by Paul Teague
* * *
Breakthrough
* * *
Amy sidled up to Mike, who was working furiously at his console. Both knew how important these events were – they had just over two hours to save Nat and Dan.
Amy felt helpless. She didn’t have Mike’s ability with the tech, there was nothing special about her DNA, she hadn’t been gifted with Xiang’s expertise or skills, or Viktor’s military prowess. She’d seen Harriet and David. They were having a great time in the rec room – the bunker staff were taking excellent care of them. She felt redundant. None of the kids seemed to need her. And then there was Nat, who had come back from the dead. Amy just wanted to hold her once again, but even Nat’s thoughts were elsewhere, just like Dan’s. She had to accept that the twins were both adults now.
She and Mike had been so proud when the adoption had been given the go-ahead, when the beautiful twins had been handed over to them at three years old. Now they were on their way in the world. She was immensely impressed by what they’d done over the past forty-eight hours, but she was also filled with sadness. Amy knew that after this she’d never have her two young kids back again – they were grown up now. Even Mike was distracted. She knew why – he was busy – busy trying to save their children.
Then she got it. There was still somebody who needed her. James had been all but abandoned. Sure, they were trying to figure out what had happened to him. But what if he was wounded, or needed some help? Amy wasn’t going to sit around doing nothing. Somebody needed her still, it was her friend Roachie, he would be glad to see her.
So she kissed Mike and headed back out to the control room, where she met Dan who had just left one of the meeting rooms. Okay, he might have been growing up, but she could still see it all over his face. He was up to something. And she was coming too.
* * *
Separate Missions
* * *
As I was making my exit from the control room I ran into Mum. Her timing could have been better.
Where are you going, Dan?
Er, space, Mum.
Remember to phone me when you get there.
As if that was how it was going to work out.
‘Where are you going, Dan? You look like you’re up to something.’
Darn, she knew everything. Still, there was no way I was telling her where I was heading.
She put her arm around me. My instinct was to pull away, but I let her have this one. Me and Nat could be dead in a couple of hours. Of course she was worried. I thought she was going to pump me for more information, but then I got a surprise. She told me what she was planning and I ended up being the one to tell her to be careful. She was heading for the elevator, same as me, but she was going to Quadrant 1 – she had her sym node activated and a weapon in her hand.
I couldn’t really get all protective about Mum saving James when I was about to join Nat in space to save my own skin. It seemed so ridiculous and unreal. We’d have to press pause on normal life until this was over. It made me laugh to myself just thinking about how preposterous it sounded. Dan Tracy, spaceman. The whole thing was crazy.
Nobody challenged us as we headed for the elevator, although we had to wait for the man wiring the explosives around the door. Once inside, we saw there were explosives in there too.
‘Are we okay to use this?’ I asked. It looked a bit serious to me.
‘You’re good to go,’ the explosives guy replied. ‘We’ll only blow this if they send troopers over. When you come back, alert us via your comms tabs – you’ve got about two seconds after those doors open. If we think you’re troopers or if we get a glimpse of troopers, we blow it.’
Nice to know. I’d try not to look like a trooper when I came back.
Nobody even challenged us about where we were going or why. Magnus was giving us the run of the place. With just over two hours to live and the destruction of the planet already in motion, I guessed there was only so much damage a sixteen-year-old kid could do.
Nat was right about the elevator. An illuminated panel had appeared above the weird symbols we’d used to get to the other bunkers. Mum pressed the symbol to get her to Quadrant 1 but nothing happened. She tried a few other options but there was nothing. The sym node must be broken – or even worse, deactivated. That would make sense. If Kate realized we were able to use these things, she’d block us immediately. Just like Dad had when he found me logging into his social media accounts and writing daft messages.
Before I pressed the button a hunch made me grab one of the explosives packs that had been secured around the elevator. The explosives wouldn’t transport with us – it didn’t seem to work that way, so I needed to pick them up and carry them. I did the honours with the buttons, and it all worked fine for me. After all, I was the kid with the special genes. The same genes that were going to kill me in a couple of hours.
The light display flashed to show that we were being transported. I took Mum back to the upper level in Quadrant 1. Before opening the doors we paused to look at each other. I drew the weapon I had tucked away in my pocket from our earlier gunfight. We both nodded and then I pressed the button to open the doors. We took a side each. I couldn’t believe our luck. There were two troopers, one on either side, and we incapacitated them straight away. That was a bit too easy. Perhaps they thought they had us on the run and never expected us to make our way back there.
Mum gave me a massive hug, the kind of hug you give somebody if it might be the last time you’re going to see them.
‘I love you, Dan … and I’m so proud of you.’
‘I love you too, Mum. Kick some butt and make sure you get back alright. How can me and Nat get killed by a nanovirus if you’re not even around to say goodbye?’
She was tearful but I’d managed to make her laugh. She gave my arm a final squeeze.
