This proto-chain was the first stepping stone to the ChainStation as a real entity. A new synthetic world. It was the first toddler footstep of an unsteady mankind—or, at least,
Nex
kind—towards the conquest of the solar system and the stars far beyond.
The TV-ProjU sparkled into life with a digital buzz of humming phosphorescence. Images spun and leapt, dissolving and then reanimating into the mercury logo of HIVE Media Productions ...
[deep male voice]
—
A normal working weekday, with normal everyday people travelling to their places of business, of fun, of productivity.
Scene pans slowly to:
an ordinary city street. Normal people are striding on their way to work when suddenly a deafening crack echoes across the world and the street shakes—
Audio:
—
A backdrop of echoes and a metallic rumbling reminiscent of a devastating earthquake.
[deep male voice]
Beneath this world, beneath this normality lurks a danger so terrible that it could rip apart the very fabric of our whole universe ...
Scene zooms quickly to:
a man’s face, which suddenly explodes into ravioli-like sachets of flesh rushing out towards the camera, shooting past the lens in a shower of liquid meat—and as we zoom through the fine mist of blood and slowly spinning brain globules, the everyday city scene has been turned into a vision of HELL. Bodies lie battered and broken; men, women and children sprawl on the pavement and the roadway, limbs missing, trailing streaks of gore to the slick layer of blood which coats everything in a shining new gloss.
Audio:
—
Screams echo.
—Women weep for children.
—Children sob for parents.
—
And a terrible final silence descends.
Screen fades to black; TEXT [scrolling L > R/ silver lettering FONT LUCIDA SANS]:
SPIRAL are a group of rogue soldiers working throughout the world to bring down your New World Government—the very World Government which saved
YOU
from the biological horrors of the HATE biological virus and the accidentally detonated military nuclear warheads. SPIRAL kill indiscriminately in their war of terror.
EVERYBODY
out there has the potential to discover a SPIRAL agent ...
EVERYBODY
out there has a duty to their fellow men, women and children—a duty to wipe this
FILTH
from the planet. Do the
RIGHT
thing, call the
NEX AGENCY NOW!
on 0999 999 999 or text/cube your information. All information is treated in the strictest confidence.
Audio:
—
Soft violin music; a haunting and harrowing solo, lilting and gentle.
—DON’T BE AFRAID—PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN AND OUR MODERN WORLD ... HELP THE NEX ANTI-SPIRAL UNITS TO HELP YOU—HELP THE NEX TO RIGHT THIS TERRIBLE DOWNWARD SPIRAL OF WRONG.
SCENE DISSOLVES TO SILVER
T
he low sleek alloy Manta skimmed over the churning waves, spray spitting up over the cockpit, the speed filling Carter with exhilaration and a sense of freedom.
As dawn broke the Manta banked right, heading north. Carter’s euphoria gave way to a sense of foreboding. Nicky had smiled and nodded, filling him with the reassurances he needed; she had taken Joseph in her arms, his head snuggling to her chest as he fell instantly into a deep sleep. She had smiled, as if to say, ‘There, you see?’ Carter had reluctantly thrown his pack into the black craft and used the recessed steps to mount up into the cockpit—closely followed by Ed in his worn old GPs.
‘Now, you look after my little boy,’ Carter had called down.
‘Just get out of here and save your friends ... Jesus, if you can’t trust Joseph with me, then you can’t trust him with anybody!’
Carter nodded, closed the cockpit canopy, and within a minute was airborne and screaming low over the Med.
Now, heading inland and with the weather turning bleaker and wilder by the minute, Carter thought back to that conversation and his own deep-rooted suspicions born from the loss of love: the loss of his Natasha, Joseph’s mother.
‘You OK?’ came Ed’s gravelled voice from the copilot’s seat behind.
‘Yeah. Just worried about my boy.’
‘He’ll do fine, Carter. It’s yourself you should be worried about. This is no easy gig.’
