Earthfall (23 page)

‘So that you could keep tabs on us all?’ Sam asked with an eyebrow raised.

‘Actually, yes,’ Stirling said. ‘We knew that it might be difficult, if not impossible, to find you all if the Voidborn invaded without warning. It was a sensible precaution.’

‘Or you could use it to track us down if any of us found out what you’d done to us and run away,’ Sam said angrily.

‘That wasn’t the intention,’ Stirling said, ‘but I can see how it might appear that way. We knew that we had to try to find the children with implants as quickly as possible, and so Jackson and Redmond made the first of many trips to the surface to try to locate them. We had used the signal tracker to find half a dozen of the implanted children when disaster struck. We’d always known that it was possible that the Voidborn might transmit the control signal again at some point so it was risky for Jackson and Redmond to leave the shielded bunker, but what we didn’t know was that the Voidborn drop-ships could transmit a control signal too. The signal is much weaker and has a more limited range, but is no less effective. Jackson and Redmond were conducting a search sweep when a drop-ship passed over Redmond’s position and he was immediately enslaved.

Thankfully, Jackson was sweeping another sector, but he found Redmond walking towards the centre of the city, his mind gone. He knew that he couldn’t let Redmond fall into the hands of the Voidborn; he couldn’t be sure that they might not extract the location of our bunker from him. He was forced to shoot and kill his best friend. I’m not sure he ever forgave himself; he certainly never returned to the surface.

‘From then on he simply trained the most capable candidates from the implanted children we had rescued, and we sent them out instead to retrieve any other test subjects we located. As you know, you were the last one we found. You proved to be particularly elusive. I was desperate to find you – I owed Daniel that much. At the time I didn’t understand why you were so hard to track. Now I think I do.’

‘I spent most of my time underground, hiding in the sewers,’ Sam explained. ‘That’s probably why I was hard to find.’

‘No, that wasn’t it,’ Stirling said. ‘Do you remember, a few weeks before the Voidborn arrived, you started to experience headaches?’

‘Yeah, Mum and Dad took me for a scan,’ Sam replied. ‘They said it was just a precaution, that they needed to check there was nothing wrong with the implant that controlled my epilepsy. Which I now realise was all a lie.’

‘Well, there
was
a reason for your headaches. The Voidborn components in your implant were starting to grow. We didn’t understand why or how it was happening, but your father was deeply worried. He spent a week developing a new type of nanobot that would greatly inhibit the growth of any Voidborn technology. He wouldn’t give me any details of exactly how they worked and I strongly advised him against using such an unproven and untested technology on you. The nanobots were highly experimental and using them without much more rigorous testing was extremely risky, but he was desperate. If the growth had continued, it would almost certainly have caused you irreparable brain damage. At some point, and without my knowledge, he must have administered those nanites to you.

‘When Rachel and Jacob first brought you to the bunker and you were fighting the effects of the Hunter sting, I ran blood tests on you. Your blood was swarming with the nanobots. They were fighting with the Hunter venom, which is itself made up of self-replicating nanites, and you were winning. I’ve been researching the nanites I found in your blood for the past couple of months now and I believe that I’ve come up with a way in which we can use them as a weapon against the Voidborn. Something that could make a real difference.’

‘And these things are inside me right now?’ Sam asked, looking down at his hands with a slightly bewildered expression on his face. After a couple of seconds he looked back up at Stirling and shook his head. ‘I can’t believe this – it’s too much to take in. It’s like my whole life has been a lie. Why are you telling me all this now?’

‘Because someone has to know,’ Stirling said. ‘With Jackson dead, I’m the last person on Earth who knows what the Foundation did, how they handed the planet to the Voidborn.’

‘But why tell me?’ Sam asked. ‘Why not tell the others?’

‘Because you were the first, Sam. You gave me and Daniel hope that we could protect people from the Voidborn, maybe even beat them and . . . well . . . because you’re right: you deserve answers, no matter how difficult it may be to give them to you. I’m tired of carrying around secrets. I feel like that’s how I’ve spent my whole life.’

‘You know I have to tell the others what you’ve just told me, don’t you? They all deserve to know the truth.’

‘You’re right,’ Stirling said with a nod. ‘I know I should tell them, but it might be easier for them to hear it coming from you. Besides, as I said, I need time to think about our next move.’

Sam got up to leave, his head swimming with everything that Stirling had just told him. In the space of a few minutes, he felt like his life had been turned upside down yet again. More than that, he realised, he suddenly felt like a tiny, insignificant part of a conspiracy that was almost too big to comprehend. Halfway to the door, he stopped and turned towards Stirling.

‘The Voidborn are going to win, aren’t they?’ Sam said, looking Stirling straight in the eye.

‘Yes, probably,’ Stirling replied, ‘but that doesn’t mean we have to make it easy for them.’

‘I don’t . . . I mean . . . I can’t believe it,’ Rachel said. Thirty seconds ago, Sam had finished telling the others what Stirling had just told him and she was the first to speak. The others stood or sat around the small central room of the safe house with expressions of disbelief, confusion and anger on their faces.

‘He’s known this all along and he’s just telling us now?’ Jay said angrily. ‘They put these things inside us and you’re telling us that our parents knew nothing about it?’

‘That’s what he told me,’ Sam said. ‘Don’t forget, though, that if it wasn’t for these implants we’d all be just like the rest of the Walkers. Personally, I’d take the implant over spending the rest of my life as a Voidborn slave.’

‘Sam’s right,’ Kate said. ‘It doesn’t matter if what Stirling did was right or wrong – we have to concentrate on the future. We have to beat the Voidborn and we’re not going to be able to do that if we start turning on one another.’

‘I’m not saying that we shouldn’t fight any more,’ Jay said. ‘I’m just saying that he should have told us.’

