Extinction

1

‘They’re behind us,’ Leanne Harnas whispered urgently across the cabin of the fast-moving SUV, almost as if she expected her pursuers to be able to hear her.

Karl Janklow could see the headlights in his rear-view mirror. Three vehicles, approaching fast. Gaining on them. His nerves threatened to get the better of him as he manoeuvred the vehicle down the treacherous, snow-covered mountain road. Huge trees veered up on either side of him, cutting out all natural light from the stars and moon and making the route seem all but impassable. And yet he knew the road was just fine; indeed, he’d driven this way home for the past three years. He tried to rein in his paranoia. So there were vehicles behind them; so what? Plenty of other people lived off base, many of them in the same small town as Janklow did.

But this time, Janklow had no intention of ever going back; he and Leanne had discussed the matter at length, and both had decided that they needed to go public with what was going on at the base. And now that they had made that decision, and acted upon it, the fear that they had been discovered was running cold through both of them.

‘If they knew,’ Leanne said, ‘why didn’t they stop us at the gate?’

Janklow increased speed, the big SUV threatening to tilt over and go spinning into the trees at every turn. He shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he answered, knowing it was a lie. He knew the reason. Colonel Anderson had let them leave the base so that they could be killed out here, in the wilderness. Away from prying eyes.

His foot pressed the accelerator harder, and the wide tyres struggled to keep a grip on the icy forest road. He saw the headlights fall away behind him and allowed himself a grin of triumph.

It was short-lived; the lights were back again just moments later, closing the gap even further. Should he risk turning off into the treeline? If he could just get round the next bend fast enough, break through a gap into the trees and turn his lights off, Anderson and his men might go shooting straight past them.

It was worth a try, he decided, increasing his speed even more as they shot towards another corner.

‘Slow down!’ Leanne screamed at him, as she felt the tyres giving way under the heavy vehicle. ‘We’re going to—’

The sound of automatic gunfire drowned her words. In the mirrors, Janklow saw flashes of light erupting from the vehicles behind him. He felt the impact of bullets hitting his car, heard the windows shatter. He struggled to control the car as one of the tyres was blown out.

He turned to Leanne to tell her to hang on but saw only her lifeless body sagging in the seat next to him, head lolling uselessly on her chest, a round having blasted straight through the back of her seat into her body. Only then did he realize that the windscreen was covered in blood, pierced and webbed where the bullet had passed out of her body and carried on forwards.

He felt instantly nauseous, and vomited over the steering wheel and dashboard even as another tyre was blasted out and his car finally, spectacularly, went spinning off the mountain road into the trees beyond.

Colonel Easton Anderson stepped out of his jeep and smelt the air, picking up the scents of gun smoke and leaking gasoline. Good. This business would finally be put to rest.

Not so very long ago, Karl Janklow had seen the computer of a technician who had been working on the base’s covert sub-programme. The technician had gone straight to Anderson to tell him. Anderson had chastized him for his lack of attention to security but was happy the man had had the balls to admit he had messed up. They had put surveillance on Janklow straight away, and Anderson was perturbed, although not entirely surprised, when the computer expert had started to hack the internal system. Anderson had ordered some files to be moved, others to be changed, but there was still enough to alarm anyone looking.

Anderson had allowed Janklow to probe, all the while monitoring his every step. Although it appeared that he had stumbled upon the covert project by accident, there was always the possibility that he was working for someone else — the police, the government, a foreign government. Anderson was responsible for the programme’s security, and he had to know if there was someone behind Janklow.

It soon became apparent that there wasn’t, but then the man had confided in one of his colleagues, Leanne Harnas — a woman Janklow was having some sort of on-again, off-again romance with — and Anderson knew the moment was coming when he would have to act.

The very next day, Janklow and Harnas had announced their intention to take a weekend trip together. It was a trip Anderson could never allow to happen, and yet he didn’t want to take care of the pair back at the base; there were too many people, too many questions that would be asked.

And so here he was now, having followed them from the base and gunned them down. He would have liked a cleaner method, but Janklow had to be stopped in the woods, in the middle of nowhere. Things would be much easier to tidy up this way, arranged to look like some sort of unfortunate car crash.

His attention was caught by one of his men, waving from the wreckage of Janklow’s SUV.

‘What is it?’ Anderson called over.

‘Janklow’s not here, sir!’ came the immediate reply.

Anderson sprinted towards the car until he could see the bloody remains of Leanne Harnas, half thrown through the bloody windscreen.

‘Check the area! Maybe he was thrown clear.’

Men moved off, torches up to illuminate the snow-filled woods. If Janklow had been thrown through the windscreen, there was no way he would have survived at that speed, and yet…

‘Sir!’ came another cry, over towards the other side of the road.

Anderson went over, saw the tracks the soldier was pointing at with his torch. They were the tracks made by a man on skis, and led downhill, away from the mountaintop and down to the small civilian town at the bottom.

Damn it! Anderson restrained the urge to punch the trunk of the nearest tree. He called over to the crew of one of the vehicles which had come with them, a big ten-ton truck.

‘OK,’ he shouted, ‘get the snowmobiles deployed, right now!’

As Janklow veered in and out of the trees, the pitch dark was almost all-enveloping, causing him on more than one occasion to nearly ski straight into one of the huge trees that made up this sub-arctic forest. He managed to adjust his course every time, at just the right moment; the darkness wasn’t quite complete, sufficient light filtered down from the moon to aid his progress.

His head throbbed from the crash, but the airbag had deployed and probably saved his life. He had known there was no point in checking but he had felt for Leanne’s pulse nevertheless, having to suppress the urge to vomit again as he held back the mop of bloody hair to feel for the carotid artery at the neck. There had been nothing.

He choked back his tears, bitterly regretting that he had got her into this situation in the first place.

Janklow kept skis in the back of the SUV. Shorter than conventional skis, they were designed for cross-country use, a sport he enjoyed and one of the reasons why he had chosen this remote posting. He’d made it across the road with his skis and boots just seconds before Anderson’s team had arrived on the scene, and was off down the mountain before Anderson reached the annihilated SUV.

But now, with the cold wind whipping against his face as he shot down the mountain, weaving in and out of the trees, he heard the sound of engines behind him, high-pitched, straining. Snowmobiles.

He knew they would be able to catch him but he would not give up. The will to survive, to live, overrode his fear, adrenalin pushing him further and faster than he would have thought possible. Part of his mind wanted to give up, to just sit down in the snow and wait for the killers to finish him off. But a deeper part, one he never knew existed within him, spurred him on. And so he continued his run for freedom.

Colonel Anderson piloted the lead snowmobile, leading a squad of four vehicles down the mountain, powerful headlights letting him see all obstacles long before he reached them.

He knew Janklow had a head start, but against engine power, the man had no chance. And the tracks in the snow were as clear as day.

Anderson admired the man for his efforts, and the evening’s action was certainly a diverting change from the normal routine, but it would soon be at an end.

The sound of the snowmobiles was louder now, and the snow around Janklow was lit up by the snowmobiles’ headlights.

And then the terrifying sound of gunfire penetrated the still air once more, and Janklow watched in terror as the soft snow was ploughed up around him, missing his skis by inches.

He swerved in and out of the trees faster, cutting down at an angle across the mountain to a narrow pass that he thought the larger vehicles might not get through.

He saw the lights turn to follow him, bullets ripping up more of the snow. He hit a shelf and jumped, flying through the cold air for what seemed an eternity before landing, taking the shock through his knees and hips, careening up on to a single leg before regaining his balance and carrying on down the steep slope.

He heard gunfire again, felt something hit the back of his arm. Looking down, he saw a gaping wound in his coat at the bicep, and realized he’d been shot, the bullet passing straight through his arm. He felt dizzy, started to lose balance, but then his peripheral vision caught movement, and he momentarily forgot about the pain and shock and turned to see what it was.

His eyes went wide as he saw two small bear cubs. They stopped playing and watched him. Even as he carried on down the hill, his mind processed the information that the bear cubs were scared. And that would mean—

The adult bear came charging towards him, snow churning up behind it, teeth bared and reflecting dimly in the faint moonlight. Janklow’s heart almost stopped, but he aimed himself towards a log with a drift of snow lying up its side. He sailed up it just as the huge animal reached out for him. He flew off the other side in a high arc, hit the ground and stumbled, blood loss from his arm making his coordination suffer, and then he was rolling, the skis striking the ground and flying off into the trees beyond, his body curling into a pain-filled ball as it shot down the mountainside.

Anderson recognized the sound and knew he should avoid the area but he simply didn’t have the time, and before he knew it his headlights picked up the ferocious image of a bear charging through the snow towards him. He pulled off left at the last minute and his snowmobile slammed straight into a tree and sent him sailing through the air.

The bear brought its great paws crashing down on to the front of the second snowmobile, crushing it instantly and sending the pilot tumbling across the snow. The huge beast ignored the man, now curled into a ball on the ground in a last-ditch effort to protect himself, and launched herself at the last two snowmobiles which were trying to take evasive action. One swipe of the bear’s huge paw sent one driver flying into the trunk of a nearby tree. Directly behind, the driver of the fourth snowmobile piloted the craft straight into the animal. The driver was thrown from the snowmobile, but the bear was propelled backwards, letting out a roar of pain and anger as she came down on to all fours.

Anderson, covered in snow, used the momentary distraction to get to his knees. Using the broken snowmobile as a rest, he laid his rifle on the top and aimed at the bear through the weapon’s night sight.

The bear, recovering and still protecting her cubs from the perceived threat, reared back once more on to her hind legs, raising her arms above her head, ready to smash them down into the body of the driver which had hit her. And then her chest erupted in a spray of blood as Anderson opened fire, peppering the thousand-pound mammal with an entire magazine of high-velocity ammunition.

Anderson watched in wonder as the bear stood still for several moments, as if contemplating her injuries. Anderson was halfway through reloading his rifle when finally, with a deep, rumbling groan, the huge animal fell to the ground, dead.

Moments later, ignorant of the danger, the two cubs came bounding over, nuzzling the dead bear and emitting wailing cries.

Anderson ignored them, anger taking over. The snowmobiles were out of action, and who knew what state his men were in.

With a sigh of resignation, he accepted that Karl Janklow had escaped.

Janklow finally came to rest at the bottom of the mountain. Even though the snow was thick and deep, he had still smashed into fallen branches, rocks and stones on his way down. He was badly battered and barely conscious. He staggered to his feet, half falling through the last of the trees, and stumbled out of the forest on to the dark grey asphalt of a road.

He turned one way, then the other, and saw lights heading towards him.

He held back, worried it might be more soldiers from the base, but then he saw the multi-levelled lights and realized it was a commercial truck. Almost delirious with the joy of a survivor, he stepped out into the road, waving his good arm frantically.

The truck sounded its horn, and Janklow wondered if it was going to hit him and end everything right there and then; but then the brakes were applied, and the huge truck started to slow down.

By the time the truck driver got out of the cab to help him, Janklow had passed out and lay unconscious on the icy road, his head filled with a single thought before oblivion.

I’ve made it.

2

Alyssa Durham’s fingers pinched the tiny outcrop of rock with a vice-like grip, the sides of her painfully tight climbing shoes pressed against the almost sheer surface for added traction.

She was free-climbing a one-hundred-foot granite cliff face, a short climb for her but made difficult due to the low temperature, which ensured the wall was covered in a thin layer of ice.

In earlier years, she would have done the climb as a free solo, without ropes for protection, but now, as the lone parent of a beautiful eight-year-old daughter, she was not willing to risk making that child an orphan. And so she used ropes, but only to save her if she fell — she wouldn’t use them as an aid in her climbing.

