“And the others? When did he turn them?”
“Emma was the last. She didn’t get turned until eight months later. There was no need to do so as she was so bloody enthusiastic about everything she was given to do.”
That last part was right. Emma had only just passed the psychiatric assessment that would let her join the agency. And she was impossible to get on with.
Linwood continued to drive in silence. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to have had Thadeus monitoring so closely. Suddenly Carey and Dean’s actions didn’t seem quite as atrocious. But then neither did Thadeus’s. From the moment he’d found Irulal back in the Tombs, he’d never quite been himself. She’d always been there, gently nudging things along until she regained her strength and the components of her plan were in place. There had never been any point in revealing her hand until she was ready to open the schism.
“The silver was connected to Thadeus, and Thadeus was connected to Irulal.”
“Yes,” Dean replied.
“But your silver is still reacting.”
“Being that close to another large quantity. It must have an effect.”
“That’s been bothering me.”
“What?”
“Carey’s remains. You said he was infected at the same time as you,” Linwood said cautiously. “But there was an awful lot of silver there.”
Dean nodded. “When Thadeus ordered the silver to destroy, it did so by consuming the body and making it explode.”
“Have you ever considered that the silver could be duplicating inside you?”
Dean stiffened. He tilted his head and put his hands through his hair. “I’ve been living like this for too long. I’ve thought of every possibility. I don’t know how much silver there is inside me. But ever since Carey’s death I’ve accepted the possibility that there’s more of it.”
“Without Thadeus, where is it getting instructions from?”
He paused. “I don’t know. Maybe there aren’t any instructions. Maybe they’re reacting to the last set of instructions they’ve been given.”
Possible. But there was a nagging doubt malingering. Dean noticed her quiet. “What? You think Irulal’s still alive?”
She shrugged. “We destroyed her once with the prototype weapon and she survived. I’m not convinced that Max Harding was able to kill her with a gunshot. From how he described her death, I’d say there’s a good chance we’ve made a terrible mistake in not trying to track her down sooner.”
“It took years for Irulal to get back to full strength after we destroyed her.”
“Exactly. But that was when we used a weapon designed to rip apart the connections between nanites. Max didn’t have a weapon like that. Maybe it’s possible that her closeness to the dimensional schism helped weaken her enough to be hurt with a conventional weapon. When we first found her in 1983, she was weak and confused having just come through something similar.” She slowed as her train of thought dried up. The problem was they didn’t have the information they needed, nor the manpower to investigate.
“There was equipment in the strongroom in the Tombs. I was down there after the event. It’s been cleared out,” Linwood said.
“Do you think Thadeus did that?”
“I’m thinking Department 5 got in there. Winborn seems to be very confident around the nanites. I think he’s been helping himself to tech and research.”
“How much of a problem is that going to be?” Dean asked.
“I don’t know. It depends on what he’s planning to do. We will put a stop to him, Dean. I will need your help to do it.”
“You’ve got it,” he replied without hesitation.
It felt wrong working with him again, knowing what she knew about him, about how he’d hurt and killed people. Was it too convenient to blame his actions on the silver? And if he was still being influenced by it, how much could she ever trust him?
She realised she didn’t really have a choice. If she couldn’t trust Kingston, who else did she have skilled up enough to help her defeat Winborn and TALOS? Her grandmother once told her that life didn’t always give you what you wanted. Sometimes you asked for lemonade and got lemons. It was up to you to make the best of what you had. Linwood would do that now, and now that she’d made her mind up, a strange sense of calm fell over her.
She’d been out of the game for too long and it was time to get herself back in there and sort out the mess she’d left behind.
40
3rd June 2013
Oh my God, I’m blind.
Jaq was lying on the floor. From the smell, she was no longer in the restricted zone. But where the hell was she?
Carefully, she got to her knees and put her hands to her eyes. There was nothing obviously obstructing her vision. She could blink and with every blink her vision refused to come back.
“Hey, I’m awake!” she shouted. “I need help!”
She’d been suffocating. It had forced its way down her throat, choking her. Then it had covered her face, cutting out the light. The silver had done this. The alien nanites that had caused them such trouble were inside her. This wasn’t new. From Linwood’s report, the Shun nanites were in the entire population, but that was to a lesser degree. The silver was several magnitudes more severe.
And this is what it felt like to be lost to it.
Carefully, she got to her feet and put her arms before her, then moving them around her, feeling for a wall, some boundary she could work with. The only sounds were the gentle background drone of air-conditioning.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” Winborn said. His voice sounded processed like it was coming from a speaker. “You had me worried for a while.”
“What the hell is this? Why have you locked me up?”
“You’re in quarantine. The silver consumed you completely. Don’t you remember? I don’t think it would be safe for anyone to allow you to move around the institute freely until we can be clear how serious this is.”
It came back to her. The silver substance in the casket had moved like it had been a fluid, but then it had attacked her. Holy shit, what had happened to her? The stuff had covered her, all the while she’d been batting it off with her hands, demanding that Winborn come to help her. But he hadn’t, and she’d been covered.
