‘Please, Sabiss,’ Selenne said, ‘there’s no need –’
‘SABISS IS DEAD!’ the Primarch bellowed, roaring at the caged Illuminate, the dark, faceted surface of its armour flashing with bright red light. It spun back towards Sam, jabbing a finger towards Selenne. ‘Do you want to know how she got here? She hitched a ride. At some point she must have blended her own nanites with yours. How did she manage to persuade you? Was it so you could better control their weapons? Just like the Illuminate, to hide poison inside a gift. When I found her hiding inside you she was comfortably coiled around your central nervous system. Now why on earth would she have done that? Unless, of course, she was planning a hijack of her own.’
Sam glanced over at the Illuminate cloud, waiting for Selenne to deny the Primarch’s accusations.
‘The silence of the guilty, I fear,’ the Primarch said with a sadistic grin. The creature leaned in close to Sam, its voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Oh, but the Illuminate are guilty of so much more. So many lies, lies on top of lies, lies under lies, lies as far as the eye can see. Isn’t that right, Selenne?’ The Primarch whirled around, shouting the question at her. ‘There’s one really big lie though, isn’t there? One great, big, black, festering deception. I wonder what would happen if we told your friend here the truth about that?’ The Primarch walked right up to the caged swirling cloud. ‘You must have heard us talking as you hid inside the child. Did you hear him? He actually seemed to care that he would have to destroy the Illuminate to save his own species. I wonder if he’d feel the same way if he was to discover what you actually had planned for this planet. Shall we find out?’
‘Don’t do this, Sabiss, I’m begging you,’ Selenne pleaded, her voice suddenly sounding desperate. ‘You will bring doom to our people.’
‘Our people?’ the Primarch spat. ‘They should have died out millennia ago. The Illuminate have always clung desperately to life, though, haven’t they, Selenne? Which brings us back to the humans.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Sam asked angrily, suddenly sick of feeling like a playing piece in a game that he didn’t quite understand. ‘What has all of this got to do with us?’
‘Absolutely everything,’ the Primarch replied. ‘I think it’s time that humanity finally learned the truth about the Illuminate, don’t you?’
Jay and Mag walked through the dark, cavernous corridors of the alien ship, trying very hard to make as little sound as possible. The walls and floors around them were made of a smooth, dark rock that was warm to the touch and throbbed with a regular pulse-like vibration. They had not seen a sign of a single living creature since they had managed to get on board and it seemed like they had been walking for miles along the featureless corridors in their search for Sam.
‘I’m starting to think this wasn’t such a good idea,’ Mag said. ‘This place is enormous. We’re never going to find him.’
‘We’ll find him,’ Jay said. ‘We just need to keep searching.’
‘You did notice how big this thing was when we were flying up here, didn’t you?’ Mag asked.
‘Yeah, I know but . . .’ Jay stopped for a moment, looking at Mag with a slightly confused frown. ‘Erm . . . you do know you’re glowing, right?’
‘I’m what?’ Mag replied.
Jay gestured towards the breast pocket of her jacket, which was lit up from within, a yellow glow showing through the weave of the fabric. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the test tube containing the handful of inert nanites that she had gathered up from the fallen Servant in London. Except they obviously weren’t quite so inert any more. The glowing particles were all clumped at one end of the tube, which she could feel vibrating slightly in her hand. As she flipped the tube, the particles raced back to the other end, as if they were trying to head in that specific direction.
‘Is that . . . ?’ Jay asked, gesturing at the tube.
‘Yeah, this is some of what was left of the Servant,’ Mag replied. ‘And it wasn’t doing this earlier, I’ll tell you that much. It seems to want to go that way though.’ She turned slowly around, the glowing nanites shifting within the tube to remain pointing in the same direction. ‘Shall we find out where it wants to go?’
‘I guess it’s better than wandering randomly,’ Jay said with a shrug. ‘Let’s be careful, though. For all we know that stuff is leading us towards the biggest group of Voidborn it can find.’
