by Paul Teague
I could remember most of the layout from the previous day, and even though it was completely different in appearance, I could pretty well find my way around, the corridor layout was exactly the same. Red Zone rooms were clearly marked as were Green Zone rooms. Even I could follow that. To get through any door you placed your hand on a pad. Presumably it scanned your hand in some way - something to do with your biometric whatever it was - as I was never blocked wherever I went.
The dormitories - Green Zone - no problem. The Chapel - Green Zone - no problem. The broadcasting studio - Green Zone - no problem. Only it wasn’t a broadcasting studio any more. Now it was a gym. I wouldn’t be needing that right now - or anytime soon - so I made my exit swiftly. As I walked through to the doors, I noticed an area just along the corridor that I hadn’t spotted before. Red Zone. Look, I’m twelve years old, what did you expect? It was only a matter of time until I tried one of the hand pads on a Red Zone door. I knew I was on camera, I didn’t try to hide it, because I expected to be denied access. No big deal.
When I put my hand on the pad, I was half expecting that ‘Uh-uh’ sound that they use on that quiz show when families mess up an answer. Maybe Mum’s right, too much time spent watching old clips on video websites. So there’s nobody more surprised than me when I place my hand on the pad and the door opens.
It’s dark inside at first, but the lights are clearly wired to come on as soon as someone enters. It takes my eyes a short time to adjust, but as they do, they fall on three figures in what I can only describe as ‘pods’. They’re wired up to all sorts of electronic gadgetry, and they’re clearly unaware of me. At first I think I’ve stumbled on some kind of sleeping area, but I saw the dormitories only a few minutes ago. They were Green Zone. This is Red Zone. These three figures are not sleeping. They’re unconscious, restrained, they’re being kept that way by the gadgetry. I recognise one of them, she was the lady who gave us our tickets when we came in - these must be the staff. Used to serving tourists. Caught up in something by accident. ‘Unauthorised personnel’ is what Kate would probably call them. Or ‘Unauthorised personnel, Dan’ more likely. Building more rapport.
One of the lights in the room flickers into life as I move further into the room. I don’t know why - or how - I got into this room, but I’m very pleased I did. As the light adjusts to full brightness and my eyes re-adjust, I focus on another three figures held captive in these sinister pods. It’s Dad, David and Harriet.
Chapter Ten
Blast Doors
The device that quietly and undetectably pulsated in her neck was made of extremely advanced technology. Only a very limited number of people knew its source. It worked very cleverly in the background, she was completely unaware of its effect upon her consciousness. Those who knew how to look for the devices would have immediately spotted that it was currently in ‘receive’ mode. Somebody was controlling her thoughts, but not in a robotic way. Her device emitted a faint blue light. The untrained eye might have mistaken it for a vein in her neck. The trained eye would have looked specifically at the colour, because that was the most crucial thing. Blue, red, yellow, purple, black or green - it made all the difference. She had full consciousness and complete knowledge of what was going on around her.
She was not aware that her recognition of the child in the car had been suppressed by the device, but it had been, working away undetected in the background, filtering out the elements that would create a strong emotional response. Things that might distract her right now. It was very subtle. So as she rushed past the black car with her new companion, there was no glimmer of recognition. Neither the child nor the car registered in her memory, even though she was aware of both. She was aware that there were questions to be asked about why the child had been in the car in the first place, but it was like her attention had been caught by something else.
She had a very strong and compelling sense that she must take shelter in the bunker. But she’d come for the laptop, juice and Dan’s phone, and she’d even returned to the car to get one of them. She knew too that there was urgency and that they would have to hurry. Crazy. Something terrible is happening and you still return to get the tech.
The sky is now darkening quickly, this appears to be much more than a storm. It is unworldly, she knows it must be freak weather conditions, maybe a solar effect or something like that, but she instinctively feels that the siren and the darkness are linked.
The two figures rush towards the cottage, through the doors, and with massive urgency now they try to make up for those few lost seconds when she returned to the car. They approach the bunker doors just too late. If only they hadn’t returned for the tech. They would have made it if they’d not wasted those vital moments. They approached the run up to the blast doors as the gap between them began to narrow to a close. There was just time to see Dan’s face and hear his final calls to them as the heavy doors shut tightly with a thunderous clang. They were all alone.
Deceit
I’m stunned for a few moments as I look at the still forms of three members of my family in their glass pods. They are clearly unharmed, I can see that no physical damage has been done to them. I can also figure out enough from the screens and dials surrounding them to see that they are alive.
I’m not totally sure what I’m looking at, but I’ve seen enough hospital dramas to know that these are monitoring life-signs, and Dad, David and Harriet all have constantly pulsing heart rates and lively brain activity. In fact David’s brain activity looks really lively on the screen. He must be thinking about Minecraft again. My instinct is not to panic, but I am suddenly pretty angry.
It’s okay Kate saying that they have to ‘stay contained’ because they don’t have clearance. I can accept that. After all, the alternative is to be trapped beyond the bunker doors. I’m happy that they’re okay. But I assumed that being ‘contained’ would mean being held in a comfortable room somewhere together. I didn’t think it would mean being frozen or put to sleep … or whatever it is that has been done to them.
