Red Mist: Season 2, Episode 6: Desperation: The Red Mist Series, #6

By R T Green

Two women... two enemies. One deadly terror threat. One jealous sister.
One true love.
What could possibly go wrong?

An MI6 shadow assassin and a beautiful terrorist are thrown together in the midst of a terror threat, the like of which London has never seen before.

This is 'Desperation', the sixth episode of the Red Mist series.

A new and yet familiar terror threat hangs over London. As a young woman finally escapes the clutches of her evil captors, she brings with her terrifying news. Coop and the DIAL team are always one step behind, desperately needing the expertise only Madeline and Zana can provide. But they are billions of miles away, and no one on Earth knows if they are even still alive.

Then, suddenly, everything changes…

Travel with Madeline and Zana as they follow a life-threatening, perilous road, taking them to a place neither believes can exist.

Killing someone isn't meant to be this hard. Neither is falling in love.

"Romantic Suspense at its finest"

Imagine a TV drama with eight episodes over two seasons, telling a complete story, and bringing you a host of unexpected twists and turns along the way.
Red Mist is that gripping serialized drama, in book form. It will keep you page-turning, and episode reading!
(Each episode is its own story, but very much leads into the next one... so to get the full effect please do read the volumes in order!)

Do check out the Red Mist series, and everything else we do, on the rtgreen website.

And enjoy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wise Owl
• Release date: Apr 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215201909

R T Green

The RTG mission in life is simple... to not be like everyone else! ‘Going Green’ has taken on a new meaning, in the book world at least. Whilst we applaud the original meaning (ebooks are a perfect way to promote that) we also try to present a different angle to it. The tendency these days is that if you don’t look and read like everyone else, you don’t sell books. Maybe there’s some truth in that, but we simply don’t do it. The RTG books have been described as a ‘breath of fresh literary air’, and, by those discovering us for the first time, ‘unexpectedly good’. We know many readers prefer the same-old same old, and that’s fine. It’s just not what you get from the RTG stable. Those who know about such things said it would take five years to become a proficient author... I scoffed at that. They were wise. It took six. It’s one reason why even today we remodel existing books, and will always do so. Right from the early years the stories were always good, but were put into words less well than they could have been! These days we have several series and a few standalones, the hit Daisy series most popular amongst them. In everything we do, the same provisos apply – Never the same book twice. If we can’t think up a good story, it doesn’t get written. The RTG brand is about exciting and twisty plots, a fast pace which doesn’t waste words, and endearing (sometimes slightly crazy) characters. We can never please everyone, but it works for us, and, it seems, for those who appreciate our work. Enjoy! Richard, Ann and the RTG crew

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Red Mist end pic copy.jpg

THIS IS SEASON 2, EPISODE 6 of the Red Mist story. Told in eight episodes over two seasons, it follows the heart-wrenching journey of discovery of two lost souls, who could not be further apart when it comes to sides of the tracks.

Romantic suspense at its finest, Red Mist is blended with espionage and a little sci-fi to keep you guessing what might possibly happen next. But at its heart, it is the emotional love story of two people who, if they had not found each other, would have remained lost forever.

We’ve written RM as a chronological serial series. Imagine a TV drama, with eight episodes over two seasons that combine to tell the whole story, bringing you a host of unexpected twists and turns along the way.

This is that gripping serial drama, in book form. It will keep you page-turning, and episode-reading.

To get the full experience, please do binge the episodes in order!

Enjoy!

Richard, Ann, and the RTG crew

Chapter 1

ZANA AND I LEFT THAT beautiful world, but a part of us stayed behind. We could never go back and visit, but how I found myself wishing it would be possible.

Then, as we broke free of the atmosphere and a billion stars became our only companions once more, a new harsh reality kicked in. I hadn’t said anything to Zana, but as our return journey began, my mind had started to recall our month of hell in the cloud, and replayed all of the realities it had thrown at us.

One particular reality was making me very, very uneasy.