Mag gave a quick nod before holding the tube in front of her, using the movements of the nanites to give her an idea which direction to head in. After ten minutes she and Jay rounded a bend in one of the endless corridors and saw a faint golden light somewhere up ahead.
‘You see that?’ Jay whispered as they approached a doorway. The yellow light that was flickering on the corridor walls was coming from the room beyond.
‘Let’s check it out,’ Mag said, her nose twitching as she sniffed the air. She could smell nothing but the faint, lingering odour of burnt metal that seemed to hang in the air everywhere on the alien ship. The pair of them slid along the wall, creeping up to the doorway until they were close enough for Jay to poke his head around the corner.
‘Woah,’ Jay said under his breath as he saw what was hovering in the centre of the room. The Servant hung suspended in the air in a shaft of white light. She was still recognisable as the Voidborn that had served and protected them during their time in London, but the glowing nanites that made up her body seemed to swirl in tiny, chaotic storm clouds, yellow sparks flickering within them. Her head was thrown back, her mouth agape as if frozen in a perpetual scream and her eyes open wide, still burning with a fierce, yellow light.
‘Is that . . . ?’ Mag asked as she followed Jay into the room.
‘Yeah, I think it must be,’ Jay replied. ‘Unless you know any other golden Voidborn that you’ve not been telling us about?’
‘Nope, just the one,’ Mag said as she walked over to the pedestal, leaning in and examining the floating body of the Servant more closely. ‘What do you think’s happened to her?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Jay replied, shaking his head and looking up at the floating Voidborn. ‘Whatever it is, it doesn’t look good.’ If the Servant had any idea that the pair of them were there, she was showing no sign of it.
‘So what do we do with her?’ Mag asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Jay said, rubbing his forehead and frowning. ‘She might be able to tell us where Sam is, because I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to think that we could run around this ship all day and never find him.’
‘Aye, I know what you mean,’ Mag said, looking up at the vaulted ceiling far above them. ‘I’d not really thought about how big this thing was when we stowed away, to be honest.’
‘So, the question is, how do we get her out of this thing?’ Jay said, raising his hand towards the beam of light. ‘What the . . .’
A stream of blue particles began to flow quickly from Jay’s fingertips and into the beam of light, twisting and entwining itself within the scattered, swirling structure of the Servant. Jay went to pull his hand away, but Mag grabbed his wrist, holding it in place.
‘Wait, Jay, look!’
Within the shaft of light, the swirling streams of blue particles started to draw the scattered remnants of the Servant’s body back together, the features of her face and body sharpening and becoming clearer as her form continued to coalesce. Within seconds, the Servant was restored, her head tipping forward and her mouth closing. She raised her eyes again and looked first at Jay and then at Mag, her head tilted slightly to one side.
‘How may I be of assistance?’ the Servant asked, a wary smile appearing on Jay’s face as Mag released his wrist and he lowered his arm.
‘You can start by telling us who you are,’ Mag said. ‘And, more importantly, who you take orders from.’
‘I am the servant of the Illuminate,’ she replied. ‘You are both companions of the Illuminate and as such I am duty-bound to s
erve you too.’
‘Aye, that’s golden boobs all right,’ Mag said, using the rather unflattering nickname that Rachel had coined for the Servant not long after her first appearance.
‘So how do we get you out of . . .’ Jay waved vaguely at the column of light that the Servant was trapped inside. ‘Well, whatever this is.’
‘The energy distribution node that provides power to the stasis field is nearby,’ the Servant replied. ‘If you look along the wall to your left, you should be able to identify it.’
Jay spotted a crystalline disc mounted on the wall in the direction the Servant had instructed them to look. It was a couple of metres in diameter and its surface was covered by a crackling red energy field that discharged along web-like energy conduits that disappeared into the wall behind it.
‘OK, I think I found it,’ Jay said, walking over to it. ‘How do I switch it off?’
