2041 Sanctuary (Let There Be Light) (52 page)

‘And what would you have me do?’ Priest said, keeping his voice low so those behind wouldn’t overhear. ‘This was his plan, he’s put us in the firing line and now he’s paying the price. As will you when they realise there’s no one stopping them from using you as they want.’

Rebecca felt a shiver of fear ripple through her. ‘What about you?’

‘What about me?’ he said.

Rebecca looked at him as he watched Walker continue his journey into the unknown.
I’ll find no help here
, she thought.

She went to say something else, but movement in the water caught her eye. ‘What’s that?’

A shimmer of light swam below the surface towards an oblivious Walker, who was now waist deep.

Priest swore, took aim and fired.

Walker spun round at the sound just as a translucent form erupted out of the water to carry him under.

Shouts of alarm came from behind and the soldiers moved forward as one, guns raised.

‘It’s that fucking thing!’ a man said, sounding terrified.

‘The light,’ another said, searching the black with his weapon, ‘it’s the light!’

Circular ripples expanded out from where Walker had stood, while the thing that had taken him was no longer visible.

Priest pointed. ‘There!’

The top of Walker’s helmet surfaced six feet from where he’d disappeared and the corporal stood up in the lake’s shallows to face them, his hands raised. A translucent form hovered behind him, dripping water and sporting a pair of glowing eyes.

‘Hold your fire!’ Walker said.

A cascade of white sparks engulfed the being that held Walker in its embrace. Black armour appeared, glinting wet in the torchlight from onshore.

A strong female voice rang out. ‘Drop your weapons!’

Rebecca’s hopes soared.
Darklight have arrived!

‘Hold fast!’ Priest said to his men, keeping his gun trained on Walker and his new found companion.

A gun appeared beside Walker’s head. ‘I said drop your weapons!’ the woman said again.

‘I don’t think so.’ Priest turned his gun on Rebecca. ‘I give you to the count of three to let Walker go, or the girl dies.’

Rebecca felt her legs go weak.

‘One,’ Priest said.

The Darklight operative’s gun remained pressed against Walker’s helmet.

Priest took aim at Rebecca’s head. ‘Two!’

‘Alright, alright!’ The Darklight woman held up her gun and moved past Walker.

The threat of death passed and one of Priest’s men waded into the water to take possession of the woman’s weaponry.

Walking onto dry land, the soldier removed her helmet and shook out long, raven hair. ‘The major will have all your heads for this,’ Lieutenant Manaus said, ‘you know that don’t you?’

Priest remained wary. ‘Where’s the rest of your team?’

‘Close.’

‘She’s lying,’ Walker said, approaching, ‘if there was anyone else we’d all be dead by now.’

Shouting erupted in the darkness beyond, where the rest of the twenty-eight strong decontamination unit stood guard.

All the soldiers swung round as one of their number appeared out of the pitch-black, pushing someone before him.

Rebecca’s eyes widened in shock. ‘Joseph?!’ She ran to her ward, who grasped her in a fierce embrace before burrowing his head into her shoulder.

‘What’s he doing here?’ Walker said.

Manaus frowned. ‘He must have followed me from camp.’

‘He’s lucky we didn’t shoot him,’ said the man who’d escorted him in.

‘I’m sorry,’ Manaus said to Rebecca, ‘I saw him near your tent; I never imagined he would—’

The Darklight lieutenant caught sight of Goodwin’s body and gasped. Pushing aside the soldiers, she dropped to his side. ‘What happened to him?’ She looked from Walker to Priest and then to Rebecca.

Rebecca fought back more tears, while stroking Joseph’s hair. ‘He drowned in the lake,’ she said, keeping the sight of Goodwin’s corpse from Joseph.

The lieutenant felt for a pulse.

‘We tried CPR,’ Walker said, ‘for a long time.’

Manaus looked to Rebecca for confirmation and she nodded her head.

The Darklight officer stood up. ‘So, what’s your plan now, gentlemen? Hide out here until Offiah’s teams find you? You won’t last a week.’

‘There’s a way out,’ one of the men said.

‘And he’s going to find it.’ Priest pointed at Walker.

Manaus glanced in the corporal’s direction and understanding dawned on her. ‘So it’s everyone for themselves, is that it?’

‘Something like that,’ Priest said, ‘and if he fails, you’re next.’

‘Is that so?’ The lieutenant stood her ground as some of the men closed in around her.

