Nixon’s angular profile caught the moonlight and Payne breathed a sigh of relief.
“What the hell’s going on?” he asked in a bemused tone.
Payne gestured for him to get down, and he obeyed, lying on top of a bunch of marram grass, and using his arms to knock as much aside as possible.
Payne explained what they’d just been through, waiting to see if Carter would offer up any more of her experience, and when she didn’t, he ended with a brief recount of their hurried exit from the leisure complex.
“I’m sorry I left you at the station,” Nixon said. “I needed some time to think but after I did, I realised what an arse I’d been and came back to apologise, thinking you’d still be there. I saw your note by the phone then tried to call you. Several times.
“When you didn’t answer, and I couldn’t get through to Sally either, I figured you’d got yourself caught up in some trouble. I wasn’t going to leave you in the shit again so came to find you. You know your car tyres have been slashed, right?”
“I don’t think the troops want us to leave.”
“Uh-huh, well it looks like they’re getting ready to.”
Payne looked towards the pool area again and saw a man hop into the driver’s seat of one of the vans. He started it up and drove slowly up the internal road, towards the main entrance.
“What’s in the vans?” Nixon asked.
Payne had a funny feeling he already knew, but it was only now that the first van was leaving that the soldiers were focusing on the second. He could see the back of this van being opened and then he could see soldiers working together in pairs, dragging out bodies from the pool building.
“They’re loading them up with Faceless,” Carter said. “Why? Where are they taking them?”
“I’m guessing they’re going to the TALOS Institute,” Payne said.
They watched for the next half an hour as the van was quickly filled up with more and more Faceless. Eventually, no more bodies were forthcoming and a soldier pulled the van’s back door down and locked it. It too trundled up the internal road and waited with its companion. The soldiers moved quickly then, hurrying to the other support vehicles and taking seats. The gates were opened, and the convoy moved out onto the access road and away from the beach towards the main roads.
Payne shivered as he got to his feet. He knew next to nothing about TALOS, only what Linwood had told him at their debrief at Westminster and that was hardly anything.
“So, what do we do next?” Carter asked.
Payne looked at the pair of them, Carter shivering against the moonlight, Nixon with his hands dug deep into his pockets, arms close to his body.
“You two get home. Get some sleep. I'm calling Linwood. It’s time she explained what’s going on.”
46
4th June 2013
Payne was back outside the Birkdale Palace Hotel, thinking it had only been four weeks since he’d last been here waiting for Linwood to show up. Again, it was dark and again he was on the back foot, not knowing enough about what was going on to be in any way effective, only this time his ignorance had almost cost Carter her life. If the TALOS crew hadn’t shown up when they had, she’d be dead.
He strolled in through the revolving doors and into the lobby, looking for Linwood, expecting her to be there waiting for him to arrive. Of course, she wasn’t. He would have to wait for her.
He took a seat in the lobby, the front desk attendant came over to check that everything was OK, and Payne flashed his ID at him. He was left alone after that.
“You look exhausted.” Her voice came from behind. He got up and turned and saw her approach from the main doors. She looked as tired as he felt. Her hair lank around her shoulders, unbrushed, but he saw the true state of her tiredness by looking into her eyes. The sparkle that had been there that first time they’d met was absent and Linwood looked every one of her years. But, despite this, he found himself wondering if he’d enjoy time in her company when they weren’t facing a crisis. With a guilty shake of his head, he knocked the idea aside and offered his hand to shake. A smile, then she came in for a brief hug.
“Glad you’re OK,” she said.
“I’m glad too.”
She tried to smile, but it looked forced and wearied. “Where should we talk? I could do with a drink.”
“I think the bar’s shut.”
“Residents’ bar is always open. Come on.”
She led him past the entrance to the restaurant to a smaller set of doors, slightly hidden from view behind the main staircase. Moments later they were seated in the corner of the deserted bar, on a comfortable bench seat wrapping a corner affording them a view of the room. Besides the barman, they were alone and Payne felt, for the first time in hours, that he could relax.
The barman came over and they ordered drinks, Payne’s a soft drink, Linwood’s a scotch, then Payne filled her in on what he’d experienced at the leisure complex. During the story, she’d take occasional sips of her scotch and quickly finished her glass. She gestured for the barman to fetch her another.
“How’s Carter now?”
“Gone home to get some sleep. She’s had a tough time of it.”
“How many Faceless did you see?”
“I didn’t get a proper count of them. Dozens. It could have been all those we saw leaving the Tombs.”
“And what were they doing there?” Linwood pressed.
“They seemed to be resting.”
Linwood nodded at that. “When Max first came across them in the Tombs, he said they were like that, all sat in a room, waiting for something.”
“Hibernating?”
“Maybe it’s a way to conserve energy. I don’t understand how they can even eat. Their basic bodily functions must be taken care of by the nanites.”
“Have you learnt anything about those?”
“The nanites?” She raised an eyebrow. “Not much. TALOS is experimenting with them.”