It pushed inside my mouth. I was almost choking.
Is that when she’d passed out?
Jaq stepped closer to where she heard the voice come from.
“The silver? You mean Carey’s remains?”
“There’s more than one source of silver. They’re nanites that have been adapted for a specific purpose.”
“And what purpose is that?”
“Control,” he said simply. “And it’s inside you. You’re infected now.”
Her face felt flushed. “You’ve got to get it out of me.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “You’ve got to help me.”
“You’re useful to me now. More useful than when you were plain old Jacqueline Petro. You can hear the Harmony, just like I can. And you’ll want to help me, you won’t have any choice.”
“You’re delusional.”
Suddenly, her body was wracked with burning fires and she dropped to the floor, screaming at the pain. Her nerves were being torn and ripped and she could only thrash on the floor in helpless agony.
When it stopped, she lay there, panting, feeling the ache of her muscles. She realised with shame that she’d been unable to contain her bladder and she hunched up on the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees.
Winborn said nothing. Jaq wiped a tear away and shuddered as she tried to hold back the sobs that threatened to take over.
Eventually, when she felt she had some control, she spoke. “What the hell was that?”
“That was the silver inside you, working its way across your nervous system, discovering what makes you tick,” he said dispassionately and in that moment, Jaq r
ealised that Winborn wasn’t a man she would be able to negotiate with.
“And you made it do that?”
“Yes.”
“How?” But she knew. Ever since the Jodrell Bank Incident, Winborn hadn’t been himself. She almost laughed. No, of course he wasn’t himself.
Slowly, she got to her feet, ignoring the wetness between her thighs, putting the shame away where it couldn’t embarrass her.
“How long have you been infected?” She asked him.
“Long enough,” he replied.
41
3rd June 2013
“We need to call Stuart,” Carter said, her voice low as they approached the pool building. The Old Sands Leisure Complex had been closed for three years and as no developers had yet been found with pockets deep enough to redevelop the massive site, the buildings remained abandoned and sealed off.
They’d parked their car in a visitor’s bay on the main road before finding a broken section of fence at the back of the site close to the swimming pool building. The man who’d rung the station had said he’d seen several people breaking in—it could just as easily be squatters as Faceless—but a tip-off was a tip-off. He couldn’t ignore it.
The money had dried up for this complex years ago and it showed. Window frames were rotting, paint was peeling, and the grounds were unplanted. Large overspilling industrial bins nestled in their purpose-built enclosures and there was the smell of forgotten rubbish. There were lots of obstacles around here, Payne thought ruefully, plenty of places to hide.
Carter wasn’t happy about this. Her face was tight, lips thinned. Payne didn’t want to hear her objections though for fear it might amplify his own and then they’d be stuck in paralysis.
“What do you think we’ll find in there?” she said.
“Honestly, I don’t know. Dispatch described the man making the call as ‘drunk as a skunk’. We’re just going to do a quick recce and see what’s what. If, and it’s a very strong if, we see anything that makes us uneasy, we’ll call it in.” Carter looked nervous. Gingerly, he touched her arm. “If you’d sooner stay here and wait for me, I’m fine with that.”
She shook her head. “Absolutely not. I’m coming. You need someone to watch your back. You’ve gotten yourself in enough trouble the last few days.” And she smiled, which made Payne smile back.
The breeze from the sea was picking up and Payne shivered again, gooseflesh breaking out across his lower back and neck. The pool building was enclosed with temporary metal barriers to stop unwanted holiday makers approaching. A series of skips lined up along the back wall, hidden from the front and the rest of the site. They must be stripping out facilities before they refurbished it.
His heart was beating faster, and he had a terrible moment of angst. Why was he doing this again and not listening to his team? But, he knew why and it was an ugly reason. Since Linwood had appeared on the scene, he’d been beholden to whatever information she’d given him. The plans they’d followed had been hers. He’d been her lapdog, and he hadn’t felt like that since he’d been a Detective Sergeant at Crosby. He’d pushed for promotion so he’d never have to follow questionable orders again; he wanted to call the shots.
Carter stayed close as they crept along the back wall of the pool building. Halfway, they found an employee entrance. No windows. Nothing to tell whether anything was on the other side of it.
A broken padlock lay on the floor. Carter nudged it with her foot. Neither of them said a word. They didn’t need to.
Payne thought to the gun secreted at the back of his filing cabinet and wished that he’d had the gall to bring it with him today. He took hold of the door handle and eased it open a crack. Peeking inside, he could make out a short corridor with doors leading off either side. Deserted.
He opened the door wider and stepped inside. The place was musty and smelt of mould. The workers must have been busy ripping things out of walls for a faint taste of plaster dust floated through the air. Carter stepped in behind him and together they traversed the corridor. The first door on their right was wide open. A locker room with most of the lockers removed. A mirror caught their reflection and made Payne jump. Along on their left was a small kitchenette for the staff. Most of the facilities in here had also been removed. The only thing that remained was an old-fashioned boiler fixed to the wall; the cupboards had been ripped out from the walls leaving holes and broken pieces of plaster. A light fitting hung from the ceiling, exposing bare wires.
