One (Alone Book 3) Read online

  All the other scientists looked up in wonderment, “You finished it?” one asked from opposite him.

  “Very nearly, one slight tweak here and there and it will be ready for unleashing on the unsuspecting world”.

  “How long will these tweaks take?” his uncle asked him suddenly intrigued by his nephews news.

  “One week maybe two?” he shrugged, but he wasn’t in too much of a hurry as he knew something none of them knew but he wasn’t about to let on.

  “Well I suggest you crack on then Dr Aksel”, his uncle said dismissing him and the others.

  Dr Aksel had hoped for more of a rewarding cheer from his uncle and from the others but he wasn’t completely surprised they just carried on like he hadn’t declared it was nearly finished. They hadn’t even asked all the scientific details about it, like what chemicals he used to perfect it and yes he meant perfect it because what they didn’t know was that it didn’t need tweaking at all, it was indeed finished but Aksel was biding his time, waiting for something special and he could afford to wait some more.

  ~

  I crawled through the barricade that I presumed Kaley and the others had made to stop the Crusher’s getting through their tunnel if I didn’t win. I was trying as hard as I could to rush through as I hadn’t heard anything else since the scream and now I couldn’t sense them in the tunnel itself. Panic rose in my throat with every footstep I took.

  I swam down a rather flooded part of the tunnel which had taken me a few hours to get through as I had to swim through it, ducking under debris and climbing over crumbled train carriages and parts of the tunnel when I could see light, not unnatural light but moonlight, dim but there, it was real. I had made it. Swimming faster I tried to get there, to see if they had made it, the light grew bigger and brighter until…BANG! A shot rang out a whizzed past my ear, causing me to jump back and dive under the cold water.

  As I resurfaced I could hear voices.

  “Wait don’t shoot”, I heard Ollie’s relieved voice call out, “It’s her, she made it”.

  As I struggled trying to climb up as the slimy walls and metal work kept making me slip a strong arm pulled me up and out the tunnel, “Well I never”, a male voice I recognised laughed as I blinked in the light of the moon on the French side of the tunnel.

  Looking up and blinking a few times until my eyes adjusted to the glow I smiled back and laughed, “No way, Damien…What are you doing here?”

  “I was about to ask you the same damn thing girl”, he smiled going to hug me then reconsidering as he noticed how much I was covered in blood, dirty water and gunge, “I watched you die, how the hell are you still here?”

  “Long story”, I said, “What about you? Why France?”

  “Well after The Sanctuary went south I took a few survivors and we all holed ourselves up in an old library for a year or two until it burnt down, then we just wondered from pillar to post until finally we thought there had to be something better, some other way of life, a town, a city, a place where people still lived normal lives. We weren’t going to find that on our tiny island, so we decided to come to France and make our way over the different countries until we found somewhere”, he paused, “But things in the tunnel were bad, there was around thirty of us to begin with, then we met those, things…and now, well it’s just us”. He motioned to himself and a woman in her early thirties, she was pretty with long hair which at one point had been dyed blonde but had now grown down showing off her long brown roots, why hadn’t she cut it? I guess we all had other stuff to worry about than hair and how we look, especially since I had climbed out looking like a sewer rat.

  “Just you two?” I asked.

  He nodded, “Yup just us”.

  “I can’t believe you have a little one with you”, the woman said from beside Damien but she looked at me with distaste on her features, I could see by the way she glared that she knew Cain was related to me.

  I turned to look at Cain, who although covered in blood still looked ready for a war, “He’s my nephew”, I said to her which made her look at me more with venom, “Do you have a problem?”

  She looked at Damien then at me, “Maybe I do”, she clenched her jaw, “I just don’t think people should bring new life into this shit world. Why have a child? It’s just not fair, he’s going to die a horrible death, just like the rest of us eventually will. No way would I have a kid. Plus by the looks of things that someone clearly isn’t here to look after him seen as you’re his aunt not his mother”.

