Enemy Invasion (2 page)

“What about other research stations in the area?”

“There’s the Russians at Vostok and the French at Concordia Station. But they have no reason to be looking for anything in that sector.”

Bright smiled thinly. “We’ll see.”

“Where did you guys come in from?” Jan asked. “Is your ship close by? Are there HIDRA scientists on board?”

Major Bright gave no response. They sat in silence for the rest of the ten-minute trip, Jan feeling more and more uncomfortable sandwiched between the men with the mirrored goggles. None of the
members of Major Bright’s group looked or acted like scientists. They were soldiers. HIDRA or not, it was clear to Jan that the military was moving in to claim the amazing find they’d
made on the ice. And all he could do was grin and bear it.

Finally, the crater in the ice appeared through the windows on the right. “That’s it,” Jan said, although it was pretty obvious they’d reached their destination –
the crater was almost two hundred metres across. The helicopter descended and made landing near the edge. The soldiers pushed Jan out after Major Bright and they walked the snowy incline to the rim
of the giant bowl.

“Amazing,” Major Bright said as they looked across the indentation.

Jan nodded in agreement. A meteorite strike on a continent the size of Antarctica was common enough, although the size of the crater was unusual. (As was the fact that none of the global
monitoring stations had picked it up, but given the amount of meteorite activity in the last six months, that was forgivable.) No, the truly interesting thing about this crater was under the ice
itself. It was as if the meteorite had hit the permafrost and burrowed deep inside. In the centre of the crater the ice had turned the deepest black and it was possible to see a spherical object
under the surface. From this object spread dark, slender veins, as if the matter at the centre was bleeding material out through the frozen Antarctic ground. It looked like a giant spider preserved
in ice.

The second helicopter landed on the other side of the crater and Jan saw that there was some kind of camp over there. Bright scanned the opposite rim with a pair of binoculars then handed them
to Jan for a look.

“The Russians!” Jan said. “I might have known the Vostok boys would come sniffing around.” He shook his head. “Those sneaky—”

The unmistakable sound of gunfire echoed across the crater. Jan brought the binoculars back to his face. A Russian scientist he recognized was running along the edge of the crater. One of the
soldiers aimed a rifle at his back and fired a burst of rounds. The man’s body jerked and went down. Bright’s men were shooting the members of the Russian scientific party. Gunning them
down in cold blood.

“What is this?” Jan demanded, hardly believing what he was seeing.

Bright smiled coldly. “Just protecting our find, Dr. Petersen.”

Jan lowered the binoculars and backed along the edge of the crater. “You’re not from HIDRA.”

“Duh. You think?”

Jan’s legs felt too weak to run. “Helen is calling the Casey Station, you can’t get away with this.”

“No one from Casey is going to answer that call, doctor,” Bright said, producing an automatic pistol from the folds of his coat.

Jan stammered, “W-why?”

“Because we’ve already been there.”

Major Bright shot Jan three times in the chest. The scientist staggered back over the edge of the crater and slid down the curved edge, leaving a smear of crimson blood on the ice, all the way
to the bottom.

One of the soldiers appeared at Major Bright’s side. “The Russian team has been neutralized, sir,” he reported. “As has the woman at Wolfe.”

“Very good.”

“Orders, sir?”

Major Bright looked across the crater and surveyed the dark, spider-like infection running through the ice. His gaze focused on the hard, black mass in the centre.

“Dig it up,” he said.

The empty cargo bay at the rear of the aircraft carrier was the place Sarah Williams went when the voices in her head buzzed so loud they took on the intensity of a migraine.
The power to read and even control people’s minds had been steadily growing in strength during the last six months (ever since her encounter with an infinitely more powerful being known as
the Entity), but this increased ability came at a price. Sometimes the constant stream of thoughts, visions and images from the people around her was impossible to control – like a television
playing at full volume that could never be turned off. Only in the bay’s dark stillness could she shut out the world for a while and focus in on the important voices.

