‘Who are you?’ Sam asked, fighting to remain calm despite the feeling of panic in his gut.
‘I think I’ll ask the questions, my young friend,’ the man replied with a smile. ‘Please, sit.’
‘No, thanks,’ Sam said, pulling the concealed pistol from the small of his back and levelling it at the stranger. ‘Now, why don’t you answer my question. Who are you?’
‘Oh, how very disappointing. I was hoping for slightly more than an adolescent thug waving a gun around,’ the man said, still smiling. ‘My name is Oliver Fletcher, and I assume you’re part of the resistance group that has been such a thorn in our side recently.’
‘What’s that thing out there?’ Sam asked, ignoring Fletcher’s question. ‘What are the Threat building here?’
‘The Threat?’ Fletcher laughed. ‘Is that what your pathetic little band of freedom fighters is calling them? Their true name is unpronounceable in our language, but the name they have given themselves in English is the Voidborn and this planet is and always has been theirs.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Sam demanded, keeping his gun trained on Fletcher.
‘We’re just caretakers,’ Fletcher said, his smile suddenly fading, ‘an engineered workforce that will help with the harvest when the time comes. That’s all we’ve ever been.’
‘And I’m supposed to believe that, am I?’ Sam snapped at Fletcher. ‘Coming from someone who’s actually working with these things.’
‘You can believe whatever you wish,’ Fletcher said with a shrug. ‘It makes no difference to me or indeed to the ultimate fate of the Earth. Now, I’d really appreciate it if you told me absolutely everything you know about your comrades-in-arms. Shall we start with the location of whatever rock they’re hiding under?’
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m the one with the gun,’ Sam said.
‘A gun which you’re going to give to me,’ Fletcher said, reaching forward and touching a crystalline disc in the centre of the desk. ‘Or I shall have my sentries rip your friend to pieces right in front of your eyes.’ The air above the crystal disc shimmered for a second and then solidified into a three-dimensional projection of Jay standing between two Hunters, their tentacles wrapped round his arms. ‘Did you really think that you would be able to get within a hundred metres of this facility without being detected? I’ve been watching your every move for the past half an hour.’
‘Call off your Hunters and let Jay go or I put a bullet in your skull,’ Sam said, cocking the hammer on his pistol.
‘Hunters? Yes, I suppose that’s what they must seem like to you,’ Fletcher said. ‘No, I won’t tell the Hunters to release your friend. What’s actually going to happen, is that you’re going to put your gun down, so that we can continue your interrogation in a more civilised manner.’ Sam felt a sudden buzzing in his head and the door behind him hissed open. Three Hunters floated into the room, the barrels of the energy weapons mounted in their upper carapaces glowing with green light. ‘You can still shoot me, of course. You may very well kill me,’ Fletcher said, ‘but then these Hunters will vaporise you where you stand and your friend will die in agony.’ His voice turned suddenly cold, a look of pure malevolence filling his eyes. ‘Now put the gun down!’ The last word was a barked command, not a request.
Sam hesitated for a moment. It would be so easy to squeeze the trigger, but what would that achieve? Jackson’s words echoed through his mind.
Frightened but alive beats brave and dead every time.
Sam uncocked the pistol and laid it on the desk in front of him.
‘You see,’ Fletcher said, the smile returning to his face, ‘that wasn’t so hard, was it?’
Fletcher stood up and walked round the desk. He closed his eyes for a second and the buzzing that Sam could feel in his head was joined by a whispering voice, speaking in an unintelligible language. Immediately, the two Hunters wrapped their tentacles round Sam’s upper arms, their grip painfully tight.
Fletcher walked towards the door, which hissed open as he approached, with the Hunters dragging Sam along behind him.
‘This is only the beginning,’ Fletcher said as they walked up a broad corridor lined with black techno-organic panels, illuminated with patterns of flickering green light. ‘Soon facilities just like this one will have been built in every corner of the world. Everything will be ready for their arrival.’