Her daughter, Anna, was higher up the mountain, skiing. Alyssa was a good skier herself, but Anna was something else — she’d started at the age of five and shown a natural aptitude for it. They went to the mountains every opportunity they got, which wasn’t as much as Alyssa would have liked. Her job was demanding, and there was only one of her, after all, but it was enough for Anna to have become pretty incredible for an eight-year-old.

The trips had started after the death of her husband, Patrick. He had contracted a rare form of degenerative disease at a shockingly young age, and Alyssa had nursed him for twelve painful months before — mercifully for him, agonizingly for her and Anna — he had quietly passed away one night. She had cried for hours — helpless tears, hopeless tears — but had gathered herself before Anna woke. She needed to be strong for her, and although both Alyssa’s parents and Patrick’s parents were a huge help, the fact of the matter — at least as Alyssa saw it — was that Anna was her responsibility, and nobody else’s. And she was now all that remained of Patrick.

Anna herself had found it hard to deal with her father’s death. He had been ill for some time and had not been involved in her upbringing during that final, painful year, but the gap that he left was difficult for a young girl to deal with. Where’s Daddy? she would ask incessantly, especially before bedtime, when he used to read stories to her before kissing her goodnight. When’s Daddy coming home? It was hard for Alyssa to explain, and Anna had cried for days, for weeks, and Alyssa had cried along with her.

It wasn’t until their first trip into the mountains, a few months after Patrick’s death, that Anna had started to come round. The magical quality of the snow, the serene peace of the valleys, the majesty of the mountains themselves had shown Anna another view of the world, perhaps of something beyond it, and given her hope; and Alyssa had felt it too, the pull of something beyond, the first faint rays of a life beyond the one that had been wrenched so terribly from them.

Alyssa and Patrick had been winter sports addicts — skiing, snowboarding, ice climbing; anything that could be done, they would do it. They had even met on a mountain, thousands of miles from home, and when holiday romance had bloomed they were delighted to find they lived only a hundred miles from one another back home. Alyssa’s first love was climbing, and had been since she was a little girl, but Patrick’s was snowboarding, and he had shown her everything he knew. They were wonderful years, those early years, getting away whenever work let them. She was an up-and-coming journalist, cutting her teeth on the local papers but determined to break into the nationals; he was an up-and-coming public prosecutor, destined for the DA’s office. But then Anna had come along, and it wasn’t so easy to get away any more. They hadn’t regretted it, not for a second; on the contrary, their years of adventure were simply put aside as other priorities took hold.

But when Patrick died, the first place Alyssa had thought to take Anna — after the worst of the grieving was over and behind them — was the mountains. If Patrick had loved them, she thought, maybe Anna would too. And she had, with a wild abandon, and for the first time in as long as she could remember Alyssa had felt free, the strains of her life miraculously lifted.

Anna had wanted to ski. She was adamant about that, having watched as people shot down the slopes, leaning first one way and then the other, slicing through the snow in graceful arcs.

Alyssa had taught her at first, and the first season had just been the basics — how to put on the equipment, how to stand, how to move, and then the first few tentative movements down the training slopes — and Anna had loved it. Alyssa had seen the excitement in her eyes, the joy of being a little girl that had been absent for so long, and had almost wept with happiness herself.

Further visits to the slopes had shown that Anna was moving beyond her mother’s teaching limits, and so Alyssa started to arrange more expert instruction. This was what had led them here, to the special training centre in the heart of the western mountains, where Anna was undergoing the first stage of selection for the national team. Alyssa was probably even more nervous than Anna was, but however Anna did, it didn’t matter. The girl was perfect whatever happened.

Alyssa, at a loose end for a couple of hours at the foot of the mountain, had decided to get a little exercise of her own, and the pull of climbing — the sharp surge of adrenalin flooding her bloodstream, the overcoming of physical barriers, the feeling of accomplishment when a wall, a rockface, a mountain, had been conquered — had been too much to resist.

The wall was a real battle, full of tiny holds that required all sorts of gymnastic contortions to reach; hard enough without the ice, nearly impossible with it. But she persevered, gaining an inch here, an inch there, pulling herself up the cliff face through sheer determination.

And finally she was there, levering herself on to the top shelf of rock where she sat for several moments to gather her breath. Then she got to her feet and gazed out across the glorious scenery around, above and below her.

She shielded her eyes from the sun, and could see the ski school on one of the slopes in the distance. Squinting hard, she could make out twelve kids, two assessors. She could even make out Anna in her bright orange parka, waiting at the top, listening to the instructions of the experts, and then she was off, skiing down the mountainside, and Alyssa’s heart filled with pride as she watched.

Anna was at the bottom of the slope just a few minutes later, an instructor was talking to her; Alyssa guessed — hoped — he was telling her how well she had done.

And then Anna and another little girl waddled away to the side, and waited for the chair lift to take them back to the top. Alyssa watched as the tiny chairs scooped them both off the ground, the lift operator closing the T-bar over them as it went on its way.

She stamped her feet and rubbed her arms; she was dressed for climbing, not for standing around watching, and her jacket and boots were back down at the bottom. She checked her watch. Just after half past one. Anna’s lesson was scheduled to finish at two, so she knew she’d have to start making a move.

She was considering whether she had time to climb down or whether just to abseil with the rope, when she heard it. The horrifying screech of tortured metal, then a gut-wrenching snapping sound that could only be…

Her eyes found the chair lift immediately, and she felt as if she’d been slammed in the stomach with a baseball bat. The chairs had stopped moving upwards, the cables immobile as the seats swung backwards and forwards underneath.

There was a double cable arrangement, and as Alyssa’s eyes scoured the length of the lift, she saw that one of the cables was broken, the snapping sound she had heard echoing across the valley. The chair next to the break hung precariously, sixty feet over the rocky mountainside. She stared more intently, shielding her eyes against the crystal-clear winter sun, and almost fell to her knees as she saw the little girl in the orange parka screaming as the chair started to tilt and slip from the cable.

Alyssa was at the training centre within minutes, having instantly launched herself from the cliff top, taking the hundred feet in just three bounds with the rope.

She now stood in a crowd of dozens, all looking up at the single chair as it moved further and further to one side, tilting towards the vertical, the two little girls screaming as they struggled to hold on.

‘That’s my baby!’ a woman to her left shrieked, hysterical. ‘That’s my baby!’ the woman kept on repeating, louder and louder, as her husband pulled her close, a look of terror on his own face.

The other chairs looked stable, not yet under threat from the broken cable, but the children were all crying, shouting and screaming nevertheless, their parents back on the ground shouting up at them, telling them to stay calm, help would come.

Alyssa told herself the same thing. Keep calm. Don’t panic. She knew shouting up to Anna would be useless. Even if she heard her mother over all the other noise, the blood rushing through her ears from the intensity of the terror would almost deafen her anyway.

Alyssa spotted the operator who had secured her daughter with the T-bar. ‘Hey!’ she called to him, pushing through the crowd towards him. ‘Hey!’ She grabbed hold of his thick jacket, turned him towards her. ‘What’s happening?’

He looked just as frightened as everyone else. ‘The… the cable’s broken!’ he stammered.

‘I can see that!’ Alyssa exclaimed, even as she heard the tearing of more metal, and turned to see the chair turn fully on its side now, the girls pulling themselves hard against the T-bar. Alyssa knew they wouldn’t be able to do it for long. ‘What are you doing to help them?’ she cried.

‘Mountain rescue are on their way,’ the operator managed, regaining some semblance of composure.

‘How far?’ Alyssa asked urgently. ‘How long until they get here?’

The man looked down at his feet nervously as the screams continued to echo across the valley. ‘An hour,’ he said finally.

Alyssa looked up at Anna in her bright orange parka, struggling to keep hold, to save herself from the sixty-foot plummet to what would undoubtedly be her death, and made a decision.

Just under two minutes later, Alyssa was halfway up one of the support posts that suspended the cables at regular intervals up the mountainside. It was an easy climb, as the posts had rungs for maintenance access, but Alyssa struggled to control her breathing, her heart rate skyrocketing as she kept the two little girls in her sights, gripping hard to the metal T-bar of the ski chair.

Down on the ground, she had announced what she was going to do — climb the support post, then pull herself along the intact cable until she reached the chair, secure her daughter to her, and then pull them both back to the post, where they would climb back down, but to her disgust nobody was willing to help. Not the chair-lift operator, not the instructors, not even the parents of the other little girl. All they wanted to do was hug each other, cry and moan, and hope a miracle would come along.

But Alyssa didn’t believe in miracles. A miracle hadn’t saved her husband from the disease that claimed him at the age of twenty-eight, and a miracle wouldn’t save her daughter now. She would have to do it herself. And she knew she would have to try and save the other girl too. She only hoped that the remaining cable wouldn’t break, and the girls would be able to hold on for long enough.

Alyssa was just securing herself to the cable at the top of the support post when it happened. There was another screech of metal and one of the chair’s attachments broke free from the stress of the twisted, unnatural position. The whole chair sagged and then jerked down, falling a few inches before stopping, the other attachments holding tight.

But the other little girl lost her grip and started the inexorable, fatal, slide down the chair seat, tiny hands scrabbling for something — anything — to hold on to, and then there was nothing, only sky. Alyssa closed her eyes as the girl’s scream pierced the cold mountain air, the crowd below too shocked now to make any noise at all, and then Alyssa heard a sickening crump, and the little girl was gone, quiet now, forever.

Alyssa opened her eyes and focused on Anna, who had instinctively reached out for the other girl, and Alyssa’s heart leapt into her throat as Anna, too, started to slide down the seat, towards oblivion.

Alyssa pulled herself on to the cable, upside down, her head towards her daughter, her legs wrapped tightly round the thick metal cable, and she started to pull herself along. She couldn’t fail. She couldn’t. Not after everything that had happened. It simply couldn’t happen.

From her position under the cable, she saw as Anna managed to grasp hold of the edge of the T-bar, her little body suspended now beneath the chair, legs kicking out over the empty expanse, tears streaming down her face.

‘Mommy,’ she cried in a scared whisper. ‘Mommy, please…’

Alyssa pulled herself along faster, the cable cutting through her trouser legs, blistering the skin. Just fifteen feet left… ten… five… She could almost reach her…

‘Mommy, please…’ her daughter begged, eyes going wide as her grip finally gave way, her little hands unable to hold on any longer, and the breath caught in her throat as she, too, fell from the chair, down into the freezing air, into nothing at all.

No! Alyssa reached out one hand, both hands, just inches away as she swung down, supported by a single belt clip and the strength of her legs.

But it was too late, and she watched, sick and helpless, as her daughter, beautiful little Anna, whom she had promised to look after forever, fell sixty feet through the cold, empty sky.

Alyssa shot bolt upright in her bed, screaming, sweat covering every part of her body, shivering as if she was back there in the snow, the ice, the cold. The terror.

But it was just another dream, a nightmare, the same as she’d had ever since the death of her daughter three years before. They came less frequently now, but when they came, they were no less devastating.

She shook her head, and took a drink of water from the glass on her bedside table.

She jumped as the phone next to her started ringing, water spilling in her lap. She looked at the clock; it was just gone three in the morning. Who the hell could it be at this time?

Reluctantly, she picked up. ‘Yes?’

‘Alyssa? Is that you?’

The voice on the other end of the line was urgent, frantic, and the tone made Alyssa immediately alert. ‘Who is this?’ she asked.

‘You know who it is. Your old climbing buddy,’ the voice said nervously, and Alyssa knew not to say the name out loud. Whatever the problem was, it was obvious that Karl Janklow didn’t want his name spoken on an open line.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, puzzled. She hadn’t heard from Karl in years.

‘Are you still working for the Post?’ came the nervous reply.

