2041 Sanctuary (Let There Be Light) (47 page)

A voice echoed through the water that burned frigid in his ears. ‘Don’t forget to breathe, Goodwin,’ Walker said via the helmet’s communication system, ‘the mask is sealed tight on your nose and mouth, the water can’t get in.’

Goodwin fought for calm, but found himself unable to open his eyelids against the bitter fluid. ‘It hurts!’ he said, his voice muffled.

‘Suck it up,’ Walker told him, ‘time’s ticking, you’ve got less than ten minutes.’

Cursing, Goodwin forced open both eyes and pain lanced through them like a spike to the brain. Seconds passed and his vision cleared. A small display encased in the helmet’s transparent shield showed him a myriad of warnings and data. Through the blur of fluid he only had eyes for the small timer that signalled the duration of his oxygen levels.
Nine minutes to go
.

Thankfully, the decontamination helmet also boasted a screen that enhanced vision. It was nothing like as sophisticated as Darklight headgear, but in conjunction with its powerful light bar it provided adequate illumination of his surroundings, albeit distorted by the constant ripple of water. Pressing a button, he vented his exhalation and it bubbled up around him. The ground angled down and he took another step, and then another. Down and down he went, into the darkness, searching for something, anything.

After another minute a depth gauge told him he’d passed below twenty metres. Something swam past his face and he cried out.

Walker’s voiced warbled in his ear. ‘What’s happening?’

‘I’m fine, it was just a fish.’
Just a fish
, Goodwin thought with an emphasis on the ‘just’. He knew full well what sort of animals patrolled these depths. Creatures that could tear flesh and consume bone. He carried on and another ten metres down, the lakebed levelled out. In itself this wasn’t a curiosity, but when other parts of the lake had been found to descend beyond their capability to measure, which was well over a mile, it meant to Goodwin only one thing – this was where he’d find their exit to the surface.

He continued forward and the phantom shapes of weed-encrusted Anakim architecture appeared out of the gloom, their alien forms drowned long ago in a foreign past. His expectation grew and he looked at his timer.

Six minutes left
.

Speeding up, he passed by these sculptural immensities and soon found himself confronted by a darker darkness, a blacker black than that of the water that pressed in around him. The light from his helmet seemed to die against this wall that shimmered like oil in the night. He reached out a hand and drew his gloved fingers across its surface. A trail briefly appeared before fading back to flat.
Strange
, he thought. He looked left and then right; it was like a liquid within a liquid. He’d heard something about underwater lakes on ocean floors from Kara. A
brine pool
she called them – a dark mass of dense fluid formed underwater. These uncanny pools seemed to defy the laws of nature, appearing as an otherworldly phenomenon, but what stood before him seemed different. For one, it was vertical, and for two – he peered closer and touched it a second time.
Yes
, he thought,
there it is again
. A trace of blue shimmered against the black.

He frowned; it reminded him of the blue stones. The same glowing rocks that had attracted the light creature, or so Hilt had theorised. An alarm beeped in his helmet.

Half his air had gone.

‘How’s it going, Director?’ Walker said.

‘There’s some kind of thick liquid down here, like a barrier.’

‘I don’t know how far out you are, but if you want to return to shore you should do so soon; either that or return to the surface and fill up your tanks.’

‘Roger that,’ Goodwin said and turned to follow the dark wall’s perimeter. ‘I’ll go to the surface and then dive back down.’

By means of a digital tracker on his helmet’s screen, Goodwin realised the wall traced the path of a circle. He couldn’t tell by vision alone, but it was definitely an arc, at least, and considering the pentagram he’d decoded within the lake’s boundaries, this could be significant indeed.

Treading through the water like an astronaut on another planet, Goodwin reached a section where the ground fell away, the vertical drop followed down by the strange black obstruction. Unable to go any further, he decided to test the wall’s resistance. Sliding his fingers across its surface, deep swirls eddied out. He pushed into it and his hand disappeared inside its blackness. For a moment nothing happened and then an image of horror flashed before his eyes and fear tore through him. Something grasped his hand and dragged him deeper. Terrified, Goodwin pulled back as hard as he could. His arm came free and he glided back in the water.

