The Faceless Stratagem

by Robert Scott-Norton

  It had been risky to put more than the smallest pin holes in the masks, and they’d used a good deal of makeup to help obscure them. Compared to the photos they had of the Faceless, Linwood felt it should be enough to pass muster, but the moment anyone got close enough to study them, they’d realise they’d been had.

  “You won’t need to see anything. Dean’s taking care of it.”

  “And I don’t exactly trust your man.”

  “He’s not my man.”

  “He’s from your team. He’s already shown himself to be duplicitous. He never told you about Erik. How do you know he won’t hand us over to their security team the moment we arrive?”

  She didn’t.

  The van bumped over a pothole and Linwood slid and banged her shoulder against the wall of the van. “Ouch.”

  Payne tried to grip her sleeves. “Here, lean into me.”

  It was getting hot in the back of the van and the mask made it difficult to breathe. They’d dared to cut a thin aperture in the centre of the mouth but every breath she took, heated her face and made her want to tear the thing off.

  A loud banging sounded on the partition between the driver’s cab and the back section. “We’re here,” Linwood said. She desperately wanted to scratch her nose.

  The van slowed, Linwood heard the gears shifting down, then it turned a corner and came to a stop. She heard voices, Dean’s and another person’s, she presumed to be a security guard on the gate.

  “What are they saying?” Payne whispered.

  “Shh. Not another word. Keep to the plan and follow Dean’s lead.”

  Payne fell silent and Linwood strained to make out the voices. The plan had seemed simple and elegant when they’d agreed to it, but now, the doubts were taking over. Dean would use his existing credentials, hoping that he wouldn’t be picked up on their security cameras or recognised by the gate guard, and claim he’d been on a job to pick up two more Faceless from the holiday centre. If the guard believed him, it should be enough to get them all inside, and from there, it would be a lot of improvising. Linwood’s primary concern was stopping Winborn from doing whatever it was Erik had warned them about. But there was also Max to consider. He’d been all but abandoned and it was right that they do all they could to get him out. After all, if it hadn’t been for Max’s bravery none of them would be here now.

  Footsteps approached the back of the van. Dean was doing a lot of fast talking but she heard him laugh and that reassured her that he was still blagging.

  The back doors opened and light spilt into the van.

  “There you go,” Dean said to the guard.

  Linwood looked up, but slowly, trying to maintain her act. The Faceless could be fast but they had a considered movement most of the time, and she was meant to be acting subdued. Luckily, there were enough shadows in the van to make it difficult for the guard to make out her features completely. This would be the first test. If they could get past him, they’d be on their way inside.

  “How did you get them?” the guard asked, his tone full of suspicion.

  “From the holiday camp. I was sent back to check and secure the premises, make sure we’d cleaned up after ourselves sufficiently. I found these two wandering around. Winborn knows all about it. I’ve called ahead.”

  It was the story they’d agreed on, only hearing it out loud caused Linwood to cringe.

  “I need to check with the security office.”

  That wasn’t part of the plan.

  “Can’t you just let me in?” Dean asked. “It’s been a long drive and I don’t know how much longer they’re just going to sit there patiently. I hit ‘em with the taser but they’ve been quiet for a while. It’s unnerving isn’t it?”

  The guard walked out of view, his hand gripped to his radio on his lapel. Shit. This was all going to be wasted.

  Payne moved fast, scrambling to the edge of the van. Dean’s eyes darted to his left. “He’s trying to escape,” he yelled at the departing guard, and before the guard returned, Dean hauled Payne out.

  Once on his feet, Payne shoulder-charged Dean, then ran away from the van and the Institute. With horror, Linwood saw the guard raise a taser, taking aim at the departing figure. But Dean had seen it and knocked the man’s arm aside. “You can’t shoot. Winborn doesn’t want them damaged.” Dean ran after Payne and caught up to him in seconds, grabbing him at the shoulder and twisting. Payne crashed to the floor and Dean grabbed the man’s arms, yanking them up behind his back.

