The room shuddered and things dropped from shelves. Anna found herself wrapped in Blackburn's arms. They were protectively encasing her. She buried her head into his chest, gripping his shoulders in an iron grip, trying to get her bearings. Eventually, he pushed her lightly aside and helped her up, looking around in wonder. They were alive!
The Mess Hall was filled with people. And there was Vengerov, the slimy snake of a man, on television saying it was he that saved the world. Anna was sure it couldn't be him, Blackburn suspected he was the cause of the catastrophe. And it was a catastrophe. Hundreds of millions of people had been wiped out. Blackburn may have been a mass-murderer but Vengerov had taken it to a whole new level. What a sentence! She shook her head in disgust as he praised himself. It was sick. All those people had died! Coastlines had been decimated all because of him. She didn't know how they had been saved, but she was sure it wasn't him. The nuclear missiles had all been deployed simultaneously to hit and breakup the asteroid, but it had been a near impossible thing and it was rumoured that the governments had not managed to do it.
The aftermath of Cruithne was heavily organised chaos. Anna was recruited as a medic, having downloaded the necessary information and her few hours of sleep were dominated by dreams of bloodied limbs, people crushed under heavy infrastructure and the wails of grief she had tried so hard to block out as people learned of their loved ones' fates. Millions had perished and more were doing so every day. The other day she had managed to force a seven year old girl with striking brown hair, covered in white plaster dust, from the rubble of a house. Her legs had been utterly crushed and one of her arms was dislocated. The girl had been there two days before being found and it had taken 14 hours to get her free. And all for nothing. Anna had worked superhumanly with another Upper to save her, but the girl's heart had been crushed and the structure she had lain under too heavy. After four painstaking hours she had died, joining her mother and only her little brother, a boy of two, had survived. Now he was being shipped off to some foster home until they found someone to support him permanently. Lyla… like Vik's girlfriend. That had been the girl's name.
No one was sleeping. Tom Raines looked like a ghost in the small glimpses she saw of him. She knew he was still waiting for word of his father. Karl Marsters had completely changed in demeanour. He looked slightly sick and was very pale. He had heard no word of his sister in Chicago. He no longer bustled through the place like he owned it, he just slipped quietly into a room and did whatever he had to do. She rarely saw Blackburn in the weeks that followed Cruithne but she had a strong suspicion that he was checking her locator frequently: the chaos occurring would have been a good time to slip away. A thought struck her. She had been so busy, so wrapped up in what was happening that she hadn't even thought of it. She net-sent him: btw did u evr find out who was responsible 4us getting stranded on Stow? She received a reply almost immediately.
This is not a conversation for netsend. Will talk more later.
That evening, after a long day of treating the wounded, and disposing of the dead, she received a net-send. Come to my apartment. We can talk more. It was incredibly late and she was breaking several rules but she dressed and crept to Blackburn's sparse living quarters. She knocked tentatively on the door, shivering in the cold December air. He opened it, fully dressed and looking exhausted. His scarred face showed up in the moonlight of the corridor. "Come in Faeilr." She sat on the sofa and he poured them both whiskeys. He rubbed his hand over his chin in a familiar gesture. "I wanted to talk to you face to face about Stow. It has been, chaotic lately and it's not a conversation for net-send."
"Well?"
He scowled, looking every bit his age in the dim light. "Sir" he emphasised impatiently.
She rolled her eyes and he caught it. He sighed. "I've been looking into what happened in Stow. The ship that sent us into the water has been impossible to trace. Uniquely impossible. It has literally vanished off the face of the Earth. Whoever did it was professional and very good, but also someone who wanted to make it seem like an accident. My guess would be Vengerov. His company has wanted me out of the picture so for years so they could sell the Spire their own so called 'experts' for Programming. He also doesn't like me much since I refused to be subjected to his 'rehabilitation programme' and escaped." The man next to her gave a sly grin.
"Vengerov." She spoke the name with venom on her lips.
