Enemy Invasion (42 page)

What about you?
she cried out.

Alex looked up and shook his head.
Get the others away! You can’t come any closer.

Watching Louise lead the others towards the gap in the wall, Alex turned back to Sarah and shook her roughly.

Sarah, wake up!

She did not respond. Above them the portal’s inexorable force continued to draw in everything in the surrounding area. A section of wall crumpled and flew towards the mouth, bricks
detaching and whizzing past their heads like missiles. Alex shook her again.

Sarah! I’m not leaving you!

44

She feels like she has been falling for centuries. All around her, the dying embers of the Entity are slowly losing their light and soon there will only be darkness. A voice
splits the silence…

Sarah, wake up!

She wants it to stop… To leave her alone for ever in the dark and stillness of the void…

Sarah! I’m not leaving you!

A light appears in the distance and she suddenly knows that she must go towards it – to fight the numbing effect of the void. Clawing her way through the tide of choking ash, she finds
the light, grabs it and pulls it open…

With a rushing sensation, she falls out of the darkness and onto the floor of the hospital room again. The walls are black with soot now, the tiled floor misshapen and cracked. Pushing
herself up, she flies through the door and out into the corridor as the ceiling begins to cave in.

The construct is falling apart.

Ahead, the lift doors are open, but there is no car – only an empty shaft. She leaps through and falls as the level above collapses. Catching the thick metal support cable running down,
she slides – ignoring the tearing on the flesh of her hands – and hits the roof of the lift…

Above, the lift shaft crumples and folds in on itself.

Kicking open the emergency hatch, Sarah slides through, hits the ground and starts running. The museum chamber is littered with the bodies of dead guards, weapons still in their hands. She
leaps over them, runs down the steps and out onto the platform with the ladders leading down…

The rig shudders and tilts violently to one side.

Sarah runs past the nearest ladder, jumps onto the rail surrounding the edge of the platform and leaps off. As she falls, she manages to turn herself in the air, stretch out her body and
execute a dive into the sea. The height is still enough to make the impact so hard it almost knocks her out. Stunned and gasping for breath, she fights to the surface in time to see the legs of the
rig collapse and the upper platforms crash down towards the ocean.

In desperation, Sarah turns and swims as the platform hits the sea, triggering a mini-tsunami that rushes over her, obliterating everything…

“We have to go back for them!” Louise cried, moving back towards the ramp.

Hack grabbed her arms and held her firm. “No! Nothing can survive in there!”

“We have to get further back,” May said, looking up at the four giant chimney stacks. Tiles were beginning to fly off into the middle of the station and it was only a matter of time
before they came down too.

Sarah!
Louise cried out.

Daniel.

“You made it,” she says.

He smiles at her as other people approach across the sand – men, woman and children she’s never seen before. There are hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Overhead the sky flickers
momentarily, like a glitch in the picture on an LCD screen.

“What’s happening?” she asks.

“We’re holding the construct together for as long as we can,” her father replies. “It will be the last time many of us can communicate.”

“Who are they all?” Sarah asks.

“Beings from many worlds, spread across the universe. All places that the Entity enslaved over time. Now they’re free.” His face darkens. “But they’re also
alone.”

“They used the construct to communicate,” Sarah says and he nods. “Before I killed it, the Entity said that billions would die without its protection. Have I done the right
thing?”

Daniel lays a hand on her shoulder. “The life that the Entity gave its slaves was no existence at all. The road ahead will be hard for many of them. But they’ve chosen
freedom.”

“I didn’t get the cure for the fall virus.”

Daniel takes her hand and presses his other palm against her lower arm. For a moment there is a burning sensation. When he removes his hand, she seems symbols and numbers on her skin, like a
tattoo.

“They gave me this formula,” he explains. “It will stop the infection from the spider bites. With some modification it can also be used to combat the original fall virus.
The HIDRA scientists should have the technology to modify it for humans.”

Sarah runs her fingers over the markings on her arm. “But how did they get this?”

“Many of these beings have been trapped in the construct for a very long time – linked into the Entity’s consciousness. They’ve known where to find the cure, but the
Entity has always been too strong – guarded it too closely. That all changed when you started fighting it back there. And when you killed it, all the doors were opened.” Daniel places a
hand on her shoulder. “Use the formula, Sarah. Use it to save Robert. Use it to save us all.”

Sarah looks up at him as the sky begins to dim. “I’ll bring you back, Dad. I won’t give up.”

“I know,” he says, stepping back as darkness spreads across the sand, hiding the faces of the others.

He fades into the darkness and Sarah has the briefest sensation, like you get when you’ve just fallen asleep, like a sudden sensation of falling…

…back into her body, lying on the cold, hard concrete floor of the base. Alex was crouched over her as a storm raged all around. Above, the portal was about to swallow the entire
base.

“Sarah!” he cried, all sound lost in the howling wind.

Grabbing his shoulder, she pulled herself up and was immediately caught in the force of the portal. The gaping hole in reality beckoned, ready to engulf them both. She raised her hand and
summoned the residual power left behind by the Entity.

With a cracking sound, the portal began to shrink, closing up like the aperture of a camera until it was only a few centimetres wide. Then it simply disappeared.

Immediately, the howling ceased and silence fell over the base. She looked at Alex and smiled, who was looking back at her with a stunned expression.