‘Yes,’ Alyssa confirmed. ‘I’m a senior investigative reporter on staff.’ What was it Karl did? Alyssa thought it had something to do with computers but couldn’t remember exactly.

‘I need to talk to you about those things going on. You know, planes crashing, animals going crazy. You know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ Alyssa said. Everyone in the world would know what he meant, it was all anyone was talking about. She wasn’t on the story herself, as she was in the middle of a piece on tax evasion by the country’s biggest companies, but she had read all about it in the past few days. ‘What about them?’

There was a pause before Karl spoke again, as if he was summoning the courage to go on. ‘I think they’re being caused by something connected to where I work.’

Alyssa was momentarily at a loss for words. Birds attacking airplanes, millions of fish dying, a massive stone statue moving, and Karl, the friend she had not seen in years but who had something to do with computers, was suggesting that the events were not just linked but actually caused by something at his workplace?

Her years in the field had taught her to be sceptical and this sounded fantastical, but she couldn’t ignore it. ‘Where do you work?’ she asked him cautiously.

‘Not over an open line,’ he answered quickly. ‘We have to meet.’

3

Alyssa negotiated the crowds as she headed for the subway, amazed by the density of human traffic on the city streets. And everywhere she looked there were people with replicas, models — even blown-up photographs — of the great statue which had moved, the glorious ‘miracle statue’, which everyone seemed to think was heralding something.

The fact that the statue was a religious icon only helped to confirm people’s feelings. And it wasn’t just the crazed mutterings of a few hard-to-believe fanatics who might have dreamt the whole thing, either; the entire incident — Alyssa still wasn’t sure if she could use the term miracle — had been filmed by several people, and had now been seen by an estimated two-thirds of the planet’s population. Lapsed members of the faith were suddenly finding their faith renewed, and all sorts of other groups had sprung up, preaching messages far removed from the mainstream. Some were cults of the statue itself, proclaiming that it had always been divine, although Alyssa suspected that most of these cults had been around less than a week. But the ones that caught her attention as she was jostled by the crowd were the so-called ‘apocalyptic’ cults. For every ten members of the recognized religions, she suspected there must be at least two or three from these new ‘end of the world’ sects, and there were more with every passing day.

Her attention was drawn to a group over on her left, not the closest, but with the most people crowded round the speaker. The man who was addressing the crowd was tall, muscular and dark-skinned. It was hard to estimate his age — he could have been anywhere from his late twenties to his early forties, his skin young but his eyes old. But it was not his physical characteristics that drew her gaze, nor his dress — shamanic white robes with gold bracelets along his arms and a gold headband pushing back his thick, wiry hair. Instead, it was something more, an energy that radiated from him and seemed to draw people to him. She felt it herself, pulling her towards the crowd to listen.

‘My brothers and sisters,’ he intoned in a deep, melodious voice that seemed vaguely hypnotic, ‘we stand today at a crossroads. Believe me, it is the crossroads between life and death.’ He opened his hands wide above him. ‘The time is coming, the great change is upon us. The world needs to refresh itself, to cast us out and start anew. The earth needs to be reborn. Believe!’

Those gathered closest round him dropped to their knees and bowed down; then they looked up at the sky and bowed down again, and continued to repeat the action, whispering prayers of a type Alyssa had never heard before.

As they did so, the man spoke once more. ‘The governments of the world are trying to control the natural order of things but nature is more powerful than the government. Nature is more powerful than Man. It will not be tricked, it will not be stopped. The time is coming! Our time is at an end, and there is nothing we can do about it except embrace it. Yes! We must embrace our fate. The earth must cleanse itself, so that life can start anew. We must die to ensure our survival. Believe! Believe! Believe!’

Alyssa had heard enough. It was similar to the other groups, nothing she hadn’t heard before. It was common enough when anything strange happened, when something couldn’t be explained, or it seemed that the world was threatened. Cults and sects would always emerge, claiming that the world would indeed end, nothing could be done to stop it, so followers might as well forsake their worldly possessions and wait, unencumbered, for the end. The cults would typically take responsibility for those possessions — money, cars, houses, shares, anything that was ‘unnecessary’ to face the coming apocalypse — and get rich overnight in the process.

The dark-skinned man was impressive certainly, a master of his craft, no doubt, but Alyssa was under no illusions about his real profession. He was a con man, plain and simple.

Turning away, she continued on her way towards the subway, wondering what light Karl Janklow would be able to shed on such strange events.

For his part, the dark-skinned man also saw Alyssa Durham. Oswald Umbebe had never seen her before in his life but he knew the type. Damn reporters. They were a cynical bunch, he knew that from experience. She probably thought that the Order of Planetary Renewal was just one more made-up sect cashing in on the current situation. She probably had no idea that the Order had been around for a long time. A long time; much longer than anybody realized. And she probably had no idea that his prophecies about the end of the world were not simply empty words designed to separate the gullible from their hard-earned money.

No, his words were far from empty; what he prophesied, however hard it was for people to accept, was the truth.

4

Alyssa could hear the excited chatter of teenagers behind her as she sat next to Karl Janklow on the comfortable leather bench seat. Giggles erupted as the rollercoaster started to move slowly forward and upward.

Alyssa had been surprised when Karl had suggested the amusement park as a meeting place, but on reflection she could see the logic of it. The area, a seaside resort on a peninsula just outside the city, had three such amusement parks, and Karl had chosen the oldest and, in Alyssa’s opinion, most charming.

She’d spent many happy hours with her family and friends on the rides here. It all came back to her in vivid, living colour — the roar of the coasters, the screams of the thrill seekers; the smell of candyfloss and hot dogs; the glare of the neon lights; the carousels and the big wheel delivering thrills and excitement to the hundreds of people who visited the huge pleasure ground.

Karl Janklow had been a friend of both her and her husband, many years ago. He was a systems engineer, Alyssa remembered now, and Patrick had told her how good he was. A good climber too, he had accompanied them on several trips. But then Alyssa had become pregnant, her and Patrick’s priorities had changed, and despite a couple of attempts to meet up, they had finally lost touch with their old friend.

They’d been here once before, she remembered, the three of them. Before Anna, before Patrick’s illness, before the accident that had changed Alyssa’s life forever. It had been a summer’s day, and the three of them were young, carefree, just enjoying the pleasure of life as it came. Those had been good days, Alyssa thought, and the throng of visitors here today seemed completely unaffected by the growing chaos back on the streets of the city beyond. Yes, it was a good place to meet, and more importantly, perhaps, it was noisy and crowded, an ideal place to lose anyone who might be following you. It wasn’t likely they’d be overheard, either.

But when they met, Karl seemed nervous, jittery, and even more paranoid than he had sounded on the phone; he wanted to ride the rollercoaster, claiming that he feared their conversation might still be monitored despite the noise from the rest of the park. His paranoia made her feel a little bit better about the fact that she’d disguised herself for the meeting, a longstanding tactic she always used when meeting sources.

Karl even remained silent as the rollercoaster train started to move, pulling them inexorably upwards to start the ride. She let him be, patiently waiting for him to tell her what he knew.

They reached the top of the first peak and, despite herself, Alyssa felt the excitement rise within her. It was a combination of the physical thrill of the old wooden rollercoaster and the anticipation of the secrets Karl had to tell her.

As the train started to tip over the peak to its stomach-churning first descent, Karl finally turned to Alyssa. As the teens behind them let out unbridled screams and the train shot down the coaster at a speed which rippled the skin, he gestured with his head, beckoning Alyssa to come closer.

She leant in, but even with his mouth at her ear, she still had to strain to hear.

‘Alyssa,’ Karl shouted above the roar of the tracks and the screams, ‘the things that are happening, they are not natural. They—’

Alyssa didn’t catch the next words, Karl’s head had moved away. She leant in even closer and felt the weight of his head resting on her cheek.

She pulled back to look at him, and her stomach lurched violently, independently of the motion of the rollercoaster. Karl’s eyes were still open, staring straight ahead, his mouth agape. And, to Alyssa’s horror, there was a neat hole in the centre of his forehead and blood was dripping over his disbelieving face.

And then, for the first time during the ride, she screamed.

‘Good shot,’ Colonel Anderson announced over the radio headset worn by the sniper. The professional soldier was lying comfortably on a shooting rug, positioned strategically on the roof of a building over half a mile away. ‘Now take out the woman,’ Anderson ordered.

The sniper followed the path of the coaster with his optical sight, tracking the unknown woman as she turned, realized what had happened, and started to scream. The angle wasn’t quite right yet, but down the next hill, up and round a bend, would be just perfect.

‘Yes, sir,’ he responded confidently.

He would be putting away his equipment and high-tailing it out of there within thirty seconds.

Alyssa could feel herself starting to hyperventilate. As she hunched reflexively down in the train, trying to minimize her target profile, she tried to get control of her breathing, her years in the mountains having instilled in her the knowledge that panic would be her worst enemy.

Where had the shot come from? A sniper could be literally anywhere. Was she a target too? Of course she was, she quickly realized; if they had killed Karl to keep him quiet, they would kill her too in case he had already told her anything.

She knew nobody else would have any idea what was going on — the people behind her would be too wrapped up in the rollercoaster ride to notice, everyone was screaming anyway, the ride was too far away and going too fast for anyone on the ground to realize what had happened. She was on her own.

The speed of the coaster wasn’t helping her think, but she knew immediately what she had to do. In the train, she was a sitting duck. Karl had been hit right in the middle of the forehead, so whoever was out there, they weren’t amateurs. She couldn’t stay on the rollercoaster. She was going to have to get off while it was still moving.

What the hell is she doing? the sniper wondered, watching as his second target started squirming in her seat.

She had previously ducked down as far as she could, which he had anticipated — it still wouldn’t stop him making the fatal shot in just ten seconds’ time — but now she was twisting, wrenching, and—

She’s trying to escape! The sniper couldn’t help but admire her. Most people would have just capitulated entirely, fear overcoming their faculties of reason. But not this woman. Oh no, she was going to get out of the train and then — what? Jump?

Knowing the futility of her actions, the sniper settled down and waited to take the shot.

The lap bar that secured Alyssa had also secured Karl, and because he had significantly larger legs than she had, there was a gap of at least an inch between the bar and her own thighs. Space enough to move; space enough to escape.

Alyssa had no idea what she was going to do when free, but she knew it was first things first. She had to take things one at a time, and her primary task was to get out of the confinement of the coaster train.

She shifted in her seat, trying to slide through and across. Ideally, she would have just pushed down on the bar and levered herself out upwards, but the acceleration of the coaster prevented this; even if it hadn’t, her instinct for self-preservation made her want to get down low, not make more of a target of herself.

She lay down across the seat, her head in her dead friend’s lap as she tried desperately to manoeuvre her legs out of the narrow opening. She clawed herself across, straining to release her lower body from the safety bar.

She gasped as one knee popped out, and quickly extended her leg out over the seat and then shifted her hips, pulling free the other leg as the coaster got to the top of another rise and started to slow down.

Her legs free, she pulled her head away from Karl’s lap and risked a glance at the track. There was a bend up ahead, which meant the coaster would be slowing down even more before accelerating down the next peak.

If she was going to make her move, it would have to be soon.

‘Target’s moving,’ the sniper reported, his voice cold and professional.

‘What do you mean?’ Anderson asked from his mobile command centre in a converted motorhome just outside the amusement park.

‘She’s trying to get out of the car.’

‘Can you take a shot yet?’ Anderson asked quickly.

‘Negative,’ the sniper replied. ‘Not yet. After this bend. She…’

There was a pause, and Anderson knew his man would be watching the woman’s actions carefully. Then muffled thumps came over the connection; the sniper was firing. But there were too many shots.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Anderson demanded.

