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CLASSIFIED SG54/nuke976/SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT

ECube transmission excerpt

Date: December 2XXX

SpiralGRID/GRID network update:

All major Spiral installations have been destroyed.

All Spiral HQs have been destroyed.

Personnel numbers have been reduced by 75% and Spiral are operating on a skeleton structure.

All Spiral core mainframes have been destroyed.

Sub-system mainframes remain operational.

Secondary controllers remain operational.

SpiralGRID has been activated and is now live; it is fully on-line.

With the SpiralGRID active, covert operations are being allowed on an accelerating and growing scale. This is being closely monitored. It is suspected that Spiral contains several spies who have leaked critical data, thus allowing such an incredible and devastating attack.

[Note: SpiralGRID is PlanZ. The last line in defence. The final safeguard that nobody ever dreamed would have to be used: a vast network of underground tunnels controlled by the sub-system mainframes; this is what keeps Spiral operational. This is Spiral’s hiding place. This is Spiral’s last resort and its final hope. Let us pray it does not become its tomb.]

Durell and the Nex are aware of the GRID’S existence. They seek to wipe out Spiral once and for all.

We must hope the enemy never discovers its secrets. That is why the rooting out of traitors is KEY PRIORITY.

The current media propaganda for HATE is intensifying; Durell’s empire is seeking to rewrite history, offering the people of the world a fictionalised past. Durell proposes—via FactAds—that HATE was a US-military-created biological weapon—unleashed in the wake of the nuclear dominance, which he claims were nothing more than acts of gross incompetence by world governments.

It has been rumoured than an ‘antidote’, an anti-HATE agent known provisionally as EDEN is being designed alongside HATE and could be used to free humanity from their current thrall. This is an unsubstantiated rumour, but nevertheless contains a high probability factor—when analysing the manner in which Durell first nuked cities, and then used Half-life Accelerators to reduce radiation levels in order to achieve his desired longterm effects.

Priority codes:

8732 6786509863 487 64873 648

8976358796438976897643 534

879689634897 6543789658734

8907098769876532232343223

a] GRID protection

b] Spy termination

c] EDEN confirmation More to follow»

[FIVE YEARS PASS]

The TV-ProjU sparkled into life with a digital buzz of humming phosphorescence. Images spun and leapt, dissolving and then reanimating into the mercury logo of HIVE Media Productions ...

Scene slowly pans [ground-level shot]:
a wide-shot pan of crumbling, devastated cities, buildings half-collapsed and swaying eerily in a bleak holocaust wind; the roads lie cratered, strewn with blocks of concrete and twisted, rusting steel wires.

Scene morphs:
into the city perimeter, where huge coils of raze-wire protect a wilderness of green, lush, verdant grasslands beyond. Trees stand swaying in the breeze and grass rolls down to salmon-rich streams. Guards stand to attention, monitoring the checkpoints, the black-masked Nex and gas-mask-protected JT8s inscrutable behind their individualised protection—and nodding knowingly. These are the Guardians of HATE—and the final barrier between a habitable urban landscape and the biological wilderness of No Man’s Land beyond ...

[sombre deep male voice]

—
Do you remember a time when you could walk hand in hand with your children through the long grass, the swaying shrubs, the sighing trees?

—
Do you remember a time when you could breathe the purity of nature?

—But then came the incompetent military devastation of HATE
—
a biological weapon spawned from the loins of an incompetent military bureaucracy, ejaculated from the army science labs like alien semen to poison billions of square miles of organic landscape—
Trapping YOU—
in towns and cities—unable to commute, unable to enjoy the God-given countryside, unable to sample your FREEDOM.

Scene slowly dissolves [into]:
a sterile laboratory environment filled with serious-looking men and Nex scientists, working together like brothers, wiggling test tubes, poring over charts, nodding in grim satisfaction at yet another wonderful and incredible breakthrough ...

