by Mark Walden
‘My name’s Sam,’ he replied after a moment or two. ‘Sam Riley.’
‘Well, Sam, there are a couple of things that I really need you to explain to me,’ Mason said, leaning forward in his chair. ‘For a start I’d like you to tell me why you have Voidborn technology replacing a large part of your right arm, and secondly I want to know what you have to do with the Voidborn drop-ship that our surveillance drones spotted over Edinburgh the night before last.’
Voidborn . . . Mason had called them that without Sam telling him anything. Whoever this man was, he knew a certain amount about the invaders, but how?
‘What if I don’t feel like telling you anything,’ Sam said defiantly. ‘What then?’
‘Then our conversation becomes more . . . impolite,’ Mason replied. ‘Do you know what the penalty is for collaboration during a time of war?’
‘I’m not a collaborator,’ Sam snapped angrily.
‘Really?’ Mason replied. ‘Well, perhaps you’d like to explain how you got that, then.’ He gestured towards Sam’s arm. ‘The Voidborn are not known for their generosity.’
‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,’ Sam said, shaking his head.
‘I think you’d be surprised what I’d believe,’ Mason replied. ‘So are you going to tell me or do I have to go and ask your hybrid friend much less politely?’
‘You keep calling her that,’ Sam said. ‘What does it mean?’
‘More questions,’ Mason said. ‘Still no answers, though. Oh well, plan B.’ He stood up and walked towards the door.
‘Wait,’ Sam said with a sigh. ‘It’s not exactly Voidborn technology. I lost my arm to a Voidborn nanite swarm during the battle to capture the Mothership over London.’
‘What?’ Mason demanded, his face a sudden combination of surprise and disbelief.
‘We captured the Mothership over London and during the fight I lost my arm,’ Sam said. ‘This just grew back to replace it. I have no idea why.’
‘You’re seriously trying to tell me that you captured a Voidborn Mothership,’ Mason said, shaking his head. ‘That’s impossible. You’d need an army.’
‘We had one,’ Sam replied. Something told him that it was not a good idea to tell Mason that the army in question had consisted of four kids and an old man.
‘When was this supposed to have happened?’ Mason asked with a frown.
‘Three months ago,’ Sam replied. ‘London is ours.’
‘Until the Voidborn want it back,’ Mason said with a dismissive wave. ‘Do you have any idea how many Motherships there are? More than enough to wipe you from the face of the planet if they wanted to, Mothership or not.’
‘How come you know so much about them,’ Sam replied, ‘and why aren’t you under their control? Or are you?’
‘These things keep me and my men safe from the control signal,’ Mason said, tapping the implant attached to the side of his head, ‘and the reason I know so much about them is that I used to work for them.’
‘You did what?’
‘I used to work for them,’ Mason replied, sitting back down in the chair opposite Sam. ‘Not that I knew that at the time. I was, shall we say, an independent contractor. I had no idea who was really pulling all the strings behind the scenes. To be honest, I didn’t really care.’
‘You were part of the Foundation,’ Sam said, ‘and you have the nerve to call me a collaborator.’
The Foundation was a secretive organisation that had been furthering the Voidborn’s plans for thousands of years, steering human history and evolution to suit their masters’ twisted ends. Sam had only learned of its existence when Dr Stirling had confessed to Sam that both he and Sam’s father had worked as researchers for the organisation until they had learned the true horrors of what the alien machines were actually planning, and had decided to fight against them instead.
‘How the hell do you know about the Foundation?’ Mason demanded, his frown deepening.
‘Because one of the people who used to work for the Foundation helped us take down the Mothership,’ Sam replied. ‘He told me all about it.’
‘Who was this man who helped you?’ Mason demanded. ‘What was his name?’
‘I don’t think I can remember,’ Sam said with a smile. ‘Must be all the blows to the head over the past few days.’
