by Emery Hale
Nicola Ramos was my next problem: she hadn’t seen anything but no doubt James had shown her compromising footage. She had to be dealt with, discreetly. Perhaps she could be useful here? Thompson caved after I shot his wife and threatened his son, everyone had a pressure point, I just had to find hers.
Now, Jessica-Grace Winters, throw her in the cells for a week, enforce daily doses of the drug and she’d be wiped clean. I’d have my agent back in no time. She was the perfect specimen and yet everything and everyone was getting in the way: her brother, her team and a particular agent, Christopher Barnes.
She thought she walked around this world unnoticed, but I owned her.
As I stared at the useless girl pining for the impossible, a thought lingered at the back of my mind. For this to work she had to believe she was utterly alone, though of course she wasn’t. Charlotte told me herself, but best to keep her in the dark.
Then all of a sudden Jessica flipped, started commanding my staff. Look at her go, there was the Charlotte in her. My joy was interrupted when that weasel Thompson scurried over, whispering in my ear.
‘Every one of us knows he didn’t go into the field willingly.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. He chose to go.’
‘It’s not like you gave him much of a choice.’
Ultimatums work exceptionally well under the right circumstances: James didn’t want to see his poor little sister crushed by a building or plugged with bullets. I’d given James the Black Scorpion briefing last week and gave him a choice: Jessica could go with her team, or he could. Simple. Of course he chose to sacrifice himself, James was a man of honour. I admired his valour but not his stupidity. James was one of the best interrogators in this country but he gave it all up for one of my agents.
I know he helped raise the girl but as I proved, the pathetic love for his sister was his downfall. We were better off without him.
Everyone in the industry will know that James Winters hijacked this operation for his own purposes, and that the so-called information he retrieved was sent directly to Trojan. When this goes to court it will be made clear that Mr Winters conspired with known terrorists, planning to decimate countries and murder thousands of people.
At least, that’s what I’ll tell everyone.
CHAPTER 31
Dies Irae
Day of wrath.
NAOMI JADE
Our feet pounded the tarmac, the measly short path stretching on for eons, the wretched building always just out of reach. Kayson told me that James’s team had taken the Black Scorpion mission without Nicola’s consent.
The soft breeze turned arctic as the moon beamed down on us like a spotlight – would anyone see us? Report us?
I kept to Kayson’s back as we sprinted down the small path and up the stairs to the main reception. A small hole burrowing open through the toe of my tights. As soon as we got inside he took off to the left and I was about to follow when I heard it – a scream of utter anguish tearing through the halls, but it wasn’t Lily’s, it was Jessica’s. The sound pierced my heart, ripping through my body.
Had James died?
Kayson continued, charging ahead, the sound driving him forward while it brought me to a standstill. I know what I said about Jess, but that didn’t mean I wished her harm.
The corridor was long and narrow, one I hadn’t seen before, the shadows creeping towards me, the walls resembling catacombs rather than concrete. Doesn’t the girl who walked down a dark corridor towards a scream usually die in the movies? Dammit.
Even though I wanted to screw my eyes shut I kept them wide open, taking off down the corridor. My imagination leapt to life, pictures and cabinets morphing into gruesome monsters, door handles reaching out to grab me. Reality hit me when I saw a flicker of red hair tossed down the corridor, stalked by a dark silhouette, Harkness. His posture was rigid but then something leapt out, like a primeval raptor chasing its prey.
Kayson hooked an arm around my waist, tugging me to the side, but I wasn’t done. We couldn’t leave Jessica to that savage!
‘Kayson!’ I whispered harshly.
‘She’s going to isolation, we’re outnumbered, and if Harkness catches us, we’re screwed.’
‘Us?’ I asked. ‘Her brother could be dead.’
‘Do you want to join him?’
The question bought my silence.