The ones with something to say.

Understanding what Sarah was going through, Colonel Rachel Andersen had ordered the crew of the HS
Ulysses
, HIDRA’s mobile base in the Pacific, to keep Bay 6 empty at all times.
Therefore, no one batted an eyelid when they saw the dark-haired fifteen-year-old walk through the lower levels of the ship, turn the heavy wheel on the entrance hatch and slip inside.

The cargo bay door closed with a clunk behind her…

There were no windows in the bay, so the darkness here was absolute. Sarah didn’t hit the light switches by the door, however, choosing instead to find her way to the centre using a
flashlight. When she reached what she assumed to be the middle of the bay – which was half the size of a football pitch – she sat cross-legged on the floor.

And turned off the torch.

Darkness flooded in.

The images and disembodied voices that had plagued her all day came on stronger with the sensory deprivation. She caught glimpses of her friends – Robert, Louise, Wei – studying,
practising their skills or just hanging out on the
Ulysses
.

But she also saw further afield…

…to kids she’d never met, in foreign countries, often using languages she could not speak but could somehow understand in the visions. They were all like her: given special
abilities of some kind or another by their exposure to the alien fall virus. Some were trying to be found. Others were running away. All were attempting to come to grips with the changes their new
powers brought.

Sarah zeroed in on the image that had been disturbing her – shutting out the irrelevant clutter and voices one by one until…

…she saw a vast city sprawl of skyscrapers, neon lights and traffic. Amidst the mass of millions of people crammed together she focused upon one boy… A tall, black-haired Chinese
kid, who looked about fourteen…

He was on the run, desperate… Pursued by men with guns…

And also by other, darker forces that would not yet reveal themselves…

She saw a high tower… Bullets exploding through a window… And the boy falling, falling, falling…

“Are you okay, sis?”

Sarah’s eyes flicked open, but she didn’t look round. She’d been so intent on trying to capture the vision, that she hadn’t even heard her younger brother, Robert, enter
the bay.

“Someone’s in trouble,” she said. “A boy – just a little older than you. His life’s in danger.”

Robert crouched and held up his own torch so he could see her eyes amidst the darkness. “Do we know him? What kind of danger?”

Sarah frowned. “Unclear. We don’t know him yet, but he’s one of us.”

Robert took his sister’s hand in his. Whenever she was like this – alone in the dark, so distant, almost alien – it worried him desperately. He squeezed her fingers, trying to
bring her back to him somehow.

“It’s okay,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”

“You have to find him,” Sarah replied. In the light of the torch, her eyes snapped into focus, like a sleeper awaking from a dream. “I’ll try to guide you.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re the only one who can save him from dying.”

PART ONE

1

In the last week of the school holidays, when Hong Kong’s summer was at its most oppressively hot and humid, Hack developed the unshakeable feeling he was being
followed.

First there was the guy wearing the ankle-length coat (even though it was over thirty degrees outside) waiting for the MTR train at Tung Chung station and again when he changed to the Tsuen Wan
line. Later, after trawling the electronics stalls in the city all afternoon, Hack spotted him again – sitting on the train back to Lantau Island, head buried in a book. Probably just a
coincidence.

Or so he thought at that point.

On Tuesday he spent the day fishing with his friend Danny and wandering the narrow alleyways of Tai-O, the fishing village where he lived with his grandfather. It was high season and by midday
the place was bustling with tourists, but there was one thin woman who seemed to follow wherever they went. Every time he looked round, she had her camera pointed in their direction.
Why would
she be taking a picture of us?
Danny laughed when Hack voiced his suspicions.

He let it go at that.

On Thursday the guy with the coat was back. Hack caught a glimpse of him in the crowd as he ascended the steps into the IFC mall on another city trip. Their eyes met and the man melted into the
throng of lunchtime shoppers like a ghost.

