A media monopoly was everything that Chris Adams had stood against, or at least what he used to stand against. Somehow, a mortgage and a family had a way of eroding his own principles to the point where he struggled to remember what they were.
There was still a line, however faintly it was drawn in the sand, and finally Adams had reached it. Finally, he had reached the point where he could go no further.
Word had come down from on high, and that could only mean Fontaine himself, that ARK was to start pushing a new direction on the Queen’s Guard coverage sparked by the death of now two former members.
Adams himself had no problem in shining a light on the once secretive organisation; as far as he was concerned, no one should be above the law and any government department answered to the people. But the new direction was to steer the conversation towards a deep suspicion of Cosmic Jones and his Queen’s Guard.
The SOUL war had been a long time ago, and the people’s fears had been forgotten, but now the ARK coverage wanted to highlight that the deaths were a distant memory and the generally considered opinion was that the government had overreacted at the time.
He had been ordered to produce an exposé to show that the people’s panic had been exploited and had led to a prime minister seizing more power than was safe for the country and free reign had been given to an alien.
Suddenly, his journalists were being handed information instead of doing their own research; facts were not being checked, and it was clear that no one was interested in an even-handed approach.
He had spent all day arguing with Fontaine’s people about the directives, but to no avail.
No one above him cared about the other side to the story, about how much good the Queen’s Guard had done, about the lives that they had saved or the killers that they had stopped. Now, they were being painted as dangerous extremists in their own right, with unchecked missions little more than assassinations and a cover-up that led to the very front door of the prime minister.
It was a dangerous direction, and Adams wanted no part of it. Worse still was that same agenda was now being pushed across a multitude of no doubt other Fontaine-owned outlets.
The explosion at the Ryhill Care Home had been a relatively minor story until Fontaine’s media had exposed it as a Queen’s Guard cover-up.
Summer Sloan had smugly returned to the station with footage of black-suited agents led by Cosmic Jones himself. There were also visuals of Dr Quantum and Jamie-Lyn at the scene.
There was, naturally, no evidence of any wrongdoing, merely questions that had to be asked. The trouble was that his own station was about to start a campaign of innuendo rather than journalism. To make matters worse, a few quick calls around to select discreet friends at other stations told him that they were all going to rumble along the same track.
It was the sight of his former employee and friend that gave him real pause. Jamie-Lyn and he had been close. He had liked the young woman from the very start, and it had hurt him greatly to see her leave, mainly because he knew she’d been right to.
There was now a stack of notes on his desk, a flood of editorials, exposés and other programming disguised as news propped up by anonymous inside sources. The gist was to be that the Queen’s Guard were a disturbingly unaccountable law unto themselves, a covert group who’d continued to operate on home soil despite government assurances that the armed wing of the department had been disbanded 20-odd years ago.
Looking through the mound of upcoming programmes, there were several pieces with supposedly impeccable psychiatric sources who would actually put forward the theory that the Queen’s Guard were, in fact, directly responsible for the creation of SOUL.
The idea being put forward was that the terrorists were in reality simply misunderstood good old folk who’d been tarnished by a few bad apples – the religious right being demonised by the liberal left; to Adams, it was all sounding a hell of a lot like the dangerous propaganda spouted by Cynthia Arrow back in the day.
His fruitless phone conversation with Fontaine’s personal assistant, while Summer Sloan sat perched on the edge of his desk with a supercilious grin on her face, had been enough to almost cause Adams to quit on the spot.
It had only been the thought of losing his pension that had stopped him, the thought of having to tell his wife Alison that their retirement plans were gone, so close to his retirement in around eight months. But how could look Alison in the eye now? How could he stand her gaze when he would know that he’d sold out everything he’d ever believed in?
The final straw had been when he’d been advised that Summer Sloan was going to present a special news report claiming that Cosmic Jones himself had been responsible for the blast at the care home and that his own energy weapons had destroyed the building and taken who knew how many lives.
The, as yet unsubstantiated, claim was going to be that the whole thing was now a government cover-up which was hiding the true number of casualties, but Summer Sloan – with the full weight of ARK behind her – was going to expose the truth. They were even now claiming to have exclusive footage, which would have been a hand grenade of a story if it wasn’t for the simple fact that Adams himself had seen the video file. Not the actual playback, of course – that was being closely guarded. No, he’d seen the file properties including a time and date stamp on the file, information that somehow magically managed to predate the care home explosion. He’d left the office tonight with a loud slam of the door, hard enough to crack the glass in his door and cause the studio staff to look up in surprise.
He was halfway along his walk home when he finally decided that he would talk to Alison tonight. He’d called her to tell her everything about what Fontaine was making him do and he’d asked for her advice. She had always been his sounding board, a woman who always knew best and always advised him to do what was right.
She had reminded him of the man he was, the man he’d always been, the man she’d always wanted him to be.
With the decision made, he picked up the pace, eager to be home and in the arms of the only woman he’d ever loved, eager to walk away from ARK.
