The Sentient Corruption (The Sentient Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian Williams

  “What, why’s he there?”

  “He wanted to help break the force-field. He seemed to think he could help them do it, after all, he’s very good with technology.”

  “It’s OK, G, Sean is there looking after him,” Elliot felt compelled to add. “It was sort of his idea in the first place, he’s trying to reach his sister inside the city.”

  For a short while they became quiet, the information having come much faster than Graham had been able to process on the fly. Dealing with all of this would be something he would need more time to manage. His mind had still to awaken fully.

  Too much talk of Isaac was ill-advised anyway, he knew, as the stress that came with it only made another black out more likely. Still, there was so much he felt he had to do.

  “I’ll take the message to them myself,” he said while staring intently at the purple shaded oval in the distance. Seeing his companions’ reaction to his request was unnecessary, he could tell from the silence that the two were again sending messages to one another behind his back.

  Finally, Jane decided to answer, and her reply matched Graham’s expectations exactly. “Absolutely not,” she said. “The doctor said you should rest. I’m not letting you gallivant off again, not this time.”

  “Jane, it’s OK. I only want to explain what I can to them. With Stephen and Sean there it means the people in charge at the base may know a little already. Besides, there’s no way into the city anyway, you said it yourself.”

  “Then why go? You’ve done enough to help. What if you have another one of these memory lapses? I don’t want to lose you again. I’ve only just got you back.”

  Taking his wife’s hands into his, he fought against the trembling of her body. Was he being selfish by wanting to go? “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I’ve put you all through hell, and asking more of you is probably wrong, but I need to at least try and help.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I owe them.”

  “You owe who?”

  Graham hesitated, his answer was going to sound crazy to them.

  “G, who do you owe?” Elliot asked this time.

  “Stephen, Luke, Kindness and every other Sentient still hiding from Isaac inside their world. If they hadn’t helped me escape, I would have died in there. And Phoenix too, if she hadn’t found me and told you where I was, I’d still be trapped beneath Sanctuary. Too many lives have been put at risk for me. I won’t just give up on them the first chance I get.”

  Jane kept her eyes locked onto his, as though reading his thoughts, and did not let them drift even a millimetre off target when he tried to look away. It was easy to see he meant what he said. Still she aimed to make absolutely sure he saw the same was true of her as well.

  “We need you, G. Your family needs you,” Elliot said, while the pair of them continued their staring contest. “First thing in the morning, I’ll see if I can get a call through to Stephen and Sean. I can’t promise anything, what with the shitty coverage here, but it should be possible. You can give them the message then. How’s that?”

  Graham swiftly moved his gaze to Elliot, making absolutely clear he intended on holding him to that promise. After a few seconds to get that across to Elliot, he returned to Jane’s waiting attention. Her eyes had at least softened a little now. It was a major compromise, but Graham slowly saw their reasoning and found it hard to dismiss. The fight was out of their hands now.

  “Fine, I’ll stay,” he said, the change of heart bringing instant approval from his two rooftop companions.

  “Oh, thank God,” Jane replied. “You had me worried there for a minute, Graham. Look, life here might not be as exciting as you’ve been used to recently, but it works just fine for now. You’ve done what you can to help, now you should let others do the rest.”

  “I can give you another reason not to go.” Someone else had secretly joined their group and spoke with a hushed tone.

  Graham recognised his sister’s voice and turned to face her. The first thing he saw was her large smile, covering a good portion of her face as usual. He smiled back in return. Then he noticed what she carried in her arms.

  A small blanket, wrapped around a couple of times, protected a valuable treasure inside. Ruth’s hushed voice had been to avoid waking the tiny being hiding quietly between the ruffles of the bright blue blanket. It took Graham a second or two to unlock his face from the contorted expression he had adopted as the muscles were refusing to work while he gawked.

  “How old?” Graham said after an all too audible swallow. Again he felt his lips tremble like two wriggling worms upon his face.

  “Two-and-a-half months. It’s a boy,” Ruth whispered, her hand gently pulling the blanket back an inch or two. “You shouldn’t go anywhere, Graham. You have a life here.”

  “And people that love you enough to see when you’re about to make a mistake,” Jane added.

  Without any warning to Graham, Ruth stepped closer and offered the baby over. He could not refuse, however much he tried in the form of two raised palms. Before he knew it, he had his young nephew in his arms, with Ruth right there for support.

  The blanket had a strong warmth radiating throughout that he felt against his own body, a tiny ticking metronome of a heartbeat too. The life he held in his hands was fragile, it had no idea of the world it had entered. It had to be protected. His nephew needed him there.

  He could see exactly what his leaving again would put at risk. His daughter, Alex, and his new-born nephew were too important to abandon again. Keeping his family together at all cost had to be his only concern.

  Jane was right, he realised, he had fought his fight already. Others would have to do the rest. Asking more of his family was something he could see was out of the question. The best he hoped for now was that he could at least tell those who needed to know precisely what they were up against, that Isaac posed a true threat to their human world.