‘I’ve missed,’ the sniper replied. ‘She got out over the other side, used the train for cover. She’s in the tunnel scaffolding, heading down to the ground.’

‘Dammit!’ Anderson cursed. ‘Keep watching. If you get another shot, take it.’ Cutting the connection, Anderson changed channels to link with the other members of his team. ‘All units, converge on the rollercoaster. The woman has escaped. Don’t let her leave this park alive.’

The ‘slow’ section of the roller coaster was still terrifyingly fast. But fearing a bullet even more, Alyssa finally took a deep breath, steadied herself, and swung her body right out of the car.

She saw chips of wood flying inches from her hands, and some small part of her mind processed the information, realized the sniper was shooting at her. The car was blocking the shots and she gripped the side for dear life, timing her next action carefully.

One… two… now!

Alyssa let go of the coaster and stepped out on to the side of the wooden tracks. The speed left her stumbling, falling, about to go right over the edge and plummet forty feet to the ground below. But then she managed to grab a metal strut in the tunnel scaffolding and steadied herself.

She could hear screams from below now as people realized what she had done, vaguely saw people pointing up at her. But then one of her hands spun off the scaffold as something hit the metal strut, the sound of the ricochet coming moments later, and she knew the sniper was firing at her again, and the cars of the rollercoaster were no longer there to protect her.

Gasping, she stepped off the side of the track and dropped straight down, catching hold of the metal struts underneath, steadying herself once more in the scaffold, hoping the wooden tracks would give her cover.

Breathing out slowly, gathering herself, Alyssa looked down; a crowd was gathering beneath, and she felt safer knowing that there were people there. Surely nobody would risk killing her once she was among them.

She hadn’t climbed since that fateful day in the mountains, when she had failed her daughter so badly. She hadn’t visited so much as an indoor climbing wall since. She just hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it. But now she barely gave those fears a thought. With the adrenalin surging into her system, for the first time in years the desire to climb became as powerful — as natural — as the urge to breathe.

Steeling herself, she started to carefully climb down the scaffold.

‘There are a lot of people here,’ Anderson heard one of his men say as they approached the coaster. ‘Too many people.’

Anderson understood. Other information coming from the park indicated that the ride was being stopped; too many people had seen the woman climb out on to the scaffolding. And when the ride stopped and Karl Janklow’s body was discovered…

A thought struck him suddenly, and he thumbed the microphone. ‘Use your police IDs,’ he ordered his team. ‘Clear the area beneath the scaffold. When she gets down, arrest her.’

The original plan was for his men to pretend to be with federal law enforcement, telling the park authorities that they’d had the area under surveillance and removing the two dead bodies from the coaster before the real cops could move in. But for the time being, there was only one dead body, which put something of a spanner in the works.

Still, Anderson knew that plans rarely survived contact with the enemy. Flexibility was the key, and Anderson issued his new orders. They would claim that the woman killed Janklow — it wouldn’t be immediately obvious that the shot had been long-range — and then some of his men could take Janklow’s body whilst others could move in to ‘arrest’ the woman, and kill her someplace away from the park; away from prying eyes.

Halfway down, Alyssa saw the crowd dispersing and wondered what was happening. And then six suited men arrived, looking up at her. They had handguns drawn and what looked like badges pulled out. Cops?

Alyssa allowed herself to relax ever so slightly. It was OK. She was going to be OK. The police were here, and they would handle it. She looked further across to where the six-car train had come to a halt, saw other men extracting Karl’s dead body and restraining the shocked and screaming teenagers. Park security were erecting a cordon around the area, sealing the ride off from the rest of the park, ushering the other riders out of the way. Yes, she thought, it would be all right.

But then she paused, going no further, her mind racing furiously. Why were they moving the body? It was a murder scene, wasn’t it? And she’d covered enough of those in her time to know that the body shouldn’t be moved. The cops should be leaving it for the forensics people and other members of the crime scene investigation team. And come to think of it, what the hell were non-uniform police doing here anyway? There were six below her, another six taking care of the body. How could they have got here so quickly?

Something wasn’t right, and Alyssa knew immediately what it was: the twelve suits weren’t the police at all. They were here because they wanted to kill her. It was the only explanation that made sense; they were clearing the body before Karl could be identified, and they were waiting for her so that they could finish the job.

She checked around her, looking for avenues of escape. The faces on the ‘cops’ below her changed from expressions of welcoming helpfulness to ones of concern as she stopped moving towards them. She watched as they spoke into lapel microphones, listened to their earpieces, looked up at her again with even greater concern as she still refused to move.

Anxious, she scanned the area. The scaffold she was on was wrapped round one section of track and led all the way down to the ground. She was on the internal side of the scaffold but she noticed that the bare metal structure went further out into the park. She peered between the thick metal struts and saw that there were stalls below on the other side, the scaffold just feet away from the rear of their canvas coverings.

Without a second thought, she turned her body, twisting through the metal to head towards the outside of the structure. Gripping the metal tightly, she manoeuvred past the track and out into the abyss, nothing below her for thirty feet except exposed metal bars and the solid, unforgiving concrete of the park floor.

She heard the fake cops shouting to her from below, bellowing instructions for her to come back, but she ignored them and headed quickly for the other side of the scaffold. The people below her would have to head back out of the entrance and race all the way round the structure to get to her. She turned to look at them, saw that they were already setting off at a run. Trying to keep calm, she knew she would have less than a minute to escape.

Slipping her lithe body through the bars, she quickly got through to the outside of the ride, clinging tight to the struts as she looked at the small stalls beneath her. She knew she could climb down in a couple of minutes, but she also knew that this would be far too long; she only had about thirty seconds left before the killers would be there.

The sound of a ricochet and the hot spark of damaged metal jolted her, adrenalin flooding her system once more, rocketing her heart rate and making her palms instantly slick with sweat. She almost lost her grip and went sailing to the ground below, but just held on, years of climbing instinct hard-wired into her.

Sniper, she thought, and knew the people after her must be getting desperate. The shooter must have been positioned to fire at the inside of the tracks, and the shot had come through the scaffold at her, which explained how he’d missed. The guy must be an incredible shot just to get close under such conditions. Then there were more shots, sparks from the metal struts hitting her skin and burning her face.

Her reaction was instantaneous, and utterly unexpected to her pursuers. Taking one single, deep breath, she crouched down and jumped from the scaffolding towards the park below.

The sniper watched as his target jumped from thirty feet. What was she thinking?

His view wasn’t ideal, the heavy metal of the scaffold obscuring much of it, but he could see that the woman hadn’t fallen. No, she had bent at the legs and intentionally jumped. Had the shots scared her into trying a suicidal escape?

Despite the extremely demanding conditions, he had still been disappointed to have missed. Anderson had ordered him to take the shot as soon as he knew the woman was heading away from the other agents, and he had done so, knowing that hitting her would be a miracle but wanting to do so all the same. It was not in his nature to accept missing his target.

But perhaps he hadn’t had to hit her anyway; she would be stone-cold dead as soon as she hit the concrete even without a bullet inside her.

Alyssa had purposefully propelled herself forwards, away from the scaffold, hoping to make several feet of distance as she plummeted earthwards.

As she sailed through the air, she prayed she’d jumped far enough; and then she was there, her feet reaching the stretched canvas roof of one of the amusement stalls on this side of the ride.

The fabric bent, and Alyssa’s heart dipped as she thought it would tear; but then she used the stored energy in her legs to jump again, pushing down against the taut canvas to dispel the force of gravity, and managed to somersault forwards, turning in mid-air to grab hold of the edge of the roof and swing her body round and down until she let go and dropped to the ground amidst a group of startled onlookers.

She saw the crowds parting beyond her and realized that the killers would be on her in seconds. Ignoring the offers of help from those around her, she turned to face the opposite direction and ran, pushing through the mass of people, desperate to get away, her heart pumping so violently she thought it was going to explode right out of her chest.

‘Status?’ Anderson asked twenty minutes later, every nerve shredded.

He knew the answer before it came through to him. ‘Negative,’ the reply came. ‘We lost her, sir. She’s nowhere to be found.’

Anderson didn’t even bother to reply, just thumbed off the radio and sat back in his chair. How had the operation gone so badly wrong? Picking off two defenceless subjects while both were strapped in place should have been child’s play. Who could have predicted that the woman would have jumped off the damned ride?

But he should have predicted it; that was his job, after all. It didn’t matter in the slightest that it was a rushed operation, set up in only a matter of hours; Anderson knew he could have handled it better.

After Janklow went missing, he had requested authorization to use every tool available to catch him, but the computer specialist had proven a crafty opponent. He had avoided detection at every transport hub he must have used, and Anderson feared that he might have disappeared from the grid entirely.

But then fate had intervened, voice recognition software capturing a call from a payphone to the amusement park, Janklow’s voice requesting details of the opening times.

Anderson had reacted instantly, setting up observation posts around the park and putting it under constant surveillance. It had taken time, though, and Anderson had worried that Janklow might already have visited the park and left, to be lost once more. It also occurred to him that it was a red herring, Janklow’s idea of a joke to waste his pursuers’ time.

But then his men had seen him, first entering the park and then meeting up with the woman. It was obvious she was a contact, someone he had arranged to meet. But who the hell was she, and why was Janklow meeting her? Was she a girlfriend? Someone in law enforcement or government? Or even — and this would probably be the worst outcome — a reporter of some sort?

Anderson had ordered high-definition pictures taken, and government supercomputers were hard at work trying to identify her. But Anderson had ordered her death anyway, along with Janklow; he couldn’t take the risk of the information getting out.

But now she had escaped, this mysterious woman, and she carried who only knew what information from Janklow, with which she was going to do who knew what. And he still didn’t even know who she was.

But he did know one thing, he told himself as he leant back in his chair, stretching his aching body. Whoever she was, he was going to find her.

5

General David Tomkin stretched out in his seat as he took the call, trying to get some life back into his tired limbs. He had spent a lifetime in the military, and had fought on every front his country had been involved in for the past thirty years, first as an infantry officer, then in Special Forces, and later in intelligence. He was an active man, even now in his late fifties, and the sheer inactivity of his latest job was enough to make him scream.

He was, admittedly, the highest-ranking military officer in his nation’s esteemed armed forces, a position he was proud to have been granted, and one he took very seriously indeed. But despite the important and highly prestigious office that he held, the fact remained that he no longer actually had any operational command over combatant forces; the role of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was advisory only, and as such Tomkin spent far more time than he would have liked behind a desk.

But the job meant that he was enormously influential; he had command over personnel and budgets, and had control over the structure and utilization of the world’s most powerful military force. His ability to work the budgets was one he had never foreseen being so expert at. Back when he had been leading platoon attacks against hostile militias down in the world’s worst hellholes, fiscal policy was the very last thing on his mind. But over the years, as he had progressed through the ranks, he had realized the importance of correctly organized budgets; correctly organized in the sense that certain ‘black’ projects could be lost, forever beyond political scrutiny. He had developed a certain skill at manipulating military budgets over the years, and was now able to hide such programmes — weapons research, illegal prisons for terrorist suspects, covert ‘snatch squads’, paramilitary hit teams — in places that would never be found by prying eyes.

It was this skill that had brought John Jeffries, the Secretary of Defence, to call him that morning. ‘John,’ Tomkin said warmly as he picked up the secure line, ‘how are you doing?’

‘Good, David,’ Jeffries responded with equal warmth. ‘How’s the family?’

‘Can’t complain. Got us another grandson on the way, Maggie this time, her first.’

‘Congratulations, that’s terrific. How many’s that now? Six?’

‘Seven,’ Tomkin corrected. He had four children, three of whom were married with kids of their own, one who had just finally got engaged. He’d been married himself for nearly forty years — something of a success story for a career military man — and he was enormously proud of his family. ‘It’s gonna make Christmas expensive, that’s for sure,’ he joked.