“You’ve been to this TALOS Institute?”
“Yes. And we need to go back. Now, more than ever.”
“Did you see Max?”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t a welcome guest. I did my best, but they decided that I was a threat to them.”
“You must have got them worried.”
“They’re playing with fire. I’d hazard they’re permanently worried. But, you’re right. They’re messing with technology beyond them. The nanites are alien and yet TALOS are treating them like something they can control. Trenton Winborn is delusional if he believes he can control them.”
Payne considered what he knew about the nanites, about them being inside everyone. “He can’t seriously think he has a chance of controlling the nanites inside us? To what end? To kill us?”
“That’s not his plan.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s taking massive risks. I can’t believe he’d go to all this trouble just to kill people.”
Payne scratched the side of his head. He was exhausted and wanted to go back home and fall asleep.
The bar doors opened again and a stranger entered. Tall and thin with a hard edge to his jaw, he looked like someone to avoid.
“Spencer, this is Dean Sharman, a former associate of mine.”
Dean didn’t offer to shake his hand and Payne sensed a reluctance on his part to be there at all.
“An associate,” Payne started, “as in an MI18 agent?”
“Yes.”
“And were you one of the ones working for Thadeus?”
Payne shook his head, a little too quickly Payne thought, then he saw a look of something pass between Dean and Linwood. Once again, he was being kept in the dark. Another reminder that although Linwood purported to be on his side, he reckoned they had different definitions of what that meant.
“Dean has been working with me down in London. He wasn’t here when things kicked off with Irulal.” Linwood said matter-of-factly. Payne decided to let her play her game. Whatever she told
him about Dean was only a half-truth and he decided there and then to give the man a wide berth. This probably wouldn’t be difficult as the man didn’t look like he wanted to be anywhere near him either.
“Pleased to meet you,” Payne said.
“Likewise.” He glanced at Linwood and she nodded. A sign that the authority still resided with her, perhaps.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to go take a shower. Do you think they can get us some food?”
“I’ll sort it,” Linwood replied.
Dean nodded at the pair of them, his eyes never quite meeting Payne’s, and then retreated from the bar.
“YOU NEVER MENTIONED Dean.” Payne finished his coke and twirled the glass between his fingers.
“He’s not important,” she said a little too quickly.
What was going on between these two?
“Is he up here because of TALOS?”
“He helped me out, yes.”
“You’re being tight-lipped about him.”
“He’s an MI18 agent.”
“But I know all about you.”
She suppressed a laugh. “No. You really don’t.”
His face was stone. “Then tell me. I’ve a right to know who I’m working with.”
“He’s not important. He’s useful, that’s all. There aren’t many left that I can trust.”
“I’ve been trying to call you for weeks. Why the hell did you never pick up?”
“I’ve been busy.”
He threw his hands up in the air. “Busy? What the hell does that mean? What the hell do you think I’ve been doing since we came out of the Tombs?”
The barman chose that moment to poke his head out of the staff only area behind the bar. He threw a glance in their direction but retreated when Payne raised a hand in apology.
“I didn’t ask you to go hunting for Faceless. You should have left that to us,” Linwood said.
“Then where the hell were you? It’s like you’d forgotten about us.” And what he really meant to say was that she’d forgotten about him.
“You’re angry, I get that.”
“You bet. What the hell did you expect to happen here? You just left me to deal with the fallout from this disaster.”
“I’ve been dealing with more pressing issues.”
“More pressing issues? Just listen to yourself.”
“TALOS. I’ve been working on getting in there.”
“I could have helped.”
“I couldn’t—” she began but faltered.
“Couldn’t what?” he looked at her curiously. “Couldn’t trust me. That’s it. You don’t need to even finish that sentence.”
She put her hand on his arm. “I do trust you. But you’ve got to understand that things are never easy around MI18. Around me.”
“I don’t expect things to be easy, but I do expect a certain amount of give and take.”
Linwood straightened and looked Payne in the eye. “OK, then. What do you want to know?”
Payne didn’t need to even consider this. There was only one thing he wanted to understand. “Tell me how Irulal escaped. What went so wrong?”
She didn’t flinch and for a moment, Payne thought she’d just drop it. But, instead, she sighed, took a sip from her glass, and with her face slightly flushed she began.
“On the night that Irulal first broke out of containment I’d been working a ten-hour shift and was gearing myself up for an all-nighter. We’d had some unusual stories coming in from the New Forest and were prepping a team to investigate. We got plenty of stories like that, nothing new, or unusual, but it had to be investigated. That was what we did.
“But, that night, something strange was happening at the Tombs and we held back from sending anyone out. The power was fluctuating. I’d sent Michael down to the power room to check things out, make sure the generators were running at optimal, but I never heard back from him. It was like he’d just vanished down there. There were six of us in the base that night. All were exhausted. Thadeus was bearing down on everyone, riding the new kids harder than he should, but we were at a turning point. We had new investment, an agreement that we would be expanded and branch out with new teams across the country. I was being lined up to coordinate the whole operation, and Thadeus was standing by, ready to take over the local section-running of MI18. If all went to plan, he’d have fifty people working in a much larger organisation before the end of the year. There were plans for new facilities to be built. It was exciting.
