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The General
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“You have contacted all the remaining Exile cells?”
The metallic voice echoed off the bare brick walls of the cellar. The general stood impassively at the far end of the room, while another Wraith guarded the doorway.
The woman nodded her head nervously as she looked up at the ominous figures from her seat in the centre of the room. She was in her mid-thirties, with a thin face, kind but fearful. Her dark olive skin accentuated the whites of her nervous eyes. She wore a headscarf over her hair and a long winter coat, still dripping wet from the endless rain outside. Her two plastic bags of shopping on the ground at her feet seemed totally out of place beside the suited figures.
“Are the Founders going ahead with their plans?”
Again, the woman nodded fearfully, craning her neck to look up at the figure before her.
“Good.”
“General, we have had confirmation from Basetown.”
Another Wraith came in through the doorway and stepped forward, ignoring the woman as he spoke quietly with the general.
“It was worse even than Vassily had said. With the fortress fallen, all order in Basetown has broken down. Those loyal to our cause have fled, and the cartels have taken over. There are pitched battles in the streets. The authorities are ready to move in.”
“We knew that this would happen.”
“But, General, since we cut off contact with Basetown — without their resources — and our people scattered or dead, what is there left that we can do?”
“We are still alive, are we not? We can still fight.”
“But, there are so few of us left. How can we hope to stop an entire country?”
“Can the body live without the head? We will cut off the head, just as planned. The strike teams have their targets. We will disable their production facilities, kill their scientists — attack anywhere that there is a weakness. And we will destroy their last array before they have a chance to repair it.We will make sure that the Americans never set foot in the Holy Land again. This is our last chance to prevent the Final War. We must stop the Americans or die trying.”
“Yes, General,” replied the Wraith with a bow of his head.
The general turned and looked down at the woman who had been silent all this time.
“Yolena, I need you to contact Josef. We need him to find somebody who has gone missing, a boy of fourteen. Josef knows him, he has looked after him in the past.”
The woman nodded once more.
“The boy is called Marko, Marko Voznesensky. He disappeared from our safe house a day ago. It is possible that he may be involved with a drug cartel somewhere in downtown. Tell Josef that it is of the utmost urgency that he is found.”
The general held out a plain, bulky envelope to the woman, and she took it with a quick movement, concealing it in her coat as the general continued, “But Josef must be careful. He must find the boy only, and then deliver his location to us, we will do the rest. Thank you, Yolena. Go swiftly with God.”
The woman stood and bowed her head, before gathering up her shopping bags and hurrying out of the cellar past the imposing figures of the Wraiths.
“General, I do not wish to question your orders, but now? We have so few resources remaining to us, and we cannot afford to draw attention to our mission. Marko is too young and unpredictable, General. He may be too — troubled to be of help.”
“When it comes to the end, Marko may be our only hope,” replied the general solemnly.
“But he could be anywhere.”
“He will be found.”
* * *
“Marko, Vozen — Voz-nesen-sky — what kind of name is that? Says here that you’re British. Is that a British name — it don’t sound like it.”
The detective leaned back in his chair, squinting at the passport as he held it up to the light. He glanced over to the boy, seated across the metal table from him, and frowned.
Detective O’Connell rubbed his stubbled jaw wearily as he felt a bead of sweat trickle down his face. The damn air conditioning was out again, and here he was at one in the morning, stuck inside a claustrophobic holding room trying to get a word — any word — out of this boy.
“I said it don’t sound too British,” he repeated, his frustration getting the better of him. The boy opposite merely stared back with his unblinking eyes and that faintly unsettling smile.
Detective O’Connell shook his head; his chair creaked as he leaned forwards placing his elbows upon the table. As he moved closer towards the boy, his face came into the harsh light of the single bulb that hung over the table.
Although in his late fifties, O’Connell was still an imposing figure, standing six-feet-two and around two-hundred and fifty pounds. His face was grizzled and careworn, and tonight the dark shadows around his eyes made him look all the more menacing.
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The boy that he was questioning was, by contrast, almost his exact opposite.
He was around five-foot-four, and of a slight build, with delicate, aquiline features. He had a pale complexion, with dark, almost black eyes, and black hair that fell down to the side almost covering one eye. He wore a black hoodie and jeans, torn at the knee, and outwardly seemed like any other regular teen. He had a look of detachment about the way that he sat though, and if the detective were to have guessed without looking closely, he would have said that the boy was high.
But there was something else going on — the way that he stared straight into the detective’s eyes. It was more a look of disinterest, or perhaps that he was staring straight through him. And then, every once in a while, the boy’s eyes would dart away, his gaze flitting to and fro as though following things unseen.
No, more likely some mental condition, thought O’Connell to himself. He had a friend a few years back, whose kid was autistic — that was what the boy reminded him of. Something not quite right about the way he looked, or the way he held himself — as though the boy were trying to sit like he’d seen other people sit, but it wasn’t natural to him.
And that infuriating, knowing smile that was somehow beginning to get the better of Detective O’Connell’s temper. It had been a long night so far, and the sight of those bodies back at the crime scene had shaken him up. It wasn’t some usual gangland killing, and his partner was in the hospital, fighting for her life, and the heat in the room was driving him mad — damn air-conditioning. And this smiling kid still hadn’t said a damn word. He was breaking every rule in talking to him before they found him a lawyer, but then tonight had gone way past normal, and O’Connell had long since stopped thinking straight.