  Again they all fell silent and gazed down at the small town as it went about its business, while Graham watched his baby nephew sleeping gracefully in his arms. From up there, looking out over the houses, it appeared deceptively calm. There were no real clues that anything had happened at all.

  The town seemed at peace, like it had expected a sudden invasion of strangers all along. It appeared to have welcomed them all with open arms, without a single objection – even though it was hoped to be only a short stay. Unfortunately, as long as the city remained cut off from the rest of the world it would remain this way.

  That alone made Graham uncomfortable.

  Isaac was causing more trouble than he ever managed before. The fight at Sanctuary had only slowed him a little. In truth Graham knew he had been on the back-foot since the very beginning, never fully able to understand the threat until too late. This time was no different; the city had failed to see what was heading straight for them. Graham was fast becoming fed-up with this arrangement. If he could help, even if only a little now, then he would.

  For the time being he only wanted one thing; to be with those he loved, right up until the morning if they allowed him to. What tomorrow contained after that, he would be more capable of facing then.

  “Wait,” Graham said. There was a question that needed answering that he had completely forgotten to ask. “What’s his name?”

  “Lewis,” Elliot said before Ruth could speak a word.

  “Lewis, as in Ruth’s and my granddad?”

  Ruth very carefully ran her finger down the side of her son’s cheek, her head turned at an angle to see his tiny face. “I always liked that name. He would have loved to know he had a grandson with the same name.”

  “Yeah, he would have.” Graham stopped as an old memory unexpectedly entered his mind. He laughed to himself before sharing with the others. “Do you remember what he always used to say when one of us misbehaved?”

  Remembering the same thing, Ruth joined him in laughing. “Yeah, he’d say you kids like zoos, right?” She put on her best deep voi
ce, which only made the others laugh more. “Well, you’ll be living in one soon, if you carry on.”

  The laughter settled soon after, as each realised just how loud they had become. It was late in the evening, so waking the baby would have repercussions later in the night. Still, it was a nice break for Graham, who had once again been surprised with how easy it was to settle back into a normal existence.

  No running from Isaac’s horrific patrols, or holding back an army with a glowing force-field made of warrior Sentients; none of what he had faced inside the Sentient world could hurt him now, he was safe and with those he cherished.

  Jane squeezed Graham’s upper-arm and slid her hand up to his shoulder, where she rested her head. “Maybe we should get you back home now,” she said to their nephew.

  “Sure, I could do with some proper sleep.” Graham looked to Elliot for validation of his comic timing.

  Instead Elliot frowned and turned to walk away. “It didn’t take long for the naff humour to reappear, did it, G?” he said with a shake of his head.

  The rest soon began to follow Elliot to the exit of the roof. Graham fell behind for one last look to the horizon. “I’m not going anywhere, Lewis, I promise.” He then made his own way toward the exit.

  During their short walk through the hospital, Graham kept the baby in his arms and enjoyed the distraction that came with it. Every single movement only brought Graham’s mind back to the time when he had done this with his daughter, Alex. She had once been as small; something he could hardly believe was ever the case now, considering how big she had become while he slept.

  As soon as they were back to Graham’s room in the hospital they began to say their goodbyes for the evening. Ruth took the baby and kissed Graham on his sunken left cheek. “We’ll come see you again tomorrow, Graham,” she said, before setting off down the hall.

  Elliot smiled his goodbye instead.

  “Are you leaving too, Jane?” Graham felt he had to ask.

  “I’m not leaving your side.” She opened the door to his room and again led him the rest of the way. She patted his soft bed, enticing him to get into it. “I’ll sleep in the chair.”

  Not wanting to disappoint, he pulled the covers back and slid underneath them. He then offered a slither of room beside him on the narrow bed. “I’ll breathe in,” he said with a smirk.

  “Are you saying I’m too fat to fit on the bed?” Jane said. She shut the door and leant against it, a broad smile returned at him that warmed his heart.

  “I’d never dare.”

  “Good.” Jane reached her arm to the side and held it over the light switch. “Now, shut up and close your eyes,” she said, before flicking the lights out.

  “Night.” He did as he was told and closed his eyes. Tomorrow would be a better day, he told himself, a new start and a chance to relax even. He then slowly drifted off to sleep, the need for rest having become too much to resist.

  Thankfully, the headache had only been slight this time.

  Chapter 3

  New beginnings

  Stanley Cartwright was happier than he could ever remember being at any other time in his life. He had an all too visible spring in his step as he walked a dimly lit office corridor toward his newly altered place of work.

  Those he passed along the way were given a friendly ‘hello’ or a ‘how’s the family’ before he continued on. They were the usual sort of people, with neither a word to say nor the mental capacity to reciprocate if he engaged them in conversation. The staff were a lot less chatty and a whole lot more emotionless these days; the complete opposite to him.

  His few long years as the Deputy Mayor of New Chelmsford were finally over. Losing his superior, Mayor Jonathan Crawley, to an unknown group just before the sky was blanketed in a magical purple glow, had left him the only person to take over.

