2041 Sanctuary (Dark Descent) (53 page)

Standing up, he froze in mid-stretch as a small light in the distance caught his eye. A single luminous glow, much like he’d seen on the footage at Hilt’s meeting, recorded by Lieutenant Manaus on her head-cam.

‘Fuck a duck,’ Alvarez said out loud to himself, ‘it must be my lucky day.’

Switching his torch back on, he ran in the light’s direction, following it as it made its way from the lake and into the city.
There’s no way it’s a Darklight team
, he thought,
they never operate with just a single light source
.

‘Hey!’ Alvarez shouted, now only a couple of hundred yards away. ‘Sergeant Alvarez, USSB Sanctuary, slow down, fellas!’

Rather than decrease in speed, the light kept moving and then blinked out of existence, most likely going behind one of the buildings. Alvarez picked up the pace and was soon rounding what must have been the tower in question, but there was no sign of the light.

‘Shit!’ Alvarez stamped his foot in frustration at his missed opportunity; he knew all too well he could ill afford to miss out on such fortuitous breaks. Turning back, he caught a glimmer of movement out of the corner of his eye. Snapping his head round in its direction he caught the tail end of an afterglow, heading deeper into the city. ‘Sweet glory,’ Alvarez said, his hopes soaring once more as he set off in pursuit.

Alvarez ran further and further into the Anakim metropolis, but the men from the USSB always seemed to be that much quicker than him; just staying the same distance ahead, almost as if they were deliberately matching his speed. Realising he couldn’t keep up with them for much longer, he redoubled his efforts, running flat out in a last ditch attempt to catch them. As he pounded along, the light from his elusive army colleagues finally getting closer, his torchlight threw up a disturbing sight – a huge chasm directly in his path! In a split second decision Alvarez threw himself to the ground in a desperate bid to halt his headlong dash into oblivion. His arms and legs spread wide, his body hit the floor, the torch flying from his grasp. Letting out a cry of terror as he slithered across the dusty, gravel surface, he felt his legs drop over the abyss, his torso following suit. Alvarez forced his fingers into the loose sediment, his nails biting into the harder substrate beneath, grinding him to a stop on the brink of the cliff edge. His eyes wide in fright, he watched the beam of light from his torch spiral, end over end into the air below, until it bounced once against the rock wall and went out, the distant echo of the impact its final declaration of existence. Thrust into darkness, Alvarez heaved himself back up, rolling away from the chasm and to safety, his breath coming in deep, rapid gasps.

He lay there for some time, gathering his thoughts while he recovered from the fright of his life.
I don’t think I’ve ever come that close to dying before
, he thought, his heart rate gradually dropping back to normality. Another thought, a worrying one, worked its way to the forefront of his mind: how had the soldiers he’d been following cross over the chasm so quickly? He’d watched the light carry on without deviation before he himself had encountered the large fissure, its expanse far too wide to leap over. Pushing the disturbing question away, he pressed the button on his watch, its light seeming less powerful than he remembered it. A strange clicking noise made him swing round, his watch extended in front of him as he sought to shine its faint glow at whatever had made the sound.

‘This is Sergeant Alvarez,’ he said, a tremble to his voice, ‘Decontamination Team, USSB Sanctuary. Who’s there?’

A light appeared fifty yards away; it glinted and glistened in the darkness, its green and blue tinge fluctuating strangely as it did so, almost mesmeric in its fundamental effervescence. Alvarez took a step back from it, the weird clicking noise restarting, getting louder and more insistent before developing into a guttural growl. Alvarez, shaking uncontrollably, felt a trickle of water run down the inside of his leg. A high pitched screech shattered his last shred of sanity as the light surged towards him. Stumbling backwards, the last sensation Alvarez had was of falling into a deep, black void, his own screams ringing in his ears as his eyes locked on to the light which followed him down into the bowels of the earth.

Chapter Thirty One

‘What the hell is it?’

‘No idea, but it looks pretty.’

‘Pretty?’

‘Don’t you think so?’

‘Hmm, I’d say more like disturbing, or ungodly.’

‘It’s been going on for some minutes now,’ a deep voice said from behind, making the two of them jump at the interruption.

Goodwin looked back at Hilt. ‘Commander, what do you think it is?’

‘An electrical discharge of some kind.’ Hilt looked up in the same direction as everyone else who had gathered at the edge of the camp. ‘I have to agree with the doctor on this one, sir, it is pretty.’