The black lights in the necks of the incapacitated troopers were pulsating furiously – we had a good idea what that meant. We’d just stuck our hands in a hornet’s nest. We didn’t have the weapons set to kill, we’d only stunned them. It was an effective stun though, it seemed to last for at least an hour. I might have been threatened with death myself but I didn’t want to kill anyone. Not yet at least. Despite their menacing appearance we had to remember the troopers were human underneath. Sure, they seemed to have it in for us, but they may have been as responsible for their actions as Mum and James were earlier. If I could avoid a kill, I would, so long as it didn’t put our lives at risk.
Mum rushed up the corridor. She grabbed one of the trooper’s weapons and a helmet for good measure. She was thinking of the darkness beyond the bunker doors, I reckoned – maybe she didn’t trust that thing in her neck which had seemed to protect her before. Within seconds she’d disappeared. I could hear movement along the corridors. They were on to her already. I had a bright idea, but I wasn’t sure it would work. I placed the explosives I’d transported with us about a hundred metres along the corridor, in the opposite direction to Mum. That’s all I dared to do. I could hear the thudding boots of the troopers approaching at speed.
I ran back to the elevator, took cover inside with the doors still open, then fired at the explosives. Two shots, three shots, then another. Darn, I kept missing. I was a lousy shot. I ran out again into the corridor and got ready to fire again. I had no idea how powerful the stuff was. Surely it wouldn’t make too much of a bang? As the first trooper appeared along the corridor, I shot again. This time I hit my target, but it didn’t explode. One more try. I changed the settings on my weapon to kill, fired again and missed. Laser fire streaked past my head. The troopers were trying to kill me. I’d fire one last time, but then I’d have to run. I squeezed the trigger.
The explosion was huge. What had I done? I was thrown right back and it took me a few minutes to come round. I was stunned by the noise and violence of what had just happened. My ears were ringing. Dust and debris were everywhere. I couldn’t see any troopers and their weaponry fire had stopped, for now at least. I picked myself off
the floor, ran into the elevator and pressed the new button. The fifth button.
That must have bought Mum some time. If she could get to James, the two of them would be able to work together to make it back to Quadrant 3. Or they could just sit it out until this was all over. However it ended.
As before, the elevator dissolved into an array of lights and the transportation was underway. I couldn’t feel anything, I was only aware of being in a brightly lit grid which, as if by magic, was moving me from one place to another thousands of kilometres away. Out into space.
Before the door opened I took a deep breath, much like you do if you’ve travelled to the top of a very tall building, collecting your thoughts while you brace yourself for what lies ahead. I opened the doors, ready to see Nat. But as I stepped out into the corridor, I walked straight into a firestorm.
Chapter Six
Collusion
* * *
Magnus had been quick to work out the type of man Viktor was. He was an astute judge of character and he saw an intelligence, cunning and potential for violence in Viktor which he did not possess himself.
Magnus was at heart an entrepreneur, a man with an amazing vision for technology and the ability to assemble a team with talents far greater than his own and thus make great things happen. In Viktor he saw an opportunity, a chance to connect with somebody who might help this entire situation play out in a different way. Like all of the Custodians in the Quadrants, he was largely blind to what was going on. Bit by bit, snippets of information were emerging, but it was not even clear yet who the enemy was, or how powerful they might be. So Magnus was making contingency plans.
He would never have mentioned it in front of Mike, Amy or the kids, but the chances of Dan and Nat getting out of this situation alive were pretty slim. Xiang had had to relocate her laboratory set-up to Quadrant 3, effectively starting again, except for the full data compilation which she’d brought with her on her E-Pad. Magnus’s team was made up of brilliant people, but in his Quadrant they’d been assembled on the basis of their technical abilities, not their experiences in the field of biology, as with the Beijing Quadrant. So it was unlikely that Dan and Nat were getting out of this in one piece, and Magnus saw in Viktor’s eyes that he understood this too.
The steps they’d taken to protect against a trooper assault would hold off an attack for now, but it would only delay it in the short term, and eventually this Quadrant would be overrun just like the others. Who knew what would happen to the bunker personnel? Those poor souls unlucky enough to be caught in the other Quadrants would already be confronting their fate at the hands of the enemy.
Magnus knew he needed another plan, a final option – the nuclear option. To his knowledge, with the limited information he had at his fingertips, Quadrant 3 was where the last stand would be made. He had already sanctioned the launch of Viktor’s nuclear subs along with Xiang earlier, but now it was time to arm them and set in some targets. Just in case.
So, when Viktor and Magnus quietly sidled off into a meeting room, they were not discussing how Viktor might contribute to the work being done in Quadrant 3, as everybody else might have thought. They were actually discussing targets for the biggest nuclear assault that the world had ever seen.
* * *
Lab Tests
* * *
Xiang was frustrated. She’d made excellent progress so far, but now she was no longer able to access her lab facilities and she was struggling. She looked at the readings on her E-Pad. Nat’s progress through the nanovirus process was at 71 percent, Dan seemed to be accelerating at 44 percent. She would keep working until the final moment, but she had a strong feeling that the twins weren’t going to make it. She was weighed down by the responsibility on her shoulders. She held the lives of these two teenagers in her hands, yet she seemed to have so little chance of saving them in the ridiculously tight timescale she had to work with.
