The Whisper of Stars (29 page)

But something was wrong.

It reminded her of that awful moment of silence before a crash, those sickening seconds that seem to drag out the inevitable. There was a sudden push, and although it was purely psychic, it felt as if she had been punched hard in the stomach and slapped across the face simultaneously. She cried out in pain, stumbling back into stands and shop displays, sending them crashing noisily to the floor around her.

‘Jen, are you okay? Jen?’ Nathan’s desperate voice sounded distant and hollow. She was flat on the floor, her mind resetting somehow after the mental beating it had just endured.

‘What happened?’ Nathan’s voice, still thin and distant.

She felt dizzy and found herself staggering, pushing herself up. Her body felt like a lump of metal that had been banged with a sledge-hammer, the vibrations still pulsing though her. She could see the two soldiers now, running straight towards her.

Nathan’s warning came at exactly the same time as her understanding of the situation. ‘They’ve just broken radio silence,’ he shouted. ‘They know your location.’

Whoever these people were, they were expecting the Histeridae, and they were somehow immune. Her mind was racing faster than ever and she could feel her pulse banging against her temples.

‘The Histeridae,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t work on them… it doesn’t work…’

Zitagi.

She felt creeping fear working itself over her. They were going to capture her, torture her, take everything she had discovered and then bury it with her. A whimper escaped her mouth and she felt the tears of frustration pushing at her eyeballs. Without the Histeridae, she was lost.

Nathan’s voice pulled her back. ‘It worked before. Search again, find anyone
except
these guys, anyone else you can use. You need to create a diversion.’ His voice was firm and direct. ‘Jen. Do it now.’

She shook her head, her mouth stretched into a grimace, and without thinking she searched with the Histeridae again, this time avoiding the approaching men and reaching out into the corners of the base.

There, crouched behind a cluster of cars she found what she was looking for. One of the Shiryaevo guards. He had decided to wait out whatever
situation
was occurring. Jen had other ideas. She took control of him, seeing what he could see, and raised his gun towards two of the Special Forces soldiers running towards the visitors centre. Taking aim wasn’t easy. She had to close her own eyes and see through his, but the clarity came. It was a standard-issue assault rifle. Decent scope. She closed one of his eyes and pressed the butt into her shoulder, resting her cheek on the cold stock. Gently she squeezed the trigger, just a little pressure, and heard the rifle click. Nothing. Jen looked down at the gun and the man’s rough hands. She removed the safety, aimed again and fired, hitting one of the soldiers square in the back. His companion turned and crouched next to the fallen body, looking around frantically. Nathan included her in the feed as the soldier broke radio silence.

‘This is Silver Team, we have a man down. East car park, please advise.’

The main strike team were now in the vaults lobby, exactly where Jen had been a few hours earlier. They stopped, regrouped and started running back towards Jen’s location.

She made the shooter run across the car park and up the side of a building. The ladder rungs burnt at the guards hands. Jen didn’t care; she needed him on the roof. She needed a bigger diversion. He clambered up and lay flat. Jen watched as the strike team closed in. She switched the gun to semiautomatic and opened fire, aiming to kill. It was too late for compromise or attempts at stealth. Through the scope of the guard’s rifle, Jen watched as the strike team members individually seemed to appear and then evaporated again, each time somehow making progress. There was no way to make a shot. They were too good.

‘I need to draw them away,’ she whispered to Nathan, her body slumped against a pillar in the gift shop. ‘I can’t hold them like this. They will be here soon no matter what I do.’ She fired off a couple more rounds from the roof.

‘There’s a back-up generator,’ Nathan said. ‘Look to the left outside the visitor centre, between two buildings. Two massive fuel towers.’

Jen searched for another mind and found a guard, who moments ago had been assisting the new arrivals. Now he was hers. She took control, running him towards the towers.

‘I’m listening to their communications. They’re short and controlled, but I’m finally getting the gist. They know where you are and they know about the Histeridae,’ Nathan advised. ‘And they’ve been instructed to shoot any guards who get in their way.’

