QT: UK - Chapter 9

It was much later that morning by the time Ethan woke, finding Jess softly snoozing alongside him. There was only a bare murmur when he leaned over and kissed the redhead’s forehead, and although his first instinct was to check on her feelings in the cold light of the new day, he let her sleep. His second was to remain alongside her, just lingering. Each time he paired with someone he quickly found a contentedness from merely being in their presence, and it already seemed Jess was no different. But his bladder quickly voted against the idea of remaining where he was and demanded he venture out into the chill of the apartment in search of the toilet.

On the way he took a moment to look in on how Alex was doing, the older McNamara sister in her bed where he left her, still imprinting and it almost felt odd to see her so peaceful after the night before. He found himself hoping he’d done the right thing for her, left concerned just how much of her life she was going to be left to untangle because of Delphi’s flaws. It was only after he’d managed to stifle a guilty sigh that he actually made his way to the bathroom that they had met in only a few hours earlier. Ethan paused as he arrived, having allowed himself to forget just how much of a ruin the small space had been left in, with the debris from Alex’s ordeal still scattered about the tiles.

He spent some time cleaning up as best as he could, carefully salvaging anything that looked like it might be repairable, before gathering several towels, soiled with sweat and cum and the dirt from a shattered pot plant. And with them in hand he headed back towards the kitchen, keen to try and get them into the laundry, as well as to find a mop for the bathroom floor. Finding Nia stopped him before he could manage either however.

The executive didn’t move at his arrival, sat upright on Alex’s couch with her phone still in hand, but with her eyes closed and her breathing gentle. She’d still been making calls when Ethan had fallen asleep himself, and he wondered just how long she’d forced herself to work for, still trying to deal with the knot of issues they’d been left with. She wasn’t the sort of person to want to rest through something like this, not by choice. But she was still human. And if anything she’d never seemed more human to him than she did in that moment; flawed and determined and vulnerable and beautiful.

Setting the towels down, Ethan found a blanket from a nearby chair and went to place it over her, only for Nia to stir, bleary eyed as he did so.

“What time is it?”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,” he said apologetically, but still found himself unable to resist leaning in to give her a soft kiss. “You need to rest like the rest of us. You do know Jess isn’t going to mind sharing a bed with you?”

“It does matter.” Nia’s reply was worn, and accompanied by her checking her phone, seemingly trying to force herself to gather up her professional persona and wrap herself back into it.  “I have half a dozen people I need to speak to, including the Delphi admins. And I need to find out from Evie just how furious Whitehall are about this. She seemed to believe that Cabinet may even take an interest, assuming they weren’t aware of flaws already. And I could do without being pulled in front of a fucking committee while we’re trying to-”

“Nia.” Ethan met her gaze and cut across her words, gentle yet decisive, doing his best to stop her throwing herself straight back into things. And he watched her relent, just slightly. But even as she looked into his eyes, her expression full of tired, hurt frustration, she still tried to protest the need to work herself to the bone.

“We were lucky circumstances let us catch things with Alex. There could be others like her out there.”

“I understand that you’re blaming yourself for this, but it’s not your fault.” Nia opened her mouth to respond, but he saw what she was about to say and stopped her again before she could say it. “No, it’s not. And you don’t need me to tell you that you’re going to stop being productive if you don’t let yourself rest. You’re a leader, and part of that means trusting people like Evie to do their jobs rather than thinking you need to fix the world on your own.”

Ethan got the distinct impression that with most other people Nia’s shoulders wouldn’t have relaxed quite as readily as they did for him. “You’re right. But I’ll be fine. Just…let me get myself some coffee and I can rest once we’re back at Taymont.”

Nia paused, and pointedly looked past Ethan in the direction of the bedrooms, and Alex. And even without her saying anything Ethan could tell she was concerned about their new teammate, just as he had been. He spoke again, answering the questions she was asking wordlessly.

“She’s still imprinting.”

There was a slow nod of reply. “And Jess?”