Payne could feel Carter close and hear her deep breathing as they entered the main reception stepping in behind the reception desk. Nothing had been left here. The vinyl flooring was faded and torn where office furniture had once been. Beyond the desk, the main entrance had been boarded—the glass doors fitted with temporary wooden panels to prevent any vandalism.
Payne caught his breath. He’d heard a noise.
Carter had heard it too. Her eyes were bright with excitement.
The building housed more than a pool. Payne gestured to the entrance for the gym that was to the right of the reception desk. Together they made their way. A smell of ammonia tickled his nose and his first thought was rats. Was that what they’d both heard? But rats didn’t break off padlocks. It could be drug users and that could mean danger. Off their faces, any addicts that were coming in here to shoot up would be irrational and desperate. And very probably armed to protect themselves from others seeking to steal their stash.
Payne led Carter through into the male changing room; the door creaked alarmingly on its hinges as he gently pushed it open. He cursed at the noise, hoping it was only his heightened senses that made it seem to scream into the gloom, but as he stepped onto the broken tiles, he thought he heard somebody moving beyond the changing room, through the opening that led to the swimming pool.
The changing area was like the rest of this place. Half gutted. Only a single row of lockers remained along one wall. An old plastic chair like you’d get in schools or church halls hid in the corner, one leg twisted at a painful angle. Slotted windows close to the ceiling were boarded as well, letting only the thinnest blades of light through air that was heavy and thick like it hadn’t moved for a while. He tried to clear his throat as quietly as he could.
As they moved into the shower area, there were signs of more ruin. Tiles had been smashed around the shower heads that contorted from the walls at alarming angles, and floor to ceiling graffiti demonstrated that it wasn’t just the builders that had been inside this place.
The hairs on the back of Payne’s neck bristled and an involuntarily shiver rippled through him. His mouth was dry, and he was struck with a sudden sense of claustrophobia. He kept focused on their best exit route should they confront anyone.
Another noise came from the pool area.
He stopped and took Carter’s arm. “It’s probably kids messing about,” he whispered. “Are you OK?”
She nodded she was fine and Payne was first to step out into the pool area.
The light was minimal. The windows were all boarded, and although the pool had long since been drained, the smell of chlorine lingered. A row of sun loungers was lined up along the far wall with broken slats like snapped ribs. In the snack area, an old vending machine had had its front ripped off, revealing the old metal spines that once held tantalising snacks for kids.
Instinctively, Payne stepped up to the pool edge, concerned by the strange shadows he couldn’t quite make out. He had an unwelcome thought that rats or something bigger were making use of the space.
It wasn’t rats.
The shadows were people. Dozens of them.
This hadn’t been a wild goose chase.
They’d found their Faceless.
42
3rd June 2013
Carter was running along the corridor. How had it come to this? What the hell did it all mean if her life was going to end running down a dismal corridor in a god-awful holiday camp?
She’d never been more terrified. Not even when confr
onted with a knife-wielding druggy on her doorstep.
She was panting. The broken glass underfoot crunched making her slip as she turned the next corner.
How could there be so many of them? The CCTV footage had suggested a hundred, maybe less. But the sheer numbers of them in the pool area...
There was running behind her. Then the door to the corridor smashed open. She turned her head, never stopping, and saw the Faceless at the end of the corridor. It didn’t try to run. Not at first. But then, she knew that meant nothing. These creatures were hunting. They wanted to prolong the experience. They could have had her by the pool area had Payne not grabbed her and physically thrown her into the women’s changing room and told her to run. It had bought her seconds—enough to gain a few seconds on her pursuers.
The Faceless behind her ran. She screamed, a mistake, but she couldn’t hold it anymore. The tension had been building for the last five minutes and something had to give.
It would be on her in seconds. But Carter was far from giving up. She’d been right about needing backup. But, no matter how many men they’d pulled from the station, it wouldn’t have been enough to combat this many Faceless.
Ahead, the corridor ended in a pair of broken doors. Either the vandals had been here, or the builders had continued their half-arsed job. The main gym and two studio rooms were on her left. She smashed open the main gym and stood on the other side of the entrance, desperately looking for something to block the door with. She pushed it shut, then looked for a lock. There wasn’t any. This was a public room and would not have easily lockable doors. A barricade then.
The room was almost empty. There was no longer any gym equipment—as the most valuable assets, the equipment had probably been the first to be removed. A water dispenser with a half full water bottle attached was close to the door. She hurried and pushed it awkwardly in front of the doors. With a final grunt of effort, she slid the dispenser into place, stood back, and admired her handiwork. It would slow them down, perhaps.
The Faceless Stratagem (Tombs Book 2) Page 19