by J. J. Green
“I think I was helping them out more than you.”
“True.” She nodded. “So, how in hell did you manage to bring this with you on two trips across the Atlantic, and I’m guessing, your flight from Australia too?”
“I have my ways.”
Harrington smiled wryly. She studied the weapon. “Not bad,” she said, handing it back. She patted the bag on her lap comfortingly. “But these are better. Hey, could you use your magical method to get these through security checks? I was going to use my professional license exemption, but your way sounds better. I don’t want to risk a nosey Customs officer having a quick look.”
“Sure, if you want.”
A moment later, Harrington’s interface beeped. A message had arrived for her. “Krat, ” she said when she saw who it was from.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve been mentoring Makey. He got his refugee status and he’s started studying to be a security officer. I forgot I had to meet him this afternoon.” She pressed accept, and the kid’s familiar face appeared on the screen. Harrington explained that she was going away for a while and she would help him out when she got back.
The kid frowned. “Where are you going? Is that Carl with you? Hi, Carl.”
“Hi, Makey,” Carl replied. “Look, we’re just going off on a short trip. Shouldn’t be too long.”
The kid didn’t answer for a moment. “Are you going to...to...can I talk about secret stuff over a vidcall? Is it safe?”
“No, it isn’t,” Harrington said. “Makey, what’s wrong?”
“Those things...we both know about. I think they’re here.”
“At the refugee center?” Carl asked.
The kid glanced to one side before nodding. “Are you going to fight them? Because if you are, I want to come with you.”
“Makey, if those things are there,” Carl said, “it isn’t safe for you to stay. But we can’t help you right now. We’re in a hurry. Can you get away? We can find you when we get back.”
“I think I can. I don’t think they realize that I know what they are yet, but, wherever you’re going, I want to come with you. I want to fight them too.”
“Makey,” said Harrington, “you’re too young. It’s much too dangerous for you to come with us.”
“Please give me a chance,” replied the kid. “I keep thinking of what happened to my mam and sister. I can’t think straight anymore. I can’t sleep. It’s eating me up. Please let me help you.”
As Carl struggled to find a way to ease Makey’s conscience, the kid added, “You need me. There’s only two of you. And I know what they’re like. I saw the ones that replaced Neeve and Mam.”
“You’re right, Makey,” Harrington said, with a nod of agreement from Carl. “We do need a third person. Okay, you’re coming with us. Bring a change of clothes.”
They arranged a corner to would pick Makey up, then Harrington ended the vidcall. She brought up the screen that was tracing Sayen’s tracker.
“They’re moving her,” she said. “She’s left Africa, and she’s traveling south.”
Carl took the interface from Harrington to study the direction Sayen was going. The flashing dot was moving slowly but steadily away from the coast of South Africa. “Unless they’re heading to an island, it looks like they’re taking her to Antarctica.”
Harrington had an inscrutable expression on her face.
Chapter Thirteen
Hours later, they were in the air again, flying south to Antarctica. Harrington had been subdued the whole way from London. Carl wasn’t sure if it was because she was worried about Sayen or if there was another reason. They couldn’t talk about what they were about to do in case they were overheard by other passengers in the shuttle, but the woman also hadn’t said a word about anything else.
Makey made up for Harrington’s silence. He was excited to be taking part in their rescue attempt. As they were descending over McMurdo Sound, he said, “I read about this place in the refugee center. I’ve been catching up on information about Earth. They didn’t teach us much about it on Dawn. All we learned was that humans had destroyed the environment and polluted the air. They taught us that humans had disrespected Earth Mother, and that she punished them by not allowing plants to grow and by bringing earthquakes and hurricanes.”
“Well, that isn’t completely wrong, apart from the Earth Mother part,” Carl said. “The climate’s still being affected by three hundred years of industrialization. The geography’s changed a lot as the average temperature has risen. Antarctica’s been melting for decades, and it hasn’t stopped. Not likely to any time soon, either. You can’t reverse rising global temperatures easily.
“It snowed here in the past, and at one time the whole continent was covered in massive sheets of ice. Now, the ice is only a hundred or so meters thick, and it’s decreasing every summer. No more snow’s fallen in years and it isn’t likely to. It never did snow a lot in the first place. Looks like we’ve seen the last of it in our lifetimes.”
Makey frowned as he looked out of the shuttle window over the semi-frozen continent.
***
McMurdo Sound was like a big country town. Carl guessed that only a few tens of thousands of people lived there, judging by its size. It was mid-morning by the time they’d got out of the spaceport and into the city. The streets were quiet.
Not many shuttles flew to Antarctica. They’d had to wait precious hours for the next available flight from London. Thankfully, Sayen didn’t seem to have moved in all that time, according to the dot on the interface that showed the location of her tracker. Carl guessed that the Shadows must have decided to keep her in one place for the time being. That was what he hoped anyway. He didn’t want to think about the other possible reason for her lack of movement.
“You trained here, didn’t you?” Carl asked Harrington as they left the spaceport.
“Yep,” Harrington replied.