He’d told Alison on the phone that he was going to spread the truth. He was going to advise the people that there was a snowstorm coming their way, an avalanche of one man’s opinion, one man’s agenda spread thickly throughout his media empire designed to smear the Queen’s Guard for Fontaine’s own personal reason, reasons that were not yet clear to Adams himself, but he had to assume they were less than admirable.
The annoying thing was that there was a story here, one that undoubtedly deserved to be investigated. There had been clearly a cover story put out into the public domain about the explosion at the Ryhill Care Home, and the Queen’s guard had been pictured at the scene, retired members and all. But no one seemed interested in finding out the facts, only pinning the blame on the Queen’s Guard, and specifically Cosmic Jones himself, but a network of lies and false evidence wasn’t the right way to go about it
Adams quickened his pace, eager to be home, eager to see Alison and find a path forwards.
He turned off the main road and took a shortcut through a back alley. Normally, he avoided such a way as the narrow alley stank of urine and most of it not animal. There were discarded needles and bottles strewn about as the dregs liked the fact that the alleyway was out of sight.
Feeling paranoid, he started to move faster, breaking into as close to a jog as he could manage at his age.
The evening was closing in around him and the shadows were lengthening, giving plenty of places for people to hide, he thought worryingly.
Something glass shattered behind him, and his heart skipped a beat. He spun around in a flash, but couldn’t see anyone behind him.
“HELLO?” he called out before cursing himself for drawing more attention to his position.
A cat screeched, and he jumped again, feeling like a lost scared child and hating the feeling.
He pushed himself faster along the alley
way, keen to find his way back into the safety of the light. He could see a tall powerful streetlight up ahead, and he started to push his ageing body further as he gasped for breath. He’d almost reached it when a figure stepped out of the shadows and blocked his path, causing him to stagger to a halt.
“I don’t think I’ve got anything,” he quickly blurted involuntarily as his hands tapped his pockets to indicate that he wasn’t carrying any loose change.
The figure remained motionless. It was large and broad and blocked the whole path, leaving Adams with nowhere to go but back into the darkness behind him.
“Look, I haven’t got anything, okay? No money? You understand?”
The figure remained silent but now took a step towards him.
“Hey! You speak English?” Adams exclaimed as he took a step backwards. “N-O M-O-N-E-Y!” he elongated.
He was a city boy, and as such, he had been mugged on more than one occasion, but this felt different; this didn’t feel like money was the objective.
His foot knocked against one of a collection of metallic rubbish bins just as the figure suddenly lunged at him with a flash of silver in its hand proving his theory correct – this was no mugging.
The space where his throat had been only a split second before was cleaved in two by a razor as he fell backwards with a loud crash into the bins. Before he could struggle back to his feet, the figure fell on him with a hard landing.
Adams raised a hand to ward off the blow, and even though he was wearing thick winter gloves, the razor blade sliced through the leather with a red hot slash of pain.
He screamed long and loud, and a nearby rear window opened from one of the properties that backed onto the alleyway.
“KEEP IT BLOODY DOWN OUT THERE!” an elderly woman yelled out into the darkness.
“HELP ME!” Adams yelled back. “I’M BEING ATTACKED!”
“WELL DO IT QUIETLY!” the woman shouted back before her window slammed shut.
The figure slashed out again, but this time Adams managed to snatch up a fallen bin lid and the blade clanged against it with a shower of sparks.
Adams thrust the lid forwards as hard as he could. The lid hit the figure’s blade hand and forced it backwards. Its face was obscured by the lid but now there was a choking sound, and when he took the lid away, the razor was now embedded in the figure’s throat.
Blood spurted downwards onto Adams and he kicked out in fear and disgust, sending what he could now tell was a man off of him.
“I’m sorry,” Adams cried out on instinct as the attacker convulsed on the ground as blood squirted through the man’s fingers.
Now he could see him clearly up close, the man didn’t look like a beggar. He wore a smart suit under a long black woollen coat.
As the man clutched at his throat, his coat sleeve rode up and there on his wrist was a tattoo, one that Adams instantly recognised. It was a long sword with a cross hilt pointing downwards like a spiked cross with a halo ring around the top; it was the symbol of SOUL.
Adams scrambled back to his feet and staggered away, his heart suddenly full of fear – not for himself, but for Alison. If SOUL had come after him, they might already be at his house.
He left the body and started to run. His hand ached monstrously, but he ignored the pain and the DNA evidence he’d left behind. Right now, all he had in his mind was Alison.
The run from here was a short one, and he was soon heading up his pathway. His body was going into shock but his mind was fighting hard against it as his hands shook violently, slowing his ability to unlock the front door.
“ALISON!” he yelled out as he stumbled through, slamming the door behind him.
He staggered into the house, clutching his slashed hand as blood dripped onto the floor though his fingers.
“ALISON!” he called out again as he crashed through the lounge door where she would always sit waiting for him to return home from work.
His heart soared as he spotted her on the sofa facing away from him.
“Alison, oh thank God,” he sobbed as he stumbled into the room. “Why didn’t you answer me?”
His legs felt weak now as he leaned on the sofa for support as he made his way around it.
“Alison?” he asked with a frail voice as his gut turned somersaults.
He found himself staring into the lifeless eyes of the love of his life, and then he knew that all was lost. Her throat had been cut open and dried blood now caked her blouse.