Goodwin looked at Hilt in amazement, the word
pretty
, not something he’d ever imagined the hardened mercenary ever saying.

Hilt glanced at Goodwin and gave him an odd expression, the downturn of his mouth and raised brows conveying his willingness to stand by his comment despite the shock it had invoked.

‘See, I told you,’ Kara said, ‘how can you not call that pretty?’

Goodwin looked back up at the spectacle, giving Hilt a final look of confounded disappointment before he did so.
I can see their point, I suppose
, he thought to himself, watching the pinnacle of the distant Anakim tower throb as a wave of purple energy pulsed up its length to discharge towards the ceiling of the chamber, over a mile above.

‘One of my lieutenants tells me it’s one of the tallest structures in the city, if not
the
tallest structure,’ Hilt told them, as another ripple of purple light flowed up from within the dark of the metropolis to erupt from behind the other surrounding towers and swirl around the building’s pointed spire.

‘Why do you think it’s started now?’ Goodwin asked.

Kara pondered the question. ‘Perhaps it always happens at this time of year.’

‘Or it’s a once in a lifetime event,’ Hilt said.

A man in front of them, earwigging on their conversation, glanced back. ‘Or our presence has sparked off a chain of events that has activated some ancient mechanism.’

‘An electrostatic build-up through the city, maybe,’ Kara said, ‘discharged when a certain mass has been reached?’

They were all plausible theories, but none sated Goodwin’s curiosity.

A Darklight soldier approached from behind and handed his commander a pair of VSE goggles. Hilt held them up to his eyes for some moments and watched the energy spike discharge once more, up into the rocky roof of the ceiling. ‘Interesting.’ He handed the device to Goodwin for him to try.

Goodwin looked through the lenses, their enhancement of the visual spectrum displaying the phenomenon in a grey, crystal clear image. With the scene magnified, Goodwin could see the branches of electrical lightning dispersing into the air at the building’s summit and flashing to the ceiling, sending out tiny trails of white light in all directions. Goodwin watched a few more of the pulses before passing the goggles to Kara.

‘I’ve sent a team to investigate,’ Hilt told Goodwin. ‘It’ll take them half a day to get there, but it’s worth a look, I think.’

‘Most definitely, Commander,’ Goodwin said before, as quickly as it had begun, the repetitive cycle of purple light stopped. A groan of discontent swept through the onlookers. Everyone waited for some time before, one by one, and then in groups, they broke away, going back to their normal routines, the fascinating display accepted as being over.

Goodwin, with Kara at his side and the Darklight commander just behind, walked back into camp, their conversation about what they’d just witnessed immersive in its detail and scope. As they approached the command tent, a heart wrenching scream of despair split the quiet, sending all three of them running to locate the source.

Coming in from the other direction a Darklight soldier held a sobbing woman in his arms, trying to pull her back to her feet from where she’d collapsed to the floor. Kara, the first to react, took over, offering soothing words of comfort to the near hysterical woman.

‘Rebecca?’ Goodwin said, realising who it was as others in the vicinity rushed to the scene, drawn by Rebecca’s terrible cries of pain and torment. ‘Rebecca, what’s wrong? What’s happened?’ he asked, anguished at her suffering.

‘I’ll take her inside.’ Hilt bent down, scooped Rebecca up and carried her into the camp’s central tent, Goodwin and Kara close on his heels.

Hilt placed Rebecca down on a pile of discarded clothing, quickly assembled by Kara to act as a place of comfort in an area otherwise free of any kind of soft furnishings. Goodwin got a glass of water, which he managed to get Rebecca to sip as she calmed while Kara continued to whisper to her soothingly.

Rebecca tried to speak, but her shallow breathing made the words stick in her throat as she fought to get them out.

‘Deep breaths, Rebecca,’ Kara said, ‘slow, deep breaths.’

Rebecca shook her head. ‘I can’t – I couldn’t – find her.’

Goodwin crouched down before her. ‘Find who?’

‘Susan.’ Rebecca’s face crumbled again as the tears came. ‘Susan’s gone!’

‘Gone? Gone where?’

Rebecca sobbed harder.

‘Come on, Rebecca, sweetheart,’ Kara said, ‘you need to tell us what’s happened.’

Another soldier appeared in the tent, with Joseph in tow. The young handicapped man rushed to Rebecca’s side, embracing her and holding her tightly, trembling himself.