As the hallway cleared we scuttled down the corridor quiet as mice, making sure to stay close to the wall, as the shadows provided some cover. Ahead I saw two smaller figures, heads bowed and bodies still as water. When I turned to Kayson, the same look of shame I’d seen in the car had returned. I guessed the shorter figure was Quinn, so the other one had to be Lily, since she was considerably taller than any of the others, but they didn’t look like themselves. Their clothes were grey and their dull faces almost blended in with the wall.
Kayson brought a finger to his lips with a mischievous grin before he threw me back into an alcove, my arms flailing to catch myself. What the hell was he playing at? Was he just going to leave me here?
He was blatantly loud as he walked – was he drawing their attention for a specific reason? Was I meant to do something? Sneakily, I peeked around the wall.
‘Orders from upstairs, you’ve both to go to the medical bay straight away.’ Kayson was firm, but I had no idea what he was on about.
‘Whose orders?’ Lily asked, but her voice was dull, without an ounce of fire.
‘Don’t know, don’t care.’
Why was he sending them to the medical bay? Was there another part of the plan Kayson hadn’t told me about?
Silence lingered in the air then collective footsteps receded down the corridor. But then another, lighter set of footsteps made their way towards me. I couldn’t tell who they belonged to; I was sure Kayson’s were heavier. Could it be Lily?
I raised my hands just like I’d practiced then swung – and by the time the familiar leather jacket came into view, it was already too late.
SMACK
Kayson staggered back, a hand shooting up to his nose.
‘What did you do that for?’
‘I thought you were Lily,’ I whispered.
‘So you thought you’d punch your way out,’ he muttered, pinching his nose.
‘Sorry.’ My hands danced in their air, unsure what to do. Kayson didn’t seem to be in too much pain but I still felt terrible. He’d apologised for everything, so punching him the face didn’t feel like payback anymore.
‘Come on,’ Kayson said, heading to the right. ‘We’ll take the stairs.’
‘Why the medical ward?’ I asked.
‘Cause you punched me in the face.’ Kayson looked back to me, and the playful smirk I’d grown to like sat there. ‘Nah, Dr McKay is waiting up there, he’s going to try one of his experimental treatments on Lily, Grace and Quinn. Hopefully we should have them back by morning. Sorry I didn’t tell you, kind of a whirlwind that this plan is even working at all.’
Hold up, he’d gotten a doctor involved? He remembered what happened last time, right?
‘Kayson, Harkness shot the last doctor that tried to do that,’ I said.
‘Believe me, I wasn’t the one who came up with this part of the plan. Dr McKay was.’
‘He – what?’
Kayson pushed open the door to the stairwell and as I pressed my hand against the cool wood the whistling wind hurtled through me. Now I didn’t believe in bad omens but that felt like one of them.
‘The faculty are starting to have doubts,’ he said. ‘Well, all the medical staff are, and there’s rumours that Ames and Thompson are starting to question Harkness.’
‘But wouldn’t Harkness just get rid of them?’
‘Can’t kill everyone. Harkness must need them, he’ll hurt their loved ones.’
Loved ones? Harkness must be the ringleader of it all, and if he had to threaten his staff’s family, this really was a cult.
Unlike last time, we wal
ked up the stairs at a steady pace. Kayson had this all planned out, siding with a superior of MI6 and an Academy doctor. This was a full-blown rebellion.
As Kayson pushed his way onto the ward, I stuck to his back. The entire floor was quiet, with only small murmurs floating in the air. The beds were emptier than before, only three were filled, and I knew all the occupants: Grace, Lily and Quinn.
Grace lay flat on the bed, a thin blanket tucked around her soundly-sleeping figure. Had they sedated her?
Lily seethed as Dr McKay struggled to pin her to the bed – Kayson ran from my side to take her legs as she thrashed. Was their great plan to sedate them all?
‘Get the needle in!’ Kayson demanded.
‘Hold her still!’
As much as I wanted to help I knew that I couldn’t, so I set my sights to Quinn. She didn’t even flinch; fresh bruises marked her forearms. My teeth ground together: had Harkness done that to her? Thompson?