There was a thudding sound and Jen was suddenly thrust back into her own body. She saw a green flashing object attach to the glass doors and managed to shield her eyes in time as splintering glass exploded over her, the explosive charge blowing the windows out in a piercing rush of air. She crawled back, crunching glass underfoot as a bullet whipped past her. Too close. She’d lost control of the two guards, her mind forced into singularity. She was up and running, back into the foyer as searchlights flashed across the shop front. She passed the exhibits and skidded along the floor, hiding behind the huge drill bit that dominated the centre of the room.

Stay calm, Jen. Stay calm.

She focused. Guard one was still on the roof. She made him hers again and fired random shots, slowing the approaching strike team as best she could. Guard two was outside watching the team work their way into the building. Jen felt as though she were playing a game of tennis, except she was both players as well as the umpire, watching, controlling, thinking. Her mind was split and it was stretching. She turned the second guard towards the back-up generator and ran. Ahead were two black towers, ridged and tall enough to cut black shapes against the bluish night sky. They were covered in signs. She didn’t need to read them, they all meant danger. Jen opened fire, muzzle flashing, bullets ripping through the tall drums. The last thing she saw, through the eyes of her unfortunate surrogate, was a tiny flicker of flame in the darkness, and then a pure and brilliant white.

Chapter 52

Jen smelt fuel, smoke and burning plastic. The air had been pushed out of the room and she couldn’t breathe. She stood, wincing against the heat pouring from either side of the statue that shielded her. She crawled away, instinctively sticking to the ground until she could walk again. Through shattered glass she stepped out of what remained of the foyer.

The entire side of the visitors centre was gone, replaced by glass and debris, huge pieces of stone and jagged steel erupting out like broken fingers. Fires burned all around her and she could see bodies, flames flickering over them. A river of burning fuel was spreading and flowing across the car park, bathing the surrounding area in primitive light.

She made her way from the building. As she staggered through the rubble a single word banged through her consciousness over and over.

Murderer.

‘Jen?’ Nathan’s voice cut the confusion. ‘Are you there?’

‘What have I done?’ She stumbled through the torturous scene, towards the perimeter fence, bodies everywhere, some in pieces, raw meat smouldering on melting tarmac.

‘I heard the explosion from here,’ Nathan said. ‘Are you okay? Are you hurt?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m okay.’ She looked up at the rooftop. The sniper was gone, released from her murderous grip during the explosion. The other guard would have been obliterated. Her ears were hissing loudly, damaged by the sudden and deafening explosion, but she could hear distant shouting. She passed a man who was laying face-down. He twitched and began to crawl, groaning, his white combat jacket burned open revealing shiny red flesh, seared and fused black around the edges. He saw her and stretched out his hand. Jen knelt next to him and plucked a radio from his belt.

She looked out across the car park and through the fence. There was the mountain range she had descended earlier. Her pack was up there, hidden next to the air vent, her original exit plan before she’d blown half the building away. It seemed a long time ago. In fact her whole life, her previous self, felt absent. Her head was spinning, dogs were barking and she could hear more shouting. A gust of wind fanned the lake of burning fuel surrounding the wreckage, lighting her battered frame a rich golden red. She walked but felt her ankle buckle, tight in her boot, painful and stretched. She couldn’t remember hurting it. The adrenalin, covering for her, enabling her to live a little longer.

‘Where are you?’ Nathan asked.

‘Heading towards the main gate, towards the hills.’ She hobbled behind a car and took a moment to catch her breath. Around her more voices, screaming and shouting. She looked back at the visitor centre, a broken construction, collapsed in on itself. She could see at least three distinctive white shapes, people, milling around. Silver Team weren’t all taken out by the blast. They spread out and began searching again. She picked herself up, working her way along the parked cars, her ankle sending sickening waves of pain through her hip and back.

Nathan heard her cry out. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘I can make it,’ she whispered defiantly.

A rush of air whipped past her and she heard the ding of metal. They were firing at her. She broke into a run, her ankle sending flashes of white pain through her vision. The combination of days on the run, the blizzard, using the Histeridae and huge adrenalin dumps had finally taken its toll. She couldn’t believe how drained she felt, as if the energy was literally being sucked from her. It occurred to her that whatever had blocked the Histeridae might also have caused this fatigue. She’d never been so tired in all her life.

