Someone had shut down the media interest in record time, and as yet, no real news had slipped out into the public domain. All the more impressive in the digital age where seemingly everything was recorded and uploaded.
The circuit around the exterior of the grounds showed no way in or out that could be exploited, and with Dr Quantum’s presence now on site, there was nothing to do but observe and wait.
----------
Cynthia Arrow looked out into the darkened room at her new disciples.
The abandoned church had been a godsend, quite literally, she thought. The location was some distance from any prying eyes. After a huge storm in 1998, the riverbanks had flooded and swept through the small village.
Wolfbane sat in the bottom of the steep valley, and when the new motorway had been built, they had cleared large sections of woodland up through the top of the valley. As a result, the small village had become a regular flood risk, and when the big storm had hit, most of Wolfbane had been washed away and subsequently deemed uninhabitable. It was now the new base for the reemergence of SOUL.
The old, largely wooden, building still stank of the river water that had sunk deep into its bones, but Cynthia didn’t mind the smell, mainly because ever since Havencrest where the demon had laid its hands on her, it was one of her senses that had been compromised.
She still got headaches so bad that it made her sit with her fingernails digging into her palms deeply enough to draw blood. She struggled to drink anything other than water; anything with any kind of flavour to it made her retch.
The strength in her left arm had never fully returned, and her left eye was significantly weaker than her right, but as far as she was concerned, these were obstacles put in front of her by God.
She had been tested once before; at Havencrest, she had been tested and she had failed. She’d had the devil in her sights but she had allowed him and The Legion to slip through her fingers. That defeat had wrecked her to her very core, and it had taken years to drag herself back up out of the gutter and start again, but she had, and she had become all the stronger for it.
She looked out now at her new disciples: these men were more dedicated, better trained and far more capable than her previous followers.
She knew now that she had made a mistake in taking souls willing to die far more than they were willing to kill. It was fine to engage faith-filled followers in her crusade, but what she really required were warriors. Here in Wolfbane, she bred them strong and willing to do whatever she required without question. There was a new war coming… a war she had to win… a war she was going to win.
----------
CJ, Jesus, Jamie-Lyn and Doc were situated in a part of the home that was still standing and that had been cleared and now sealed.
The matron’s office had a long table on one side of the wall. The table had a large shiny black bag lying on it, a bag holding their friend.
None of them had opened the bag as none of them wanted to see Bull’s final face, preferring to remember him as he was in their memories, not as he currently lay.
One by one, they had all walked up to the table and gently laid a hand on the body bag.
“He was always the best of us,” Doc said sadly as she took her turn at the table, and the others merely nodded their heads silently in agreement.
There was enough furniture in the office to seat them all, but CJ didn’t seem to be able to sit still for even a moment as he paced about before finally coming to a standstill looking out of the window with his hands clasped behind his back in a typical pose.
He stood that way for almost a full minute before finally speaking.
“Look, I can’t be sure of anything right now. I know that you think I’m hiding something.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Doc said bitterly.
“Excuse me?”
“You never told us that you could put a hold on our powers.”
“That was a… safety measure,” he offered.
“Can you take them away completely?” Doc asked, more than a little hopefully, Jamie-Lyn thought.
“I’m sorry, but no; it would be too dangerous to play around with your DNA a second time. I was able to suspend them momentarily, but I don’t think I could even do that now.”
“Now?” Doc enquired.
“I may not age like humans do, but I do age, and your bodies are…, well, they are an organic entity. They are still adapting, evolving, even if you do not realise it. My enhancements are now bonded to you at a cellular level.”
“So what do you know? Or at least what do you think?” Jesus asked, impatient at the side conversation.
CJ looked uneasy at the question.
“We need to know,” Jamie-Lyn prompted. “A lot of people are dead, CJ. You do understand that, right? Someone is coming for us, all of us. If you know something, or even suspect, then you owe it to us to say, before it’s too late.”
CJ took a long heavy sigh before finally speaking.
“Torvanians,” CJ said as if the very word should explain everything.
“Sorry?” Doc asked for the group.
“That’s what they are called. You know that I am from a home world called Thoraxis? Thoraxis is a peaceful planet. We are a race of explorers, scientists, researchers; our existence is to provide answers, solutions to enrich all. But we have our limitations: we are thinkers, creators, so we required hands to do the heavy lifting, the menial jobs, if you will. As a result, we created a race of beings to handle such things; they were called Torvanians. The Torvanians were bred to be physically strong, hard workers, able to adapt to the harsh mines of the Morgana Planes.”
“Kind of sounds a little like slaves to me,” Jamie-Lyn said uncomfortably.
“No, you don’t understand,” CJ said quickly. “Thoraxians are not built for hard labour; we needed hands for the lifting and carrying to free our minds for the mental pursuits. Our work is meant to enrich the galaxy; the Torvanians were just necessary tools.”
“And did they have a say in what they were used for?”