“But amidst all the excitement, we’d grown very complacent. Only three months earlier, we’d brought in Irulal. An alien of, as then, undetermined origin. Her ship had disintegrated over the Isle of Arran and we’d been over to coordinate the search and retrieval efforts. We found a young girl, Laura Brodie, sitting by the sea, watching for something. She kept saying the same thing over and over ‘contact must be made’, and ‘they’ll come back’.
“Only, this little girl had just killed her mother’s new boyfriend and put her mother in hospital. The mother never came round. The police were called, and we issued a D-notice to keep things quiet.
“Irulal had taken over Laura’s body and once we captured her, she served as good leverage to get the government investment we’d asked for. We’d proved that we could deliver, and they wanted a UK based organisation that could help protect all of their borders. But, I’d made a mistake.
“The others said Irulal was dangerous. That we should keep her in the containment unit at all times. That it was too dangerous to interact with her. But, we had an alien in our care and I wanted to show we could learn from it. We’d already done a reasonable job in recovering the remains of one of the three spaceships that had come down, and we were making progress in understanding their technology. But there were still barriers. Problems I knew we would not solve in a meaningful time frame without her help.
“Once the government got wind of the delays in our research projects, they piled the pressure on. They wanted results on the technology projects or they would hand it all over to another department. I didn’t take the chance they were bluffing. There was no section I’d heard of that was even remotely geared up to do the investigations we were doing. None of them. Department 5 and TALOS didn’t exist. It was a bluff.
“But I was arrogant. I wanted to show we could do this.”
Payne sat with his hands resting on the table. “What did you do?”
“I let her out,” she said. “I wish to God I hadn’t, but I wanted to make her help us and I thought with the tech we’d taken from her ship, and the advances we’d made with the containment unit, that we knew how to keep her safe even outside the casket. It wouldn't be easy, but we knew what to do. I knew what to do.”
She looked down at the ripples in her glass and set the glass aside. “I didn’t tell the others what I would do. I wanted to prove them all wrong. My mother always told me that my arrogance would be the end of me.” She smiled. “At first, Irulal was obliging. Surprised that I’d even considered removing her from containment. She’d changed. She was no longer the confused little girl we’d met on the beach that day. The alien side of her had crushed what remained of Laura Brodie.
“Irulal was fascinating. She explained that she’d come from a race called the Shun and they were on a reconnaissance mission when they suffered engine failures. That was what caused them to crash. I showed her where we were, explained that MI18 existed to help bridge that gap between aliens and humans. I thought we were doing so well but all the while I felt guilty that the only hospitality this alien had experienced was the inside of a containment unit. I let my guard down.
“I’d been taking her out of containment for two weeks. The rest of the team didn’t know. They thought I was just monitoring her stats, experimenting on the tech we’d taken from her ship. But all the while, I thought she was helping me, she was actually looking for our weaknesses. We weren’t a threat to her, she was merely biding her time.
“She feigned interest
in our experiments. And whilst she wasn’t prepared to help us outright with our research, she was happy to explain some of the principles that allowed her ship to fly. The engines were too badly damaged to retrieve safely, but we had some of the core components and were looking at energy transfer signatures.
“We’d had fantastic results, taking some of the technology from her ship and using that as the containment unit. We’d also found a weapon on her ship and had managed to repair it, figuring out that it could destabilise the electromagnetic fields holding the Shun nanites together. Without those bonds, we figured she would collapse into a pile of grey goo.”
“I can’t imagine she’d have been pleased that you were developing weapons.” Payne asked.
Linwood shook her head. “She was furious we’d repaired it. I told her we were just exploring the technology, and that we had no intention of ever using it against her. We were considering it an experimental prototype, but she didn’t believe me. She refused to return to containment. Her strength was something we’d never measured, but she was ferociously strong. When the security team came up to force her into the containment unit, she slaughtered them like cattle.
“She went on a killing spree. I’d exposed her to everything she needed to know. I was a damn idiot.”
“You thought you were doing the right thing. Having a friendly alien on your side has got to be better than a hostile one.”
“I should have known, though. When she’d taken over that little girl, the first thing she’d done was kill. We’d labelled her as hostile and I should have respected that.
“As soon as she escaped, we implemented our emergency procedures and shut down the base, but she still got out. We’ve three hatches that link to the lake. We use some of the water for our cooling systems and she broke her way into the system. The place flooded.
“Thadeus took a team including Dean up to the surface and tried to apprehend her, whilst I hurried to the lab to grab the prototype weapon. As far as we knew it was the only thing that had a chance of working against her.”
She stopped with a haunted faraway look in her eyes.
The Faceless Stratagem (Tombs Book 2) Page 21