The Secret Bunker 3

by Paul Teague

  ‘What’s Kate doing here? Have you captured her?’

  This was the woman who’d launched all the drones. I wasn’t sure I was ready to be besties just yet.

  ‘I’ll explain later, Dan. But she’s one of us, it’s okay. We’re going to cover you. You need to turn right out of the elevator.

  ‘After three, Dan … 3-2-1… now!’

  I ran out of the elevator, turning right and landing in the middle of a blaze of laser fire. All around me were violent explosions as rays of light hit the walls, the ceiling and the floor.

  ‘You mean your right, Nat!’ I shouted, realizing I’d turned the wrong way out of the doors. I was running straight at the troopers. I could see them there: black, strong, formidable. You’ve never seen such a fast direction change. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever done something quite so athletic in my entire life.

  Simon, Kate and Nat started a constant blast of fire in the direction of the troopers – I couldn’t believe that none of those deadly rays had hit me yet. I wondered whether they were actually trying to kill me, but this was no time to compile a FAQ. I turned and dived in a way I would never have dreamed I was capable of before. As I landed near Simon’s feet, I rolled and took cover around the corner, well out of the way of the red rays. I was breathless, but relieved, and just a little bit impressed with myself. I wished I could have rustled up some of those moves while my PE teacher at school was advising me to spend less time at my PC and more time kicking a football around outdoors.

  ‘We’ll give them everything we’ve got, then run!’ Simon shouted.

  ‘Shouldn’t we escape in the transporter?’ I suggested, but I was overruled by Kate, of all people.

  ‘No, Dan, this is where this thing ends. We need to be on board whatever this spaceship is, this is where we’ll get our answers.’

  It made sense. With two hours left to live, Nat and I needed to run towards this problem, not away from it. And if we were hit in the heat of battle? Well, we were both goners in two hours anyway. I glanced at the feed Xiang had added to my comms tab. My nanovirus level was at 49 percent – how had it gone up so fast and so suddenly? Adrenalin, maybe. I hoped Xiang was working away in Quadrant 3. She was going to need to pull a rabbit out of a hat. And very soon too, by the look of it.

  ‘We need to separate, guys,’ said Simon. ‘We stand more chance of making progress if we split off. I’ll go with Kate and you need to stick together, Dan and Nat. Make sure you keep checking in with Magnus. They need to know where you are if they make a breakthrough.’

  He was talking sense. We couldn’t just disappear – if Xiang discovered a cure for the nanovirus we needed to be back in Quadrant 3.

  ‘We’ll take the left fork, you take the right one,’ said Kate. I was finding it difficult to place my trust in her, but I couldn’t see any life in her neck device right then, so I had to follow Simon and Nat’s cue.

  ‘Are we all connected via comms tabs?’ asked Simon, and we checked our devices. Whatever technology these things used, it seemed to work fine up there. The same with the transporters. It was clear that all of this was linked up. The space station could just as easily have been part of a bunker. It looked exactly the same.

  There was a massive thud and the entire structure shook. It was similar to the feeling I had when the lower Quadrant sections began to move when we were in the bunker. It was a deep, thunderous, violent tremor. I glanced outside the windows and looking below I could see what was happening. The four Quadrants had made their journey from Earth to space. They were docking with the space station, and that was what was causing the shaking. It had stopped the weapon fire for a moment, at least. It must have caught the troopers by surprise too.

  ‘Run! Now!’ Kate suddenly commanded. She was the first to gather her wits. We all fired a few random shots up the corridor towards the troopers, then each group took its agreed fork in the corridor.

  We were going deep into the heart of the place now. The windows were gone and we could just be in one of the other bunkers, as far as I was concerned. The shaking had stopped. I counted four great thuds – that had to be all of the Quadrants docked.

  The structure must have been huge. The upper levels of our Scottish bunker were supposed to be the size of a couple of football pitches while the vast lower levels spread out over a much greater area, so I couldn’t imagine how big the place was now.