  “Help me,” he called to the guard.

  Together, the guard and Dean dragged Payne back to the van and manhandled him inside, all the while Payne keeping up the pretence of trying to break free. Once inside, Dean slammed the van doors shut.

  Linwood heard Dean thank the guard then the guard telling him to drive the van round to loading bay two.

  With a sigh, Payne leant back on Linwood’s back and said. “I told you this was a stupid idea.”

  She smiled and told him he’d done a good job, then she heard the whine as the security gate rose and the roar of the engine as Dean pressed over-enthusiastically on the accelerator. A jerk and they were travelling again.

  “First hurdle,” she said to Payne.

  “And the easiest,” he replied.

  50

  5th June 2013

  A minute later the van jerked to a halt and then reversed. The driver’s door opened, quickly followed by the back doors.

  Dean was shaking his head gently at the pair of them. “Quick thinking but stupid. He was going to taser you. I had it under control.”

  “Like hell you did. He was about to call us in,” Payne said.

  “He’d have struggled to do that with my mobile jamming all radio signals,” Dean said. “Honestly, you’d have thought I’d never broken into a top-secret research facility before.”

  Linwood knew he was joking but Payne didn’t reply. Annoyed no doubt as being cast as the green one of the trio.

  “Looks like no one’s here to meet us. The guard will be able to use his radio by now, though, so we have little time.” He helped the two of them out of the van and then hurried to a side entrance beside a retractable garage door.

  “Thanks, Dean. Good job,” Linwood said as she leant into the building, noting the security cameras by the roof line. “You should cut these now,” she said. “We might need to act quickly.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said and took a knife from his pocket. He nicked through their ties. “I suggest you keep your hands behind your back though or it will look suspect.”

  “Right.”

  Dean got to work on the lock, placing his telephone on the sensor pad and letting it do its work. Ironic that a piece of kit that had originated here was being used to aid their illicit entry. A click and Dean pulled open the door before poking his head inside.

  “There’s no one about. We should hurry.”

  They entered and Linwood cast her eyes about. It was a loading bay. The sort where vans could reverse part way into the building to take on loads or deliver goods. Around the edge of the room was the equipment you’d need to facilitate this including metal cages on wheels and two forklift trucks.

  It was warm in here and she tried to ignore the stifling heat around her face and neck. Sweat was pouring from her, threatening to loosen the glue holding the mask in place.

  “Where’s Max likely to be?” Payne asked.

  “He’s in one of the research stations,” Dean replied.

  “It’s a lot of effort to go to for one man.”

  “Yes,” Linwood said. “I don’t understand why they’re so interested in him. They must think he’s worth the effort though. But, we’re not just here for Max. We need to find Jaq. Find out what happened to her. And that’s only on top of finding out what Winborn is up to,” Linwood said.

  “Who do we go for first?” Payne asked.

  “Jaq,” replied Linwood without missing a beat. “If she’s on our side, she could be a serious asset. If not,
well, we need to make sure she doesn’t cause us any problems.”

  Dean hurried to the inner door leading from the loading bay into the interior.

  “Come on, let’s go.” He held his phone before him. He was looking at a map of the facility. Red dots were moving around slowly. A couple were moving along an adjacent corridor to where they stood.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Erik set it up for me when I last visited. It’s registering the employees’ security cards. We can track them in real-time, keep out of their way.” A line traced its way from their location to another block several corridors away. “This is the best way to the security section.”

  They hurried. There were security cameras installed at regular intervals, so Dean made a show of pushing Linwood and Payne ahead of him. If anyone were to watch them, they’d seem unsettled for sure, but it would still look like Dean had things under control.