‘I’ve been thinking.’

She glanced to me from the helm seat, and grinned. ‘What, again?’

‘Yeah, but this time you’re really going to want to hear it.’

She must have seen the look on my face. The smile faded. ‘Go on.’

‘I’ve been remembering all those alternative realities we went through in the cloud. One or two of which turned out to be fact, like Tiri showing me the place we’ve just left.’

I saw the frown on her face, and realised she too was replaying them in her mind. ‘What are you saying?’

‘You know how you kept saying the impossible wasn’t possible, but then were proved wrong?’

‘Don’t remind me,’ she smiled grimly.

‘So now I’m starting to think, what if the one thing that really can’t have been possible was actually real?’

‘Now I’m worried. Which thing?’

‘Son of Arik.’

‘Hell.’ Her face went white. ‘No... that can’t be... okay, how is it even possible for you to know that?’

‘I don’t actually know it. But if it is true, DIAL might be going through a new hell on Earth right now. And we’re rather a long way away.’

Her head lowered, and I could see by the tremble in her hands she was thinking back to the beginning. Whatever was fuelling the recall wasn’t making her smile. She looked up to me with a new fear in her eyes.

‘You will remember Arik kept his experiments on Daisy secret from me. Now I’m thinking he kept a lot more to himself. If he and his men had already started his... breeding programme as soon as they reached Earth, and already accelerated their offspring’s growth rate...’

As the words faded away, her hands covered her face. I voiced the thought she didn’t seem able to.

‘By the time we get home, Son of Arik will be well past his mid-teens. Especially as we have to go round the phenomenon... coz I ain’t putting us through that hell again.’

I watched her shake the horror away. Finally she found a smile. ‘Actually, on the subject of getting home, there’s something I was about to tell you too.’

‘I’m all ears... please give me something to take my mind off old enemies who are now new ones.’

‘The phenomenon. According to long-range sensors, it’s not there.’

‘But... where is it?’

‘Nowhere.’

‘It’s playing with us again. It has to be there. Doesn’t it..?’

She shook her head. ‘Let’s give it an hour. We’ll be in visual range then. Or at least, in range of the position it used to be.’

We gave it an hour. It didn’t make any difference. It wasn’t there. As we stared at the screen, neither was anything else.

‘Um... aren’t there supposed to be stars in space?’

‘Not in a black hole.’

‘Shit.’

‘It seems the phenomenon has gone, leaving a black hole in its place.’

‘Maybe we killed that too. Go us.’

Still she was pressing buttons, trying to get a handle on yet another event she couldn’t explain. ‘Even for us, that is unlikely. But there’s something else...’

‘You sharing?’

‘According to what the sensors can actually understand, it seems to be warping space.’

‘So what does that actually mean to a dumb rookie?’

‘It means whatever goes into it comes out a lot further away. Our mother-ship came across one before, but we avoided it.’

Crazy thoughts were whizzing through my head. Suddenly I was Katherine Janeway again, searching for ways to safely traverse fluid time. ‘So can we tell it where to take us?’

I knew it was a dumb rookie question, and Zana duly shot me down. ‘I think you know the answer to that one, Madeline. But it might be possible to work out where it might take us. Kind of.’

‘How kind of?’

‘Very kind of. But let me try and see...’

She kept me waiting for three hours. In reality it was five minutes, but it felt like a lifetime. Then she looked up, and spoke in a solemn whisper.

‘It looks like it might take us closer to home.’

‘Then why the long face?’

‘Because there’s no guarantee. I’m starting to realise what appears to be isn’t always what is... not out here.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘You tell me. You’re the one who seems to get premonitions of reality.’

I put the finger to the chin, and closed my eyes like I was attempting to link to a psychic revelation. I heard her giggle, opened them again, and saw her shaking her head.

‘Ok, you can quit with the Madam Madeline crap.’

‘You know I’m only going to say one thing though, right?’

