2041 Sanctuary (Let There Be Light) (14 page)

Propellant Primed

Crosshairs displayed on her visor. Aiming it with her eyes, she locked it onto her target and pressed a button on the side of her helmet. With a whoosh and a burst of flame, the projectile sailed into the air, the fine cord on her belt feeding out behind it like a party streamer. Moments later the bolt punched into the bridge on the opposite side.

Pulling the cord tight, Sarah took a breath and jumped.

♦

Jason watched his friend drop from the edge, her blonde hair streaming out from beneath her helmet as she cut an arc between the two sections of Anakim bridge. The Centipede’s winch reel span faster, letting out more and more cable. Trish grasped his arm and turned away, unable to look, while Jason’s heart was in his mouth.

Sarah flew past the base of the opposite structure, her momentum carrying her upwards before she let go in mid-flight to latch onto an outcrop of stone. A few feet from where she landed, a large swathe of the bridge crumbled away into the abyss.

Jason’s finger strayed over the Centipede’s winch control, his thoughts full of fear.
She’s not going to make it
.

♦

Sarah, heart pumping, blood rushing, grasped a balustrade with two hands and heaved herself onto the top of the bridge. She’d made it! Hazard symbols popped up all over her visor before a single flashing message appeared:

WARNING!!

UNSTABLE STRUCTURE

Collapse Probability: 95%

Alternate Route Advised

Sarah glanced back.
There is no alternate route!
A deep rumble from the depths made her look down. An embryonic larval glow broke the darkness. Black eddies swirled in its midst and a rush of air swept past. She activated her breathing mask before heat engulfed her. Unable to do anything else, she ran.

♦

Trish, sensing Jason’s increased tension, turned back to see Sarah leaping and dodging around obstacles as she ran flat out across the bridge. Behind her the structure shuddered and with a tremendous groan, its end collapsed and the rest followed in a domino effect, the falling walkway hunting Sarah down like a giant monster.

♦

Breathing hard, Sarah leapt over a gaping hole and crashed to the ground before rolling back to her feet, her momentum unbroken. A roar of noise set the ground vibrating.

WARNING WARNING WARNING

A tiny window appeared on-visor showing the scene behind. Her eyes widened as the bridge disappeared from view. Adrenaline rocketed and her speed increased. Jumping, running, dodging, the ground lurched. Heat consumed. Lungs burned. Gasping, crying, gripped by terror, the collapse was at her feet and time slowed. Death had arrived.
Why do you fear me?
The voice of nightmares echoed in her ears.
Am I not what you desire?

♦

Trish made a grab for the Centipede’s control unit. ‘Press the button!’

‘No, she can make it!’ Jason saw Sarah leap and he held his breath before the bridge vanished in a cloud of dust.

Trish screamed and he pressed the button.

‘Why didn’t you press it?’ A sob escaped Trish’s lips.

In shock, and still pressing the button over and over, Jason looked at the device, confused. ‘I did.’

Chapter Eleven

Pelican Bay, California, USA

The heavy, reinforced door slid closed with a resounding boom. A buzzer sounded and a green light switched to red.

‘Cellblock A1 locked and secure.’

‘Cameras and failsafes?’

‘The grid’s operating at full capacity. All security measures are in the green.’

‘What’s the old one up to?’

The prison guard, Jayden Connor, known to his friends as Jay, brought up a picture of a cell on the wallscreen. ‘Taking a nap by the looks of it.’

‘And the son of Satan?’

Jay switched to another image. A powerfully built man, stripped to the waist and wearing prison issue orange trousers, hung from one of the horizontal bars that supported the transparent walls of his high-tech cell. ‘He’s just about to start.’

‘How many do you think he’ll manage today?’

The inmate pulled himself up with his arms and extended his effort until his waist met his hands and his arms locked out. He then lowered himself back down again with effortless ease before repeating the process over.

Jay glanced at his colleague. ‘Four fifty.’

‘What? He did six hundred two weeks back.’

‘Yeah, but he’s been out of it since then. Enough drugs to kill a rhino.’

‘With good reason; he bit Wilson’s fingers off.’

‘And he got a good beating for it, that’s why four fifty.’

‘They’re lucky they didn’t kill him.’

Jay gave a grunt. ‘He deserved it, everything that’s happened he’s deserved.’

