Enemy Invasion (20 page)

“Move!” Sarah yelled as the helicopter hit the ground and kept on coming. Blades detached and flew across the compound, followed by lumps of jagged metal and broken glass. Sarah and
the others piled through the opening Wei had made in the fence and into the darkness of the jungle. Only Hack held back, remembering the explosive collar around his throat.

“Come on!” Robert exclaimed, pulling him away.

“Wait—”

“No time!”

Behind them the helicopter exploded as it finally came to rest against the shattered fence. Robert, Hack and the others tore into the trees on the other side and instantly became lost in the
blackness of the island night.

“Are you okay?” Good asked uncertainly, looking over the tattered, burned remains of Bright’s uniform. Strangely, his skin seemed completely unharmed.

Bright looked at him with distant eyes, then cocked his head to one side, listening to gunfire and explosions in the distance. His gaze snapped into focus.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“Superhumans,” Good replied. “The base has been attacked. Don’t worry, I set the Black Hawk on them and they’re on the run. Our men are going to chase them down in
the jungle.”

“You had the men use live rounds?”

Good looked at him incredulously. “Isn’t that what all the guns are for?”

“Idiot.” Bright turned his attention to Kotler, who was standing off to the side. “Call the men back. And start the evacuation.”

Kotler saluted and moved out at the double, leaving a perplexed Good to follow the major as he crossed the hangar towards the containment field holding the squid.

“Those kids just tore up half the camp!” he exclaimed. “They blew up a chopper worth 5.9 million bucks!”

“So buy another,” Bright said, eyes locked on the ever-changing shape of the squid as it moved beneath the hypersphere. “The boy is essential to our plans. As is Sarah
Williams. And you would have gunned them down.”

“Ah…”

Bright reached under the hypersphere, fingertips crackling with electricity, and placed his hands on the squid. Its tentacles, at once solid and yet liquid, metallic and yet organic, wrapped
around his arms as he pulled it out. Good watched transfixed. As the squid struggled to envelop Bright, the major’s eyes gleamed with a strange energy.

“Bring me the boy, Hack,” he commanded the squid, which had stopped struggling against him. “And the girl, Sarah Williams.”

With that, he dropped the alien machine-beast on the ground, where it simply lay for a few seconds. Then it began to change shape yet again. The writhing tentacles became thinner, more
elongated. They gained definition, taking on a shiny hardness as they formed into segments, eight of them in all. These new legs lifted the black, central body from the ground. On the forward part
of the body glowed red orbs, too many to count, set in the surface of the metal. Eyes.

“My god,” Marlon Good murmured as he took in the transformation. “It’s like a—”

“Spider?” Major Bright finished for him, taking a step towards the machine. He held a hand out to the creature, which was now the size of a large dog. “Hunt them down. The
other children are expendable. Kill them.”

With that, the robospider darted towards the open doors of the hangar, needle-sharp legs scuttling on the concrete...

21

After running through the humid darkness of the jungle for five minutes, Sarah looked back and, seeing no sign of pursuit from the camp, ordered everyone to stop. Breathing
heavily and drenched with sweat due to the heat, they collapsed against the trees and on the giant roots spreading across the ground.

“Is everyone okay?” Sarah asked when she had her breath back. “Is anyone injured?”

Nobody spoke up. Either they were fine, or too exhausted from the flight to complain.

“Why aren’t they following us?” Robert asked. In the distance they could see the flames of fires still burning and hear the sound of men’s voices, but nothing closer. No
torch beams flicking through the trees.

“We caused a lot of damage to the camp,” Hack said. “Maybe they’re too busy putting out fires.”

“You should have let Wei burn it all,” Louise said and her friend nodded vigorously at her side. “We should sneak back and finish them off. Right?”

Heads turned towards Sarah, but she said, “No, we need to get off this island. Bright is planning an attack on the
Ulysses
. We have to warn HIDRA.”

Louise began to protest, “But if we get Bright first—”

“He’s too powerful,” Sarah interrupted. “He’s not just using the serum any more for his strength. He’s joined with the Entity and he’s stronger than
ever before.”