“So, you must know the terrain pretty well.”
“Yeah.”
“And the conditions.”
“That’s right.”
Carl waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. Harrington had never been much of a talker, but Carl wondered about this especially silent streak she seemed to be going through.
The security officer pointed. “We can get vehicles over there.”
Antarctica was the coldest place Carl had ever been. He pulled out a second jacket from his bag and put it on over the first as they walked over to the vehicle rental place.
When they got there, Harrington picked out three snowmobiles. The vehicles came equipped with snow goggles, thick mittens, and snowshoes. An assistant loaded the snowmobiles into a pickup truck and drove them to the edge of town. After Carl and Makey practiced driving the machines, the three of them set off across the flat, icy landscape.
On the horizon all around, the dirty white of the land melted into the cloudy sky, so that it wasn’t possible to tell where one began and the other ended.
When McMurdo Sound was no longer visible behind them, Harrington stopped. Carl and Makey parked their vehicles beside her.
Carl got out the interface that showed Sayen’s location. Harrington looked over his shoulder.
“It’s that way,” she said, nodding at a part of the landscape that looked no different from the rest. “As I see it, the place she’s in has to be crawling with Shadows. There’s no way we can take them all on. The best we can do is go inside, grab Sayen, and get out as fast as we can.”
“Right,” said Carl. “How do we do that?”
Harrington opened the bag of illegal stuff she’d bought from the dero. “This might help.” She got out a couple of large aerosol cans.
“We’re gonna freshen them up until they disappear?” Carl asked.
“No,” Harrington replied, straight-faced, “we’re the ones who are going to disappear.”
“That stuff will make us invisible?” Makey asked.
“Not exactly. It bends l
ight. Anyone who’s looking at something sprayed with this will see what’s behind the object, unless they’re at very close quarters. Whatever you spray it on isn’t exactly invisible, but unless it moves, you probably won’t notice it. In this landscape we have an advantage because it’s harder to see things anyway. We lose that advantage when we go inside.”
“So the Shadows won’t see us unless we move?” asked Makey.
“That’s right.”
“I think we’re gonna need to move to rescue your friend.”
“Yes, we will, but you don’t have to worry about that,” Harrington said. “I want you to wait outside.” She continued over his protests, “We need someone waiting to take Sayen back to the snowmobiles if Lingiari and I get caught. We don’t want our effort to be wasted. We’ll be relying on you, kid, in case something goes wrong.”
“But I can help on the inside too,” he said. “I want to help.”
“Harrington’s right,” said Carl. “The more of us go in, the bigger the chance is of one of us being spotted. You’ve gotta think about the whole picture.”
Makey nodded reluctantly.
“Good,” said Harrington. “Now, let’s spray ourselves before we get any closer to the place. We need to go on foot from here. We could spray the snowmobiles too, but they would hear them, so there’s no point.”
“So that stuff’s illegal?” Carl asked. “Is it used by the military?”
“No, it isn’t even available for restricted use,” Harrington replied. “There are a few reasons, I think. One is because it contains a tiny amount of mythranil, which is banned of course. Another reason is because the substance failed safety tests. It causes psychological effects, probably due to the mythranil. Some test subjects developed psychoses.
“And I think the Government might also have banned it because of the havoc it would cause if it got into the general public’s hands. Imagine the crimes people could commit if they could turn invisible.”
“Hold on. So what you’re saying is, this could make us insane?” Carl asked.
“It’s a very slight possibility,” Harrington said. “Are you ready?” She held up the can.
“Er...I suppose so.”
“Lift up your arms and spread your legs. Hold your breath for as long as you can while it dries.”
Carl did as she said. He heard a hissing sound, and tiny droplets of the invisibility spray landed on his skin, which tingled unpleasantly. He fought an urge to touch his face. Harrington’s footsteps crunched on the ice as she walked around him. He heard the hissing sound again as she sprayed the back of his body.
“You ready, Makey?” she asked.
After a little while, when Carl’s lungs were bursting, he exhaled. Harrington was finishing up spraying the kid. A very vague shape the same color as the landscape stood where Makey had been. If Carl hadn’t been looking directly at him, he wouldn’t have known he was there.
“My turn,” said Harrington, holding out the can.
He began spraying her. Harrington’s face and hair seemed to melt away into the pale gray ice behind her. Her shoulders and torso disappeared, and then her hips and legs. It was easy to spot any patches that he missed because they remained suspended in mid-air.
He turned to look for Makey.
“I’m here,” Makey said.
The kid had moved. His voice came from somewhere to the right of where he’d been standing.
“Right,” Harrington said. “If you want to show where you are, lift your snow goggles. We can’t spray our eyes, so it’s a good thing we’re wearing them or we’d have to keep our eyes closed to slits to avoid being seen.”
The woman’s almond-shaped, deep reddish-brown eyes, eyebrows and a small portion of her face appeared briefly as she removed her goggles to demonstrate. They quickly disappeared into the landscape. When she moved, she was visible, but only vaguely, as if Carl were seeing her through a screen.