"Yes. I think he gave the order. I do not think he had a hand in executing the plan, I'd bet he paid someone or some organisation to do it for him. Since he is not one for leaving loose ends and that plan had far too many. I mean the man has a neural processor, he wouldn't have left so many variables up to chance!" He stopped, seeming to realise what he had just said as Anna stared at the Lieutenant, mouth agape.
"What?" she breathed. "That's impossible."
Blackburn recovered quickly. "It's not," he said gravely. "I don't know how or why but I can tell you now that he has one. It makes sense. He is more robot than human" he laughed.
"But how do you know that? Sir. How?"
Blackburn shook his head. "It doesn't matter."
"Yes it does! How could you possibly know that? Yes there are the 15 second eye blinks but that isn't proof. Vengerov's way older than you, there is no way he can have a processor yet you seem completely and utterly sure! How do you know that?"
"Enough!" His voice snapped like a whip in the air. "It doesn't matter now drop it!"
She scowled, crossing her arms. "So are we at risk again? They never tried anything at the Spire but it would've been way too obvious. But with all the bedlam of Cruithne, it would be very easy for them to try something."
"On that front, you don't need to worry. It wasn't you that snake wanted to get rid of."
"It's always him isn't it?" She finished her whiskey, it burned her throat. Suddenly Blackburn stiffened, his muscles tightened and he stared through the wall, at something she couldn't see. "What is it?"
He came out of his trance and cast her a cursory glance. "I have to go Anna. I have an appointment to keep." She drew back, he was growing menacing again. In fact he looked angry. She turned the corner, making her way back to her dorm, but she had no intention of going there. She was going to follow Blackburn to his 'appointment'. She wanted to know what was going on. She was probably far too curious for her own good but she was going to get as much information as possible. She guessed he would be too distracted to bother checking her tracker. She followed him, slight as a shadow and watched as he slipped into the elevator. But to her surprise, the numbers on the floors didn't change. He was just waiting in there! She then saw Tom Raines ambling down the corridor, smiling inanely at something. He looked positively love struck! He jabbed the button absent-mindedly and gasped in horror when he saw the Lieutenant. Blackburn reached out and bodily forced the boy inside. "Are you a fool? What were you thinking?" The doors slid shut and the elevator moved, blocking out the conversation. It then seemed to stop, halfway between floors if the numbers were to be believed. Clearly Blackburn did not want to be disturbed.
Anna furrowed her brow, thinking hard. Vengerov, Blackburn and Tom Raines. Those were three people everything seemed to be coming back to. And how much was this about Tom? She thought back. He was the reason Heather had blackmailed Blackburn, something to do with what Tom could do. She remembered his reaction when she had asked about Raines on Stow: 'You think Tom Raines had something to do with this Sir?"' He had immediately gone on the attack, trying to fathom how much she knew. The problem was, where Tom was concerned she knew very little. Then there was all the weird stuff about the boy. He interfaced with the exosuits scarily well, and although he was useless at programming, he had shown hints of being able to do some things especially well. When Blackburn had tried to strangle her, Tom had bypassed the doors somehow, Blackburn had not tried to kill him although he would have been capable of it, and Tom had threatened to plant a virus for memory retrieval saying '"And you know I could do it too!"' All this suggested a much deeper relationship between the two of them than just pupil and teacher. And Tom had been so certain that Blackburn wouldn't try to kill him, which, considering he had just seen him try to kill her, was confusing. She determined to find out more about him.
One week. One week of monitoring Tom, of trying to figure things out, noticing his secret rendevouzs and the secrecy between him and his friends. One week, and he disappeared. Vanished. No one knew where he had gone. When rumours had first surfaced that Tom had gone missing, there had been an investigation and Anna had feared for her life. What if this meant her breath was once again forfeit? After all Tom had been the one to stop Blackburn. For a while, when she saw her teacher, her heart would stop, her stomach clench and her body would go into full alert. She had felt physically sick whenever she had caught a glimpse of him. She had realised that whatever had happened to Tom, Blackburn was tied to it. He might have killed him, Tom might have run away or been captured but Blackburn knew more than he was letting on to the General. She sensed the Lieutenant was more angry and worried with Tom missing. Whenever she saw him he looked furrowed, stern and concerted. A storm was coming.