by A. G. Taylor
Sarah runs her fingers over the markings on her arm. “But how did they get this?”
“Many of these beings have been trapped in the construct for a very long time – linked into the Entity’s consciousness. They’ve known where to find the cure, but the Entity has always been too strong – guarded it too closely. That all changed when you started fighting it back there. And when you killed it, all the doors were opened.” Daniel places a hand on her shoulder. “Use the formula, Sarah. Use it to save Robert. Use it to save us all.”
Sarah looks up at him as the sky begins to dim. “I’ll bring you back, Dad. I won’t give up.”
“I know,” he says, stepping back as darkness spreads across the sand, hiding the faces of the others.
He fades into the darkness and Sarah has the briefest sensation, like you get when you’ve just fallen asleep, like a sudden sensation of falling…
…back into her body, lying on the cold, hard concrete floor of the base. Alex was crouched over her as a storm raged all around. Above, the portal was about to swallow the entire base.
“Sarah!” he cried, all sound lost in the howling wind.
Grabbing his shoulder, she pulled herself up and was immediately caught in the force of the portal. The gaping hole in reality beckoned, ready to engulf them both. She raised her hand and summoned the residual power left behind by the Entity.
With a cracking sound, the portal began to shrink, closing up like the aperture of a camera until it was only a few centimetres wide. Then it simply disappeared.
Immediately, the howling ceased and silence fell over the base. She looked at Alex and smiled, who was looking back at her with a stunned expression.
“You called me back,” she said.
He opened his mouth to say something, but stopped with a gasp. One of the massive chimneys, weakened by the portal, was finally falling – directly towards them…
Just metres above them and disintegrating as it fell, the chimney simply stopped. The broken bricks, tiles and general debris simply hung in the air – in suspended animation. With wide eyes, Alex looked around the interior of the base. Projectiles hovered in space, unmoving. It was as if someone had taken a photograph of the destruction at the point of total collapse – and that photograph had frozen reality.
“I don’t believe it,” he whispered, as if afraid speaking too loud would bring the power station crashing down around them like a pack of cards. Sarah slipped her hand into his and they rose slowly to their feet.
“Are you doing this?” he asked as she led him towards the open front wall of the station.
“A little something left over from the Entity,” she replied, ducking under a wooden beam hanging across their path – suspended by nothing.
“Cool,” he said, voice hoarse. “Can we run now?”
“Yeah.”
They ran.
“Get back!” Alex ordered Louise and the others as they tore down the ramp. “The whole place is coming down!”
They dashed into the empty space in front of the power station and only when they were at a safe distance, turned to look. The four chimneys were in the process of coming down, smashing through the remaining walls of the structure. The picture was frozen just a few seconds before the final destruction. There was something frigidly beautiful about the scene.
“Weird,” Wei said.
“Sarah, it’s you?” Louise asked, looking at the older girl.
Sarah stroked a hand through Louise’s hair. “Yes. Thanks for not giving up on me.”
“Look!” Wei exclaimed, pointing across the Thames. In the distance, four objects had appeared in the sky: hovercopters bearing the HIDRA logo. As they approached, Sarah looked down at the markings on her lower arm. Alex noticed them too.
“What’s that?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “A way to save Robert and the others, I hope.”
The hovercopters made a wide pass around the half-destroyed building and landed on an open stretch of ground. As the children ran to meet them, Rachel Andersen emerged from the lead vehicle. HIDRA marines fanned out to secure the area.
“Is everyone okay?” she asked.
“We need to get Nestor and Octavio,” Louise said, jumping into the back of the hovercopter. “We left them along the river.”
Rachel nodded and looked at Sarah. “Is it over?”
Sarah took a look back at the remains of the power station and closed her eyes, letting go of the last of the alien consciousness that had invaded her soul. With a mighty crashing of bricks and mortar falling, the four chimneys fell into the building, sending up a cloud of dust that would be seen for kilometres. All that remained of the base, the hypersphere, Major Bright and his men was buried for ever under the rubble.
“It is now,” she replied.
45
Octavio groaned and shifted in his hospital bed. Licking his parched lips, he opened his eyes and squinted against the light.
“Sleeping beauty’s awake,” said Nestor, who was lying in the bed next to him.
“About time,” Robert added from the other side.
Octavio looked at them in confusion, then at the drip in his arm and the monitoring equipment surrounding their beds on the medical level of the HIDRA base. “What happened?”
“You were being a hero, remember?” Nestor said wryly.
“Oh, yeah,” Octavio said, touching his fingers to the point on his neck where the spiders had bitten. The flesh was now all but healed over. “That didn’t work out so well.”
“It worked well enough,” Sarah said from the door of the room where she had appeared a second before. “You bought us the time we needed to get to the base.”
Octavio raised his eyebrows at Nestor. “See, we did all the heavy lifting as usual.” Then he had a thought. “What happened to my Kawasaki?”
Sarah walked in and stood by Robert’s bedside. “Sorry, we didn’t have time to pick it up when we went looking for you. There were about three million other infected people to take care of. You’re lucky we found you so soon.”