‘Whose arrival?’ Sam asked.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise,’ Fletcher said. ‘Don’t worry, you and your friends won’t be around to see it anyway, so it really doesn’t concern you.’
‘Why would you do this?’ Sam said. ‘Why would you cooperate with these, what did you call them, Voidborn?’
‘The oldest reason in the book,’ Fletcher replied. ‘Survival.’
They walked towards a huge pair of double doors made from the same matt black material that covered the outside of the Voidborn structure. These slowly rumbled apart and the corridor was filled with the sounds of the enslaved humans labouring within the compound. Fletcher walked ahead of them, heading for the large building where earlier Sam had seen the slaves dumping the rubble from their excavations. In the centre of the brightly lit area, Jay stood between a pair of Hunters, just as he had appeared in the projection on Fletcher’s desk.
‘Sam!’ Jay yelled as he saw his friend approaching. His expression changed to a confused frown as he turned his attention to Fletcher. ‘And who the hell are you?’
‘You may call me Mr Fletcher,’ he replied. ‘Now, shall we get down to business?’ He walked over to a slave who was queueing up to dump his load of rubble into one of the black furnaces that lined the room and took a fist-sized rock from the container he was carrying. He walked towards the glowing portal at the front of the furnace and tossed the rock inside and it vanished with a flash.
‘Really quite a remarkable piece of Voidborn technology,’ Fletcher said, ‘capable of full molecular disintegration. Everything that enters the energy field is broken down at the molecular level and then harvested to be used as raw materials in the nano-forges. Absolutely nothing is wasted – true lossless recycling. I’m sure you can imagine the effect that it would have on human tissue.’ He turned back towards Sam and Jay.
‘Is he working with these things?’ Jay asked Sam, shaking his head in disbelief.
‘I’m afraid so,’ Sam said, staring at Fletcher.
‘Do you want to know what I really hate, Sam?’ Fletcher asked. ‘I really hate being threatened, especially by a boy. So here’s how this is going to work. Your friend Jay is going to tell me exactly where the rest of your little friends are holed up right now, or I’m going to feed you piece by piece into that disintegration field while he watches.’
‘Don’t tell him anything, Jay,’ Sam said as the Hunters dragged him towards the portal.
‘Where are your friends?’ Fletcher asked Jay. Jay spat on the floor at Fletcher’s feet and said nothing. ‘Have it your way.’ He turned back to the Hunters restraining Sam and closed his eyes for a second. Again Sam heard the whispering inside his skull and a moment later the Hunters began to drag him closer to the furnace, raising his right arm and pushing his hand towards the crackling energy field.
‘Last chance,’ Fletcher said. ‘Tell me where the rest of the resistance is based or your friend loses his arm. And that will just be the beginning.’
‘You don’t have to do this,’ Jay said. ‘Please, I . . .’
‘Are you going to tell me or not!’ Fletcher yelled.
‘No,’ Jay said, hanging his head. ‘I’m not.’
‘Very well,’ Fletcher said, turning back towards the Hunters and closing his eyes again.
Sam fought with every ounce of his strength against the Hunter holding his arm as it pushed his right hand towards the disintegration field, but it was no good; the creature was simply too strong. He felt the hairs on the back of his arm stand up as his fingers moved to within millimetres of the field.
r /> Suddenly, there was the sound of an explosion in the distance, followed almost instantly by the sound of automatic gunfire. The Hunter that had been pushing Sam’s arm into the furnace was torn apart by a hail of bullets, sending hot green liquid spraying across Sam’s face and chest. The Hunter’s tentacles went slack and Sam wrenched his arm free of its grip as the creature holding his other arm shrieked in enraged alarm. Moments later there was the sound of another explosion from somewhere much closer, and the night sky in the compound outside was lit up by a billowing fireball. The Hunter holding Sam’s other arm released its grip and spun backwards through the air, twitching and jerking as it too was hit by another burst of fire. Sam pulled himself free and spun round just in time to see Rachel and Nat advancing into the room, rifles raised. A moment later they fired in unison at the Hunters hovering above Jay, taking them both down.
