Chapter 8 The Compromise

Agent Riley and Agent Vox escorted us all to their vehicles, Adelaide included. We all complied without too much protesting, as we wanted to put as much distance between the agents and Anhur as we could.

Jen, Lava, Adelaide, me, and Officer Beckett were ushered into one vehicle, leaving Dr Henry Derwent and Kai to be placed in another.

We were told not to talk on the journey to wherever it was we were being transported to. As we travelled, I found myself thinking of what a young Immanuel Paley was like. Thinking about his university years and his life with Adelaide. It was surreal to think that Immanuel had an encounter with Anhur when it was alive. However, in a bizarre way it made sense, it helped me to understand why Paley, the older Paley, acted in the ways that he did. Why he was always appearing muddled and unable to speak in a way that was not riddled with alternative meanings. Whatever Anhur shared with Paley, or whatever Anhur did to Paley, it was evident that it must have been hard for such a knowledge exchange to be a smooth transition amongst two completely different species.

I remained lost in thought until the large vehicle we were in came to a standstill.

It didn't take long until we were being swept into another non-descript office building with floors and floors of identical layouts. There was no sign of Dr Derwent and Kai as we went inside. Which was a little concerning. Were they trying to split us up? Where had they taken then? Were they already here?

As we travelled the seven floors in the lift Jen grabbed Lava's hand, seemingly in need of support. I looked at Adelaide, who seemed very calm, she gave me a small smile and a nod.

When we reached the seventh floor we were led into a room with desks and computers and all sorts of other gadgets floor to ceiling. It seemed like a tech-wizards dream playground. In the centre of the room was a large rectangular table that we were told to sit around, taking seats on the large chairs bordering its sides. Agent Vox did not take a seat, neither did Agent Riley. Riley lent forwards and placed her hands on the table, looking at us all "Right," she began, "We need to come to a compromise here. You must work with us. We cannot be working against each other or sneaking around. That isn't going to work. Particularly as Paley doesn't seem to be any use to us, not without familiar faces anyway."

I was surprised at the admission from Agent Riley, but maybe she had realised that bowling in with an iron fist was not the way to go if she wanted answers.

She went on, "An overwhelming number of strange readings have started to show up across the globe in the last six hours. We have infrared images to show you and satellite images. Some of these readings are in remote areas, others are in highly populated areas. This is going to come out to the public soon, we cannot keep it under wraps much longer." Agent Riley paused and put her fingers to her temples giving them a brief massage in a small circular motion before standing up straight and placing her hands by her sides.

Agent Vox interjected, "We will leave you to talk for a while and here is Dr Paley to join you." Vox lifted his arm and gestured towards the door where Immanuel had just entered, escorted by two men who quickly closed the door behind Immanuel as they exited the room.

Agent Vox nodded at Agent Riley, and they made their way to the door. "Wait," Lava called after them, "What about the others, where are Kai and Dr Derwent?"

Vox turned, "They are with some of our specialists, we needed them to look over a- a -specimen killed in the Isle of Man that has been transported to Leeds."

Paley heard this exchange as he came closer. "Where? Where was it killed did you say?" he asked, frantic. I could imagine he was wanting as many details as possible about Anhur's kind based on his deep investment into Anhur, and into keeping his body safe.

"It was taken down in the Isle of Man," Vox repeated.

"Ah, right, right, right, you managed to move that quickly then," Paley replied, with his voice trailing off at the end, as he nodded to himself.

Vox and Riley passed by Paley, quickly opening, and closing the door to the room behind them.

It was such a relief to know that Paley's wishes would still be upheld. Knowing that Anhur's body was still safely stored away from prying eyes in the old war bunker in York was a small win.

It seemed we all needed to talk and see how we could navigate this supposed compromise with Agent Vox and Agent Riley. I was unsure as to how the others would feel about this, as Vox and Riley had, so far, not always acted like team players.

Paley raised his eyebrows ever so slightly as he caught a glimpse of Adelaide, "Adi, what are you doing here?" he asked.

Adelaide stood up. Paley made his way to her, and they exchanged brief kisses on each cheek. Adelaide gestured for Paley to sit with us. Paley obeyed and took a seat quickly, eager to hear about how we had come to be there, particularly Adelaide.

