Meteorite Strike (10 page)

“What about when you want to go outside?” Robert asked, ever-inquisitive.

Moss gestured to the far side of the dome. A tunnel the size of a house was set into the outer wall. The entrance was blocked by two massive iron doors and surrounded by a squad of armed soldiers.

“That's the airlock,” the colonel explained. “Any personnel or vehicles leaving the dome have to pass through there and undergo a fifteen-minute sterilization process. It keeps the virus out. And don't worry: it's absolutely the only way into the dome.”

Sarah looked at the soldiers guarding the airlock. They wore a black and gold uniform different to the others. She wondered if they were some kind of special group – they looked serious, even more so than the normal soldiers.

“And it's the only way out,” she added.

Colonel Moss shrugged. “I guess you could say that. Come on.”

They followed him in the direction of one of the other buildings. Sarah was starting to find walking in the bubble easier, although she was aware how stupid she must look: like she was in some kind of oversized snow-globe. They passed several soldiers and white-coated scientists on the way, but none gave them as much as a second look. Sarah guessed that seeing people walking around in giant, inflated bubbles was pretty normal at HIDRA.

They reached a building marked
Sleeper Modules B
. A ramp led up to the entrance, making it easy enough for Sarah and Robert to traverse. Colonel Moss led the way and they followed passively.

The door opened into a single room filled with rows of what looked like sarcophagi from an Egyptian tomb. Each of these, however, was plain white with a glass screen set into the top. As the colonel led them along one of the rows, Sarah saw that each sarcophagus was filled with a sleeper. She stopped next to one that she recognized from the plane: Nicole, the flight attendant. Through the screen, Sarah made out sensors attached to the woman's body, while a computer read-out on the side of the casket kept track of her heart-rate and other vital information.

Robert asked, “Are they all—”

“Victims of the virus,” Colonel Moss finished for him. “Many of these come from your plane crash. The caskets keep their condition stable and provide everything the sleepers need – food, water and waste disposal. But of course, this is just a fraction of the total number affected.”

“You mean there's more than this?” Sarah asked, looking around the room. There had to be at least four hundred sarcophagi packed inside.

The colonel stopped by one of the caskets and looked at her.

“You and Robert have been incredibly lucky,” he said. “We've got four rooms like this filled already. We're trying to control the spread, but more importantly we need to find a cure fast – before the virus reaches one of the major cities. If it does, we'll be dealing with millions of people, not thousands.”

Sarah sensed he was building up to something. She decided to ask first. “What do you want from us?”

Colonel Moss smiled, approving of her directness. “We need your help. You and Robert are special, immune to the fall virus. Maybe you contain a cure for all this. We can stop more suffering and maybe we can bring Daniel and all the others back. We need to do tests… I can't promise that it will be easy…”

Sarah looked at Colonel Moss. Once more, she found him impossible to read. However, she knew they had a responsibility to help in any way they could. She'd work out the colonel and HIDRA later.

“We'll help any way we can. Right, Robert?”

Her brother looked round from the casket. She saw tears glistening in his eyes.

“For Daniel,” he said, voice barely above a whisper.

The colonel smiled approvingly. “You're doing a very brave thing. I just want you to promise me one thing: tell us about anything strange that happens to you. The virus can have…unpredictable effects. Any information could be useful – anything at all. No matter how trivial it seems. Okay?”

Sarah met his eyes and nodded. But once again, her instincts told her that revealing everything to the man before they knew what was really going on would be a mistake. She had the feeling Colonel Moss wasn't telling her the whole truth.

“Sure,” she said. “We'll let you know everything, but I can't think of anything unusual at the moment.”

Colonel Moss nodded and gestured to the soldiers waiting at the door. “My men will take you back to your rooms.”

A few minutes later, Colonel Moss strode from the casket room to another building. Two black-and-gold-uniformed Special Forces soldiers guarded the entrance. The colonel saluted his elite soldiers and carried on into the building.