“Sleeping. She’s taking things better than you could expect anyone to.”

“This isn’t how I wanted it to be for her,” Nia said, her voice weighed down by failed expectations and how genuinely sorry she was for the other woman. Ethan couldn’t help but find an odd, gallows amusement in her words however.

“No shit,” he chuckled, drawing a slight smile from Nia in return as she realised how redundant her words were. She remained quiet however, and he could practically see the thoughts wistfully working their way through her mind. “Want to share?”

“The plan had been to find the time to bake her some blueberry muffins, for breakfast, before we drove back.”

Nia sounded almost sheepish with the admission, as if the idea seemed somehow foolish to her now. Ethan however couldn’t help the surprise from showing through in his reply. “You bake?”

“I dabble at baking,” Nia corrected, firmly with a slight smile. “At best. I’m far from good, but I enjoy having something where that doesn’t need to be the point. I was looking forward to having a kitchen where I could make an effort like that for someone, rather than the big industrial one at Taymont.”

That prompted him to kiss her again, taking her unguarded moments as they came, no matter the circumstances.  “I’m sure she’d have loved them. You’ll get a chance to do it for her another time.”

“I know, but the first time will always be the first time.” There was a long sigh, and Nia changed the subject before Ethan could speak again, not wanting to dwell on things further. “Have you spoken to Aoife Ryan yet?”

Ethan shook his head. Nia’s question was meant to be supportive, to shift her concern from herself and on to him, but all it managed to do was bring his own worries and feelings rushing back up to the surface with a warm lurch. He’d checked his phone on waking, and again several times in the brief space of time since then, hoping to see her name there and a reply that would make everything feel less fraught. But either she’d missed his last message or Aoife was being Aoife.

“You’ve got enough things to deal with without worrying about that. I can wait until we get back before speaking to her if I have to…”

The room fell quiet again as Ethan tailed off and they both realised they’d found themselves back at another point neither of them quite had words for. Any introspection was cut short however by the restless way Nia returned to her phone, as if doing so was going to offer her some way to negotiate away her agitation.

“I’m not actually going to convince you to rest before we go, am I?”

Nia made a show of considering before answering dryly. “It’s unlikely, no.”

He knew he might as well try and push back the tide than be able to change that much about Nia, her determination coming even at her own expense. But even so he caught the slight playfulness in her tone, and met it with his own. “Ok, well, I’m not going to argue. But you do have to let me do the one thing I can to take some of that stress off you.”

Ethan saw her pick up on his suggestiveness, but not his exact meaning, until a small quirk of his head gestured her downwards towards his crotch. As realisation dawned, a glimmer danced across her eyes, followed by what could generously be called half a protest.

“Please, that’s hardly reasonable.”

“No? And working yourself to death is?”

“No. But you know I’m not going to be able to say no to-” As Nia talked, Ethan stood and began to lower the jeans he’d only recently slipped on, causing the executive to stop mid sentence as his cock emerged at half mast, inches from her face. Her expression widened, and she cursed to herself as the genetic hooks of the serum massaged their way into her mind. “Oh fuck, thats unfair.”

“Come on, we’re basically only a couple of months away from mandatory blowjobs just being good HR policy anyway.”

“I’ll have to propose that one at the next board meeting,” Nia laughed, easing herself from the couch to kneel in front of him. It was true that the Gemivax assisted erotic hit was going to do more to help Nia’s stress than anything other than a good night’s sleep, but as her lips eagerly slipped around his shaft, Ethan was caught off guard to realise just how much of this was for himself too. It came as a near constant surprise how there was always a part of him that wanted more of this sort of gratification. No matter how tired or sated he thought he should feel, something that only seemed to be amplified around his partners. But then they didn’t seem to be any less affected, something the bobbing of Nia’s head attested to.