“The Entity?” Robert said. “How’s that possible? I thought we destroyed it when we flattened Makarov’s Spire.” He looked at Hack and said for his benefit,
“Makarov was a Russian billionaire in league with the Entity. He wanted to take over the world from this giant skyscraper in the middle of nowhere. We blew it up.”

“Okay,” Hack said.

“But the Entity didn’t die in the Spire,” Wei corrected and Sarah nodded.

“We only destroyed the meteorite fragment the Entity was using as a transmitter here on earth.”

Hack was becoming more and more confused by the conversation. “So, what is this Entity you keep talking about?”

“It’s an alien force,” Robert explained. “Like a kind of giant brain somewhere out there in the universe. We don’t know where.”

“The main thing is it’s evil,” Sarah added. “And incredibly powerful. It uses the fall virus to control beings on different worlds.”

“Which explains us,” Robert continued. “We get a little bit of the Entity’s powers as a side effect of being immune to the virus. And it doesn’t like it one
bit.”

Sarah nodded. “It plans to enslave the world and either kill or imprison anyone immune to its power.” She smiled at Hack. “I guess all this must sound pretty
far-fetched.”

“Not really,” Hack replied. “I think I’ve met this Entity of yours.”

The others exchanged surprised looks.

“Back in the hangar,” Hack explained. “Major Bright grabbed my and May’s hands. That’s when I sensed something else… Like a kind of presence coming from a
massive distance away. It was the scariest thing ever.”

“That sounds like the Entity all right,” Wei said.

“What did it want with you?” Sarah asked, remembering the scene in the hangar, the cameras and the squid-like thing.

Hack frowned as he tried to explain. “Major Bright… I mean the Entity...used our powers on the hypersphere. The Entity manipulated May to change it into a different form and my
ability to control machines to load it with data. Like programming a computer.”

“What kind of programs?” Robert asked.

Hack looked at him. “Programs for creating killing machines. All sorts of killing machines.”

For a moment everyone was silent. Once more, Sarah sensed something out there in the jungle dark…

“We should keep moving to the plane,” she said.

They all stood, except Hack. He touched a hand to the collar around his neck and shook his head. “I don’t think—”

Sarah threw out a hand to silence him and spun round, staring into the darkness behind her. Robert went to her side.

“What is it?”

“Something’s out there,” she replied, taking a step forward…

“FREEZE!” a man’s voice yelled. Two mercs carrying machine guns appeared. The taller of the two grabbed Sarah’s arm before she could react and pressed the gun to the side
of her head. “Try anything stupid, and she gets it. I don’t think any of you can stop a bullet at this close range. Get ’em up.”

The group raised their hands. The tall merc regarded them with a sneer. “Freaks,” he hissed. “The sooner you’re all wiped out, the better. Maybe we should start right
now.”

“Hey,” the other merc warned, standing off to the side, gun trained on the rest. “We’ve got orders not to touch them.”

His partner snorted. “I don’t remember getting that order. Our comm must have been out of range.” His cruel eyes met Sarah’s. “A friend of mine was in that chopper
you brought down.”

Sarah sensed the tall merc’s finger tighten on the trigger and she knew with absolute certainty that he planned to kill them all. Gun them down right there in the jungle and leave their
bodies for someone else to find. She remembered her conversation with Commander Craig in the sparring room:
there are no rules for men like these
. She had to take control, but her fear for
herself and the others was like a force paralysing her will to fight…

The other merc said nervously, “Perhaps we should just—”

“Shut it,” the tall merc snapped.

“
GAKKKK
.”

The tall merc looked round at the strange sound his partner had just made. The other man was still standing, but there was something jutting from the centre of his chest – a jointed, metal
pole ending at a point. Blood glistened on the gleaming surface. It appeared to be straight through his heart. The merc’s body went limp and his weapon dropped to the ground.

The tall merc released Sarah, pushing her away, and rounded on whatever was attacking them. His partner was flicked to one side and his body flew off the pole, far into the jungle. In the
darkness, a dozen red orbs appeared, floating a metre off the ground.