—
Well, all this can change ... here at HIVE Labs we are close to a CURE, close to an ANTIDOTE to the terrible bio-weapon known as HATE. We have invented an almost magical chemical called EDEN, a substance which will obliterate this HATEful disease, this cancer of the green world ... EDEN will bring love, and peace, and most of all... freedom!

Scene morphs [from HIVE Labs to-]:
grass, swaying at toe-level, sounds of giggling children, brown, black and white feet running towards the camera as we pull back, showing children of
all
nationalities skipping and running through the grass, breathing the once-polluted HATE air. They stop at a convenient picnic table under a spreading oak tree. Mum and dad (an inter-racial marriage; mum with knowing smile, dad with chirping laptop) hand out cream-cheese sandwiches and strawberry ice cream.

—
You WILL walk free through the world once more! You WILL help the rebirth of a new EDEN!!! DONATE TODAY! HIVE LABS NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT!!
... To make the world a greener place. Your unborn babies deserve a cleaner, HATE-free future!

don’t be filled with HATE ... learn to live in a new EDEN!!

SCENE DISSOLVES TO SILVER

no rights were ever given to us by

the
grace of god

no
rights
were ever given by some

united
nations clause

no rights were ever given by some

nice guy
at the top

our rights they were bought by all

the
blood

and all the
tears
of all our

grandmothers, grandfathers

before ...

My Country

New Model Army

C
arter sat staring at the Mediterranean. The sky was black, strewn with a scatter of uncut diamonds. The sea crashed rhythmically against the rough jagged rocks.

Beneath him, the patio was hard and cool, and his hand dropped, fingers tracing the delicate contours of honeycombed terracotta as his free hand lifted the bottle of Lagavulin to his lips. He took a long, burning sip. The whisky warmed his belly, and Carter smiled, eyes fixed impassively on the distant sea.

Too much shit, he thought.

Too many years, and too many deaths.

What the hell have we done to our world?

Just what the hell have we created?

He turned at an insignificant sound, a battered Browning 9mm appearing in his fist. Samson padded close, the chocolate Labrador rubbing his velvet nose against Carter’s ribs and looking up with soft brown eyes. Carter placed the Browning on the patio and rubbed at Samson’s grey-peppered muzzle.

‘Getting old, buddy,’ he said and Samson gave a little whine, tilting his head in contemplation. Carter rubbed at the dog’s ears as a cool breeze blew in from the sea—making him shiver. ‘And I’m not really sure who I’m talking about... you or me? Both of us, I think, my friend.’ He chuckled softly, releasing a long pent-up sigh and feeling nostalgia stab sharply at his drifting memories.

In the distance, fireworks suddenly erupted. A silver shower, sparkling briefly and illuminating the rolling waves. They disappeared, and another shower ignited, sparkles of red and blue and green. Carter caught the retort of the explosive: crackles peppered the distance and concussive bangs made Carter shiver.

What the hell have they got to celebrate? The world’s a mess. A living nightmare.

Carter crawled to his feet, sliding the second-hand Browning into the cargo pocket of his knife-cut combat shorts, and lifted the Lagavulin to his lips. He took another sip—just a small one this time. He didn’t allow the alcohol to run freely any more; not like it had when Natasha died. Whisky had flowed like a river, then, into his shattered, welcoming remains.

No, he limited the alcohol fiercely now—had to, with his boy to look after.

Carter’s steel gaze swept the area before his small house, built on a lonely section of deserted coast on the island of Cyprus. The landscape rolled down from a heavy copse of citrus trees to the rocky seafront and a small stretch of splintered, sandy causeway. In the distance more fireworks showered from the yacht. Carter shaded his eyes and could make out the flashing silhouette of the sleek white craft. He weighed the whisky bottle thoughtfully, and wondered at the foolishness of the partying people on the boat: in the current climate of war, terrorism and post-Nex domination,
fireworks
were the last thing a man needed. Not unless he wanted a quick return-hail of bullets and a black-clad Nex squad banging on his cabin door.