  Simon and Kate were off. It seemed they’d done this sort of thing before – they were a team.

  I looked at Nat.

  ‘You okay?’ I asked. It seemed that everything had been crazy for the past few days. We’d barely had time to speak.

  ‘Yeah. I’m just thinking of the time. We haven’t got long left.’

  ‘We’ll talk later, but let’s finish this thing now, however it ends for us.’

  Before she could answer, a green laser ray hit her chest and she slumped to the ground. For a split second I was aware of a sickening rush of fear, then a second ray hit me too. It was over.

  Chapter Seven

  Lost Friend

  * * *

  Amy heard an explosion along the corridor. She stopped for a moment, fearful for Dan, but then ran on. She was seeing a different side of her son and she knew she’d have to trust him. He’d played enough of those blasted computer games in his life to have every bit as much idea of military strategy as she did. Her guess was that he’d detonated those explosives in the corridor to slow down the troopers. Good call, Dan, and thanks for the head start.

  She made her way up the corridor, where only days before she and her family had explored a dusty old cold-war bunker. How she yearned to be back there right now, to those safe, carefree family days before the darkness fell. Away from attacking troopers and drone bombardments, shoot-outs and medical crises. She’d walked away from this life at the age of nineteen when she left the army, and never looked back. Those events with James had been quite enough for her, she’d long ago decided that a life of dramatic excitement was not for her.

  She neared the blast door area where she’d been reunited with James hours earlier. She looked towards the end of the corridor. The doors were open, the shimmering lights were acting as a barrier between the bunker and the darkness outside. There was a solitary guard there. The team they’d sent to retrieve Roachie must still have been out there.

  She put on the helmet she’d taken from the trooper earlier. She cursed that it was no longer possible to pass herself off as regular bunker staff. When she first entered this place with Nat all she’d needed was a pair of overalls and a name badge. That reminded her, her laptop was still in the dorm area with James’s blood on it where she’d whacked him on the head. Poor guy, he’d been through a lot.

  The helmet took a little getting used to, but having already spent twenty-four hours in the darkness beyond the doors, Amy knew what was out there and understood this would require some assistance. Wearing the helmet and carrying the weapon she’d retrieved from the trooper, she was hoping she’d be able to make it quite some way up the corridor before the guard realized something was wrong. With the initiative hers, she reckoned she’d be able to stun him before she was spotted. It was worth a try anyway. She was just bracing herself and summoning up the courage to start the long walk up the corridor when there was a commotion at the blast doors.

  A group of troopers stepped out of the darkness, through the shimmering wall of lights, back into the bunker entrance. They’d been alerted by the Queen. The minute Dan had set off the explosives deep within the bunker, the troopers had been diverted from their task of chasing James on the surface high above. Their mission was to find and terminate whoever had entered the bunker, before they could get back to the elevator and escape.

  Amy was quick to realize what this meant, but she could just about see from that distance that the troopers were carrying something – or someone. She hesitated, thinking through her options. Her only way out was via the elevator transporter, but even then she wasn’t su
re if she could activate it anymore with the sym node no longer working.

  She needed to resolve the issue with Roachie. Did he need help? There were only six troopers in all: one who’d been outside the bunker doors, the one she’d been about to shoot a few moments ago, plus the search party of four sent out to find James. She decided to take a chance. Whatever Dan had done further along the corridor had stopped troopers coming up behind her. These six troopers could be dodged – there were a lot of places to hide between here and the elevator. If she could avoid them, she might still be able to locate James.

  She repeated the steps which had kept her concealed previously, deciding to take cover in the dorms where she’d left her laptop. She hesitated at the door, remembering that Nat had had to open it previously, this thing required clearance. She activated the sym node on her hand. It fired up straight away and she touched the entry pad. She heard a beep within the helmet, and the door slid open. Wearing the helmet must have authenticated the sym node in some way, and that meant she’d probably be able to access the elevators as well. She hoped so.