Glancing down, he saw Nia looking back up at him seductively, and he hardened fully. She felt him twitch, and took it as a cue to try and take him further, practised enough now to briefly take him to the hilt. Ethan groaned at the unexpected sensation of his cock pressing so deep into her throat, and had to fight the urge to buck his hips rather than allow her to set the pace herself. It was only a moment before she had to ease back however, eyes damp from the effort.

“This is what you wanted isn’t it? To have me panting around your dick like a desperate whore?” He knew Nia’s dirty talk was even more for her own benefit than his own, but words were lush and rich from his mouth and quickly built his arousal even further. “To remind me that I’m a filthy slut who can’t help but put this first? Because that’s what you make me now, a helpless bitch in heat. And I’m never, ever, going to get enough.”

It didn’t take long for Nia’s efforts to leave Ethan feeling himself reaching his limit. But as he did so he retained enough presence of mind to indulge a perverse little thought that wandered into his mind. He reached down to stroke Nia’s face and spoke, even as he tried to hold back.

“Want me to finish on your face? So we have something to send back to Evie and Farah?”

He wasn’t sure which of them had had the idea, but even before they had left his other two partners had made sure there were a pair of separate team chats on Whatsapp. The first was for the more mundane, day to day talk around Project Upstart and their burgeoning collective relationship. The second was to give them a place exclusively for the more illicit things that they had to share. And in the short time since Nia and Ethan had left Taymont, Evie and Farah had almost been competing for who had the most to post. There’d been a steady stream of explicit pictures, videos and messages meant to remind them both of what they were coming back to; from solo masturbation and candid shower selfies to Evie strumming Farah’s pierced clit and the sportswoman responding with her tongue in the younger girl’s asshole.

Nia didn’t remove Ethan’s cock from her mouth to respond, but the delicious moan she gave at the suggestion was answer enough on its own.

When Ethan came moments later, it was with his lover waiting with eyes closed before him. Enough of the thick ropes that he stroked into streaks across Nia’s face made their way into her open mouth to set her shuddering into her own climax, with a sudden gasp. And as she rode it out, she did so with her hand snuck down the front of her own panties, unable to keep her fingers still as the vaccine’s effects washed through her body. They both lingered, eyes closed and breathing heavily, before Ethan reached for his phone and captured the view before him with the camera.

It was only then that a sound from the doorway caught his attention. He wasn’t sure how long Jess had been standing there watching them, but it was obvious it was long enough for her to have also been touching herself while she did. The redhead was wearing nothing but the t-shirt she’d ended up napping alongside Ethan in, leaving the sight of her own arousal obvious between her thighs. She jumped on realising he’d noticed her and stammered in embarrassment.

“Sorry. I heard you cleaning up and thought I’d come and help only…well, you were doing this and I didn’t want to interrupt, and I know I shouldn’t have stayed, but it was hard not to watch and…”

“Jess, it’s fine. I think we’re going to have to get used to catching ourselves in compromising positions”

The artist allowed her hand to stray back between her legs. ”I thought I’d actually stopped being horny but then I saw you both and, shit, is there a point where this stops?”

Nia dabbed a finger at some of the cum plastered near the corner of her mouth, lapping at it with her tongue. “While Ethan’s around? Probably not, no. It might recede into the background from time to time and allow you to focus on other things, but all it takes is for him to remind you just how close to the surface it’s lurking.” She wiped at another streak, before smirking at Jess, still standing by the door. “You are more than welcome to share this you know.”

Bashfully Jess made her way over, the embarrassment of how she found herself feeling still something that she was coming to terms with. Not that Ethan could blame her. Even with his head start it wasn’t as if any of the effects of the serum were entirely normal to him either, just something he was having to learn to take in stride. However he wasn’t given the opportunity to watch whatever Nia had in mind for the younger woman, as the sound of his phone began to ring from inside his pocket. And as he checked the device it was Aoife’s name that appeared on the screen, leaving him fumbling to pull his jeans back up and find somewhere to take the call.