Inside, he entered a smaller room in which a two-way mirror looked into an adjoining cell. At a metal table inside the cell sat Daniel Williams. There was a bruise forming around his eye and his lower lip was split, but his face was defiant.

By the window, Colonel Moss's second-in-command, Major Bright, looked round. Although he was almost twenty years younger, Major Bright was an identical make of soldier to the colonel: hard, experienced and determined to achieve his goal at any cost. One of his most striking characteristics was a scar that ran down the side of his face from his right ear to the tip of his chin. Colonel Moss was one of the few people at HIDRA who knew how Major Bright got the scar. The rest were just too afraid to ask.

“Did the children buy the story, Colonel?” he asked.

Colonel Moss nodded. “I told them their father went into a coma – they had no reason to disbelieve me. What happened to his face?”

“He didn't take kindly to some of our questions, sir,” Major Bright said, eyes flashing. He ran his forefinger along the groove of his facial scar, as was his habit from time to time. “He's strong, this one.”

“Like his daughter,” Colonel Moss replied, showing no sign of disapproval at the injuries inflicted. “The girl claims to have experienced no side effects so far.”

“Do you believe her, sir?” the major asked. “Perhaps they haven't started developing like the others. We have more persuasive methods to bring on the change than the scientist-run tests…”

“Patience, Major,” Colonel Moss answered, smiling at his second-in-command's eagerness. Bright was aggressive, a trait that Moss found useful sometimes but which needed close supervision. “You'll get your chance with them. For now, we'll use kid gloves. Dr. Andersen is already asking too many questions about the special abilities programme.”

Major Bright nodded and indicated Daniel. “What about him, sir? He's demanding to see the children.”

Colonel Moss scratched the stubble forming on his chin. “I was hoping the virus would've taken hold by now, but he seems unusually resilient.”

“Keeping their father around is an unnecessary complication,” Major Bright said, moving closer to his superior. “We can't hide him here for ever without the scientists on the base getting wind of something. It might be days before the virus kicks in.”

Colonel Moss nodded. “He could get in the way of our plans for the children.”

On the other side of the glass, Daniel looked directly at Moss. Again there was that defiance.

“Just give the word, sir,” Major Bright said quietly.

Colonel Moss considered a moment before finally deciding, “Let's
relocate
Daniel Williams. I take it you can select the best men for the job?”

“The Special Forces team is loyal only to you, Colonel.”

Moss nodded. “Drug and hide him in one of the sleeper caskets for now. Then I want him dumped in the desert. Dehydration will do the job if the virus doesn't first. And put the diamonds on him – I don't want anything tying back to us.”

“And the children…”

“Will give us what we want eventually, just like the others,” Colonel Moss replied coldly. “Thirty years of soldiering has taught me one thing…orphans make the best recruits.”

14

The tests began the next afternoon. Or at least, Sarah assumed it was afternoon. She found it almost impossible to measure the passage of time accurately in her windowless room. When the scientists wanted her to sleep they dimmed the lights. When they wanted her awake they raised them again.

Food was bland meat and vegetables brought in on metal trays three times a day. Most of the time, she wasn't hungry enough to eat more than a few mouthfuls of these boring concoctions. The pills they gave her made her feel sick whenever she ate, anyway. She was given a stack of magazines and books to keep her occupied, but no music or television. Mandy encouraged her to keep a diary in a ruled exercise book brought by one of the suited men. Despite the flood of thoughts rushing through her brain, Sarah only wrote a few lines. The feeling that she should keep her new powers a secret for as long as possible hadn't gone away. HIDRA just wanted a cure, didn't they? She'd tell them about her new ability when she knew what was going on herself.

At regular intervals, men or women in protective suits entered to take blood samples or run various tests. Sometimes they got her to exercise while they monitored her heart-rate. Sometimes sensors were attached to her head that she had to wear while she slept.

Other tests were stranger.

