Carter, taking Joe’s hand, led him across to the large pan of red gloop. ‘We’ll need our strength, but we won’t need any more damned roughage, that’s for certain. Look at that, you’re burning it around the edges! Give it a stir! Mongrel, man, learn to cook!’
Mongrel grinned bitterly. ‘I wish I had time, Carter, I really do. Let’s see what goes down ... hell, after tomorrow it might not matter anyway. We living on borrowed time, my friend. Borrowed time.’
‘For everything there is a season! And a time for every matter under heaven; a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted! And yea, Durell is in dire need of a serious uprooting!’
The Priest strode across the cavern, sandals slapping against the damp stone, rosary beads rattling across his hairy chest. His beard was filled with breadcrumbs and stained with wine, and in one hand he carried a modern day Sterling sub-machine gun.
Behind him came two figures. One was a woman, with shoulder-length blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She wore black combat fatigues and a tight black jumper. The line of her compressed mouth hinted at untold horrors in her recent past. The second figure was a huge man with fists like sacks of marbles; he had a huge black beard flecked with grey, and his shaggy dark hair showed silver at the temples. His nose was hooked slightly, and his skin was dark, making him look distinctly Arabic. His stance was that of a protector and he stayed close to the woman, shielding her with his huge frame.
The group halted.
‘Hey!’ cried Mongrel. ‘You that bird off TV! One who always shows her ... her ...’
Carter placed his hand on Mongrel’s shoulder. He nodded towards The Priest. ‘You been busy, you religious nutter? Of course you have. And you two are part of the REBS?’
‘Yes.’ Sonia smiled then, a dry smile. ‘We’ve come with a proposal. The REBS’ back is broken; Spiral are doomed without their GRID. The REBS think it is time that we joined forces, before it is too late for all of us.’
‘Even together we cannot take out Durell.’
‘We have to,’ said Sonia softly. ‘Because I know his plans.’ She glanced at The Priest, whose hulking figure was hunched, dark brown eyes hooded with weariness and a hint of defeat. ‘We both know his plans.’
‘What are they?’ rumbled Mongrel.
‘He is going to spread EDEN across the globe. He’s going to evacuate the Nex and the people who want to be Nex to his ChainStations in orbit around the Earth; then he’s going to spread EDEN using a barrage of intercontinental warheads.’
‘I thought EDEN was a cure? I thought it was going to neutralise the toxins of the HATE virus?’
‘No,’ said Sonia. ‘EDEN is the most deadly poison ever created. It will effectively wipe out every man, woman and child on the planet. Durell plans a genocide. No, more. Durell plans to eradicate the entire human race.’
‘What can we do?’ said Mongrel.
They were all seated around the fire, which crackled softly, golden embers glowing in a hearth of charcoal. The whole of the Spiral gathering—those DemolSquad unit commanders who still remained—had congregated in a circle around The Priest, Carter, Mongrel, Sonia J and Baze. The mood was grim indeed.
The Priest sighed. Then his head came up and his gold-flecked eyes surveyed the group. ‘We are broken. We are smashed. Spiral and REBS will pool their resources, put aside their historical differences. Without the GRID we are effectively crippled. Now our only recourse is to the EC Warhead ...’
‘A myth,’ said Mongrel.
‘A reality,’ said The Priest gravely. ‘Durell plans to kill everything on Earth. Every form of life will be extinguished to make way for a new Nex realm. A planet free of insurrection. A new and advanced breed of humanity. We need to find the Evolution Class Warhead, my friends ... and we need to launch it against Durell. It will destroy his WarFacs, destroy his NEP Production Plants—and it will destroy his ChainStations. It is the only weapon on the globe with such capabilities ... Without his ChainStations Durell cannot evacuate the planet. Without them, he dare not unleash EDEN.’
‘How we do this?’ rumbled Mongrel.