“Fuck. I need to answer this,” he announced, the look of concern returning to Nia’s face as he moved back towards the privacy of the spare bedroom. The room felt smaller than the one he’d left Jess in only a short time earlier as he answered, cold and claustrophobic in the pale autumn daylight. But it was the palpable distress in Aoife’s voice that really made him wish he was elsewhere.

“Ethan, I’m freaking the fuck out.” Aoife’s words sounded thin with exhaustion, left to sound even more distant by the crackle of a bad line.

“I’ve been trying to reach you. I wanted to-”

His phone signal dropped, briefly, and when it clicked back in a second later, Aoife was already talking again. He sometimes had trouble picking apart her Glaswegian accent when she was excited, but this was different. Everything felt agitated, as if she was trying to keep desperately ahead of the urge to cry, and the words ran away from her in a high pitched, Scottish blur he wasn’t able to understand.

“Hey, hey, hey, slow down,” he said, trying to do his best to sound reassuring and hating that he wasn’t able to simply put his arms around her instead.

An exhale came from the phone and he could practically see Aoife trying to steady herself. “I’m trying,” she said, almost pleading. “I’ve been trying to slow this all down for fucking hours and all that’s happening is that my head’s gawpin’ and I feel like I’m going mental. And I tried to come and find you but all anyone will tell me is that you’re not in Taymont right now and where the fuck even are you? I swear if you’re in hospital and no-one’s telling me I…”

Her voice cracked entirely, and he heard her make a scared, frustrated noise.

“Aoife, I promise I’m fine. I’m going to be back this afternoon, what’s this even about anyway?”

“I know, Ethan.”

The statement was ambiguous enough, but something about the way that Aoife said it left Ethan immediately certain of what she meant, as an anxious weight set in heavy across his shoulders. He struggled to work out how he was meant to respond, and fumbled with silence enough for Aoife to be the one to continue instead.

“I know about what you wanted to talk to me about. About Project Upstart. About the virus.”

“Shit…Aoife, I’m so sorry.” He could tell the pain she was in and blamed himself immediately. For letting things get this far and for whatever, inelegant and hurtful way she’d had to figure this all out instead of him being able to be there for her. “I wanted to tell you myself.”

“I already felt like the world had gone tae fuck but this…”

“Makes some of your B-movies look sane?”

There was quiet on the other end of the line rather than a quip back, immediately concerning Ethan. He was meant to do the introspection for both of them and he knew the moment she stopped talking was the time he needed to worry.

“If I ever find out who wrote the pitch for this one I’ll let you be the first one to tell him he’s a hack.”

That got a small but forced chuckle. “Aye, well, fuck that guy…How can you manage to joke about this?”

It took Ethan a second to consider the answer to that. “Because I want you to feel like somehow this is all going to be ok.”

“But it’s not ok, is it? It’s never going to be ok. I’ve seen how many people have died. I just…” Aoife wavered and Ethan could make out tears, before she screamed an emotional curse into the phone. “Fuuuuck!”

Again he wished he was there to be able to give her more than words he knew weren’t enough for the pain and fear she was dealing with. “Hey, come on, we’ve kept each other going through things this far, even if we didn’t know what we were dealing with. I swear, I’m going to make sure we get each other through it the rest of the way, no matter how far that is.” Ethan found himself sitting down on the spare bed, trying to force some of the tension from his own body as he did his best to be comforting. “Do you think you’ve lost anyone?”

“No,” she replied eventually. “I text mum every few days and she and my sister are doing fine.”

“That’s something right?”

“I guess,” she sniffed. “But I don’t know if that makes it worse. Knowing that out of all the people I’ve known, there’s a load that just aren’t there now and I have no idea.” There was another pause, followed by the sound of creeping realisation. “...that’s what happened to Tom and the others isn’t it? They’re all just fucking dead aren’t they?”

“I think so.” Ethan’s reply was quiet. He still hadn’t quite come to terms with the idea that was what had happened to their former boss, Tom, and the rest of their colleagues. He was only dealing with it by avoiding looking reality in the face for too long, leaving a cold unrealised space where those emotions should be.