Adelaide calmly started to explain to Paley what had happened at the war bunker, being careful to refer to Anhur in a coded way, in case anyone was listening in.

It was a great feeling, to see Paley again, energised, and unharmed. Lava, Officer Beckett, and Jen also appeared to be pleased to meet Dr Immanuel Paley in the flesh, the only man we were aware of who possessed some form of knowledge of another worldly species.

"Have you seen the latest news?" Paley asked once we were all well acquainted and everyone was up to speed.

"What news?" Beckett asked.

Immanuel pointed over at one of the opened laptops on the small, long table behind where I was sitting. "A.J. grab that device there behind you and pass it to Mr Beckett will you."

"Please," Adelaide adds and gives Paley a look.

"Please," he himself added after the silent exchange of looks with Adelaide, followed up by a little smile. A smile that almost seemed to suggest Paley was, in that moment, reminiscing about other occasions where he had had similar exchanges with Adelaide.

I reached behind me, twisting my body, to grab the laptop and passed it over to Officer Beckett. He quickly carried out an online search, well as quickly as possible in the early 1990s, and one of the top stories on the web came from BBC news, it was entitled, 'Unidentified objects spotted, friend or foe?' Beckett pushed the laptop away from him so most of us could get a half decent view of the screen. He began to read, "Several unidentified objects have been spotted in various locations by avid amateur astronomers across all continents around the globe. The grainy pictures that had been shared across many blogging platforms appeared to be of similar shapes and sizes."

Beckett continued to read, and we all listened intently.

It was evident from the online sources that many people were starting to make theories online, and people were suggesting that these sightings, in some instances thousands of miles apart, were somehow linked. These online keyboard warriors summations were right, they were making a logical deduction from the very poor-quality images that they had available. I must admit, it was quite impressive to see how quickly this hive mind was working online. One of the worker bees in this online hive was one avid star gazer, named Edwin Hawking from Eton, Berkshire, in England. Edwin had shared images on his online blog according to the BBC source. "There is a link to his page" Officer Beckett said pointing to the part of the screen with the underlined blue hyperlink.

By this point Lava had already grabbed another free laptop and found the same BBC source that Beckett was reading. "I wonder if Henry has seen this?" Lava said, almost to herself more than the rest of us.

Lava clicked on the link to the bloggers page and started to look over the images and the writing that went with them.

"He only looks like a lad," Officer Beckett said as he scrolls down to a picture of Edwin Hawking.

About twenty minutes after Paley had brought the latest news reels to our attention Agent Vox and Riley returned. A little sooner than I had expected. Vox began, "We have had an update from Kai and Dr Derwent. They would like you all to join them at the lab in Leeds. We have transport prepared to go when you are ready."

"We have got you all a change of clothes and some food. And there are shower facilities for you all to use before we set off," Riley added.

We all agreed to take our time, to make sure that we were meeting Dr Derwent and Kai with clear minds and bodies, as well as full stomachs.

As we ate what must have been the first warm meal in a while, I took the time to have a catch up with Paley and thanked him for trusting me with the postcard that led us to Anhur's body. Paley shared a little about his time being held 'captive' as he put it. He said that there was no way that he would ever reveal anything of worth to the agents, as he was suspicious of any type of authority. By the time I had finished my food and headed to the showers Adelaide was sitting down to eat, which seemed like good timing, for her and Paley to speak properly and without people eaves dropping.

It was soon time to move on to yet another location.

The journey from just outside of York to Leeds took about fifty minutes. Paley had managed to sleep the whole way, which seemed impressive to me, as we were about to see another one of those things, another one of Anhur's kind. I could not sleep knowing I was about to see one of the invading beings, one of the many descending in the wave that had travelled here on those huge spaceships, a fellow being of those who had attacked Jen and the team, scurrying around in one of the skyscraper ships of theirs.

We reached a small gate and our driver wound down his window and pressed a call button. The driver carried out a brief exchange with a disembodied voice, assumably one of the security team who were inside the grounds. The gates opened, and we drove through into a fair-sized car park.

