FALLING (FADE Series #2) Page 3

The pilot answers that one. “We have access to private airfields, ma’am. Please prepare yourself for landing; we will be at the specified coordinates soon.”

  I look down, and I can’t see anything like the base the Underground has out in the desert. What I can see is some kind of private estate, with a manor house in the middle of it. It looks kind of quaint and old fashioned, except that as we get lower, I see that there are a whole bunch of aerials and satellite dishes on the roof, hidden out of sight of casual view.

  Looking around, I can see that the manor house’s gardens are huge. From this high up, I can spot the small town nearby, but there are rows of trees in the way so that the whole place has a cut off look to it. There are outbuildings arranged around the main wings of the house, and I wonder if they will hide as many secrets as the hangar in the desert. It’s the kind of place that manages to be both convenient and totally secret at the same time. And yes, there’s a helicopter pad at the rear of the house, which currently stands empty, obviously awaiting our arrival.

  “This is where we’re going?” I ask. It seems impossible. Far too much to spend on a secret base. But then, the one back home wouldn’t have been cheap.

  Grayson nods. “This is where we’re going,” he agrees. “Celes, welcome to Location Two.”

  FIVE

  The helicopter touches down, the rotors slowing to an eventual halt while I stare at them. Their whirling is almost like a meditation, giving me something to distract my thoughts from what has happened to Jack just for a moment. They come to a halt, and the pilot moves round to open the door, letting us out onto the helipad in the middle of the grand estate we saw from above.

  I get out and breathe in. The air has a different feel to it here. It’s not dry, like in the desert, and it doesn’t have the perpetual fumes that you find with a big city like New York. Instead, the air in this place is clean, and clear, with the scents of flowering plants carried on the breeze. The light’s different too. It’s gentler somehow, not harsh and glaring like it was back at the Underground’s base. Behind us, the manor stands imposingly, looking far larger from ground level, its façade perfectly preserved despite the ivy growing up one side of it. My main impression is of glass, thanks to the rows of windows on every level. Even the ground floor has French windows arranged in a line to let more light in.

  It’s from one of those sets that an older man walks, leaning on a cane. As he gets closer, I see that he is probably Sebastian Cook’s age, but he looks older from a distance, thanks to the combination of the stick and his shock of white hair, which sticks up at odd angles as though he has forgotten to comb it for a few days. Even so, his posture is ramrod straight, and he’s wearing tweed, which makes him look a little like the lord of the manor, out for a stroll.

  When he gets closer, he stares at me, looking me up and down with obvious recognition. But then, he would have been told I was coming. “So it is true. Sebastian has succeeded in locating you. I hadn’t thought he would be able to.”

  His voice sounds almost like an exaggeration. Jack’s British accent is faint and delicious, but this man’s sounds like simply too much. It’s like the kind of accent you might hear from one of the characters in an old war movie, or something.

  “You do not know how many years we have waited for this,” He says, looking around as though he expects more than just the two of us. “Where is Dr. Cook?”

  It isn’t Sebastian I’m thinking of right then, but that’s a reminder that there are more people than just Jack in danger. “He’s still back at the Underground,” I say, not trusting myself to put it more directly than that. “He… couldn’t make it with us.”

  “And Jack? I would have expected him to be here on such an important occasion.”

  It’s all I can do to keep from crying at that moment. I manage to shake my head. Grayson seems to sense the downturn in my mood, and puts a hand on my arm.

  The white-haired man seems to pick up on it too, and I get the sense that this is someone who won’t miss anything. “I shouldn’t worry about Jack too much, young lady. I trained him very well, and he was a good student. He always had the drive for work as a Fader, not to mention a knack for guessing what was going to happen. He should be well equipped to deal with any situation that crops up.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, not wanting to lose control like this in front of a stranger.

  “It’s quite all right,” the man replies, and then sticks out a hand. “Now we should probably be properly introduced. I am… well, my full name is Dr. Major Sir Lionel Lancaster, and then there are enough letters to play scrabble with after that,” he smiled. “Please call me Lionel.”

  “Celes,” I say, taking his hand. “Dr. Major Sir?”

  “I am glad to say I have led an eventful life.”

  “He worked as a British military liaison with the memory fading project,” Grayson supplies, “and then he helped to apply principles from it to create accelerated training methods for the Royal Marine Commandos, Parachute Regiment, Special Air Service, and Special Boat Service. Now he trains top Faders.”

  I look over at Grayson. He comes out with the information as though it’s nothing. Something he has known all his life, yet there’s no way he should have known it.

  Lionel smiles, taking Grayson’s hand. “That would make you Grayson, I assume. I received a message from Sebastian about you. His people obviously did a good job with your memories. But then, Sebastian always was a genius. It made those of us who got to observe the project simply because we happened to have a background in the sciences, feel quite jealous. And of course, he has always been a man with his heart in the right place. Unlike some.”

  I wince. “The Others got him,” I say. “I’m not sure if he will be-”

  “Oh, Sebastian will be fine for now,” Lionel says dismissively. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if his capture were one of the major objects of their raid.”

