Alien Storm (20 page)

“Thank you, master.” Makarov extended his arm and placed his hand in the light. As he did so, the beam glowed red. Makarov threw back his head as he was engulfed by the light.

He's changing!
Alex exclaimed. Sure enough, the lines on Makarov's face began to fill out and disappear. His hunched body, which had previously looked so frail and bent, now straightened and became strong again.

“To join me is to live for ever,” the Entity said as Makarov stood, young again. “Wait. I sense the presence of others. You are not alone!”

Makarov looked round the chamber in confusion. “I sense nothing.”

“Fool!” the Entity bellowed. “You have been tricked by a mere girl!”

Time to get out of here
, Alex suggested, pulling Sarah back towards the chamber entrance.

“Show yourselves!” the Entity's voice boomed from the light beam. “You cannot hide!”

Sarah and Alex, however, were already running down the stairs past the sleeping Balthus. They hit the bottom and carried on through the lines of sleeper caskets as Makarov's voice echoed across the chamber.

“Balthus, awake!” he commanded. “Hunt them down! Bring them to me dead or alive!”

23

What was that thing back there?
Alex thought breathlessly as they made it to the other side of the chamber and ran into the corridor. In their haste to get away, he'd lost concentration and they had become visible again.

Some kind of alien intelligence
, Sarah replied.
It's behind the fall virus – and there are more meteorites on the way. We have to warn the others. We have to stop this
.

Behind them, a lumbering figure leaped from the sleeper chamber. The robowolf was coming after them. Hitting the stairwell door, Sarah and Alex flew through and ran to the edge. Below them, stairs stretched down vertiginously towards the bottom of the Spire.

“Up or down?” Alex asked as something slammed against the door behind them – Balthus.

“Up!” Sarah exclaimed at the sound of footsteps approaching from below. They ran up three flights, taking the steps two at a time. They stopped at the sound of another robowolf coming down the stairs.

“In here!” Alex said, pulling Sarah through the nearest door. Slamming it behind them, he shot the lock on the door and stepped back. Breathing heavily from their dash, they both looked round.

They were standing in another circular chamber, but the ceiling was even higher here – at least three storeys. The area appeared to be empty except for a single, massive shape sitting right in the middle. As they walked into the room a sensor triggered and lights set into the floor and ceiling came on automatically. Now they could clearly identify the shape in the middle – the stealth plane that had picked them up in Melbourne. It looked strangely out of place in the room, like some kind of squat, black sculpture.

“It's the jet!” Alex exclaimed as they circled the machine. “How did it land in the Spire?”

Sarah walked to a control panel and ran her hand over the screen. “I don't know, but we have to find a way out of here.”

She pressed a button and the entire left wall split open delivering a blast of ice-cold air into the room. As the wall continued to slide open, a wide ramp began to extend outwards off the edge of the building.

“A landing strip!” Alex marvelled with a shake of his head. He walked to the very edge of the room and looked over. The side of the Spire sloped downwards – over seventy storeys to the snow-covered ground. He looked up. Above them, framed against the night sky, he could see the penthouse levels – a sheer climb on the glass windows of the building. The landing strip finished extending with a clang. It stuck off the side of the building over fifty metres – an insane feat of engineering. Alex thought of the Entity and realized they'd found the explanation for Makarov's incredible machines and robots – alien technology.

Robert! Nestor!
Sarah called out with her mind, but immediately sensed that her message had not reached her friends. The same power that had prevented Robert from teleporting to the lower levels of the Spire was now blocking their telepathic communication. Without her link to Robert and the others, Sarah felt suddenly cut off, isolated. “We have to get out of here,” she said, looking around the chamber in desperation.

“Maybe we can escape in the plane!” Alex called over to Sarah, who had opened up a store cupboard on the far wall. She produced two heavy coats and ran across to him.

“Who's going to fly it?” she said, throwing a coat at him. “Put that on.”

Alex slipped his arms into the coat, glad of the protection from the sub-zero breeze blowing into the room. “What are you planning?”