“Like millions of others. And I just carried on going? Didnae let myself notice what was happening to them because I was so caught up in my own meaningless shit.”

He could tell she was grappling with the same sense of survivor’s guilt that he had, the hurt of what was going on somehow amplified by the fact they were still there and others weren’t.  “You can’t blame yourself for that. I’ve seen how hard you’ve worked just to keep going.”

“Keeping myself going so I could stay shut away watching stupid films and frigging myself off to shitty porn?”

It’s not like he’d found the time to do anything more, and he knew that wasn’t the point. “To keep ourselves feeling human.”

Aoife’s distress began to stray towards undirected anger as she struggled to make sense of things. “For what though? We’re working til we break just to lie to people. All this has been going on, the world’s fucked and we’ve been here making sure people don’t know what’s happening to the folks they love, selling them the same old shite instead. How many people got sick because no-one was telling them what they needed to hear?”

“You know it’s not that simple.”

Her volume rose, becoming emphatic. “Not that simple? This is some shady bullshit and we’re right in the middle of it Ethan.”

“I don’t like it either but it’s not like we’re really being left with a choice anymore.”

“What do you mean there’s no choice? Of course there’s a choice! None of this shite about people not being trusted, or it being worse if they find out, because that’s not the point. We’ve no right not to let people know what’s happening to them and their families. I saw what the team in Edinburgh were putting together but why are we even waiting on that? They should all be in the know, not tomorrow or next week but now.”

Ethan could practically picture how animated she must be on the other end of the line as she voiced questions he kept going back to. “And if we do that we lose the US’s support for the vaccine and lose the one bit of light we have. That’s not a choice.”

There was a sudden silence, leaving him confused as to what he’d just said that would cut Aoife’s passionate objection dead the way it just had.

“What do you mean a vaccine?”

The question caught Ethan by surprise, as he struggled to work out how she could know about DuoHalo and what the Edinburgh team were doing, without having learnt about Gemivax. It didn’t seem reasonable that anyone would have told her about one but not the other.

Aoife pressed again, her words suddenly slowing, as if pleading with him. “Ethan, what do you mean a vaccine?”

“How has no-one told you about that,” he replied, disbelieving. “The US pharma company Veraxiontic has a treatment for DuoHalo but their government is only giving us support if we follow their timetable for going public. I thought you said you knew about Project Upstart.”

“Project Upstart’s telling people about the virus and how it’s the end of the world,” she said, quietly.

“No. The teams in London and Scotland are working out how to tell people about the virus. Project Upstart’s what we’re doing at Taymont, preparing the public campaign for the rollout of the vaccine. How did you find out about DuoHalo without hearing that?”

There was more quiet on the other end of the line, an awkward pregnant pause that let him know the answer wasn’t simple. Or one that Aoife felt was easy to share.

“I sort of saw some files on a drive I probably wasn’t meant to have access to.”

Her response was sheepish, and thick with understatement and omission that left him in no doubt what she actually meant had happened. And Ethan was left with a new sweep of anxiety at the trouble that might be waiting between the lines, ready to go with all of his other stresses. Along with an unexpected dash of anger at her. That she could have done something so obviously stupid that now risked upsetting things even further, just as he could start to see a way through things.

“Shit, how dumb do you want to be Aoife…”

“I know.”

“If you get caught…”

“I know!”

He was suddenly aware of the phone feeling more uncomfortable in his hand, his mouth slightly dry. But then Aoife spoke again, and those new concerns were swallowed up by the much larger ones he had for the green haired girl as her distress showed through.

