Authors: A. G. Taylor
“You’re saying they’re aliens?”
“Shh. They’ll hear.”
“But they don’t…you know…look…”
“No tentacles and six heads?” Daniel asks wryly.
“Yeah.”
“The construct is partly created from the memories of the individual,” Daniel explains. “How it appears to you, might be different to me. And they appear to you as human,
because that’s what you expect.”
“So I might look like I’ve got six heads to them?”
“I would say almost certainly.”
“Then none of this is real?” Sarah asks again.
Daniel picks up one of the remaining breakfast bowls and places it in Sarah’s hands. “Does that feel real? Did the rice taste real?”
She nods.
“Everything here is as real as it needs to be. The Entity makes it so.”
“So if we get hurt here…”
“The damage will seem completely real to you. You can feel pain. You can die.”
Sarah frowns. “Die?”
“Trust me,” he says, “you don’t want to die in the construct. You’ll fall into a kind of limbo. The link between you and the Entity will be severed, but you
won’t be returning to your body on Earth. Your physical form will grow old and die, while your mind will be trapped here for ever.”
Sarah takes a moment to let that sink in. Somehow the unreality of the place – the Japanese setting, almost a copy of the images she’d seen in her karate books, and the presence
of Daniel when he was really back in the sleeper casket at the HIDRA base – had convinced her that this was all some kind of a game. Ninja uniforms. Throwing stars. Back in the real world,
her friends are fighting and probably dying without her.
“Are you okay?” Daniel asks, seeing the seriousness on her face.
“Yes,” she replies. “I just feel like I haven’t been thinking straight… I…”
“It’s okay, Sarah. Just remember that the construct is designed to do that – lull you so the Entity can keep control over your mind. You must be mindful that this is not
your reality at all times.”
“How?”
“By fighting.”
The streets of London were filled with the comatose bodies of men, women and children. Through the thunderstorm that had lashed the city they had lain, oblivious to the rain
and cold, but now they began to rise…
All across the capital people flicked their eyes open and, staring blankly, they stood. To an observer they might have appeared like a set of dominoes that had been knocked over, simultaneously
rising up again…
And they waited, as if for some command. Unnaturally unmoving...
Then…
They began to hum.
First just a few, but like a virus the noise spread from one person to another. Young and old, all made the same noise… The same tone…
They were one...
“What
is
that?” May said as a buzzing noise rose around the junkyard. It almost sounded like an engine of some sort, but the sound was unnaturally even.
Louise levitated to the top of one of the stacks and looked around.
It’s the infected people,
she said.
They’ve all risen up and they’re…humming.
May looked at Hack questioningly, who was in the process of checking over another of the battlesuits. They had five now – one for each of them. They’d need the advantage the suits
provided if they were going up against the base defences.
“The Entity is booting up its slaves,” Hack explained as he worked. “Like computers in a wireless network.”
May said, “Then that means…”
“...they’re probably about to attack.”
Just then, Alex and Wei came running. “We’ve got trouble!” Alex yelled.
Behind them a line of people appeared, advancing slowly in a uniform progression. Each one of the people – be it a man, woman or child – had the same fixed expression. Each one was
emitting the same low hum.
“What do they want?” May asked as they regrouped in the centre of the yard. A second line of people had entered from the other side of the yard and it was possible to hear the sound
of others clambering over the corrugated iron fencing that surrounded the area. One of the men at the head of the first group picked up a rusty pipe as he approached. Others snatched up bricks,
broken bottles, lumps of metal…
“I’ll give you three guesses,” Alex said. He and the others had formed into a circle facing out at the threat appearing from all around.
“I can take care of them,” Wei said and a fireball appeared in his hands.
Alex turned to him and shook his head. “No. They’re just being used by the Entity. We can’t hurt them.”
“The suits are ready,” Hack said as the nearest group came within just a few metres. They clambered into the machines and Hack sent them hurried instructions as to how to use them,
explaining the telepathic link between their minds and the suit controls.
The man with the pipe raised it above his head and ran at the nearest battlesuit, which was Wei’s. As the man started smashing the pipe ineffectually against the leg of the machine, Wei
stumbled back clumsily and almost went over.
“Be careful!” Hack snapped. “You’ll crush one of them!”
The five children, made gigantic in the cumbersome robot suits, stumbled away from the approaching mob. The machines were designed for fighting and to protect the user, not to pacify crowds.
Hack realized they were in serious danger of accidentally doing damage to the innocent people the Entity was using as its puppets as they swarmed ahead.
“Everyone, go high!” he commanded, leaping over a line of civilians in a single bound. As he touched down, he sprang again, hooked his metal claws into the side of one of the junk
stacks and clambered to the very top. The others quickly got the idea, running and jumping onto high ground, away from the people crowding into the yard.
“What now?” May asked, crouching precariously atop one of the stacks and swivelling her head around.
Inside his suit, Hack brought up a scan of the city on the internal HUD – a holo-image highlighted Battersea Power Station in the distance.
“We keep moving,” he said, leaping to another stack and then another. Bricks, metal and wood were thrown at him, but bounced off the hard exoskeleton of the battlesuit. The main
thing was no one got hurt as he reached the outer wall of the yard, leaped onto the road beyond and then hauled himself up the side of a building. On the roof, he turned and waved to the others,
who were watching him from their vantage points in the junkyard.
Come on! Race you to the bad guys!
40
They say their thanks to the family and leave quietly by the back door to the house on the outskirts of the village. It’s early, but already the main street is coming
to life with men and women in work overalls going about their daily business. Suddenly Sarah feels conspicuous in the black uniform. Both she and Daniel look like fighters amidst the farmers. Out
of place…
“Over there,” Daniel says, nodding towards an open-top jeep standing at the other end of the street. They move towards the vehicle as quickly as possible. Sarah notices that no
one in the village meets their eyes.