“We're going to climb up to the penthouse and warn the others,” Sarah said. She walked to the edge and looked up.

“Are you joking?” Alex said. “We'll never make it! There's nothing to grip on to.” A blast of freezing air buffeted them back. “The wind would blow us off the side of the building even if there was.”

“Have you got a better idea?”

“We surrender and wait for another chance to escape,” Alex suggested as something thudded against the fire escape door. A second later Balthus smashed clean through the metal door. The robowolf stepped into the room, head scanning left and right, eyes glowing a deeper shade of red as its gaze fell on them. Balthus gave a low growl and advanced slowly, extended claws scratching on the floor. Its jaws fell open, revealing two rows of metal teeth like razor blades.

“Think it's going to let us do that?” Sarah asked as the wolf approached. They retreated, until they were standing at the very edge of the landing strip. Balthus tensed its back legs as if preparing to leap at them. Desperately, Sarah looked round and down – at the sloping side of the Spire.

“Let's jump,” she said.

“Huh?” Alex replied, looking at her as if she was crazy.

“It's okay,” she said, grabbing his arm. “We'll make it.”

“Sarah, no—” Alex began, but the sound of Balthus running at them had already spurred her into action. Moving forward, she went over the edge, pulling Alex with her.

For a split second they fell…

…before hitting the side of the building and sliding down. The glass was covered in a thin layer of ice that cut down resistance. Alex let out a cry as they slid, picking up more speed by the second. Before them the side of the building stretched down at a seventy degree angle, a plain of glass whizzing past ever faster.

“Grab something!” Alex yelled as they slid along side by side. He reached out a hand and tried to slow their descent, but his skin burned as it contacted the speeding ice.

“It's coming after us!” Sarah cried.

High above them, the robowolf had gone over the edge and was also sliding down the side of the building, legs splayed to control its descent. Suddenly Alex was glad they weren't slowing. He looked down and saw the ground growing closer. He judged they'd slid down almost two-thirds of the side of the building at that point.

“We're slowing down!” Sarah said, grabbing his arm. At the lowest levels of the Spire, the angle of the walls changed dramatically towards forty-five degrees and then to an even gentler angle. Within a couple of seconds they came to a stop on a massive pane of glass that was practically horizontal. It formed the roof of a large open area containing vehicles that looked like small aircraft. Painted on the floor below them in massive letters –
Level 10
. They'd almost reached the bottom of the tower.

“I can't believe we made it!” Alex gasped as they rested on the glass.

“It's not over yet!” Sarah said, pointing back at the massive shape of Balthus sliding towards them at alarming speed. She pushed Alex to one side and rolled in the other direction just in time as the robot barrelled past them, carried by its own momentum towards the edge of the building. For a moment it looked as if it would shoot over the side, but then Balthus extended its claws. With a screech of metal against glass, the robowolf found purchase and came to a stop.

“It's coming back!” Alex said as Balthus began to claw back towards them. A cracking sound filled the air as it moved across the glass. Splinters began to form all over the pane on which they were sitting, caused by the weight of the machine and the scratches its claws had made.

“We're all going to fall through,” Sarah said urgently, looking round. A metal beam separated the pane they were lying on from the next. “Get to the support!”

They pulled themselves across the surface of the glass towards the edge of the pane as Balthus approached. The robowolf came within a metre of Alex and raised its massive front foot. A set of claws as sharp as butcher's knives gleamed in the moonlight.

“Look out!” Sarah screamed as the claws descended, centimetres from Alex's leg. He pushed himself back as Balthus hit the glass, shattering the pane completely. The robowolf let out a howl. At the last moment, Sarah grabbed Alex's arm and pulled him onto the adjacent pane.

Balthus wasn't so lucky.

The robowolf hurtled down, crashing into one of the vehicles below a couple of seconds later. Its body spun in the air and went hurtling across the floor, finally coming to rest in a tangled heap. Sarah and Alex looked down, waiting for the robot to get up.