  But something else was happening too. Since she’d placed the helmet on her head, she’d begun to hear the mutterings of somebody who sounded distressed, in pain even. All she could sense was a confused flow of thoughts, commands and plans. She didn’t know it then, but she was receiving the streamed consciousness of the Queen. To her it was a jumbled mass of words and information – she was unable to filter it or process it in any way. In spite of that, Amy got a strong sense of who – or what – was conveying this data. It was female and she was in a high state of anguish and agitation. Whatever she was doing, she was doing unwillingly. Such was the force of the sadness that she picked up, Amy had to tear off the helmet, she couldn’t bear it any longer.

  She grabbed her laptop from the bed where hours before she’d first found the overalls which had served so well, letting her blend in. As she picked it up, she noticed something she’d missed before. There was an SD card tucked into the side, just the tip of it protruding. Amy didn’t have an SD card, and her instinct made her wonder if that’s what Nat had been up to when she’d found her in the car.

  She’d check it later. She could hear the troopers moving along the corridor outside. They’d be in here soon. She grabbed one of the metal wardrobes – it was easy to shift, and she pulled it in front of herself in a corner. There was just enough room for her to conceal herself.

  The troopers entered the room – two stood outside the doorway, four came inside. They threw whoever they’d been carrying onto one of the beds. They searched the room, under beds, in wardrobes and cupboards, but they didn’t detect or hear Amy in her makeshift hiding place. They left the dorm, the door closed behind them and Amy began breathing easily again.

  She intuitively knew who it was on the bed, but she had to see for herself. Amy rushed up to the body and turned it over gingerly. She felt for a pulse, in the neck and in the wrist. Blood and mud were caked in equal measure over his body and clothes. It was James. And he was dead.

  * * *

  Cleaning Up

  * * *

  As soon as Kate had been released from the power of the device in her neck, the Queen had come online and taken over control of the troopers. From that moment she was able to broadcast a steady stream of information and instructions directly to all troopers, whichever Quadrant they were in.

  She could see and hear everything that they could. It was a constant stream of a thousand consciousnesses, a disjointed jumble to anybody but the Queen and the troopers who’d been modified to receive this data. The Queen had gained this position because she had powers beyond those of her warriors. She was telepathic, and it was her genetic ability that had been harnessed to create this terrible army, part human, part machine.

  The Queen’s power was exerted too late to stop the Unification process, which had been sanctioned by the Global Consortium, but it didn’t matter to the perpetrators of these crimes. They had only needed the Nexus. Now they had a vast spaceship at their command, it would all be destroyed in the end anyway.

  Thousands of miles below, in the three Quadrants that had been overcome by troopers, bunker personnel were being rounded up and contained on the remaining upper levels. Those who resisted were killed, the others herded callously into cramped rooms. There they would perish once the final bunker assault had been completed, but in the meantime they’d be held as hostages, useful currency to hasten the conclusion of this battle.

  Troopers who’d been stationed in the lower levels of the Quadrants were now in space and docked with the Nexus. They could move freely between each of the Nexus Quadrants, but there were only two ways on and off this ship since the fifth button had been activated by Nat. Either it required docking from space, or there was one central Nexus transporter – everything that came on or went off this hub went through a single portal. Only the third Quadrant remained uncaptured on the ground. Once the Nexus was fully mobilized, the final assault would begin.

  The Nexus had been conceived as an ark, a refuge for humanity to start all over again if the terraforming had failed. Now it represented the last remnants of a dead society. It would come crashing down onto the surface of the planet that had created it, destroyed by a human whose hatred for his species knew no limits. It was only a matter of time now. The shards had begun to change the Earth’s biosphere, after a certain amount of time that process was unstoppable. The last tatters of the human race would be defenceless against it.

  Very soon, this planet would take its last breath, the sleeping life forms on the surface below perishing in the process. But who would be left to hear Earth’s final screams?