‘I believe that the regional application of sufficient kinetic energy should prove effective,’ the Servant replied.
‘The what of what?’ Jay asked, with a confused frown.
‘Oh, come on, Jay,’ Mag said, pulling the handgun from the holster on her hip. ‘She means hit it with something.’ Mag raised the pistol and fired three quick shots into the device mounted on the wall. It exploded in a shower of sparks and an instant later the shaft of light surrounding the Servant vanished. The Servant slowly dropped to the ground and stepped off the pedestal. As the final echoes of the gunshots faded, the sound of a low, wailing alarm siren could be heard somewhere in the distance.
‘I believe your actions may have drawn unwelcome attention,’ the Servant said to Mag calmly. ‘I would advise evasive relocation.’
‘Yeah,’ Jay said, looking around nervously as the alarm continued to blare. ‘I think you might just be right. Let’s get the hell out of here.’
‘Hold the line!’ Jack yelled, searing white energy beams lancing out from the weapons mounted on the back of his forearms. ‘Don’t let them push you back.’ He fired again, sending more bolts into the massive wave of drones surging up the canyon wall towards the one end of the Voidborn structure that was still firmly secured in place. There were just too many of them and he knew they would not be able to hold them back for ever. Now it was just a case of trying to buy themselves as much time as possible. Beyond that, they could only hope for a miracle. As the swarm surged up the sheer rock face, it swept under the giant Voidborn structure, disappearing from view beneath it.
‘What are they doing?’ Anne yelled as she and Will ran towards the edge of the span, leaning over and trying to see exactly where they had gone. They could just make out huge clumps of the swarm forming on the main supports that held that end of the structure in place. There was a sudden screeching sound and then a loud, ominous crunch. A moment later one of the supports gave way in an explosion of black crystalline shards, sending billions of the bug-like drones cascading down into the canyon below. The whole colossal structure gave a sickening lurch as the Hunters supporting the control node struggled to compensate for the sudden massive shift in its centre of gravity. Anne and Will fought to keep their footing as the ground bucked wildly beneath their feet.
‘They’re going to bring this whole thing down,’ Will yelled, triggering his armour’s flight systems and rising into the air. ‘We’ve got to try and keep the swarm away from those supports.’ A moment later, he dived under the massive structure, firing at the heaving masses of tiny creatures. Showers of them dropped away as his beams struck home, only to be replaced by countless thousands more surging up the canyon wall behind them. He kept firing, despite the apparent futility of his actions, as Anne and Nat hovered beside him, adding their own beams to the withering field of fire he was already laying down. Their combined bombardment was marginally more effective but it still seemed only to be delaying the inevitable.
‘I need every Hunter we can spare down here now,’ Nat yelled into her comms system. ‘Have them concentrate all their fire on the swarm attacking the supports.’ A moment later another one of the supports began to crumble, chunks of it dropping away as its structural integrity failed. Illuminate-controlled Hunters began to pour over the edge of the superstructure above them, sweeping down towards the swarm as it continued to devour the massive bracing structures. The humans and the Hunters both had to choose their targets carefully, trying to drive the swarm back without further damaging the supports beneath them with their own fire.
‘How long until the first Illuminate Mothership gets here?’ Will yelled over the deafening roar of weapon fire around him.
‘My Illuminate’s telling me it’s going to be at least five minutes,’ Jack replied in his ear.
‘Roger that,’ Will replied, feeling his mouth go dry inside his helmet. He looked at the rapidly disintegrating support structures and the tiny skittering black creatures swarming over them.
There was no way they’d last that long.
‘What do you mean, the truth about the Illuminate?’ Sam asked the Primarch, who was towering over him with a sinister grin.
‘I mean, that you have been lied to, right from the start,’ the Primarch replied. It turned back towards the energy cage within which Selenne was trapped. With a wave of its hand the cage disappeared and the swirling cloud of glowing blue dust coalesced quickly into the robed form of Selenne, dressed just as Sam had last seen her at the Threshold.