‘Yes, Jacob, I should have.’ They all turned to see Stirling standing in the doorway of his room; he looked older and more tired. ‘That was my mistake and if it’s any consolation to you at all I regret not telling you sooner. Jackson always told me that I should have and he was right. What I won’t apologise for, and you may not want to hear this, is what we did to you to make you immune to Voidborn control. You may question the ethics of it, but if we had not done what we did, there would be no hope for us now. As it is, we are quite possibly the last form of concerted resistance to the Voidborn anywhere on the planet.’

‘Why didn’t you just tell everyone, the whole planet, what was going to happen?’ Rachel asked. ‘We might have had time to prepare, to defend ourselves.’

‘Who would have believed us?’ Stirling asked. ‘And, even if they had, it would probably just have caused mass panic and we still had no means of protecting the adult population from Voidborn enslavement. It would have served no purpose.’

‘That wasn’t your decision to make!’ Jay snapped. ‘That’s what this is all about – you like playing God, don’t you?’

‘Enough!’ Sam yelled. ‘I know you’re angry, Jay. I’m angry. We’re
all
angry, but we have a job to do. We can shout and scream at each other all we want, but it doesn’t change the fact that there’s a three-kilometre-wide Voidborn ship hovering over central London. It doesn’t change the fact that we’ve all lost people we care about and it certainly doesn’t get us our damn planet back. Only one thing can do that – us. Living together, working together, fighting together. If we can’t do that, it’s already over – the Voidborn have already won.’

Jay stared at Sam for a moment, still furious, and then after a couple of seconds he threw up his hands in surrender.

‘OK, OK, you’re right,’ Jay said, sitting back down. ‘So where do we hit them? ’Cos I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m ready for some payback.’

‘I think we all are,’ Nat said. ‘They hit us; now we should hit them right back, twice as hard. That’s what Jackson would have done.’

‘Indeed he would have,’ Stirling said with a nod, a sudden look of cold determination on his face. ‘And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.’ He reached down and pulled a foot-long silver tube from the pack on the floor.

‘What is that?’ Will asked.

‘This is what we’re going to use to take the fight to the Voidborn,’ Stirling said, placing the cylinder on the table at the front of the room. ‘This cylinder contains a swarm of self-replicating nanites that will infect and corrupt any Voidborn technology that they come into contact with. In simple terms, it’s a technological virus. It is my belief, based on the description that Sam provided, that, if we can successfully release the nano-virus into the machine that he discovered beneath the Voidborn Mothership, it will disable it permanently. I am not entirely sure what purpose it serves, but I think it’s safe to assume, given the scale of the Voidborn’s efforts to construct it, that it has to be rendered inoperative, permanently. What’s more, any Voidborn technology that comes into contact with the machine will, in turn, become infected with the nano-virus. Any attempt to repair the machine or even approach the facility will simply result in more Voidborn becoming infected.’

‘So we’re releasing a Voidborn plague,’ Anne said, eyeing the cylinder slightly warily. ‘You’re certain that this nano-virus isn’t harmful to humans, that it won’t spread unchecked?’

‘I can be reasonably sure that it won’t harm humans since it came from a human.’ Stirling gestured towards Sam, who looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘It will only spread into Voidborn technology. If this works as I think it will, we will transform central London into a viral hot zone that is a no-go area for the Voidborn for the foreseeable future.’

‘Are you saying that we’ve got to go back to the Voidborn compound?’ Nat asked. ‘Because I hate to sound negative, but the last time we went in there we barely made it out alive and they’re bound to have increased security after that. Couldn’t we just release the virus somewhere nearby and let it spread naturally?’

‘No,’ Stirling replied, shaking his head, ‘we can’t give the Voidborn the opportunity to put any sort of quarantine in place. As I said before, I’m not entirely sure what that machine does, but I have a theory, and if I’m correct the machine is our priority target.’

‘Why? What do you think it is?’ Liz asked.

‘Part of the Voidborn endgame,’ Stirling replied, ‘and very, very bad news for every living thing on the planet.’

‘Sounds like a suicide mission,’ Jay said, ‘so, obviously, you can count me in.’

‘I had a feeling that might be the case,’ Stirling said with a tiny smile. ‘Any other volunteers?’

‘I’m in,’ Sam said with a nod.

‘And me,’ Rachel replied.

‘Well, you’re not doing this without me,’ Nat said.

‘No,’ Stirling said. ‘I’m sorry, Natalie, but you’re injured. I appreciate your dedication, but you’re not ready for a mission like this yet.’

For a moment it seemed as though she was going to argue with him, but then she just sat back in her chair, looking irritated. The trip to the safe house had been difficult enough with her injured leg; much as she may not have wanted to admit it, she knew she wasn’t ready for a mission like this yet.

‘I’ll go,’ Kate said. ‘Adam would never let me live it down if I didn’t.’

‘And you’re going to need someone who knows one end of a gun from the other,’ Jack said with a grin.

‘I will also be accompanying you on this mission,’ Stirling said.

‘I’m not sure that’s a good –’ Sam said.

‘I’m not going to argue about this with you,’ Stirling said, cutting him off. ‘This weapon needs to be deployed in the right location to ensure that the Voidborn machine is permanently and irrevocably disabled. I’m the only person who can be certain of doing that correctly. So I’m coming with you.’ He looked around the room. ‘William, Elizabeth, Natalie, Anne and Adam shall remain here and hold the fort. The rest of you need to be ready to leave at nightfall. We can’t use the same route into the area that Sam and Jacob did yesterday so we will need to work out a new approach.’ Stirling looked at his watch. ‘We have three hours to put a plan of attack together. I suggest we get to work.’