‘Quinn?’ I asked, but made sure to keep my distance.
Then she presented her arm to me, but her face remained blank. Did she think I was going to inject her with something?
Slowly, Lily’s protests quietened, the laboured breathing of the men overpowering her voice. Dr McKay grabbed something from the nearest cart and hooked it up to an IV pole before injecting the receiving end into Lily’s arm.
Kayson focused on straightening out her body, his hands gentle. I turned my attention back to Quinn and cautiously walked towards her.
‘Quinn?’ I asked again, but her eyes didn’t falter.
Dr McKay’s warm palm pressed against my shoulder.
‘She won’t respond. Lily fights every time no matter what she’s up here for, Quinn just takes it.’
‘She does?’ I could scarcely believe it.
‘The drug is cognitive – it wipes out anything that Harkness doesn’t want in there. She cried the second time but after that, nothing.’
The Quinn I knew would fight; the girl in front of me was just an empty shell.
A tug on my sleeve pulled me to my feet, and Kayson led me away from the bed. The way he placed his hand on my back, it was like he didn’t want me to see what Dr McKay was doing as he moved to her bedside.
‘Kayson, I know he’s desperate for soldiers or whatever, but there’s no need for this,’ I said.
‘I hate to break it to you, but shouting morals at Harkness isn’t going to do anything.’
‘You had to sedate them, for the love of God.’ The entire thing was horrific. Did Lily even know who she was fighting against? Fighting for? How many interrogations had she undergone while I was tucked up in bed at night?
My hand fell over my mouth as I began to pace: how could we be sure this plan would work? Was there any of the original flame left in Lily anymore? Did Quinn still have a spark of hope? If the drug was cognitive it would wipe the slate clean – would any remnants of who they were be tucked away, or had the Academy obliterated them?
‘Hey, hey.’ Kayson took my arms but I tried to push away. I didn’t want to be near him right then, I needed to think. ‘Naomi, look at me.’
With a firm shove I untangled myself from his grip and scampered to the other side of the ward, flinging a set of doors open. I needed to breathe.
The lipstick-tube memory stick rested in my pocket – I should have been high-tailing it out of there, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to leave. The teams’ faces haunted me, screams and cries echoing through my head. Now I’d seen the situation, how could I leave them? How could anyone?
Yes, I was terrified, but the thrashing body of Lily, the still figure of Grace, the empty expression of Quinn and the heart-wrenching scream from Jess made my feet stick to the ground like glue.
They protect us, but who protects them? Answer: I will.
I’d calmed down a little and was ready to walk back on the ward, when the television at the end of the corridor grabbed my attention:
BREAKING NEWS: ESTONIA DECIMATED IN TERRORIST ATTACK
There was no sound, but the headline read clear enough. This must have been why James was out in the field, to try and stop it. He couldn’t be working for Trojan – he really was dead wasn’t he?
‘Naomi, listen, I know it’s a lot.’ Kayson threw open the doors, darting to my side, but stopped short when his eyes fell to the television. ‘It’s started.’
‘Started?’ I whipped around. ‘What do you mean, started?’
‘Trojan, they’re taking control.’
The doors burst open again but this time Dr McKay marched through, his eyes fixed on the screen.
‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘This whole thing has been a set-up from the beginning.’
‘You knew about this?’ Kayson asked directly, on the defensive.
But the doctor shook his head. ‘James commandeered an op that was meant for us. The info was transferred back to base but the whole thing was a massacre. Black stamp.’
‘Black stamp?’ I asked.
‘Suicide mission. They’re always given to us and recently Harkness has been dishing them out to the seniors. All except this one.’
Suicide missions? Why would anyone hand those out in the first place?
‘What information?’ Kayson asked.
The doctor shrugged. ‘Damned if I know, it’s important though.’ He pointed to the screen. ‘But that – that was supposed to happen. We thought we were winning but really, we were playing right into their hands.’