Ducking inside, Carter padded in bare feet along the tiled marble floors and deposited the whisky bottle on the kitchen worktop. Gritting his teeth stubbornly, he moved like a ghost through the darkness with Samson close behind, halting at the door to the bedroom. He stopped, head tilted, listening. Within, he could hear soft breathing.

Carter pushed open the door, allowing a little moonlight to spill tentatively into the room. He moved forward and stopped by the low bed, gazing down at the pale circle of Joe’s face, serene in sleep, eyes closed, lips pursed, chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm.

Carter knelt and placed a hand against the warmth of his son’s skin. He felt tears well gently, pressure building within his chest, but he pushed them back and smiled instead. For this boy sleeping below him was the only reason Carter still lived, the one thing that had kept him sane; his son was why Carter had not taken his own life.

I am scared of dying now, he realised. Not because of pain, anguish, suffering. Not because of bullets or knives. Carter didn’t care a damn for pain—he had survived enough, lived through enough to understand that. But he now felt a pervasive fear of death—because if he died, then he would never see his son grow up; he would never witness those first moments of which there were so many, moments which would flood his heart with gold and make life in the bomb-tangled mash of the modern world under heavy Nex law and the stranglehold of HATE ... well, make it
worthwhile.

Carter kissed his son on the forehead, picturing the young face with its broad cheeky grin and sparkling bright excited eyes from earlier that day; a face which held the ghost of Natasha.

Natasha.

Her face swam at the forefront of his mind. He could feel her lips brush his neck. He could taste her sweet honey. He could smell the autumn breeze of her musk.

All gone, he thought. All dead and gone.

Carter drank. The powerful flavour caressed his lips, burned his throat and warmed him from oesophagus to belly. His head swam a little and as sleep claimed him, tiny flickers of a twisted, deformed face haunted his slowly sinking conscience. Carter curled into a ball then, wound himself into an embryo and Samson put his big grizzled head on Carter’s feet and together they dropped tumbling into a deep well of sleep where Durell waited, where a savage history waited. Carter flowed unwillingly back to the Syndicate HQ in New York and stood there, could still feel the cold trigger of the Steyr under his merciless finger and oblivion blowing a Harmattan in his soul.

Bullets sprayed from the gun, pounding at Durell’s merged insect flesh as the gathered Nex turned automatic weaponry towards him and bullets hissed and spat past Carter’s face. The Spiral agent turned, leaping a low alloy bench and racing for the door. Bullets chewed alloy in his wake, hot shavings stinging his skin, and he slammed into the stairwell and pounded up the stairs.

Outside, New York had been obliterated and a hot wind blew. Carter had stood on top of the world surveying the destruction of a nuclear warhead; the destruction of Man.

Jets roared, and Mongrel’s Manta howled into view and a cable hissed through the brittle baked air; Carter’s gloves had caught this umbilical, this lifeline, and as Nex spilled out onto the roof behind him with fire-spitting guns Mongrel had pulled Carter’s bleak-eyed hollow carcass to safety ...

All gone.

All dead and gone.

Carter stirred uneasily in his sleep. Outside the fireworks gradually died, the yacht glided across the inky black waters and was lost in the swallowing maw of the darkness.

Carter kick-started the 699cc KTM in a burst of LVA fumes. The motor roared harshly for a moment and then fell to a rough fast idle. He revved the bike hard, grinning for a moment like a child with a new toy.

Joe was staying in a nearby local village, a modest gathering of five white-walled houses surrounding an ancient, crumbling stone well; his nanny was a tiny, twisted old lady named Mrs Fickle. Mrs Fickle was a widow, small in stature but gnarled and powerful—like a stunted old oak. In a heavily lined face sat sparkling blue eyes, a vivid contrast to the surrounding results of decades of dermatological abuse by the sun. Carter trusted her wholly with his son. With his life. Not just because of her squat iron strength which had surprised many a larger man, and not just because of her mule-like stubbornness; but because of her unquestionable ability with a double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun. Like the one she kept under her bed. And the one behind the settee. And the one mounted above the fireplace.