‘This isn’t a game, Sam,’ Mason said, shaking his head slightly. ‘You saw what the Voidborn have done to Edinburgh. What’s to stop them doing that to London? Or the entire planet? If everything you’ve told me is true, then we’re all on the same side. It’s us versus them – there’s not going to be any runner-up prizes.’
‘I know that,’ Sam replied, ‘I’m not stupid, but why should I trust you?’
‘Because I saved your life,’ Mason replied. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the situation you were in when my men found you.’
‘Yeah, and then you brought me here and subtly suggested that you might torture me and my friend if I didn’t tell you everything you want to know. So, really, you could look at this two different ways, couldn’t you?’
‘I thought you were working with the Voidborn,’ Mason said. ‘For all I know, you are and everything you’ve just told me is a lie. Trust works both ways.’
‘So if I give you the name of the man who helped us retake London, you’ll let me go?’ Sam asked.
‘If you give me the right name,’ Mason replied.
‘And if I give you the wrong name?’
‘Then I drop you in the centre of Edinburgh in the middle of the night and let nature take its course,’ Mason replied. The look on his face made it clear that he was not making idle threats.
‘Stirling,’ Sam said after a moment, ‘his name is Stirling.’
‘Iain Stirling?’ Mason said, a smile quickly replacing the frown. ‘Iain Stirling is the man working with you? I don’t believe it. I assumed he’d been lost to the Voidborn.’
‘You two know each other, I take it.’
‘No, not really,’ Mason replied, ‘but the last mission I was given by the Foundation was to find him and kill him.’
‘What?’ Sam said with a sudden look of shock on his face.
‘I was one of the Foundation’s most trusted security operatives,’ Mason said. ‘I had . . . certain skills that were useful to them. I had a talent for removing problems.’
‘You mean you were an assassin,’ Sam said, staring back at him.
‘If that’s what you want to call it,’ Mason replied. ‘I never knew why the Foundation wanted people eliminated – I was not in the habit of questioning my orders. They were simply targets to me, nothing more. When Stirling betrayed the Foundation, I was given the task of hunting down him and another man called Daniel Shaw.’
Mason saw the fleeting look of surprise on Sam’s face.
‘How do you know that name?’ Mason asked.
‘Stirling must have mentioned it,’ Sam lied.
‘And you’re not as good a liar as you think you are,’ Mason replied with a frown.
‘I didn’t know him as Daniel Shaw,’ Sam replied with a sigh. ‘I knew him as Andrew Riley. He was my dad.’
‘I’ll be damned,’ Mason said, studying Sam’s face carefully. ‘I don’t see much of a resemblance.’
‘I was adopted,’ Sam said. A fact that he himself had only learned from Dr Stirling recently.
‘I see,’ Mason replied. ‘Well, it’s a small world.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sam asked.
‘Until recently your father was here, working with us,’ Mason said.
‘He’s alive!’ Sam said, feeling a sudden rush of excitement in his chest. ‘Where is he?’
‘I have no idea, I’m afraid,’ Mason said with a slight frown. ‘We had a . . . disagreement. He left the base a couple of months ago.’
‘What was he doing here? Why were you working together?’
‘As I mentioned before,’ Mason said, ‘years ago I was given the task of elimin
ating your father by the Foundation. When I finally tracked him down, he was the one who first showed me incontrovertible evidence of what the Foundation really was and how it was furthering the Voidborn agenda on Earth prior to an invasion. Needless to say, that rather changed my opinion of my employers and I quickly realised I could never be a part of what they were planning. That was when I began to work secretly against the Foundation from within, smuggling out what Voidborn technology I could and delivering it into the hands of your father. He was working as part of a government initiative with Iain Stirling that was designed to prepare some sort of meaningful resistance when the Voidborn finally, inevitably, arrived.’
‘And you have no idea where he is now?’ Sam said.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ Mason replied, shaking his head. ‘After the Voidborn released the creatures in Edinburgh I was determined that we should do something to help them, but your father disagreed. He thought it was a waste of our resources.’