She decided to focus on something important.

The obvious thoughts came, exposing the truth and the lies, but those ideas felt somehow distant now. They were concepts that brought no warmth, no vitality. She needed something more immediate. She focused instead on the one person she still trusted, the man who hadn’t let her down. She imagined his hands reaching towards her, pulling her on, willing her to be safe. Suddenly he seemed essential, like she
had
to return to him. They were a team now. Their meeting suddenly felt like fate.

Another bullet fizzed above her and into the darkness. The shouting had stopped. They were organised and closing in.

His voice came then, as if on cue. ‘Jen, I’m out and heading to the meeting point.’

‘Okay.’ She was struggling to maintain her composure. ‘Nathan.’

‘Yeah?’

A pause. Words stuck in her throat. ‘Be careful,’ she managed.

His voice
had
spurred her on. Time had somehow passed and she was running between trees with snow underfoot. The forest had thickened, encasing and hiding her and the ground, and begun to steepen. It meant she was climbing. A tight stitch banged in her left side but the energy in her legs had returned and her ankle had stopped complaining.

Five minutes later, as she reached a plateau, she allowed herself a single look back down the hillside. She could see lights, equally spaced. Men with night vision working their way in formation up the hillside. They were moving away from her, though. She was going to make it.

She turned and fell, her heart suddenly pounding in her ears. Her stitch was worse now and it felt as if her body was expanding. She pulled her hand away from her side. It was warm and sticky. She blinked in the gloom, not wanting to see but not being able to help herself. Her hand was stained dark, covered in her blood.

She’d been shot.

Chapter 53

Jen was on her knees, gasping for breath. The sight of her own blood had told her body that it was time to go into shock, that it was okay to stop pretending. She could feel death closing in on her again, but this time it meant to finish the job. Exhaustion returned with a wave of pain that threatened to knock her unconscious. The radio she had plucked from the wretched, crawling guard sparked to life.

‘Logan?’ She recognised the voice. Zitagi sounded calm, controlled. ‘Listen to me very carefully.’

Jen snarled at the radio, grabbing it, fully expecting to throw it away but cradling it instead, eyes closed, panting.

‘Logan. If you run, you’re going to die. There’s nowhere to go.’

Jen howled, lifted herself up and continued walking, the radio dangling at her side. She thought about that bitch, miles away, somewhere safe, controlling this whole situation.

Zitagi’s voice drifted up. ‘You don’t understand what’s
really
going on. This is bigger that you realise, bigger than you and I.’ There was the slightest hint of something genuine in those words; it was a quality Jen didn’t associate with this woman.

Jen coughed, wiping her lips, ignoring the dark smears glistening on the back of her hand. ‘I’ve got evidence.’ Jen hissed, ‘I’m going to blow this whole thing open and take you down with it.’

‘Some secrets are better left buried,’ Zitagi responded. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’ There it was again. Jen could hear something different in Zitagi’s voice. It wasn’t fear. It was something else. ‘Your father was a good man, Jen, he didn’t do anything wrong.’

Jen had been dragging herself along and making a decent pace, the lights of men behind her still drifting away from her position. She stopped now and shook her head, sighing into the icy air. Zitagi was playing her, trying to get a radio lock. Jen was at her weakest, desperately reading into her words, wanting them to mean something, for all this mess to make sense.

Fuck this.

Jen threw the radio to the ground and lifted her leg, but before her boot landed, smashing it into pieces, Zitagi spoke again. Five simple words that echoed in Jen’s mind in the silence that followed.

‘We can’t save them all,’ Zitagi had pleaded, almost shouted it.

We can’t save them all.

Chapter 54

The dam was also a bridge crossing the Volga, huge arcs of water pluming from its row of locks below. Nathan, hidden in its shadow, saw Jen stumble out from a line of trees and out onto the riverbank. He ran to her and she collapsed in his arms.