She felt alone and isolated. Magnus had assigned her a team, but these people were not specialists in her field. She needed people who could keep up with her, who might even be ahead of her at times. She was overcome by a surge of concern and sadness for the people she’d left back in Beijing. Communications had been cut as soon as the troopers had breached their transporters. She didn’t know how many of the mobile masts had been disabled, what damage the drones had done to her city, and what terrible things might be happening to her colleagues.
Xiang shuddered, then focused her mind on the task in hand. This situation would have to play out – there were forces at work here, over which she had no influence. Other people were dealing with security matters. That was not her main area of expertise. She understood that the greatest contribution she could possibly make to this crisis would be to save the twins. At any cost. They were pivotal to this entire scenario. They weren’t moping around waiting to die. They were fighting, and that’s what Xiang would do. She would play this change in circumstances to her advantage. Her new team were not biological experts, but that meant they had unique and differing perspectives. And that’s just what she needed right now, fresh pairs of eyes on a tricky problem.
Xiang steeled herself for the most important two hours of her life. That was the time she had left to save these two important youngsters: twins in whose hands the key to this terrible situation appeared to be held. She would flip this on its head – look at it from another angle. If she couldn’t fix the twins in time, how could she circumnavigate it? What if she could find somebody like the twins, with the same genetic make-up? A transfusion of blood might be possible, it might buy her some time to figure out how to save them.
This thing had been done to Dan and Nat – in fact something had been done initially to Nat to trigger the process. If something can be done, it can be undone. She’d need some tech to do this. This was a nanovirus, created with microtechnology and biological processes. It would not take a regular transfusion or medical procedure, but she had a room full of tech ops to help her. She could do this – she was certain she could. She’d do the biology, they could manage the nanotech element.
If only she had the missing piece, somebody with the same genetic make-up as the twins.
* * *
Hidden Folders
* * *
Mike felt guilty that he’d barely acknowledged Amy and now she was off, who knew where? He was so focused on the task in hand – he needed to start breaking into these files and getting some answers.
Dan and Nat had about two hours left by his reckoning. Xiang was working on it, he knew that, but if he could only break into those damn folders he’d be able to shortcut a lot of the learning processes and get directly to some answers.
Mike was feeling his age. Sure, all of this stuff followed consistent principles that had been in place since he was a teenage hacker himself, but things change and he was having to figure them out as he went along. It felt like the team that Magnus had assigned to help him were streets ahead of him. Only they’d never hacked, they’d been the kind of geeks who’d created the systems Mike had broken into all those years ago.
He had to spin his mind around and adopt another approach, this was taking too long. Then he saw it – it had been there all the time, right in front of him. He was looking for something that wasn’t there, and it was why all these young techs surrounding him couldn’t see it either. These files were old school. Whoever had set up these systems must be his age or older. They’d made the whole system more secure by playing the younger geeks at their own game. Clever. Very clever. He’d missed it at first. All the young coders thought they were so cool with their hacking and amazing scripts. They’d have a good laugh at MS-DOS, CP/M and TSR routines, but they didn’t know these systems, they regarded them as prehistoric.
So the best way to cheat the youngest, best and fastest coders? Go retro, they’d never expect it. They’d be looking for all the latest whizz-bang encryption techniques when right under their noses you’d gone flashback. Sure, there was some modern stuff in there
to throw them off the scent, but Mike had it now, he could see it clear as day. It was like being sixteen years old again. This security was a nod back to the good old days when only a handful of geeks were hacking in their spare time, rather than it being an actual category at the job centre as it seemed to be these days.
Mike put his theory to the test. He was in, he was right. One by one, the folders unlocked. Mike had opened up the heart of the Genesis 2 project. And now he was able to peer inside and find out what made it beat.
* * *
Captured
* * *
A red ray narrowly missed my head as I stepped out of the transporter door. The windows opposite confirmed that I was in the right place – I could see stars and blackness, just like Nat said.
There was no time to gawp. I’d obviously walked into something I shouldn’t have. I wished I’d taken more explosives with me, although I wasn’t sure I was ready to chance an explosion in space. A solid concrete bunker on Earth was about the limit of my risk-taking.
‘Dan, is that you?’
It was Nat, her voice coming from around the corner. I could hear her returning weapon fire – I didn’t dare to step out into the corridor. It was noisy and dangerous out there.
‘Yes, it’s me, Nat. What’s going on?’ I yelled.
‘They’ve started to fill this place with troopers. It happened just after we heard the weird voice over the speakers. This is the centre of it all—’
I could hear her cursing.
‘You okay, Nat?’
‘Yes, I think so. I almost got hit by a laser ray. I’m with Simon and Kate. They’re going to help me give you cover.’
Kate? Did anything stay the same here for more than five minutes?