‘Catch!’ Rachel yelled, and pulled the pistol from the holster on her belt, throwing it to Sam. He caught the weapon and raised it, aiming at one of the other Hunters that had been supervising the slaves as they emptied their loads of rubble into the furnaces. He pulled the trigger and the pistol bucked twice in his hands in quick succession, hitting the Hunter dead centre and sending it spinning straight into one of the nearby disintegration fields, where it vanished with a flash. Jay untangled himself from the twitching tentacles of the two dead Hunters that were wrapped round his arms and ran towards Nat who tossed her own side-arm to him. Fletcher made a break for it, running for cover as two more Hunters that had been on guard started to return fire at the four armed humans. Sizzling green energy bolts flashed through the air, sending the two girls diving for cover behind the furnaces. Sam kept firing, moving towards Rachel’s position as energy blasts struck the ground near his feet. He threw himself against the wall as another bolt flashed by, missing him, but striking one of the mute slaves square between the shoulder blades, and the man toppled to the ground. Unbelievably, the rest of the Walkers just continued with their work, unloading rubble into the furnaces as if nothing was happening, oblivious to the raging firefight that was going on around them.
‘I thought Jackson ordered you to stay home,’ Sam said, as he leant out and fired, knocking another Hunter out of the air.
‘Lucky for you that I suck at following orders, then, isn’t it?’ Rachel said, grinning as she fired at the last remaining Hunter, winging it, but not putting it out of action. It returned fire and multiple energy blasts slammed into the furnace that they were taking cover behind, tearing chunks out of the machine’s heavy metal skin. A moment later, Nat ducked out from behind the furnace on the other side of the room and fired a three-round burst into the wounded creature, putting it down for good. As the last of the Hunters in the chamber hit the ground, Fletcher made a break for the door at the far end of the room, sprinting across open ground. Jay stepped out from cover, took careful aim at the fleeing man and fired. The bullet caught him high in his left arm, spinning him round and knocking him to the floor. Jay ran towards the fallen man with the others close behind him. As Jay approached, Fletcher struggled to his knees, trying to climb to his feet.
‘Siddown,’ Jay said, kicking him in the backside and sending him sprawling flat on his face in the dirt. Jay levelled his pistol at Fletcher as the man rolled on to his back and looked up at the four angry-looking children who now surrounded him.
‘How’s it feel?’ Jay said, his voice shaking with anger. ‘Knowing you’re going to die.’
‘You can kill me,’ Fletcher said, clutching the bloody wound in his upper arm, ‘but none of you are going to make it out of here alive.’
‘Jay, no,’ Sam said, putting his hand over his friend’s gun and pushing it downwards until it pointed at the floor. ‘We need him alive. He knows what the Voidborn are building here.’
‘The what?’ Rachel asked as they heard the angry buzz from outside of what sounded like a horribly large number of Hunters getting ever closer.
‘The Voidborn, that’s what the Threat call themselves,’ Sam explained. ‘That’s what he told me, at least. We have to take him back to Stirling. The information he’s got in his head could be invaluable.’
‘Stirling,’ Fletcher said, a frown appearing on his face. ‘Iain Stirling? I might have known.’
‘You know him?’ Rachel said, looking confused.
‘Oh, we’re old friends,’ Fletcher said with a pained laugh. ‘And you’re all his little helpers, are you? How amusing.’
‘Shut up!’ Jay barked at Fletcher. ‘Sam, we can’t take him back with us. You saw how he was controlling those Hunters – he’d bring every one of the Threat . . . or Voidborn, or whatever you say they’re called now, right down on top of us.’
‘Jay’s right,’ Rachel said. ‘We can’t risk them tracking us back to base. It’s too risky.’
‘Oh, do make your minds up,’ Fletcher said. ‘I’m not sure I can stomach much more of your indecisive whining.’
‘That’s it,’ Jay said, raising his pistol. ‘I’m finishing this treacherous piece of filth off.’
