“This is old — fifteenth August 1952,” he said, then lobbed it onto the bed where Will was sitting. “I give up — whose room was this?” he asked.
The plastic dust sheet covering the bed crackled as Will leaned over and opened the bedside stand. He took out a bottle with a label that said HINE, and a box with AROMA DE CUBA emblazoned on it. “Brandy and cigars,” he said, holding both items up.
Chester could see that the bottle wasn’t full, and the seal on the cigar box had been broken. “That doesn’t help — you’ll have to tell me.”
“Winston Churchill was the last person to sleep in this bed,” Will announced.
Chester laughed. “Well, I hope they changed the sheets!”
Will was looking at the cigar box and the brandy with interest. “Sergeant Finch told me that these have been here since he was Prime Minister. He wanted to spend a night in the Complex to find out for himself what it was like. And he always had a gulp of brandy first thing in the morning to go with his first smoke,” Will said, bouncing up and down on the mattress several times. Then he held the brandy bottle up to study the label. “Why don’t we drink this?”
“Why?” Chester asked, nonplussed.
“Because I’ve never been really drunk. I suppose I had that beer Tam gave me in the Colony, but it tasted foul.” Will was now staring at the thick brown liquid in the bottle as he swilled it around. “Maybe it’s something we should do. Just in case . . .”
“In case what?” Chester said, flopping down on the bed beside his friend. “In case we don’t make it through all this?”
Will nodded somberly.
“That’s a happy thought,” Chester whispered. He took the cigar box from Will and hinged the lid open, sniffing inside. “These things must have been here for years. Don’t they go off?” he asked, as he picked out one of the stubby cigars and rolled it between his fingers.
Will shrugged. “Who cares — they’re still cigars, and I’ve never smoked one. I’ve never smoked anything yet.” He rooted around in the bedside cabinet until he found a box of matches. “Whitehall,” he said, reading what was printed on them. “That follows.”
“I had a couple of lager shandies once on holiday with Mum and Dad, but that’s it,” Chester admitted. “And I’ve never smoked, either.”
“Remember the Grays?” Will said, staring into the middle distance as he thought about the gang who had terrorized the smaller children at Highfield High School. “Speed and Bloggsy necked cider and smoked cigarettes all the time. They’d done the whole lot, hadn’t they, and that was more than a year ago!”
“They had girlfriends, too,” Chester said wistfully.
Will still had a faraway look in his eyes. “If you think about it, Churchill led the country through the Second World War, and right now you and I are stuck in the middle of this war with the Styx. We’re pretty important, too. Who knows — without us, the country might not have a chance of winning. So don’t you think we have a right to do what we want? Don’t we owe it to ourselves to polish off what’s left of his brandy?”
But Chester dropped the cigar back into the box and closed the lid. “Tell you what, Will, when we do win, let’s come straight back here and smoke our heads off and get really bladdered!” He stuck his hand out. “Deal?”
“Deal,” Will agreed, shaking his friend’s hand, then putting the brandy and cigars away again.
They were interrupted as the intercom system emitted a clear tone both in the room and outside in the corridor. “Everybody is to report to the Hub immediately. I say again — everybody is to report to the Hub immediately,” it ordered.
“That’s Danforth, isn’t it?” Chester said as he angled his head to listen to the voice.
Will nodded. “If she shows up, I hope Elliott’s forgiven him. She’s in a funny mood, and he got a little carried away with the scalpel when he was investigating her.” As they walked back toward the stairs, Will added, “In fact, I don’t like to think what would have happened if nobody else had been there to stop him.”
“Yes,” Chester agreed. “It’s odd really, because although he doesn’t look like much, when you get to know him better, he’s actually a really scary little man.”
Drake was laying out a variety of items on the desks as everyone converged on the Hub.
Will and Chester arrived first and were watching as Mrs. Burrows, Mr. and Mrs. Rawls, Colonel Bismarck, then Elliott and Stephanie turned up. The two girls were chatting enthusiastically to each other as though they were long-lost friends.
“Here they are,” Chester muttered to Will as he twisted away from Elliott and Stephanie. “Looks like they’re getting really matey.”
“And Danforth’s keeping well out of the way,” Will observed, watching the Professor, who had his eyes glued on the screen of one of his laptops. “I’m telling you, I really wouldn’t be surprised if Elliott has a pop at him when she gets the chance.” Will switched his attention to Parry and Sergeant Finch, who were both busy talking on satphones.
“Form a line, please,” Drake said. “The quicker we’re done here, the quicker we can move out.”
“Where are we going?” Chester asked, as he and Will found themselves at the front of the queue.
“London,” Drake answered, preoccupied with inserting a small glass cylinder into a stainless steel device, then rolling up his sleeve. “Just in case anyone has misgivings about the shot I’m giving all of you, I’ll go first.” Cocking the mechanism, he placed it against his upper arm, and when he pulled the trigger, it made a small click. “Didn’t feel a thing.” He smiled.
“But we’ve all had the vaccine for Dominion,” Chester pointed out. “So what’s this for?”