He sank to his knees and took her cold hand in his one remaining good one.
“I’m so sorry,” he sobbed. “This is all my fault, all my fault…. I shouldn’t have called you.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” a voice said from behind him and he didn’t need to turn around to know that it was SOUL who had come for their pound of flesh.
The cold blade was on his throat, but he didn’t fight. Staring into his dead wife’s eyes, he knew that there wasn’t anything left to fight for… not now.
The cut came quickly and expertly and it barely hurt at all. Then he was falling into the darkness, praying that Alison would be waiting for him.
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chapter 17
A SHIFTING LANDSCAPE
“Look, let’s not get this out of perspective,” Jesus announced to the group.
They were assembled in a common room back at the Queen’s Guard compound. Jamie-Lyn, Doc and Crimson were sitting spaced apart on a three-sided sofa that covered the whole centre of the large room.
Back in the day, the room had been a social hub for the team, a place to decompress after missions. The wall was covered with a huge TV screen hooked up to every satellite station, a games system and a mammoth DVD library.
There was a long bar, a multitude of old-school arcade and pinball machines, a commercial-sized and kitted-out coffee bar, as well as full-sized snooker, pool, foosball and table tennis tables.
Most of the time, the team sat in their cliques; sometimes, Jamie-Lyn and CJ sat alone together deep in conversation as her reporter’s mind never tired of hearing about his previous life. Marshall and Doc would often be seen huddled together, a couple in all but the physical sense. Bull would normally be sat just on the edge of any conversation, happy to be close but not confident enough to take an active part. Other times, Jamie-Lyn and Doc would sit together, often giggling like young girls. Crimson, however, would always sit alone, and unlike Bull, he never exhibited any desire to be a social part of the team.
Now in the room, the remaining members had unconsciously left open spaces on the sofa for their missing comrades, gaps that would never be filled again.
“Out of perspective!” Jamie-Lyn exclaimed, and everyone immediately looked around nervously, as though expecting to see CJ appear. He was the only one still alive who was missing. “Are you kidding me?”
“Keep your voice down!” Jesus hissed.
“Oh, great, so what? We’re scared of CJ hearing us now?” Jamie-Lyn retorted, shaking her head. “Don’t you think he should be here?”
“He’s resting,” Jesus replied defensively.
On instinct, the others all turned to Doc for confirmation.
“Don’t look at me,” she said, putting her hands up. “I’ve told you all before I never could read him, and if I couldn’t do it back in the day, when I was at my peak, then there’s certainly no chance of me being able to do it now.”
“It would help…,” Jamie-Lyn pressed gently.
“Wow, you’ve changed your tune,” Crimson scoffed.
“Excuse me?”
“You used to hang on his every word, would never hear a bad word said against him; he walked on water as far as you were concerned.”
“Well… things change, people change, I changed. I’m not a kid anymore.”
“So do we believe him? CJ, I mean. This whole… Torvanian business?” Doc asked the group.
“He’s never lied to us before.” Jamie-Lyn shrugged.
“That we know of,” Crims
on added cryptically. “But then isn’t that what lies are? Truths that we’ve accepted that haven’t yet been proven to be untrue.”
“You were always paranoid,” Doc replied. “Professionally speaking.”
“Maybe that’s why I’m still alive.” He winked back at her.
“Look, even CJ said he’s not 100% sure about that,” Jesus interjected.
“Aren’t you supposed to be the one with the answers?” Crimson asked the man with a sneer. “I mean, isn’t that your whole deal? Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“It’s… difficult. Look, things aren’t the same here as a decade ago, okay? Our funding has been slashed to the bone. We are a department designed to fight a war that no longer exists.”
“Well that’s comforting,” Doc said sarcastically.
“And what about SOUL?” Jamie-Lyn enquired. “I mean seriously, what do you know about them because I find Cynthia Arrow’s involvement in all this a hell of a lot easier to swallow than some kind of space monster roaming the planet.”
“Is she even still alive?” Doc added. “They never found a body, right? At Havencrest, I mean. Right, Jesus?”
“That’s right,” he acknowledged. “The war’s been over for a long time now. After a few years, the money started to dry up, resources got pulled, you guys… well, you all left. This place was being held together with pennies.”
“So this could all be her, right? I mean, it could be Cynthia Arrow?” Doc asked the group.
“What about all of the negative media coverage out there? Surely none of you can possibly think that’s a coincidence?” Crimson suggested.
“Look, if she was back…,” Jesus answered, holding up his hands in a placating gesture, “then I’d probably know about it, and if she was rebuilding her organisation, then trust me, I’d certainly know. There is absolutely no way – no way in hell – that she could have been plotting a comeback without us finding out, okay?”
“You sound pretty sure about that,” Jamie-Lyn responded.
“Look, you don’t put together a whole nefarious plan without government ears catching wind of it. The thing with Marshall? Maybe she could have rounded up some goons and crashed the house, but getting away scot-free? Not a trace left at the scene? Not to mention killing Marshall in the first damn place? No, that takes planning; same thing with Bull at the care home.”
Capes Page 23