  “Through these doors,” Dean said. Linwood’s pulse had quickened. She hated being so vulnerable in the mask. It was making it impossible to see anything on her periphery and she was effectively only using a limited tunnel vision. At least her hands were free now. She bumped into Payne. “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “Quickly,” Dean said, herding the pair into a room filled with supplies. “Someone’s coming.”

  Footsteps outside, hurrying, almost a run. Then another pair. Voices she couldn’t quite make out. She glanced down at Dean’s display and could just about make out the dots heading back to the loading bay.

  An alarm sounded.

  “I think our cover is blown,” she said.

  “Thank god for that,” Payne said. “I can do this.” His fingers clawed at the edge of the mask hidden on his neckline, and he pulled the mask up his neck and off his face. Linwood sighed and copied his lead. There was no point in the ruse anymore, and these were just going to give them a disadvantage if they got into a fight. The latex tugged at her skin as she pulled it off her cheeks. “Goddammit, this stuff hurts like a bitch.”

  But in moments she was free of the mask and looking at a wry smiling Dean. Payne had dropped his mask on top of a cardboard box and Linwood did the same. “What’s so funny?” she asked Dean.

  “I think you missed a bit,” he replied.

  She felt around her face and found a large chunk of latex had stubbornly clung to her cheek. With a yank, it was free. She whipped out her gun. Payne did the same.

  “You ever fired an ion blaster?” she asked the detective.

  “I can’t believe it’s that complex,” he said examining the piece. A silver tube, about eight inches long with a trigger mechanism and a tiny row of settings embedded on the top of the device.

  “It has a full battery,” she said, indicating the tiny LEDs. “The default setting is 50% charge. That’s enough to knock most people out cold. You can change that setting here.” She pointed to a couple of buttons and Payne nodded.

  “How many shots?”

  “About twenty at 50%. Less if you increase. Let’s go.”

  After first checking Dean’s mobile, she opened the door cautiously. The alarm was so much louder in the corridor. “Don’t waste any time. We’re running out of chances. You head for Max, I’m going for Jaq.”

  She took Dean’s mobile and oriented it to the direction she wanted to go, committing the route to memory. “Meet you at the extraction point,” she called and handed the phone back to Dean, leaving them behind.

  Payne eyed Dean. During the Jodrell Bank Incident, the man had been nowhere to be seen and yet Linwood was trusting him with something as important as this infiltration mission. He was prepared to challenge them both on it later but right now, he wanted to find Max so they could get away.

  “Which way?” he asked Dean but Dean had already nudged him aside and was running up the corridor in the opposite direction to the one Linwood had taken. Payne had no choice but to follow suit.

  They reached the first pair of TALOS employees as they rounded a corner. A man and a woman in yellow tunics, talking to each other and pointing at a tablet one of them was holding. Middle-aged, they looked harmless and would be easy to overcome.

  Dean shot both of them with his blaster. They collapsed before they could even have time to comprehend what was happening to them.

  Payne wanted to make sure they were OK, but Dean shouted back at him to get a move on and he cursed and did as he was told. The mission was more important than any one individual—he had to keep telling himself that. But the woman had a security badge clipped to her lapel and Payne ripped it off hoping it might prove useful later.

  They reached a stairwell and Dean charged on, taking two steps at a time with Payne barely keeping up.

  There was shooting and sizzling noises as Dean released energy bolts at more men in TALOS uniforms. Payne reached the landing in time to see three more men collapsing. One banged his head against the wall as he fell and Payne winced.

  “We’re here,” Dean said calmly. If he was psyched by the adrenaline of the chase, he wasn’t showing it. He appeared as together as anyone he’d ever seen.

  They were standing in front of a double set of doors. This set was a dark grey steel and positively screamed at strangers to keep away. Undoubtedly they’d found their target. A sensor plate was on the wall and Payne pressed the security card he’d picked up against it. A red light appeared.

  Dean moved Payne aside and placed his mobile phone against the pad. The screen changed from the internal map to a new one with lines and swirls, rotating. Seconds passed. The alarms were giving Payne a headache and fuelling the sense of panic that had been gnawing at his insides.

