The girl got to her feet. A grim smile on her face.
Max instinctively stepped away from her. Raising the gun.
“Who are you?”
“You can call me Irulal. And it’s time we were going.”
There was something unsettling about listening to Irulal. She spoke with a confidence beyond that of a young girl.
“They’ll be here in a minute,” she said and ran up to door that led towards the hatch.
“Do you know how to open them?” Cindy asked.
Irulal touched the door and Max heard a tiny chattering, like a thousand beetles marching, and as he watched, a silvery strand of—something, wound its way out of Irulal’s hand. In seconds, the material had completely covered the door.
“What the hell is that?” Max asked.
Irulal grinned. It didn’t suit her. The door looked strange, glistening with light that Max realised were actually holes appearing on the surface, letting him see through to the other side. Whatever had come out of Irulal, was dissolving the heavy metal of the door like it was nothing more than polystyrene. Irulal swung her arm back and punched a hole through the rapidly disintegrating door. Just as she did so, the door at the other end of the corridor opened and a small group of men hurried into the corridor. Max saw with trepidation that all four of them were carrying guns.
“Stop or we’ll open fire!” The blonde man in front shouted. He pointed a serious looking weapon in their direction.
Max didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Cindy and twisted his arm behind him as he ran towards the melted door, shooting randomly behind him. He chanced a look and saw that he’d been lucky and one of the men had been brought down by his firing. The others had dropped low and were firing back. Irulal just stood there.
Energy bolts zapped past Max and Cindy as they ducked their way through the door and ran for the end of the corridor.
“Come on!” he shouted at Irulal but she didn’t seem perturbed by the firing going on all around her. Then one of the shooters got lucky and a bolt hit her squarely on her back. Max got ready to grab her but she didn’t need his help. The bolt barely registered and she carried on walking along the corridor. Max realised that the men weren’t aiming for him or Cindy at all. He looked at Cindy and her scared reaction reflected his own terrified feelings. Adrenaline pumped through his system making it difficult to think of anything other than to run.
The men had gotten bolder and were running towards them, shooting as they came. The blonde guy took the lead; a dark headed man, and another shorter man flanked him. More shots hit Irulal but she just let them hit her. Max pounded the corridor, keeping a good lead on the men, but Cindy wasn’t so fast and in serious risk of getting a shot in the back.
“Max, wait—” she was out of breath, struggling to keep up the pace.
He paused to encourage her along, and saw that the dark-haired guard had got close enough to make a grab for Irulal. Max hesitated, torn between escape and watching what was surely to be a disaster for Irulal’s attacker.
The guard lunged for Irulal, grabbing her around the waist, pulling her to the ground like a rugby pro. Once down, he scrambled to get a tight grip of her arms but Max could see he hadn’t thought this through any further.
“Help her Max,” Cindy cried.
But Max wasn’t sure what to do, wasn’t sure that Irulal needed his help at all. He still held the weapon, but he wasn’t that good a shot that he couldn’t guarantee not hitting Irulal if he tried to take down the guard. “I’ll hit her.”
“That doesn’t seem to bother her. Shoot them both,” Cindy shouted.
But the blonde guy had got close and shouted at the first guard to get out of the way. The man on top of Irulal rolled aside and the approaching guards started firing their weapons directly at Irulal. Not just one or two shots, but a whole hail of shots aimed straight for her small body. This time, she was very much affected. The girl shook on the floor with each bolt. She was trying to say something but with every shot her body convulsed and the words got lost on her tongue. The shooting guards continued their assault as they got closer to the girl, continuing the onslaught even when they were only two metres away.
“No!” Cindy cried. Max knew this could be their only opportunity to escape and tried to grab Cindy’s arm and lead her to the exit. “Fuck you Max,” she shouted and evading his grasp, started running towards the men. “Leave her alone you fucking bastards!”
Cindy charged into the side of blonde guard who was firing blast after blast into the girl, and as he wasn’t expecting it, he fell to the side. The shooting stopped. The shorter guard pulled his rifle around to Cindy, but Max raised his own weapon and fired. From ten feet away he wasn’t going to miss. The guard fell.
The blonde guard lying on the floor raised his own weapon but Max didn’t give him a chance to use it, firing at the man’s torso. The bolt sent him spinning several metres down the corridor. The first guard who’d been pinning Irulal to the ground started towards them and Max shot him as well.
Max looked at the fallen men along the corridor and shook his head to help clear his thoughts. He’d brought down four men with his gun. Suddenly, the gun didn’t seem as attractive. He placed it carefully on the floor then ran over to Irulal. Her face was pale but he couldn’t see any obvious injuries. Who knew what hidden injuries those energy weapons were capable of? They could have been cooking her insides for all he knew.
“Is she dead?” Cindy asked hurrying over.
“I don’t know.” Max tried to feel for a pulse but he was useless at things like that. “Check the guards.”
“Whatever for?”
“Just do it!” He snapped at Cindy and she recoiled like he’d actually hit her. It did the trick though for she hurried over to the closest guard, the dark haired man who’d tackled Irulal.