“I asked you a question, boy,” growled the detective, leaning forwards a little closer.
Marko didn’t even blink.
“You might think that you’re being smart, covering for your buddies, is that it? Do you think they’d do the same for you? Let me tell you, son, you’re in a hell of a ton of trouble. Maybe you think you’re too young to go down for this, but I warn you — this will not end well.”
He paused, rubbing his temples; his head throbbed painfully, and he squinted at the harshness of the light.
“I can see that you don’t have it in you to be a part of what happened to my partner and those security guards — so let me help you, Marko. Just tell me what was going on. You were on the company’s systems when we found you — are you some sort of hacker or something? Is that it? Did the others get you involved in this so you could break into their computers? The company said you were pretty deep into their files — said they’d never seen anything like it — they even said they were impressed, Marko. But you didn’t think anyone was going to get hurt, did you? I don’t believe that you wanted to see what your friends did to those security guards. They butchered them, Marko. And when my partner got there, they butchered her too.”
O’Connell paused, feeling a rage rising inside him, but there wasn’t even a flicker of emotion from the boy.
“She’s in surgery right now, Marko, and you better hope that she makes it through the night, or you’ll be looking at a prison cell for the rest of your life. Unless you start talking, boy, yours is the only name that I have in connection to any of this. And somebody is going to pay for what happened tonight, and I don’t want it to be you. But somebody has to pay.”
Detective O’Connell’s angry voice trailed off to silence once more under the unblinking gaze of the boy across the table. He rubbed his eyes as he tried to focus his thoughts. It was as though everything he said just washed over the boy, like he was listening intently, but utterly disconnected.
He let out a long sigh and glanced at his watch; to his surprise, it read two-thirty a.m. He felt the frustration rising inside once more; something about the boy just played upon his nerves.
“Dammit! You’re going to speak to me, or so help me, I’ll wipe that fucking smile off —”
He stopped, halfway to his feet, as there was a brief knock at the door behind him, and it opened to reveal a uniformed officer. The man paused momentarily with a look of surprise as he saw the detective’s look of rage.
“What is it?” said O’Connell, carefully enunciating each word. He remained standing, looming over the diminutive boy, his fists balled upon the table.
“There’s been a call, sir,” replied the officer, his voice uncertain. “We are to hold off questioning the suspect immediately.”
The detective glanced around in surprise.
“What? A call, from who? The lawyer?”
“No, straight from the DA’s office, sir. She says there are some men coming to take over the investigation — they’re on their way now.”
Detective O’Connell turned to the officer in frustration; another stabbing pain behind his eyes made him stagger a little and he reached out for the support of the table.
“You saw what his friends did to Jensen,” he cursed. “She’s fighting for her life tonight, and this boy is going to tell me exactly who his friends are, and what they were looking for in that facility.”
“Detective,” said the officer, standing in the half-open door. “The DA made it clear that we weren’t to —”
“You’d better step outside,” said O’Connell in a low voice, straightening up, and such was the menace in his voice, the young officer paused a moment, and then stepped back, hurriedly closing the door behind him.
“Now, Marko,” growled the detective, his tone menacing as he stepped around the table. “We are going to have a proper conversation — where I talk, and then you answer, understand?”
O’Connell stared down at the boy, who still returned his gaze with that oddly unsettling smile.
And then, the boy glanced away again, looking over to the far corner of the room and his body suddenly tensed. He turned back, looking up at the detective, and suddenly it was as though there was recognition on his face and his smile broadened.
Such was the change that came over the boy, without thinking, O’Connell glanced around, but there was nothing there. He went to turn back, but then something caught his eye — a faint shimmer, as though the air buckled through a heat haze. A flash of light lit up the far corner of the room, and a faint tracery of sparks danced at the edge of his vision.
Then suddenly, as though stepping out of the shadows and into the light, a dark figure was in the room with them. He wore a protective suit, covered in red corrosion, and a face mask with two glowing lamp-like eyes. The detective glanced back at Marko in shock, as he reached for his gun, but the boy hadn’t moved — he was watching O’Connell with a look of calm interest.
At the same time that he drew his pistol, Detective O’Connell felt a pair of arms wrap around him from behind. He tried to struggle, and as he staggered forward his gun went off. He heard the retort, but it was strangely muffled and distant. His body felt suddenly heavy, as though he were travelling at great speed and the force of his movement was pushing him down. He tried to breathe, to cry out, as a flash of electricity coruscated up his body.
The world around him blurred and dimmed, and everything was suddenly overlaid in red.
He fought against the arms that held him, tearing himself free as a third figure appeared before him, and he fired his gun again and again. He felt the recoil and saw the muzzle flash, but there was no sound. It was as though he had been suddenly struck completely deaf.
And then, as he broke free from his attacker’s grasp, he fell forward and his face hit the floor.
For the briefest instant, he had the strangest hallucination.
Instead of the tiled floor of the holding room, he found himself lying upon red rock; the ground scorched his cheek, and he went to cry out in pain, but his throat was burning from the inside out. The holding room was nowhere to be seen, and instead, he looked up in horror at a landscape of barren red rock beneath dark, storm-filled skies.