by R T Green
In our little terraced house in East London, it was my father who had done most of the parenting. Now, thirty years later, here I was being looked after by my surrogate mum, the woman my father loved, who was so kind-hearted she felt like the mum I’d never had.
As I pulled the thin white sheet across my body I felt cocooned, safe. I was part of a family, the little girl with a kindly mum and a loving dad.
It felt good.
But it could never come close to taking away the heartbreak and desolation of a month ago.
Chapter 65
DAWSON’S HILL, LONDON, ENGLAND
One Month Earlier
Ryland Cooper watched, his heart breaking, as Madeline knelt down next to Zana's body, kissed her gently of the forehead, and pulled the red hood back over her head. His eyes followed her as she stumbled, half-blinded by grief, back down the hill and out of his sight.
He doubted he would ever see her again.
He struggled over to the body of the girl who had intended to harm the human race, but found love and instead saved it from harm. He pulled the hood tight around her face, and turned her a little so no one would see her features.
Madeline's chances of survival were slim, he knew that. He hoped with every fibre in his body she would make it in one piece. He had felt her pain, a woman who didn't believe she had a heart, but then found it hidden away deep inside her. And now, before she’d even had time to come to terms with that discovery, found out the hard way owning a heart also meant it was vulnerable to getting shattered into tiny pieces.
He shook his head desolately, looked across to the glowing ship filling the sky with red light. And despite the pain and heartbreak, a slight smile spread across his face. What he saw was perhaps a poignant tribute to the alien girl who had given her life to save so many.
The thick damp mist still shrouding the city was reflecting back the light from the flaming ship. It wasn't white anymore.
Now it was a red mist.
The arrival of the first sightseers dragged him away from his thoughts. Quickly he turned Zana’s body a little more, so she was almost face-down to the ground.
No one must see her alien features.
He glanced a little further down the side of the hill to where Carl’s body lay. It was in darkness, just away from the summit where people were gathering to watch the dying embers of the huge spaceship sitting over central London.
Captivated by the scene stretched out in front of them, nobody was paying him any attention. He breathed a sigh of relief, but knew it wouldn’t be too long before someone noticed. He looked around desperately. Alone, a broken foot making it hard to even walk, and two bodies he didn’t want anyone seeing? Hardly the best situation he’d ever been in.
His phone rang, he groaned. Duncan Scott. ‘I don’t know what the hell is going on Coop, but your phone tracker places you on a hill in East Dunwich. Bits of flaming spaceship are raining down all over London, and I have a feeling it’s something to do with you. Mind confirming that?’
‘Sir, I’ll explain when there’s time. It wasn’t my doing. Zana... she destroyed the ship so it couldn’t do any harm. Killed her own people.’
‘Oh my god. Where is she now?’
‘Right next to me. I’ll bring her body back as quickly as I can.’
The voice went quiet. ‘Oh no. How?’
Coop glanced around. One or two people were looking in his direction. ‘Sir, there’s a million people up here watching the fireworks. I have to move her body, right now. Fill you in when I get back. But there’s one other thing. Carl Mitchell is dead too.’
‘Shit. This has got epic catastrophe written all over it. I’ve already sent another field unit to liase with you, they’ll be there in about half an hour. Get back here as soon as you can Coop, manic doesn’t cut it right now.’
He killed the call, gently slid his arms under Zana’s body and stood up, cradling her in his arms. He winced with the pain from his ankle, knew the walk back to the van would be an excruciating one.
It wouldn’t have to matter. Nobody could set eyes on Zana.
He began to hobble down the hill, the crisp frost of the November night crunching beneath his feet. People were still running up the slope, passing him by with hardly a second glance, so eager to see the spectacle from the best view of London around.
And then he saw the TV cameras coming towards him. That really would be endgame. He left the gravel path, slipped into the darkness of the trees, cried out as the uneven ground made the pain from his ankle unbearable.
He leant against one of the trunks, closed his eyes for a moment to help him get through the pain barrier. Then something was flashing into his face. He groaned, again. A young metropolitan police officer and his torch stood right next to him. He looked scared to death.
‘Sir, are you ok?’
‘Yes I’m fine, officer. Damaged my ankle, that’s all. I need to get back to the road, if you don’t mind.’
The officer didn’t move. ‘And that... person you’re carrying sir, is he or she alright?’
This was about to get out of hand. ‘Officer, I’m special agent Ryland Cooper, MI6. The woman with me was a threat to national security, but now she’s dead. I am returning her body to HQ, on the instructions of my boss. Now may I go?’
The policeman looked fidgety. ‘Um... may I see your badge please?’
Coop sighed, making sure the officer noticed. Both his arms were tied up holding Zana’s body, her face luckily shrouded by the hood of the cape. If he set her down, that might change. ‘Inside left pocket, officer... if you must.’
Hesitantly the cop felt for the badge, pulled it out and flashed his torch over it. ‘I’m sorry, agent Cooper... this is an unprecedented situation, we have to be certain. Is there anything I can do?’
