‘Now, Carter is heading for London and that on its own may be enough for us to secure his demise. Have the Foundation Stones there been initiated? The QEngine testing complete?’
‘The testing was perfect. We had one hundred per cent accuracy rates, and the engineering could not be faulted. The QHub is working smoothly and I will upload the processor links when we finish this dialogue.’
‘Good.’ Durell’s voice was thoughtful. ‘Kattenheim, my friend, it would seem that we are nearly ready for the assault. I know we were planning on building ... but it would seem events are overtaking us ... we are being pushed, as always, by the enemy that is Spiral.’
‘They think themselves all-powerful,’ said Kattenheim softly.
Durell laughed, a laugh of genuine humour this time. ‘Spiral are fools and they will die like fools,’ he said.
As Carter and Natasha flew further west, the weather worsened over Germany and Natasha had to activate the ECube to aid with navigation. Rain lashed down around the small black helicopter as they swept low over the sprawling Black Forest, dark and foreboding under heavy leaden skies. When Carter awoke from his slumber, he dictated a quick sitrep on their position and the ECube blipped an acknowledgement from the Spiral controllers. They already knew of the Comanche’s destruction and had sent out automated scouts called PopBots - tiny semi-sentient globes of black alloy about the size of an apple that would analyse and report on the crash site.
The rain smashed against the cockpit and with much awkwardness Carter and Natasha exchanged controls, swapping seats and allowing the more experienced Carter to drop the helicopter even lower until they were flashing above the sweeping forests and banking past the occasional castle that stood on a jagged tier or cliff of rock.
The ECube rattled in Natasha’s hands just as she was falling into sleep’s welcoming embrace. Groaning softly, she squinted at the machine and read the data flashing across it.
‘Shit.’
‘What is it?’ Carter glanced at her, one eye on the rolling sweep of darkened green below them, one eye on the shocked whiteness of Natasha’s face. ‘Bad news?’
‘Very bad news. It’s Jam’s latest SAD mission; it has been reported as a failure.’
‘A ... failure?’
Carter stared long and hard at Natasha as the implication sunk into his weary brain. ‘What are the CSRs?’ The seconds seemed to last an age. He could not bring himself to acknowledge the very real possibility of Jam’s death.
‘The whole team are missing - Jam, Slater and TT. They were on a mission in Slovenia, up in the mountains researching a possible sighting by a local cattle farmer. PopBots were subsequently dispatched, but nothing has been discovered - no bodies, no vehicles, nothing. They have simply disappeared and all that remains is a coordinate from Jam’s ECube’s automated PanicBurst, nano-seconds before the ECube deactivated ... or was forced to deactivate.’
‘Not good.’
‘They’re not dead, Carter.’
‘Have you heard yourself? ECubes don’t fucking deactivate - they’re nearly indestructible! And if his PB initiated, that meant vital signs gave his ECube a severe and violent kick up the arse. No, it’s a bad situation ... has anybody been assigned to an investigation?’
‘Not yet,’ said Natasha softly, her gaze fixed to her lover’s stern jaw, the swathe of stubble across his face making him appear older and rougher. Whatever had happened, Natasha knew then - in that instant - that Carter would find out. Find out and kill like no other man on Earth could kill, if he thought it was necessary ... and deserved.
‘Once we have been briefed at this Spiral meet, then I will go and find them - if they’re still alive.’
‘But this looks important. Hundreds of Squads are being drafted in ...’
Carter glanced at her, frowned and said, ‘If there are hundreds of Squads being drafted in then they won’t need me so much. I’ll put in a showing and then I’m gone ... find me the coordinates and put in an Investigation Request. Do it, Natasha, do it now.’
‘You don’t know yet what Spiral wants ...’
‘Spiral can fucking wait. This is Jam. This is my friend.’
They travelled in silence, rain thundering against the cockpit. The black helicopter lifted, rising into the deluge to skim over a series of high and densely forested hills, then dropped like a black bullet into a valley following the course of a wide river swollen by the storm. In the distance lightning flickered, illuminating the darkness for an instant in electric blue with a touch of blinding white.