By Friday, Hack was looking over his shoulder constantly, attempting to work out who was a tail and who was not. He tried staying in the house, but found himself checking the blinds every five
minutes to see who was passing by outside. School wasn’t back for two weeks and for the first time in his life, Hack actually found himself wishing he was there, just to take his mind off
things. Sick of watching him pace the floor, Grandfather sent Hack on an errand to the market stalls by the bay, where he became convinced that everyone was eyeballing him: housewives, pensioners,
even little kids.

Had his secret finally been discovered?

Hack thought he’d been careful enough: he never used his power in public and had only told a few trusted friends. But had one of them ratted him out? And to who?

These questions whirled through his mind like a tornado until he finally fled back to the city and the place where he felt most at home: the Golden Chip. He needed to talk to someone, and
Jonesey, one of the few people who knew about his secret, was the obvious choice.

Two basement levels bustled with stalls selling every imaginable piece of junk. If you were looking for a component for a thirty-year-old games console or wanted to buy a box of motherboards for
five dollars (some of which might actually work), the basement was the place for you. On Levels 1, 2 and 3, pushy sellers touted laptops, PCs, fake iPhones, real iPads and just about any gadget you
could name (and a few that you couldn’t) at half the price of the malls. Levels 4 and 5 were the place for Nintendo cartridges loaded with fifty games, PS3 and X-Box titles selling for cents
and copies of any operating system you wanted – complete with fake seals of authenticity. Nothing had a price tag, everything was up for negotiation, and the air buzzed from dawn to dusk with
the sound of haggling.

Hack rode the escalators past all the noise, casting his eyes over LCD screens showing a cornucopia of images and messages written in Cantonese, English, Mandarin, and often a mix of all three.
He breathed a sigh of relief. For most people, the incessant chatter, computer noise and harsh lighting would have been headache-inducing, but not to him.

This was home.

Level 6 was his ultimate destination – the repairs and upgrades area of the GC. A customer could start at the bottom of the building and ride the escalators to the top, picking up
components on the way, and have them assembled into any machine he or she desired. Level 6 was markedly less noisy than the other levels and divided up into little cubicles like an office building.
Some of these cubicles contained little more than a workbench and a few tools. Others were crammed with spare components, discs, and shelves groaning with manuals. Each cubicle had a technician,
and to get a space here you had to be a kind of magician at building, repairing or upgrading computers – a master of your craft.

Hack’s friend, Jonesey, had a cubicle at the far corner of the floor and it was one of the untidy ones. This was Jonesey’s work and sometimes living space (mainly when he’d had
an argument with his mum and she threw him out of her flat). He was a pudgy kid (and getting pudgier by the day, due to a diet that consisted mainly of McDonald’s and chocolate bars) whose
long, greasy black hair wasn’t made any better by the fact he cut it himself with a pair of paper-scissors. Jonesey wasn’t a big one for personal appearance.

“
Ni hao
,” Hack said as he pushed a stack of magazines off a swivel chair, flopped down and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The air con on the sixth floor just never seemed
to work well enough in the summer.

“Speak English,” Jonesey replied. He spoke with a thick American accent although, as with Hack, Cantonese was his first language and he’d never set foot outside Hong Kong.
Jonesey was only a year older than Hack, but he’d dropped out of school at the age of fourteen – he was making too much money building and selling his own computer systems to waste time
away from the GC. That Friday afternoon, he had a laptop balanced on his knees and was working at its exposed innards with a tiny screwdriver.

Hack noticed a brand-new LCD TV hanging from the back wall of the cubicle. It was playing a Blu-ray: some blockbuster that wouldn’t be released in the cinema for another month.

“What’s wrong with the picture?” Hack asked, squinting at the distorted colours.

Jonesey grabbed a pair of plastic glasses from the bench and tossed them over. “3D version.”

Hack looked at the TV through the specs as a spaceship seemed to fly off the screen at him with perfect clarity. “Cool.”

With a groan, Jonesey threw the laptop on the desk. “I can’t get this piece of junk to work.”