AIVA

Deir ez-Zor Province, Syria

23rd August 2016, 04:17 hours EEST

Commander Khaled al-Hassan was worried. Tariq had never been gone this long before. He was his best fighter – his fiercest – with over forty kills to his name. He simply didn’t just disappear. He disappeared others. There were reports of Americans in the area supported by the Deir ez-Zor Military Council and Tariq had gone to investigate. By himself. He didn’t need anyone else, but that was two nights ago and the men gathered around the fire were getting nervous. Khaled looked up as the last scout entered the low cave.

‘Nothing,’ Omar al-Khalilhe grunted, before adding, ‘Maybe the Americans took him?’

‘Impossible,’ Khaled said. ‘We would have heard. Tariq would have put on a show.’

‘An accident?’

Khaled shook his head.

‘Tariq grew up here. He knows these hills.’

He nodded at the glowing embers.

‘Come, eat, warm up.’

Men shuffled sideways, allowing Omar to sit. He took a flatbread from the griddle, and someone handed him a bowl of adas bil hamod – lentil and lemon stew – ladled from the steaming pot hanging above the fire. Just then, raised voices drifted into the low cave from the direction of the entrance, causing everyone to turn. Laughter followed. Khaled hadn’t heard that sound in days, and his heart lifted.

A giant entered the cave: broad-shouldered, big-boned, towering well over six feet. He nodded towards the fire.

‘Forgive my absence,’ he said, his voice rolling out from beneath the hood that shadowed his face. It was unmistakably Tariq’s, like distant thunder echoing across a desert plain.

Khaled studied him. ‘What happened?’

The hooded figure turned to face his commander.

‘I was heading south towards Al Mayadin. Had stopped. To rest. In an overhang. Above the Euphrates. I woke at dawn. These were on my chest.’ Tariq withdrew two crumpled photos from his thawb. He passed them to Khaled, who stared at them. The first one depicted two children, toddlers really. They looked of similar age, one girl, one boy. Clearly related. He shrugged, turning to the second photo. It was of a man. Small, brown-skinned.

‘Do you know them?’ Tariq said.

‘Not the children,’ Khaled al-Hassan said, ‘but the man came to Al Baghouz every so often. He was working with Ibrahim. Helping him plan the UN attacks.’

‘What was his name?’

‘He called himself Abdullah – Abdullah Zalzalah. I didn’t trust him.’ Khaled al-Hassan spat into the fire, which sizzled appreciatively. ‘He used the devil gates to come and go. Where to, I don’t know, but he wasn’t a man.’

‘How so?’

‘Abdullah was gifted a woman. A Yazidi. He refused her. Said he couldn’t. That he had been castrated by the Americans. Something wasn’t right. He killed Omar.’

Another of the men murmured at the recollection.

‘In cold blood. Hacked him to death in front of us.’

Tariq shrugged.

‘Then what?’ he growled.

‘After he delivered the key that hid our fighters in New York, he disappeared,’ Khaled al-Hassan said.

‘Why would he come into my cave? Who are these children? Are they captives here?’

Tariq addressed the last question to the entire group.

Nobody answered.

‘I need to find this man. Maybe he is working with the Americans. Where did you last see him?’

‘Two years ago,’ Khaled al-Hassan said. ‘In Al Baghouz. But the town was destroyed by the Americans after the UN attacks.’

‘Thank you,’ Tariq said. ‘You—’ he nodded at Khaled al-Hassan ‘—have been most helpful.’

Tariq lifted his head and shook the hood free.

Despite the gloom, Khaled knew something was wrong.

Tariq’s face was different: nose too big, splayed out, almost like a snout, but it was the eyes that were the strangest. They were huge obsidian pools of blackness, glinting in the low glow of the dying fire, like dinner plates and set far too far apart, like a Bubo – a Eurasian owl.

‘Your eyes,’ Khaled al-Hassan said. ‘What has happened to them?’