‘Help them?’ Sam said, looking confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The creatures that infest the city,’ Mason said, ‘they’re not Voidborn constructs. They’re human, or at least they once were.’
‘Oh my God,’ Sam said, feeling suddenly sick to his stomach. ‘You mean, those things were . . .’
‘The former inhabitants of the city, yes,’ Mason replied. ‘When the Voidborn Mothership left, those things began to appear all over the centre of the city at night. At first we thought they were just some new form of Voidborn weapon, but when we eventually captured specimens your father quickly realised that they were mutated humans. We still don’t know what the Voidborn did to them, but we did know that their numbers were increasing all the time as more and more of the Voidborn-controlled humans that were left behind were transformed into those things. The creatures can spread the infection that causes their mutation through their bite; just one of them could turn an entire group of Voidborn-controlled humans in just a matter of hours.’
‘So the Sleepers became the Vore,’ Sam said quietly, still struggling to get his head around the true horrifying scale of what Mason was describing.
‘The Vore?’
‘That’s what Mag called them,’ Sam said, shaking his head. ‘She was a Sleeper too, but then she woke up looking the way she does now, with no memory of what had happened.’
‘She was lucky,’ Mason said, ‘though it may not seem like it. For the vast majority of the humans the Voidborn left behind, the transformation was total, but a handful of the survivors were only partially altered. The degree of transformation varies. Some of the hybrids are more human than others. The girl you were brought in with is one of the very few who retained some semblance of their former humanity.’
‘And my dad didn’t think it was worth trying to help them,’ Sam said with a frown. ‘That doesn’t sound like him.’
‘Your father thought the priority was defeating the Voidborn,’ Mason said. ‘The way he saw it, it was pointless to try and treat the symptoms of the disease: you have to cure the disease itself. I suppose it was a more scientific way of looking at things. Who knows, maybe he was right. We’ve had no success with trying to treat the converted humans . . . the Vore as you call them.’
Sam sat in silence for a minute, trying to absorb the enormity of what Mason had told him. The Voidborn had always seemed to want to preserve the enslaved masses of humanity, for whatever reason, but this was something altogether different and more horrible. He had a sudden horrific vision of London overrun by the Vore, his friends being swallowed up by a ravenous tide of glistening teeth and claws.
‘Are they spreading?’ Sam asked.
‘Yes,’ Mason said with a nod, ‘but slowly, and we’re doing our best to find a way to stop them from leaving the city.’
‘So, where are we now?’ Sam asked, looking at the bare concrete walls that surrounded him.
‘Two hundred metres below Faslane naval base,’ Mason replied, ‘about forty kilometres west of Glasgow.’
‘I need to contact my people in London,’ Sam said. ‘I have to let them know I’m still alive.’
‘I think the best thing would be if we were to take you back ourselves,’ Mason replied after a moment’s thought. ‘If everything you’ve told me is true, then I need to see it for myself.’
‘Fair enough,’ Sam replied. The addition of Mason’s men and resources to their own could be a great help. A nagging voice at the back of his head told him there was more that Mason wasn’t telling him, but he supposed that it would take time for proper trust to develop between them. Besides which he didn’t have much choice. He was, after all, the one handcuffed to the bed. ‘I just have one condition: I want to see Mag first.’
The cell door swung open and Mag hissed in discomfort as the overhead light flickered on, retreating into the furthest corner from the door.
‘It’s OK, it’s me,’ Sam said as he stepped into the room. He turned back towards the soldier beside the door. ‘Turn the lights off.’
The soldier beside the door glanced over at Mason, who gave a quick nod, and he flicked the switch next to the door. Mag was still visible in the dim light that shone through the doorway from the corridor beyond, huddled in the corner.
‘Are you OK?’ Sam asked quietly, walking into the cell and squatting down in front of her. She slowly lifted her head and looked up at him.
‘Aye, I’m OK,’ she replied with a nod. ‘No thanks to those morons.’ She gestured at Mason and the two soldiers standing in the corridor.