“I know. But fuck, you can’t tell me I was wrong for thinking something was up.” She talked rapidly, the emotions in her voice fraying again with panic as she tried to justify herself. And he couldn’t tell if she was more worried about the consequences, or how he would react. “I’m not stupid. I just never thought it was going to be something like this. How are you meant to expect something that huge? And I’ve been freaking out since I saw it and-”

Ethan breathed, cutting across her in an attempt at reassurance. “Ok. Ok…Aoife, I don’t care how you saw it. All I give a shit about is making sure you’re ok.” And he meant it. Something bubbled up inside him, and shoved judgement aside. Forget how things were meant to be done,  all that mattered was her. “We can’t let people know you were breaking any rules. I’m off the site for work right now but I have permission to tell you about most of this when I get back anyway so it’s not going to matter. I just need you to hold on for a few more hours for me and we’re going to try and make sense of this for each other, ok?”

There was a sense of her relaxing, trying to hold herself together with the promise of him being there, until she landed on a detail of what he said. “Wait, where are you anyway?”

“Nottingham.”

The idea that he’d travelled to a city hours away alarmed her. “Nottingham!? Why the fuck are you in Nottingham when there’s a hell virus destroying the planet?”

He leaned back, looking around Alex’s spare bedroom and took stock of the fact he was in another woman’s apartment as they spoke and realising there were certain things about Gemivax it would be wrong to try and disclose to her on the phone. Not that ‘I think I might be in love with you but I’m sleeping with 5 other women’ was going to be simple face to face either, but he owed her to be looking in her eyes when he tried.

“It’s a very, very long story. To do with the vaccine, which has enough wrinkles that I need to tell you about in person.”

“Oh…”

Ethan was left waiting for her to continue, practically able to hear the introspection. “Don’t go quiet on me again, talk to me Aoife.”

“It’s nothing, just, when you said there was a vaccine I let myself hope a bit. But the way you just talked about there being wrinkles, you sounded just like you do when you’re trying to say something nice about a Roger Corman film.”

She knew him too well. It might only have been a few months since they’d met, but the pandemic had made sure that felt like a lifetime, with enough unguarded moments that she could instantly spot when he was diplomatically leaving things out. Just as he could tell that she was looking to him for something to cling onto.

“You can let yourself hope, trust me. It’s just going to take a little explaining.”

Normally he would expect Aoife to make a joke to a statement like that. Maybe something about not trusting anyone who could tolerate listening to house music unironically. But she didn’t, instead simply saying, “ok. I trust you.”

They ended up talking for a while longer, filling the air with neither of them willing to be the one to cut things short. They reminisced about co-workers that Aoife realised they’d lost, wondered out loud about friends from school or distant relations and speculated about celebrities. Talking about which members of the Expendables was most likely to be able to drop kick DuoHalo if it went near them might not have been realistic, but hearing Aoife’s laughter, no matter how strained it was, was better than hearing her tears. Besides, It was what they did. Made fun and deflected until the pressure didn’t seem quite so unbearable as it was alone.

It was only a knock at Aoife’s door, thirty minutes later, that interrupted them. She excused herself, and it was only as she returned that Ethan realised how much of the strain had left her voice as they’d talked, and how quickly it had all come back again.

“I need to go. We’ve got problems with that satellite uplink again,” she said with a familiar exhaustion.

“I thought you had a telecoms engineer for that?”

“Nothing I can’t check over. Nat was working most of the night so I’ve got her on an enforced break.”

“And when did you last take a break? A real one.”

The absence of any attempt at an answer left him in no doubt that it wasn’t one she wanted to give him, the air filled only by a tired sigh before she spoke again.  “Ethan?”

“Yeah?”

“You meant what you said? That we’re going to get each other through this.”

There was something about how she asked the question, the way her brash Scottish energy had gradually been stripped down to something vulnerable that left him hurting. Wanting to put his arms around her until she had no doubts about just how much he meant it. He glanced at the wall separating him from Alex’s bedroom, where the redhead was still imprinting, and practically felt himself tear in two, pulled between all the places he was needed.

“Yeah. I meant it. I…”

He caught himself, before small words that felt far too easy came out far too early.

“You mean a lot to me,” he settled for instead.