“Of course not. They were bred to be subservient. Their brain functions were intentionally limited, and we only made males in order to prevent them from breeding on their own. They were simply mindless automatons used for mining.”
The room shifted uncomfortably at the revelation.
“No, I am not perhaps explaining this properly. I think the problem is that you don’t understand,” CJ said, shaking his head.
“I think maybe the problem is that we do,” Doc answered for the group, and a heavy silence settled on them for a few moments.
“Wait a minute,” Jamie-Lyn said, holding up a hand with an incredulous tone. “Are you saying that the thing out there is one of these… Torvanians? Are you serious?”
“Would that be so hard to believe?” CJ asked curiously. “I stand before you as a creature millions of light years away from home. Is it really so hard to believe that another might have taken the same path?”
“To be honest, yes,” she answered. “You landing here was a gazillion to one shot; two aliens landing on the same planet… well, that surely can’t happen, can it?”
“It could if this thing followed him,” Doc said, thinking about the question.
“So you’re saying that’s what this thing is?” Jesus demanded.
“No,” CJ responded quickly. “Let me make myself absolutely clear. I am not saying that at all. I have no evidence to prove that hypothesis. Besides, the Torvanians were a simple race, limited intellect and bred for their obedience; the thought of one being capable of somehow managing to navigate their way here is simply quite preposterous.”
“But…,” Jamie-Lyn prompted.
“But while I only caught just a flash of a glimpse of the creature that attacked Marshall, a glimpse of that red fur, it was… well, it was the first thing that went through my mind.”
“And now with Bull?” Jesus asked pointedly.
“Well, I helped to enh
ance Bull’s skin, and to be honest, I’m not sure that I could think of anything on this planet that could slice through it like Dr Quantum has described. The Torvanians’ claws were made to cut through the mines, cut through the sort of impenetrable rock that could not be broken with even any of our scientific tools. Perhaps those claws could shred even Bull’s skin.”
“And if one of those things is here hunting us?” Doc demanded.
“But it couldn’t be. Even if, by some miracle, it landed on this planet, I do not see how it would have the rational thought processes required for such a mission.”
“Do you not have evolution on your planet, CJ?” Doc replied. “Millions of years of evidence here on earth tells us that life evolves, develops, finds a way.”
“I cannot see how a Torvanian would evolve; it is scientifically impossible.”
“But if it did?” Jamie-Lyn asked nervously.
CJ considered the question. “If a Torvanian were able to develop to the point of rational independent thought? Combined with its physical advantages?”
“And were hunting us?” Jesus prompted.
CJ looked at them all slowly in turn before speaking. “Then may your God help us all.”
chapter 14
NEWSFLASH: CATS ESCAPE FROM BAGS
There were actually multiple sets of eyes watching the private hospital from afar. One such striking green set belonged to Summer Sloan.
The news anchor was out in the field at her own request, or demand might be a better word for it.
After the disastrous interview with Cosmic Jones, her only saving grace, as far as she thought of it, was that the attention at the station had been focused on the deaths of the ARK crew and Andrew Marshall at the outside broadcast rather than her own performance.
Of course, the interview itself had never been broadcast and she thanked her lucky stars for that fact, despite her protestations at the time against not doing the whole thing live. As a result, her reputation had not taken a hit in the eyes of the public, but it had in the eyes of her colleagues, something that she could not let stand.
Her solution had been simple: get out in the field and bring home the story.
She knew how they all viewed her: a bubble-headed blonde, a simple script reader without the brains to write her own words. Her greatest weakness was that they weren’t wrong; her greatest strength was that she knew it. Having limitations wasn’t the problem – not knowing them was.
Journalists like Jamie-Lyn Anderson rode their high horses and looked down on people like her because she wasn’t as smart. Jamie-Lyn had stumbled into her own big break, granted. She had used that opportunity to launch her career – an aspiring journalist returning from the Queen’s Guard front lines who had soon dedicated herself to revealing truths across the world. But that, and about £3, would get you a cup of coffee as far as Summer was concerned. But Summer had her own tools, and she used them with a ruthlessness that would put a dictator to shame.
She was currently sitting in a van parked almost half a mile away, a van kitted out with top-of-the-line surveillance equipment that would put a government agency to shame.
Her companion at this time was a man by the name of Quentin Link, a former special forces reconnaissance operative who now worked for hire on the private market.
He was a slender youngish man somewhere in his mid- to late thirties with soft features and glasses, a far cry from the tough guy stereotypical image she’d had in her head about ex-military private contractors. But Link wasn’t sought after for his muscles. It was his uncanny ability to track and trace anything on any continent that gave him his value.
Link wasn’t cheap, but Summer had her own personal pathway to the man upstairs at the ARK network, a bloated, ageing dinosaur by the name of Wilson Fontaine.
Fontaine was the money and the power behind his own media empire, one that stretched its tentacles around the UK in a vicelike grip, promoting his own agendas as independent news coverage.