‘We have two objectives,’ said The Priest. His gaze swept the group, and all he saw there was strength. A readiness to lay down their lives for the good of the world; and the good of their species. This was a fight for survival of life on Earth. ‘The first objective is an infiltration. We must break into the Nex central K-Labs—to confirm our fears that EDEN
is
this terrible poison that we suspect. We need to know when and where Durell plans to launch it. And we need to destroy the K-Labs and any stocks of EDEN we discover—smash their technology ladder, if we can. Or at least buy ourselves time to find the ECW.’
‘And secondly?’ asked Carter, a cigarette balanced between his lips, eyes squinting as the smoke stung his eyes.
‘There is a man who knows where the Evolution Class Warhead programmers are—the ones who still live, from before the days of Durell’s dominance. They will know the exact whereabouts of the EC Warhead—and the codes needed to activate the weapon and to target multiple destinations. Without the programmers, we can’t find and launch the EC Warhead. And without our informant, we can’t find the programmers.’
‘Who he?’ asked Mongrel.
‘His name is Justus, and he is being held in a high security Nex prison—at the Submarine Graveyard. Deep under the North Atlantic Ocean.’
‘Great,’ muttered Carter. ‘Things are looking just rosy, hey?’
‘It gets better,’ said The Priest, his eyes twinkling. ‘Our intel informs us that we have forty-eight hours. Before the Nex are Drag-lifted from Earth and the bombing begins.’
‘So we have a race to see who can launch first?’
‘Precisely.’
Carter frowned. ‘Call me cynical, but we’ve been misfed information before. How do we know this is the truth and not a crock of shit? How do we know we’re not just being set up once more? Another deception designed to eliminate the remains of both Spiral and REBS once and for all?’
‘Ask her,’ gestured The Priest.
Carter turned to look at Sonia J. ‘You’re the head of the REBS, right?’
Sonia shook her head. ‘Wrong. I’m the decoy. I’m too high-profile to head the REBS, although Durell and Mace and his other cronies made that same false assumption. They thought I was the big boss—the lady in charge.’
‘Why should we trust you, then? And how does your head honcho come by such inside information? I’m pretty sure Durell doesn’t just leave disks labelled “Plans for World Domination” lying around.’
‘You can ask our leader himself when he arrives. He will answer all of your questions.’
‘Do I know him?’ Carter’s eyes were glittering in the light of the fire.
Sonia J met his gaze. She nodded then, smiling gently. ‘Yeah, you know him, Carter. He is your oldest friend.’
‘Oldest friend?’ Carter frowned again.
‘His name is Jam.’
R
EWIND >>> The noise intensified around Jam as the earthquake reached its climax. He fell, bleeding, with clawed ScorpNex hands reaching tantalisingly close to Durell’s throat as the Austrian castle collapsed around him.
Rumbling filled Jam’s head, rock pounded his skull and dust blinded him. He could smell sulphur, and smoke filled his nostrils and lungs, choking him. His arms came up, covering his armoured triangular ScorpNex head as he fell, and the fall seemed to take for ever.
And then it was done. For a long time Jam lay there, prone and filled with pain. Weight pressed down on him: the mass of the mountain crushed him and he struggled to breathe. Hours passed as he slowly recovered his strength.
Blinking blood from his copper eyes, Jam braced himself against the ancient rock above him and heaved. His armour plates crackled, his muscles bulged and a roar escaped his twisted jaws ... but the stones which trapped him refused to move.
Jam relaxed. He allowed his breathing to calm. Dust and grit settled into the blood still streaming into his eyes, but he could not wipe it free. He tried to turn his head, but a huge block obstructed his movements.
Trapped. Panic began to build in Jam’s chest. It was one thing to die, smashed into an oblivion of pain and then dark eternity—but to suffocate? To succumb slowly to a choking lack of oxygen?
Jam started to struggle, thrashing about within his crushing stone tomb. But there was a collapsed castle around him, above him, that even his fury and enhanced ScorpNex strength could not shift.
Jam fought for an hour until his energy was spent. Then, as he drifted into an uneasy sleep, he wondered if he would ever wake. How much air did he have? How long could he hold to the glittering thread of life?
