Web of Fire Bind-up (48 page)

‘To Alya Blin!' cried the voices from around the table, and they were the voices of generals, scientists, politicians – the highest ranking officials in all of Vermia.

It should have been a moment of supreme triumph, for it was a moment that Alya had dreamed of many times throughout the lonely months of research.

She had finally made it.

But as she looked around the table, she could think of nothing but her dead family and the bruised, battered face of the young boy she had seen at the airbase, his frightened green eyes staring wildly into her own as he searched desperately for someone to rescue him from his nightmare.

It was hard for Sam to know how long he had been in this place. Whenever they moved him for interrogation – which they did frequently – he was always blindfolded. All he knew was that his cell was in some kind of basement at the airbase. He knew this because when he first arrived they had taken him down several flights of steps. There were no windows, and the only light came from a bare bulb which burned constantly. He had no idea whether it was night or day.

The questions were always the same: ‘What's your name? Where have you been hiding? Where is the girl? What is the location of the Resistance base?'

And Sam would always tell them the same thing: ‘My name's Sam Palmer. I haven't been hiding. I lost my memory. What girl? What resistance?'

And then they would get angry and lay into him.

Now he sat in the corner of his cell, dipping a corner of his blanket into a mug of water and dabbing at his cut,
swollen lips. His left eye had closed up completely, but out of his right eye he watched a spider scuttle across the floor and disappear off under the door of his cell. The fact that even such a small creature had made it to freedom lifted his spirits slightly.

‘Good luck,' he whispered. ‘Kill some flies for me.'

He thought about Skipper back in the forest and wondered: a) if she knew that he had been captured; b) whether she had found the rucksack with the hornet's egg in it and c) whether she had managed to make it back to Aurobon. The odds didn't look good. He'd heard Norzun contacting other fly squadrons with the coordinates of the hornets' nest; with the storm gone and no Vahlzian forces to slow them down, they would have been there within the hour. He supposed it all depended upon how quickly she'd been able to get out of there. But Sam knew what she was like. If she'd thought that there was any possibility he was still there, she'd have kept on looking for him, right up until the moment they found her…

Sam stiffened. There were voices in the corridor, which usually meant only one thing – they were coming back to interrogate him. His stomach churned and his hands began to shake. They had only just finished with him. He didn't know if he could face another session. But he knew he must avoid giving away the location of the airbase. If he revealed that, then everything would be lost. He
had
to hold out, at least until Skipper could get back and warn them.

Sam put down his blanket, waiting for his tormentors to kick the door open. But something was different this time. He listened. Usually there were a whole bunch of them, shouting and queuing up to take a pop at him. But this time there were only two voices. The first he recognised as belonging to the regular guard, but the second one was new. And it was female.

‘Major Krazni sent me,' the woman was saying. ‘He wants me to run a check on the prisoner's DNA. Here are my authorisation documents. I think you'll find them in order.'

There was a rustling of papers followed by the sound of footsteps approaching along the corridor. Sam stood up just as the door opened to reveal the smirking, sadistic face of the guard.

‘Lady back here wants to check on your DNA, kid,' he sneered. ‘The fun don't stop for you, do it?'

‘It shouldn't take long,' said the woman's voice brusquely. ‘However, there is a slight risk of infection and I wouldn't want to put you at any risk. So if you wouldn't mind… ?'

The guard frowned and his thick eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead.

‘Oh… right. Infection you say? Well maybe I'll just wait down the hall.'

‘I think it best. This'll only take about twenty minutes.'

The guard stepped back into the corridor to be replaced by a young, dark-haired woman in her early twenties. Sam was surprised to see that she had a fresh,
open face, quite unlike any of the others. But, he reminded himself, appearances could be deceptive.

‘I'll just be at the end of the block if you need me.'

‘Fine. Thank you.'

The guard vanished into the shadows and the woman closed the cell door behind her.

Sam stared at her.

‘Taking a bit of a risk aren't you? Shutting yourself in a cell with a dangerous criminal?'

The woman smiled.

‘You don't strike me as the killing kind,' she said and Sam found himself unnerved by the apparent kindness in her eyes. He would definitely have to be careful with this one.

‘If it's my blood you're after,' he told her, ‘then maybe you should check out the interrogation room. They've been decorating the walls with it in there.'

The woman nodded gravely. ‘I am sorry you have been treated so badly. But I want to help you.'

Sam gave a hollow laugh.

‘Of course you do,' he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘That must be why you work with all these nice people.'

‘I was there at the airfield when they brought you in,' said the woman. ‘I saw what they did to you, and I'm sorry. I don't want to be a part of that.'

‘Well, you know what?' said Sam, ‘from where I'm sitting, it looks pretty much like you already are.'

But as he spoke, Sam remembered catching sight of
her face as he was dragged through the terminal. He had seen something in her eyes then, a look which had reached out to him in his distress.

He nodded.

‘I remember,' he said, more gently. ‘Who are you?'

The woman looked over her shoulder as if to check that they were still alone.

‘My name is Alya,' she said. ‘And you're right. I do work for the government.'

Sam stared at her suspiciously.

‘Then why would you want to help me?'

He noticed Alya glance at the cell door again and the fact that she seemed genuinely nervous reassured him a little.

‘Look,' she said, ‘we haven't got much time, but I think it's important that you know something about me. Then maybe you'll realise why I'm doing this. Why you can trust me.'

Sam shrugged.

‘I'm listening,' he said.

‘You need to understand,' Alya went on, ‘that ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a scientist. I saw the world as this huge, complicated puzzle and felt that if I could only solve it, figure out what everything meant, then everything would be OK.'

Sam saw sadness in her eyes and asked: ‘Did you succeed?'