A cry of anguish drew everyone’s attention as Joseph squirmed out of Rebecca’s grasp. The handicapped man fell to his knees and grabbed Goodwin’s shoulders. He shook the lifeless body and his cries of fear and loss increased. Rebecca moved to his side to try and pull him away, but Joseph pushed her off. He drew Goodwin to him and rocked him back and forth like a child with a doll. The director’s head lolled to one side and a trickle of black fluid ran from his mouth, and then Lieutenant Manaus was there, pushing Joseph aside.

‘Someone take him!’ Manaus said, struggling to hold Joseph at bay.

Rebecca grabbed Joseph and hauled him away while the lieutenant rolled Goodwin onto his side and pounded on his back.

A gush of thick ooze burst from his mouth, the inky slime flickering with tiny glimmers of blue lightning.

Manaus lay Goodwin onto his back and opened an eyelid. The same flicker of energy swept across his iris. His dilated pupil contracted and Manaus restarted the chest compressions before breathing two rescue breaths into his mouth.

The director’s body spasmed in response.

‘Come on, damn it!’ Manaus said, restarting the compressions. ‘Come back to us, Director!’

Chapter Sixty Three

A million fish swam in the deep blue seas of eternity, tiny minds living and breathing as one. Sweeping arcs of colour shimmered through the ocean blue as the shoal ducked and weaved like a three-dimensional spirograph of life. Patterns infinitesimal and grand merged and exploded into a chaos of nothing while the wonder of the sunlight shone bright through the waves above. The ultimate essence of beauty in a ’verse of dark, the light of a single star pulsed vibrant, a life source of energy unlike any other in the system of creation. Seasons came and went. Stars scudded across changing skies, black to blue, red to black. Plants grew, bloomed and died before the transitions slowed. A summer dawn broke against a beach of universal energy. At its heart a single burning light throbbed with a spark of life like the passion of Christ, the desire for resurrection vast. Unquenched by the fires of dark, the mind returned as the air-filled lungs recovered their might. A steady pulse beating in time to another’s. Pulse, pulse, pulse …

‘Come back to us, Director!’

‘They’re calling you,’ said a deep voice that echoed through time and space.

The consciousness that was, felt confused. ‘Who are you?’

‘Who are you?’ his voice echoed. ‘… are you … are you … are you?’

‘You know who I am,’ the voice said, its rumbling resonance shaking his soul. ‘It is you that is without self. Who are you?’

The mind pondered the question, but the answer remained elusive. ‘I am no one. I am lost.’

‘Lost … lost … lost,’ said his echo.

The voice boomed out again. ‘We are all lost.’ It paused. ‘None of us is perfect.’

‘Except you,’ said the mind.

The voice laughed, the pitch turning human. ‘So you do remember me.’

A vision of a preening bird flared before him. The animal paused as if listening before using its beak to beat a tap tap tap in rhythm to his thoughts.

‘But who am I? Where am I?’

The voice sounded pleased. ‘You are nowhere, as am I.’

‘Is this real?’

‘As real as real is now.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

The voice chuckled. ‘I know, but I cannot answer what I do not know.’

Another voice made the mind twist its perception.

‘You should go,’ said the voice, ‘they’re waiting for you.’

‘What about you?’ The mind felt scared.
I don’t want him to go!

‘Don’t be frightened,’ said the voice as if reading his thoughts. ‘We will meet again.’

The sound of fluttering wings resounded in his mind and a small bird flew away into the light.

‘Professor, wait!’

A tsunami of light and sound swamped his senses and Richard Goodwin opened his eyes, emerging from the strangest of dreams like a newborn child from the forbidden canal of death.

An angel spoke to him. ‘Can you hear me, sir?’

‘Richard, can you understand us?’ another being said. ‘Say something.’

Goodwin reached out and touched the face of a smiling man, the innocence of spirit powerful in its purity.

The man grinned and a flood of memories ignited Goodwin’s scrambled mind.

‘Joseph,’ he said, looking from the young man to Rebecca. ‘I had the oddest of dreams.’

‘Sir, can you sit up?’

Goodwin switched his attention to Lieutenant Manaus. He gave a nod and the Darklight officer helped him into a sitting position before nausea and coughing doubled him over. A pressure built in his stomach and he retched up a mixture of water and oil. Wiping his mouth, he tried to stand.

‘Slowly, sir,’ Manaus said, helping him up, ‘you’ve been through quite an ordeal.’

‘How long was I out?’

Rebecca held onto his other side. ‘You were unresponsive for a long time.’

‘How long?’

