Second Contact, page 50
part #2 of Not Alone Series
“I think we should call it a night and head home,” Emma said, looking to Clark for some vocal support.
“Yeah,” he said. “Early start tomorrow.”
Dan turned to Emma and tipped his head in a gesture which was less subtle than he realised, asking if she still wanted him to say the other thing they had discussed telling Henry, Phil and Mr Byrd while they were all in one place.
She nodded quickly and mouthed “if you want”, a lot more subtly than Dan’s initial gesture.
“Before we go…” Dan said. “And just so you all know… we didn’t want to make anyone’s life any more complicated with everything that’s been going on, but me and Emma are, uh, together. We have been for a little while.”
“Shit, well you coulda fooled me!” Henry grinned, sarcasm positively dripping from his words.
Mr Byrd glanced at them in turn and smiled warmly.
“Well I say the world needs as much light and positivity as it can get right now,” Phil said, raising his glass. “So here’s to a long and happy future for both of you, together.”
“How about a future for all of us,” Clark chuckled dryly. “But yeah… you two out in front.”
“That’s what we’re shooting for,” Emma said.
“And Timo is a smart man,” Mr Byrd chimed in, his voice slow and warm. “Even if tomorrow doesn’t change anything right away, he’ll think of something if no one else does.”
Clark nodded firmly. “One way or another, this’ll work out.”
“Failure is not an option…” Henry McCarthy said, raising his glass to begin a second toast.
At Dan’s side, Emma gladly took Henry’s cue to finish it: “… so here’s to success.”
WEDNESDAY
C plus 24
Fiore Frontiere Global Headquarters
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Dan woke up next to Emma not for the first time, but for the first time since making their relationship ‘official’ by announcing it beyond the small inner circle who had been too close not to know. It didn’t really feel any different, but this morning in general had a more hopeful vibe to it than either of the last two.
It felt good to be doing something proactive and Dan couldn’t wait to get to Fiore Frontiere HQ. Only Emma, Trey and Timo were planning to speak, but Dan and Clark would be there watching along with Tara.
Despite another night of looting in some areas, the morning news cycles all began with anticipatory countdowns to Timo’s upcoming press conference. No one was anticipating it more than Dan, and he was ready to leave as soon as Trey arrived.
“Are you nervous?” Dan asked him.
“Not really,” Trey said, sounding very much like he meant it. “I just have to tell the truth, dude. Easiest thing in the world.”
Dan nodded supportively, immediately growing even more relieved that he didn’t have to say anything. Timo and especially Emma were far more adept than he was at keeping certain things to themselves in high-pressure moments, and he certainly didn’t envy their task.
Spilling the hoax now would likely be the final nail in society’s coffin, obliterating any remaining trust citizens had in their governments and particularly in a GSC which would be exposed as being founded on the basis of an outright fabrication.
Dan, Emma and Clark had lived through the truth being exposed as a lie and the lie coming true; and through Ben Gold’s long explanation and literal boxful of evidence, they also knew that Walker and Kloster truly had masterfully pulled the wool over every eye in Washington and beyond.
But what they knew just as well was that no one else would so readily believe that their national leaders and intelligence agencies had been so utterly hoodwinked. Most particularly, few would be able to even entertain the notion that William Godfrey hadn’t been in on the hoax; he had simply gained too much political capital from the IDA leak and resultant capital-D Disclosure for such good fortune through someone else’s nefarious politicking to be dismissed as a coincidence. The world was already in trouble and society was already reeling, but Dan knew that the kind of anger that would likely be directed at Godfrey and the GSC in the aftermath of the hoax being revealed could prove decisively fatal for humanity’s collective efforts to save itself from Il Diavolo.
Emma was in the zone from the moment she woke up to the moment the group arrived at their destination in Colorado Springs. She ran through everything one last time with Timo and Trey, the latter of whom would have a full written speech to fall back on.
As expected, a large crowd of both everyday citizens and reporters who didn’t quite make the invitee list was gathered around the old IDA building. A number of Clark’s police force colleagues were on duty but the crowd seemed well-mannered and supportive of the soon-to-arrive group. Across the street, the smashed windows of several recently-looted stores provided a stark reminder that this kind of relative calm was very much a daylight-only deal.
Emma, keen to get everyone inside and stay well clear of the countless photographers and cameramen gathered at the scene, made sure that Dan didn’t stop for a single second to look around at anything while they walked through the unfinished parking lot towards the building’s deserted rear entrance. Emma and Clark, both having to drive given that Trey’s presence brought their group’s number beyond one car’s capacity, had opted to park on a nearby side-street rather than next to the main entrance in a successful bid to avoid as many prying eyes as possible, and the short walk proved as untroubled as they’d hoped.
Although the building’s redesigned facade and brand new welcome plaza were absolutely fit for a future-focused organisation like Fiore Frontiere, the mid-renovation main internal reception area was little more than a building site. Parts of the ceiling were bare and numerous wires ran across the main walkways, but all attendant reporters were there on the understanding that this didn’t matter and was not to be reported.