Something touched his leg and he jerked round. A scaled tail vanished into the abyss and Goodwin scoured the dark before his helmet was knocked sideways.

A massive catfish sailed past overhead, long barbels flowing from beneath its giant mouth. The creature swam back towards him, black eyes distracted by his light.

Goodwin’s breathing sounded loud in his ears, his chest rising and falling in quick succession.

The fish turned away, but as it departed it twitched and thrashed as a monstrous reptilian eel cut across it, its tooth-ridden maw severing the catfish’s head from its body. Blood flowed into the water and more armoured fish appeared to feast in a frenzied mass of tails, fins and gaping mouths. The first animal consumed the head in a few bone crunching bites before spying Goodwin watching it. The creature reared in the water, its flared head waving from side to side like a snake.

Plate-sized eyes locked in on its prey and Goodwin took a step back before the beast dived straight at him. With no time to think, he launched himself into the wall of black.

Thick viscous fluid engulfed him, swallowing him into its density. Pure terror descended, eviscerating all calm. He felt his throat collapse and horrific images attacked his mind, strobe-like and intense. Black oil seeped into his helmet, forcing the clear water out. Soon it would cover his eyes and clog his equipment. He thrust out with his legs, seeking the surface, but he could no longer tell up from down. Drifting in the oozing oil, fear constricted his chest and pierced his stomach. A sense of death clamped down on his mind.

I’m going to die
.

As the thought formed Goodwin felt a presence at his side, a presence so real he could almost touch it.
Is this my guide into the afterlife, the angel of my death
? The being at his side – unseen, but tangible – turned his mind tranquil. His throat released and he swam forward, trusting in this source of serenity. No matter where it led him, it had already saved him from fear. Moving as if in a dream, Goodwin saw tiny branches of electricity ripple toward him through the oil, which had grown semi-transparent. Sparking tendrils passed over his body like a wave and an abstract vision of Joseph tilting his bottle of water flared into remembrance. Goodwin realised the dark liquid that pooled inside his helmet created a flat plane as it rose, indicating the pull of gravity and the direction of down. Using this reference he struck out for up.

Warning symbols flashed on his helmet’s screen before a single message appeared:

System Failure

The air from his mask ceased and the black ooze crept over his eyes, which he was unable to close. His arms and legs twitched into inactivity and a spark of light ignited his optic nerves, searing a vision into his brain. A face, a tower, a planet. The smoke trail of a blazing comet as it impacted the Earth. Images of a strange world cascaded across his mind’s eye, of peoples transported to distant lands. A beautiful Anakim woman opened her mouth and spoke to him without words. Goodwin didn’t understand her meaning, only the feeling of welcome induced. He felt enriched in soul before the face changed into one of horrific fury. Goodwin felt his pulse quicken before the scene filled his mind, sharp teeth and a roar of sound blinding him in a burst of light.

A shimmer of tiny blue atoms coalesced around his spasming body in the dark liquid that had claimed him for its own. Richard Goodwin floated adrift in unconscious rotation. His quest had found its end.

Chapter Fifty Nine

‘Why aren’t we dead?’

Eric looked confused. Jessica was too. She looked at the wallscreen and its static fuzz. There were no two ways about it, they should be scattered across the Chilean desert in a thousand pieces. She’d just seen the rocket sent to kill them destroy its target – at least that’s how it had appeared – and yet they all still lived. How?

‘Unless we
are
dead.’ Eric pinched himself. ‘Ow.’

With some effort, Professor Steiner stood up. ‘I believe your friend was playing Joiner for a fool. Isn’t that right, Bic?’

‘To have reached a position of such import and power,’ Bic said via the room’s speakers, ‘Malcolm Joiner is no fool, Professor Steiner, as you must know. He is a great adversary, although, he has revealed himself and now I know who is pulling the strings behind this part of the veil.’

‘And you think that will help you?’ Steiner said. ‘Joiner has influence no one man should have. I know that to my cost. If you think you can outsmart him and the tens of thousands of GMRC and government personnel under his control, then you’re mistaken.’

‘I have just demonstrated I can outsmart him, Professor Steiner. I will do as I must, as must you, as must we all.’