The other thing that’s bothering me is that Kate has quite clearly deceived me. She hasn’t actually told me any lies, but she hasn’t told me the whole truth either. For instance, my family are being held in a Red Zone area. I’m only supposed to have Green Zone access, so I’m not supposed to be seeing this. It makes me wonder what else is going on in the other Red Zone rooms.
And even more intriguing is why I can get access to these areas. It has to be some terrible computer error or glitch. Maybe they use Windows 8 too.
At the moment I need to stay focused. I’m the best hope for Dad, David and Harriet. If I end up in one of these pods too, we’ll be at the mercy of whoever is running this place. I don’t get the feeling that anything sinister is going on, but I’d still rather be conscious and moving than stuck in one of these glass coffins.
‘Don’t call them coffins,’ I think. But that’s what they remind me of. Bearing in mind what’s happened in the past day or two, I’m pretty impressed with how maturely I figure out what needs to come next. Dad would be proud of me. If he was awake. I need to be cool about this situation, because if I cause trouble, I’ll probably end up like all the other ‘civilians’ in this room.
If I end up here, I won’t be able to figure out what’s going on. Dad needs me to make sure that somebody is looking out for them. And there’s Mum too. I couldn’t bear ending up in here and not knowing what’s happened to her. So everybody needs me to play the game with Kate and just keep things ticking over. For some reason I’ve got clearance to roam freely. Who knows why? That might change when they have more time to acclimatise to their new surroundings, or when they get their mission instructions. The best bet is to stay cool, keep off the radar and maintain a low profile. Great strategy Dan. Because at that very moment, Kate bursts into the room with two armed guards at her side.
The World Sleeps
The darkness creeps across the surface of the earth, obliterating all light, filling al
l spaces that it encounters. It began with the skies, but it moved across the earth, permeating the seas, obliterating all light, extinguishing all flames. Many things could be planned for in advance. Nuclear power stations closed down, one by one, under government instructions. Just a routine drill, a test for a ‘national emergency’. It didn’t matter what the excuse was, they were used to instructions like this ‘from above’, they just did what they were told, when they were told.
Most flights were grounded, but you can’t account for everything, in matters like these you can’t save everybody. What else can you do if you need to whole world put to sleep for a while, some lives are bound to be lost?
All in all, it was as well executed as you could hope for. So that when the global freak weather patterns turned from grey skies, to black and then something much, much more sinister, most of the world had pretty well stopped itself.
When the final surge of blackness came there was just enough time for the internet to go crazy with conspiracy theories, religious predictions and apocalyptic scenarios.
If only they had known before they slipped into that deep slumber, the biological stasis that the darkness brought with it. This was no Doomsday scenario. The darkness had been unleashed across the planet precisely to prevent the destruction of the Earth.
Conscience
Loyalty can be a funny thing. It can change in the blink of an eye. He’d never before questioned the work that he was doing or the tasks that he was asked to do. He understood that Governments have to act for the ‘common good’ and that sometimes people had to do things that might make the ‘ordinary’ man or woman uncomfortable. But being responsible for the death of a child? That can never be justified. So on the day that he drove away from that desperate scene, his loyalties changed. As the sight of a crowd gathering around a dying child at the roadside grew smaller in his rearview mirror, his conscience kicked in. He knew that he could not question his orders or challenge what had just happened.
He couldn’t even explain it. Asking questions, making waves and prying into the mission outcomes would not get him any closer to the truth. He would need to maintain his cover, keep his poker face on. But he was not a child killer. And he was not going to let the loss of a child’s life go unchallenged.
Nor was he a fool. The machinations of the shadowy figures in his organisation sometimes took years to play out. So it would be with the death of this child. He was a patient man, he knew the importance of the long game. So he would wait and watch. But the death of this child had not gone unnoticed. And he would make sure that the young life that he had just helped to end would not go unavenged.
Chapter Eleven
Grounded
Kate looks as much troubled as she does annoyed. She can’t explain how I got in here, but she knows that she’s going to have to think of something quickly. And I must have the same look on my face that I did when Mum caught me hunting in her wardrobe for my birthday presents. That guilty look of somebody who knows that they’re just been caught red-handed and knowing that they have some serious explaining to do.
Fortunately, Kate speaks first. ‘Dan, we’re really disappointed to find you in here,’ she begins. Darn, she used the ‘disappointed’ word. I remember everybody wheeling out that one when I was having my problems at school. ‘The incredible thing is that you seem to have full clearance across the bunker,’ she continues. ‘So you are in fact authorised to be here.’ Phew, advantage Dan. She doesn’t want me here, she doesn’t like me being here but it appears that there’s not much that she can do about it.
Time to go on the offensive, but she gets in before me. ‘We need to explain what’s going on Dan, I’m sure you must be shocked to find your family like this?’ she says. Kate is good. In fact she’s very good. She has this knack of seeing what’s going on in my head, then dealing with it in a way that answers all of my questions. Yet it leaves the biggest questions unanswered still.
