The Sentient Corruption (The Sentient Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian Williams

  The strange being had now vanished as well.

  “Fuck, yeah,” Jack proclaimed.

  As the smoke cleared and she saw it for herself she was overjoyed. There, leaning to one side and about to go over the rest of the way, was the most resilient relay ever designed. She had brought one down, had sent a message straight to the ones who tried to kill her. The humans were not going to take any more, they were going to hit back. And the new relays would be the main target from then on.

  That message was signed and sealed by those still fighting back, who she was sure would follow with similar attacks to the rest of the relay network. Now, finally the fight to take back the city had begun, and she had dealt the first, most powerful blow to date. All that was left was for her and the others to leave the place without being seen and meet up with the rest of their people.

  Chapter 7

  Plan C

  Graham sat in a hard metal chair and watched as Stephen went about his work in silence. On the table sat a small screen and a manual keyboard. From his short visit of the real Sanctuary, Graham knew Stephen preferred this slightly archaic method of interacting with his computer systems. It matched nothing of what the military used though, meaning they had brought it in just for this purpose.

  Stephen had become very important to those running this particular show and appeared the only one with the know-how to succeed, as proven by the lack of others assisting. If there were more working on breaking through the shield, then they worked elsewhere.

  While leaning back on the uncomfortable chair, unsure of what his own role was, Graham found it rather relaxing to hear the rapid clicking of keys. The ease with which Stephen used the system had him transfixed. For the first time since arriving he had seen a glimpse of the true talent hiding behind the child-like veil. It told him something useful, it told him that there was still a good part of the man that had once been the Sentient Collector inside. That part now had control and was the one choosing which key to press next.

  That was as far as Graham could get with his understanding of what he saw, however, as what appeared on the screen seemed nothing but gibberish to him. Each line of code had some meaning he could never have understood, even after years of trying. Such a level of intelligence was beyond him.

  His mind was still stuck on his own predicament to worry about this for too long. Certain questions had yet to be asked. He struggled to think of the best way to ask them while Stephen concentrated on his work. Putting them directly to such a timid creature, one afraid of the slightest whiff of a threat, risked forcing the competent side of Stephen to scurry away again. That would remove any chance for answers straight away.

  Instead, Graham spun his chair around to talk to Sean as he entered, in his hands the lunch he had taken the opportunity to fix them all: a disappointing selection of a warm cup of tea and sealed military ration packs.

  “Sorry, it was all I could get for now,” Sean said after being met with a look of disgust from Graham. “Stephen, you need to stop for something to eat.”

  “But I’m nearly done.” Stephen’s response was followed by a sharp sigh.

  “No, come on, you know you work better when you’re not hungry.”

  “Fine.”

  A smile snuck onto Graham’s face as he watched Stephen slowly, and with a degree of reluctance, turn the chair around to face them. It was the perfect time to speak up, he realised a moment later. So while Stephen took the already opened military snack and perused it with his fingers, Graham formed his first question clearly in his mind. After a nervous gulp of his own warm brew he then asked it. “Stephen, do you remember when you went into the Sentient world?” he asked.

  To his and Sean’s amazement, Stephen replied without even a hint of difficulty. “Oh yes, I remember that very well.”

  “Really?” Graham shot a look of surprise to Sean, who returned the exact same expression straight back at him.

  “Yes, it was a wonderful day, so full of pretty colours and magical glowing people. I miss it.” Stephen paused after his first, and hugely unsatisfying bite of the energy bar, then added, “Can we go back there one day?”

  “I’m not sure about that, Buddy. Maybe someday,” Graham said, even though his insides felt as though they were twisting inside of him just at the thought of doing such a thing. “What about when you tried to leave their world, do you know what happened to you?”

  “Yes, Luke said it made me forgetful.”

  That’s only the half of it, Graham thought with a mournful look to his white-haired friend. “Do you understand why that happened to you?”

  “No.” Stephen swallowed back his mouthful like a spoonful of distasteful medicine and followed it up with a noisy sip of his own drink to wash it down. He then deliberated over his words, his mouth open and twitching, but nothing making it out.

  “What is it, Stephen?” Sean asked.

  “My brain was broken. The words in my head weren’t this messy before. When I left that lovely place they made no sense anymore.”

  Graham leant forward in his seat as he listened, intent on getting everything before Stephen lost himself, as he often did.

  “Luke said that some of me got left behind,” Stephen continued as though just casually shooting the breeze. “He said something went wrong when we left that world.”

  “Yes, that’s what I want to talk about. Did you know something was wrong straight after you got out?”

  “Oh yes, I knew my head had gone funny right away.”

  “So could that have happened to me?”

  Stephen gave him a perplexed look in reply.

  “The black-outs?” Sean asked on Stephen’s behalf.

  Graham nodded. He decided it best to be totally honest this time. “It’s been more than just black-outs though,” he said, pausing for a drawn-out breath. “I’ve been hearing a voice inside my head that doesn’t always sound like me. It’s been telling me to do things, telling me to say certain things too. I think this other me is what takes over during my black-outs.”

