Alien Storm

by A. G. Taylor

  Without warning the sprinklers shut off and the lights came up in the corridor.

  “About time,” sniffed the leader. Alex took a deep breath.

  Don’t think… Do.

  Reaching out fast, he grabbed the handle of the pistol and fired at the area of the cop’s body he thought most likely to hit – his backside.

  The leader gave a cry that was an equal mix of shock and pain as he spun round, bringing his rifle up in the process. In his concentration on grabbing the gun, Alex had allowed his invisibility to slip. For a moment they looked one another in the eyes.

  “Kid?” the cop said, before his eyes rolled up into his skull and he crashed backwards, landing with a splash on the floor.

  Alex dropped the dart-gun at his feet and threw himself at the emergency exit. Pushing the bar, he ran out into brilliant sunlight.

  8

  The two-bedroom unit owned by Uncle Pete was silent in a way that gave Alex the creeps the moment he stepped through the unlocked back door. Normally the place was filled with the sound of his uncle arguing with Stella, the TV blaring out a football match, or some of their no-good mates laughing and drinking. But not today. Alex walked through the kitchen, past the piles of dirty dishes stacked in the sink (his job to clean them, under normal circumstances) and down the corridor to the lounge room. It was empty and the giant LCD TV in the corner was turned off for the first time he could recall.

  “Hello?” Alex called through to the bedrooms, but there was no response. The place felt abandoned – cleaned out. All that was left was the junk his uncle and Stella couldn’t carry. And me, thought Alex as he slumped wearily onto the sofa and pointed the remote at the TV.

  Getting back to his uncle’s place had been easy enough. There were just a few cops covering the rear of the bank and he’d slipped past them and round to the front, just in case Uncle Pete was still there. The car was long gone, of course. He ran a few blocks before making himself visible again in a side street. The roads had been chaos, but he’d jumped in the back of a cab. The driver agreed to take him anywhere he wanted when Alex pulled a couple of hundred dollar bills from the bag still tied to his belt.

  In the apartment, he flipped through the channels until he reached a station showing the local news. A reporter stood in front of the bank, talking about the massive police operation that was under way right in the centre of the city.

  “They’re bringing someone out,” the reporter announced, turning back to the building as the camera focused on the door. Two medics appeared, wheeling a stretcher towards a waiting ambulance. “It seems as if one of the Special Forces team members has been injured.”

  Alex recognized the cop he’d shot, still unconscious on the stretcher.

  The reporter looked back at the camera. “We don’t know if the criminals are still inside the bank, but clearly they’re not afraid to use violence to evade capture.”

  Alex had heard enough. With a shake of his head, he raised the remote to turn off the TV…

  “Wait, Alex!” the reporter on the screen said urgently. “You should keep watching— …the start of a city-wide manhunt for any of the robbers who might have escaped…”

  Alex froze with his finger over the off button. Slowly, he leaned towards the screen, feeling more than a little stupid as he watched the reporter continue the story as normal.

  “Did you just speak to me?” he asked finally. Immediately, the screen flickered and crackled, making him jump back in surprise. The picture went to static for a split second before being replaced by a new image: a desert of snow that seemed to stretch on for ever. In the distance a skyscraper rose into the sky – out of place in the icy expanse. Shaking his head, Alex pressed the channel up button a few times, but every side seemed to be showing the same programme now. He lowered the remote as a tall, thin figure walked out of the snowscape towards the camera: a man in a dark suit that made him look like a silhouette against the glaring brightness of his surroundings. As he came closer to the screen, Alex could see his hair was pure white, although he only looked about as old as his uncle, perhaps in his early forties. The man stopped and smiled at the camera. Alex had the strangest feeling he was looking directly at him.

  “Hello,” the man said, “my name is Nikolai Makarov. If it’s easier for you, feel free to call me Nicholas. It’s so nice to finally get a chance to speak to you alone, Alex.” His accent was Russian, but his English was perfect.

