Free The Secret Bunker Trilogy: Part One: Darkness Falls by Paul Teague Page B

of
the children and watch it happen.

The only way it could have happened is because of computer error.
Unlikely. He hesitated to say ‘impossible’, but it really was pretty well
impossible. As impossible as anything could be.
No, he was pretty sure it had something to do with the man who’d
distracted the mother as he’d just driven by. The face that he recognised straight away, even though he was
completely out of place. He should not have been at that place at that time.
It was his boss, Dr Pierce.

Chapter Nine
Last Moments
    She rushed past the black car, failing not only to notice its familiarity
but also the very obvious fact that something was not quite right. It had no registration plate.
Had this been anything other than a desperate race to get back to her
family, she might have glanced back.
    Something out of place might have registered with her.
Had she glanced back, she would have seen that number plate change
before her eyes. From being totally blank, to generating a random registration number.
Something that the police would never be able to trace. Had she noticed what was going on, she might have wondered ‘What
kind of car can do that?’
    And if the device in her neck wasn’t doing its job quite so well, she
might possibly have realised that she’d been travelling in that very car
only a few days earlier.
Tour
    It seemed on the surface that I was talking to the most pleasant person
on the Earth.
She even used my name regularly in her sentences.
To build rapport.
Why did I get an uneasy feeling whenever Kate spoke to me?
    She appeared to be helping me, giving me the information that I was
asking for. I wanted this, I wanted these answers and this information.
So why did it all seem to be bad news? Everything she said seemed to be a block - a ‘No’ - yet the way that she
said sounded like it was a positive thing.
    I knew what Dad meant about that guy in HR now.
‘A viper’.
He must have felt the same thing when he left his job.
I didn’t feel that I was much further forward.
What did I know?
Mum was missing, but was probably okay.
    They were looking for her.
I couldn’t progress that, I was in their hands on that one. Dad, Harriet and David were safe.
I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes, and even though I was unsure of
Kate, I did believe her that they were okay at least. They might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The worst that could happen would be that they were restricted to a
certain area. The Red Zone probably.
    And what about me?
How did I get lucky?
And why am I on the ‘biometric database’ or whatever she called it? I know I’ve joined a lot of random web sites but I’m pretty sure they’re
no more sinister than Minecraft or Runescape. I’m certain I didn’t get myself onto any biometric database.
I really must read the terms and conditions more carefully next time I
register.

I decide to focus on the facts. Dad, Harriet and David are alive and fine.
Mum is alive - and I hope she’s fine. I’m certainly feeling much better after my time in the MedLab - or
whatever it was that Kate called it - and the burger and chips that I
just ate seem to have had amazing recuperative powers.
‘Am I okay to take a look around?’ I ask Kate, ‘Get a feel for the place?’
    ‘No problem!’ Kate replies, pleased to get away from the tricky and
troublesome topics I suspect.

Actually, she looks pretty relieved that I’m changing the subject.
‘Kate,’ I ask, remembering that there’s one more thing that I want to
ask her right now.

‘How did this place change like this, from the old bunker that we saw?
It seems incredible, it’s like it’s a different place.’

Clearly happy to move to other topics, Kate introduced me to yet
another new word. Who needs home-ed when you get to spend the day in a hi-tech, space
age military-style bunker?
It was doing wonders for my vocabulary.
    ‘Transmogrification,’ Kate declared.
It sounded like