  “You think something happened to you when you left the Sentient world then, like with Stephen?”

  Again Graham nodded, then turned to Stephen. “If my mind is broken, could that explain the other voice?”

  Arching his head forward, Stephen looked deep into Graham’s eyes and seemed to study the consciousness behind them. What he searched for remained a mystery, yet he investigated with intent, only switching eyes when he was completely satisfied. He could hardly have seen any sign of the other voice in Graham’s head. Even so, he suddenly became wide-eyed at the sight of something.

  “What, what do you see?” Graham could not ask it with any less worry in his voice.

  “Hmm, that’s really odd.” Stephen grabbed Graham’s hands and held them out in front of him. He then looked over the sweaty palms in front of him, flipping them over after a second or two. Apart from the bandage on Graham’s hand there was nothing out of the ordinary – he had deemed the injury hidden beneath the tight bandage as unimportant on first inspection, just a scratch or something. It certainly did not warrant the look of excitement on Stephen’s face. “Take off the wrapping.”

  Without saying a word, Graham did as he had been told and began to fight against the bandage. After a few failed attempts to prise it loose he eventually looked about himself for something to cut through it instead. Anything would have done at that point as he only cared to see what had been hiding underneath.

  “Try this,” Sean said, pulling a small pen-knife out of his trouser pocket and handing it over. He was definitely Phoenix’s brother, Graham thought. She would never go anywhere without some form of weapon on her. Sean appeared just as cautious.

  Carefully sliding the blade through the bandages top layer, Graham managed to cut it enough to begin unwinding it. His hand felt no different to the other, just a lot itchier and much hotter too. He did not expect anything to show up, other than an obvious redness. He never expected what he saw at all.<
br />
  “What the fuck is that?” Graham said. He held his hand out in front of him as far as he could. But however much he refused to look directly at it he could not avoid it entirely. What should not have been there at all now sparkled with little concern for its obvious strangeness. He had to look at it eventually and was disturbed by how familiar its subtle glow felt to him. No larger than a ten pence piece and roughly circular in shape, the object stuck out of the back of his hand like a diamond encrusted scab.

  “Remarkable,” Stephen said.

  The shock at what he saw made Graham claw at the object in a desperate attempt to remove it. He knew that glow, that light that penetrated his mind and refused to leave it. Kindness and every other Sentient he had seen in the Sentient world had had the exact same illumination to them. Somehow he had something from another plane of existence right there on his hand, like he had brought a part of that world into his own.

  “What is that thing?” Sean asked while rudely staring.

  “It’s a perfect little star, or a beautiful emerald from a faraway land.” Stephen had wondered off into a dream world at the sight of the strange object, one Graham now felt compelled to hide away again.

  “Jesus, what’s happening to me?” Graham said before quickly wrapping the bandage around it again. “That isn’t right. I need to know what’s happening to me, Stephen, please.”

  As though summoned like a genie, the voice in his head reappeared to add its thoughts to proceedings. “You’re not an average joe anymore.”

  “What?”

  “We didn’t say anything,” Sean said with an arm on Graham’s shoulder.

  “No, I was talking to…”

  Stephen suddenly jumped out of his seat and looked around himself. “He’s here.”

  Hang on, can he hear you too? Graham thought, remembering to try and keep the conversation within his own head again.

  “That old fool?” the voice replied. “No, he’s just a silly old bugger. My voice is for your ears only.”

  “Graham,” Sean interrupted. “Tell us what it’s saying to you, what’s it telling you to do?”

  “Kill them all,” the voice said with a deep growl.

  What?

  “I’m kidding, G, I’m kidding. This is all just part of the plan, nothing more. That thing on your hand has a purpose, so too do you. You will understand in time. Now, just nod politely and tell Stephen and Sean that the voice has gone.”

  “Please, I just want an answer,” Graham said. He had no intention of hiding his struggle any longer, irrelevant of what the voice had to say about that. “What are you? How did you get inside my head?”

  “What are you talking about, G?” There was a tone of surprise this time. For the first time it did not appear as confident in its convictions. “I’m you, always have been.”

  “Bullshit. You know something, don’t you? Tell me what you are.”

  “What do you want to hear, that your mind is split and I’m the other half of you speaking? Is that what you think?”

  “It happened to Stephen. That must be what happened to me, except both parts still made it back inside my head.”

  Sean and Stephen had taken to watching as Graham answered back to a voice they could not hear. One of them seemed to understand what was going on more than the other, Stephen had faced a similar situation after all.

  The last reply did not quite sit right with Stephen though, which he made clear with a rigorous shaking of his head. “No, no, no, that’s sounds wrong, that sounds wrong, wrong, wrong,” he said while pacing the floor.

  Graham broke away from his argument a moment later. “What’s wrong?”

  “You aren’t as broken as me,” Stephen began, all the while the voice continued to dispel anything that contradicted it. “You’re more than you were before, not less. You know things you shouldn’t.”

