FALLING (FADE Series #2) Read online

  “But it’s so much more than that,” Jonas insists. “That’s why I went along with Sebastian, trying to find others like Jacqueline. Like you. It’s not just that Jacqueline was my sister, it’s that her existence shows that there is more to the universe than just humanity. Than just Earth. The whole parameters of our thoughts have to change to take that in.”

  Jack moves me gently away from Jonas a little. His uncle doesn’t seem to take any offense at it.

  “And now, of course, Jack has found you. I had started to worry that perhaps he was all that was left. That he was the last, lonely remnant of… well, whatever you both are. Which we will of course be able to find out far more about, now that Jack has brought us the rock for analysis.”

  So Jack has brought the rock over with him. I wonder how he managed to persuade Lionel to do that. Or maybe he didn’t tell him. I have to say that, in spite of his over-eagerness, I quite like Jonas. There’s something about him that’s almost infectiously warm and curious. It reminds me a bit of my little brother, but it’s more than that. I like the warmth Jack has towards his uncle. It’s a total contrast to the stiff formality of his relationship with his father, and it makes me wonder how they got so close when they’ve met so little.

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Jonas,” I say. “I hope I can do something that will help with your research. I’d like to know where I come from as much as you do.”

  That makes Jonas grin, and he moves forward to pull me into a bear hug. “You know, you remind me of Jacqueline. She was so much the same as you, even down to her smile. And it’s good to see Jack happy for once too. Even over his video messages, I’ve been able to spot the rosy glow of love, you know. You two are obviously made for one another.”

  I pull back. I get the feeling Jonas could be a bit intense in anything more than short bursts. Maybe that’s why he’s out here on his farm, away from the rest of the Underground. Still I can’t help liking the compliment. Jack and I are perfect together. At least, I think so, and I want to keep things that way.

  Jack rolled his eyes. “Ah, Jonas, it’s time to get together with Lancaster and go through the final preparations. The Fortress of the Others is something else, and we all have to be prepared.”

  TWELVE

  It’s dark by the time we finally make our move on the Others’ compound. I guess that makes sense. Darkness means an easier time of sneaking in, not to mention fewer people around who might potentially cause problems. That’s important, because this is meant to be a rescue mission, not an all-out assault. Even so, I’m under no illusions about the danger we might be walking into. Jack makes me wear a flak jacket before he agrees to let me come, and gives me a pistol for self-defense. It has a silencer, which makes me feel like an extra out of a spy movie, but also serves to drive home just how dangerous the situation we’re walking into is.

  Of course, if that hadn’t, then the sight of the Others’ base would have. It’s a big, ugly, windowless building three stories tall, sitting behind enough barbed wire to make it clear that no one sensible would want to go near it. There are armed guards patrolling the perimeter with dogs. I’m not sure how we’re going to get past them as I crouch at the top of a small rise not far from the compound, along with Jack, Grayson, and the others involved in the rescue.

  What surprises me is how close this place is to ordinary homes and houses. It’s less than a mile from the heart of suburbia, yet it even looks like a secret base.

  “I thought you said that the Others disguised their bases better than this,” I say to Jack, keeping my voice low.

  “Normally, they do,” he whispers back. “The Fortress is a special case.”

  “The Fortress,” Lionel puts in, moving closer almost silently, “is one of their most secure locations. We didn’t know where it was until now.”

  I look down at the place below us in surprise. “How could you not spot this?”

  “It could have been anywhere in the world,” Jack points out. “Besides, it might not look like a house or a business, but if you didn’t know what it was, wouldn’t it just look like a secure warehouse? Or maybe something run by the government?”

  “But wouldn’t a government facility have signs outside, telling you what it is?” I ask.

  Beside me, Lionel laughs softly, “You obviously haven’t worked at the same ones I did, dear. Now, enough talking, we go on Jack’s signal.”

  Jack talks into a radio ear piece. “Everybody ready?”