The building was a mismatch of differing designs. It was glaringly obvious that part of the build was originally constructed well before the attached new-looking extension that must have been added at a much later date. "Paley we are here," I said giving his arm a nudge. He opened one eye, peering out at me, then closed it again and rubbed his eyes before taking the opportunity to have a large stretch, extending his arms out, one to his side, and one in front of him, as to not hit the window to his left.

Paley, Lava, Riley, and I exited the car we were in leaving the driver, just as the car with Beckett, Vox, Jen, and Adelaide came rolling through the same gates we had come through moments earlier.

We waited for everyone to jump out of the cars, and all headed towards the main entrance of the laboratory together.

"I was envisaging some high-tech futuristic building," Officer Beckett said as he walked beside me.

I smiled "What- like in Hollywood films?"

Beckett mumbled something I couldn't quite make out, then let out a small laugh as he rubbed the back of his head. The rest of the team did not appear underwhelmed or surprised by where we found ourselves. Perhaps that was a sign of their profession. You couldn't blame Beckett for expecting something extravagant, it wasn't exactly as if his line of work would take him to a lab.

We entered the building and were confronted with armed police officers at the swipe card turnstiles in the reception area.

As we walked in Agent Riley addressed one of the officers and seemed to know him well. We all started to filter through the access point. When it was my turn to make my way through the turnstile one of the officers decided to approach me and asked me to stop.

I looked at her and said, "I'm with them," pointing in front of me.

"Have you got anything in your pockets?" she asked. She asked me to raise my arms just as Agent Vox had managed to turn back to meet me.

"That is not necessary," Vox said sternly.

"Yes Sir," she replied. I didn't say anything, but simply shook my head as I looked at the ground before following Vox through the turnstile.

There was no need for a lift ride for us that day, there were no 5th, or 7th floor rooms to be told to wait in. The section of the lab we were taken to was on the ground floor.

We were taken through the bright white main hallway to a sturdy looking door, with a swipe card access pad to the left-hand side. Agent Riley knocked on the door and it was opened by a man in a long white lab coat, brown cord trousers, a brown belt and checked blue shirt.

Riley spoke, "Dr Dawkins great to see you again," Riley held out her hand and Dr Dawkins offered his hand, with a quick firm looking handshake.

"Come on in," Dr Dawkins said, clearing the way to let us through one by one. We entered a rather clean clinical looking room, which appears very new, evidently this was part of the buildings later add-on. The room had three white walls resembling the walls of the corridor we had just come down. The fourth wall was made of some sort of glass or plastic from floor to ceiling, which looked rather thick. On the other side of the glass was a rather large room filled with people in protective clothing and ventilated masks. The walls inside the room we were looking into were dotted with shelves filled with all sorts of equipment. And in the middle of the room was what looked like a metal plated slab or in this case a corpses bed. Laid on the slab was a huge creature limp and lifeless. Its body too large to comfortably fit on the surface of the post-mortem table had its arms slumped over the sides, spilling down the harsh sliver plinth of sorts, resembling the lifeless carcass of a hunter's trophy kill.

"It's so big," Beckett said, making his way closer to the glass.

"Yeh, much bigger than…" Jen started to speak, and Paley threw her a look, "…than… than I expected," she finished, looking at Paley a little wide eyed giving him a little sassy 'I wasn't going to say it" look before looking away.

Jen was right, this creature was much bigger than Anhur. It looked a lot stronger, and I was guessing it was older. Maybe Anhur was an adolescent, not a fully grown adult. Or maybe this was a particular warrior or soldier for its kind, and Anhur was just an intelligence officer. Which made me think, it was possible that there was no need for Anhur to be built like this one was, if there was more of a need for stealth in 1962, when Anhur crash landed in Adelaide and Paley's backyard! But what did that mean for us on earth, in 1992? 

Seeing the creature laid there was intimidating enough, and it was dead. I could only imagine, with dread, what it would be like to stand in front of a number of these things alive! I was hoping beyond hope, that countries were starting to work together quickly and efficiently to neutralise any threat, hoping any existing quarrels across the globe could be quashed by the shared aim of protecting all humans. Was it time for countries to look at their arsenals and quicken the pace at which they were making weapons? I hated the thought of violence and destruction, but at that time, it was hard to see any other way out of this mess if these alien visitors were here to try and wipe humans from the face of the planet. Preservation of life sometimes came at a cost.