  “He might not be my son but he was someone’s son”, I snapped rage filling my veins over the subject, “My sisters and she was…” I nearly said it, I nearly told her why and how he came along but I couldn’t. Cain would be heartbroken no one had told him how he came to be. I decided to take a different approach with her, “And she chose to have him, to keep life going in a world where life is taken away too easily. She knew life was precious and that if we all give up and don’t bring anymore new life into the world then eventually there will be no world left to fight for. No one to tell our stories and remember our history. No one to find a way to fix it all and cure it, to make it better again. Children are the future!” Especially if we don’t succeed I added in my mind.

  Damien stepped in, “Now, now ladies there is no need for fighting, we all have one enemy in common and that’s the creatures. Now Stacie you never answered my question?” He made us change the subject.

  “What’s that?” I said still feeling livid over the rude cow before me.

  “How are you still alive?”

  I sighed and glanced over at Kian who was looking at me with a strange amusement in his eyes, “Let’s find somewhere to rest, let me freshen up and then I’ll tell all”. I eyed the woman with Damien giving her a lethal look, she ignored it and looked away from me. I had a feeling I was going to need to watch her.

  A few hours later we were all hold up in some old office block some miles from the Euro Tunnel terminal, we had found some water and I had washed as much of the blood off me as possible before we all sat down to eat. With the others not looking at me as they were too busy eating, I slyly took the pills Doc had prescribed to me. Once I had taken them I was snapped back into the room by a question.

  “So Stacie, are you ready to tell us now?” Damien asked, he still looked pretty much the same, just a little scruffier round the edges. He wore a long grubby jacket, his hair was longer and tied back and he still had hold of some cigarettes which he lit up and began to smoke.

  “So…” I looked at Kian then looked away biting my lip then I told all, “So you remember how when Doctor Toni found me I had been infected”.

  Damien nodded, “Yes but you had the cure”.

  I looked again at Kian whose eyes gave nothing away, “It didn’t work, I lied to you back then, I was still infected”.

  He nodded, “Right”, he didn’t sound overly surprised as I remember him asking me on the roof tops on patrol if he needed to be concerned about anything with me.

  “The Prime minister wanted to be like me and injected my blood into herself, I could feel the change coming inside me with the Crusher virus so I thought, well, stuff it… jump. So I took her out”.

  “Yes I saw your broken body at the bottom of the hospital, you were dead”, he replied, “Callum checked you over, you were gone”.

  I nodded, “I should have been but I wasn’t, I…I don’t think I can die, well I haven’t tried everything like decapitation and burning the parts separately”, I laughed nervously thinking back to old vampire books and films I had witnessed years ago, “But other than trying that, I can’t die. I get hurt, badly sometimes and then I heal from the inside out”, I lifted up my top where the scratches and puncture wounds from the Crusher’s Alpha and my own claws had penetrated me, “By tomorrow these will nearly be fully healed”.

  The woman next to Damien spoke up, “You mean to tell me we are sitting here having dinner with someone who’s infected?”

  I
nodded, “Yes”.

  “Well I’m out of here”, she sniped and grabbed her bag and stood up to leave.

  Damien stood too grabbing her arm, “Ruth just calm down, Stacie ain’t like the others, she’s not no monster. She looks after people. I’ve seen it first hand, I’ve known her a long time”.

  “Whatever Damien I’m not staying here with no freak”.

  “She’s not a freak”, Ollie said strongly.

  “And how do you know this?” she hissed.

  “Because she saved me maybe a million times over, I first met her at a hospital in Brighton where a crazy doctor killed my sister, Stacie helped me take him out and has kept me alive ever since. She has been infected for a long time and uses the strength its gives her to help others”.

  I smiled at him, “Thanks Ollie”, then I turned to her, “Look I don’t really care what you think and if you want to leave or stay that’s up to you”.

  She crossed her arms, “So why are you here? Where are you all headed?”