‘Just make sure things don’t get out of hand at the hilltop, officer.’
He nodded, and disappeared into the night.
After the most agonising walk of his life, Ryland Cooper made the park entrance. What he saw brought out the biggest groan so far. Dunston’s Road looked like the M25 after a major accident, except all the queuing cars were empty of occupants.
He made the van, gently placed Zana’s body on the double passenger seat. He pulled back the hood, his eyes misting over as he gazed a moment at her alien beauty. ‘Oh, Zana...’ he whispered desolately.
He closed the door, struggled round to the driver’s side, wondering how the hell he was going to get the van out of the jam of cars.
‘Coop!’
The man in black ran over to him. ‘You ok, mate?’ he said.
‘Done my ankle, Peter.’
The young agent blew out his cheeks, glancing at the scene around them. ‘Geez, this is a bit epic.’
‘More than you know. Carl’s dead. Get the team up to the top of the hill. Don’t know if anyone’s spotted him yet, but it ain’t a pretty sight.’
Peter frowned. ‘Just what’s gone down here, Coop?’
‘That ain’t for the here-and-now. Just recover his body, get it back to base as quick as you can. I’m heading there now.’
‘Good luck with that.’
Peter beckoned to two other men standing close by, looking more than a little shell-shocked, and they headed off up the hill. Coop struggled into the driver’s seat, sat back to gather his thoughts.
He had two problems. The van’s clutch was hardly the lightest on the planet, so a broken left foot wasn’t going to make changing gear easy. And Dunston’s Road, and very likely all the streets around it, were jammed with traffic. He thumped the wheel, swore a few times, and decided the only way out was brute force.
Crying out with the pain he pushed in the clutch, reversed the van into the car parked right up against the rear doors. He gained a metre of space on the car in front. In first gear, he did the same to that, apologising silently to the owners for making their cars a little shorter.
At least he could use the path to escape. He spun the st
eering wheel, gestured back angrily to a few people about to head up the hill who didn’t seem too pleased a black van was taking a pedestrian route, and drove across the grass in the opposite direction to the hill.
He didn’t have a clue if the park had a second exit somewhere, but there was no choice. If there was no other way out, he’d just have to make one.
Chapter 66
He drove up the slight rise, made the summit. Below him, the nature reserve stretched down to a thin strip of lake, a block of smart apartments built along the far side. The bright moonlight reflected off the still water, looked beautiful.
In the distance, the lights of south London punctuated the darkness. There were plenty of those, nobody asleep this night. To his left he could see traffic on a main road, moving slowly.
A hard frost sparkled off the open grassland in front of him, looked almost like snow. He’d have to be careful. Bending the van would truly be an epic disaster. He began to head for the road in the distance, hoping there was some kind of exit.
There wasn’t.
Cars on the main road skidded to a stop as a black van suddenly smashed through a tall hedge right in front of them. Ryland Cooper raised an apologetic hand, slewed the van to the right, and headed for central London. Blipping the throttle and crashing the gears to avoid using the clutch, he managed to get up to speed. It didn’t last long.
London was in chaos. The flaming remains of the spaceship, more than a mile in diameter, had dropped over the city. He knew there would be casualties, knew many fires would flare up.
But he also knew things would be a million times worse if Zana hadn’t intervened.
He glanced across to the passenger seats, her lifeless body hidden by the cape. Sadness tried to overcome him. If she’d survived, maybe her life would not have been worth living, the first and now the only alien being the human race had ever encountered.
But her death, at the hands of one of his fellow agents who misread what he thought he saw, was a tragedy so bitter he knew it would never leave him.
She should have lived.
As he drew closer to the city he met hastily-erected roadblocks. He flashed his badge, the officers let him through. Their faces were grim, an uneasy panic in their eyes as they tried to come to terms with the epic events still just a few hours old.
Albert Embankment had missed the worst of the fallout, but even so the road was littered with smoking alien debris. His heart began to beat harder as he drove down the ramp to the underground car park. He’d called his boss, told him he was a few minutes out. As he came to a stop close to the lift, a reception committee stood waiting.
A grim-faced Duncan Scott glanced inside the van, lifted the cape covering Zana’s face, and then beckoned to the two women with him to pull up the wheeled stretcher. He looked into Ryland Cooper’s eyes. ‘Madeline?’
Coop shook his head. ‘Not here, sir.’
‘My office, now.’
The two men took the lift, stepped through the four-sided security screen into the big open-plan room that was DIAL’s domain, and headed for the office set higher off the floor so the boss could watch his employees at work.
A small balding man, Duncan Scott was dressed as always in a finely-tailored black suit, white shirt and red bowtie. Gold half-round spectacles gave him a slightly caricatured look, but those who crossed him knew only too well there was nothing amusing about DIAL's commander-in-chief.
He slumped into the chair behind the big silver desk which seemed to make him look even smaller, and fixed the piggy eyes onto the burly Jamaican-born man who took a seat on the opposite side.
‘Well?’
