Enemy Invasion (28 page)

He looked round and saw one of the Black Hawks appear over the roofs of the shops on the other side of the street. It looked out of place – a war machine hanging over a normal city street.
The chopper angled round, twin machine guns aiming down at them…

May pushed him towards the doorway as the guns opened up. Shop windows exploded as bullets ripped through glass and wood. People screamed and ran. Others cowered behind vehicles. Hack and May
collapsed into the doorway as the helicopter made a pass, spraying the top of the building with bullets. Lumps of brick and broken tiles rained down on the pavement. Then the shooting stopped.

“They’re insane,” May said. “They’re going to bring the whole country down on themselves!”

Hack held the mobile to his ear. “They don’t care any more. If they get us, they can unleash the machines from the hypersphere. And then no one will be able to stop them.”
Inside the phone he searched the internet for the protected area of the HIDRA portal and patched himself through the firewall.

“Watch out!” cried May, pulling him from the doorway as the helicopter opened fire again. They took cover behind a four-wheel drive as the place where they’d been standing was
ripped apart.

The Black Hawk circled over the street and then descended, low enough so that Kotler and three of his men could jump down onto the tops of cars. In their hands they cradled automatic machine
guns. With a word from their commander, the mercs opened fire, blasting out car windows and tearing through tyres. Helpless civilians cowered in fear and crawled for safety.

“What are they doing?” May yelled above the noise.

“Making a point,” Hack said as the phone line finally connected to the HIDRA base.

“This is a secure line,” a woman answered, “how did you get this number?”

“Shut up and listen!” Hack yelled above the gunfire. “I have a message for Sarah and Robert Williams—”

“Who?”

“They’re superhumans! Just listen. Major Bright’s target is London. His base is Battersea Power Station.”

“I don’t—”

“Just tell them to get here fast!”

The windows of the four-wheel drive shattered. Hack left the phone connected and threw it under the wheels of a nearby car. May gave him a questioning look.

“They’ll be able to triangulate the location from the nearest cell phone towers,” he explained.

She grinned. “Smart.”

“Give yourselves up!” Kotler shouted from down the street. “Give yourselves up right now and nobody else has to get hurt.”

Hack looked round the side of the four-wheel drive. The mercs had fanned out through the stationary cars, eyes scanning for them in every direction. Kotler jumped on the bonnet of a taxi and
removed a grenade from his jacket. Ripping out the pin, he held it tight in his gloved fist, cooking it so it would explode shortly after being released. “We’ve got orders not to kill
you,” he shouted in the direction of their hiding place. “But if you don’t give yourselves up right now, we’ll kill everyone else on this street.”

He threw the grenade through the back window of a parked car. The explosion lit up the petrol tank, lifting the burning wreck through the window of a nearby chemist. People scattered in all
directions. The mercs fired into the air and they hit the ground again.

“I’m waiting!” Kotler screamed.

Hack met May’s eyes. “No choice, huh?”

“No choice,” she agreed.

Hack rose to his feet, hands in the air. May did the same.

Mercs moved in fast, grabbing their arms and pinning them behind their backs. Cable ties were drawn painfully tight around their wrists.

“We’re not going to give you any trouble,” Hack said as they were manhandled towards the waiting chopper, but it made no difference. They were thrown down on the floor of the
vehicle and told to lie still or get shot. Seconds later, Kotler jumped on board and the Black Hawk lifted. The merc leader stood over them, pure malice in his eyes.

“You don’t have to hurt us,” May said as the chopper raced over the rooftops, back towards the power station. “We’re going to do what you want.”

Kotler crouched down beside her and bent his head close. “I don’t like you freaks. You’ve caused me and my men a lot of trouble. And after the major’s finished with you,
you’re going to pay for it.”

He looked round at Hack and grinned viciously.

“Both of you are going to pay.”