‘I don’t know,’ – the other guard shifted in his seat in discomfort – ‘some of the stuff they’ve done …’

‘What, you don’t feel sorry for him, do you?’

‘Not sorry, exactly.’

‘Then what?’

‘It just doesn’t sit right. I know what he did was all sorts of wrong, but torturing the guy won’t bring back the people he killed.’

Jay shrugged. ‘If the cops had their way he’d be dead already and the FBI couldn’t have made it any more obvious they’d turn a blind eye to their treatment.’

‘I think Wilson got his comeuppance.’

‘How’d ya figure?’

‘He was tormenting him. And it was his idea to take away his meds.’

‘Yeah,’ Jay said, ‘not the best move. Who knew, though? We have no files on them. We don’t even know their names. If Wilson had known what would happen if he stopped his pills he’d never have done it.’

The other guard looked back at the prisoner in question. Muscles rippled and sweat ran over his bruised skin while military tattoos on his arms stretched in time to his exertion. ‘He’s obviously insane. I don’t know how he’s not in a mental facility. And they employed him in the army, how crazy is that?’

‘Pretty damn crazy.’

‘I’m surprised his defence team didn’t try for the diminished thing.’

‘Diminished responsibility?’ Jay said. ‘No way. He knew exactly what he was doing; he’s as sane as you or I when he’s got those little red poppers of his.’

His colleague gave him a dubious look, a
speak for yourself
kind of look.

‘Well, maybe not,’ Jay conceded. ‘But over a hundred people dead, most of them federal agents and police officers. There was no way in hell they were gonna give in to a plea bargain. Some were calling for the chair. If anyone deserves to fry, it’s him.’

‘I doubt they’ll reinstate it for one person.’

Jay sat back in his chair. ‘Shame.’

The door to the security office opened; the warden entered and both men rose from their seats.

‘Gentlemen,’ the warden said, ‘we have a contingent of VIPs coming to speak to the prisoner.’

‘Which one, sir?’ Jay said.

The warden pointed to the screen and the exercising man they’d just been discussing. ‘As before, they’ll need complete control of all security and that includes all recording equipment.’

Apprehensive, Jay looked to his superior. ‘I take it this lot know who they’re dealing with? It took us hours to clean up the mess last time.’

The warden wandered over to the console to gaze at the prisoner. ‘They’re U.S. Army officers accompanied by a couple of GMRC officials.’

‘Shall we subdue and sedate beforehand?’

‘No. They said they’ll handle it. Just run them through our protocols and then leave them to it. We’ll make sure the outer corridors are sealed off in case there’s any trouble. They seem capable, though, ex marines by the look of it, so they should be able to handle him.’

‘That’s what they said last time,’ Jay said.

The warden made a face. ‘As they say, that’s their problem. We just do as we’re told. I’ll just be glad when these two aren’t here anymore.’

‘Any more problems with the press, sir?’ Jay’s colleague said.

The warden glanced at the prison guard. ‘Yes. We had to arrest two more reporters this morning. Cheeky bastards were trying to come in disguised as a cleaning crew. I don’t know if you saw, but the number of news vans outside has increased. The closer we come to the sentencing, the more intense this circus becomes.’

‘Yeah,’ Jay said, ‘I saw them on the way in. They’re going nuts. I almost ran one down when they tried to stop me for questions, damn fool jumped right out in front of me.’

The warden looked grim. ‘It would help if the authorities, the GMRC, the FBI, whoever, revealed who these men were. The longer they try and keep it under wraps, the greater the furore.’

A knock on the door made everyone turn. ‘The security chief ducked his head inside. ‘They’re here.’

The warden nodded. ‘Right, let’s get this show on the road.’