‘Fine,’ Sam said, turning and walking towards the exit, ‘but make it quick.’ It didn’t matter what Fletcher had done, that he’d sold out his own species; something about killing another human didn’t sit right with Sam. They’d all been changed by everything that had happened since the arrival of the Voidborn, but this was the one line that he could not bring himself to cross.
‘Nothing personal, but you asked for this,’ Jay said, pointing his pistol at Fletcher’s head.
‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ Fletcher said, closing his eyes.
A split second later one entire wall of the recycling chamber exploded in a flash of bright white light, knocking everyone in the room to the floor. Sam slowly dragged himself to his feet. It was almost impossible to see anything through the thick smoke that now hung in the air, but he felt something growling in his head and then the ground shuddered as a huge black shadow moved through the haze. Sam’s fears were confirmed when the room was suddenly filled with a monstrous bellowing roar.
‘Grendel,’ Sam whispered to himself. A moment later a second roar answered the first from somewhere on the other side of the room. ‘Oh, great,’ he said, sneaking over to where Rachel and Nat were picking themselves up off the floor.
‘We need to get out of here,’ Sam said as the smoke in the room began to clear. ‘Where’s Jay?’ He heard a groan from nearby and as the smoke continued to clear he saw Jay rolling over on to his back with a nasty gash on his forehead, blood trickling down the side of his face.
‘Jay, you OK?’ Sam whispered, helping his friend to his feet.
‘Yeah, something hit me. Must have been a piece of debris or something,’ he groaned, slowly standing up. ‘Where’s Fletcher?’ He looked around for any sign of the man who had been right there just a few seconds earlier.
‘Don’t worry about him. We need to move,’ Sam said, picking Jay’s pistol up from the floor and handing it to him. A gentle breeze blew through the room and the smoke began to suddenly clear more quickly. A pair of Grendels, their heads almost touching the ceiling, were just fifteen metres away on the other side of the room. One of the creatures turned its monstrous head towards Sam and the others, its huge mouth opening wide, razor-sharp teeth glistening as it spotted them and roared again.
‘Run!’ Sam yelled, and all four of them bolted for the exit. The two Grendels strode across the room towards them, the impact of their giant footsteps sending tremors through the floor. As Sam ran out into the crater compound, he saw that several of the outlying Voidborn structures were ablaze, with huge holes blown in their walls.
‘We had to plant a few distraction charges on the way in,’ Rachel said, sprinting along beside him.
‘Don’t worry, you made quite an entrance,’ Sam said, looking over his shoulder as the two Grendels smashed their way through the doorway leading out of the recycling chamber. ‘Your timing was impeccable. You might just have sav
ed my juggling career.’
‘Can we save the jokes for when we’re not running for our lives?’ Nat said, raising her rifle and fired a short burst at a Hunter that came buzzing out from behind one of the damaged structures, sending it spinning into the flames with an ear-piercing shriek.
‘Where exactly are we going?’ Jay asked as they ran headlong towards the crater wall.
‘My plan extended about as far as running away from those things,’ Sam said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the two giant, black monstrosities chasing them through the compound.
‘You know, that’s actually a good plan,’ Nat said, glancing nervously over her shoulder.
‘Don’t know what you’re worrying about,’ Rachel said, firing at another Hunter that came screaming towards them and sending it crashing to the floor. ‘You’ve taken one of those things down before.’
‘Yeah, I hate to remind you, Rach, but on that occasion there was only one of them and I had a rocket launcher,’ Jay said when they reached the bottom of the crater wall. ‘Biggest difference tonight? No rocket launcher.’
‘Point,’ Rachel said, and the four of them began to scramble up the steep crater wall. Behind them, the two Grendels pounded across the open ground between them and their prey, roaring in anger. As Sam and the others reached the top and hauled themselves over the edge, the Grendels were just reaching the bottom. The massive creatures began to climb, but their huge size made it more difficult for them because the loose soil and gravel gave way beneath their weight.