‘That’s true, my man. I’ve got six of my own, I know just how it is.’ There was a chuckle on the other end of the line, then a pause. Tomkin realized that the small talk was over, and Jeffries was about to get down to business. ‘So how’s Spectrum Nine advancing?’

Tomkin cracked his neck from one side to the other and straightened in his chair, pain running through each vertebra of his spine. ‘Tests are going well,’ he answered. ‘The system should be ready soon.’

‘Is anybody else aware of the project?’ Jeffries asked nervously.

‘No,’ Tomkin answered immediately. ‘That would be impossible. Funding for the project has been buried so deep that even I don’t know the full details any more.’

‘But the human element?’ Jeffries persisted. ‘Could anyone talk?’

‘Nobody that’s connected to the programme will talk. They’re all patriots, vetted beyond all normal classification. Besides which, Colonel Anderson is there to keep an eye on things.’

Tomkin could hear Jeffries grunt on the other end of the line, and wasn’t surprised by the reaction. Colonel Anderson had a reputation.

Tomkin decided not to trouble Jeffries with the recent business about Karl Janklow, even though the latest news from Anderson was not exactly what he’d been hoping for. Janklow was dead — that was the good news — but there was now a new troublemaker, as yet unidentified. Tomkin had recently ordered a full-scale identity search for the woman based on the pictures Anderson had sent over, but the situation was still unresolved. It was a major concern, but it was too early to brief Jeffries on the matter. It was an operational concern, not a strategic one, after all.

‘Glad to hear it,’ Jeffries replied finally.

There was another pause, and Tomkin could sense that Jeffries was about to address the real reason for the call. ‘But,’ he ventured gingerly, ‘might there be any possible ramifications from recent incidents?’

It was Tomkin’s turn to pause as he considered the matter. He had given it a great deal of thought already, and still couldn’t be entirely sure. Anything was possible, after all. But he would not be telling Jeffries that. ‘None, John, you can be sure of that,’ he answered confidently. ‘There is absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing, that could lead anyone to us. Believe me.’

‘I believe you,’ Jeffries said quickly. ‘I just want to be sure, that’s all. If we go to the President with a finished project, something that works, something that’s guaranteed, that’s one thing. He’ll listen to us, maybe even use it like we want. If he finds out some other way, though, somebody lets something slip, somebody discovers what we’ve been up to, then that’s it — we’re talking jail, plain and simple.’

‘I know that, John,’ Tomkin said soothingly. ‘I do. But trust me. He won’t find out until it’s ready. Nobody will.’ And, Tomkin thought silently, he won’t even find out until it’s already been used in anger, maybe not even then, maybe not ever. Because General Tomkin knew what John Jeffries didn’t: there was no way in hell that the President would ever authorize the use of Spectrum Nine. You’d have to be crazy to even consider it.

Tomkin smiled to himself. What the President didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, Tomkin was sure. It never had before.

6

Jack Murray reclined and stretched out, balancing precariously on the swivel chair beneath him as he made a straight line with his body from his toes to his fingertips.

How long had he been here? As he settled back into the uncomfortable chair behind his workstation, Murray did the calculation. Fourteen hours. Fourteen hours behind this damned desk, crunching numbers.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have any other option; he could have signed off six hours ago. But where was there to go? The research base was in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and there was a blizzard coming down outside that was ferocious. All personnel had been confined to base for their own safety for the duration of the storm. Murray’s apartment in the small town of Allenburg was more than a forty-minute drive away, and he resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn’t be seeing it again for some time. Not that it was anything special anyway.

Accommodation was laid on for them at the base — bunkhouse dorms like you’d get in an army barracks — but he wanted to avoid going there until the last possible minute. And so he had volunteered for overtime, and was going to put in another two hours before he’d head off to the bunkhouse. As he stretched out again, he wasn’t sure which was worse — the swivel chair here, or the iron cot in the staff dormitory.

At least there was work to be done. Ever since Karl Janklow had been lost in an avalanche a few days ago, there had been two jobs to be getting on with. In fact, Karl’s tragic death was one of the reasons the staff were now confined to base. The weather had been bad then too, and poor visibility was the probable reason for Karl losing control of his car. It was too short notice to get a replacement, and Murray had therefore been doing Karl’s job as well as his own ever since.

It upset Murray to think of Karl. They’d been sitting across from one another for over a year now, trading jokes and banter. Karl lived — had lived, Murray corrected himself sadly — in Allenburg too, and the pair had regularly met up for nights on the town. Allenburg wasn’t exactly the most exciting town on earth, but the nights had been good, and more often than not had ended in female company. At least they had for Murray, blessed as he was with his rough good looks, lilting baritone voice, and an ability to charm anyone he met. Karl, smart and funny though he was, had never had the same kind of appeal. Whereas people were always surprised that Murray was a computer technician — with a doctorate from the country’s leading technical university, no less — somehow they would always be able to guess what Karl did for a living.

Damn, Murray thought as he looked over at the empty workstation opposite him. I miss him. Good ol’ Karl, computer geek extraordinaire. My friend.

Murray pushed Karl from his mind, telling himself that these things happened. People died. The world went on. It was the nature of things, and the world couldn’t be any other way. What had his father said when he’d asked him, all those years ago, why people died?

‘Jack,’ his father had said, placing both of his big workman’s hands on his five-year-old son’s shoulders, ‘if we all lived forever, how would we find the space? The food? The world’s only so big. That’s just the way it is.’

It was logical really, and he’d never asked again. Not when his mother had been taken from him two years later, when a car had hit her at sixty miles per hour and shattered every bone in her body. Not when his sister had drowned whilst trying to save her dog when she was just twelve years old. And not when his father was on his own deathbed, dying of blood poisoning from unregulated chemical leakages at the factory he had worked at his entire life. He had cried, he had grieved, he had felt all the things a normal person would, but that was life. There was no other way.

When he’d applied for the job here, the location had not bothered him in the slightest — it wasn’t as if he had anyone to leave behind. Run as it was by the military, he had undergone thorough vetting and security checks. He was not surprised when there had been questions asked about some of his political ideas — college friends must have talked about some of his campus activities, although they had been harmless enough. It meant, however, that he was employed lower down the food chain than his academic achievements might have warranted, but that was OK. He was here, and that was the main thing.

Unfortunately, nobody at the base would even understand the real reason he was there. It was a shame, he reflected as he looked around the large room, filled with technicians behind workstations, a hundred feet under the huge radar array on the snow-covered surface. He would have liked to be able to talk about it with at least one of his friends or colleagues here. But he knew what response he’d get; everyone was too conditioned — by society, by religion, by all sorts of constraints and controls meant to keep the status quo — to accept his true aim in life.

Because Jack Murray knew that this project had the capability to save the world; and his aim in life was to make that happen.

7

It was late afternoon by the time Alyssa Durham got back to the city. A thousand questions were racing around her brain, but there were no answers. What had Karl wanted to tell her? Who had killed him? Who were the people who were now trying to kill her?

She knew the key to the answer would be finding out where Karl had been working, and so despite still feeling badly shaken by the day’s events, she had decided to head straight for the office. Her editor, James Rushton, would support her, offer her all the help he could. She wondered if he would recommend going to the authorities, and realized that of course he would. But she would try and convince him otherwise. How did she know they could trust the authorities? Instead, she would convince him to let her investigate. She would use the newspaper’s resources to find out where Karl had been working, and then take it from there.

Another question that plagued her was whether the enemy — for that was surely what they were — knew who she was. The wig and glasses she’d been wearing weren’t the most sophisticated of disguises, but they might be enough to give her some time. Besides which, she’d find out soon enough. If they knew who she was, they’d be waiting outside the office to put a bullet in her head.

Before she went to work, she was curious to see what was going on in the city square but the taxi driver hadn’t been able to get close; traffic was backed up for miles all around the city. And so she had got out, paid the driver, and set off on foot, keen to see if the stories she had been hearing on the radio on the way back to the city were true.

Walking had proved equally difficult, the streets more and more crowded the closer she got to the square. It was clear that everyone in the city wanted to see it with their own eyes too, with the result that pedestrian movement was as restricted as the traffic.

But slowly, ever so slowly, she did move forwards, until finally she was at the square itself, at a barricade erected by the police. A barrier built to separate people from bats. Millions of bats.

Alyssa had never seen anything like it. The square was literally crawling with them, piled on top of each other, covering every square inch of the city centre meeting spot, horizontal and vertical. The radio reports had estimated the numbers to be upwards of twelve million, all coming to roost in the square over the past few hours, utterly unprecedented behaviour that only served to encourage those predicting the end of the world.

She looked around the crowd and noticed that the preachers were already here, some from the regular religions, some from the cults of the statue, and even more from apocalyptic sects. Down the line from her she saw people gathered round a man wearing a white robe and gold arm- and headbands. He was dressed like the man who had caught her attention earlier, on her way to meet Karl. Those guys were everywhere. There’d probably be a story in that, she considered, as she started to make her way slowly round the barriers.

Unfortunately, her office was on the far side. She checked her watch. Half past four. She sighed, hoping that Rushton wouldn’t have left for home by the time she got there.

Almost an hour later, she was in Rushton’s office, looking out over the square from the plate-glass windows of the twenty-first floor of the newspaper building. Even from up here, the sight was incredible.

‘And in the daytime too,’ she said in wonder.

‘I know,’ Rushton said, handing her a steaming cup, which she took gratefully. ‘Bats just don’t behave like this. And where in the hell are they from, anyway? We don’t have that many bats in the state, never mind the city. At least, I don’t think we do. But they must have come from somewhere.’ He shook his head, then looked up. ‘But first things first. I think it’s time to call the police.’

‘No,’ Alyssa said immediately, shaking her head.

‘Alyssa, these people are dangerous,’ Rushton said. ‘Snipers? People impersonating the police? And from what I can find out, there’s no evidence of your friend’s body whatsoever. Whoever is behind this, they’re professional. And if they don’t know who you are already, they will soon enough.’

‘James, who can we trust? For all I know, those people were the police; maybe corrupt, maybe working for someone else. I’m only assuming they were impersonating cops.’

‘I have friends in the Bureau.’

‘But they’d have to tell someone, wouldn’t they? And then what?’ She shook her head once more. ‘I want to do some digging first. Find out where Karl was working, what sort of things he was involved in. We might have a better handle then on who’s involved, who we can contact.’

Rushton took a sip of his drink, obviously uncomfortable. ‘You really think there’s some connection between where your friend Karl worked and these weird things that are happening?’

‘Someone sure as hell thinks he knew something important. Whatever it was, it’s worth killing for.’

‘That’s just what I’m afraid of,’ Rushton answered.

The computer screen bathed Alyssa’s tired, drawn face in a pale blue light as she accessed database after database. It was getting late now, and there was only one other journalist left in the research room. Eduardo Lubeck covered vice stories, and was well known as a night owl.

Not for the first time, she was grateful for the paper’s vast investigative resources; within minutes, she had found evidence of Karl’s transfer papers from his previous job, setting up anti-hacking programmes for several blue-chip firms in the capital. That was just under three years ago, but finding out where he’d gone next was more challenging.

She quickly found out that he had been headhunted by the Department of Defence for some contract work, but she was struggling to find out exactly where he’d been posted.

She decided to try a different tack, searching the vehicle registration database for a match. She wasn’t exactly authorized to do such a search, but her years in the field had taught her the rudiments of cyber hacking, and the vehicle database was one of the easiest government sites to strong-arm.

Her eyes lit up as she found an SUV registered to Karlssen D. Janklow — thank heaven for unusual names, she thought — and she quickly took note of the address.