  “So they weren’t going after me?” I ask.

  “I am sure they were,” Lionel says, “but a good planner will always try to achieve a lot with a little. You are valuable, of course, but Sebastian? His wealth of knowledge is priceless. He knows the details of constructing the memory fading machine, for example, along with so many other secrets that the Others will simply have to keep him alive.”

  I feel the faintest ray of hope then. Not just for Sebastian, but for Jack as well. “So the Others…won’t kill him?”

  “Not if he is of use to them. And he will be. The Underground is no longer extant in that location, and they do not know where the machine went. Sebastian will be needed to either locate it or rebuild it.”

  I have to ask. “What about Jack? What if they capture him?”

  Lionel looks grave for a moment. “That is a much more difficult situation, young lady, though hopefully, Jack would not allow it to come to that.”

  I can’t bring myself to say that Jack appeared to be on the verge of capture when we left. Not now. “What would happen?”

  “If the Others know what he is…” he looks over at me, and it’s clear that the middle-aged Englishman knows exactly what I am “…then I’m afraid they would probably kill him out of hand.”

  “And if they don’t?” I ask, trying to cling onto any scrap of hope.

  “Then Jack is still a potential threat, who has killed many of their people over the years. I’m sorry to say that they might well still execute him.”

  I let out a breath, and feel Grayson’s arm slip around me protectively. I know what he feels about Jack. I know he won’t care about that news, but he’s there for me. He’s there to make sure that I can still stand, even though it doesn’t feel like there’s anything left in the world for me.

  “Let’s get you inside,” Lionel says. “You’re here, and you should have the chance to get your bearings before anything else happens.”

  He leads the way, and I follow, not knowing what else to do. The inside of the manor house is odd. There are rooms there that don’t fee
l like they’ve been touched for a hundred years, while others have a very modern look to them, with plenty of glass and brushed steel mixed in with the rest of the furniture. It reminds me a lot of the apartment Jack had to blow up shortly after meeting me.

  “This is an interesting place you have here,” I manage to say.

  “Oh, I do my best with it,” Lionel returns. “I have to keep some of the older stuff for the look of an old English manor house, but it isn’t really to my taste.”

  No, it’s Jack’s, and it’s hard to understand until I remember the comment about Lionel training him. Jack has obviously picked up a lot from the man who was once his mentor, even down to his taste in decorating.

  Grayson and I follow Lionel as he shows us around the various rooms on the ground floor. They are fairly typical of what I would have expected from a manor house like this. There’s a library, a large kitchen, a gallery. It’s only when Lionel leads us down a flight of stairs that I start to realize there’s more to the place.

  “This used to be a wine cellar, until we made a few alterations and… well, extended things a bit.”

  That’s an understatement. The stairs lead down to a corridor almost identical to those back at the Underground’s main base. There are doors leading off it, and Lionel pushes them open as we pass. In the first, there are people working, huddled over screens as they tap away at keyboards. The second door features what appears to be a shooting range, where a couple of people are practicing with pistols. A third features a large, matted area, where a couple of Faders are going back and forth, exchanging blows and trying to throw one another. Lionel pauses there, going over to correct one of the combatants, and tripping him casually when he isn’t expecting it.

  “There. Maybe now you’ll remember that this isn’t a game, young man.” He comes back and apologizes. “Sorry about that. People these days never seem to understand that there aren’t any rules in a real fight until you demonstrate it to them first hand.”

  Lionel seems satisfied enough to move on then, taking us into an elevator, which leads us down to a lower floor. There, he spends several seconds getting us through voice print and retinal scan based locks, which let us into what appears to be a control room, where we are surrounded by screens. Those screens show all kinds of things, from news feeds to satellite imagery of distant locations. There are pictures of people, along with information about them, as well as graphs that make no sense without being told what they are about. There is even some footage that looks like it is being taken directly from security cameras and overhead drones.

  One of the screens shows the hangar I had thought of as the Underground’s only base until recently. It’s in ruins, the fires having burned themselves out. It’s eerily quiet, and there’s no sign of anyone still being there. There aren’t even any bodies on the ground from where the battle occurred. It’s just deserted.

  “What happened to everyone?” I ask. “Did the Others kill them all?”

  Lionel shakes his head. “We were able to evacuate the majority of the personnel from Location Six, along with the files and equipment that were most sensitive. It looks like Sebastian was also able to activate the self-destruction sequence, eliminating anything that could have been used by the Others.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” I say. “How could they have evacuated before the explosion? I was there. There were a few Faders fighting the Others, and Sebastian was there, but I didn’t see anyone else come out of the place.”

  “That’s because they left via a different route,” Lionel explains. “There is more than one reason they call us the Underground, you know.”

  SIX

  “So you’re saying they escaped underground somehow?” I say.

  Lionel nods. He’s still looking at the screen that shows the broken and ruined Underground base. He taps a few keys on a nearby computer keyboard, apparently making a note of something.

  “As you probably know, each of our bases has multiple underground levels. We are, for example, currently some four stories underground.”

