Last Man Standing (The Earthburst Saga Book 1) by Craig A. Falconer

Author:Craig A. Falconer [Falconer, Craig A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2022-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

46

I gulp.

I’ve known my life is in danger since the moment I walked out of the lab and found everyone else dead all around me. But after fixing the air pipe and finally making radio contact with someone, I thought the immediate danger phase was over.

Mel’s words say it’s not.

Her expression says it’s definitely not.

“Ray, I don’t know what’s gone on there or how much you know about what’s happened on Earth,” she continues, “but we have reason to believe there is an infiltrator on board The Beacon. He could be hiding in a secure location. You need to alert your colleagues to this news when you can be sure it’s safe to do so, but do not attempt to engage with this man on your own. His name is Oliver Grainger, working undercover as Dale Thorpe.”

The image on my screen changes, with the live feed of Mel temporarily replaced by the image of a man I know only too well. It’s the checklist-and-gloves killer from the Canteen, whose dirty work I was all set to watch on the security footage right before I made contact with Mel.

“Do you see him, Ray?”

I nod. For now, I say nothing.

“Earth has been hit by what looks like the largest series of coordinated terrorist attacks in history,” Mel goes on. “I’ll tell you what I know. Three members of the organization behind the initial attacks appeared in public to issue an ultimatum. All three were quickly identified, and the intelligence agents who identified them also discovered complex financial links between two of those individuals and Oliver Grainger. Your station has been offline and unreachable since before this discovery was made. We thought it was too late. Ray… what happened up there?”

I blow air from my lips. Where do I start?

“Grainger is dead,” I tell her.

Her eyebrows raise halfway up her forehead.

“Mel, everyone is dead. It’s just me and a parrot, plus some other animals in induced comas inside one of the labs. There’s no one else left. It is too late. Grainger did something to the air supply while I was in my sealed lab. I think he thought he would survive, but he didn’t. I can show you when I figure out how to share footage from the cameras.”

“Everyone else?” she asks, bringing a hand to her mouth in shock.

I turn the screen slightly so the camera brings Commander Harrison into the shot.

Mel closes her eyes and swallows hard. “Okay,” she says, exhaling slowly. “Well, until a minute ago we thought absolutely everyone was dead — you, too — so at least one survivor is better than none. How much do you know?”

I turn my palms upwards in a tired kind of shrug. “Less than you, it seems like. When you say ‘we thought you were dead’… who’s we?”

“At the time, everyone thought that,” Mel sighs. “The Beacon went dark before anything happened on Earth. No one knew what happened there, but something had obviously gone wrong. Then when everything started going

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