“What is this?” the tall merc roared, letting rip with the machine gun. Bullets ricocheted off something in the shadows. The muzzle-flash of the gun illuminated a body and what
appeared to be legs.

Sarah signalled everyone back as the remaining merc’s gun clicked empty. He tore out the spent clip and grabbed another from his belt…

The thing in the darkness surged forward, swiftly and silently. One of its legs slashed the air in a smoothly efficient motion, the razor end merely a blur in the moonlight. The tall merc
dropped to his knees, dark liquid spraying from his throat in a wide arc. Then he fell forward and hit the ground face first, blood still pumping from his half-severed neck.

Sarah and the others watched in horror as the robospider advanced out of the shadows. It positioned itself over the body of the merc and angled down at the front, red orb eyes scanning as if to
make sure the man was dead. Then it rose again and turned its attention to them.

Unable to speak, Sarah used her mind to give the order…

Run
.

The others didn’t need telling twice. They dashed into the jungle, weaving between the trees and jumping treacherously low-hanging vines, their earlier exhaustion forgotten. Sarah sensed
they were headed in the right direction for the plane, but it would be only too easy to get split up in their haste to escape.

Keep together
, she warned them.
Look out for one another
…

There was a whoosh of air as something leaped overhead, jumping nimbly between the branches of the trees. Sarah looked up and caught sight of the spider hanging between two trunks, metallic legs
splayed to hold it in place. Before she could react, the machine made a hissing sound and something dark flew from its lower body, hitting her full in the face. A sticky, black goo enveloped her
nose and mouth and it was all she could do to stop herself swallowing the disgusting stuff. As she clawed it away, something wrapped around her ankles. She was pulled clean off her feet and high in
the air. Struggling wildly, Sarah found herself dangling upside down two metres off the ground. She tried to cry out to the others, but the goo was making it impossible to breathe, let alone call
for help.

The robospider descended towards her, hanging from a slender yet incredibly strong strand of black silk. The multitude of eyes turned on Sarah and she noticed pincer teeth for the first time.
Her mind raced with images from the Discovery Channel: spiders biting their prey, paralysing them, wrapping them up for later.
I’m like a fly in the web
, she thought, beginning to
panic as she struggled to get air into her blocked nose and mouth.
I can’t breathe. I’m going to die
…

The spider reached towards her head with a claw sharper than a carving knife.

Sarah’s eyes widened…

…and the spider sliced the smallest hole in the substance hardening on her face. Suddenly she could breathe again. She gulped air into her burning lungs as the spider continued to regard
her.
It wants me alive
, she realized.
The Entity isn’t going to let me escape
. She looked up at the silk holding her by her ankles.

The jungle lit up as a line of fire whipped through the canopy, slicing through the silk strands. Both Sarah and the robospider crashed to the ground. She landed heavily on her shoulder and
rolled to one side. Beside her the spider had landed on its back, legs thrashing wildly. As it managed to right itself, an uprooted tree hurtled out of the night, hitting the spider full force and
sweeping it away.

“Sarah!” Robert exclaimed, appearing at her side. He grabbed her arm and they instantly teleported some fifty metres away. Wei approached and held up a hand to Sarah’s
face.

“Hold very still,” he said seriously.

Sarah didn’t move a muscle as heat emanated from his palm, melting away the hardened goo on her lower face. In less than ten seconds she was able to pull the rest away and take a relieved
breath.

“Thanks,” she said.

“What was that thing?” Louise asked.

“One of the machine plans the Entity had us load into that rock,” Hack replied. “It’s a hunter. And a killer.”

“Well, let’s not hang around for it to return,” Robert said urgently. But it was already too late. The robospider was scurrying back through the trees, forelegs a blur of
motion, cutting through anything in its path. As it came within a few metres it jumped high into the air and arced down towards them. Louise held up her hands…

The spider stopped in mid-air above them, suspended, legs flailing. Louise looked at Wei, who already had the idea. Fire leaped around his hands and he pressed them together. The fire grew to
become a blazing orb.