  Then the sirens stopped.

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “That someone has got fed up listening to them. They know we’re here, they’ll catch up with us sooner or later,” Dean replied.

  The sensor pad glowed green, and the doors slid open letting the pair into a much larger space. The room was cavernous and split across three levels. They were at the lower level and Payne looked up at the three tiers. Each was a replica of the ground level. A row of cells along each wall large enough to hold a single Faceless.

  A hundred Faceless turned their heads as one to look over at the newcomers.

  A hundred Faceless stepped forward, so they were pressed against the entrance of their cells.

  Payne felt sick. “What’s keeping them in?”

  Dean hurried to the closest cell and pointed out the thin bar embedded into the floor and ceiling of the opening. He reached out into the empty space then there was a crackle and he snatched his hand back, rubbing it.

  “There’s a containment field.”

  Right, Payne thought, more James Bond.

  “We’re supposed to be going for Max. Linwood is counting on that. Why have you brought us here?”

  “I wanted to see what they were doing to the Faceless.”

  Since the Faceless had almost killed him at the holiday centre, Payne had tried to put them from his mind. He wanted to mouth off at Dean but looking around at the number of these creatures contained, he knew where Dean was coming from. Why had TALOS come to collect them? Why were they being contained? It can’t be out of a public duty. From all that he’d heard from Erik and Dean about how TALOS operated, there was something more nefarious going on.

  Dean hurried along the aisle, checking in on the trapped creatures and they, in turn, followed his progress. It was uncanny to watch these individuals track him with gentle turns of their heads. Almost as if they were connected.

  It was easy to forget these creatures weren’t harmless innocents. Less than a day ago, they’d tried to kill him and his colleagues.

  Dean took photos of the room on his mobile and hurried back to Payne. “Got what you need?” Payne asked, eager now to get on and find Max. Dean nodded and ran for the same entrance they’d come through. “The quarantine suite is this way.”

  Payne took a breath then gripped his gun tight an
d followed him out.

  It was Dean’s quick thinking that saved him from being caught in an ambush. From the moment the security doors opened, he had seconds to process the sight of four armed and mean-looking security guards raising their weapons. The first shot missed Payne’s head by a fraction and then he was slammed against the wall by Dean who was already returning fire. With the first two shots, he took down the closest guards.

  They were using the same kind of energy weapons as Dean and Payne. Despite Payne’s shaking grip, he fired his own weapon towards their aggressors.

  Dean wasn’t stopping. With the rage of a madman, he screamed obscenities at the men and ran, firing off blue bolts in rapid succession.

  They never stood a chance.

  Payne got to his feet, ignoring how unsteady the floor seemed, putting a hand out on the wall, then retracting it so Dean wouldn’t notice, but Dean wasn’t likely to notice anything—he was already ripping security badges off the men’s lapels and taking one of the men’s weapons to hold in his other hand. It looked very similar to the ion blasters they’d brought with them but with a black casing instead of silver. He pocketed his silver weapon and felt the weight of the black ion blaster.

  “Something wrong?” Payne asked.

  “These are lighter. Newer design. May get more shots before it drains the battery.”

  Then with only the briefest glance at Payne, he asked if he was injured.

  “No,” Payne replied. “I’m not.”

  “Then we should hurry.” He turned and left, not checking whether Payne was following.

  51

  5th June 2013

  Toby Kingston had been having a hell of a morning. As Director General for the security service, being out in the field was certainly not one of his typical activities. He was far more comfortable secreted behind his desk, absorbing reports from subordinates and guiding his teams. Never a micro-manager—in his position it was impossible—but this situation called for something different. Since the Jodrell Bank Incident, the home secretary had increased the number of meetings and updates expected of him, and it was getting extremely draining. Having to constantly explain how his Department 5 organisation was working was exhausting.