How does she manage that? I think back to Dad and his rants about the HR people at his work. ‘People must make a living out of this,’ I think to myself, ‘Of saying one thing, then meaning another thing entirely.’ Maybe politics will eventually make sense to me after all. ‘Your Dad and your brother and sister are in stasis,’ Kate explains, I decide to let her say what she wants to say uninterrupted. I hope Dad can’t hear this, I wouldn’t want him to think that this ‘not interrupting’ thing was going to become a habit anytime soon. ‘They were exposed to the darkness beyond the blast doors when the sirens went off, you were all caught in the corridor,’
‘So was I!’ I interject. ‘Here’s the strange thing Dan,’ Kate continues. She’s doing that ‘Dan’ thing again. It works every time with me. ‘We checked you out thoroughly in the MedLab and you’re absolutely fine,’ she explains raising another mystery rather than solving any.
‘Your family and the bunker staff from the cottage may have got caught by the darkness as they made their way into the bunker when the sirens went off. It’s essential that they remain in the pods for BioFiltration, it’s for their own health - and safety’ she added at the end.
‘Health and safety,’ I thought, ‘Even at the end of the world we have to do a risk assessment!’ I keep my thoughts to myself and ask, more intelligently I hope, ‘What is BioFiltration?’ ‘Great question!’ Kate replies, she knows she has won this exchange by engaging my curiosity. Have you ever noticed how brilliant you feel when someone says ‘Great question?’ It happened to me at school quite a lot. I’d put my hand up, ask something like ‘Were the Lion and the Witch actually in the wardrobe?’ Or ‘Does a chessboard always have to have 32 white squares?’ And the teacher would enthusiastically reply with a ‘Great question!’. Now, don’t get me wrong, I knew it really wasn’t a great question. It was a diversionary technique I’d mastered many years ago. Be proactive with questions that you control, that way the teacher will see that you’ve participated in class. And when it comes to them asking questions over which you have no control, they’ll pass you by. After all, you already contributed. Diligent student that you are. But the ‘Great question!’ reply always worked on me. It always made me feel like I’d just done something amazing. When I knew I hadn’t. I mean, a lion and a witch in a wardrobe? More than 32 white squares on a chessboard? Come on, really?
So while I was patting myself on my own back for my great ‘What is BioFiltration?’ question, Kate gave me the answer. ‘We don’t have full information yet about what’s happening outside the bunker as you know Dan, but we do know from the medical teams that the darkness itself is not harmful.’
Okay, so far so good once again. She’s very skilled at this reassurance lark. ‘However, all of the people in this room were partially exposed to the darkness, when they’re supposed to be either fully exposed, as with the people outside the bunker, or not exposed at all, as is the case of all of us who were inside all of the time.’ ‘These BioFilters are removing the contaminated elements and restoring all vital signs to normal levels.’ Wow I actually understood all of that. Maybe I am cut out to be a futuristic bunker worker after all.
‘So in summary Dan, your family are fine, all of the people in this room are fine.’ ‘They just need to stay here for a little while longer while the process is completed, after that we’ll wake them up and you’ll all be able to chat.’
‘Great news!’ I think to myself, and to be completely honest, although everything that’s going on here is completely unfamiliar to me, I’m still not unduly worried. What Kate tells me all adds up. What I hear and what I see makes sense, I’ve no reason to doubt it.
We’ve all been standing still while we’ve been having this conversation and at that moment the movement-sensitive lights turn themselves off again. It’s only a moment until somebody moves and they’re back on again. But for the few seconds that the lights were out, I caught a glimpse of something. Like a faint light where Kate’s neck was in the darkness. Unusual, because it appeared to be pulsating. I couldn’t see it as c
learly when the lights came on, though I was pretty sure that I’d seen it in the darkness. A pulsating, faint light just at the side of her neck. It was red.
Solo mission
He stood up at his terminal and walked towards the exit. Nobody seemed to notice him. They saw him moving, but they were unable to detect the significance of what he was about to do. It was an unusual situation in the control room. They just seemed to be waiting. They were waiting of course. The full mission briefing was coming in the next few hours. While the events unfolded beyond the bunker doors. They knew that the mission was connected to that. They knew that their loved ones beyond the doors would be fine. They’d had the advantage, they had been able to engineer things so that their families were at home when it began. Their initial instructions were simple. Just like they’d practised in training. Familiarise yourself with your work station. Perform the routine tasks on your initial work schedule. Basic things like ‘Check the perimeter’ and ‘Ensure all terminals are operating correctly’. Then, use the time to familiarise yourself with the bunker layout and other team members. It was a simple holding pattern, prior to the full briefing taking place.
There was an atmosphere of hesitant expectation in the building, but assurances had been given, training had been thorough and all was as it was supposed to be. Except for James. Or ‘Roachie’ as his closest friends called him. He now had a personal mission which had to be completed secretly. This mission hadn’t been communicated via his terminal or through any of the routes that were considered ‘normal procedure’. James’ actions were taken as a consequence of the device that was faintly pulsating beneath the skin on his neck. Barely perceptible unless you were looking for it. Its blue light seemed to suggest that information was being transmitted in some way. Unknown, invisible, undetected. James knew what he was doing, but he didn’t understand the implications of the solo mission that he was about to carry out.