He thought about millions of germs swarming into the ragged hole in his foot, swimming through his veins to his heart and brain. The blinding pain of earlier was replaced by a constant, hard throb that was somehow worse. He bent down in the back of the SUV and touched his trainer at the entry wound. Fuck, that was sore. He tried to arch his foot and the pain shredded up his ankle. His sock was soaked with blood and stuck to his skin.
He’d been trying to get comfortable for the whole ride. He’d told Fellowes about Ullapool, couldn’t take the chance they would hurt Iona. It was clear they would kill if needed and that was like a stone in his stomach. He couldn’t let anything bad happen to Heather and the rest, but he couldn’t work out how to prevent it.
Fellowes was across the other side of the back seat, tapping on a laptop and sighing. The two suits were in the front of the car, silent. The other SUV had raced ahead to Ullapool.
He presumed he would die today. They’d brought him along to make sure he’d told them the truth. But that didn’t mean they would let him go if they got what they wanted. They couldn’t, he was a journalist. Not a very good one but his instinct had led him here, bleeding in the back of a government car, waiting to get a bullet in the head.
‘Tell me,’ Ewan said.
Fellowes removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Tell you what?’
‘Who you are and what you want with Sandy.’
Fellowes smiled. ‘It’s so interesting you named it.’
The car went round a bend and Ewan braced himself. The doors were locked, he’d already tried. He saw a low spread of hills across the other side of a loch and wondered how close they were.
‘Look,’ Fellowes said, ‘I’m a scientist.’
He pointed at the two special forces guys in the front. ‘This has given you the wrong idea. I don’t do much field work, most of my days are in the office or the lab.’
‘And yet here you are, shooting people as if you were taking the minutes of a meeting.’
‘I already apologised about that.’
Ewan narrowed his eyes. ‘Do you have a boss?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Do you report this to someone? Fill in a timesheet?’
Fellowes tapped the laptop. ‘We have procedures, of course, we’re the government. Although you didn’t hear that from me.’ He tapped the side of his nose like it was a joke.
Ewan swallowed. ‘So tell me about the creature you had.’
Fellowes looked out of the window, then at his gun on the seat, well out of Ewan’s reach.
‘It’s very frustrating,’ he said eventually. ‘Working in an organisation that’s so secretive. When we found the NNC, I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.’
‘NNC?’
Fellowes straightened his shoulders. ‘Excuse the agency acronym. Non-Native Cephalopod. It doesn’t really capture its wonder, does it?’
‘How did you find them?’
‘On a beach in Arran. Only it didn’t have a rescue party like your one. There were two cases of extreme stroke in a Glasgow hospital that we think were connected. Those people helped us, were able to communicate with it, but it was dying. I don’t think because of anything we did. It was always going to die.’
‘Did you experiment on it?’
Fellowes rubbed his neck. ‘It’s necessary to take chances for scientific progress.’
‘You killed it.’
Fellowes looked genuinely pained. Good. Ewan’s foot reminded him he wasn’t sitting with a friend here.
‘People think science is a methodical, clinical practice. But the great leaps forward come at a price, Ewan. They take courage and faith.’
‘You sound evangelical.’
Fellowes gave that some thought. ‘Maybe I am, about these creatures.’ He leaned forward. ‘Tell me about Sandy, why do you refer to it as “they”?’
Ewan shrugged. ‘That’s what Lennox said. They spoke in the plural.’
Fellowes raised his eyebrows. ‘Like there are others?’
‘Like they’re part of a collective. Or maybe they are the collective.’
Fellowes nodded. The car went downhill and Ewan saw the loch widening to his left. Glimpses of houses ahead.
Fellowes followed his gaze. ‘Is that what’s in Ullapool? More of these things?’
‘I honestly don’t know.’ Ewan squirmed in his seat. ‘Look, can I please get medical help.’
Fellowes looked at Ewan’s blood-soaked trainer. Ewan wondered if he could overpower him, grab the gun, take Fellowes hostage. Threaten to kill him if the other guys didn’t unlock the car. But then what? He would have to take Fellowes with him and he couldn’t walk. Anyway, he needed to be in Ullapool, to help.
Fellowes threw Ewan a sincerely sorry face. ‘We’ll get it seen to as soon as we can. Once we have Sandy.’
His tone sounded reasonable. Maybe he didn’t want to kill everyone, maybe he was just a scientist.
‘I was right about MI7, wasn’t I?’ Ewan said.
They were passing houses now, coming into town. Out the left-hand window it was all water, hills and sky. Ewan thought about what was under the surface of the loch.
‘That’s not a name we use. But we do deal with possible extraterrestrial threats, I suppose.’
‘Sandy’s no threat, that’s obvious.’
Fellowes shrugged. ‘The people above me are all military. They hear about something they don’t understand – that we don’t understand – and they get scared. Their instincts are to attack, protect themselves. I said that if we don’t find Sandy, others would follow, and I meant it.’ He nodded towards the front of the car. ‘Believe it or not, we’re the friendly face of this.’
Ewan felt suddenly exhausted with the bullshit. He wanted Fellowes and his cronies to be swept away in a tide of righteous anger.
‘Tell that to the fucking hole in my foot,’ he said.
He stared at the gun on the car seat. Why not try? Even if there was no way out of this, taking out this motherfucker would be good. But then what about the others? Fellowes was right, more people would come and that was bad news for everyone.
The car pulled into a petrol station. The view down the loch was stunning, sailing boats rocking in the water by a low jetty.
Fellowes opened his window and Ewan smelled the salty air. He saw the other SUV parked up. Its driver approached their car and leaned in.
‘It won’t take long to find them, sir, this place is tiny.’