In his dream, Jam was human again. Time had played slowly backwards, from before the experiment, before his transformation into Nex by Durell—and by Mace, the evil Nex who had been Jam’s torturer. In his dream Jam was not a powerful ScorpNex with chitinous black armour, armoured forearm spikes, and a twisted, almost triangular head flattened on the top. In his dream, Jam was a human, lying in a warm bed next to a warm woman. She turned to him, eyes filled with love, and kissed him tenderly on the lips.
‘You did the right thing.’
‘I did?’ His voice was normal; his voice, Jam’s voice. Not the softened, twisted sound of a Nex.
‘You helped Carter, up on the castle battlements. You did not kill him. You bought him time ... and you love me, you said that you loved me ...’
‘I... I do not remember.’ But then it returned, like a flash: Durell, orchestrating the earthquakes across the globe. And Carter had come—to find the machine, The Avelach, which had the ability to heal. Carter wanted to save Natasha, his woman, from her terminal wounds. He wanted to save his unborn baby boy ...
Durell had ordered Jam to change Carter into Nex—either that, or kill him. Jam had done neither. Instead, his humanity had asserted itself, piercing the metal armour of the insect holding his soul hostage: Jam had given The Avelach to Carter and allowed him to live ... to rescue Natasha ...
Nicky kissed Jam again in his dream. And he cried ...
Jam opened his eyes on darkness, and realised that tears were flowing from his eyes. Yes, he decided. He
had
done the right thing. He felt the insect mind inside his own, squatting, immovable, watching and listening. What happened? he thought.
What the fuck happened to me?
Realisation struck him with an impact that swept aside thoughts of his present predicament. For a moment it no longer mattered that he was teetering on the brink of death, that he would be dead in a few short hours—either by being crushed or from oxygen starvation. He had won the battle: the mental battle. He had overcome the insect part of his mind and soul. He had regained his humanity and imprisoned the insect in a cell within his consciousness.
Jam was back.
And Jam was
pissed.
I will not die, he thought. I
cannot
die! He heaved against the stones above him, heaved until blood ran down his armoured arms and legs and he forced his triangular head to one side and pushed until he thought his bones would compress and grind into dust—
Something moved.
Not above him but below. Jam focused his energies in a different direction, struggled,
fought
with the collapsed castle until something under his fist broke free in a tiny avalanche of stones and dust, which fell away into a gap beneath him. Jam’s clawed hand flexed in its freedom, and a cold breeze caressed his skin.
Jam moved his hand and spikes rippled across his forearm. He began to scrape at the rock and rubble which held him prisoner and after what seemed an eternity his claws exposed the edges of a stone block. He carried on levering and scraping and pushing until, after what must have been many hours, the block finally shifted.
The breeze flowed up more strongly now and Jam tasted the cold air. It filled his dust-abused lungs like the finest of nectar. Jam breathed in deeply and with renewed vigour set about moving the rectangular stone.
It moved again then fell away into darkness. There was a dull thud, which indicated a considerable drop, and much of the pressure was released from Jam’s chest and abdomen. But still his legs were pinioned in a vice of stone. With his other arm free, Jam levered himself around, sensing a huge expanse of space beneath him, and started to work at his trapped legs. He toiled for hours, his weariness sidelined by sheer necessity. Time meant nothing in this dark vault: the total darkness was almost as oppressive to Jam’s senses as the weight of stone bearing down from above.
He worked, and suddenly felt something shift again—not around his legs, but somewhere above him. A sudden wave of nausea washed over Jam: if the stone above him gave way, he would be cut in half or brutally crushed by the new fall of stone.
With renewed vigour from tortured cramping muscles Jam continued to work at freeing his legs. The stones above him shifted once more and something fell past his face, rattling and clattering as if rolling down a slope beneath him in the blackness.
Slope?
Jam knew that the castle had had dungeons, huge vast subterranean vaults. But why a slope? And then he realised. When the castle collapsed, stones would have tumbled down, filling up the spaces below. Somehow the collapse had become precariously stalled—with him entombed at its heart.