It was a rented apartment in Allenburg, a small town way up north. Pretty much in the middle of nowhere, pure wilderness territory. What was he doing there?

As she took a sip of coffee, she entered a new key phrase into the computer’s online search engine — ‘computer systems Allenburg’.

The hits came back soon after, dozens relating to local businesses, everything from laptop repairs to bespoke software programs. None of it sounded like anything he’d need a DoD clearance for.

She tried again — ‘military research Allenburg’.

She drank more coffee as the page loaded, then glanced down at the results. This time, each site seemed to list the same four-letter acronym — HIRP.

It seemed oddly familiar to Alyssa but—

Without warning, she felt her chair suddenly move beneath her. Her coffee spilled on to her leg, burning her, and then her chair moved again. She planted her feet more firmly on the floor to keep her balance.

Opposite her, she saw Lubeck rocked backwards in his own chair, his eyes going wide. ‘Earthquake!’ he shouted at her, even as the entire room started to shake, the desk moving across the floor, the walls rippling with the shock.

Alyssa screamed briefly as the lights went out, then gathered herself and grabbed Lubeck, pulling him underneath the desk. If the ceiling collapsed, it might provide some protection. That was what people did, wasn’t it? But she didn’t know for sure; earthquakes didn’t happen here!

The room continued to shake, pictures vibrating and falling off the walls, glass shattering on the floor. Alyssa heard Lubeck whimper next to her.

And then, as soon as it had started, it was over. In the dark, Alyssa was surprised that Lubeck was hugging her. Seconds later, the lights came back on.

Under the table, Lubeck and Alyssa just sat there staring at each other, their faces white with shock.

Alyssa glanced up at the computer. It was back on now and reloaded, the strangely familiar acronym HIRP challenging her to press on with her investigation.

8

‘Are you ok?’ Rushton asked Alyssa as they stood in the crowded city street, watching as firefighters and paramedics entered the building, along with a team of structural engineers. It was late, but some of the buildings here were residential units which also had to be evacuated.

Alyssa was surprised that Rushton had still been in the building, but perhaps she shouldn’t have been; with millions of bats in the square outside his office, and strange things happening not just across the country but across the world, he would have a caseload of literally hundreds of stories to manage. It would be a miracle if he ever found the time to go home again.

‘I’m fine, James, thanks. More surprised than anything, I guess.’ It wasn’t entirely true; she was still a little shaken by the quake, ‘minor’ or not. Added to which, her nerves were still shredded from watching her friend get shot right next to her, and then the subsequent attempt on her own life. But, she decided, the best way to cope with it was the method she always chose: ignore her tangled emotions and concentrate on work. Psychologists would probably give her hell for it but it seemed to work for her.

She wanted to get back to the research room right away but all the buildings in the city had been evacuated whilst the damage was assessed, and each building had to be judged safe before anyone could return. As Alyssa looked around, she could tell that the quake had indeed been minor — everything was still standing, after all. But there was smoke pouring out of more than a few nearby windows, and she realized that it made sense to be careful.

Rushton seemed to be having the same thoughts. ‘Pain in the ass, right?’ he said. ‘We’re probably not going to get back in for hours. Still, I don’t suppose they can take any chances.’ He studied her again. ‘You sure you’re OK?’

Alyssa nodded. ‘Just thinking.’ She paused, then turned to him. ‘Have you ever heard of a government research programme called the HIRP?’ she asked, initializing the word.

Rushton’s eyes narrowed briefly, then he nodded his head. ‘Yes, I think I have. Is that where Karl was working?’

‘I think so, yes. He was working for the DoD some place, and HIRP is the only base near to the town his vehicle’s registered to. When I can get back in there,’ she said, gesturing to their offices, ‘I’ll try and confirm it. But what is it?’

‘If my memory serves,’ Rushton began, ‘it stands for the High-frequency Ionospheric Research Project.’

‘And what the hell is that?’

Rushton smiled. ‘I know about the project because Jamie Price was going to do a piece on it last year.’

‘Going to?’ Alyssa prodded.

Rushton nodded. ‘I had to pull it in the end,’ he admitted. ‘It was good, but it was a bit too inflammatory, without the evidence to back it up. It was intriguing, but in the end it was just based on hearsay and circumstantial evidence.’

The pair had to move as a stretcher was raced past them towards one of the buildings which still had smoke coming out of the windows, and Alyssa felt slightly perturbed as she saw people readying their cameras to get shots of the victim when he or she was trundled back to the ambulance. It didn’t help that she knew some of the photographers.

‘OK,’ Alyssa said, turning back to her editor, ‘tell me about it.’

‘HIRP was designed over twenty years ago to investigate atmospheric data. Apparently the ionosphere is a great conductor of radio signals, and what started out as a purely scientific project caught the interest of the military when they realized that they could improve their communication and navigation technology by exploiting the ionosphere in line with this research. Secure comms with the submarine fleet and ground-penetrating radar — you know, the kind that could investigate, say, a cave system in the Middle East, see if any terrorists are living there — are just some of the things the DoD are interested in.’

‘Sounds like there’s nothing too out of the ordinary there,’ Alyssa commented. ‘So what was Jamie’s story about?’

‘Well, it all started when the residents of a small village near the base started to suffer from headaches. And I don’t mean just your average little headache, I’m talking about really debilitating migraines, suffered by pretty much everyone in that village, over a hundred people.’

‘And?’ Alyssa asked. ‘What did he find out?’

‘Well, he did some digging, turned up a few rumours about the place; I mean, just the average, what you’d expect when the military takes on scientific research and sets up a covert, secretive base around it. You know the sort of thing, they’re building some sort of new weapon of mass destruction there, something worse than nuclear, maybe biological or chemical. Another theory was that they were experimenting with mind control, beaming out special radio waves to subdue the population, make us all into government lapdogs.’

Alyssa nodded, aware how it all worked. Anything labelled ‘covert’ was an immediate target for the lunatic fringe, who seemed to compete to come up with the most imaginative — crazy — purpose for the project concerned. But the fact that a seasoned reporter like Jamie would launch an investigation was interesting. ‘So what was Jamie’s take on it?’

‘Well, by the time he got up there to interview the people, lawyers from HIRP had already been there to apologize and negotiate a payoff. They accepted and just clammed up, wouldn’t speak to Jamie at all. Apparently HIRP admitted that a recent test might have been to blame, I think they said it was just a five-second burst from the radar field to do a live check on submarine communications. Anyway, that was that — nobody would say anything, and all Jamie could get was an interview with a HIRP spokesperson, and that wasn’t even on the base itself.’

‘So he never even got to see the base?’

‘He took some long-distance shots but nothing we could use; he was too far away, and the location is protected and remote.’

‘So have outsiders never been there?’ Alyssa asked, her curiosity piqued further.

‘Well, I wouldn’t say that. Every year they actually have a public open day, even people from the press can attend. It’s all very sanitized of course, and you aren’t allowed to roam free, but they show you some of what they do there, and they publish a lot of their research online too.’

‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that they’ve got one of these open days coming up.’

‘The last one was just two months ago, so there won’t be another until next year. And they don’t let the press in at any other time. So what are you going to do?’

Alyssa thought about it for several moments, not even noticing when the body was stretchered past her, camera lights flashing all around. Finally, her mind made up, she said, ‘First of all, I’m going to confirm that Karl was working there. Then I’m going to go and see Jamie, look at what he found out. And then I’m going to go and have a look at the base.’

‘And just how are you going to do that? No press, no outsiders, remember?’

Alyssa looked at him, her features set, determined. ‘I’ll find a way,’ she said.

9

It was almost midnight by the time the newspaper offices were cleared ready for use again, but the late hour didn’t deter Alyssa. As soon as she was able, she was back in the research room, behind the same computer; the only difference was that while Lubeck had decided not to return, the room was now much busier than it had been before. An earthquake was a big story, after all, especially here in the city, and her paper’s reporters were some of the best in the world, hard-working and dedicated. But, she soon found out, they weren’t here just for the earthquake story; things had been happening elsewhere too.

In fact, it turned out that small-scale natural disasters had occurred over a significant portion of the globe. Checking the online news stations, Alyssa saw floodwaters crashing over fishing villages, sandstorms sweeping over desert cities, a volcano that had spewed out a gigantic ash cloud; image after image of devastation.

Tyler Bradshaw, a local reporter sitting at the desk next to Alyssa, turned to her. ‘It’s probably not as bad as it looks,’ he said, in a tone that was less than confident. ‘Like what we just had, these things are all classified as low-level events. What’s of more concern,’ he continued, ‘is that there have been so many, spread over such a vast area of the planet. There have been fourteen of these low-level disasters around the world in the last few hours. It’s just unbelievable,’ he said, shaking his head.

Two hours later, Alyssa had found clear evidence that Karl had indeed been working at the High-frequency Ionospheric Research Project.

The task had been made easier by knowing where to look; concentrating only on HIRP focused the search and enabled her to spend her time a lot more efficiently.

As Rushton had pointed out, several facets of HIRP’s activities were available on the web for scrutiny. On an open data research site, she finally found Karl’s name on two separate papers, labelled as a consultant on computer network security at HIRP. The trouble was, these papers had been published two years before, so all it proved was that Karl had worked there at that time; it didn’t necessarily mean he had still been employed there.

She also found him in a group photo taken at one of the base’s ‘open days’, which appeared on numerous websites. This was more recent but still over a year old.

She used some of the open data sites to delve further into the web, until she found the archives of the internal staff newsletters. These weren’t exactly public access, but they had been easy enough to find. Nothing secret was likely to appear in a newsletter, after all. She scrolled through endless notices about bake sales and softball games, and at last found what she was looking for, in a newsletter just two weeks old: ‘HIRP Adventure Club will be meeting at the Bear Tavern in Allenburg at 7 p.m. this Tuesday to discuss provision of a new hangar for the club glider. HAC president Karl Janklow requests that all members attend.’ This was confirmation that Karl was still working at the base when he was killed.

Thinking back, Alyssa recalled that he had always been fond of clubs and meetings; indeed, he had been president of the Ski Association back when she’d first met him. The memories of those times flashed before her, events, parties, faces…

Why didn’t I think of this before?

She almost cursed as she reached for the telephone. It was late, but she had to know. And if she played it right, then perhaps gaining access to the base might not prove as impossible as Rushton feared.

Despite the lateness of the hour, the phone rang only twice before a nervous, tearful voice answered, ‘Hello?’

‘Is that Elizabeth Gatsby?’ Alyssa asked, sure from the reaction that it must be. Liz Gatsby was Karl Janklow’s younger sister, and the tearful voice answered one of the questions she’d had — Karl’s death must have been reported already.

‘Yes,’ Liz answered. ‘Who is this?’

‘I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Alyssa Durham. We met a couple of times at parties a few years ago. I was a friend of Karl’s.’

The tears started again, but Liz managed to control them. ‘Yes… Yes, I remember you.’

‘I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am to hear about your brother. We were good friends.’

‘Yes, I remember… How did you hear?’

‘I’m a reporter,’ Alyssa replied. ‘I saw the name over one of the wires, and just wanted to get in touch, offer my condolences. Do you know what happened?’ she probed, wary of being too interrogative but at the same time needing some quick answers.

‘Yes… The local police, well, local to where Karl was living, called to say that he’d been involved in an accident. An avalanche while he was driving…’ The voice started to crack again, and Alyssa let her cry, just waited until she was capable of going on. ‘They say they can’t find the body… They might never find it. Oh!’ And the tears began once more, and Alyssa felt her heart go out to the woman.

Karl had always been close to his sister, Alyssa knew; he had looked after her in the way typical of an older brother, and she had looked up to him in turn. Alyssa was no stranger to loss, and knew exactly what she must be going through.