They’re afraid of us, she realizes. We’re not like them. We’re fighters.
Without warning, a woman only a few years older than herself steps around one of the buildings directly into Sarah’s path. Taken aback, Sarah looks into the eyes of the woman –
and sees only blankness there. The woman stares back at her with no comprehension, but equally does not move.
“Come on,” Daniel says, taking Sarah’s arm and leading her away.
“Who was that?” Sarah asks, looking back at the woman, who hasn’t moved. She feels a strange fascination towards her.
“She was another visitor here,” he says quietly as they reach the jeep. “Like you.”
“What do you mean, like me?” Sarah asks. Daniel starts the jeep and they pull away from the village onto a bumpy dirt track leading down to the sea.
“She came of her own free will so she could fight the Entity on its own turf,” Daniel explains.
“So what happened to her? She’s like the walking dead.”
They reach the end of the track and pull onto the sand. “Like you, she had the power to take on the Entity at its own game – a being with the psychic strength to actually defeat
it. But she was not successful.”
They have entered a bay surrounded on all sides by hills, providing some seclusion from the ocean beyond. The water of the bay is brilliant blue. The jeep heads towards an inflatable boat
pulled up on the sand.
“What do you mean?” Sarah presses. “Not successful?”
“She fought the Entity. She lost.”
“And so now she’s stuck here for ever?”
“Or until someone shuts down the construct.”
“Someone like me.”
“That’s right.”
The jeep stops by the boat, an inflatable with two powerful outboard motors attached to the back. Sarah helps Daniel push it into the sea and they jump aboard. He angles the outboard on their
boat down into the water and rips the starter cord. The engine roars into life and the boat powers across the bay. In less than a minute they pass a narrow inlet and are suddenly in the open
sea.
“Where did you get all this stuff from?” Sarah asks her father. Sitting at the back of the boat, he looks like some guy out of an action movie.
“Friends,” he says. “There’s a large resistance movement. They’ve been training me ever since they found out I was your father. You’re quite a celebrity,
you know.”
“Among the aliens?”
“Once in a while someone comes along with the ability to challenge the Entity. That’s you. They sensed it after the Entity’s meeting with you under the ice in Russia. The
cost of bonding with so many beings – the Entity can’t keep many secrets.”
Sarah frowns, thinking it over. “So you’ve been living off my fame then?”
Daniel grins. “Free meals. All the military equipment and training I could use. It has been kinda cool.”
“You’re a big kid!”
Sarah grips the side of the inflatable boat as it bounces over the water. Daniel sends it on a course around the headland. As they round a jutting outcrop of rock, he points ahead.
“Look,” he shouts over the engine and Sarah sees what he’s pointing to…
Three giant structures rise from the sea just a few kilometres from the land. They look like oil rigs – made up of platforms sitting atop iron legs rising a hundred metres from the
water. These platforms, however, are a maze of walkways, observation decks and buildings. Here and there it is possible to make out mounted machine guns… satellite communication
arrays…landing pads… But there is also an odd mix of Japanese-style wooden structures, twisted trees and vines hanging down from the structures… Massive, black birds circle
both above and below the rigs…
“What are they?” Sarah asks.
“Unknown,” Daniel replies. “They appeared in the construct the day you arrived, which makes me think we’ll find the Entity in one of those things. Which
one?”
Sarah gives him a confused look. “How should I know?” Then she remembers his earlier words:
If you seek it out, it will be there
. “The middle one.”
Daniel nods approvingly and steers towards the central rig.
A whistling sound fills the air…
An explosion of water rises above the sea, just a few metres to the right of the boat. She looks towards the rigs again as they speed past. There is a flash from one of the mounted guns. A
second explosion rocks the ocean, dead ahead this time, but Daniel expertly sends their boat around it.
More shells hit the ocean, creating a wall of flying water ahead of them.
“What do we do?” Sarah cries as the boat is almost capsized.
“Swim!” Daniel yells.
He pushes her off the side of the boat. Hitting the water is like falling against concrete, then Sarah is sinking as the boat is destroyed with the
whumpf
of another shell. She gasps
for breath. Daniel grabs her arm and pulls her towards the surface where they gulp air into their lungs for a few seconds, before he pushes them down again, away from the explosions hitting the
surface all around.
Diving, he produces a silver tube that he places in her hand. Sarah watches as he takes another and puts it in his mouth – a mini breathing tank. Copying him, she sucks air from the
mouthpiece and breathes out through the side of her mouth. Daniel looks at her and she gives the thumbs up to show it’s okay.
Her hand in his, Sarah swims towards the rig…
Hack and the others ran across London, jumping from one rooftop to another, powered by the hydraulic strength of the battlesuits. They made it into a race to see who would
make it back to the enemy base – mainly to distract themselves from the thousands of slave humans lining the streets, looking up as they leaped across the gutters.
“I SEE YOU!” was the cry that greeted them wherever they ran, along with the strangely inhuman humming of the masses – the signal that seemed to link them together under the
control of the Entity. At the edge of a building on Clapham Road, Alex paused as the others leaped on, crashing across the tiled roofs of the shops opposite. He cast his gaze over the motionless
crowd below – a throng of people looking up at him with one vision – their only purpose to relay information back to the Entity.
This is what we’re fighting against,
he
thought to himself.
This is what it would turn us into…
Keep up, Alex!
Louise called as the crowd began to throw missiles up at him. He jumped on.
A few minutes later Alex caught up with the others as they ran along the railway track towards the gasworks opposite the power station. Leaping onto the side, he used the hooked metal of the
suit’s feet and hands to claw his way up to the top of the highest structure. Here he stood, alongside the others, on the circular frame and looked out over the site of the power station.