  “We are?” I ask. I don’t know why, but somehow, it’s easier to imagine a maze of tunnels beneath a hangar like the one back in the desert than it is to imagine them beneath an old house like this. And it’s not like I can tell just by looking how far down we are. There aren’t any windows here, but beyond that, this control center could be on any level.

  “The Underground got the idea from the kind of underground tunnels and bunkers used in this country during the Second World War,” Lionel explains. “There were whole secret sections that did their work underground then, and sections of the London tube system were used as part of it. There were also plenty of bunkers and tunnels built for use in the event of an invasion. This house originally had several like that, which we merely expanded and made a little more appropriate for our needs.”

  “Just how big are these tunnels?” I ask, trying to get some sense of the scale on which the Underground is working.

  Lionel shrugs. “They are extensive enough to hide our whole operation in each location. We really don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. Not only does that create an increased risk of attack by the Others, but even local governments tend to get quite worried when they see heavily armed operations on our scale. It wouldn’t do to give them an excuse to send in troops, now would it?”

  I guess not, though I hadn’t really thought about it like that. “Don’t you work with governments?” I ask.

  “Our relationships with them can be quite... complicated,” Lionel says. “Most of those like myself and Sebastian came out of official programs of one kind or another, yet no government would ever admit to doing the kinds of things we look into. If we were officially linked to any one government, that might cause embarrassment, as well as creating the illusion that we are here to support one country’s interests, rather than simply to do research. On the whole, it is better for us to be merely a private organization with a few friends in high places, don’t you think?”

  I can’t answer that. In fact, all it does is to remind me just how out of my depth I am. I’m a part of this world because of what I am, but I am not trained for it, and I don’t have any experience of trying to keep up with its complex politics. Instead, I try to latch onto something simpler.

  “So these tunnels beneath the various bases include escape tunnels?” I ask.

  “They do,” Lionel says, then turns to Grayson. “Tell me, young man, where does the tunnel from Location Six come out?”

  “In the mountains,” Grayson says, and then gives Lionel a map reference.

  For a moment, the retired major looks thoughtful. “Sebastian certainly put a lot more information into you than I would have thought,” he says. “It’s enough to make me wonder why. Still, you’re correct.”

  He taps another few computer keys, and one of the cameras switches its view until it shows what appears to be nothing more than a mountainside.

  “I don’t see what we’re looking at,” I say.

  “Be patient,” Lionel advises. “Ah, there. Thank goodness.”

  The camera zooms in, and because I know that there must be something there, I try to see what Lionel is seeing. It’s only when the hatch in the rock face starts to swing open though that I even notice it. It opens wide like some kind of modern day take on Aladdin’s cave, and from that gap in the rock, people start to appear.

  They come out in ones and twos, looking organized and determined. Most are holding bags, or carrying rucksacks. The only ones who aren’t are the ones who appear to be injured. I recognize Marlene among their number, and I feel a little surge of gladness that at least some of those who have helped me have survived.

  “What’s in the bags?” Grayson asks.

  Lionel shrugs. “Information, weaponry, personal effects. Whatever they could grab, I should imagine. There is a lot of material kept at each base, and in the event of destruction, it would need to be transferred securely.”

  “Couldn’t
you just do that online?” I ask, and find myself feeling stupid when Lionel looks at me. “What?”

  “That kind of transfer could easily be intercepted,” he says. “If one of the bases is under attack physically, then we have to assume that it would be attacked by hackers simultaneously, all ready to intercept any packets of information sent out from the site. No, it is far safer to move things physically. My only worry in that regard is whether the Others might be able to retrieve anything from the systems damaged by the destruction sequence.”

  “Mr. Cook incorporated a controlled EMP effect into the sequence specifically to prevent that,” Grayson says. I still can’t get used to the idea that he knows this stuff. “It would have been contained within the base by the outer shielding, but would have wiped all electronic storage.”

  “Well, that’s something, I suppose,” Lionel says, returning his attention to the screen. More people are spilling from the hole in the rock. Most of them are on foot, but a few ride motorcycles, skirting around the edge of the group with weapons at the ready. I guess that they’re those Faders who remained behind to supervise the evacuation rather than going out to face the Others with Jack.

  The three of us watch that screen, looking, waiting, hoping. It’s obvious to me that we’re all looking for the same thing, but none of us says it. We’re all hoping that Sebastian or Jack’s face will miraculously show up among those coming out of the base. That things will somehow be all right in spite of what I saw from the helicopter as we were leaving.

  As time goes on though, and more faces go past without any sign of them, my hopes diminish. And when the door in the rock slams shut without them having appeared, those hopes wither and die. If they aren’t in that group, it’s because they couldn’t be. Which means that they didn’t get away when they fought the Others.

  “So that’s it,” I say. “They’re… gone.”

  “We don’t know that for certain,” Grayson says. I know he’s trying to be comforting, and I appreciate the effort, but I can’t help remembering that it was he who shoved me into the helicopter, he who sedated me with a syringe full of who knows what.