‘We did, yes.’ Narendra nodded. ‘But what we discovered is . . . troubling.’
Narendra said something to Eren – and Saul gasped as a bag was once more pulled over his head.
‘I would rather you didn’t see just where we’re going,’ he heard Narendra say, as Eren lifted Saul back up on to his feet. ‘But it’s not far.’
Saul stumbled along blindly, one man pushing him from behind while the other led him with a firm grip on his upper arm. When they next came to a stop, Saul felt the floor suddenly lurch beneath him, and guessed they had boarded an elevator. As they emerged once more, he felt a breeze blowing through the narrow slit just above his mouth.
‘We’re going to put you in the boot of a car,’ he heard Narendra say. ‘Do not struggle.’
Two pairs of hands bundled him into a cramped space, then he heard the car’s boot lock click into place just an inch above his head. A moment later he felt the vehicle accelerate.
No more than ten minutes passed before the car came to an abrupt halt, and soon the boot clicked open once more. Hands reached in and pulled him out, and once more he was led through a series of twists and turns. When they finally tore the bag from his head, Saul blinked under flickering strip lights that illuminated a narrow corridor with peeling, whitewashed walls, and a stairwell at the far end.
They led him to a door, on which Narendra continued rapping until it swung open, revealing a surly-looking man in his early twenties. He wore faded work clothes and held an Agnessa submachine gun close to his chest. He nodded to Narendra and Eren, but spared Saul only a brief, contemptuous glare, before leading the three of them into what appeared to be someone’s living room. A TriView sat in one corner, while a couch and armchair were positioned on a thick, patterned carpet. The room smelled of a mixture of mint and cigarettes.
‘Where are we?’ Saul asked.
‘This was Farad’s apartment,’ said Narendra. He gestured to Eren, who merely nodded and collapsed into the armchair, placing the shotgun across his knees.
Narendra beckoned to Saul to follow him into what had clearly been Maalouf’s office, where a second TriView was mounted on the wall. Narendra left the door open, and Saul, glancing back towards the living room, saw that Eren could easily keep an eye on them from where he was sitting.
Narendra activated the TriView. ‘The database contains many video sequences we are still struggling to comprehend,’ he explained as he turned back towards Saul. ‘We want to know what they mean.’
‘You’re buried in shit right up to your neck, I think,’ Saul muttered under his breath.
‘I am a businessman, not a revolutionary,’ Narendra responded sotto voce, with a nervous glance towards the living room. ‘For all that I would like to see the men responsible for killing Farad pay, I would now prefer to be almost anywhere but here.’ He nodded towards the TriView. ‘Please, pay attention.’
Saul found himself watching several figures in bulky spacesuits making their way across what appeared to be a bridge that was illuminated by rows of lights. Tinny-sounding voices crackled with static, and a notice flashed up, warning them this recording was classified. To Saul, it all looked very flat and artificial, without the aid of his contacts.
The footage was raw and clearly unedited, and appeared to have been recorded through some kind of suit-mounted camera rather than through anyone’s contacts. The view shifted suddenly, as whoever was recording these images glanced up. Saul noticed that the bridge led into a passageway entrance in the side of a building of monumental proportions. An angled wall rose up and up above brbefore disappearing into a sky so black and empty that something about it sent a chill all the way through him.
The suited figures began talking amongst each other about low-pressure zones and high-gravity areas, and of Founders and artefacts. At one point, Farad Maalouf’s face, pale and nervous-looking, became visible through the smeared glass of a suit helmet.
The scene changed abruptly to what appeared to be the deck of a cruise liner, or a ferry, moving through heavy weather, with dark grey clouds scudding low over a stormy sea. Something huge grew out of the water directly ahead, almost incomprehensibly large – obviously one of the alien growths currently dominating the headlines. Enormous leaves were intermittently visible through the cloud cover.
The view then blurred as whoever was making the recording – through contacts, this time – made a sudden movement. There was a brief glimpse of a woman’s face and then the scene changed again, as abruptly as before, now showing Copernicus City as it would appear from further along the crater wall.
Something was wrong, however. The entire city was in ruins, as if it had undergone some cataclysmic aerial bombardment. The view slowly panned around to reveal that the upper levels of the city’s tallest buildings had been sheared off, and their debris scattered for tens of kilometres all around.
Another change of scene, and this time Saul found himself looking at what appeared to be satellite footage taken from low-Earth orbit. He saw the surface of the Earth was now dotted with the same flower-like growths, but in far, far greater numbers than they existed currently.
That settled it, then: this footage was obviously faked. Any reasonably skilled graphic artist could generate images like this, impossible to distinguish from reality. But what gave Saul pause to wonder – even to doubt his own sense of disbelief – was the look of utter dread he saw on Narendra’s face, as he glanced towards him.
‘Farad caused us much consternation,’ said Narendra. ‘He was given the opportunity to infiltrate a highly secretive research project backed by the ASI. At first we rejoiced, because we now had one of our own deep in the enemy’s territory, reporting back to us. It was clear that one of the greatest discoveries ever made in the history of mankind was deliberately being kept hidden from us all. But, within a short period of time, Farad became . . . recalcitrant.’
‘What do you mean, “recalcitrant”?’
‘At first, he refused to report back on anything he had seen and learned, so he was accused of becoming a turncoat. I tried to speak to him, because I was worried for his life, and finally he admitted to me that he was terrified of telling us what he knew in case we thought he was insane. He swore he was working on assembling the proof we would need in order to believe him.’ Narendra shrugged. ‘We had no choice but to go along with that explanation.’
Saul pointed to the TriView display. ‘And this is the proof he was bringing back?’
‘Presumably,’ said Narendra. ‘Although I would rather it was not the case. Please,’ he gestured to the display, ‘there’s more.’
Saul turned back to the TriView and reeled in shock. The view had shifted back to the figures in pressure suits, except that this time some of them had cracked their helmets open, and were engaged in lifting a naked Mitchell Stone on to a makeshift stretcher. His skin was tinged blue and, as Saul watched, an oxygen mask was placed over his mouth. After that, he was carried down a long corridor with a high, vaulted ceiling, the walls decorated with carefully carved glyphs and shapes so utterly inhuman that they verged on the obscene. Another sudden jump-cut, and Saul watched as Mitchell was lifted out of some kind of cabinet in a sterile-looking room filled with pipes and monitors.
‘I can’t make sense of any of this,’ said Saul. ‘What is it supposed to be?’
Narendra regarded him with sad eyes. ‘You cannot explain it?’
‘It can’t be real.’ But how, then, to explain that image of Farad Maalouf peering out of his helmet, surrounded by that impossible landscape?
‘That is Eren’s assumption,’ said Narendra. ‘He thinks Farad somehow invented all of this. But this does not explain why someone in the ASI wanted him dead, nor, presumably, why they wanted Jeff Cairns dead as well.’