‘No,' replied Alya. ‘The more I found out about the world, the more I found out how complex the puzzle
really was. I soon realised that the most I could hope for was that I might solve the tiniest part of it. So I decided I would just concentrate on one small part of the puzzle and become an expert in that field. I thought that by becoming the best, I would finally
be
someone. I believed that through hard work and achievement, I would be happy.'

A silence fell between them for a while and Sam stared at the young woman with a growing sense of fascination. It was as if in telling him these deeply personal thoughts, she was hearing them herself for the first time. From the look in her eyes he felt certain that she had never spoken of these things before – perhaps had never even acknowledged them in her own mind until now. But why was she telling
him
?

‘Did it make you happy?' he asked.

‘No,' said Alya. ‘For years I convinced myself that everything was OK, but underneath it all I was beginning to have serious doubts about the work I was doing. I sensed that I was shutting my eyes to some unpleasant truths. The past few days have finally opened my eyes.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I realised that all the things I worked so hard to achieve were not solving the puzzle at all – instead they were helping to destroy an irreplaceable part of it.'

Somewhere outside in the corridor, Sam heard the guard clear his throat and spit.

‘What's all this got to do with me?' he asked.

‘While I was waiting for them to bring you in the
other day, I was expecting to see a monster. But when I looked into your eyes, I saw something quite different – something I haven't seen in a long time.'

‘What was that?' asked Sam.

Alya smiled sadly. ‘It was goodness,' she said. ‘The moment I saw you I knew that you could never have done any of the terrible things they were accusing you of.'

Sam looked closely at the young woman standing opposite him in the stark light of a single bulb and wondered at this strange turn of events. Although still unsure whether he should trust her, he was finding it increasingly difficult not to. Could she be his guiding light, the one who would lead him out of the darkness? It was almost too much to hope for.

Alya reached out and touched his arm. ‘I mean it,' she said. ‘You are a good person, Sam. And I realised last night that if I want anything at all in this life, it's to be a good person too.'

‘But what happened to make you so sure about all of this?'

Alya quickly checked the door again before continuing.

‘Two days ago, I learned how to read the minds of parasitic worms,' she said. ‘I learned how to understand their language. And now I can make them do whatever I want them to do.'

‘What?' said Sam. ‘You've lost me completely.'

‘Forget the details,' said Alya. ‘The important thing is that – because of what I've done – the Vermian Empire can now influence human behaviour in a way that will
probably lead to their extinction. And knowing what I know now, I don't want that to happen.'

‘Sounds as though you've left it a bit late,' said Sam.

‘There's still time,' replied Alya. ‘But not much. That's where you come in. I need your help.'

‘I thought you were here to help
me
,' said Sam sceptically.

‘I am,' said Alya. ‘But in order to help you, I need you to help me first.'

‘Look at me,' said Sam. ‘Just look at me for a minute. I've got one eye closed and I can hardly stand up. How can I possibly be of any help to you?'

‘Simple,' said Alya, ‘just tell me where the Resistance base is. Tell me where your friends are hiding out.'

Sam smiled, a bitter, joyless smile.

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' he said coldly.

When Alya spoke again, there was a new urgency in her voice.

‘Please,' she said. ‘Think about it for a minute. Vermian forces are only weeks – maybe days – away from destroying every human being on Earth. There's no way I can possibly stop them on my own. But if I can get in touch with your friends I can give them information which might help them disrupt any attack on Earth, or at least delay it for a while. But I need you to tell me where I can find them.'

Sam shook his head.

‘But if I tell you and you're lying, then my friends will die.'

Alya nodded. ‘I know, Sam. But if you don't, then millions will die. You
have
to tell me.'

Sam was silent for a long while. He knew there was a very real possibility that this woman had been sent to trick him, but there was something about her that seemed genuine. Either she was extremely clever, or she was telling the truth. It was a terrible decision to make, but Sam knew that, one way or the other, he had to make it. Very slowly, he put a hand on the back of Alya's head and pulled her face close so that her cheek was touching his own. ‘All right,' he whispered, ‘I'll tell you. But if anything happens to them, I swear I'll come looking for you. Do you understand me?'

‘Yes,' said Alya, her serious brown eyes fixed for a moment upon his own. ‘I understand.'

Joey Pestralis had been running his pest control business for less than eighteen months, but already his annual turnover was close to a hundred thousand dollars. In fact he'd had to take on Bobby Morgan simply to cope with the demand. Sure, he paid the kid one fifty a week, but when you were making eight grand a month it was peanuts.

‘Hear that buzzing sound, Bobby?' he'd say as they unpacked their gear beneath a nest of angry yellow-jackets. ‘That's the sound of dollar bills, flying into our pockets.'

Bobby would laugh that goofy laugh of his and then the two of them would get on with the job of spraying their way to another few hundred bucks.

Joey's mum had been heartbroken when he dropped out of school two years ago. She said she'd wasted all her money paying for a college education. But she changed her tune soon enough when he turned up with a brand new fridge and plasma TV screen.

‘I'm so proud of you, Joey,' she said, holding his face
and kissing him on both cheeks. ‘Making your way in this world all by yourself.' He'd stuck the screen on the wall and she'd curled up happily on the couch with her fist in a bucket of popcorn, watching her favourite soaps.

‘What'd I tell you, Ma?' he said. ‘Your Joey's going places.'

And he certainly was. In fact, the place he was going this afternoon was a big step in the right direction. A
leap
in the right direction, actually. If this contract came off, he could take a fortnight's vacation in Hawaii.

Joey pulled the truck into a dusty lay-by and turned to look at Bobby who was staring at the map.

‘Are you sure this is right, Bobby? I can't see nothin' but dirt and telegraph poles.'