Harkness had to be working for Trojan, it was the only thing that made logical sense – he was the mole in one of the highest ranking jobs in the country. If the seniors were already drugged they wouldn’t even know if they were working for the winning side; you could palm them off to Trojan and they’d never know the difference . . .
‘How many black stamp ops have been issued?’ I shot out.
Dr McKay shook his head. ‘Don’t know if you’ve noticed, kid, but I’m in scrubs, I don’t assign ops.’
Kayson looked at me expectantly. ‘Why do you want to know that?’
‘I have a theory,’ I said.
Kayson pointed down the corridor, his feet dancing like there were ants in his shoes. ‘Come on, we’ll be able to sneak into one of the tech suites.’ Then, like a shot, he took off.
I did have a theory: it was a crazy one, but not impossible.
Jessica always talked about a war but I’d never heard of such things – there were protocols in place to prevent them. But what if the terrorists wrote the protocols? What if the Reign Academy was training soldiers for Trojan?
* * *
The tech suites were huge, taking up the last section of the fourth floor. As I walked in Kayson was already sat down at a computer pulling up files. The room smelt of stale coffee and biscuits; brown stains and crumbs littered the white desks.
‘OK, you want black stamp ops?’ Kayson asked, fingers clicking on the keyboard.
‘Yes.’
Another couple of clicks.
‘OK, here we go.’
‘I thought you said you weren’t a computer genius? How’d you get access to these?’
‘Well the Academy is run on a main server, it’s really complicated, you wouldn’t understand.” I could tell he was lying through his teeth and my thoughts must have transmitted to my face because he sighed in defeat. ‘Alright, before everything went tits up Quinn showed me how to get into Helen’s account.’
I sat down, peering into the monitor. Countless files littered the screen, none of which had obvious labels, but as Kayson clicked on the first one I knew instantly what it was: crime scene photos. Blonde hair matted with blood and an ID card. Willow Mae’s.
‘Shit,’ Kayson muttered, and clicked to the next document. As he scanned it over he let out a breath, inching closer to the screen. ‘Codenames, these will be the people involved in the attack.’
‘Are there seniors here?’ I asked.
Kayson scanned over the list of names before singling one out, Artis
t.
‘That one, I know him. Fuck.’
‘Kayson, you aren’t preparing to fight Trojan, you’re soldiers for them.’
When the words slipped from my mouth it looked like he stopped breathing, his hand clenching the mouse. His usually unreadable face now snarled in anger – I honestly thought he was going to launch the computer through the window.
‘I’m going to kill him,’ Kayson said. ‘I’m going to fucking kill him.’
But he didn’t throw the chair back or punch a hole through the wall, he continued looking through the files, each click of the mouse louder than the last.
There were files and pictures I didn’t recognise, but then a small grainy picture at the bottom of the screen caught my eye: a boy sat in front of a tree, dead. Was that Quinn’s friend?
The next file was filled with maps and aerial photos: Brora, the op I’d signed on as a Carrier for. It clearly stated the intention to ambush us from behind; they knew everything, right down to the exit plan. The folder after that was marked Black Scorpion and was laid out exactly the same. Estonia was planned out to the letter: where the team would go and how to. . . take out the backup medical team, listed as collateral damage underneath.
How far had the human race sunk? I felt sick, the spicy bile rising in my throat.
When Kayson clicked on another folder I tore my eyes away, but immediately turned back: it was a video and the sound blared. Clips were jammed together like a video package, footage from Brora and Estonia. I saw the clips they’d played on the TV, then some others from a theatre dressing room, two bodies lying motionless on the floor. The footage from Brora I soon realised was from my lapel camera: someone must have found it.
‘They planned this from the beginning, the bastards. Even prepared that for the press. Sending us to Brora, the theatre, the bank, they were making propaganda,’ Kayson spat.
‘What for?’ I asked.
‘National panic.’ His eyes ignited with a rough darkness, and I almost pulled away.