  * * *

  The Devil’s Offer

  * * *

  As I came round I was aware of a sharp pain in my head. For a few moments I was disorientated, but then I pieced things together. I was on the floor in a control room similar to those I’d seen in the Quadrants. I looked around and saw Nat on the floor next to me. There was blood too, but it wasn’t hers. I looked to the other side of me, and there, motionless and bruised on the floor, was Doctor Pierce.

  I was battling through my sore head now, and Nat had begun to wake. She barely had her eyes open before she leaped up and ran with terrible force at somebody who was standing across the room. She hurled herself at him as if she didn’t care about the outcome, scratching his face, drawing blood, before a trooper pulled her off and threw her back to the floor. I studied her target. It was Doctor Pierce. Well, it was somebody who looked like Doctor Pierce. A clone perhaps? A twin more likely. They were the same, yet not the same. Identical twins, but one had a kinder face – the man who was lying unconscious at my side. I recognized that tie of his. It was doing that weird thing again where it seemed to reflect different colours.

  The man I was staring at had hate in his eyes, he looked wild and mad. There was somebody else beside him. At first I mistook him for a human, but he wasn’t quite human. That was confirmed when I clocked his hands – he had loads of fingers, seven on each hand. Wow!

  Nat was dazed. A trooper came up and restrained her with his booted foot. She looked as if she was only taking a few moments out before she got up for round two.

  The mad-looking Doctor Pierce began to speak.

  ‘Welcome, Dan … and Nat. How nice it is to see you both together again.’

  ‘You scumbag!’ yelled Nat. She struggled against the trooper’s restraint and he hit her with his weapon. Blood trickled from her forehead. She was subdued now, although from what I’d seen of Nat recently she was just waiting for her moment. As I went to protect her, another trooper moved towards me menacingly.

  Pierce carried on speaking. Nat had taken quite a gash out of his face.

  ‘Thank you for coming to me, it saved me a lot of time having to flush you both out. I must say, I thought we’d be retrieving your dead bodies. The fact that you’re both alive is a very pleasant bonus.’

  Okay, this was definitely not the
Doctor Pierce I knew at school. Sure, that guy was weird and difficult to talk to, but his evil twin had an even bigger attitude problem. This guy was hardcore nasty. The Doctor Pierce who was lying at my side began to stir, roused to consciousness by the commotion.

  ‘Dan ...’ he said, looking at me, then ‘… and Nat too.’

  The look on his face told me all I needed to know. This was not good.

  ‘Henry!’ he shouted at the other man. ‘You need to stop this now!’

  ‘Shut up, Harold!’ came the reply, and a trooper raised his weapon as if about to strike the man at my side. He was cowed. They’d done this to him already, like Nat. He knew they’d use violence if we gave them the excuse.

  ‘Dan, you already know my brother Harold Pierce. Nat – meet the other Doctor Pierce, my useless twin.’

  So they were twins. At least we had something in common. I suppose it was a starting point, though I got the feeling we wouldn’t be doing a lot of bonding.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve already figured out, Nat, why you were my guest in the lab for so long. I see from your comms tabs that you’ve got nice little timers counting down to the end. Less than two hours remaining. I hope you’re enjoying your final minutes of life.’

  Okay, this guy was really starting to annoy me now. I could see why Nat disliked him so much. It seemed like they knew each other already.

  ‘Of course, it was your sister who helped us engineer all of this. Without access to her DNA for the past three years, none of this would have been possible. So, thank you, Nat. You’ve done me a huge service – but for Earth, I’m afraid it’s not so good.’

  Nat struggled again. I could almost feel the hatred seeping from her, she couldn’t wait to hurt this man.

  ‘I want to give you the opportunity of life, though, my young friends,’ he continued, clearly enjoying the power he wielded here. His weirdo friend, the fingers guy, was smiling, enjoying being a spectator in all of this.