‘You’re going to say that based on what you saw in your crystal ball, London is back in a crisis and we need to be there as quickly as possible, so we should just go for it and see what happens.’

‘And you call me a psychic.’

‘Hardly. But I know how impatient and reckless you can be.’

‘So tell me what you would do.’

‘I’d go for it too.’

My heart was thumping a rhythm like it was playing a drum solo again. I could hear Zana’s heart doing the same. Deliberately flying into a whole lot of nothing, and praying we’d come out the other side into something, was terrifying the hell out of us.

As every star in the universe disappeared, and I finally knew what being truly in the dark was like, she reached out a hand. It felt like I grasped it and held on for dear life, but somehow it didn’t seem like it actually was my hand.

Everything froze. I was a part of a photograph, a two-dimensional image set in a jet-black frame. I think I tried to move a part of me, aware that still life can’t move much. My panic levels hit the roof. I was a mirror-image of myself, a lifeless statue being stared at by a lifeless statue of myself. A prisoner of time, captured by the lens of a mysterious cameraman who had taken a picture of time itself.

Then he changed focus. Everything blurred, and the picture multiplied itself. Suddenly there were thousands of me, thousands of Zana, and thousands of fogged-out bridge windows that were displaying massive streaks of white that must have been stars.

My senses couldn’t cope. Blasted by a million identical images all merging together, and yet were still separate pictures, my head shut itself down.

My strange, timeless world went black.

‘Madeline... Madeline... wake up, you wimp.’

‘Huh?’

I opened eyes that felt like lead. Zana was standing over me, caressing my cheek with a warm hand. ‘Hey, less of the wimp, okay? I just closed my eyes for a minute.’

She was grinning back to me. ‘Sure you did.’

‘And you didn’t?’

‘Well, maybe... for a few seconds.’

‘Oh yes, of course. My captain knew exactly how long she was in the time tunnel, didn’t she?’

‘Of course.’ She noticed the I-don’t-believe-you glare. ‘Okay, the sensors knew. Happy now?’

‘Maybe. So how long were we in the time-warp?’

‘Four months.’

What?’

‘That’s what the sensors are saying. But for us, it was probably four minutes.’

‘Are you saying..?’

‘We’ve halved our journey time, Madeline. ‘We’re three months from home!’

Chapter 2

Two Months Later

RYLAND COOPER LEANT his considerable weight against the fragile door, rather forcibly. It offered little resistance, crashed open, and then fell away completely as the old rusty hinges disintegrated.

Vic was inside the hallway a second later, moving ahead of him with her weapon held in outstretched arms. The place looked deserted, but the unearthly smell they were getting used to told them they were in the right place.

Once again, likely at the wrong time.

They spread out, Miles and Comfort taking the stairs to the first floor, he and Vic searching the ground floor. The old abandoned house was filthy, rat-infested, and covered in cobwebs hanging like silk blankets everywhere. Like so many times before, the most recent occupants had ignored the ground floor, preferring the added security of a higher vantage point.

He heard Miles call out. Then, as he and Vic joined their colleagues in one of the dusty bedrooms, he found his head shaking yet again. It was the same as always, dirty mattresses on the floor, evidence all around of feral occupation not so long ago.

Even so, this time was a little different.

Vic stooped next to the body, lifting the woman’s wrist. ‘This only happened a few hours ago, guys.’

Coop turned away from the pitiful sight of the tragic, grey-skinned young woman, who had finally found the courage to slash her wrists. They’d missed the feral in her care by a whisker, as they’d done so many times in the last two months.

It was like they knew. Knew to clear out, and find a different hiding place just before they would have been caught.

It was driving Coop insane. Something had to change. With their accelerated growth rate, it was getting very close to the time they would be old enough to reproduce for themselves.

That really would be hell on Earth.

Comfort Walker headed back downstairs. Her phone had just vibrated to tell her there was a text message, and likely not for public consumption. She pulled it up.

Did it get away? it asked.