‘Long enough that you shouldn’t be walking and talking,’ Walker said.

‘Which was?’

The corporal shrugged. ‘Fifty minutes, maybe longer.’

‘Fifty minutes?’ Goodwin turned to the Darklight officer. ‘But I feel fine, great even.’

‘I don’t know what to say, sir.’ Manaus prodded at the black ooze with a foot. ‘Maybe this material had something to do with it. It gave off some sort of electrical charge when it came out of you.’

Goodwin thought back to his time in the lake and the wall of oil beneath the surface, the sea within a sea, and the nightmarish visions that had struck at his sanity, and his fight for life. ‘How did I end up here?’

Walker gestured at himself and the suit that mirrored Goodwin’s own. ‘I came to the rescue.’

‘Only because you wanted the director’s escape route,’ Manaus said, ‘otherwise you’d have left him for dead.’

Walker put his hands up to Goodwin. ‘She’s not wrong. What can I say? I’m a survivor.’

‘Where’s the rest of your team, Lieutenant?’ Goodwin indicated to the two women he was able to stand under his own steam.

‘Sorry, sir, I’m on my own.’

Goodwin looked around at the armed men of Walker’s decontamination team. ‘But they’ll be arriving soon?’

‘Offiah has despatched a team led by Captain Winter,’ Manaus said, ‘and yes, they’ll be here soon.’

‘And if you believe that you’ll believe anything,’ Walker said, ‘isn’t that right lads?’

Goodwin saw animosity on the faces surrounding them, with no small amount aimed Corporal Walker’s way.

The man Walker referred to as Priest stepped forward. ‘It remains to be seen if the rest of Darklight are turning up,’ he said, ‘but if they do we’ll be ready for them and you’ll be back in that lake searching for your way out.’

Rebecca grasped Goodwin’s arm protectively. ‘He can’t go back in there; we’ve only just brought him back!’

Priest glanced around at his men. ‘I can’t help that, and besides, he said he’s fine, feeling great, which means he goes.’

Walker held out his headwear to Goodwin with a smile. ‘Godspeed, Director.’

‘And that goes for you, too.’ Priest tapped the corporal’s helmet with the tip of his rifle.

‘What?’ Walker’s smile fell from his face, his nervous tics roaring to the fore. ‘You don’t need two of us in there; if we both fail then you won’t have any more equipment unless you go back to camp.’ Walker looked round at the soldiers. ‘Surely you can all see that?’

Priest shoved the corporal towards the lake, making him stumble. ‘Twice the manpower, twice the chance of success.’ He gestured to Goodwin. ‘Now suit up, both of you.’

Goodwin hesitated.

‘Now,’ Priest said, raising his gun.

Goodwin sighed, retrieved his helmet and transparent breathing mask, and joined Walker at the lake’s edge. Bending down, he washed out the black filth that had nearly killed him and looked at Walker who was ready for the off. ‘Do you ever have bad dreams, Corporal?’

He gave Goodwin a funny look. ‘Sometimes, why?’

‘Because where we’re going your mind will be tested to its limit.’

Walker held his gaze before Manaus moved forward to help Goodwin secure the breathing apparatus and to check all its systems still functioned. While she was doing this Walker used the pause in proceedings as an opportunity to press home his needs to Priest.

‘I don’t give a damn what’s down there,’ Priest said, ‘you’re not having a gun.’

As the two men argued, Manaus helped Goodwin with his mask.

‘Does Major Offiah even know you’re here?’ Goodwin whispered.

The lieutenant gave a small shake of her head. ‘No one knows.’

‘Why?’

‘I saw Walker and his men had taken Darklight kit. I couldn’t risk them intercepting the transmission.’

‘So they’re not coming?’

‘They’ll find us … eventually.’

‘Why are you helping me?’

‘Because I believe—’

Manaus fell silent as Priest approached.

He pushed the Darklight woman aside and finished preparing Goodwin for submersion. When he’d completed the process, clicking the final latches of the helmet into place, he pressed the hilt of a large knife into Goodwin’s hand. ‘For protection,’ he said, standing back.

Walker rejoined him and brandished his own serrated blade. ‘Better than nothing, eh, Director?’

Goodwin noted the bitter irony in the corporal’s tone. He had to admit he shared his scepticism, especially after seeing what lurked down in the depths. They might as well have given him a toothpick for the good it would do. But, unlike his reluctant companion, Goodwin knew a greater power was at work and a divine mission could not be stopped, no matter what stood in its way.