  “Svalbard”, Kaley spoke up, dropping her can of food on the floor and rolling her eyes at the woman in a way only a moody teenager could, “And she’s not the only infected one”.

  The woman’s eyes widened, even Damien backed off a little at this, “What do you mean? Are you all infected?” Damien asked looking at the rest of my team one by one.

  I shook my head, “Only myself and Kaley”.

  “So why Svalbard? Isn’t that in the middle of the ocean or something?” Damien asked.

  Kaley replied, “Yes it is and we have to get there as soon as possible, there is a scientific facility there where they originally made the acid rain that made all this mess. We know of something that could potentially reverse what has happened”.

  “You mean like a cure? But a cure didn’t work on Stacie?” Damien said.

  Kaley shook her head, “No not a cure, something different, it’s too complicated for me to explain as I don’t fully understand it myself”.

  “Hang on a sec, you are all going to this facility not for a cure but for something you don’t really know or understand?” The woman said sarcastically.

  Kaley shrugged, “We have to take the chance”.

  “The chance? Because you are all infected?”

  “Not all of us remember”, I corrected her.

  “Kaley doesn’t look infected to me”.

  “Doesn’t mean she isn’t”.

  She huffed, “I think you’re all stupid, running after some pipe dream which you don’t even really know anything about”.

  “Isn’t that what life is about now?” Kian asked, “Pipe dreams and hope?”

  “Hope yes, hope keeps you alive but pipe dreams get you killed”, she said bitterly.

  Damien looked away from me and looked at her, “We had a pipe dream remember? Getting through that tunnel to find something better and for what? For all our friends to die, to find nothing, nothing other than more creatures and another wasteland”.

  “This isn’t a pipe dream”, Ollie sighed, “This is real, we know it is real, we have seen it”.

  “Seen it?” Ruth cried out, “How on Earth have you seen it?”

  “Well um…” I was cut off by Kian.

  “I worked there, I have seen the evil these people commit and they will not stop until they have destroyed the whole goddamn world”, Kian hissed, “That is how we know this ‘Pipe dream’ is real. Something needs to be done to stop them, I don’t fully understand how Kaley can stop all this but she…She came to me…For help…She knew that I was at that place and she called to me to help her stop this”.

  “You’re not making a lot of sense mate”, Damien said softly, “How did she call to you? Like with a telephone? But I thought all that stuff was gone”.

  Kian turned to Kaley, “I think you need to show them like you showed me, how you contacted me”.

  She bit her lip and looked at me, “Stacie?”

  I nodded, “If it means they can help us then do it, even if they don’t and they leave they know what else could be out there”.

  “Show us what?” Ruth spat, “I’m sick already of these games and weird crap”.

  “Well this crap is about to get a whole lot weirder”, I smiled and winked at Kaley.

  ~

  Kaley just ignored the woman’s cursing and stood up and walked over to Ruth and Damien, “This might feel a little weird”, taking their hands she looked into their eyes and let her gift flow out from her, she felt the tendrils of her power spasm through their minds and bend their reality so they could witness what is was she had seen and shown the others. She showed them the facility, the white snow, the empty looking ghost town, she showed them a doctor, Kian running with Candice after their conversation, she let them see a glimpse as to a fight that will take place, then something new appeared to her, something she couldn’t hold back from them but she didn’t want them to see either.

  Stacie waking up, screaming out Kaley’s name but she could no longer feel her, feel her alive. Something was wrong, something was happening that shouldn’t have happened. A room full of incubators, all standing vertically, all their friends that made it to the end all inside, the infection being pumped into their veins…… Then it changed to an older timeline, a flash of a hand hitting glass, a small hand, a flash of ginger hair, Ollie’s younger wide eyes screaming out to Stacie as she tried to shoot the incubator glass, then her pushing it and smashing it to pieces and pulling out Ollie before the infection could reach his young body and mind……Sian……The name rang out in her mind, “Meet me at the beginning”.

  Then it changed again....