Drake cleaned the end of the device with an alcohol wipe, then cocked it again. “We haven’t seen any deployment of the Dominion virus yet, but the Styx have some other nasties they might unleash on the population,” he replied.
“How do you know?” Will said.
“Because I snitched a load of specimens before Chester and I totaled the Laboratories in the Colony. Some were locked away in a special vault, so naturally I had to have them. And I asked a contact to analyze the different pathogens I came back with. On the basis of his findings, he manufactured a vaccine cocktail against all of them.”
Will unbuttoned his cuff and pulled up his sleeve. “Come on, then. Better safe than sorry,” he said.
Drake hadn’t been lying — the shot wasn’t painful. After he’d administered it, he led Will to the next desk. “Special Forces radio with a throat mike,” he told the boy, handing him one of the units. “Chester’s used a similar model before, so he can show you how it works.” Drake then dipped his hand into a plastic container and fished out what appeared to be a pair of small earplugs, which he passed to Will.
Will examined them, then looked at Drake questioningly.
“Belt and suspenders,” Drake said. “Celia and I were KO’d by a Styx subaural bomb on Highfield Common. I lost Leatherman and too many men that day. I’m not going to let it happen again.” Drake looked down for a moment. “There’ve been a couple of reports that the Styx are using similar devices in London.”
He took a second pair of plugs from the container and inserted them into his ears. “So these are a little something I knocked up while I was at Eddie’s flat. They won’t interfere with normal frequencies, but the moment they detect a subaural bomb, they kick in. They replicate its wavelength, but out of phase. So they’ll counteract any audiosonics being used on you.”
“They’ll protect us?” Will asked.
“Well, you’ll still know you’ve been zapped — maybe you’ll feel some dizziness, and your vision might go a little funny — but at least you won’t black out. These plugs will protect you long enough either to skedaddle, or to neutralize the source . . . the bomb itself.”
“Cool,” Will said as he went to slip them into his pocket.
“No, you should get into the habit of wearing them. Put th
em in,” Drake said quickly. “And I’ve finished with you now, so you can lend Danforth a hand to crate up the mobile detectors over there. We need them outside, ready for pickup by our transport.”
Will was about to ask what the transport was when Drake turned and went back to the waiting queue. With a shrug, Will made his way over to Danforth. He slowed as he passed Parry, who was on a satphone. He seemed to be employing a pass code sequence similar to the one Sergeant Finch had used when they’d first arrived at the main entrance of the Complex — Parry was quoting lines of what sounded like poetry about waking slumbering dragons, then waiting for responses from whoever he was speaking to.
“Drake said I should help you,” Will began, announcing himself to Danforth. The Professor was so intent on the symbols scrolling down the screen, he took a few moments to look up.
“That’s a classified government program I’ve got translating the Book of Proliferation. And from what I’ve read so far, it’s quite an eye-opener,” he said, tipping his head toward the screen. “The document gives an insight into one of the oldest, most resilient, and arguably most highly evolved species the world has ever known.”
“Really,” Will said indifferently. He wanted to spend as little time in Danforth’s company as he possibly could. Chester was right — there was something incredibly unnerving about the man.
And Will was surprised when Danforth stepped from behind the table and nearer to him, albeit making sure he wasn’t too close because of his phobia about human contact. “So you’re off to London on a wild frolic to hunt for Dark Light activity,” Danforth said, keeping his voice low. “How do you feel about that?”
“I don’t know anything about it yet — Drake hasn’t briefed me,” Will admitted.
“Ours is not to question why, ours is but to do or die,” Danforth said, misquoting the poem by Tennyson. “How very admirable you’re willing to throw your life away for the cause.”
“Well . . . no . . . we’ve got to do everything we can to stop the Phase, haven’t we?” Will met the Professor’s intense pupils through his glasses, but the man didn’t answer.
For a moment the Professor and the boy locked eyes, as if trying to delve deeper, to understand each other. In Danforth, Will again sensed something akin to Dr. Burrows’s obsessive dedication to the pursuit of new knowledge. A cold shiver passed down the length of his spine; he could almost imagine he was back with his dead father. But there was a stark difference. The Professor’s eyes were completely devoid of any warmth or compassion — no one mattered to him. No one at all. And that frightened Will.
Danforth began to smile, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile.
“Why — what’s wrong with the plan?” Will asked, hoping to find out more about it.
“Well, it promises to be interesting,” Danforth said, his smile transforming into a sneer. “Look at what we’ve got here.” He indicated everyone in the Hub with a sweep of his hand. “A leftover from the Third Reich, a Styx turncoat, a man with a microwave oven in his head, and a bunch of trigger-happy teenagers like you. And to top it all off, there’s a commando old enough to claim his bus pass calling the shots. How can we possibly go wrong?”
All of a sudden, Mrs. Rawls’s anxious voice made everyone look. Drake had finished with Chester and was about to give his parents their shots.
“No! I won’t let my husband and son have any part in this!” she exploded. Chester and Mr. Rawls were standing on either side of her as she remonstrated with Drake. “Hasn’t my family done enough for you already?”
“Dissent in the ranks,” Danforth commented. “Doesn’t bode well, either.”