‘Nothing, they are fine. Perfect for the night. For seeing everything.’

Tariq shrugged off his cloak, hands moving diagonally to his shoulders. A flash of metal. He moved fast for a big man. Too fast. Tariq was a lumbering giant, all brute strength and blunt force. This version was like a gazelle, dancing around the circle, blades flashing. It was over in a moment. As nine of his men lay dead or dying, Khaled’s shaking fingers were still reaching for the catch of his service revolver.

Tariq was facing him, blades black with the men’s blood.

‘Who are you?’

‘Jude,’ the owl-faced giant rumbled, as he drove both blades into Khaled’s chest.

Sixty-two miles above the Earth

24th August 2016, 21:31 hours EDT

Richard Landry III felt the stress of the day melt away as he stared out of the narrow window, trying to get his bearings. Not easy, given that the Kármán V was moving west-to-east at nearly twenty‑six thousand feet per second. He knew where the ship should be, but it was chasing the dawn across a vast expanse of inky oil, flecked with bolts of silver where the moonlight still lingered. Landry shifted his position, arching his neck. He had wanted to install a transparent floor, but the engineers wouldn’t let him. Too many unknowns, so they had stayed with the familiar elongated version of the Challenger crafts so beloved by NASA, which meant he was stuck with the same airline‑style perspective he had argued against. Suddenly, the scene shifted: one second the endless blackness of night, the next an impossible gradient of sapphire and flame exploded across the Atlantic Ocean as the sun began its gradual ascent. Landry gasped in awe as its molten embers ignited a band of fire across a two-thousand-mile stretch of water, melting night into day, the darkness disappearing in violent hues of violet, indigo and burning tangerine. The coast of Morocco appeared, rapidly conceding to the Sahara as an endless golden sea of sand replaced the recently liberated Atlantic.

A sharp electronic beep cut through the hush of the cabin.

Landry closed his eyes, trying to ignore it, but his general counsel was persistent, trying again as soon as the call timed out.

With a reluctant push, Landry drifted towards the comms screen embedded in the back of the seat and accepted the call.

Charles Wilkinson, General Counsel of Landry Space Ventures, appeared. He looked exhausted, worse, defeated. Landry felt his gut drop.

‘How bad is it?’ he said.

‘We lost on every count,’ Wilkinson said, glancing down. ‘NASA successfully argued that we breached its fifty-year licence over anyone using LEAP tech in a 1,250-mile band of space around Earth.’

Landry stared at the screen.

‘When do we have to stop carrying passengers?’

‘Midnight. Immediate suspension.’

Landry groaned.

‘What if we ignore it?’

‘Twenty‑four million dollars a day in fines,’ Wilkinson said.

‘Exactly what we earn per day,’ Landry muttered.

Wilkinson nodded.

‘Can we appeal? Drag this through the courts? Another sixty days would mean—’ Landry did the maths automatically— ‘over a billion in revenue. Enough to cover the Mars Explorer. Enough to save Kármán.’

‘No appeal,’ Wilkinson said. ‘Judge called it frivolous. Said international law is clear: above the Kármán line is space, and we’re above it.’

‘But “space” is notional, Charles. Did we not make that clear?’

‘Of course I did, Richard. It was the basis of our defence. Not only that the Kármán line is a rough estimate, but that our spacecraft are flying just along it and therefore do not breach the terms of NASA’s exclusion zone. But he wasn’t buying it. Worse, he’s ordered the Kármán V returned to Cape Canaveral.’

Landry snorted. ‘NASA property. They’ll charge us ten million just to touch the tarmac.’

‘By then it won’t be ours,’ Wilkinson said. ‘The banks will take it. Along with everything else.’

Landry felt the words land like gut punches. Eight Manhattan office buildings. Over nine hundred apartments. The ranch in Montana. The yacht in Miami. Margot’s place in Palm Beach. All mortgaged. All at risk.