‘You’re going to have to take my word for this,’ Sam said, ‘but I think they may actually be on our side.’
‘They’ve got a funny way of showing it,’ Mag replied, scowling at the men outside.
‘I’ve persuaded them to let you go,’ Sam said. ‘Think you’ll be able to behave yourself?’
‘You mean am I going to rip anyone’s throat out?’ Mag asked, looking Sam straight in the eye.
Sam tried to ignore the memory of her blood-soaked face from the previous night.
‘You saved my life,’ Sam replied. ‘You did what you had to.’
‘Perhaps,’ Mag said, looking down at the floor. ‘I hate it when I lose control like that. Reminds me of who I really am now.’
‘That’s not you,’ Sam said. ‘The Vore might be a part of you, but the human part is still in control.’
‘For now,’ Mag said with a sigh.
‘Come on,’ Sam said, ‘Mason and his men are going to take me back to London and I wondered if you’d like to come with us?’
‘I’d just like to be released,’ Mag said. ‘I told you before I don’t want to be part of your war.’
‘You don’t have to be,’ Sam said, ‘but London is safe, for the moment at least. A lot safer than staying around here, trust me.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Sam,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’m ever really going to fit in anywhere again. Thanks for the offer, but I’ll make my own way.’
‘It’s your call,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll talk to Mason.’
‘Thanks,’ Mag replied.
Sam walked back over to where Mason stood, flanked by the two soldiers.
‘She wants to be released,’ Sam said to Mason, glancing back into the cell where Mag was standing in the shadows, eyes fixed on them.
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ Mason replied. ‘It’s not going to get any safer out there, you know.’
‘I think she can look after herself,’ Sam said with a crooked smile.
‘Yes, I suppose she can,’ Mason replied. ‘Very well, I’ll have her escorted to the base perimeter.’
‘I’d like to see her off,’ Sam said. ‘I owe her a proper goodbye.’
‘I understand.’ Mason turned to the soldier beside him. ‘Escort them both to gate three and return the girl’s belongings.’
The soldier gave a quick nod.
‘Come on,’ Sam said, stepping inside the cell, ‘they’re letting you go.’
> Mag walked out of the cell, her hand shielding her eyes from the overhead lights in the corridor. She looked at Mason for a moment, a slight frown on her face, before the soldier gestured for her and Sam to follow him down the corridor. They entered a wire cage lift at the end and stood in silence as it trundled upwards for what seemed like an age. Eventually the heavy steel doors rumbled apart and they found themselves in a huge parking garage lined with lorries painted in a drab military green. Another soldier approached carrying Mag’s hooded top and backpack.
A few minutes later they were walking across the large open area outside the garage towards a gate guarded by a pair of armed guards in a watchtower.
‘Be careful with that man,’ Mag said quietly as they approached, ‘the tall one.’
‘You mean Mason?’ Sam asked.
‘Yes, the one in charge,’ Mag said. ‘There’s something off about him.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sam asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Mag said with a shake of the head. ‘Just something not quite right.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Sam said. ‘Once we get to London we’ll be fine. I don’t think he really believes what I’m telling him. When he see the Mothership and that it is actually under our control, I think he’ll relax a little.’
‘Maybe,’ Mag replied, ‘just keep an eye on him.’
‘I will,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll be careful.’
The soldier who had been leading them waved to the guards in the tower and a couple of seconds later the heavy gates began to roll apart. Mag turned towards Sam and surprised him by giving him a quick hug.
‘Thanks,’ she said as she pulled away.
‘For what?’ Sam asked with a smile.
‘For not treating me like a monster.’
‘You’re not a monster, Mag,’ Sam said, shaking his head.
‘I’m not sure everyone would agree with you,’ she replied with a sad smile. ‘Goodbye, Sam.’
Sam watched as Mag walked away down the road, the gates rumbling closed again as she vanished from view.
‘How many men have you got?’ Sam asked as he looked down into the submarine pen.