‘So he hasn’t found us?’ Eric said.

‘No,’ Bic replied, ‘but I found him.’

Jessica saw the professor’s expression change to one of concern. The ex-GMRC man’s body no longer shook from trauma, but his hands still quivered a little and Jessica laid a compassionate hand on his arm in an attempt to still his distress.

Steiner gave her an appreciative smile in response.

‘Where is he?’ Eric asked Bic.

‘All in good time, Eric. For now we should rejoice that he believes you no longer live.’

‘And why’s that?’ Jessica said.

No sound came from the speakers and then Bic spoke again. ‘The dead do not pose a threat, Jessica Klein.’

Jessica looked out of the window. ‘So where are we, then?’

‘You
are
in South America, but Peru rather than Chile.’

Brett pointed at the military drone outside. ‘How did you manage to stop them seeing the plane? It’s not exactly small.’

‘The aircraft came replete with a remote UAV,’ Bic said, ‘designed specifically to replicate the radar signature of the larger craft. Without satellite telemetry due to the dust cloud the military’s powers of tracking their enemies has been reduced. I managed to fly the smaller craft to a hangar near the Atacama telescope array in Chile and left its systems active to draw attention. Combine that with the trace they thought they’d executed and you have a convincing target.’

Jessica could tell Brett was impressed, despite her misgivings about the terrorist himself.

‘But if they blew up ALMA, how can we track this mysterious signal?’ Eric said.

A blind on the far side of the room whirred into life and another set of windows appeared. ‘Observe,’ Bic said, ‘the Two Square Kilometre Array. The TSKA.’

Jessica moved to the window and looked out into near total darkness. Slowly her eyes adjusted to the faint sunlight that penetrated the dense shroud above. Beyond, vast numbers of radio telescopes loomed, their massive concave dishes angled up to the heavens like the heads of giant flowers with a single petal.

Jessica gazed up, envisioning the smoke trail from a missile that headed straight for them. ‘Won’t they realise their mistake and find us here?’

‘They may well do, Jessica Klein, which is why you must not delay for too long. Professor Steiner,’ Bic said, ‘things have changed, loyalties are warped and motives skewed, are you willing to help us now that Malcolm Joiner has admitted to the mass murder of your friends and colleagues?’

♦

Professor Steiner wrung his hands to quell his trembling as he pondered the question. His fury at Joiner for killing those in Steadfast had created a well of interminable rage which had infused his being and reignited the fire in his soul. As he’d sat listening to Joiner’s words, his whole body had shook. It was if the malicious words had sparked something within him. It had felt like coming out of a dream into a nightmare. Terrifying fear had filled him, rendering him incapable of speech or deed. As he’d sat, incapacitated, a flood of images had bombarded his mind. Scenes from his time in prison, his beatings, the horrifying sensations he’d suppressed, all rushed back to torment him. But this time, rather than fleeing to another time and place in his imagination, he’d held on, anchoring himself to the present and Joiner’s goading, while at the same time imagining the safest place on heaven and Earth, a summer’s eve and the loving embrace of his wife, Amelia.

Even now the energy that had been trapped in his system released, sending fresh shivers coursing through his system. As the shaking decreased, he felt the renewal of mental and physical acuity bringing his body back into realignment. He felt strength coursing through his veins and yet for all this, and despite the loss of Steadfast, he still refused to jeopardise the Subterranean Programme. Joiner may have destroyed one base for reasons still best known to himself, but no matter how evil that act was, it would not break Steiner’s last resolve. ‘How do you know they were my friends?’ he said in answer to Bic’s plea for help.

‘Because of the change in your manner,’ Bic said. ‘You have regained your voice. Power is in your blood, Professor Steiner. You are a leader of men, you cannot let this injustice lie, it is not in your nature.

‘And what do you know of my nature? We’ve only just met.’

‘Have we, Professor Steiner?’

Steiner didn’t know what to say to that.

‘Your voice and actions give you away,’ Brett said. ‘He’s profiling you, don’t believe anything he says.’

Steiner glanced in her direction, but Bic’s words rang true in his mind.
Have we met before? Do I know this man? It feels like I do
.