29

Every seat at the long table in the HIDRA UK briefing room was taken. There were HIDRA officers, Dr. Fincher and his science team, and Sarah and her friends. Rachel Andersen
was on the satellite link-up again, this time from a HIDRA plane en route to the base. Everyone listened intently as the doctor spoke about the sample from the squid he had analysed – its
holographic representation projected in the centre of the room.

“The material is a kind of polymer,” Fincher said. “Alien origin, of course. But close examination revealed some interesting things happening at the molecular level.” He
tapped the table and the holo-image zoomed in. Magnified, it looked less like a metal, and more like the blood of an organism: circular microbes swarmed and multiplied within the substance.
“We ran an electrical current through the object and things started jumping.”

“It’s like it’s alive,” Sarah said.

“Quite so,” Fincher agreed. “We’re looking at incredibly advanced nanotechnology. Microscopic robots can change the structure at the molecular level, turning it into
basically any shape that the programmer dictates.”

“You’re saying this thing is active?” Rachel said.

“Well, not any more. As soon as we reactivated it, the nanites formed into a very nasty little killing machine. A kind of self-destruct mechanism. Tore apart the lab before we shut it
down.”

“Then you can control it,” one of the military personnel suggested.

Fincher shook his head. “No. We have no way to interface with these machines. The technology is far beyond our present capabilities. It would be like trying to control a modern computer
using an abacus, to use an analogy.”

“That’s why Good needs Hack and May,” Sarah said. “To shape and control the material in the hypersphere.”

“So it would seem,” Fincher agreed. “With the proper means, this material can be formed into any configuration…any machine that the user desires.”

“Like robospiders,” Louise said.

“Or a giant squid,” Wei added.

“And that’s just the beginning,” Fincher continued. “As we’ve seen on the video Sarah took from the island, the dimensions of the hypersphere suggest enough
material to replicate a vast number of machines. The Entity must have fired the object at the earth with the express intention of releasing these robots.”

“A fail-safe,” Rachel mused. “In case the meteorite strikes failed.”

“Which they did,” Alex said.

“Tell us more about the machines, doctor,” Rachel demanded. “We need a way to fight them.”

“Ah,” Fincher said, pulling up a video hologram showing recorded CCTV footage of the lab. “This is what that single fragment managed to do.”

Everyone around the table watched the grainy footage of scientists in protective suits working on the fragment. As electrodes were attached, the materials immediately began to reform, sprouting
spider-like legs. The scientists backed away as the machine split into two spiders and began tearing the table apart. HIDRA soldiers rushed in, firing upon the machines. The bullets glanced off
their hard shells. There was a scream as one of the spiders jumped at a soldier’s neck. The other scurried towards the corner of the room. A second later there was a brilliant flash of white
and the recording ended.

“What happened?” Rachel demanded.

Fincher replied, “One of them turned itself into a bomb. Blew out the entire wall so the other machine could escape. We cornered it at the perimeter and managed to knock it out…by
firing two Javelin missiles at it.”

There were murmurs around the table.

“Those machines were the size of my hand,” Octavio said.

“And they wrecked a substantial part of the camp,” Fincher replied. “They’re incredibly resistant to all forms of conventional weaponry. And, as you saw, they can split
into multiple parts to avoid capture.”

“Then how can we fight them?” Nestor asked.

“With our current weaponry?” Fincher said, looking around the table, his face deadly serious. “We can’t.”

“Well, we have to find a way, doctor,” Rachel said, turning her attention to Sarah and the others. “Think you can help out with that, Sarah?”

Sarah looked around the others and then nodded as a harried-looking HIDRA officer burst into the room.

“Colonel Andersen,” the officer said, looking at the screen in which Rachel appeared, “we’ve received a call from London. Someone claiming to know the location of Major
Bright’s base.”

Hack looked at him with pure hate in his eyes but said nothing.

“Because,” Good continued, “in a very short time there won’t be enough of your mind left to understand if I broke every finger on your hand. Enjoy the pain, kid –
it’s one of the last things you’re ever going to feel.”