  It made sense to Graham, who had felt like himself throughout his time awake. The voice in his head had to be something extra, then. Something he had not had before his venture into the Sentient world. But what could that be?

  “Wait, are you a Sentient?”

  The voice snorted derisively before answering. “How should I know? Look, what I am isn’t relevant right now, what we do is.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You’ll have to wait and see. Now, better salute.”

  Before Graham could answer back or tell Sean or Stephen what the other voice had told him, Brigadier Harrington burst into the room, his face slightly flush and his eyes more alert than ever. “You three may want to see this?” he said.

  For the time being Graham was happy enough to allow others to take the lead. He kept quiet while they talked, enjoyed the moment of rest it allowed his tired mind. Slowly he was figuring out something about his strange behaviour and wanted time to work out the rest before the voice interrupted him again, or threw him off in the wrong direction. It was clear his second internal voice did not like the company he kept; they asked too many questions.

  Brigadier Harrington ushered them all out into the long room with the rows of screens taking up the middle. They each followed, and were eager to find out the reason for the sudden excitement among the soldiers manning each screen, which all now showed the same images, that of an expanding dust cloud somewhere in the city.

  “What we can see is all that’s left of one of the new relays. This is a magnified video feed from the scene. We’ve filtered out the shield’s purple glare to clear up the picture.” Brigadier Harrington moved his people away from the nearest screen to give Graham and the others a clear view.

  “What caused it?” Sean was the one to ask first.

  “Someone just set off an explosion at the base of the relay. Whoever it was, they knew what they were doing, look at the damage to the structure. It gets even better, though. Notice anything missing?” When no one answered, Brigadier Harrington went on. “The relay is no longer emitting its energy to back-up the shield. That explosion just weakened it.”

  Sean and Stephen appeared to understand exactly what that meant, other than the first sign of an organised fight back from those trapped in the city. Brigadier Harrington had no intention of explaining himself to the uninitiated, however. He did not care who among them had missed the point.

  “We should get right back to it, then,” Sean said with a slap of Stephen’s back. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Brigadier Harrington smiled in appreciation. “Excellent. Remember, we only get a few tries at this, make this one count.” He then turned to address his own people. “I want status updates now. We’re going to try the new equipment out.”

  “New equipment,” Graham had to ask as he chased after Sean. He left a hectic flurry of activity behind him as everyone aboard the Ring platform readied themselves for what was to come.

  Sean answered without stopping. “You weren’t the only important thing in that container, Graham.”

  Back in their small work area, Sean and Stephen began to shut down their own computers and to gather up any loose paperwork they thought they would need. From what Graham had been able to see, the rolls of paper were schematics of some kind, of something he had not even attempted to figure out. He knew it had to be the new piece of equipment Brigadier Harrington had mentioned.

  Once the pair were ready they headed to a second door, one that had remained locked all while Graham had sat in the room with them. Sean entered a passcode into a recessed touchscreen and then stepped inside. The speed with which they went through this process told Graham that they had done this quite a few times before.

  “Come on, G. This bit is fun,” Stephen said as he also stepped inside. “Bring your invisible friend too.”

  When Graham followed he was at first surprised to see the next room had barely enough space for the three of them. He soon realised, as a hiss followed the door closing behind him, that this was only the airlock to what resided beyond. The new equipment required its own atmospheric controls to keep it working co
rrectly it appeared.

  The second door slowly opened with another hiss - and with a noticeable drop in temperature, enough to make Graham’s breath as visible as smoke. He crossed his arms to counter the sudden drop in temperature, then followed the jumpy figure of Stephen in front of him. This new area was similar in setup to the one Brigadier Harrington called his temporary home. It took up an entire carriage of the Ring just by itself.

  “Welcome to plan C,” Stephen said with obvious pride. He waved his arms about the place as a short attempt at showing them around.

  “What was plan A and B?” Graham asked with a frown.

  “Plan A was a bombing run, plan B was an underground tunnel, both utter failures,” a woman said from behind a large sphere with wires coming out at all angles, positioned in the centre of the room. When she stepped out she had to remove a pair of thick goggles to see who had entered her work area. She wore a white boiler-suit covered in grease and black smudges, and heavy-duty black gloves. Her short brown hair hung loose over her forehead.

  Sean introduced her. “This is Emma.”

  “Hi Emma,” Stephen said, his fondness of the woman more visible than Sean’s. He smiled from ear to ear.

  Graham could not look at her for long because what rested next to her and taking up a large part of the room had him more interested. The sphere stood at roughly two metres high and was on four thin metal struts bolted to the floor. Peering around the right side of it revealed a collection of small apertures, each about the size of a tennis ball. The wires were everywhere, hanging down over themselves and tangled around the next, making the device a chaotic mess of connections.

  “What is this thing?” Graham asked.

  “This,” Emma began with another wipe of dirt onto her boiler-suit, “is my baby. You won’t find a more powerful Laser rig anywhere in the UK, maybe even the world. With this I can create a 600 kilowatt laser beam and keep it going for almost ten minutes. That’s enough to melt through to the centre of the earth, if I felt so inclined.”