On one occasion Sarah was taken to another room, identical to her own, except without a bed. She was left alone for ten minutes before the sound began. It started as a low hum, barely noticeable, and grew in intensity until it was an annoying ringing in her ears. Sarah shouted at the mirror, where the noise seemed to be coming from, but there was no response. The sound grew…and grew…and grew…

Until it seemed to be splitting her skull.

Finally, she'd curled up in the corner, trying to block the noise with her hands over her ears. At some point she passed out…

Sarah awoke some time later in her own room again.

“What happened?” she asked the mirror as aspirin and water were provided through the slot in the wall.

“I know some of our procedures are difficult to understand, Sarah,” Mandy's voice in the mirror reassured. “But you said you'd help us. Thousands and maybe millions of people can be saved by the tests we're carrying out.”

“I don't understand how…”

The reply was curt. “Sarah, we're scientists. Trust us.”

“I want to see Robert. And I want to speak to Colonel Moss.”

“That's not possible right now. Please, Sarah. Be patient.”

So she was. For the time being.

Sarah could sense Robert close by and the feeling got stronger hour by hour. Often she would lie on the bed and close her eyes, focusing on the part of her mind where she could sense his presence. His room was only a hundred metres away, she could tell. Concentrating harder, she began to pick up his emotions: happiness, boredom, anger, fear. Very occasionally a thought of his would snap into her brain, like a voice shouting in her head, before it disappeared again.

She couldn't fully control the power yet, but it was coming.

Again and again in her sleep she dreamed of Robert speaking to her and woke up shouting an answer to him.

“Is everything okay?” Mandy would ask from the other side of the mirror.

“Just a bad dream,” Sarah answered, turning over in the bed.

Sometimes she'd cry in the night, thinking about how she would have given anything to see Mum again for just a few seconds. Mum would've known what to do and would have been strong for both her and Robert. Very much to her surprise, she also found herself wishing that Daniel was there – but he was gone too, lost to the virus. Sarah knew that she was the one who was going to have to be strong for her brother now. She buried her tears in the pillow.

She wouldn't let them see her cry.

* * *

“How much further?” the Special Forces soldier in the driver's seat of the truck grumbled as it bumped along the desert track.

Beside him, his commander tapped the odometer and replied, “Another couple of klicks.”

Major Bright had been precise with his instructions: the prisoner was to be dropped in the desert one hundred kilometres to the west of the base – no more, no less. Right now he was lying sedated in a sleeper casket in the back of the truck.

A few moments later, the commander signalled for the truck to stop at the top of a dune.

“Okay, helmet on,” he ordered and both men fitted on their mirror-masks before moving into the back of the cab. They stepped into the airlock and closed the hatch. The cab of the truck was completely sealed and took in air from the outside only once it was thoroughly filtered. The air outside was still contaminated with the airborne virus and would be for at least three more days according to the HIDRA scientists.

Checking the internal door was thoroughly sealed, they opened the external door and stepped out into the forty-five degree heat of the desert. Their combat-model HAZMAT suits were fitted with cooling units, but they could still feel the intense sun beating down.

“Let's get this over with quick,” the commander said as they walked to the back of the truck. He pulled down the back door and they both grabbed the end of the sleeper casket, hauling it out. The unit slipped unexpectedly from their gloved hands, rolling down the side of the dune all the way to the bottom.

“Ouch, that's gotta hurt,” the younger soldier said, thinking of the drugged prisoner inside the casket.

The commander shook his head. “Well, we're the ones who have to drag the casket back up to the truck. Major Bright said leave no evidence.”

The other man groaned and they started down the dune, kicking up arcs of sand as they went. “Just what did this guy do to get on the wrong side of Major Bright so bad?”

“Maybe he asked too many questions,” the commander said pointedly as they reached the casket. He pulled a lightweight dart-gun from his belt, as did his companion. They'd been ordered to use non-lethal force to avoid suspicions being aroused if the body was ever found.