Carter blasted headlong into the storm.
The gentler terrain of France provided an easier ride for Carter and Natasha as the rain slowly lessened, and there appeared several tentative glimpses of watery sunshine. But after the churning slate-grey waters of the English Channel the weather worsened once again.
Carter could not stop thinking about Jam ...
Dead?
He could not be dead ...
Carter’s mouth was a thin grim line as they headed towards London and the Spiral meet at this most secret of HQs a couple of miles from the city centre. Disguised among a scattering of high-rise buildings, bland and nondescript, it was an architectural nonentity, bleached concrete with silvered windows. The Spiral HQ was a wholly unremarkable building above ground - but below was a warren of the most incredible high-tech activity, linked by mammoth networks of deep tunnels to other HQs, the SPl_Stores and several UK military bases. It was also linked via the newly blossoming SpiralGRID.
As the black helicopter swept across southern England darkness was falling. The ‘copter whined low over rolling fields and damp autumn woodland, over drenched towns and bleak tarmac. Headlights cut swathes below, and Carter lifted the helicopter a little, avoiding urban areas where he could, and as the sprawl of the Home Counties stretched towards him and the population and housing density increased so he lifted the helicopter further and further into the storm until they were buffeted by wild winds.
‘Not far now.’
‘You’d make a wonderful navigator.’ Carter smiled wearily. ‘Your accuracy and grasp of details in navigational matters are astounding.’
‘Yeah, Carter, and you’d make a superb comedian.’
‘I try, I try. After all, life’s a fucking joke.’
They were closing on the bleak concrete of the Spiral HQ as a sudden deep rumbling echoed across the world, reverberating and booming through the heavens, an almighty noise that drowned the sounds of the storm ...
‘Bad thunder,’ said Natasha softly.
The chopper’s rotors spun, glistening under the rain.
Carter frowned.
The ‘thunder’ did not halt. It increased in tempo ...
‘That’s not thunder,’ said Carter slowly, eyes widening as the distant buildings far below seemed to vibrate, trembling and swaying, and he dropped the helicopter and suddenly, like a deck of cards toppling a whole section of streets collapsed, crushed by some invisible lump hammer. Carter’s eyes lifted to the distant glow of London. He powered forward through the rain, the rumbling all around them, sometimes rising in pitch, sometimes dying off to nothing more than a distant grumbling.
The lights of London loomed close, and Carter closed on Spiral HQ’s concrete tower. The wail of klaxons was springing up now from all parts of the city - fire engines, police cars, ambulances, their sirens howling through the storm - and Carter saw another building, a magnificent Victorian stone edifice, crumble and spew its contents across the street, whirling bodies tossed like pulp through the air to mash with the crashing stones—
‘Fuck,’ hissed Natasha.
Carter said nothing.
‘What’s happening, Carter? What the fuck is going on?’
They swept over the HQ; below swarmed a hundred Spiral operatives, some just recently arrived for the meet, all heavily armed and all glancing up from the wide expanse of roof as the helicopter dropped from the skies ...
They brought the stolen Nex chopper down to land on the roof and immediately they were swarmed over by heavily armed guards. The earthquake took London in its fist and shook it and crushed it and fucked it hard ... lightning flickered, illuminating a scene falling dropping
spinning
into Hell as streets compressed into piles of rubble and buildings were uprooted like concrete trees and spewed in a parody of dominoes ... and below there was screaming, and the flashing of blue lights, the wails of sirens. Police and military helicopters took to the air as the networks were flooded by a million distress calls and all anybody could do was stand there and watch from the rain-soaked parapet as in a few short minutes the earthquake ripped the guts from London and left ugly rancid entrails showing from beneath the battered torn streets.
‘I don’t believe it,’ hissed Natasha, rain soaking her hair and her pale shocked face, dripping from her eyelashes, lightning flashing in her eyes and tears mingling with the rain. ‘I just don’t fucking believe it.’
