Day of Deliverance Read Online Free PDF

– all clear – on you go.”
    One by one, they stepped onto the spiral staircase. The steps began to descend automatically. As they dropped beneath floor level, the aperture above them closed silently and after a couple of minutes they came to a gentle halt. Ahead of them was a door. Tony pressed the device again and it opened onto a short metal-clad corridor illuminated by the same dim blue light. At the end of the corridor was a circular door like the entrance to a bank vault. It had five letters etched on it: ‘V I G I L’.
    The door opened without a sound, revealing a tubular passageway that curved off symmetrically both to the left and to the right. Jack noticed that there were no markings on the passagewalls – no rivets, no seams – it was perfectly smooth.
    “Round to your left, please,” Tony said. They followed obediently and as they walked, the passageway bent away from the entrance, which resealed itself silently behind them. They had only taken twenty or thirty paces when Jack noticed a strange marking on the wall at about head height. It appeared like the outline of a figure – a stylised hominid figure of some sort. There was something other-worldly about it. Jack stopped and turned to Tony.
    “What does that symbol mean, Mr Smith?”
    Tony approached the figure on the wall. He turned to Gordon. “Have you seen this, MacFarlane?” he said apprehensively.
    Gordon moved closer and inspected the strange marking, running his fingers tentatively over it. “Mmmm – the latest experiments must be more advanced than we thought.”
    Tony turned back to Jack and Angus. “VIGIL have been using their wormhole technology to experiment on new applications…”
    The boys’ eyes widened.
    “Yes – the figure on the door is indeed a symbol…”
    “The alien symbol,” Gordon added reverentially.
    “Signifying a portal to a whole new universe.”
    Angus’s eyes were on sticks, “You mean… space travel?”
    Tony put them out of their misery, “No, you plonker, that’s the Gents toilet – and the Ladies is opposite – look. Do either of you need to go?”
    Gordon laughed raucously and the boys shuffled on their feet self-consciously.
    “We’re fine, thanks.”
    The party moved on, Tony and Gordon buoyed by their joke at the boys’ expense.
    Finally Tony announced, “Right, here we are.”
    The passageway had continued to curve round and they had reached a point where the grooving on the wall indicatedanother doorway. Jack reckoned that if they continued on they would eventually arrive back at the point where they had originally entered the underground complex. Essentially, they were in a giant subterranean doughnut from which all the various VIGIL control rooms and annexes could be accessed.
    Jack read the lettering on the door:
    ‘Situation Room’.
    He felt his heartbeat tick up a notch. This was it.
    Tony pressed the device in his hand and the door slid open.
    *
    On each wall of the large underground room there were screens – some showed maps, some complex-looking historical timelines and others just row upon row of computer programming language that Jack could not even begin to understand. Some of the VIGIL team were already seated around a large central board table. They looked like a war council. Others manned computer terminals, or scientific equipment, at pods in separate areas of the room.
    Jack spotted a number of familiar faces: Miss Beattie, their English teacher, was involved in an animated conversation with, of all people, Gino Turinelli, from the café in the High Street. Jim De Raillar, who ran the mountain bike shop two doors down from Gino’s, was also there and, finally, Jack’s mother, Carole, was sitting at one of the computer terminals. In fact, as Jack looked around, he recognised everyone. They all either worked at the school or in the local village of Soonhope. Since their inauguration into VIGIL, Jack had learned that VIGIL’s network was quite pervasive. It made