The voice was spooky; there was no better word to describe it. Ryland Cooper had often thought the chief was in the wrong job. With an eerie voice like that he could easily have been an A-list movie star. But he wasn’t. He was his boss, and right then fixing his little round eyes right into him, and not looking at all happy with life.
Coop drew a deep breath, hoping the chief couldn’t see the heart trying to beat right out of his chest. He was about to put his career on the line, again.
He told him the truth.
Well, almost.
Duncan Scott sat back, folded small hands across his stomach. His face expressionless, Coop knew he was analysing a thousand facts, almost as fast as a computer could.
For two minutes he didn’t speak. The phone on his desk rang every thirty seconds, he ignored it. And then, just as the silence was getting too much to bear, he finally spoke.
‘So you are telling me Madeline simply disappeared?’
‘You had to be there, sir... that incredible ship was kinda taking my attention, it was dark...’
‘Hmm... my gut says my top agent is somewhat better than that, wouldn’t you say?’
He couldn’t answer, threw his hands into the air but the words weren’t there. Scott was no fool, he wouldn’t be the head of the Department for the Investigation of Alien Life if he was.
The little man stood, walked to the big glass windows, and spoke quietly. ‘The world is about to go crazy, Coop. Right now, dealing with a rogue agent who has murdered one of our own is not at the top of the list. The PM wants me at Number Ten, London is in meltdown... literally. People are panicking, and if any of this conversation gets out, my head will be the one rolling.’
‘Sir?’
‘I cannot let Madeline deWinter’s actions go without retribution. But what happened on that hill is a complication we could do without. So for the moment, how Carl Mitchell met his end goes no further than the two of us. Do I make myself clear?’
Struggling to believe the words he was hearing, Coop nodded. ‘She... she was partly responsible for saving us all, sir.’
‘I am well aware of that. But it does not excuse her subsequent actions. However...’ He turned away from the windows, sat back down. ‘Until the full facts are known by those outside this department, which hopefully will be some considerable time, we will deal with it internally.’
‘What does that mean, sir?’
‘Madeline must be found. But we must be the ones to do the finding.’
Chapter 67
The tuneful notes of the internal com jangled out from the console on Scott’s desk. This one he answered. ‘Yes?’
‘She’s in examination room one, sir.’
‘On my way.’
He stood, headed for the door. ‘Come on, Coop. Let’s go take a look at her.’
Coop’s heart sank as the two men left the lift and walked quickly into a large room in the basement. He’d been there before, just over a week ago, when a young homeless girl had been brought in.
Discovered by one of the stakeout teams watching Zana’s compatriots, she’d been butchered by Arik, the head of the seven known aliens DIAL had located, blended innocently into London life.
She reminded Ryland Cooper of one of the Borg’s assimilated victims in Star Trek.
Just a few days ago Coop had shed a tear for Daisy Farrow, the young girl who had died so tragically. Now, as he stood at the side of Duncan Scott, looking down on Zana’s lifeless body, he had to fight back the tears once more.
They’d removed her clothes, covering her in a white blanket so just her face was exposed. Scott folded it back a little, shook his head as he gazed down on her perfect form.
‘Magnificent,’ he whispered, the words choking in his throat.
‘She is truly beautiful,’ Coop agreed. Until a few hours ago, he’d only ever seen her in human form, apart from when she’d reverted to her natural alien form in the darkness of the hillside. He’d not been able to fully appreciate the beauty of her true colours then, but in the lights of the examination room, she took his breath away.
The green eyes he’d come to know were open, but they were not now human eyes. The shape of a slender, beautiful leaf, they slanted upwards as they curved to a perfect point. Her full lips were exactly as before, except now they were a deep iridescent red, so dark they were almos
t black.
There wasn't a single hair, anywhere on her body.
Two small, pointed ears only just broke the smoothness of her skull; a tiny, delicate ridge began in the centre of her forehead and ran over her head, blending back into her body as it reached the nape of her long neck.
The same perfect body was identical to that of a human woman’s. The only difference was her fingers; a little longer, yet somehow still elegant and feminine.
But her skin was not human. The centre of her face and torso, and a strip along her arms and legs, were a deep dusky pink that seemed to shimmer in the lights of the room. The rest of her, like a leopard, was dappled, tiny patches of red darkening the closer they came to the outside of her body.
She was totally, utterly beautiful.
‘What do you want us to do with her, sir?’
The words jolted Ryland Cooper out of his trance. Scott answered the technician. ‘For now, nothing. There are more important matters to attend to. Please cover her, make sure she is comfortable, and then leave her in peace.’
The young technician frowned at his last words, but nodded.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Ryland Cooper said as they headed back to the lift.
‘She saved the human race, Coop. The least we can do is show her some respect.’
The chief’s words were spoken in an emotionless way, but Coop was sure his eyes were misted over.
Chapter 68
Ryland Cooper spent a half-hour in the medical room, getting his ankle sorted. There was no time for proper treatment, but a heavy plaster bandage gave it some support, and nuclear-level pain killers helped neutralise the nuclear-level pain.