She typed an answer. Yes. But we’ve found its mother. She committed suicide.

The reply came just a few seconds later. No matter. But it has to be found, before someone else does.

She shook her head at the phone, and sent a reply. I can’t do any more without giving myself away.

This time the answer took a little longer to arrive. Just keep us informed.

She heard the sound of footsteps behind her, and killed the screen. ‘You coming, or you gonna spend all day texting your boyfriend?’ Vic smiled as only she could. ‘Done all we can in this hell-hole, time to move on.’

Ryland Cooper slumped into his couch, whiskey glass in hand, and rubbed the other hand across his eyes in a desolate kind of way. They were running out of time, and he was running out of ideas. Shirl was feeding them a constant stream of locations where the ferals might be hiding out, but for eight weeks his team always seemed to be one step behind.

He was beginning to believe the ferals had some kind of sixth sense, knowing just when to pack up and leave.

That day had been the most frustrating so far. The poor young girl who’d finally had enough and taken her own life had done so only hours previously, and he knew she wouldn’t have taken that drastic step in front of her child. They’d missed catching their first feral by a matter of hours.

It should have felt like an encouraging sign, but somehow it was just another near-miss that seemed to drag him down.

They’d managed to keep the fact half-aliens were running around London a secret from the general public, but it wasn’t going to be much longer before one of them was spotted. With the population still on alien-watch, that would be when the news would break, big time.

Coronavirus, devastating as it was, was their friend right then. With London still in virtual lockdown, it had helped prevent the news from breaking earlier. But that lockdown was close to being relaxed, just at the time a far more terrifying threat was close to erupting. The six or seven mutants they knew existed would soon be teenagers, and each one had the Calanduran instinct for preserving the race built into their DNA.

If they didn’t get a breakthrough soon, there would be an awful lot more of them running around.

He sank the whiskey, filled the glass once more, and told himself it had to be the last. A foggy head would be the worst thing come the next morning, another meeting scheduled at DIAL HQ, when he’d have to tell Duncan Scott they were still failing. He sure needed a clear head to ride through the disappointed looks that would pierce his way.

Then his phone rang.

He looked at the screen and frowned. Unrecognised number? That was a phrase he’d never seen before. Cautiously he pressed accept, and lifted the phone to his ear. ‘Hello?’

‘That you, big man? Wow, modern technology, hey?’

The voice on the other end was crackly, but somehow familiar. ‘Um... who is this?’

‘Gee, you forgotten me already? Now I’m seriously disappointed in you, Coop.’

His heart missed a beat. ‘Maddy..?’

‘You call me that again and I’ll turn this ship around and disappear forever.’

‘But... how... where...?’

‘We’re on our way home. Zana managed to use her brilliance to project a long-range signal to a cell phone satellite, and I tried to call you... and it worked.’

‘Geez... but... where are you now?’

‘On Tiri’s shuttle, a month out.’

‘Her shuttle? But...’

‘We kind of swapped ships. Long story.’

‘But did you... I mean...’

‘She’s dead, Coop. And you’ll see your two favourite agents soon.’

He reached for the whiskey bottle again. One more wouldn’t have to matter. Steadying his thumping heart did matter. ‘You’s coming back to a hell, guys. A pandemic had all but shut the world down, and now there’s something else you ain’t gonna like.’

‘Yeah, I know. Son of Arik.’

He sank the whiskey in one gulp. ‘How the hell?’

‘Another long story. Sort of a more difficult one to explain, Coop.’

‘Geez...’

‘Going to lose the link anytime, boss. Give you a call soon...’

The voice and the crackling died. He sat back, fighting to get his senses in order. Right then it seemed impossible, but the one thing he knew for sure was that life was about to change once more.

His intergalactic friends were coming home, and suddenly the world felt like a better place.

Chapter 3

SUNDAY 16th August

THIS IS THE FIRST ENTRY IN MY NEW JOURNAL. The one regret