“Woah, what’s that?” Makey asked. “What’s happening?”
Carl felt it too. It was like he was floating in space. The landscape had become translucent and insubstantial. Then a moment later, he was in Antarctica again.
“It’s the spray,” Harrington said. “Try to ignore it. The effect wears off after a while. Let’s go.”
Chapter Fourteen
In the void, the Shadows waited.
Generation was proceeding at an acceptable pace on the planet called Earth. An early infiltration had occurred when the humans were unaware and unprepared. The process was always risky and vulnerable to failure in the beginning. Most often, the subjects would realize that one or two of their number had been replaced, and they would kill the ones who had replaced them before they had an opportunity to introduce more subjects to the traps.
But the initial invasion of Earth had succeeded before the humans had known what was happening. By then, it was too late for them. The quarantine they’d put in place after they understood the risk from their experiences on other planets had been doomed. The test they’d developed was effective, but the testers were mere humans. Replacing them had been easy.
Light years from Earth across the physical realm, on a trap planet, the most recent generation had nearly failed. Only one of their number had succeeded in deceiving the humans and surviving when their starship had crashed. That one had arrived on Earth. Passing a test was simple when the tester was also one of them. That one from the trap planet had joined the generators.
They had replaced humans in many organizations that controlled Earth affairs, and their plan to introduce more subjects to the secret traps was succeeding. The moment was approaching when they would no longer have to hide, and large-scale generation could begin. Already, they had acquired many tracts of land in areas close to human habitation. At an appropriate time, traps would be activated in these places, and the humans could be replicated on a large scale. There were so many of this species, it would matter little if they destroyed those who resisted.
In these early stages, killing subjects was not desirable. It caused disturbance and confusion in the target population and raised suspicions. That problem had occurred in the area called Australia when two subjects had resisted. The effects of destroying those subjects were only just dying down.
Another impediment to the scheme had occurred when a human had succeeded in accessing information they held on the generation process. Attempts to replicate the human to prevent it from revealing the information had failed. The subject was not entirely organic, and the mechanism had faltered, as it always did with synthesized substances.
A further complication was that this human had a familial relationship with two others in positions of high influence. Replication was not possible, and yet they could not allow the subject to escape. If it alerted the population at large, all their plans could fail.
They could not allow that to happen. They needed more time to infiltrate and conquer the physical realm.
The Shadows debated the problem of the existence of the part-synthetic human they had imprisoned. If replication was not possible, it seemed the only option was to destroy the subject. The effects would not be desirable, but perhaps they were unavoidable.
Replication. Generation. Domination. The plan had to succeed.
Chapter Fifteen
The air inside Sayen’s metal box was getting colder and colder. The Shadows had taken her on another long flight, and she guessed she must be traveling south. She’d never known such low temperatures. Wearing only her underwear, she would have been suffering from hypothermia without her enhanced skin.
The Shadows hadn’t been careful with her box as they’d loaded her onto the heli, and they were the same when they unloaded her. She was thrown from side to side, and at one point the box was upended, and what had been the ceiling became the floor. Sayen was desperately thirsty and hungry. For most of the flight she’d drifted in and out of consciousness.
Lying curled into a ball, Sayen wondered what the hell she’d been thinking
of when she’d decided she wanted to finally live her life and not be overly cautious anymore. She wished she’d listened to her mother when she’d begged her to stay home, safe and secure. After nearly dying aboard the Galathea, she’d been crazy to put herself in danger again. She should let people like Jas and Carl handle the Shadows. She wasn’t cut out to be a hero.
As she lay unmoving, Sayen tried to figure out why she hadn’t been replicated. She was sure that had been the Shadows’ intention, but something must have gone wrong. She wondered if it was something to do with her enhanced body. Maybe Shadows couldn’t replicate synthetic materials, and so the cloning process wouldn’t work.
The box had been still for so long, she began to wonder if the Shadows were going to leave her there forever. It wouldn’t be a good way to die, but she couldn’t get out, no matter how hard she tried. She had bloody bruises on her arms and legs to prove it.
A scraping sound came from outside. Something was being dragged across the metal. Sayen heard the rattle of chains falling, and at last the box opened.
She didn’t recognize the expressionless faces of the four Shadows that stared in. These were different from the ones at the last place. All of them were pointing weapons at her.
“If you try to run or fight us, we will kill you,” one of the female ones said.
Sayen reflected that they were probably going to kill her anyway, but she decided to play along for now. Grimacing with pain, she crawled out of the box and unsteadily stood up. They were inside a windowless room. It looked like some kind of classroom. She was inside a building, not a Shadow trap. The room was square and empty.
“Come with us,” said the Shadow who had spoken. The four of them formed a guard around her, two in front, two behind, and together they went through the door. As they moved along, more Shadows passed them. Sayen’s guard didn’t speak to the others or even look at them. They passed ten or twelve Shadows.
Sayen was dismayed. They’d been going about five minutes, and the building seemed quite big. If it was full of Shadows, that meant there were already many of them on Earth.