The interior of the helicopter resembled the insides of a stainless-steel animal, large metal ribs running from floor to ceiling. The sliding side door was open, and Sara leaned forwards, elbows on her knees, looking out on to the bumpy landscape of clouds below her.
She and Caleb were strapped into a bench, opposite a line of soldiers on a facing seat, their weapons lying on their laps.
She could see two other helicopters flying in formation behind them, matching their speed as they flew towards GCHQ.
She wasn’t sure what she was feeling. Could you feel grief for someone who didn’t exist in your conscious memory? If it wasn’t grief then it was empathy, for Phoebe and her broken life, another casualty of the mysterious strands that wrapped themselves around her family’s DNA, blighting each generation. Strands that allowed the family to peep over the hedges of time and yet blinded them to the outcomes of their own fate.
Caleb said something to one of the soldiers, who handed him a canteen and an oatmeal bar. Caleb passed them to Sara.
‘You should eat,’ he said.
The cool water flowed down her throat, its reviving power channelling through her body.
Caleb nodded to the canteen.
‘Have some more.’
She took a second revitalizing swig and, with a jarring feeling, the emergency of the situation hit her. Her brother was deemed a sufficient threat that an aerial armed fleet was being sent to confront him. Christian, who had remained in the programme to hone and perfect his powers, now needed an army to take him down. What did that mean for her? Was she on the same road now, one that would inevitably bring a monster out of her shadows?