POSTHUMAN

Chapter Sixteen

                                                               20th December 2111

Marcus' feet met the tarmacked ground of a runway at London Heathrow, no commercial airline flights for years, only military and private aircraft but he had heard on the grapevine that commercial airlines might reopen by the middle of next year. He backed away from the private jet he had arrived in as it taxied for take-off; the sudden honk of a car horn stopped him from wandering right into its path.

        A Lexus Nuaero, mean-looking car somewhat reminiscent of a catamaran on wheels, in a deep shade of red, came to a smooth stop beside Marcus. The driver-side door swung open on a backwards hinge to reveal Morgan Stern. He had exchanged his combat trousers, boots and bulletproof vest for black trousers, dress shoes and a waistcoat in that dark blue hue that Morgan was so fond of.

        "You should look where you're going, Colonel Sewell, we don't want you having an accident now?" Marcus felt the urge to punch him in the nose but forced a smile, "Get in, Colonel Sewell, I don't have all day." Marcus once again stamped down the impulse to hit Morgan and put his suitcases into the back seat before he sat by the agent. He secured himself in his seat as the car doors closed themselves. Morgan pulled the steering wheel towards himself to make the car accelerate, there were no pedals in a Nuaero. Stern fiddled about with the steering pad for a few seconds, then Marcus heard something like the purr of jet engines as the car sped up tenfold, its front began to rise and point towards the sky. Two long, tubular, powerful engines had lowered out from underneath the car, and the front wheels rolled neatly beneath the car to reveal rotors that would allow the car to turn in the air. They were off the ground now, the back wheels having done the same as the front wheels. Marcus was in a flying car, he had heard about them since his youth, that the fabulously rich owned them – he had never thought he might find himself in one. "Agent Stern, this is amazing," he couldn't help himself; the thought had to be expressed.

        "It is rather breathtaking, isn't it? I don't expect you'll have been in anything like this before. It has three settings – terrestrial, amphibious and aerial," Morgan kept his eyes on the skies outside. Marcus peered out of the window as they slowed down to a cruising speed, he could see runways below, people in high visibility jackets were bizarre, yellow ants from this height. Then the car turned back the way it had come from to face London again. He must look like a simpleton to Stern, he knew gawked at the London skyline.

        There were skyscrapers with sleek, elegant hangars atop them; clearly Londoners were far more affluent than New Yorkers. Several features stood out as they approached the city. So much construction work, building ever upwards to accommodate the bustling populous; automatons outnumbered their human supervisors three to one. Next were the amount of independent stores, he spotted very few of the chains prominent before The Flash. He saw a fair number of flying cars in the skies of London, and spotted an unmanned police aircraft not too far from them.

     An immense glass tower loomed, the car was in its shadow, Marcus noted the Providence triskelion on the building's sloping roof. The glass of the skyscraper was tinted a shade of blue. "What's that for?" Marcus motioned at the tower.

       "That's Bond Tower. The Joint Intelligence Committee operates out of there. Which means we're not too far from MIC," Morgan swept them around Bond Tower in a wide arc, their underside tilted towards the tower.

      They crested the curve of the tower. Marcus needn't ask where MIC was. He could see four enormous, black trapezoidal prisms whose ends enclosed an awesome jet obelisk. On every prism roof was a runway. The Lexus slowed down and began to lose altitude. A fifth, great, black trapezoid prism brooded to the east of the compound, a fin rose oddly from the top of it, on the fin was a darkened sphere. From out of the sphere to the roof beneath ran a metal cord for a lift.

       "The obelisk is an air traffic control tower with four staff inside assisted by virtual intelligences," Morgan touched down on the roof of the north prism and taxied to an area marked out by a yellow rectangle, "The buildings around it are covered in one-way armoured glass. There's a monorail in the east prism that leads to the main structure, these prisms are just hangars, garages and storage." The rectangle of runway they occupied began to sink, his surroundings slowly disappeared as he was lowered into the hangar. Morgan drove them down one level to a garage full of flying cars.

They rode the monorail to the station inside Prism Prime, "That's what everyone calls it," Morgan had said. Stern led him through the fashionably minimalist and unnervingly stark Prism Prime to the top floor where that special lift to the darkened sphere was. Morgan gestured for Marcus to enter first, he did so and they continued in stony silence as the windowless cylinder travelled upward. He heard the smallest whoosh and click as the lift came to its only possible destination.

        The doors slid to either side of him, he stepped out and glanced at Morgan Stern, the agent smirked at him, "Good luck." The lift quickly closed and disappeared as the hatch which had opened to enable its entrance shut swiftly behind it, a gap left for the cord to sit comfortably.

        Marcus took in his location and found that it worried him. The only light he could see right now were tiny ones marking a path forwards to a waist-high, dark marble column with a slanting peak. He approached it tentatively – a green button and a blue button were on top of it. He pressed the green button but nothing happened so he pressed the green, after a few seconds he pressed it again, then a cold and arch voice filled the room.

        "I heard you the first time, Colonel Sewell, there's no need to wear out the buzzer. Come up here, we need to speak to one another," commanded the voice. A semi-circular platform descended along the wall in front of Marcus. He mounted the platform and was taken to the floor above.

        There was something off about this room; a man sat behind a large hardwood desk. His terminal, his stationery, paperwork and the telephone were the only items on the desk. He sat under a cone of light. Marcus advanced cautiously. The floor beneath him suddenly became the sky so that he stood in the air. His stomach lurched and he anticipated a horrible death.

        He did not fall; he looked back down to confirm he was indeed standing on nothing. Then the sky became wild grass and he stood in a meadow then suddenly it was the surface of the moon and above him sat the stars and he could see Earth.

       "Approach," at the man's word, the room was flooded with unbearably bright light. All of the walls and floor and ceiling became white. Marcus squinted and walked slowly and eventually found himself in front of the desk. "This office is an extremely advanced holographic chamber, one of only a few in the world. This is aiding the advancement of virtual reality technology as we speak. This is the nature of The Providence: everything we do benefits mankind," the man's grey eyes were pitiless, they took away the mystery of whether he had ever witnessed death. He had done more than bear witness to the taking of lives.

      "You must be Director Saul," replied Marcus, the director had thinning grey hair, and a stalwart frame. He reminded Marcus of a great, cunning beast whose apparent brutishness would fool the arrogant observer. The only thing which gave away the master spy was the nimbleness of his fingers when he had played across the terminal screen. There was a terrifying grace and speed inherent in Saul.

        "Indeed I am, colonel, and I have a proposition for you," his smile struck a chord with Marcus, not a pleasant one at that; he the mouse, Saul the wicked cat.

      "What do you want?" Marcus was apprehensive, the whiteness of the room did nothing to calm him.

     "Your more secretive exploits place you on a par with some of my best agents, Colonel Sewell, which includes SSA Stern. You will work for us, here, as a loyal operative of The Providence," he smiled at Marcus again; he must know Marcus did not enjoy the expression.

      "And if I refuse?" Marcus tried for defiant.

      The room was plunged into darkness, Saul within his cone of light, Marcus just outside of it, "Was the option ever presented to you to refuse this vocation? Agent Sewell, let us not live under false pretences." Marcus cast his gaze to the ground, he would not find a chance to escape this engagement for a decade.