‘I’m sorry, Richard,’ Wilkinson said. ‘I’ll keep looking for a way out. Come find me when you’re back on the ground.’

The screen went dark.

Landry’s breath hitched. Then broke. Great sobs of anguish floated watery tears into the cabin like lost pearls. He had promised Margot everything would be OK. He’d wanted to believe it himself, even when he knew the fight was lost. He was tired. Seventy-five next month. So was she. They would lose everything; the boys would lose their homes, too, would have to find local schools in Miami for the grandchildren. Despite the weightlessness of the cabin, he felt his lungs contract with the enormity of what was about to happen. He waited for the moment to pass. It always did. Life was like that: a series of pendulum swings, moving from good to bad and back again, like a finely tuned metronome. Eventually his breathing steadied, and he wiped his tears away.

Beneath, the deep ochre of the Sahara was fracturing into the jagged spine of the Atlas Mountains, their rugged peaks still clinging to the last traces of night. His spirits lifted as he watched the mountains give way to the fertile plains of Algeria and Tunisia, where rivers and roads traced delicate veins across the land, hinting at the civilisations below. There was that sense again, that his earthly worries were completely irrelevant as the spacecraft chased the day across the curvature of the earth. Up here, his losses felt small. He wished he could stay forever.

His dream had been so close: ten Kármán Vs. Then a hundred. Ticket prices dropping. A few minutes in space to glimpse the watery-blue bauble they called home. Now, that dream was slipping into someone else’s hands.

NASA’s.

He checked his watch. He had to get back. Charles would be waiting.

Landry took one long look, palm pressed to the glass like a love-struck lover.

Then, he pushed himself into the cabin of the Kármán V and floated through the LEAP gate.

An Arctic blast chilled his whole body.

Even as his mouth boiled.

Landry couldn’t breathe, but he felt no panic.

He was staring at a vast globe, ringed by a thin blue halo.

Beyond.

Nothing.

As the vastness of space yawned back at him.

Landry glanced down.

His last movement, frozen eyes now locked forever on red-blotched hands.

Swollen like grotesque balloons.

His body was burning as if liquid lava were coursing through it.

Waves of dizziness swept over him.

A blurred object beneath his feet.

It looked like a toy spacecraft he had owned as a boy.

He smiled, or was it the thought of one?

No pain, just warmth.

Twitching hands fading down a long tunnel.

A deep ringing sensation echoed from centuries away.

Darkness enveloped Richard Landry III as he drifted into the endless void of space.

Deir ez-Zor Province, Syria

23rd August 2016, 04:51 hours EEST

She heard the man before she saw him. A rattling expulsion of air, interspersed with loud intakes of ragged breaths. Jude slowed her pace and crept forward, rounding a jutting outcrop of rock where she could observe him 150-feet ahead. He was fat, well over fifty and fast asleep. The man snorted loudly and turned on his camp bed so he was facing Jude. Even from this distance, he looked mean, his lips curled into a cruel sneer. Beside him was a pile of dirty metal camping plates, ten in total. Jude felt her heart beat faster. Was this it, she thought? Had she found them? She quickly covered the remaining distance to the snoring man and studied his bedroom. It was a natural cul-de-sac off which seven rusting steel doors faced her like sentinels, slits cut into the metal for pushing food through. She turned towards the entrance. Another guard was approaching, a Kalashnikov slung across his shoulder. He was carrying a steaming pot, his way lit by a solitary head torch which cast a weak beam in front of him. The light burned her eyes. She slipped the goggles over them to protect the modified retinas and glided over the rough rock, listening for his heartbeat, which remained steady, breathing constant. He had not seen her. Why should he, she thought? It was over six hundred yards to the entrance. There was nothing to fear this deep inside the cave complex – a maze of dead ends and cramped tunnels, some barely high enough to crawl through, others enabling people to walk comfortably, ten abreast. Nobody would be crazy enough to come this far by themselves. But that was her element of surprise.

