Amber pulled a flashlight from her smock pocket but refrained from switching it on, cautious of revealing her presence. She searched the darkness for some sight or sound of humanity but found nothing. Instead, she waited in the cold as the light to the east grew stronger and cast its glow down the valley toward Clearwater and finally brought enough illumination to the town for her to see her way.
Amber crept forward across the bridge toward Main Street, and as she reached it so she slowed as her jaw hung open and her grip on the flashlight failed. The flashlight dropped onto the wooden bridge with a crack that sounded deafeningly loud in the absolute silence around her.
The old barber’s shop opposite her still stood alongside the former mine shop that was now a tannery, horses still a popular mode of transport on the more rugged local trails. Both properties were silent and dark, as was the rest of the town, but what stunned her was that they both also appeared to have been untouched for perhaps decades. The paint on the walls was peeling, exposing old woodwork beneath, and the windows were caked in filth. Amber paced forward onto Main Street and stared in disbelief as she realized that debris was strewn across the street, old newspapers and pieces of junk scattered as though nobody had cleaned the streets for weeks or even months.
Amber turned left, heading instinctively for home. Her footfalls sounded unusually loud in the absolute silence as she walked past the small chapel, the white clapperboard building decayed and the roof collapsed. She quickened her pace, hurrying past vacant lots and houses stained by decades of disrepair, and then she began running up the old road that led to her home.
Amber was out of breath by the time she reached it, and she stared in silence as the rising sun cast shafts of golden light through the faint mist hanging in the air. The glow bathed her home in its warm light, the house that she had grown up in, the one that she had left just days previously. The dawn light passed through the skeletal remains of the property, piercing old roof timbers and broken down walls as Amber’s legs gave way beneath her and she sank to her knees on the stony track.
Like the rest of the entire town, her home looked as though nobody had lived in it for half a century.
II
‘Any news on where the fire is?’
The driver of the unmarked sedan glanced in his rear — view mirror at Douglas Jarvis and gave a brief shake of his head, his face cast into sharp relief by the brilliant light of the sun rising above the city. The vehicle was moving between lanes of light morning traffic on the 295 just east of the base, heading for the off ramp that would take them into one of the United States’ most secretive locations just inside the District of Columbia: Anacostia — Bolling Air Force Base and the home of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s DIAC Building.
Jarvis had not really expected the driver to have any real knowledge of what was awaiting him inside the building, although on occasion in the past his former boss at the DIAC, General Mitchell, had forwarded files out to him to peruse on the way in and bring him up to speed. These days, however, security was more paramount than ever — what happened inside the DIAC, stayed inside.
Jarvis had been summoned by the Director of National Intelligence, Lieutenant General J. F. Nellis, a former United States Air Force officer who had recently been appointed DNI by the current president. Jarvis, a former career Marine Corps officer and later an intelligence analyst with the DIA, had been selected by Nellis to run a small, almost invisible investigative unit designed to root out corruption within the intelligence community while remaining beyond the prying eyes of senior figures on Capitol Hill. Jarvis had been chosen due to his prior success in operating a similar unit within the DIA that had conducted five investigations into what were rather discreetly termed as “anomalous phenomena” and attracted the attention of both the FBI and the CIA before being shut down. Jarvis had spent some twenty years working for the DIA and been involved in some of the highest — level classified operations ever conducted by elements of the US Covert Operations Service. Most of them he would never be able to talk about with another human being, even those with whom he had served. Jarvis knew the rules and had obeyed them with patriotic fervour his entire career.
What bothered Jarvis was that since the formation of the new unit most of his meetings with Nellis had occurred at the DNI’s own office in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, and not here in the district and within a stone’s throw of both Capitol Hill and the White House.
The driver eased the vehicle toward the heavily guarded entrance to the DIAC, modern silvery buildings that glowed a burnished gold in the sunrise, and passed through numerous checkpoints and bomb — sweeps before being allowed to continue on toward a parking lot shielded from scrutiny beneath one of the array of buildings before him. Whatever the reason for Jarvis being brought here, Nellis was still keeping his presence under wraps, the buildings were ringed with vast open — air lots that could have been used, but all of which would allow Jarvis’s arrival to be observed.
The car came to a halt near one wall of the lot, which was virtually empty at this early hour, and the driver indicated an elevator door close by.
‘Access code number seven — zero — four, select level five, room two — zero — one.’
The driver spoke the words mechanically, having clearly memorized them, and looked at Jarvis to ensure that he had understood. As soon as Jarvis had climbed out and closed his door the car slid away again toward the exit. Jarvis accessed the elevator and stepped inside, selected level five, and took a deep breath.
Room 201 was a non — descript briefing room on the fifth floor, and the only one that Jarvis encountered on his journey that was open. Furthermore, it had not escaped his attention that the floor in the immediate area was entirely empty: for whatever reason, Nellis had seen fit to ensure that no DIA staff would witness whatever was about to take place in the room.
Jarvis approached the open door cautiously and knocked once.
‘Enter.’
Jarvis felt a brief moment of relief as he recognized Nellis’s voice and entered the room, the DNI standing from behind a bare desk and extending a hand.
‘My apologies for the unusual choice of location,’ Nellis explained. ‘I have a briefing with both the president and the Director CIA in an hour in DC.’
‘No problem,’ Jarvis replied as he closed the office door and took a seat opposite Nellis. ‘What’s the story?’
Nellis was just one year into the role of DNI and he had already aged visibly, swamped by the sheer volume of information he was required to process as a matter of daily routine. Nellis sat back down and retrieved from a briefcase by his side a slim file that he slid across the table to Jarvis.
‘Classified Cosmic, naturally, and cannot leave the room,’ Nellis said. ‘We need to be quick and develop a strategy rapidly before we both leave the building separately. I have a car waiting and my staff think I’m up here revising the presidential briefing, not talking to you.’
‘Understood,’ Jarvis nodded as he opened the file and began scanning the contents as fast as he could.