As directed by Danforth, Will began to cut a roll of khaki material into strips, which he wrapped around each of the Geiger counters before stacking them in a crate. The Geiger counters appeared to be the same as the ones Will had seen left at various points around the Complex — rather battered, with chipped gray enamel casings. The only difference he could spot in the ones he was packing up was that some type of stubby antenna had been added to them, and the analog dials had been replaced with modern LED displays. But Will really didn’t feel like speaking to the Professor to find out what they were going to be used for.
The heated discussion with Drake came to an end, with Mr. Rawls and his wife leaving the Hub. Will saw Chester heading over to him.
“That was embarrassing,” his friend said.
“What’s the matter?” Will asked.
“Mum doesn’t want Dad or me to be put in danger again. She’s a bit strung out by everything at the moment,” Chester replied. “So Dad and I are still coming, but Drake’s promised we’ll only be there in a support role. No front-line stuff. And Mum’s stopping here with . . .” He didn’t go as far as to mention Danforth’s name, but the Professor was too engrossed in his laptop anyway to hear.
“Oh,” Will said. He’d been counting on his friend being with him when they faced whatever they were going to face in London.
Chester leaned toward Will and whispered into his ear. “Don’t worry, though, Will. I’m not about to wimp out after all we’ve been through together.”
EVERYONE HAD BEEN ordered to report with their weapons and equipment to the area by the twin guardrooms at the far end of the entrance tunnel.
This was it. The moment they were all leaving.
Drake had given everybody white parkas with fur-lined hoods, and thick trousers of the same color. Although the clothes were a little bulky to move around in, he said they’d be grateful for the insulation they provided when they went outside.
As Will looked at everyone in these white combats, he saw their vacant expressions and how fidgety they were. He knew precisely what they were feeling. They were trying to hide their fear.
In the relative safety of the underground Complex, the threat posed by the Styx Phase felt so far away. Like some nightmare that might fade from memory if one stopped dwelling on it.
Why us? Why can’t someone else deal with it? Will asked himself. There must be somebody else out there who knew what was going on, somebody better placed to fight it.
Given the choice, Will knew that he would simply turn around and just march back down the long tunnel again. The Complex might be very far from the real world, but it had been the closest thing to home that he’d known in a long time.
But then he looked again and noticed what lay behind Drake’s and Eddie’s expressions. Their eyes spoke of duty and quiet determination and doing what had to be done. Will told himself that he should try to emulate these men and draw strength from them. He’d been so immersed in his thoughts that he hadn’t heard Drake speaking to him.
“Have you got your earplugs?” Drake asked for the second time.
Will nodded.
From his mobility scooter, Sergeant Finch was helping Drake to give each of them a detailed equipment check before they were allowed to pass up the slope and into the darkness of the entrance chamber. Will had emptied his Bergen and arranged the contents neatly on the floor next to his belt kit and Sten submachine gun. Drake now praised him.
“Perfect turnout,” he said. “We’ll make a soldier of you yet.”
“One last thing — comms check,” Sergeant Finch reminded Drake as he squinted at the list on his beloved clipboard while a cat slept on his lap.
Drake put his hand to his headset. “Testing — one — two — three,” he whispered.
“Got you loud and clear,” Will confirmed.
“Good, kid, but now turn it off to conserve the juice. And that’s you done.” Drake turned to Chester and began the process with him. Will repacked his Bergen but held back for his friend, who was clearly embarrassed because his mother seemed reluctant to let go of him.
Will’s heart went out to her as she clung to her son, speaking softly to him. Against all odds the Rawls family had been reunited, and it felt wrong that Chester and his father were about to be separated from Mrs. Rawls again.
Will threw a glance at his own mother as
she stood not looking at anyone, in some sort of ethereal detachment. Will and Mrs. Burrows hardly constituted a family any longer. They were more like fellow combatants.
Then Chester was coming toward him. “Poor old Mum. She really doesn’t want us to go,” his friend confided in a low voice. The boys entered the chamber together, finding that Parry was already in position beside the sliding exit panel.
“Sweeney’s coming with us, isn’t he?” Will said to Parry, realizing that he hadn’t spotted him by the guardrooms.
“He’s watching the crates outside,” Parry replied. “And before you ask, Wilkie’s not part of the detail, either. He’s . . .” Parry simply trailed off as he looked at the dial of his luminous watch.
Before long, everyone was packed in the chamber. Shoulder to shoulder in the enclosed space and laden down with their weapons and heavy Bergens, they were getting hotter and hotter in their Arctic Issue uniforms.
Parry’s radio suddenly crackled into life. “Five clicks on a north by northwest flight line,” it announced. “Acknowledge. Over.”
Flight line, Will thought, wishing he could catch Chester’s eye, but it was impossible in the darkness. Nobody had been told how they’d be making the journey to London. Drake had said it was on a need-to-know basis.
“Acknowledged,” Parry replied into the radio. “The LZ will be painted. Over and out.” As he hooked his radio back on his webbing belt, he must have sensed that both boys were bursting to know what his exchange had been about. “These days we don’t use visible light to mark landing zones, but infrared beacons,” he explained. “The pilot can see it a mile off through his dropdown.”