‘Yeah, London fucking gangland with a wanted face like mine. All I need. Maybe I should paint my arse orange and stand on top of Big Ben! I’m sure that would present a less obvious target.’
They swept low over rain-drenched forests and rolling fields through the gloomy autumn ice-light. Below, nothing moved—no man, woman or child could be seen, no cars on the roads, no pedestrians standing on pavements and staring up as the Manta cruised past.
Occasionally they spotted—on the radar or ECscans—columns of armoured vehicles; Nex-led convoys of tanks and FukTruks, usually ferrying infantry across the countryside that had become a desolate wilderness.
HATE had seen to that.
A wonder of military, biological and chemical design, the HATE virus—when released over non-urban areas—would spread to the concrete outskirts of major towns and cities, killing all in its path. In effect, it would force populations into heavily built-up conurbations — herding humans (and certain types of animal) into areas where they could be either easily policed or easily exterminated.
HATE, invented by a team of American, British, Russian, Japanese and German military scientists, had ironically been used by Durell against the very people whom it had been developed to protect.
Spiral operatives maintained their freedom of movement through this poisoned world by the use of Spiral-developed anti-HATE drugs. But as with any drug that altered an organism’s responses, there were side effects. And this resistance to Durell’s grand scheme gave the Nex an even greater need to exterminate the seemingly perpetual thorn in their side: Spiral.
Carter lowered the Manta on a whine of engines, and then skimmed the top of a huge, sprawling, rain-drenched pine forest, sweeping up over a massive hillside and banking past an old stone Bavarian castle mounted on a narrow rocky outcropping.
Carter’s mind started to settle itself, readying for the confrontation he knew was to come. He breathed deeply, watching the rolling forests undulating beneath him. They crossed a river swollen by heavy rainfall... then flew low over a deserted German village, the desolate streets empty except for a few rusting, overturned cars. Occasionally Carter caught a glimpse of skeletons squatting in corners, huddled in wet torn clothing, bones picked clean by scavengers. Carter shivered in the confines of the Manta’s cockpit.
A ghost town, he thought.
HATE did its job well...
‘
Yeah, but never well enough,’
came Kade’s bitter words.
‘Why don’t you just fuck off and die?’
Kade chuckled, a bone-rattling sound filled with lead and toxins.
‘Never in your lifetime
compadre—
Brother, Father, Son and Holy fucking Ghost. We are together. Merged and bonded into One. For now and for all eternity ... or until we crumble into dust. Amen.’’
Carter’s dark, sombre eyes stared steadily ahead through the gloom. He severed the connection.
Carter landed on the outskirts of London, in a park beside a river. The distant skyline was a ravaged silhouette of broken buildings; the relics of the nuclear blast five years earlier.
A SmutCar—an old rusting black Range Rover which had had the roof cut free with a Stihlsaw and sported folded, jagged edges—was waiting patiently for the two men; just as Nicky had promised. Carter landed the Manta and climbed free of its warmth and into the chilly London air. Ed followed, shouldering the soft case containing his Russian Dragunov SVD sniper rifle with its PSO-1 telescopic sight, and carrying an M27 carbine in his tattooed hands. His face was set, blue eyes focused on the job that had to be done.
Carter moved warily to the Range Rover, checking inside and out—mainly for bombs. He palmed the key and slid it into the ignition as Ed scanned the area. The powerful Perkins 7.2 diesel fired after a few spins of the starter, and black fumes belched from the triple exhaust pipes. Carter slid into the damp rain-slick seat and fixed his eyes on the distant remains of the capital. Even from this distance he could make out the war-torn features; the crumbling, bombarded, bullet-riddled buildings.
‘We’re clear,’ said Ed softly, climbing in beside Carter. ‘Too much chance of contracting HATE out here—looks like the people have defined their own borders.’
‘It’s still classed as a KillZone,’ said Carter. ‘If the fucking Nex see us they’ll open fire without question.’
‘Yeah, but if they see your face, mate, they’ll open fire anyway. You’re a wanted man.’