“Thanks.”
Sarah examined her brother’s neck, which now showed only the slightest discolouration. “The infection is receding nicely. How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine!” Robert said under his breath. “Stop fussing over me!”
“Okay,” Sarah said, backing off a little.
“You can fuss over me, if you want,” Octavio said and Nestor laughed.
Sarah gave him an unimpressed look. “I’ll send in the male nurse on my way out.” She kissed Robert on the forehead and moved back to the doorway. She paused there to look back at Nestor and Octavio. “Thank you. Both of you.”
For once Octavio didn’t have a smart reply. Nestor smiled and nodded at her.
“And you,” she said, speaking to Robert, “no more sneaking out of your bed. The nurses tell me everything that goes on down here.”
Robert rolled his eyes.
“Hey!” Octavio said as Sarah left, noticing the strange markings on her arm. “Since when did she get a tat?”
In the days following the defeat of the Entity, the meeting room had become a kind of open area for personnel passing by wanting to catch up on events in the capital. The wall screens were on constantly, broadcasting feeds from multiple news sources. The BBC was showing aerial footage of the devastated site of Battersea Power Station – now a cordoned-off high security zone surrounded by tanks. Sky News had a story about the humanitarian operation around the city. Amid a sea of temporary medical tents, a reporter was talking to doctors administering injections to infected civilians. Al Jazeera was broadcasting a press statement by the Prime Minister, talking about the clean-up operation.
Sarah entered and went over to Alex, who was seated at the conference table, newspapers spread out before him.
“What’s new?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Alex replied. “They’ve been showing the same footage for hours. There was this though.” He pre
ssed a remote and a recording of a news story began to play: Marlon Good, head of software giant Goodware Inc., had been found wandering in a confused state along the Thames. The reporter stated that he was currently being held for questioning in relation to the London attack. Footage showed him being led into a van between two police officers. His suit was grimy and tattered, his eyes wide and staring and he was clutching a single object in his hands: a metal collar which matched one around his neck. Good appeared to be saying something to himself over and over again as he was pushed into the van.
“I was wondering what happened to him,” Sarah said.
”How are the patients?”
“Doing well. The antidote has been a success and Fincher is working on a version to treat the previous fall virus victims.”
“What are you going to do with that?” Alex asked, meaning the mysterious symbols that had appeared on her arm following the incident with the Entity. Upon their return to the base, Dr. Fincher had instantly recognized them as instructions for the creation of a chemical compound. Sarah had insisted the compound would be a cure for the strain of the fall virus in the spider bites and she’d been right.
She ran her fingers over the symbols on her arm and remembered her last moments in the construct, standing with Daniel and the strangers on the beach. She wondered what was happening to all those beings on all those other worlds now they were finally free of the Entity. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m kinda getting used to them.”
“You should see some of the tattoos the HIDRA grunts rock up with after a weekend on the town,” Lt. Kaminski said, appearing in the doorway. “That’s nothing.”
Sarah smiled and looked at the screens, her attention caught as one by one they flicked to the same image: blurry footage that looked as if it had been taken with a handheld camera. The scrolling titles below the BBC screen read: BREAKING NEWS – leaked video footage of “superhuman” team responsible for saving London.
“Oh, damn,” Kaminski said quietly as they watched the twenty-second movie play out. It had clearly been taken with some kind of distance lens and showed the hovercopters touching down on the runway at the HIDRA base. The image zoomed in to show Sarah and the others, less than an hour after their defeat of the Entity and looking grimy and worn-out, emerge from the machines and be escorted into waiting ambulances.
The screens kept on playing the video in a loop, either full screen or as an insert while people talked in the studios. Images of Major Bright (“Rogue military commander implicated in city assault”) appeared intermittently. One channel had isolated Sarah, Alex and Louise’s faces from the video and had them superimposed in the background with the caption “Friends or foes?”
“Well, this is going to be a little bit more difficult to cover up than the last one,” Alex said.
Sarah nodded. “They know who we are now.”
“And they’ll start demanding answers,” Kaminski said. “God knows what we’re going to tell them.”
“How about the truth?” Alex suggested.
“I wish it was that simple,” Kaminski replied, before disappearing down the corridor. Alex shrugged and looked at Sarah.
“Perhaps it’s not a bad thing,” he said. “People should know what happened. What almost became of the world.”
Sarah didn’t take her eyes from the screen. “Maybe there are some things they’re better off not knowing.”
“I don’t believe that.”
She looked round at him. “Well. I guess we’ll soon find out, won’t we?”
Alex nodded, then said, “There was just one thing I wanted to ask you…”
“Yes.”
“Back in the power station, when you kissed me…”
“When I transferred the information about how to fly the helicopter to you,” Sarah corrected. “We had to be in physical contact for me to be able to do that.”
“Right,” Alex said. “I was wondering why you didn’t just grab my hand or something.”
Sarah coughed. “Well, I thought…it seemed the easiest way to get your attention. I needed you focused. Did you mind?”
“No! It was great!”