  Alex sat back on the sofa and was silent for a moment. This had to be some kind of trick – a joke thought up by his uncle and his mates to make him look stupid. They loved to play their games. But the man on the screen – Nikolai Makarov – shook his head.

  “Come, come, Alex,” he said, as if reading his thoughts, “you know your uncle doesn’t have the brains to set something like this up. In fact, he’s busy selling you out as we speak. Take a look.”

  Makarov snapped his long fingers and the TV image abruptly changed to a shot of what looked like an interrogation room from a cop show. Uncle Pete sat at a metal table nervously smoking a cigarette while a suited man with a badge on his belt paced before him.

  “It was the kid!” Pete whined. “I tell you, my nephew got these freak powers since he was exposed to that virus. Always sneaking around, all invisible like. He made me drive him to the bank – just ask Stella. He said he’d hurt us with some kind of mind control if we didn’t help him rob the place!”

  Alex stood abruptly and pointed at the screen. “Hey! He’s making that up!”

  The image snapped back to Makarov and the ice desert. He nodded sympathetically. “One of his so-called friends tipped off the police and they picked him up trying to escape the city. He’s already given you up, Alex. In about three minutes the cops will be banging down the door of the house in which you’re standing.”

  Alex shook his head. “How did you get those pictures of him? This must be…”

  “Some kind of trick?” Nikolai Makarov finished for him with a wry smile. “Not possible? Please, Alex, I would expect someone who can make himself invisible to be a little more open-minded about such things.”

  “Then you’re…”

  “Like you,” the man on the screen finished for him once again. “Your gift is a by-product of your exposure to the fall virus, as I’m sure you’ve guessed. And so is mine.”

  Alex frowned. “You can control TVs?”

  Makarov laughed. “And much more besides. I’d like to tell you all about it, but at the moment we have the small matter of the police to worry about. You shouldn’t have gone back to the house, Alex. You’re going to have to get smarter if you’re going to stay free long enough for me to rescue you.”

  Alex looked around as a car screeched past outside. He turned back to the TV, deciding that the guy on the screen was his best bet at that moment. “What do I do? I haven’t got anywhere to go.”

  “You’ve got about one minute,” Makarov said urgently. “Just get out of there. Move!” The screen went dead.

  Not hanging around, Alex ran straight through to the kitchen. Something crackled near the sink as he went past. Looking round, his eyes fell on Stella’s iPod, lying forgotten near the window. The little white headphones were still plugged in and sound was coming from them, faint but audible.

  “Take it, Alex!” Nikolai Makarov’s voice commanded tinnily. “Go out the back door. They’re already covering the front.”

  Hearing the sound of vehicles on the road, Alex grabbed the iPod from the window sill and ran out the back. (As he ran across the lawn he remembered that the player hadn’t worked since Uncle Pete had thrown it at the wall during one of his and Stella’s arguments – but he decided to think about that later.) From the house there was a crash as the front door was smashed open.

  Alex jumped the back fence in one fluid movement and landed in the alleyway beyond, hitting the ground running.

  He didn’t look back.

  Thirty minutes later, Alex walked onto the platform of a suburban
train station with the hood of his jacket up to hide his face. Somewhere a police siren howled, but he didn’t look round as he walked past the ticket office. It was tempting simply to fade out, but the run from Uncle Pete’s house had left him too exhausted for that. For now he walked to the end of the platform, trying to keep out of people’s way. The speakers announced that a train was due in two minutes.

  “Well done, Alex,” Makarov said in the headphone he had placed in his left ear. Alex looked down at the iPod. Now that he’d stopped running, the ridiculousness of taking orders from a broken MP3 player occurred to him. In the window, the playlist even read Nikolai Makarov. “No need to speak out loud. Direct your thoughts to me and I’ll hear.”

  What now? Alex thought back, glad of the fact he wasn’t going to have to speak out loud to the iPod in public. I want to know what’s going on here.