Eventually, Liz managed to carry on. ‘And there was someone else too, a lady I think Karl was seeing, Leanne… somebody. I don’t know… Karl and I hadn’t seen each other since he moved away. I don’t think he was allowed to get away much.’

Alyssa made a note to check out the name. An avalanche was clever, she thought. In that part of the world it could well hide a body indefinitely. And who was going to investigate that far north anyway?

‘Has HIRP been in touch with you at all?’ Alyssa asked next, fishing for information.

‘You… know he worked there?’ Liz asked, her surprise evident.

‘A guess,’ Alyssa replied evenly. ‘It was about the only place up there he could be working.’

Liz seemed to be thinking on the other end of the line. ‘Yes,’ she answered finally. ‘With Mom and Dad gone, and Karl unmarried, I’m the next of kin. They rang a few hours ago, to express their sympathies, ask if I wanted to go up there, collect his personal effects, you know.’

Alyssa’s heart leaped, her unvoiced hopes confirmed, but she managed to contain her sudden excitement. ‘So will you be going?’

‘I really want to,’ Liz replied, ‘but I can’t afford to go up there. And with two kids at school and my own work, I just don’t have the time anyway. I asked them to pack up his things and send them down to me.’ She paused. ‘Even though they’ve not found the body, we’re going to have a memorial service for Karl at our church. I need to speak to the priest but I think it will be early next week. It would be nice if you could be there.’

Alyssa forced back her own tears, the reality of Karl’s death coming violently back to her. ‘I will.’ She sniffed. ‘Thank you, Liz.’

Over three thousand miles away, Professor Niall Breisner waited in the secure communications room for the call to be patched through. He was sweating, and it wasn’t from the heat generated by the large banks of electrical equipment that filled the room. This wasn’t a conversation he was looking forward to having.

Moments later, the image of General David Tomkin appeared on the screen in front of him, the large high-definition picture making it appear that the man was in the room with him, an impression that did nothing to calm his nerves.

‘Professor,’ Tomkin said in greeting.

‘Good evening, General. How are you?’ Breisner winced at the banality of his words even as they left his mouth.

‘Not happy, so let’s skip the pleasantries,’ Tomkin said plainly. ‘What the hell is going on up there?’

‘We always knew there would be indicators,’ Breisner offered. In fact he remembered quite clearly that he had briefed Tomkin in precise detail as to how these sorts of things were more than likely to happen.

‘Indicators are one thing,’ Tomkin said impatiently. ‘The events we’ve just seen are like a big flashing neon sign. It’s unacceptable, Professor.’

Breisner nodded. ‘You’re right. It is unfortunate. But I’m afraid such exposure is very much part of the deal. We cannot test the device without ramifications of some kind. You must surely realize that.’ Breisner wondered if he’d overstepped the mark by addressing the general in this way, but the man merely paused, head bowed.

‘OK. What’s done is done, we can’t change that now. Just tell me that it was worth it. Is the device operational?’

Breisner shook his head very slightly. ‘Effective, yes. Obviously. But not yet fully operational. There are some details that need to be ironed out. Questions of control and direction. Obviously, the device needs to be fully accurate, and I cannot guarantee that at the moment. But we are close,’ he said with pride. ‘We are very close.’

Tomkin grunted. ‘Close doesn’t cut it with me, Professor. I want results; that’s what you’re paid for.’

‘We are on schedule,’ Breisner countered.

Tomkin stared at him through the computer screen, his blue eyes piercing. ‘Good,’ he said firmly. ‘Make sure you don’t fall behind.’

Breisner nodded. He knew what would happen to him if he let the general down.

Moments after the connection was severed, Breisner’s head snapped round as his landline desk telephone started to ring. He picked it up instantly. ‘Yes?’

‘Is that Professor Breisner?’ the voice on the other end asked; a tearful female voice, and Breisner knew instantly who it was.

‘Yes. Is that Liz?’ he asked, his voice sympathetic. He knew what Anderson had done, and that Janklow’s sister had been given the party line about the ‘accident’. He thought it had all been dealt with, and wondered what she wanted.

‘Yes,’ the voice came back. ‘I’m sorry to call so late, but I’ve changed my mind.’

‘Oh? Changed your mind about what?’

‘About collecting Karl’s personal effects. I’ve decided to come. I… I need closure, I think. I hope it’s still OK.’

OK? Damn, it sure as hell wasn’t OK, but Breisner knew he had to keep up the pretence of normalcy; he mustn’t arouse the woman’s suspicions. They would just have to escort her in, show her Janklow’s workstation; maybe he’d even have a word with her himself, offer his condolences personally; and then she would be escorted off again, and the whole sorry incident could be forgotten.

‘Of course it’s still OK,’ he answered. ‘When do you want to come?’

Alyssa smiled as she cradled the telephone next to her ear. She checked her watch; it was still before midnight up at the base. ‘There’s a flight that will get me there by tomorrow evening.’

10

‘Have we identified the woman yet?’ Anderson asked as the private jet carried him back towards the frozen wastelands which sheltered the HIRP base.

‘Negative,’ the answer came back over the satellite phone. Anderson had left some agents behind to investigate the scene — physically check CCTV footage, interview witnesses, and so on; he had also been in contact with the experts back at the base, ordering them to make an immediate electronic search for the woman. The computing power at HIRP was enormous, and Anderson had instructed the CCTV footage of the mystery woman to be plugged into the system for a facial match to be run. The woman may have been in disguise, but the dimensions and contours of the face would be unchanged.

He had also ordered a thorough background check on Janklow, including finding all the interviews done during his security vetting checks when he had applied for the post at HIRP. The woman was probably known to Janklow, and looking back at his past might well provide them with the answer.

The woman obviously wasn’t Janklow’s girlfriend; Leanne Harnas was already dead. Unless he had another? Anderson thought this unlikely, but you never knew. The man’s mother was dead, and his only living female relative was his sister, Elizabeth Gatsby. His agents had already established that she was at work teaching grade school over five hundred miles away when Janklow had met the woman at the park.

It was possible, of course, that the woman was genuinely unknown to Janklow; perhaps he had been approached by someone, forced to work for them.

The intelligence analyst back at the base went on, ‘We have, however, highlighted evidence of a detailed web search about HIRP performed very recently.’

Anderson considered the matter. It could be nothing; HIRP was always the target of conspiracy theorists, and so web searches were nothing to get excited about. However, the timing seemed just a little too coincidental. ‘Where did the search originate?’

‘We’re still working on that, sir,’ the man answered. ‘But it might take some time — the search was initiated by a secure system, on a protected network.’

This started alarm bells ringing for Anderson; the crazies didn’t normally have access to such technology. It indicated that the investigator was professional, and Anderson again considered the possibilities — another government department, a foreign intelligence agency, or the press. Any of them spelt trouble.

‘Concentrate on that,’ Anderson ordered. ‘By the time I get there, I want to know where that search originated.’

Alyssa was glad to be able to go home at last, for one night at least. Get some proper sleep, in her own bed. The next few days promised to be busy.

She had reported in to Rushton, who had been amazed by her gall. He had at first refused to countenance the idea of her getting on to the base by pretending to be Elizabeth Gatsby, but she had finally won him round and he was now in the process of lining up some false identification papers for her. He could sense a big story and although he acknowledged the danger to Alyssa, the reward might just be worth the risk.

The task of impersonating Liz should not be too difficult, Alyssa reasoned. By her own admission, Karl’s sister had never visited him at the base, and nobody there was ever likely to have met her in person. She realized that the security personnel might have pictures of Liz, but she knew she would be able to make herself look sufficiently like the woman to pass muster. Their body proportions were very similar, they were the same age, and Liz wore glasses — a great accessory to mask the face. The only major change would be hair colour — Alyssa’s was dark brown, whilst Liz was a redhead.

She was going to have to get some hair dye, several bottles of the best, and so she headed across town for the minimart just a few blocks from her apartment building. It was the middle of the night but the store was open twenty-four hours a day.

She would get the things she needed, sort her hair out back at her apartment, get some much-needed sleep and then meet up with Jamie Price at the office in the morning. She could then get the rest of her things ready before catching the 2 p.m. flight up north. She hoped Rushton’s sources would have the ID ready in time.

She decided to avoid the subway due to the late hour and keep to the streets. She would have caught a taxi but the roads were gridlocked — at this time? she wondered — and she knew it would be quicker walking. And anyway, she lived less than a mile away.

It wasn’t long before she was questioning her decision, however; even though it was way past the time people were normally out — except for the regular die-hard party fans, of course — the streets were still clustered with people. She realized that it was possible that some of the apartment blocks had still not been cleared after the earthquake.

But it soon became apparent that it was something more than that. People were actually taking to the streets in protest, visibly shaken by the week’s events. The various religious sects and cults were still plying their trade on the street corners, and seemed to be attracting huge followings. She checked as she walked and, sure enough, soon came across a preacher dressed in a white robe and wearing a gold headband. A few dozen people had gathered round him, listening intently, and he was urging them, in the name of the Order of Planetary Renewal, to prepare for the cleansing of the world.

The next street she chose was obstructed by a group of angry people — all ages, men and women, some wearing suits, others in rougher clothing — demanding to know what the government was doing to ‘save’ their country. Armed police were already starting to arrive on the scene, and Alyssa turned off, following a side road down to an intersection.

Things were quieter here, but only because the craziness had already been and gone. Storefront windows were shattered down the length of the street, the shops looted, empty. Cars lining the streets had evidently been set on fire at some stage; many were still smouldering, although most were gutted wrecks. A group of six men wearing greatcoats and carrying three-foot lengths of wood started marching down the street from the far end but were soon intercepted by a group of policemen. Alyssa turned down another street before she became embroiled in the confrontation; the sound of shouting and then heavy impacts, followed by two gunshots, made her quicken her pace.

It was one thing to hear about riots on the television, another thing altogether to see them up close. Alyssa had seen worse during her career but she wasn’t used to witnessing it so close to home. It scared her.

She arrived at the minimart ten minutes later, her route mercifully unopposed by any more rioters or protestors. But instead of the minimart’s normal night-time trade of a few dozen people at any one time, there were now several hundred crammed into it. People were buying all they could, just in case. In case of what? Alyssa thought about trying somewhere else, but soon decided against it. Another store might be even busier than this, and who knew what she might have to walk past to get there.

Pushing through the door, she entered the melee.

The store was busy but calm, people nervous but controlled as they moved along the aisles filling their baskets and trolleys with things they would probably never need. Alyssa tried to get what she wanted as fast as she could, but the sheer numbers were against her; it took her twenty minutes before she joined the long check-out queue. By then the mood was starting to change. The close crush of people and the interminable waiting was wearing down whatever patience people still had.

The first shouts came from the aisle next to Alyssa. That’s mine! It was a woman’s voice, coarse, penetrating. Get your hands off it! I mean it! The man’s voice was equally coarse, threatening. Then others joined in, and there was scuffling as the man and woman went for each other. Shopping carts were pushed to the side and crashed into shelves as people tried to split them up. More shouts erupted, and then it sounded as if a full-scale fight had broken out down the aisle, and not just the man and woman now but many more, taking sides against each other. Alyssa flinched as the shelves swayed towards her, pushed by the struggling bodies on the other side. It held, but only just.

And then other fights broke out, all around the store, and Alyssa watched in mute desperation: two men kicking a woman on the floor, their feet repeatedly stomping on her belly, her head; another man driven face first into a refrigeration unit, the thick glass shattering and cutting him, blood pooling down his neck and chest to the floor; four women fighting in the queue directly in front of her, pulling each other’s hair, kicking at each other with sharp heels; and then the man with the gun.