  To say he was pleased about this was putting it mildly. In truth he had planned for a similar outcome many times in the past, usually while staring at his rather inept boss.

  Mayor Crawley had always been a highly respected man, but he was not a true politician. His background in business made him a great figurehead and that was all. His mind did not allow for the wider picture to be seen, only what his tiny part in it was.

  For this reason, Stanley had found it hard to stay in the background behind such a clown. So now the old fool was gone, he could do what he had spent his life trying to do, and lead from the very front.

  Before his move to New Chelmsford, a constituency he barely knew at all, he had been a man promised great political power. His label as one of his party’s ‘newest and brightest’ had set him up for an eventual job at the top table, maybe even the very top as Prime Minister of the UK.

  Unfortunately, it had never happened. For all of the talk and all of the excitement he had gained only one lasting label, one he greatly resented; the man who never really stood a chance.

  Standing in his way at every turn was one rather large road block in the form of a lifelong rival. This one person had been there all the way, like a permanent shadow, rising alongside him from the very beginning.

  He had never believed he would be overtaken by this person and left with nowhere for his own career to go. Yet that was exactly what had happened, to his complete surprise. This one trusted ally had turned on him at the slightest whiff of power, leaving him discarded and broken.

  But that was then, and he was more than making up for that failure now. It would never happen again, Stanley had decided a year after his rival was handed leadership of the party; a particularly difficult and highly public embarrassment he would make sure could never be replicated.

  He had made the career ending decision to retreat to local government instead soon after, where his over-qualification made him the automatic winner in most arguments. Of course, to then find himself behind someone with little experience - such as Jonathan Crawley - had made him worry it was happening again.

  With no-one in his way now he had the stage set for a monumental rise to power that none could challenge. Waking to this new world of uncertainty and fear, he had been handed the keys to the entire kingdom, and he intended to monopolise on this opportunity.

  He knew he could do it. More importantly he knew his new boss had always known too; it had been the reason for his slightly hidden role behind the Mayor. It was he who had orchestrated from the shadows and played Mayor Crawley like a puppet.

  Now the world would see his real worth.

  He stopped by the reception desk. The slim woman manning the desk ignored him as he leant a little too close to her and read her holographic display. He did not mind her lack of interest, he had more important things to worry about. She wore nothing but black clothing that covered every part of her body anyway, so she hardly interested him in return.

  In fact, she barely looked different to everyone else in the building, aside from him. His own smart, pressed shirt and trousers made clear he was an individual, not one of them – although he shared a similarly colourless shade to his skin that some would say appeared waxy in the daylight.

  “Don’t work too hard, Sandra,” Stanley said to the unresponsive woman staring blankly at her screen. He waved casually as he wandered toward the lifts ahead.

  With every window completely covered and keeping all sunlight out it was often a pain to remember exactly what floor he was on. It was the same on every floor now, after things outside had become a little troublesome of late. If not for the huge stone monument that ran right through the centre of the New City Hall, it would have been almost impossible to tell. As it was, he currently resided on the ground floor, with the large spinning door entrance just behind him.

  He gave the column of stone the building appeared to have been built around a casual glance, and watched as water gracefully ran down its length.

  A pleasant ding sound interrupted his moment of tranquillity to announce the arrival of his vertical carriage. He boarded, and pressed for the top floor, waiting politely as other
s joined him for the trip – all dressed in black as they were required. Again not one of them appeared willing to talk, despite Stanley’s sudden want for conversation.

  “Anyone going away for the holidays?” he asked.

  They were lost to their own thoughts, as most in the building now were. Stanley found their unfocused and unblinking eyes a little creepy. If they did not want to talk then he would just watch the beautiful central monument as it tapered all the way to the tip of the building.

  He always enjoyed this trip and marvelled at the fact the lift had travelled a kilometre-and-a-half up in less than ten seconds, a journey that tested the muscles in the back of his legs. Those not used to the speed were often thrown temporarily off balance the first few times.

  Once at the top he jumped out of the lift as soon as he could, just to get away from the strange people he found himself surrounded by each day now. The black boxes attached to each of them had made them nothing more than a shuffling hoard of zombies, all waiting to be needed and given some purpose other than to clog up the corridors. Stanley did not mind too much, as they would find themselves busy again soon enough.

  Even up this high – roughly 1.5 kilometres up – the view was kept to a minimum within. This seemed a shame to Stanley, as the idea of the city in the grips of a purple shaded panic made him want to see for himself. Except it was this way for a reason, the most important of which was for protection. What lived up on the top floor of the Mayor’s tower had to be protected at any and all cost.

  The heavy wooden doors of the Mayor’s office were shut tight as usual. Rarely were they open and never were they ever a welcoming sight. They sparked dread in most, even for Stanley, who had entered through them on many occasions. Regardless of how often he had pushed the left door open and crept into the room beyond, he still could never quite get used to it. It would always scare him. He thought this a good thing; it would stop him becoming complacent while in the company of such greatness. And considering complacency had cost him a seat at the top once before, he would not let it hold him back again.