  Voices come back, saying yes, one by one. Everybody around me looks ready. I’m easily the least heavily armed of the group around me. Everyone else has either a submachine-gun or some kind of elaborately modified rifle. Everything has sound suppressors fitted. Additionally, most of the people there have backpacks, undoubtedly containing a whole host of extra gear.

  “Then we go in three, two, one. Go!”

  The sentries and their dogs fall almost simultaneously. I look at Jack questioningly.

  “Tranquilizer darts,” he explains, “now come on.”

  We run for the fence as quickly and quietly as we can. The fence is electrified, but it isn’t a problem, apparently. Jack says something else into his radio, and in the distance, I see half the lights in the area go out. The Underground has cut the power, I realize. Even while I’m thinking it, Lionel and Grayson move up to the fence, hacking a hole in it at lightning speed. In a matter of seconds, there’s a gap big enough to walk through.

  “Just in time,” Jack says. “The emergency power will be on in a moment.”

  “Do you think they know that we’re here yet?” Lionel asks.

  “They would have to be very stupid not to, but we’ll take precautions anyway.”

  Jack signals to another of the Faders, who brings forward a computer. The Fader taps in a series of commands before looking around at Jack. “I’m in their camera feeds now. I’ll only be able to freeze a few at a time, but I should be able to mask your movements.”

  Jack nods. “That’s good enough.”

  We move to a door, looking around for potential threats. I spot someone moving out of the shadows, gun raised, but as fast as I react, Jack is faster. He brings up his submachine gun, and gets a silenced shot off in the dark. The figure falls. No one comments.

  The doors to the Fortress go with its name. From a distance, they don’t look like much, just ordinary loading doors to let trucks drive in, the way people would have at just about any warehouse. Closer too, though, I can see that they’re reinforced steel. There’s a retinal scan lock similar to the ones back at the Underground base.

  “Time to see if this works,” Jack says. He takes a small box from his backpack, opens it, and then presses something to each of his eyes in turn. I realize that he’s putting in contact lenses. He bends over the scanner, and a light goes green, before those great metal doors slide open in near silence.

  The Faders move through them, checking the space beyond. This is obviously the most dangerous point of the mission. Even I would want to ambush us here, and I don’t know anything about military tactics. Jack and Grayson, who obviously know far more, stay by the doors until we get the all clear to move in further.

  The room beyond is some kind of loading bay, and we get out of it quickly, leaving a couple of Faders behind to keep our escape route secure. We move deeper into the Fortress, following corridors that have no signs beyond a few stenciled numbers and letters. Presumably, the Others know what they mean, but we don’t. We’re left trying to find our way around the base by trial and error.

  It’s a total maze. If Location Six was confusing because of the amount of things that had to be fit into it, this feels like it is almost deliberately so, with corridors taking twists and turns for no apparent reason, while doors lead off at the sides at random intervals. We have to check each one we come to, just to make sure that we aren’t leaving a whole bunch of potential enemies behind us. For the most part, there isn’t anybody there.

  That changes quickly when we round
a corner and almost run straight into a guard in the Others’ traditional black clothing. Jack reacts before any of the rest of us, spinning him around and putting him in a choke hold that has the guard slumping into unconsciousness in a matter of seconds. It’s quick, it’s quiet, and it has me wondering what I’m doing there. I can’t keep up with that kind of thing.

  The guard isn’t the only person we run into. A little further on, we find a lab, with toughened glass windows facing out onto the corridor, and plenty of expensive looking pieces of machinery inside. There’s also a woman in a white coat bent over a microscope, apparently making notes as she works. She appears to be in her mid-twenties, with long blonde hair tied carefully back and glasses. Jack starts to open the door to the lab. What is he planning?

  Jack moves quickly over to the woman, putting his gun to her head. “If you call for help or reach for a weapon, you’re dead, understood?”

  The woman freezes in place. “I… I…”

  She’s panicking. She’s going to try something stupid, like screaming. I know I have to do something, so I move forward, level with her. “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Teri. Oh God, please don’t kill me.”