Carter stood, silent, eyes wide and absorbing the horror show before him.
The building shook.
‘Get back in the chopper,’ growled Carter, his hand touching Natasha’s back, guiding her towards the vehicle. The rumbling beneath their feet intensified, vibrating through the soles of their boots to a distant backing track of screams. Spiral HQ suddenly lurched, and the men and women present were launched across the ground, some falling, others staggering. There came distant groans of stressed steel like a dinosaur screaming in pain. Carter was dragging Natasha now, towards the helicopter which - disappeared.
The building was torn in half, a huge gash ripping across the ground at their feet. Spiral operatives disappeared in the blink of an eye as the structure was separated, dragged into two halves by convulsions of the bucking ground beneath them. The helicopter fell, plunging through the gaping wound in the concrete, and the entire section of tower block drifted away from the severed other half and then halted, leaving a gap of perhaps three or four metres. The whole building was torn in two - a teetering parody of a skyscraper - and Carter could see offices, carved as if by a huge magic sword, sliced neatly in two. The helicopter crashed down further, smashing through the rooms and equipment and people, twisting and compressing until it became wedged a hundred metres below them.
A cold wind blew.
Carter’s head turned swiftly left and right; people were screaming, some hanging on to the edges of this sudden rift as their comrades rushed to help. The rumbling continued, a roar of concrete unrest. He licked his lips, realised that he was holding on to Natasha with a grip of iron and dragged her back as they moved away from the precipice.
Machine-gun fire rattled from the rubble-strewn streets below.
‘We’ve got to get out of this fucking building,’ Carter snarled.
Nats was pale, speechless.
Carter ran back to the parapet and watched the swarm of Nex sprint across the rubble, their submachine guns spouting fire. Several Nex were punched from their feet by return fire from the Spiral building. Below him, he felt the structure shudder - as if wondering whether or not to collapse ...
‘You only have a few seconds,’
Kade whispered softly.
Being the Spiral HQ, this building which was nondescript to look at nevertheless had a host of innovative design features; one of these was safety chutes from roof to ground. As the people on the roof milled around in horror at the events unfolding beneath them, several activated the chutes which sprung into life, huge tubes jettisoning diagonally to the streets below. Carter tried to warn them but the noise was too loud. He watched helplessly as twenty or so jumped into the chutes and sped to the safety of the street below - and straight into a hail of JK49 fire at the hands of the crouching and merciless black-masked Nex.
Carter’s Browning was out. He leaned over the parapet and started firing, a grim look of hatred on his face. Thirteen bullets found thirteen heads and blasted thirteen brains across the rubble. In a smooth movement Carter released the empty mag from the gun and slotted a fresh one home. More bullets spat from the Browning. Others saw Carter’s actions and followed his example -still more bullets rattled down on the Nex. The falling rain was joined by a hailstorm of metal and the Nex turned, retreated to a nearby building and took up defensive positions behind crumbling brick and stone, guns coughing and crackling whenever a member of Spiral tried to escape—
Natasha touched Carter’s arm.
‘We’re fucked that way,’ he snapped, whirling around. ‘We’re going to have to head for the tunnels under the HQ - head for the SpiralGRID ...’
The earthquake chose that moment to smash and stomp its way across the helpless city of London.
Carter and Natasha and a hundred other Spiral people watched an invisible scythe sweep across buildings containing thousands of people, a wave of energy which crushed the buildings into the ground.
The collapsing edifices pumped dust and stone up into the rain-darkened sky and the screams were terrible to hear.
Natasha dragged Carter around and pointed.
‘Look, there are children over there - on the other side of the gap.’
‘What?
What
?’ Carter’s eyes narrowed. ‘How fucking bad can it get?’ he snarled. He sprinted to the edge of the precipice; the building had moved a little more, was still juddering and vibrating, responding to invisible signals at the heart of the quake. The wrecked helicopter had groaned and screeched its way down another few metres. He glanced hurriedly at Nats. ‘What the fuck are children doing on the roof of the Spiral HQ?’