It didn't.

“Thanks,” Alex said with relief. “You saved me.”

Sarah looked up towards the penthouse levels of the Spire, nearly half a kilometre above them now, and shook her head. “Makarov will send more of his machines when Balthus doesn't return. We've got to keep moving.”

“Moving where?” Alex demanded.

“Anywhere but here.”

Alex nodded and looked round. His eyes fell on the top of a ladder at the edge of the glass roof. “Some kind of access point by the looks of it.”

“Let's get to ground level,” Sarah replied.

Avoiding the massive gap created by the shattered pane, they slid carefully along the roof of level 10 towards the top of the ladder. Alex climbed on first and started down the side of the building. Levels 11 to 153 of the Spire were made of sloping glass, but floors 1 to 10 had vertical walls. The ladder led down the side all the way to the ground. Ignoring the biting cold of the metal against his skin, Alex made good progress downwards, closely followed by Sarah.

A couple of minutes later, they both jumped down onto the snow at the side of the building. The ground level of the Spire extended away in either direction – an unbroken wall of concrete rather than glass. Wind howled along the edge of the Spire. Alex's fingers and ears were so cold they felt as if they'd been cut with a knife.

Sarah pressed her hands against the side of the building. “How do we get back inside?”

“I don't think we do,” Alex replied, indicating the shape of another robowolf prowling in the distance. “One of Makarov's machines on sentry duty. We should get out of here.”

Sarah nodded, pulling her coat tight against the bitter chill of the night air. “But where?”

“No time to worry about that!” Alex took her hand as the robowolf turned in their direction. They ran into the snow, trying to put as much space between themselves and the base of the tower as possible. After some distance, they stopped and crouched down in the snow. Looking back, they saw the robowolf walk the perimeter of the Spire, seemingly unaware of their presence. Another appeared, patrolling the building in the opposite direction.

I can't see any way back in
, Alex thought to Sarah.
And I bet there's more wolves on patrol
.

If we can't get back inside the Spire
, Sarah replied,
then perhaps there's somewhere we can find help. Or at least some way to contact the outside world. HIDRA needs to know about the meteor storm. It's less than two days away! We need to find a phone or something
.

Alex looked at her incredulously.
What, in this wasteland? In case you hadn't noticed, there's nothing out here but snow for hundreds of kilometres
.

I saw some buildings to the east from my bedroom
, Sarah suggested, indicating the lightening sky on the horizon.
That way
.

Where are you going?
Alex demanded as she got to her feet and set off towards the rising sun.
How do you even know there's anything out there?

Sarah stopped and looked round at him.
I don't
, she replied flatly,
but it's our best hope at the moment. Makarov and the Entity are bringing more meteorites to earth – we have to stop them
.

How do you propose to do that?

Sarah shrugged. I don't know, but there has to be someone out here who can help us. Also, Makarov has answers about the virus. The Entity uses it to control people – so they must have a cure. I intend to get it from them.

With that, she turned and carried on into the wasteland. Alex clambered to his feet.
Okay, okay
, he called.
I'm coming!

Makarov paced the chamber in front of the Entity's light beam, impatient for the return of Balthus. Although his master had fallen silent, the meteorite fragment continued to spin slowly, suspended only by the mighty psychic energy of the alien force.

The rock was the largest surviving piece of the meteorite that had exploded over Tunguska in the year 1908. Makarov gained his psychic powers that day, but even as an eight-year-old had been smart enough to hide them from the Siberian priests who rescued him. He could already sense their superstitious beliefs that the meteorite strike was a punishment from God. If the priests discovered he could read their minds, Makarov knew he would have been denounced as a devil.

So as he grew, he kept his power hidden.

All the time his abilities were developing, however: mind-reading, thought control, extrasensory perception. In his dreams he saw things that had not happened yet, visions of a future where earth was ruled by an alien mind of unimaginable strength – the Entity. He instinctively knew that this force was also the source of his own hidden power and he began to formulate a plan to make contact.