“You’re insane,” Hack said slowly. “And I’m going to make you pay for what you’re doing.”

Marlon Good looked at him, his face an emotionless mask for a few seconds. Then he laughed his high-pitched, giggling laugh. “Sure you are.”

The mercs grabbed the kids’ arms and led them onto the platform. May began to struggle as she was dragged towards the table on the left. Hack looked across at her as he was forced onto the
other table and the restraints were strapped around his ankles and wrists.

“Just stay strong, May!” he called. “Hold on!”

She looked at him and nodded. Then a technician passed in front of her, obscuring his view. Hack turned to a technician at the side of his table.

“Why are you doing this?” he said. “Can’t you see you’re hurting us?”

The technician, a guy with thick glasses and long, straggly hair, couldn’t meet Hack’s eyes as he attached electrodes to his skull.

“I’m talking to you!” Hack persisted.

“I’m sorry,” the technician said quietly as he finished his work. “We’ve got orders. We’ve got no choice.”

One of the mercs pushed the tech away and Hack closed his eyes. The technicians were clearly too scared to disobey orders.

At the side of the platform, Marlon Good joined Major Bright at the control desks. Here, technicians oversaw monitors showing brain-scan activity from the children on the tables. This data was
linked into another scan of the hypersphere itself.

Marlon Good waved a hand over the computers. “From here we can control the hypersphere by channelling the combined powers of the two children. The tables are basically modified ECG
machines, designed to manipulate brainwaves rather than just monitor them. Highly experimental stuff, of course.”

“Very impressive,” Bright said thinly. “Will it work?”

“Oh, it’ll work.”

“Then begin. Their little trip into the city will have alerted the authorities to our presence. It’s only a matter of time before HIDRA finds us.”

“By that time,” Good said, “London will be ours.” He signalled the nearest technician. “Link them up.”

The tech nodded and pressed a series of keys on the panel. The thermal image of the sphere began to change, turning from blue to yellow to red, almost as if it was heating up. The surface of the
hypersphere itself had become completely reflective, like looking into a perfectly calm lake. Then a single ripple passed across the sphere, from top to bottom. As the ripple disappeared towards
the southern pole, a drop of mercury-like liquid fell from the hypersphere and hit the platform with a hiss. This drop instantly reformed into one of the metal spiders – eight sharp legs,
pincers, and searching red eyes. Another ripple passed down the sphere and a second spider formed next to the first. The brainwave scans of Hack and May began to show increased activity. On the
tables, the two children began to cry out, as if in pain.

“It’s like it’s feeding off them,” one of the technicians said, meaning Hack and May.

Good nodded. “Using up their energy to create an army.”

Major Bright smiled approvingly. “Your machine actually appears to be working, Good. I am impressed.”

Good walked from the control panels and stood before the hypersphere. “It’s beautiful,” he said softly.

The ripples were coming at the rate of one a second now and speeding up. There were over fifty spiders on the floor of the platform. They moved forward in a kind of formation, like ranks of
soldiers.

“By the end of this hour there will be millions of them,” Major Bright said, appearing at Good’s side. “All loaded with the modified fall virus and ready to infect the
world. Ten times faster-acting than the original fall virus: it places the victim in a coma in seconds and allows full integration with the Entity’s psychic control within less than an hour.
You have done well.”

Good beamed at the major, enjoying the compliments. Around the power station, mercs moved into position near the technicians working the computers, as if to make sure they stayed at their
posts.

“When the Entity brought me into contact with you,” Bright went on, beginning to pace around Good, “and told me using your money and technical knowledge was the only way to win
this war, I was sceptical. But you’ve proved yourself a most useful ally.”

Good cast a look at the hypersphere, which was now pouring spiders from its lowest point in a steady stream. On the tables one of the children screamed, but somehow it was impossible to tell
whether it was the boy or the girl, the sound was so distorted by pain.