  Makarov sighed as if they were wasting time with questions. “Plenty of time to explain everything later, Alex. Right now you need to—”

  I’m not doing anything until I get some answers, Alex answered firmly. I’ve been chased, tricked and ordered around all day. I’m not going anywhere until you give me an explanation. Just who are you? And what do you want?

  The iPod was silent for a second, but then it sprang into life again.

  “I’m just like you, Alex,” Makarov explained. “Except I was exposed to the fall virus many, many years ago. Since then I’ve been able to cast my mind to distant places and control things remotely. My skills have given me riches and power, but now I have a different concern. I have a mission and I want you to be part of it.”

  Where are you? Alex asked.

  “Far away,” Makarov replied. “What’s important now is that you find the others like you in Melbourne.”

  Why?

  “Because people like us have to stand together,” Makarov explained. “At the moment we’re scattered, weak – you’re going to help me bring us together, Alex. There’s going to be a war and it’s going to be us against them.”

  Alex shook his head, trying to process the information he was getting. War? What war? Perhaps you’re confusing me with someone else, because I’m just a kid—

  “Who has the power to make himself invisible,” Nikolai Makarov interrupted. “I think that makes you pretty special, don’t you? There are six others, Alex. They don’t know it yet, but they’re in imminent danger – I have sensed it. Go to them, help them and I’ll get you all out of Australia.”

  Alex looked round as the train pulled into the station. He guessed he didn’t have anything better to do – and there was nothing left for him in Melbourne.

  Just tell me where to go, he replied.

  The battered Range Rover drew to a halt at the crest of a hill overlooking the city. The driver’s door opened and the equally battered Eco staggered out into the fresh air. He’d been driving non-stop for hours and now they were finally at their destination: Melbourne. Major Bright emerged from the passenger side and surveyed the city spreading out before them.

  “It’s bigger than I expected,” Eco said. The city seemed to stretch on for ever into the distance. Most of Melbourne was a flat expanse of suburbs and highways, with the centre marked by a towering spike of skyscrapers huddled together. It sprawled away from them, shimmering in the heat of the afternoon. “How will we ever find the children you’re looking for?”

  During their flight from the desert, Bright had spoken about how the children in the city were essential to his plans. They were the key to his powers. But now Eco couldn’t see how they could find them in a city of five million people. Bright, however, didn’t seem concerned. He raised his hand to the view and splayed his fingers.

  “I sense them in the north,” he said quietly. “They cannot hide their thoughts from me. Six of them.”

  Eco looked to where he pointed. “What are we going to do?”

  “Together they’re strong,” Major Bright replied. “But capture one of them and the rest become weaker.”

  “How do you intend to do that?” Eco asked.

  Fire leaped around Major Bright’s outstretched fingertips. In seconds his hand was aflame.

  “First I’ll divide them,” he said. “Then they’ll fall.”

  9

  The sun hung low in the sky as Sarah entered the botanical gardens near the ANZAC shrine in the centre of Melbourne. She walked in the direction of the lake. The place was practically deserted, apart from a few people enjoying the last of the afternoon on picnic blankets laid out on the grass. From the way people had moved aside on the pavements as she walked from the train station, Sarah knew her giant-disguise was holding up – she projected it into the minds of the people around her in a five metre radius. However, the strain of maintaining the pretence was starting to give her a headache again.

  Keeping to the shadows created by the trees and staying on the smaller paths through the park, Sarah allowed the image to slip away with relief. Although she was getting stronger, as they all were, using her powers for an extended period left her drained. She checked her watch and doubled her pace.

  Dr. Rachel Andersen, the head of HIDRA in the region, was already sitting on the bench that overlooked the lake. She didn’t look round, but Sarah knew that she sensed her presence. Sarah was also aware of at least four people stationed in the trees and bushes around the lake, hidden from sight.

  “You didn’t come alone,” Sarah said as she took a seat on the end of the bench.

  Rachel nodded. “Protection.”

  “For you or me?”

  Rachel laughed. “For both of us. There are some dangerous people out there.”