Fortunately, as Timo’s group had repeatedly been reassured by his staff in charge of the project, the press room was fully complete and ready for action.
Dan had toured this very press room as a child during a school trip, and just a year earlier he had watched from home as Richard Walker stood at its old podium and tried to eviscerate his character in front of the world’s media. It conjured up mixed emotions, to say the least, but the minor renovations were certainly for the better.
The group had timed their arrival so as to not have too long to wait around, so none of them were surprised to find the press room already packed to the rafters with reporters when they stepped inside. Hushed conversations and murmurs greeted the group, but no reporters yelled out any out-of-turn questions.
Dan, Tara and Clark took their reserved seats in the front row, next to two very familiar and friendly faces in the form of Maria Janzyck and Kyle Young from ACN. Along with Trey, these had been the most helpful and supportive media personnel during the fallout from the IDA leak, and Dan was glad that Emma had made sure they got such good spots.
“Any early scoops?” Kyle asked, more in hope than expectation.
Dan chuckled. “I think you can wait another five minutes.”
At a desk-like table on the elevated stage at the front of the room, Emma took the middle of three chairs. Timo placed his briefcase containing the all-important fourth plaque in front of the seat to her right, then briefly stepped away to talk to someone about the harshness of the overhead lighting.
Trey, meanwhile, produced his laptop from its carry case and inserted the memory card Dan had returned to him less than an hour earlier. Between his footage, Timo’s plaque and Emma’s way with words, Trey knew that the next twenty minutes could prove crucial in not only calming the current levels of societal unrest but also increasing humanity’s long-term survival prospects.
At least, that had been the plan.
Timo Fiore, the space enthusiast and billionaire philanthropist on whose shoulders rested a great portion of the weight of responsibility for humanity’s very survival, thanked the reporters for their attendance and approached his chair from the side of the room. “I think you’ll all be very glad you came,” he said. “You can begin broadcasting in three… two… now.”
But as Timo took his seat in front of the live cameras, his weight triggered a hidden explosive on the underside of the chair. The resulting blast, impossibly loud without giving off much visible light, rocked the Fiore Frontiere press room and sent much of the crowd fleeing in horror.
Dan leapt out of his chair and took two steps in the wrong direction — towards the stage — before Clark roughly tackled him and hauled him to his feet.
“Get out of here!” Clark bellowed. He handed Dan to Kyle Young, the fairly well-built ACN reporter, and implored Kyle to get Dan out of the room. A bottleneck of frightened attendees was going to make this a lot more difficult than Clark realised as the narrow doorway to the press room’s only exit struggled to cope with the sudden surge of panicked onlookers.
Clark pulled out his phone, ready to dial 911, until his ears kicked in and heard at least a dozen other witnesses doing exactly the same thing. The building’s central location meant that ambulances would be there any second; right now, the priority was making sure that no one tripped any more explosives.
Kyle Young, hardly willing, restrained the entirely unwilling Dan as Clark had instructed.
Trey Myers, limping and bleeding, lurched forward with cumbersome steps. The room was emptying as quickly as most people could leave, but a small number of Trey’s colleagues nearest the front offered him assistance.
“Tara, get back!” Clark called as he belatedly noticed her standing with her head in her hands at the side of the table. “Seriously! It’s not safe! Everyone else, too: stay back!”
Tara neither moved nor replied. Clark hurried around and lifted her away. She didn’t protest, she just stared straight ahead.
Clark asked Maria Janzyck to take care of Tara, which was an easier task than Kyle’s given that Dan was still trying to wriggle free. He then ran back to attend to Timo and Emma as best he could until the emergency medical personnel arrived.
But after his first proper glance at the fallout, Clark’s stomach fell.
Timo Fiore was seriously injured with very visible wounds on his legs. His eyes were tightly closed and his face was straining in pain, but his loud gasps at least confirmed that he was conscious.
To Clark McCarthy’s horror, the same could not be said about Emma Ford.
Part 7
Breakdown
“Never was anything great
achieved without danger.”
Niccolò Machiavelli
C plus 25
10 Downing Street
London, England
“Jack,” John Cole whispered, staring in disbelief at the images on his TV. “For the love of Christ, tell me that wasn’t us…”
C plus 26
Fiore Frontiere Global Headquarters
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Violently thrown from her now broken chair, Emma Ford lay motionless on the press room floor. One side of her face and more worryingly her neck was a mess of shrapnel cuts while her head rested at a very disconcerting angle. The way she was lying made it look as though her head had taken a serious impact, likely on the edge of the table or perhaps via a thud to the hard floor.
Timo looked in far worse shape in terms of visible injuries, but Clark could immediately tell that he wasn’t going to bleed out and he didn’t seem to have suffered any head trauma. Emma’s complete lack of movement and consciousness, on the other hand, unquestionably made her condition the greatest cause for concern.
When Clark crouched to the ground, he caught a glance of the underside of Emma’s fallen chair without touching it; and in doing so, he saw a false bottom just like that which had concealed the improvised explosive device hidden under Timo’s.