It hadn’t been easy getting to the man, but while the likes of Jamie-Lyn were utilising their own talents such as intelligence and hard work to climb the ladder, Summer’s talents lay more in the seduction department.
Men had always been easy prey for her. She had a natural allure that drew them to her, but as result, she had little in the way of respect for the gender.
Fontaine had been difficult to work her way up to, especially given the fact that there had been plenty of tight-waisted and long-legged competition. Sure, she could have bagged him for a one-night stand, another notch on his bedpost, but she wanted more than that from him.
She had not faltered, had not deviated until she was the only whisper in his ear every night as they shared a bed and she endured his feeble sloppy gropes.
She shook the weekend’s sickening fumblings from her mind as she looked around at the van’s interior and at what her sacrifices had bought, or at least rented, her.
“Don’t we need to get closer?” she demanded.
Link didn’t look around from the bank of monitors and flickering equipment at his disposal.
“We’re fine just where we are,” the man answered dismissively.
“You are aware that you work for me, right?”
“You hired my services to do a particular job, Miss Sloan, and that’s not quite the same thing.”
His tone was, and had been from the start, infuriating. For some reason, her wiles seemed to have no effect on the man and she didn’t understand or like it.
“What are we looking at?” she asked as she leaned in close to stare over his shoulder while making sure her ample cleavage was millimetres from his face, but again, he didn’t bite.
“Government agents, young but well trained. I’m guessing Queen’s Guard from what I’ve studied about them.”
“I thought they were retired?”
“My information says mothballed at best but never really retired. When you’ve got an asset like that alien, well, I guess you never take anything off the table.”
“What do you know about him?” Summer asked as she removed herself from Link’s shoulder and took a seat next to him at the console desk.
“His power is off the charts, obviously. We’ve never seen the likes of his type before. What his abilities and limits actually are, we don’t know for sure. Those are very carefully guarded secrets kept within the Queen’s Guard. Personally, I‘ve heard that even their scientists don’t know the man’s limits for sure. Cosmic Jones was granted unprecedented protection from the government. I guess given what they knew about him, they wanted him on their side and allowed him to write his own ticket.”
“You believe he’s a… a good guy, for want of a better word?”
Link sat back in his chair. “He’s been here what? 30-odd years now? I’m guessing that if he had bad intentions, we’d have seen them by now. Either that, or he’s playing one hell of a long game.”
“So who’s the woman?” Summer asked, pointing at the screen as several figures walked around the hospital grounds.
“Well, Jamie-Lyn Anderson you know, obviously; the other woman is Helen Forbes.”
“Forbes? Why do I know that name?”
“Dr Quantum.”
“That’s Dr Quantum? That old biddy?”
“Appearances are always deceptive, Ms Sloan. The doc there is still a big hitter, regardless of what you might think she looks like. She still carries the power that Cosmic Jones gave her, but my information is that she no longer uses it.”
“Really,” Summer mused.
“She lives in Norway, teaching high school science.”
“So what about now? Why is she active again? Why are the Queen’s Guard active? Why are any of them here? What the hell was that thing that attacked our outside broadcast crew?”
“That’s a lot of questions,” Link replied softly as he kept one eye on the screens.
“Well, we’re paying you a lot of bloody money!” she snapped, irritated at his constant steady flow of
calm.
“And you’ll have the answers when I do.”
“Well you’ve yet to provide us with anything useful. Your first assignment was Havencrest, the great war-ending victory for the Queen’s Guard. My sources tell me that there is a rotten core at the centre of that particular story.”
“And like I say, you’ll have the information when I have it. My job is to provide you with the facts, Miss Sloan, not to merely prop up your own theories.”
“Well what about this place? My sources told me that there was a gas leak explosion here.”
“And you believe that?”
“Well…, maybe not now that the Queen’s Guard are here.”
“Good girl. This hospital has been home to Harrison Millington for the past 20 years or so. Bull,” he added when Summer looked blank at the name.
“Holy shit!” she exclaimed.
“Holy shit indeed.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I’m working on it, but given the extent of the efforts to shut this place down and any reporting on it, I’m guessing nothing good. The former government-sanctioned adventurer known as Bull was never taken to any hospital in the vicinity.”
“Government-sanctioned adventurer?” Summer laughed. “What are you, 90?”
“He’s not currently, and has not been, with the Queen’s Guard team, no sighting of any kind. My guess is, given the specific type and amount of destruction here, the man fought here and the man died here.”
“Damn, I thought he was indestructible?”
“Well if he ever was, he isn’t now.”
“Okay, so that makes two teammates dead, or killed I should say. We’ve got Dr Quantum dragged back, Jamie-Lyn back in the fray, and the great Cosmic Jones stepping out of the shadows. So what’s next?” Summer asked excitedly.
“You’re looking at it.” Link shrugged.
“So we just sit here?”
“That’s the job, Miss Sloan. What did you expect?”
“For it not to be this boring.”
“You’d better get used to it. If you want answers, that requires watching and waiting. This is a recon mission. Right now, they have the information and we want it.”
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