‘I came – I came back to our tent and somehow Susan and Joseph had sneaked out,’ Rebecca told them, stroking Joseph’s hair. ‘Julie and Arianna were beside themselves. I ran out to look for them, expecting them to be close by—’ Rebecca paused again, wiping away her tears as her voice strengthened. ‘I saw Joseph in the distance, at the edge of the camp. I called out to him, but he didn’t seem to hear me. I ran over to where he’d been, but by then he’d moved out beyond one of the floodlights, beyond the boundary. I had my torch with me so I turned it on and ran after him, heading straight out into the dark. I heard a noise in the distance, followed by Susan’s screams, I called out, shouting her name and Joseph’s. Neither of them responded. I kept shouting until I was hoarse, and eventually I found Joseph, on his knees. He was shaking uncontrollably, he’d wet himself too. There was no sign of Susan. I tried to search for her, but Joseph wouldn’t move forwards and I couldn’t leave him in the dark again. I managed to drag him back towards the camp and I can’t really remember the rest. A soldier started taking me back here, but I knew Susan was still out there, on her own, alone. I tried to tell him, but I couldn’t get the words out. I couldn’t—’ Her voice broke again.

‘Joseph.’ Goodwin touched the boy’s shoulder; he whimpered and flinched from the contact. ‘Joseph,’ Goodwin said again, moving round to try and look into his face, ‘it’s me, it’s Winnie.’

Joseph’s eyes opened a fraction and he stared into Goodwin’s face. Goodwin gave him a comforting smile, noticing the handicapped man’s limbs still shook and spasmed as his body attempted to rid itself of the massive amounts of pent up energy created by his trauma.

‘Joseph, what did you see?’ Goodwin asked.

Joseph closed his eyes, his body shaking in response to the question.

Goodwin cupped the poor boy’s cheek. ‘Joseph, where is Susan?’

Joseph opened his eyes again. ‘Noise,’ he whispered across Rebecca’s shoulder, his grip on his carer unrelinquishing.

‘Noise?’ Goodwin said. ‘What noise?’

Joseph let out another whimper and shut his eyes.

Goodwin was about to stand back up, but before he could Joseph started making a strange sound that got louder and louder until he was shrieking in one extended scream, his eyes wide, his face a mask of terror.

Goodwin stumbled backwards in shock and fear, the hairs all over his body standing up on end. He stared at Joseph in horror as the boy quietened and hid his face in Rebecca’s shoulder once more, his shaking unabated, and whimpering increased.

‘What is it?’ Hilt asked, seeing Goodwin’s expression. ‘Sir, what’s wrong?’

‘That sound—’

‘That was exactly the same sound that we heard in the city,’ Kara said, her voice as distressed as Goodwin felt.

Hilt looked from Kara to Goodwin. ‘How can that be?’

‘The boy can mimic sounds.’ Goodwin tried to dispel the awful noise produced by Joseph from his mind. ‘He’s seen what we saw in the city. Susan isn’t lost, she’s been taken, by whatever, or whoever, that light is.’

Hilt contemplated them both, perhaps judging the conviction of their claims. Apparently satisfied the information was sound, he turned to one of his men. ‘Lieutenant, get me my armour.’

‘Sir!’ The man sped from the room.

Hilt strode to his command desk and flicked some switches on the main console before picking up a communication device and holding it to one ear. ‘This is Command. Code Red alert. All units receiving this message return to base immediately. I repeat, Code Red.’

‘Sir,’ Major Offiah said, ‘what about the men at the lake; shouldn’t we leave at least a token force in case the U.S. military return?’

Hilt muttered something unintelligible but maintained his calm. ‘Very well, make it happen.’

Offiah got on his radio.

Another Darklight soldier approached the commander. ‘Sir, the sensors didn’t activate in the quadrant where we found the woman and the boy. We have no data on movements in that sector for the past hour.’

‘You’re telling me we had a malfunction at the exact time one of our number goes missing, in the same location?’

‘Yes, sir – well – no, sir – I mean, the equipment is sound. We’ve tested it. It just didn’t work when it was supposed to.’

Hilt’s face darkened. ‘Then it’s no coincidence.’

‘You think this thing, this light, manipulated your systems by design?’ Goodwin said.

Hilt’s mouth tightened before he nodded in confirmation. ‘Whatever this thing is, it’s turned out to be more of a threat than expected. I won’t underestimate it again. It’s come into this camp, disabled a high-tech piece of hardware and made off with an unarmed and vulnerable woman; but it’s shown its hand now and I aim to ensure that will be the first – and
last
– mistake it makes.’