Nightmare Series: Books 1 to 6 Bundle

Chapter 3: The Lady of Mountfalcon

Tim Garstang looked back at the wake of the boat. The spreading vee of foam led his eyes up towards the Welsh coast and the village they had just left. Night was falling. He was on the last stage of a journey that had brought him from LanCorp’s headquarters in London halfway across the country. The last couple of days had passed in a whirl of phone calls, emails, packing, and frantic attempts to find someone to take care of his tropical fish. He had not even been allowed to tell anyone where he was going. A confidentiality agreement saw to that. Instead he had been required to simply say he was away on a foreign assignment.

Why am I here again?

He had been summoned from his mundane job as a sub-editor on a Sunday lifestyle magazine to become some kind of assistant to the Big Boss. He still had no real idea why. Tim had no idea how Sir Charles Lanier, with his tens of thousands of employees, had become aware of him. At first, he had suspected the request to meet Sir Charles was a hoax perpetrated by a colleague. But the expression on his editor’s face – astonishment mixed with poisonous envy – had quickly confirmed that it was a legitimate offer.

“You should be looking to the future, not the past,” said Murphy.

“Oh, right, yeah!” said Tim, looking round at Lanier’s head of security.

Murphy had been pleasant enough when he met Tim at the dock in the village, but there was something about the man he did not like. The man had no small-talk about politics, sports, the weather. He also had a very low blink-rate.

Still, Tim told himself, people in his line of work are seldom charmers. He’s probably ex-military, or maybe an ex-copper.

“The island is very pleasant,” Murphy said. “The house has been extensively refurbished.”

“Great!” Tim replied.

And that’s another thing, he thought. The guy talks like a robot.

Shrugging off the minor annoyance, he did as Murphy bade and looked at Holyhaven. The island had, Tim knew, been a monastery of some sort back in the Dark Ages. But for hundreds of years it had been private property. Lanier had bought it back in the Eighties and had a kind of mini-kingdom of about twenty staff. And for some reason, Tim was about to join the select company.

“So,” he said tentatively. “What’s it like? Working for the man himself?”

“Sir Charles is a remarkable man,” Murphy said.

Tim waited, but the security chief apparently had nothing more to say. The security guard at the controls of the boat had not looked back once, and there was nobody else on board. Tim suddenly had a vision of himself in the middle of the channel, heading towards a mysterious island. He felt nervous, afraid of what might happen next, while having no real idea why.

“You see, I’ve never met him,” he babbled. “I mean, I’ve seen him on the telly, of course. Last year, when he told that parliamentary committee to get stuffed, you know? But never, you know, in the flesh.”

Murphy looked at him, unblinking. Then the taciturn man gave an odd kind of shrug, which was almost a wriggle. Tim smiled at the thought that Murphy might be wearing ill-fitting underwear. Then he looked ahead of the boat, and saw that they were turning in a wide arc towards a small jetty. Above, looking suitably dramatic on a tall crag, were the lights of Lanier’s house. Tim recalled that it was called Mountfalcon. The name, he decided, suited it.

Looming up there like a hawk surveying its territory, waiting to strike.

“Impressive,” he said.

“Yes,” said Murphy, turning his back on Tim and making his way forward.

The boat slowed as the driver idled the motor. Murphy balanced on the bow, and threw a line to another uniformed man on the jetty. As they came alongside a ladder, the security chief leaped onto the wooden platform. He moved clumsily and nearly fell backwards, arms cartwheeling. The guard on the jetty grabbed him in time, pulled him to safety.

And nobody makes a joke about it, thought Tim. Is Murphy such a bastard to work for? Or do all Lanier’s staff get some kind of humor bypass?

Chapter 6: Contact with the Enemy

“Nice of them to leave the gates open,” Zoffany remarked.

“Quiet!” hissed Comstock, gesturing for them to follow him.

The area around the factory was illuminated by halogen floods that cast a harsh light on the bleak surroundings. Comstock had briefed them on various possible entrances to the building, and was equipped with tools for picking locks or simply breaking in. But as they dashed from one patch of shadow to the next, Frankie wondered if they were biting off more than they could chew.

“This is it,” Comstock said, stopping by a door with a pane of frosted glass in its upper section. “Check it with your heat camera.”

Frankie did as she was told, switching to infrared. There was no sign of warmth from the interior, no moving shapes, human or otherwise. Interlopers, she knew, were warm-blooded. But that simply meant that they could not be told apart from humans by heat sensors.

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s cold in there.”

Comstock was already working at the lock, and the door swung open with a muffled click. The security chief drew his gun and darted inside. Frankie followed, finding herself in what looked like a large factory kitchen, complete with ovens, sinks, and cupboards.

“Gould?” Frankie asked. “That gizmo doing anything?”

“Still going up to eleven at intervals,” the scientist replied. “Far stronger response than I got from that school bus.”

“So it’s a Loper convention,” Frankie said. “Hear that, Comstock? We’ve done enough. You can report back to Trent and ask him to send in the cavalry.”

“We don’t know enough about numbers and capabilities,” Comstock said, in his usual clipped monotone.

“Oh, come on!” she protested. “Gould’s detector is off the scale, and you want to go poke the hornet’s nest?”

Frankie saw the flicker of a torch, the blue beam playing around the handle of an inner door before being switched off.

“Anybody on the other side of that door?” Comstock whispered.

“Yes,” said Frankie instantly. “An unknown number of Code Nines, let’s get out of here!”

The door handle rattled, and Comstock moved until he was flat against the wall. If the door opened, Frankie saw, the security chief would be behind it. Gould took out a shock baton and moved to stand opposite Comstock. Frankie joined Zoffany behind a row of cabinets.

What one knows, they all know, Frankie thought, as the door opened. So, yeah, let’s attack one.