“You called me back,” she said.

He opened his mouth to say something, but stopped with a gasp. One of the massive chimneys, weakened by the portal, was finally falling – directly towards them…

Just metres above them and disintegrating as it fell, the chimney simply stopped. The broken bricks, tiles and general debris simply hung in the air – in suspended animation. With wide
eyes, Alex looked around the interior of the base. Projectiles hovered in space, unmoving. It was as if someone had taken a photograph of the destruction at the point of total collapse – and
that photograph had frozen reality.

“I don’t believe it,” he whispered, as if afraid speaking too loud would bring the power station crashing down around them like a pack of cards. Sarah slipped her hand into his
and they rose slowly to their feet.

“Are you doing this?” he asked as she led him towards the open front wall of the station.

“A little something left over from the Entity,” she replied, ducking under a wooden beam hanging across their path – suspended by nothing.

“Cool,” he said, voice hoarse. “Can we run now?”

“Yeah.”

They ran.

“Get back!” Alex ordered Louise and the others as they tore down the ramp. “The whole place is coming down!”

They dashed into the empty space in front of the power station and only when they were at a safe distance, turned to look. The four chimneys were in the process of coming down, smashing through
the remaining walls of the structure. The picture was frozen just a few seconds before the final destruction. There was something frigidly beautiful about the scene.

“Weird,” Wei said.

“Sarah, it’s you?” Louise asked, looking at the older girl.

Sarah stroked a hand through Louise’s hair. “Yes. Thanks for not giving up on me.”

“Look!” Wei exclaimed, pointing across the Thames. In the distance, four objects had appeared in the sky: hovercopters bearing the HIDRA logo. As they approached, Sarah looked down
at the markings on her lower arm. Alex noticed them too.

“What’s that?”

“I’m not sure,” she replied. “A way to save Robert and the others, I hope.”

The hovercopters made a wide pass around the half-destroyed building and landed on an open stretch of ground. As the children ran to meet them, Rachel Andersen emerged from the lead vehicle.
HIDRA marines fanned out to secure the area.

“Is everyone okay?” she asked.

“We need to get Nestor and Octavio,” Louise said, jumping into the back of the hovercopter. “We left them along the river.”

Rachel nodded and looked at Sarah. “Is it over?”

Sarah took a look back at the remains of the power station and closed her eyes, letting go of the last of the alien consciousness that had invaded her soul. With a mighty crashing of bricks and
mortar falling, the four chimneys fell into the building, sending up a cloud of dust that would be seen for kilometres. All that remained of the base, the hypersphere, Major Bright and his men was
buried for ever under the rubble.

“It is now,” she replied.

45

Octavio groaned and shifted in his hospital bed. Licking his parched lips, he opened his eyes and squinted against the light.

“Sleeping beauty’s awake,” said Nestor, who was lying in the bed next to him.

“About time,” Robert added from the other side.

Octavio looked at them in confusion, then at the drip in his arm and the monitoring equipment surrounding their beds on the medical level of the HIDRA base. “What happened?”

“You were being a hero, remember?” Nestor said wryly.

“Oh, yeah,” Octavio said, touching his fingers to the point on his neck where the spiders had bitten. The flesh was now all but healed over. “That didn’t work out so
well.”

“It worked well enough,” Sarah said from the door of the room where she had appeared a second before. “You bought us the time we needed to get to the base.”

Octavio raised his eyebrows at Nestor. “See, we did all the heavy lifting as usual.” Then he had a thought. “What happened to my Kawasaki?”

Sarah walked in and stood by Robert’s bedside. “Sorry, we didn’t have time to pick it up when we went looking for you. There were about three million other infected people to
take care of. You’re lucky we found you so soon.”

“Thanks.”

Sarah examined her brother’s neck, which now showed only the slightest discolouration. “The infection is receding nicely. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine!” Robert said under his breath. “Stop fussing over me!”

“Okay,” Sarah said, backing off a little.

“You can fuss over me, if you want,” Octavio said and Nestor laughed.

Sarah gave him an unimpressed look. “I’ll send in the male nurse on my way out.” She kissed Robert on the forehead and moved back to the doorway. She paused there to look back
at Nestor and Octavio. “Thank you. Both of you.”

For once Octavio didn’t have a smart reply. Nestor smiled and nodded at her.

“And you,” she said, speaking to Robert, “no more sneaking out of your bed. The nurses tell me everything that goes on down here.”

Robert rolled his eyes.

“Hey!” Octavio said as Sarah left, noticing the strange markings on her arm. “Since when did she get a tat?”

Sarah entered and went over to Alex, who was seated at the conference table, newspapers spread out before him.

“What’s new?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Alex replied. “They’ve been showing the same footage for hours. There was this though.” He pressed a remote and a recording of a news story began to
play: Marlon Good, head of software giant Goodware Inc., had been found wandering in a confused state along the Thames. The reporter stated that he was currently being held for questioning in
relation to the London attack. Footage showed him being led into a van between two police officers. His suit was grimy and tattered, his eyes wide and staring and he was clutching a single object
in his hands: a metal collar which matched one around his neck. Good appeared to be saying something to himself over and over again as he was pushed into the van.

“I was wondering what happened to him,” Sarah said.