  “We aren’t going to kill you,” I promise her. I hope that’s true. I know how much the Underground hates the Others. “We need information, Teri. We need you to tell us where Sebastian Cook is being held.”

  Teri shakes her head. “I don’t know any Sebastian Cook.”

  “Don’t lie,” Jack warns. His voice is cold enough to be terrifying. But then, I guess that’s the point.

  “I’m not lying,” Teri says. She starts to look around, but thinks better of it. “I’m not. I swear.”

  “Where would they take important prisoners, Teri?” I ask.

  She swallows. “The top floor. The northern corner. There are… cells there. There’s one… the glass cell. If he’s important, he might be in there.”

  “Thank you,” I say, looking at Jack. Thankfully, he understands what I want, which is for him not to go around shooting frightened young scientists. We leave Teri tied up, and head upstairs in search of Jack’s father. We’re moving quickly now, so when we run into a guard post with half a dozen armed men, there almost isn’t time to react.

  Almost. Jack presses me flat against the wall, firing off a burst from his weapon one handed. Lionel fires almost as quickly, while Gray and the others follow suit. In less than a couple of seconds, the danger is gone. It’s only in the aftermath that I see the steel door beyond them, complete with another electronic lock, which Jack sets about breaking through as smoothly as we got through the first.

  The room beyond is larger than I thought it would be. It’s a big, steel walled square, with a glass cube inside it. Sebastian sits inside that cube, on the floor. He doesn’t appear to have been harmed, but he’s clearly a prisoner there, and he doesn’t react when we approach.

  “The cube will be one way glass,” Lionel says. “It’s an effective way of cutting someone off from the world.” He goes to the door. There’s a lock on the outside, and the retired major takes a more direct approach to it than Jack. He smashes it with the butt of his gun, before flinging the door open. We move through into the cube. From inside, the walls are opaque. They remind me of the glass back in the viewing room of Location Six.

  “Hello, Sebastian,” Lionel says. “Welcome to the escape attempt.”

  Sebastian stands, smiling weakly. “Just like Kuala Lumpur.”

  “I hope not,” Lionel replies. “I got shot on that one, if you remember.”

  A voice comes over hidden speakers. A voice I recognize all too well. A voice that means that things have just become a lot more dangerous than they were. “And you could still get shot on this one, Sir Lionel.”

  The glass goes from cloudy to clear in a matter of seconds, revealing a group of the Others surrounding the cell. They’re as heavily armed as the Faders are, and at their head is Richard, Grayson’s father. He stands there casually, as if he hasn’t just set up a huge stand-off. It’s not him I’m looking at though. I’m looking at the three figures next to him, all standing with their hands handcuffed behind their backs, looking like they have no clue what’s going on.

  “Mom, Dad? Bailey?”

  My family looks at me without recognition. Of course they do. They’ve been Faded. I remember them, but they have no recollection of my ever existing.

  “Put your weapons down,” Richard instructs. “Do it now, or I don’t need to tell you what will happen.”

  I see Jack wince slightly. Grayson, however, does more than wince.

  “It isn’t enough you used your own son to get to Celes, Dad?” he snaps. “Now you’re using innocent civilians who don’t even know what this is all about? You disgust me.”

  THIRTEEN

  Richard actually looks a little sad as Grayson steps forward to berate him. Maybe he wasn’t expecting it. Maybe it’s just the betrayal of it, his own son siding with the Underground. The Others don’t open fire though. I guess that’s partly because of the walls of the glass cube, which, if they’re anything like those back at the Underground will be tougher than they look, but maybe it’s also because Richard doesn’t want his son hurt.

  “You know,” Sebastian says, moving to back Grayson up and nodding towards my family through the glass walls of the room. “You’ve really crossed the line here, Richard, bringing in innocent civilians like this. These people don’t even know why they’re here.”

  Richard shakes his head. Beside him, my family stand still, guarded closely by a trio of the Others, all with guns trained on them. “They know,” he says. “And they’re part of this. They’re with Celestra Caine.”