“He’s alive.”
Max felt like a weight had been lifted from his stomach.
“Thank god.”
“What are we going to do? We need to get out of here.”
“Yes.” Max scooped the girl up in his arms and got to his feet. Cindy gave him an exasperated look, then picked up the weapon he’d left on the floor.
“Come on then,” she said and started towards the exit corridor.
Before they made it ten metres more, a woman appeared from a side corridor and blocked their path.
“Going somewhere Max?”
Emma raised her gun, a conventional looking pistol, and fired.
The shot sounded terribly loud and echoed along the corridor. Cindy screamed in shock and fell to the ground. Max didn’t have time even to lay down his charge before a second shot was fired. It felt like a sharp punch in his leg and suddenly the leg wasn’t prepared to take his weight anymore.
He crashed to the ground—not even able to lay Irulal down gently; she fell on top of him. The pain was immense; searing blades raced from the entry hole just above his knee and Max screamed in anger. Cindy howled whilst clutching her hands tightly over her left leg. There was a lot of blood on the floor. Max wasn’t sure which was his and which was Cindy’s.
Emma took her time walking towards them, never once dropping her guard.
“You bitch!” Cindy yelled at her. “Why won’t you just leave us alone?” But Cindy was no fool, she never let her eyes leave the weapon in Emma’s grip and at the same time, tried to shuffle away from her aim. It was a futile exercise. There was no way Emma was going to miss shooting two stationary targets.
The corridor was starting to spin. Max felt light-headed but had involuntarily followed Cindy’s lead and was pressing against his wound as best as he could. But every time he shifted his hands, the pain intensified and came at him like a wave.
Emma stopped in front of them, Max noticed just far enough that any attempt to tackle her would be fatally slow. Her gun focused now on Irulal.
“How did you get her out?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Don’t be smart. You’ve no
idea what you’ve done.”
“I’m not being smart.”
“The next bullet will be through your head.” Her expression told Max that she meant every word of what she was saying. Her grey eyes didn’t show a glimmer of emotion. It scared the hell out of him. He took a deep breath and tried to will the pain away whilst he answered.
“We found where you were keeping her.”
“How did you get past the security? No one can crack that system. It’s fool proof.”
“Somebody rang and gave us the security codes we needed to release her.” It was almost true.
Emma nodded. For a moment Max thought she was accepting his story, and that made the next gun shot even more surprising.
She fired at his other leg.
Max tried not to howl but he didn’t have any choice in the matter. He roared with pain and fell backwards onto his back. For a moment he thought he was going to be killed. Just make it quick, he thought. Cindy was screaming at Emma. He caught the first couple of expletives, then everything became a bit blurry.
“Has she spoken to either of you?”
Max heard Cindy answer that she had.
“Max, what about you?” Emma said in her brusque manner.
Max struggled to get back to a sitting position. Cindy looked terrified but at least was no longer screaming from the pain. Max looked up at Emma and shook his head. He could barely bring himself to look at his legs. The jeans were red with blood and there was more of it on the floor. He didn’t know which wound to press against so he pressed against the new one as it was causing him the most pain. He realised that he could barely feel his left leg. Probably a side-effect of the loss of blood.
Emma took a few steps back and pointed her weapon at Irulal, still lying where Max had dropped her. She wasn’t moving but Max could see her chest rising and falling.
“Pick her up and get to your feet. You need to see the boss.”
“Are you fucking crazy?”
“On your feet.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I need a doctor.”
Emma laughed.
“What’s wrong with you? I’m going to bleed to death unless you get us some help.” She was twisted. Why wasn’t she just killing them both?
Cindy looked just as confused and was holding onto her own leg tightly.
“Don’t be stupid,” Emma said. “You’ve been infected.”
“Infected?”
She nodded, then shook her head incredulously. “You didn’t know did you? I thought that was why you were both stupid enough to come down to the tombs. Oh this is rich.”
Max was bemused by her behaviour. Was she trying to kill them or not? “We’re not ill.”
“Oh, not in the traditional sense no. But believe me, you are infected. That will be one reason why you’ve found it so easy to get through the base undetected. Security systems have a habit of going easy on your type.”
“What’s she talking about Max?”
Emma grinned. “Jeez, you’re a class act you Cindy. Making out like you don’t even know me. What are you hoping to gain?”
Cindy looked indignant. “But I don’t know you.”
Emma slowly nodded. “OK. Whatever.”
“How were we infected?” Max asked.
“Sleeping beauty here.” Emma nudged the unconscious Irulal with the toe of her shoe, all the while keeping her gun pointing at the girl’s head. “She did it.”
“Are we going to die?”
Emma shrugged. “I wouldn’t have thought so. Look at your legs.”
Max frowned. The pain had gone in his right leg as well. Carefully, he pressed his palm against the second bullet wound, and was amazed by the absence of pain. There was nothing other than a warm feeling from his leg. But hadn’t the same thing happened at Dennis’s house earlier? Carla had stabbed him but later the wounds weren’t visible. But this was a gun shot at close quarters; he wasn’t going to be able to get up and walk away from this one.