“Great?”
“I mean, it was very effective… As a means of transferring information.”
They sat in silence for a moment.
Alex finally said, “If you’d ever like to…um…”
“Transfer information?”
“Yes. If you’d ever like to transfer information again, I wouldn’t mind. I mean, that would be fine by me.”
Sarah gave him a quick glance. “I’m sure it would.”
“If you wouldn’t mind, that is.”
She thought for a moment and then smiled. Their enemies were defeated. Her friends were safe. Maybe it was time, like Commander Craig had told her that last day on the Ulysses, to stop worrying so much.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think I’d mind at all.”
Hack and May walked across the runway towards the private jet sitting ready on the tarmac. What few items of luggage she had were already loaded on board and the engines were humming, ready for the flight that would carry her back to Australia – and her parents. Unlike the other kids, May had been kidnapped and she had a family to return to. It was time to go home.
A little distance from the plane, they stopped. May rubbed her hands together and blew on them.
“I’m not going to miss this cold,” she said.
Hack grinned. “Tell me about it. You’d think a country this freezing would actually have decent central heating. But, oh no…”
She laughed, but then became serious. “You can come with me, Hack. Mum and Dad said they want to meet you. We have a spare room where you can stay for as long as you want. And it’s summer in Western Australia right now. Beaches, barbecues. I’ll teach you how to surf.”
Hack thought it over for about the hundredth time. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know what it is, but I feel like I’ve still got stuff to do here.”
“What about your grandfather? Isn’t he going to miss you?”
Hack laughed. “He’s flying out next week. First time he’s been off his island in about fifty years. I think he’s quite excited about it.”
May laughed and said, “Try to look after yourself, huh? I won’t be around to patch up any cuts and bruises in future.”
“Yeah.”
Behind them the sound of the jet engines rose. They embraced hastily and May ran towards the plane. Hack waved to her as she went up the steps, but she didn’t look round – mainly, he sensed, because she didn’t want him to see the tears in her eyes.
A few minutes later the jet blasted into the morning sky as Hack watched from the edge of the runway. He followed its path until it was just a speck in the distance, eventually becoming aware of someone standing beside him.
Aren’t you supposed to be in sickbay? he asked, glancing at Robert.
By the time they miss me, I’ll be back. Are you okay?
Hack nodded and they started back towards the main buildings of the base. “I never thanked you properly for saving us,” he said as they walked. “May and I owe you our lives.”
Robert shrugged as if it was nothing. Then he said, “Well, there is one way you can pay me back.”
“Yeah?” Hack said.
“I’ve been stuck on the lower dungeon level of Portal War for the last two months—”
“Trying to find the proton shield?”
“Yeah! How did you guess?”
Hack shook his head. “All the newbs go looking for that one…”
“Yeah… Wait a minute. Are you calling me a newb?”
“Yeah, I’m calling you a newb. Everyone knows the proton shield isn’t in the dungeon. Look, you have to double back to the control room on level 5 and… It’s probably easiest if I just show you…newb…”
The doors to the sealed sleeper chamber opened with a hiss and a warning light flashed red on the wall as the monitored temperature within began t
o rise. Dr. Fincher and Sarah passed through quickly and they slid closed again. Lights illuminated automatically, showing the rows upon rows of caskets containing victims of the original fall virus outbreaks. They stepped up to the raised platform.
“Patient number 345,” Fincher said into the control panel and the robotic arms went to work, retrieving the chosen casket and carrying it towards the platform.
Sarah stepped forward and checked the window, confirming that it was her father, Daniel. The read-outs on the side indicated a perfectly stable coma, as always. Dr. Fincher laid out an aluminium case on the panel and flipped the lid, revealing a syringe gun and vials of liquid. He slotted one of the vials into the gun.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Sarah?” he asked. “There are plenty of other patients whose families have given us research permission. We don’t know how your antidote is going to affect victims of the original fall virus, or even if it will have any result at all.”
To answer his question, Sarah pressed the release code on the side of the casket. Magnetic locks shot open and the lid rose slowly, revealing her father lying inside. He was draped in a sheet, covering the sensors attached to his body. She reached out and touched his hand.
“It’s what Daniel would have wanted,” she said. “He never ran away from a fight.”
Fincher nodded and offered her the gun. “Would you like to do the honours?”
Sarah took the instrument and placed it against Daniel’s upper arm where she knew the vein was.
“Come back to us, Dad,” Sarah said as she pulled the trigger.
Epilogue
It was one of those incredibly bright, crisp winter’s days. The frost was still on the ground as the two limousines pulled through the automatic gates at the edge of the estate and started the two-kilometre drive through the woods down towards the Georgian mansion at the centre of the grounds. As they passed the lake, the cars stopped. Presently the back doors of the vehicles swung open and an assortment of teenagers piled out, taking in their new surroundings.
Sarah Williams walked to the edge of the road and looked across the lawn at the three-storey building up ahead. It looked like something out of a period drama – all high windows and stone steps leading up. Her friends stood alongside her and it was a moment before anyone spoke.