  A flash of a hand, a feminine face looking out, screaming wildly in the liquid before falling limp inside…Stacie screaming…a connection made between minds…Stacie still screaming…Open it up, open up your mind…Glass shattering all over the clinical flooring, blood and gooey liquid spraying out all over the walls…a spinning whirling vortex of some sort, a black hole whipping at her long blonde hair…

  “Kaley?” Stacie had hold of her friend’s shoulders trying to steady her so she didn’t collapse.

  But before she could answer her she took hold of Damien’s mind and Ruth’s and locked away the last part in their mind, she had to make them forget that part, they weren’t meant to see that, that was for Kaley’s mind only. Only she knew what to make of the new information.

  “Kaley, everything ok?”

  Kaley turned to Stacie and smiled the best fake smile she could muster, “I think it will be, in the end, I think it will be”.

  “Have you seen something new?” Ollie asked standing.

  Again she kept the fake smile, “Yes, but I cannot share it, not just yet”.

  Stacie didn’t push her, she knew it was pointless to try and force it from her, Kaley would show her when she was ready, if she would ever be ready to show her that.

  Damien spoke up, “We will help you”.

  Kaley’s shoulders dipped but she felt a smile inside her ignite, “You don’t have to, I didn’t show you for you to help us”.

  “Damien?” Ruth sounded angry, “So without consulting me you have just decided we are helping them?”

  “How can we not? You saw what I saw, I mean yeah I don’t quite get what it means but it means something. Can’t you feel it?”

  “Feel it, all I felt was her trying to tell me what to do”, Ruth hissed.

  “I would never tell you to do anything, I said you don’t have to come and with an attitude like yours I would actually rather you didn’t”.

  “Attitude? See here girly it is you who has the goddamn attitude”.

  Kaley stood up and lunged for the woman, pure anger raging in her veins, Ollie stood up and grabbed her around the waist pulling her back. “She’s not worth it, just leave it be”.

  “Leave it be?”

  “We don’t need anything else on our plates. We need to get you there safely, no feuds, no fighting between us as it will get us killed”, Ollie
stated he then turned to Ruth and Damien, “Like she said you don’t have to come, maybe it’s best if you both leave and go to where it was you wanted to go”.

  “To where?” Damien said to Ruth.

  She shrugged, “Anywhere, somewhere must be like…home”.

  “Home?”

  “We should never have left it, yes it was boring and tedious but it was home and if we had stayed the others would still be alive”.

  “Yes they would”, he said and she looked heartbroken that he had agreed, “But we can avenge their deaths by helping Stacie and her group. They can kill the bastards who did this to our world and we can help them do it”.

  “What if we die in the process?”

  “What if we die out in the wilderness?”

  “What if I lose you?”

  “What if I lose you? At least this way we are with other people if something did happen to one of us, this way we won’t be alone”, he returned the statement back to her and she looked away, tears staining her dirty cheeks.

  “I just want us to be safe and happy”, she cried.

  “I want that too but to make it safe we have to help them”.

  Kian then added, “They will wreak havoc in a couple weeks’ time when they let the new breed of virus lose on the world then you will die anyway, where ever you are”.

  She looked up at him, “Maybe I just want those last few weeks to be happy ones, of us together”.

  Kaley felt a wave of emotions as Ruth told this to Damien, the man she loved and cared for. That’s what she had wanted for her and Ollie but it had been rejected for her, she still had to go and fight for this world, when all she wanted was Ollie, nothing and no one else.

  Ollie sensed her mood, “Shall we go for a walk, check the perimeter?”

  She nodded and they headed off together leaving the others to quarrel between them. They headed down some stairs checking the doors they barricaded were still tightly shut. The hallway they stood in was dark and smelt heavily of damp, a small beam of moonlight was streaming in casting Ollie’s handsome face in light, she could see every imperfection and perfection, scars, freckles, sleep deprived bags under his eyes and she loved them all. She reached out to his face and cradled it in her hands.