He looked at Cindy and the expression on her face told him she was feeling the same thing. Her brow was narrowed, and she’d started patting her own wound.
Max put his fingers through the hole in his jeans and started poking around for the bullet wound. He couldn’t find it. This wasn’t possible.
Gingerly, Max put his hands down beside him and pushed himself to his feet. Other than a curious warmth from where the bullets must have entered his body, he didn’t think he was injured at all.
Cindy slowly got to her feet as well.
“What’s happened to us Max?” she asked.
“I’ve no idea.”
“You’ve been infected. I’ve already told you,” Emma said. “Pick her up and start walking back the way you came.”
Max picked up Irulal. She was still unconscious.
“Even if we don’t need medical treatment, she does. Your men were firing their weapons at almost point blank range.”
“That’ll probably be enough to keep her out of it for half an hour or so. Long enough to see Thadeus.”
Max suddenly had a thought and turned to face Emma, stopping in his tracks.
“If we can’t be hurt—”
“I wouldn’t recommend testing whether you’ll recover from a bullet to the face.”
“Point taken,” he replied and started walking the way Emma had indicated, Cindy keeping close to his side.
41
Linwood lent back in her seat. “Operation Snowflake,” she repeated, her mind racing through the possibilities and how this could be connected to what was going on now. “That was almost thirty years ago.”
Thadeus nodded. “1984 was an important year for me. For this agency.”
“We rescued Irulal.”
“Imprisoned her.”
“Interesting choice of words.”
“Maybe.”
Why was he talking like this? Why was he so caught up in the past?
“No maybe about it. If we hadn’t imprisoned her, she would have destroyed us.” Thinking back over those events in 1984 were painful. The images and memories as alive today as they were back then when Linwood was a relative newcomer to the MI18 team. 1984 was the year they realised Earth had become a target for invasion by aliens. The RAF had first detected the disturbance over the Isle of Arran in Scotland and quickly sent up aircraft to investigate. What they found was going to change the nature of Britain’s air defence forever. A damaged alien vessel on the verge of disintegration. After unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the ship, the RAF drew it away from land, and shot it down over the Firth of Clyde. A couple of days later, they discovered a survivor barely alive on a rocky shore on Arran. MI18 took over then, and brought the survivor back to their base—to this base; the best equipped of its time.
“Irulal was dangerous,” Linwood said, choosing her words carefully. “And unpredictable. We had a responsibility to protect our people.”
“So, we imprisoned her. Fair enough. But what about the torture? Did we have to do that? Is that what we do with visitors?”
“It wasn’t like that. We needed to find out what she was capable of.” Linwood didn’t like the way Thadeus was painting his version of history. Didn’t like it one bit. “You were happy enough at the time to learn from her. You even helped devise some of the tests.” Thadeus flinched, and Linwood knew she’d touched a raw nerve. “It was you that first conjectured what she was made of, and devised a solution to that problem.”
A slow realisation built up in her mind and dragged her back to the here and now and what she’d seen in the police cell. “The thing that killed Carey. It came from her didn’t it? You’ve taken your research into nanites, technology that you first learnt about from your studies on Irulal, and carried it forward.” Linwood thought that she’d probably made a mistake coming here on her own. She’d not yet had the chance to release the exit hatch and give Payne a way in. Isolated and alone, she knew she was facing a desperate man.
“The nanites are from Irulal yes
. I can influence them. Encourage others to cooperate.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing to get my team to work with you? Infecting them with nanites? Seriously?” said Linwood incredulously. “How would you even learn to do something like that?”
“It’s taken a lot of time. But then, I don’t spend my free time on anything else really.”
If Thadeus could control the nanites that Irulal had left behind, who knew what he was capable of. And to infect others with them like you might a disease, was almost too impossible to comprehend, and yet, she believed him, every word.
“You infected Carey with your nanites?”
“Yes. He was reluctant to work with me otherwise.”
“So, why did you kill him if he was working with you?”
“Carey was going to talk sooner or later, and it was just the wrong time for him to start talking to the police. I didn’t want any interference.”
“But what are you doing down here? What was so important that you had to kill Carey, and Charlie Harris?”
The doors to the operations room banged open and three figures stepped in. The man in the middle was holding a girl in his arms. The woman was dazed and confused. There was blood on their clothes. Emma stood at the back of the group, waving them inside at gunpoint.
But it was the girl in the arms of the man that held Linwood’s attention. A girl with a face she’d hoped never to see again.
Eventually, Linwood found the courage to say one word. “Irulal.”
42
Max didn’t recognise the woman staring across the conference room at him, but he couldn’t fail to recognise the man stood by the bank of monitors with his cobalt blue eyes and the scar on his cheek.
The woman held her hands in front of her like she was trying hard to look calm. Her eyes gave her away though. Her pupils were wide and she mouthed a single word as Max entered the room.
“Irulal,” she said, then got to her feet and took a step back, rounding the wooden conference table to form a barrier.
“Hello again,” Max said to Thadeus. “Sorry for dropping in—”
The Face Stealer Page 24