That IED was small and crudely put together compared to others Clark had encountered during his years of active duty, but it had proven capable of packing a real punch and the false bottom on the underside of Emma’s chair suggested that a second IED had likely failed to detonate… so far.
Clark had lost friends and colleagues to IEDs in the past — the calling card of the coward — but not for one second did he ever think he’d see a day when they came to the heart of Colorado Springs. He looked over towards Trey’s chair, which was also tipped over but well out of the way, and unsurprisingly he saw a third false bottom.
“Everyone stay back!” he yelled, though no one other than Dan and Tara had been trying to do anything else since his first warning. “And put your fucking cameras away!”
He then checked for Emma’s pulse, finding one glimmer of relief at last, and immediately pulled her well clear of her chair and its undetonated IED. Even though he knew what precautions to take to minimise the risk of neck injuries and related problems, moving her like this with no equipment and no help was far from ideal.
Just moments later, the remaining reporters parted to clear a pathway as the first medical staff arrived and hurried to Clark’s side. He warned them about the two undetonated IEDs before stepping away to give them space.
“Which hospital will she be at?” he asked.
The reply — McKinley-Dwyer — was all he needed to hear. “Come on,” he said to Dan and Tara. “There’s nothing we can do here that they can’t and it’s not safe to stay for a second longer than we have to.”
“I want to go with Emma,” Tara said, now more mindful of her surroundings than she had been in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.
Clark nodded, conceding to what he saw as a reasonable request. “Okay, but wait outside,” he said. “We really do all need to get out of here.”
Tara agreed to that.
Dan, however, did not. Kyle Young let go of him when he stopped trying to struggle free, but as soon as Dan was loose Clark had to grab him again to stop him from running to Emma.
“Listen to me!” Clark boomed in his face. “You’d be putting yourself at risk and you’d be getting in their way, putting her at risk, okay? We’ll see her at the hospital.”
“But what if—”
Clark put his hand over Dan’s mouth.
“I’ll go in Timo’s ambulance,” Trey choked out from a little distance away, where his painful but comparatively minor injuries were being assessed by some of his colleagues who knew basic first-aid. “And Clark, wait… grab my laptop and Timo’s briefcase.”
Clark was more than grateful for this interjection from Trey, on both counts. He told Dan he was trusting him to stay still while he gathered the important items, and Dan finally got the message about the danger — for both parties — of any further attempts to get to Emma in her current position.
Kyle Young stepped forward to help Trey towards the now cleared doorway while Clark guided Dan and Tara, who was now sobbing with every step. The police had already done a good job of clearing the building’s semi-renovated reception area and also a buffer zone outside, where two ambulances were waiting.
“Just come with us,” Clark said to Tara. “We’ll be at the hospital before she is.”
Tara shook her head. “I have to stay with her. You two go.”
Clark gave Tara a very quick hug and Trey a very gentle pat on the back. Tara and Dan shared a longer, more emotional hug which continued until Clark reluctantly repeated that they really did have to get out of there.
Trey, hurt without being seriously injured, offered Dan a hand in place of what would have been a painful hug. Dan shook it and thanked him for going with Timo, then apologised for getting Trey involved in the whole sorry mess.
“Less of that crap,” Trey said. “Whoever’s fault this is, it sure as hell ain’t yours.”
Dan walked to Clark’s nearby car, which was parked right behind Emma’s, but Tara grabbed Clark’s arm as he turned to follow. “Don’t lie to me,” she said, putting on as brave a face as she could. “Is she going to be okay?”
“Emma’s a fighter,” Clark said. “And that’s the truest thing I know. See you soon, okay?”
Tara nodded, no more or less soothed by the words than she had been without them.
Dan was already sitting in the car when Clark got there, and he had chosen the passenger seat. Clark drove away as soon as he could, greatly aided by the police force’s emergency traffic-management procedures which were in place to let the ambulances out when they were ready to leave. He drove silently until the car was well clear of the immediate area, before unexpectedly pulling over just a minute or so later.
His head then collapsed onto the steering wheel. His leg began to bounce — it wasn’t both legs and it wasn’t shaking, it was just one leg bouncing faster and faster.
Dan put his hand on Clark’s leg to stop the unsettling movement.
Clark, speechless, shook his head several times and eventually raised it. This revealed that he was crying, something Dan had never seen.
Growing up, there had been more than a few instances when Dan had cried when bad things had happened to Clark, mainly losing particularly dirty schoolyard fights. There had also been more than a few instances of Clark trying to console Dan when things had happened to both of them, be it a family death or finding out that their mother wasn’t coming back, but it had never been this way round.
“Are you okay?” Dan asked.
Clark nodded once, gave himself two fast slaps on the forehead, and set off again towards the hospital.
C plus 27
McKinley-Dwyer Hospital
Colorado Springs, Colorado
In an otherwise empty waiting room, Dan sat in dejected silence with Clark and Tara. There had been no news beyond what Tara had been told in the ambulance, namely that things didn’t look great for Emma.