  “Really?” Sebastian asks, without raising his voice. He looks over to where Bailey stands and points at me. “You, young man, do you know who this young woman is?”

  Bailey looks nervous. He would. He’s surrounded by armed people, in a situation he knows nothing about. I’m almost proud of him when he manages to shake his head. Proud, and a little sad. I’ve known in theory that my family won’t remember me, but seeing the truth of it like this is something different. It hurts, even though I know that right now, it could be the thing that keeps Bailey safe. If there’s no connection to me, then there’s no leverage. There’s no reason to want to kill them, if that won’t have any effect on me.

  “What about you two?” Sebastian asks, looking at my parents now. They seem as blank as Bailey was. “Do you remember her?”

  “Of course they do,” Richard snaps, not giving them a chance to answer. “She’s their daughter. They raised her for seventeen years. They know everything about her.”

  It’s my father who answers. “Sorry, I don’t know who you think we are, but…”

  “You’re her parents. She is your daughter.”

  “We don’t have a daughter,” my mother says, and it’s heartbreaking now, even as I know that she isn’t doing it to hurt me. She simply doesn’t remember, but that’s what hurts. “I don’t think we’ve even met this girl before.”

  I want to cry, but I know I can’t. If I cry, it will show how much they mean to me. If I cry, it will show the Others that what they’re doing is working. Grayson moves to put an arm around my shoulders for comfort. Jack doesn’t move, but then, he probably gets how important it is to minimize the connection between me and my family right now. He’s also busily watching the Others, readying himself for the fight he knows must be coming.

  I try not to think about that fight. The Underground’s Faders have plenty of guns, but so do the Others, and they have us surrounded out in the open, where they could potentially cut us down with a burst of bullets. There isn’t much cover for them, either. Any battle now is going to be a bloody one, and a lot of people are going to die on both sides. Maybe that’s why no one has given the order to fire yet.

  Richard shrugs then. “It doesn’t matter if they remember her or not, just as long as she remembers them. You don’t want t
o see your family hurt, do you, Celestra?”

  I know what I have to do. I have to protect my family in the only way that they can be protected right now. I have to play the part I was meant to play. I have to be the person the Underground tried to Fade me into being, before they realized that it wouldn’t work. “Celestra? My name is Celeste. Who are these people? Why have you brought them out here?”

  Richard looks amused, and I know that my act hasn’t even begun to fool him. He’s too clever to be taken in. Or maybe he’s simply not willing to believe that the situation wouldn’t work out the way he wants it to. “You grew up with them, Celestra. Even Grayson remembers them, so there’s no point in you trying to lie your way out of this. They’re your family. The only family you’ve known. Now, persuade your friends to put their weapons down, or they die.”

  “And then what, Richard?” Sebastian asks. He doesn’t seem very bothered by the prospect. “We have a gun battle?”

  That’s what I’ve been worried will happen, but Sebastian says it like it isn’t any kind of threat at all.

  “Do you want things to get that far?” Richard demands. “Do you want some kind of glorious last stand?”

  Sebastian smiles. “I don’t think that will work. I take it you used the compound you came up with for these walls? You know, the bulletproof one?”

  “Do you want to find out the hard way?” Richard asks. “Are you willing to bet your life that our weapons won’t get through it?”

  Beside me, Sebastian’s smile just widens. “I’ve always had a lot of faith in your skills as a scientist, Richard, if not in your capabilities as a human being.”

  “You’re trying to lecture me on morals?” Richard demands.

  Sebastian shrugs. “Well, I’m not the one threatening to kill three civilians.”

  “No,” Richard says, “you aren’t. Which is why you’ll put your weapons down and come out, before I decide to start killing them.”

  That gets another burst of anger from Grayson. “Dad,” he says. “How can you? We went on family trips with the Caines, we had family parties, celebrated birthdays together. We’ve known them for years. Does it boil down to this? You threatening them? Why do you hate Celes so much that you’re doing this? What did she ever do to you?”