The door opened slowly, and a small figure entered. It was framed in harsh light, and Frankie could not make out its features. Gould raised his baton as Comstock emerged from behind the door, gun pointed up, finger over the trigger-guard. There was a sharp click and the lights came on. A gray-haired woman was standing in the doorway. Frankie recognized Fiona Jones from their briefing on the Moment of Truth charity.

Jones opened her mouth to speak, but Gould was already bringing the baton down onto her back. There was a crackling noise as the weapon touched the woman between the shoulder blades, and she dropped to the floor.

“Okay, let’s get her out of here!” urged Comstock.

The two men lifted the woman and half-dragged her to the outer door. Jones was writhing, and starting to lash out with hands and feet.

“Make it quick, Harriet!” hissed Gould.

Zoffany moved in quickly. Comstock’s torch flashed again, showing the struggling woman’s neck. Frankie saw a needle glint and realized that Zoffany was injecting something into Fiona Jones’ neck.

“What the hell is this?”

“Plan B,” said Gould breathlessly. “Sorry we couldn’t keep you in the loop. Orders.”

Frankie stood watching, confused, as the others carried the now inert body outside. She heard running feet, shadows beyond the inner door. She hurried to follow the others while keeping her camera pointing into the building.

“You couldn’t just tell me about this?” she said furiously as she caught up with Gould.

“Comstock was under orders from Trent,” gasped Gould, who was obviously bearing most of Jones’ weight. “Too close to Denny.”

“Who can’t be trusted,” Frankie put in. “Great. So now we’re running like the Keystone cops.”

They had reached the gate before the first pursuers appeared. A group of people, hard to make out clearly in the harsh floodlights, emerged from the factory. Comstock fired his pistol over their heads, and the small crowd seemed to hesitate. Then, moving fast through the milling adults, small figures appeared. Two, three, then four figures with pale faces bounded after the Task Force team.

“Lopers,” Frankie said flatly. “They’ll catch us.”

Chapter 9: Nightmare Visions

Denny was looking through Zoffany’s eyes, hearing the manic echo of her thoughts, feeling her emotions. The biologist was working with frantic speed, surrounded by laboratory equipment. Zoffany noted that the room had portholes, and realized that it was a cabin on the yacht Fulmar.

Another person entered carrying a tray of food. The meal was basic, chicken and some vegetables, along with a glass of water. Zoffany ate and drank hastily, barely acknowledging the man who brought and took away her tray. The scientist was thinking about DNA, her theories and conclusions suddenly clear to Denny.

When I’m in her head like this, I know what she knows, Denny thought. Cool.

Time passed, days and weeks melting away as Denny roved along the timeline of Zoffany’s memories. At first, nothing seemed wrong. The kidnapped scientist had a symbiont urging her to work against the human race. But Zoffany had devised a way to hide her true self, a shield against the weak and bickering minds of Alpha, Beta, and Gamma.

Kind of convenient, Denny thought. Okay, Harriet is very smart and mature, and human adolescents are notoriously erratic. But the juvenile Queens aren’t human.

Denny began to search for signs of inconsistency, evidence that Zoffany’s memories might have been tampered with. She tried to find the same true memories lurking within false ones that she had first detected in Gould. But she detected no evidence of Nomad-like tampering.

As far as Denny could tell, Zoffany had produced a small amount of a human-killing virus. This had been tried out on a few unfortunate individuals, to convince the Queens that their weapon was effective. But in fact, the biologist had sabotaged that virus, making it incapable of surviving for long outside the lab. Meanwhile, she had perfected a virus that exploited the unique qualities of Interloper DNA.

Maybe Zoffany is right, she thought. Perhaps she really did fool them. Nemesis could be real.

Denny moved forward, approached the time when Zoffany staged her escape. She saw the scene in the luxurious lounge of the Fulmar, with the unsuspecting harbormaster about to be replaced. She saw Zoffany attack Gamma, driving the injector into the creature’s neck. Then came the confused escape as the Queen thrashed around, vomited. The other Interlopers and controlled humans lost control, sharing their leader’s confusion and distress.

Something wrong here, Denny thought. Zoffany was hardly affected.

She examined the scientist’s memories more closely. Zoffany was convinced that her tricks had shielded her from the suffering the virus had supposedly inflicted upon Gamma. It was hard to credit that improvised mental defenses, such as nonsense rhymes, would work so well.

But Zoffany had to get away, Denny reasoned. Which means she couldn’t collapse and writhe around on the floor. The escape was rigged. I’m almost certain.

Denny went back along Zoffany’s timeline, checking times when the scientist had supposedly shielded herself most effectively. Now that she was focusing on particular moments, she spotted the first deception almost at once. Zoffany created her human-killing virus, put samples carefully into a small fridge. Shortly after, Zoffany began to work on the Interloper-destroying variant. Or so she thought.

Appalled, Denny watched as Zoffany’s hands systematically disobeyed her mind. The scientist labeled containers as if they contained a new virus, but in fact, they were simply fresh cultures of the original. All the routine acts of a professional scientist, things Zoffany did automatically, were hijacked. Often it was as simple as mislabeling a glass vial.

They weren’t weak or divided among themselves, Denny thought. The three were always nudging Zoffany in their chosen direction. They let her think she was free of them, at least sometimes, so that she would work harder.

While the biologist was thinking of complex, theoretical problems, her body had always been under subtle, near-total control. Denny was shocked and dismayed to see that the three Queens were very knowledgeable about scientific methods. And Gamma, it seemed, was also a good actor, one who could apparently puke on command.

“We have many hidden talents,” said a cool, clear voice in Denny’s head. “Come, link with our minds. Now that you know the truth, you must decide what your response will be.”