  “Major Bright,” Sarah said, seeing the scene from the desert playing out in Rachel’s thoughts – the sandstorm, the crashing hovercopters.

  “Hey, I thought you said you weren’t going to do that mind-reading thing all the time!” Rachel protested with mock anger.

  Sarah blushed a little. “Sorry. Sometimes it’s difficult not to.”

  The woman nodded her understanding. They’d known one another since the original crisis with Colonel Moss and Major Bright, when Rachel had merely been the head scientist at HIDRA. When she found out about Colonel Moss’s intention to turn Sarah and the others into super-soldiers, Rachel helped them escape and eventually took Moss’s role as commander. Sarah well knew that Rachel’s only interest was finding a cure for the fall virus, but she also knew she had to be cautious – as an organization, HIDRA was just too big, too complex, to read or predict.

  “Have you considered Bright might come after you?” Rachel asked.

  “I was hoping HIDRA would have caught him by now.”

  “We’re closing the net,” Rachel replied, a little shortly. “He’s tougher than we anticipated.”

  “I know,” Sarah replied. “I’ve fought him.”

  “We’ll get him. He must be running very short of serum by now. With no fresh blood, he has no way to manufacture any more.”

  “Which brings us down to business,” Sarah said. She held out the red box and Rachel took it. The woman didn’t bother to open the lid, knowing that the insulated container contained six vials of blood extracted from the children. Each vial could contain a cure to the fall virus and bring the thousands of coma victims back to life.

  “Thank you, Sarah,” she said, holding the box on her lap. “You don’t know how much this means to us. Of course, our research would proceed more quickly if you all came in—”

  Sarah held up a hand. “Don’t, Rachel. We’re not returning to HIDRA.”

  Rachel sighed with exasperation. “But we can provide you with everything you need: food, shelter, education. What about the younger ones? How are Louise and Wei? When was the last time they went to school?”

  Sarah looked away over the lake. As soon as they reached Europe, she intended to enrol Robert, Louise and Wei in the best private school possible. From the diamonds, they had enough money to last for years; now all they needed was new identities, which
was where the new passports came in.

  She looked back at Rachel, who was waiting expectantly for her reply, and felt a pang of guilt. She and her friends were planning to vanish off the face of the earth, safe for ever from anyone who knew their secrets. But as much as she liked the woman, Sarah realized she couldn’t tell her – finding the viral cure would always come first with Rachel and they both knew it. And while Sarah desperately wanted to see HIDRA find a cure for the sake of her father and the parents of her friends, she also needed to protect the freedom of her group.

  “They’re doing fine,” Sarah said firmly. “They’ll be better when they know where their parents are.” Both Louise and Wei had lost parents to the fall virus coma – and then HIDRA had “mislaid” their sleeper caskets. Her own father, Daniel, had only escaped the same fate because they had fled with him before he succumbed to the coma.

  Rachel sighed. “Believe me, we’re trying to find them. Colonel Moss deliberately lost the details of significant patients.”

  “Like the parents of children he wanted to control?” Sarah said bitterly.

  “There’s thousands of John Does among the sleepers,” Rachel acknowledged. “We’re DNA testing them all, but it’s going to take time.”

  “Okay,” Sarah said. She knew Rachel was trying her best in difficult circumstances.

  “Is there anything we can help you with?” the woman asked, placing a hand on Sarah’s arm. “Do you need food, supplies? How about Daniel – is he still stable in his sleeper casket?”

  “He’s fine,” Sarah replied. “We’re fine.” The last thing she wanted was to become dependent on HIDRA. At the moment Rachel was in charge of things and her intentions were good, but she knew that could change without warning if another military man like Colonel Moss was put in control again.

  “Just catch Major Bright,” Sarah said, rising from the seat. A strange feeling passed over her as she did so – a sudden dizziness that came out of nowhere. She steadied herself against the bench. She sensed danger. Not for herself, but for the others back at the apartment.