She gave a small laugh. “Well, I suppose if I have to put up with an English wanker you could be worse. Just…make sure you actually come and find me when you get back, ok?”

Ethan went to reply, but a blip from his phone indicated she’d hung up on him, getting the last word in rather than lingering in an admission. But as he lay back down on the bed, he said the words on his tongue, even though she couldn’t hear them.

“For you? I promise.”

******

Aoife had to admit that the walk up to the satellite dish was actually something approaching pleasant on the odd occasion where the elements weren’t out to get her. She could have used one of Palisade Service’s 4x4s to drive herself out to the site, but almost as rare as the good weather, she found herself wanting the walk, a chance to clear her head. To feel like the world wasn’t coming apart underneath her. The view from the hill bent down towards Taymont Hall and out over the Peak District National Park, and from up there it was almost possible to kid herself that everything was exactly how it had always been. Idyllic. Normal.

Speaking with Ethan had helped, like she knew it would. But it was only once the weight of the world had become more overwhelming than the stubbornness of her feelings towards him that she was willing to admit that. And even now Aoife could feel the relative ease he’d left her with slowly fleeting away, leaving her just as hurt and in need of him as she’d been before. For a moment she comforted herself with knowing that at least the idiot hadn’t gotten himself killed yet, only for thought to be replaced with a sting of guilt for all the others who had died, and how that mattered less to her.

The world could be ending and there she was, up a stupid fucking hill, wrapped up in her own exhausted, teenage bullshit.

The dish came into view, looking much the same as it had looked the last time she and Nat had been up there, sat among autumn mud and huddled granite outcrops. Some of the hardware required a lot of work still, but between them they’d managed to at least get a replacement cable hooked up and something resembling basic functionality.  She allowed herself a wave of relief, reasoning quickly that the latest outages she’d been asked to check on were almost certainly due to something as mundane as a loose wire somewhere. It might even be an easy enough fix, she thought, to get back in time for a nap before the evening news bulletins generated their inevitable repair tickets. And the realisation gave her the energy she needed to haul her tool bag over the final stretch a little quicker than she would have done.

Aoife stopped however as she got within the final few metres with a nasty feeling stirring in her stomach. It had rained that morning, the mud fresh and the tire tracks from the last trip they’d made in the Land Rover long since washed away. So why were there footprints freshly peppered into the earth around the dish? And why did the tread marks look different to the now familiar ones left by the standard issue boots given out by Palisade to the Taymont staff. At least two sets of them.

Her heart raced as she slowly lowered her toolbag. Her eyes did their best to be alert despite her fatigue as she scanned the nearby rocks, looking for signs anyone else was there. Chances were that whoever had been up here had already gone, but then if anyone had seen enough movies to fill their heads with worst case scenarios of how this might play out, it was her. And in that moment her imagination definitely wasn’t on her side.

The terrain that had previously seemed peaceful and reassuring suddenly felt painfully isolating, and it took her a moment to find the courage to call out.

“If anyone’s there I don’t mean you any bother. I’m just an engineer.”

There was no reply other than the wind, even after what felt like an eternity of looking, listening and waiting. It was only after Aoife started to feel foolish that she dared herself to move forward and wander into the dish’s shadow to inspect the tracks, wondering if there was some more innocent explanation for everything than the one she’d jumped to. But the prints were definitely there, one set larger than the other.

She stooped down to look and as she did so her adrenaline spiked. There was a rustle of movement behind her. Someone rushing, out from behind one of the closest rocky outcrops, with heavy footfalls that slapped against the damp ground. Aoife spun around in time to see a man bearing down upon her, a purposeful blur in a heavy coat, almost a foot taller than she was.

She yelled. Felt him grab at her shoulder. And as she tried to pull away she lost her balance, toppling over landing with a wet thud next to the thick cable that ran from the satellite.

Aoife looked up, and as she did so, it was with the barrel of something long and metallic pointed at her face.