Jude coughed once, a harsh guttural rasp, causing the man’s torch to flick up in surprise.

‘Tariq?’ he said, staring up at the man-mountain. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m here to relieve you.’

‘On whose orders?’ The man sounded uncertain.

‘Mine,’ she said, hammering her fist into his chest. It connected between the second and fourth ribs, to the left of his sternum, with a loud crack. As she took the pot from his loose fingers, the guard sank to his knees with a sudden inhalation, eyes bulging, lips pursed. Jude removed his head torch and crushed it beneath a size thirteen boot, plunging the tunnel into darkness. She removed her glasses, examining the dying man who was staring straight ahead, fear clouding off him like slaughterhouse panic. As his heart’s electrical system flickered out, his head slumped forward in a moan of acceptance.

Jude picked up the dead man’s gun and made her way back to the sleeping guard, kneeling down beside him. He looked peaceful, but she knew his life hadn’t been. So much pain and suffering had been dealt out by that cruel face. He didn’t deserve this easy death, but she had no time to make him properly pay for the suffering he had caused. So many ways in this Masq. She closed her huge hands over his throat and squeezed. His eyes opened, telegraphing terror, seeing nothing. Just the blackness of night. That would be bad enough, Jude thought. She applied pressure, studying him as his hands scrabbled at her own, but hers were immovable, like crocodile jaws locked on their prey. She felt his vertebrae collapse, neck muscles detach, but still she compressed until, finally, his arms relaxed. He looked peaceful now.

Jude removed the keys from his belt and went to the first cell. She could smell two people: men, sleeping. The door swung open with a loud creak. Both snapped awake, but months of captivity had hollowed them out, leaving no flight or fight, just a terrified stillness. She studied their white hair, longer beards, once pristine suits now rags, barely covering their emaciated bodies.

‘Qui est là?’ Who’s there? one said in French.

‘No sé.’ I don’t know, the other answered in Spanish.

Jude walked over to the first man and stared down at him. He was looking up at her, unseeing, his thin face covered in scratches and bruises.

She raised the Kalashnikov and pointed it at the centre of his forehead.

‘Tu reverras bientôt ta famille.’ You’ll see your family soon, she said in French.

Before he could respond, the rifle cracked like a thunderclap. His head snapped back, a mist of red blooming like fog as the sound ricocheted around Jude, deafening and final.

She turned and aimed at the second man, on his feet now, his arms waving blindly in front of him.

‘¿Qué es eso?’ What is that? he whimpered.

‘Verás a tu familia pronto.’ You’ll see your family soon, Jude repeated, this time in Spanish.

The gun barked again, louder if that was possible, and the man slumped to the floor of the rocky cell.

Jude shouldered the gun and pulled her thawb open to access a chest sack from which she pulled plastic gloves and a DNA testing kit. She carefully clicked the container open, laid it on the bed, pulled the sticky latex over her hands and placed the swab inside the first man’s mouth, rotating it, once, twice before withdrawing it and placing it back in the capsule. She removed the gloves, took out her iPhone, slipped her goggles off and quickly took two pictures. The LOB – LEAP Oversight Board – had previously rejected two of her kills for not following the revival protocol. She was damned if they would get to do it again.

She repeated the exercise with the second man, bagged everything up in her rucksack and stepped back into the corridor. Behind the other cell doors, she could sense the fear leaching out into the tunnel; muffled sobs, frantic whispering, the rustle of bodies shifting in panic. The gunshots had pierced more than bone. They had shattered whatever fragile hope remained. But soon it would stop, and fifteen more Disappeared from the UN attacks would be reunited with their families.

Jude froze, her head snapping towards the last cell.

A new cry filled her ears. Unlike the others.

Higher. Sharper. Shriller.

A child’s cry.

She was at the door in a heartbeat, keys in hand, heart hammering.

Could this be it?

The day she finally found Kristin and Kristófer?