At its appearance, the whole store seemed to go quiet for a fraction of a second; or at least that was the way Alyssa would later remember it. Maybe it only went quiet in her own mind as her senses focused on the terrifying sight in front of her: the dull black metal of the pistol being raised by the panicked man in the pinstriped suit and glasses, the slight pressure on the trigger, the slide ratcheting backwards and forwards, the empty shell casing ejected; the head of the woman next to her exploding, covering her own face with the unknown woman’s sticky, thick, bright red brain matter.

Despite herself, Alyssa screamed. The man dropped the gun in terrified recognition of what he’d done and was tackled to the ground by the people surrounding him. Alyssa clamped down on her scream. As she watched the gunman being mercilessly kicked to death by the crowd, his glasses broken across his bloodied, smashed face, she knew she had to keep her head together or she wasn’t going to make it out of there alive.

Wiping the blood and brain tissue off her face, she went into a low, protective crouch and looked around, assessing the situation. The gunshot had acted as a catalyst for true chaos to break out, and her options were limited.

All around her, scenes of violence erupted, as people started fighting everywhere, most using just their fists but others using bottles, shopping carts baskets and any other improvised weapon that came to hand. People trying to escape were trampled underfoot, their screams muffled by dozens of pairs of shoes and boots.

And then the sheer force of the crowd smashed through the storefront windows, glass shattering on to the street outside, people spilling out after it. The violence gave way to looting then. People gathered up as many items off the shelves as they possibly could and raced for the huge opening that was once a window. People fled from the store carrying piles of goods in their arms or in overflowing baskets. Some even pushed their shopping carts over fallen shoppers on their way out, crushing them.

Alyssa edged her way forwards, sidestepping as a man fell to the floor, hit on the side of the head by another man wielding a heavy piece of wood. She looked outside to gauge her chances of escaping through the window, and decided that they weren’t good. Shoppers were being jostled and shoved to the ground by people pushing their way out of the minimart with their stolen goods; and Alyssa now noticed that other people were actually entering the store through the hole where the window had been, opportunists seeking to loot the store, maybe perfectly normal people until recently, now possessed by the mentality of the rampaging mob.

She looked to the check-outs and saw some of the staff fighting running battles with the looters, trying desperately to stop them, but it was hopeless, there were simply too many of them.

Alyssa sensed movement behind her and reacted, dodging to one side as a greasy fat man in a suit threw a punch at the back of her head. Without even stopping to consider why he would do such a thing, Alyssa stamped down on his knee. As the leg buckled, the man’s weight collapsing on top of it, Alyssa grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head straight on to her knee. The impact knocked him out cold and his heavy body hit the floor. Alyssa was no stranger to fighting — had discovered years earlier that she was actually good at it — but she knew when discretion was the better part of valour. She couldn’t fight them all.

You’re a climber, she told herself. Climbing’s what you do. Her eyes tracked upwards, following one of the nearest aisle’s huge central shelving units as it led up towards the plasterboard ceiling, and knew that she had a chance. Climb!

She started to push against the crowd, avoiding punches, to her disgust even treading on some of the other shoppers who had fallen to the floor, until she was at the shelves. And then she started climbing, fingers gripping each shelf in turn as she pushed off with her feet, propelling herself upwards.

Hands started to claw at her from below, and she kicked out — hitting an arm here, a face there — and then she was at the top, pulling herself up on to the shelving unit, which ran from one end of the store to the other.

Keeping down, she quickly crawled along the length of the unit, ignoring the cans thrown at her by the people below. She saw the staff exit at the rear, saw how it was unobstructed, everyone’s attention on the broken glass of the storefront, and knew that was going to be her way out.

She felt the shelving unit begin to sway underneath her, and looked down to see a group of women pushing against it, trying to send it smashing down to the floor. Again, Alyssa didn’t stop to ask herself why they would do such a thing; instead, she looked at the shelving unit across the aisle, doing a quick mental calculation. Could she make it? It would be a standing long jump, with no room for a run-up. But it seemed so far. Logic told her that it was only two metres — far enough, but not out of the question. But up there, balanced precariously three metres off the ground, the women below screaming for her blood, it seemed much further.

But what choice did she have?

And so Alyssa braced herself, did a half-squat, and jumped straight over the aisle. For a few brief, terrible moments she felt she wasn’t going to make it, would miss the shelves entirely and fall to the floor where she would be kicked to death by the angry mob; but then she was there, landing with a shudder on the top of the shelves opposite.

Her balance was good but she still almost lost it, struggling to compensate for the movement of the shelves that came from her weight hitting the top of it. But she managed to stop herself from falling over the edge, and composed herself. The exit was three aisles over.

The women below her pointed and screamed, rushing forward to push at the new line of shelves. Other people in the store started to notice her too, the mob mentality taking over, and they joined the women below and started to push at the shelves, for no other reason than that they could. They could take this jumping female down and kick her to death, and nobody there in the shop would judge them for it, they were free from all constraint. Alyssa could feel the violent energy, and jumped, just moments before the shelving unit collapsed.

She teetered on the top of the next one, getting her balance again, blocking out the screams of the people trapped beneath the crushing weight of the shelves behind her, and then jumped again.

She was a prime target now, people from all over the store were heading towards her, but it was quieter at the back, most of the crowds were at the front, and those coming for her were hampered by the crush and the obstruction caused by the fallen shelves.

Looking forwards once more, she made her final jump to the last shelving unit, her legs tired now, collapsing under her as she landed, spinning her off the top. She gasped in momentary surprise and panic but managed to correct herself as she went over the edge, catching hold of the top shelf with her strong hands; but her own weight, combined with the momentum of her jump, started to pull the whole unit down, and she shouted at the people below her to get out of the way, riding the shelves down as the unit arced towards the floor and jumping clear as it crashed down into the aisle with a deafening noise.

She saw a group of people — an unruly, violent mob — moving across the broken shelves and bodies to get to her, and she turned for the door to the staff exit, just feet away now. Sprinting forwards, she barrelled a man out of the way who had decided to block her path, kicking through the door just as the first hands were starting to reach her.

Then she was through into a whitewashed concrete corridor, and she pivoted on her heel and slammed the door shut behind her, sliding the locking bolt home even as the door bulged inwards from the weight of the ferocious crowd behind it.

She turned and fled down the corridor to the fire exit at the far end. Pushing through it, she heard the inner door break behind her and the flood of people rushing down the corridor in pursuit of her — their mind operating as one now, their only desire to track down and kill the jumping woman. Why?

Why not?

As Alyssa gulped in the clean night air of the service alley, she knew she didn’t have much time before they would be upon her. She turned back to the minimart and looked up. The building was four storeys high.

She pulled off her shoes and threw them into a garbage bin opposite, then hauled herself up into a boarded-up window frame, her fingers and toes reaching for the ridges and depressions that would give her the purchase she need to climb.

Within seconds she was on top of the window frame, and then started on the harder part, her fingers and toes feeling for the gaps between the brickwork, using the tiny ridges to give her leverage to haul herself up the exterior of the old building.

By the time the first rioters broke out into the service alley, she was already two storeys up, but she didn’t stop, she just kept on climbing, her mind focused on nothing else. Adrenalin coursed through her body, sharpening every sense; she could see the brickwork in exquisite detail, her fingers and toes probing the tiny gaps and depressions as she hauled herself upwards.

She could hear the shouts far below — Where’s she gone? — Where is the bitch? — Come on, down here! — Let’s get her! — and realized that they had never looked up; and now she was so high, she would be almost invisible in the dark.

She kept on climbing, until finally she pulled herself over the parapet of the roof; drained, exhausted, the breath simply drained from her.

But she’d done it. She was alive.

Alyssa spent the next few hours on the rooftop, watching with increasing horror the scenes around her.

The fighting and looting continued, spreading out from the minimart to engulf other shops on the street. And then innocent bystanders were pulled in, beaten, robbed of their money and jewellery. Cars and vehicles were set on fire, and then the shops too. Mercifully not the minimart — Alyssa felt safe on the roof, and didn’t want to come down — but several other shops and business units on the street were set alight, some with people still inside.

And then the riot police descended on the scene and moved in with shields and batons, while water cannon and rubber bullets were used as suppressing fire from the rear.

The violence was terrifying, and surprisingly lengthy; the rioters held out for quite some time, despite the advantage of the police unit’s weapons and equipment.

But slowly and surely some semblance of order was restored; the street was cleared, and Alyssa counted fifty-four people being loaded into the back of the police vans. Hundreds more fled across the city.

Finally, she felt confident enough to climb back down the building. She collected her shoes from the dumpster and made her way just two blocks further to her own apartment building. She avoided the police; she knew they were doing their job for her protection but if she’d gone to them, she would have been taken downtown as a witness, and she had no idea how long it would have been before they took her statement. Hours? Days?

But she was home now, finally; although — as the magnitude of what had happened to her began to sink in — she had to admit, she no longer felt safe anywhere.

11

Oswald Umbebe grimaced as he took a sip of sweet tea. The pain in his chest was agonizing, yet he knew that it was a not a problem with which he would have to concern himself for much longer.

He had been diagnosed with the disease just six months ago, after refusing to visit a doctor about the pain for several years. And by the time he went, it was inoperable; it had already spread from his lungs, outwards through his body. He knew he was going to die — the doctor had told him as much on that first day — but this didn’t trouble him in the least. Everyone was going to die one day. And Umbebe knew something most other people didn’t — that day was coming sooner than they thought.

He was the High Priest of the Order of Planetary Renewal and it was his firm belief that the world was going to end very soon. At least, the world in its present form was going to end, to make way for another to rise from the ashes. That was the beauty of it.

This wasn’t just a way to cash in on the current situation, to part fools from their money. The order didn’t ask anyone for money, they never had, not once in their thousand-year history.

Their philosophy was simple. The world had to periodically renew itself in order to survive. It had to cleanse itself, to cure itself of the malaise it periodically experienced. Catastrophic incidents had occurred on several occasions in the earth’s four and a half billion-year history, and the ancient scientists who had established Umbebe’s order had charted these events, discerning a pattern amongst the seeming randomness.

According to the ancient scholars, this year was due to see another Apocalypse, another renewal of the world’s finite energy. Umbebe was thrilled that he would be presiding over the order during the time of final upheaval. It was an honour of the highest magnitude, and he had worked hard to build up the order, until now membership stood at over eighty thousand across the world. Not that they would have any sort of reward; they would perish along with everyone else. But they would die knowing that their deaths had purpose, and that was the real difference.

The year, however, was fast running out, and there was nothing on the horizon — no planet-ending comet, no tectonic movement presaging a gigantic earthquake, no sign of any catastrophic tsunami. But he wasn’t without back-up plans. Years before, one of his most loyal brothers had come to him with news of some secret government research, and Umbebe’s true mission in life had become clear to him in a moment of exultant revelation.

It was too much for him to expect to just sit back and let the world destroy itself. Technology was so advanced now that the earth might need assistance to cleanse itself. The world was testing him, he began to understand that. And so he had started planning.

The phone beside him rang, the electronic handset obtrusive in the otherwise natural, wood-panelled setting of his private office. My update, he thought, wincing with pain as he picked it up.

‘Yes?’ he answered expectantly. He listened as his agent informed him of the latest occurrences, grunting occasionally in acknowledgement. When the man had finished, Umbebe asked simply, ‘But how long until it is ready? Truly ready?’

As the man answered, many thousands of miles away, Umbebe smiled, the pain in his chest all but forgotten. It was a matter of great fortune that he had a loyal man deep inside such a project. Although, he had to admit, it wasn’t entirely luck — Umbebe had spent years recruiting people; they were spread throughout the world for just such a time as this.

Yes, he thought happily. The time is almost here. And our order will usher in a new dawn… with the destruction of the earth, and everyone in it.