Chapter Twelve

Professor Steiner lay on the bottom bunk, his head resting back on a pillow and his vision engulfed by the bland underside of the mattress above. After twenty years of leading the world’s response to the meteor threat as a member of the GMRC Directorate, he often wondered how his life had come to this, locked up in a supermax prison for the crimes of another. Granted, he’d helped Colonel Samson during his insane rampage through Los Angeles, but his part had been enforced by his need to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people still trapped underground in USSB Steadfast, put there by the unfathomable actions of Malcolm Joiner, the GMRC’s duplicitous intelligence director. Furthermore, he’d never intended for
anyone
to get hurt, but Samson had instigated a plan of his own making, a plan that saw him risk everything to secure the safety of his daughter, an FBI agent who loathed her father as much, if not more, than Steiner himself. Steiner had tried his best to prevent more deaths by guiding Samson to safety so that he might help in the liberation of Steadfast’s entombed GMRC residents. Of course, none of this had any bearing to those that had imprisoned him, the FBI and civilian judiciary. They were out for his blood, no more aware of his contributions to the future welfare of the human race than the majority of the populace, the billions who remained blissfully unaware of the meteors that closed in on their position with every passing second. Only the dust cloud that had resulted from the impact of the first meteorite the year before ensured mass panic hadn’t already destroyed the tenuous illusion that was human civilisation.

A small sound, a steady tap tap tap, squirmed its way into Steiner’s awareness. Moving his head to the side, he looked up at the skylight on the cell’s high ceiling. On the glass pane, a bird pecked at the window. After it stopped its attention seeking noise, it returned to the task of preening its feathers. Steiner continued to watch the animal, lost in its simplicity, until a cell door slammed, causing the bird to take flight into the freedom of the skies. Steiner wished he could join it. He shifted on the mattress and winced at the pain that racked his body every time he moved. The guards that
looked after
him had ensured his stay had been as uncomfortable as possible. However, his luck had improved a little in the last few days. Instead of daily rounds of verbal abuse followed by the occasional brutal beating, he’d been left pretty much alone. The reason for his reprieve was the same individual who’d been complicit in his current incarceration. Colonel Samson had proved as indomitable in prison as he had without and it had been his actions that had ensured Steiner was merely a forgotten appetiser to the main course. From the screams Steiner had heard emanating from Samson’s cell, the colonel had been subjected to horrific practises of torture. These sickening sounds had repulsed him so much on one occasion he’d shed a tear for the monster who’d taken the lives of so many. He could have warned them the colonel was one man they didn’t want to antagonise, but he’d decided they could have the joy of finding that out for themselves, such were the pleasures afforded him, such had become the bitterness in the broken shell of his mind he called home. And it wasn’t long before Samson had duly delivered, dishing out some of his own medicine despite the efforts of the guards to keep their distance. Samson was nothing if not resourceful. Steiner remembered the small smile that had crept onto his face when the tables had been turned.

He frowned. That those times had given him enjoyment had disturbed him more than anything else. It felt like he was in a continuous fight against the oppression of darkness. Time and again his calm was broken by an array of frightening thoughts, thoughts so bestial he didn’t recognise them as his own. He could not let himself be corrupted before … before what he knew was an inevitability – life imprisonment, which on the surface meant he’d be dead, if not within the year, then within four when the final asteroids made landfall. He intended to go out of life with his head held high and his dignity intact. He would not give Malcolm Joiner the pleasure of his destruction. As far as he was concerned he was still Director General of the GMRC’s Subterranean Division and he was damned if he was going to let his last breath be one of torment. He would embrace death as he had life, with courage, optimism and a measured resolution.

His greatest fear was that if he allowed himself to be consumed by hate and despair, Amelia wouldn’t recognise him when they met beyond the veil. As he was wont to do, his thoughts turned to his wife, taken from him thirty years ago, stolen by fate’s cold, chaotic hand. His fingertips strayed to the gold wedding band that still adorned his ring finger. Touching it conjured up Amelia’s beautiful smile. Her features had grown indistinct over the years, despite the photos of her he’d kept in his wallet, offices and home, his memory couldn’t secure the outlines he could have once drawn with his eyes closed. But then Amelia had never been the body she’d inhabited, not to him; her soul was what he loved and, as everyone knew, the eyes were the window through which to view the spirit within. The body was a vessel, a biological construct for the mind. Steiner, with an IQ through the roof and enlightenment beyond most, turned his focus to the questions that he often posed himself. These had initially been ones of escape and retribution, but as time progressed such futility had fallen by the wayside. He’d decided that his days should be spent on something constructive rather than the impossible, so he’d resolved to address the fundamentals of the human consciousness and the riddle of the power of man. Why was it some people were capable of such great advances in science and knowledge while others weren’t? There were a few central principles he knew to be true—