‘Good point. You fill me with supreme confidence.’
‘That’s why I’m here.’ Ed grinned, slapping Carter on the back.
Carter nudged the old tiptronic into first and stomped the accelerator pedal. The Range Rover wheel-spun across loose stones, bit tarmac and shot down past the edges of the tree-lined park with its black wrought-iron fences. They disappeared into the narrow, shadowed confines of a deserted huddle of Victorian terraced buildings.
They drove slowly through a light fall of rain threatening to become snow, tyres crunching rubble, eyes watching warily the people who moved along the pavements.
They cruised past several groups of JT8s, black-clad and wearing alloy and plastic gas-masks. Occasionally, their heads kept low, the two men rumbled past a squad of Nex—but the authorities seemed uninterested in this old SmutCar with its two anonymous-looking occupants.
The atmosphere in London was bad; it was wrong.
Something nasty was going down.
‘Roadblock,’ said Ed softly.
‘I see it.’
They slowed, caught in a crawling queue of traffic moving towards Covent Garden. The rain turned to snow and swirled in the gently moaning wind. The quality of the light seemed to become subdued.
‘Shall we ditch the car?’
‘We’re too close to them now; they’ve probably tagged us,’ said Carter softly. ‘We’ll have to chance it.’
They moved on, closer and closer to the checkpoint. Carter pulled his collar up as snow settled across his shoulders and head and into the Range Rover’s damp interior. He allowed the snow to build, disguising the colour of his hair. As they reached the checkpoint—a temporary construction fashioned from sandbags and concrete-filled oil drums, and protected by two GAU 19/A Gatling-type three-barrelled machine guns that fired .50 Browning cartridges and were capable of putting down two thousand rounds per minute—the Nex waved the Range Rover through with only a cursory glance at the occupants.
Still Carter felt tense; the Browning dug into his hip as if reminding him of their mutual agreement—a blood-brother agreement written in the splattered souls of innumerable victims.
Carter eased the Range Rover forward, past the intimidating GAUs. They turned right at the earliest opportunity, down a narrow side street which had once been home to some of London’s finest West End restaurants but was now an avenue of dereliction. Carter killed the engine and both he and Ed clambered out, shouldering their packs. Carter checked up and down the gloomy street, looking back at shattered restaurant fronts and the bullet-riddled stonework around gaping doorways. He discreetly checked the ECube given to him by Nicky, then orientated himself. He killed the tiny machine, looked into Ed’s eyes, and said, ‘This way.’
They walked along the buckled pavements for five minutes, passing groups of people huddled in the snow or hurrying with heads down and dark-circled eyes shadowed by their fear. Stopping outside a deserted building Carter and Ed quickly stepped into the cold and draughty interior.
The building’s windows had long ago disintegrated, and the interior sported nothing more than rotting carpets. The walls were pockmarked with the signs of old battle. One wall sported a long jagged crack running from ceiling to floor.
‘Is this place condemned?’ Ed asked.
‘I would hope so,’ said Carter softly, his Browning in his fist as he moved forward past a disused buckled lift and towards a wide sweep of marble stairs. ‘Somebody sure shot the shit out of this place.’
The stairs were incomplete, with sections of marble facing missing to reveal gaps and blocks of supporting stone beneath. Carter trod warily up the snow-slippery steps.
He moved slowly and with care, eyes scanning continually. After four storeys of climbing the two men finally came to a series of narrow galvanised steps rising steeply to the roof.
The wind snapped at their exposed skin like a terrier, and snow settled across them in a diagonal fall. They moved carefully to the large stone blocks at the edge of the building, crouched, and peered over at the spread of the city around them. To their left rose a slick dome of green copper and the large white clock face—bullet-pocked like the victim of some awful skin disease.
Traffic moved in blocks below, held up by various checkpoints. Some people gathered on the streets, but this was lessening with the severity of the weather now that the snowstorm had increased in intensity. Carter’s sharp eyes picked up plenty of Nex—a more heavy concentration of them than he would have liked.