‘These beautiful, luminous creatures of light,’ the Primarch sneered. ‘Do you really think this is their true form? Or could it just be that they chose a shape that humans would trust? Hoping that you would believe that such luminous beings could only be your friends, possibly even your saviours?’ It turned back towards Sam, its fiery eyes suddenly blazing with increased intensity. ‘They are no such thing.’ The words came out as little more than a growl.
Sam glanced over at Selenne and she looked away from him, refusing to make eye contact.
‘You see,’ the Primarch continued, ‘the Illuminate understood that my Voidborn had infinite patience and that they would continue to scour the universe until they knew with certainty that the Illuminate’s hated presence had been erased from existence for all eternity. So they needed somewhere to conceal themselves, a hiding place where even I would never find them.’
‘You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,’ Sam spat back at the Primarch angrily. ‘I’ve heard this all before. We know about the Heart. The Illuminate never lied to us about it.’
‘Oh, I’m not talking about the Heart,’ the Primarch replied. ‘That was only ever a temporary measure. They knew that I would find it eventually, no matter how well hidden it was. No, they needed a more permanent solution. Hidden in plain sight. Somewhere I would never think to look.’ The creature placed one massive hand on the side of Sam’s head, the claw at the tip of its thumb pressing into the centre of his forehead painfully. ‘Inside you.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Sam said, sounding slightly bewildered. ‘What do you mean, inside me?’
‘Oh, not just you,’ the Primarch replied with a vicious smile. ‘Inside all of you.’
‘All of us?’ Sam said, frowning in confusion. ‘I still don’t understand.’
‘Do you know how many Illuminate consciousnesses are stored inside the Heart?’ the Primarch asked, taking its hand away from Sam’s head and turning back towards Selenne. ‘No? Then let me tell you. Seven billion. That was all that was left of a species that once numbered in the trillions, reduced at their end to compressed memory engrams, just ghosts stored away inside an indestructible tomb. Seven billion. An interesting number, I’m sure you’ll agree.’
Sam stared at the Primarch, a vague notion of what the horrific creature was talking about starting to form in his head.
‘Let me ask you this,’ the Primarch said. ‘Do you really think it’s a coincidence that all of these terrible misfortunes should befall your planet just as its native population reaches a similar number?’
‘Wha
t are you saying?’ Sam asked quietly. He feared he knew exactly what the Primarch was implying, but he didn’t want to believe it.
‘What I’m saying is that your friend over there –’ the creature gestured towards Selenne, who was standing silently with her head hung low – ‘is really no friend at all. They chose this planet as a hiding place for one reason and one reason only. Life. Rich, abundant, ubiquitous life. A verdant jewel of a planet with an already partially evolved higher-order primate life form that was just beginning to claw its way towards civilisation. A species that could be steered, manipulated, prepared.’
‘That’s not true. It was the Voidborn that manipulated our history,’ Sam said, ‘not the Illuminate. You’ve been here for thousands of years.’
‘Who told you that?’ the Primarch asked.
‘A friend,’ Sam replied angrily, the pain of Stirling’s death still feeling like a fresh wound. ‘He told me everything about how the Voidborn had tried to manipulate human history, how they recruited him and my father to help prepare the Earth for the invasion and how they turned against you when they discovered what you were really planning.’
‘Don’t be so naive,’ the Primarch said. ‘Do you really think Suran told your friend the truth? These creatures have manipulated your entire society for millennia. Is it really so hard to believe that they could deceive just one man? As I said before, lies within lies, it’s the Illuminate way.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Sam snapped angrily. ‘It wasn’t the Illuminate that invaded our world. It wasn’t the Illuminate that turned every person on this planet into a mindless slave.’ His voice became louder as he grew angrier and angrier. ‘It wasn’t the Illuminate that killed my family. That was you!’