by Tim Weaver
Healy raised his eyebrows: That’s where he kept Sona.
Suddenly, a noise exploded around us.
Both of us put our hands to our ears and Healy manoeuvred the torch until he found a second speaker high up on the opposite wall. Then, as quickly as it had started, it stopped. The silence was like a shockwave passing across the room.
Beside me, Healy reached into his jacket and took out his gun.
I followed the circle of light as he moved it around the room. Now he had the torch and the gun, and I had nothing. I was completely reliant on him. I didn’t like the lack of control, but I liked ceding it to Healy even less. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him to watch my back – it was that I didn’t trust him to watch his own.
‘What is this place?’ he whispered.
It wasn’t part of the sewer network. It wasn’t a bomb shelter either – or, at least, wasn’t built to house people originally. Which meant it could have been a relic from the factories on the eastern edge: some sort of transportation tunnel. Healy shone the torch towards the manhole again. It looked like a new addition, as if it had been hollowed out and drilled through in order to join the area we were standing in. But everything else looked old. I wondered for a moment how Glass had got equipment down here, and how long it had taken him to do it. And then I thought again about him, how meticulous and patient he was. How, ultimately, the time and logistics wouldn’t have mattered. He would have got it done, and – as he’d already proved – he would kill anyone who got in the way.
Healy swung the torch around the room a second time and picked out a thick reinforced door. It looked like a submarine hatch, black and rusting, a hole in the centre where the wheel had once been. It didn’t seem to fit the frame, or the frame had been made too big. There were gaps at the bottom and at the right-hand edge, faint light trickling through from the other side. Out of the speaker above it came a constant buzz.
We edged across the room, Healy slightly ahead with the torch and gun up in front of him. His finger was tight in against the trigger. He had the air of a man who’d used one before, and not just in a firing range. Police warrant cards were marked with an endorsement if an officer had the right to carry firearms. Healy’s hadn’t been. Wherever he’d learned to fire weapons, whatever he’d done with them before, it hadn’t been within the boundaries of the law.
At the door, he pulled at the hatch. It stuck, juddered in its frame, then came back at us, squeaking as it swung on its hinges. On the other side was a partially lit corridor, a series of glass panels on the right. The walls were tightly packed red brick and the floors polished concrete. At the end of the corridor, the artificial light stopped and there was a vaguely circular wall of darkness. Above us, wires snaked out of another speaker, static buzzing from it, filling the dead air in the corridor. When we stepped through the hatch, we could see the glass panels were windows.
Just like Sona had described.
There were three of them, looking into three small rooms, each one about twenty feet square. Everything had been painted white: the brick walls, the ceiling, the concrete floors, the door on the other side. In the first room there was a small table with nothing on it. We edged further along. The second was completely empty.
A noise from up ahead.
Healy shone the torch into the darkness at the end of the corridor. It kinked right at the end, past four unmarked barrels. As we moved forward, towards the third window, the sound of static increased. Healy directed the light upwards. Three feet above us was another speaker, pumping out sound. A constant, unbroken wall of noise like someone had hit a dead TV channel.
We reached the third window.
In the centre of the room was a hospital bed. A white mattress and white bedclothes on top of that, the bedclothes half covering the legs of the woman lying on it. She was semi-conscious and dressed in a pale blue night dress, lying on her side in the foetal position. One of her hands rested on her stomach. After a while, her fingers started moving gently across her midriff, even as she slept. Tracing the roundness of her belly. The swell of her pregnancy. Eventually she shifted position on the mattress, her head tilting in our direction.
It was Megan Carver.
66
There was no door into the room from the corridor and the glass was a one-way mirror. Reinforced. When I tapped on it, it made almost no sound: just a dull whup. We need to call the police. We need a medical team. I took out my phone and flipped it open. There was no signal this far underground. It would only take me a couple of minutes to get up above ground and make the call – but I needed to get to Megan first. I wasn’t going to leave her. Not now.
We moved quickly forward, into the gloom of the corridor, torchlight swinging right to left in Healy’s hands. When I glanced at him, I could see the desperation building. Sweat was forming on his hairline, even though it was cold in the corridor. His shoulders had tensed. His muscles had hardened. Up ahead, the barrels started to emerge more clearly in the darkness, all four unmarked except for a serial number at their base in Cyrillic. Healy angled the torchlight across them.
Then the torch cut out.
He bashed it against his hand, trying to force new life into the batteries. But they were gone. I got out my phone and flipped it open again. The blue light from the display crawled across the walls and floor, lighting our way for about ten feet. I nodded to his jacket, telling him to remove his mobile. ‘One of us needs to move ahead,’ I said, keeping my voice low. ‘We need to stay six feet apart, then we can light more of the corridor.’
He nodded, discarding the torch on the floor. Then he raised the gun, placed his left hand under the bottom of the grip and put the phone between his teeth. The keypad faced out, the light from the display faintly orange in colour. His face was a mix of nervousness and dread.
We both broke into a jog as we moved around the corner, footsteps echoing, carrying along the corridor like a muffled drumbeat. There were two doors at the end: a heavy one with rivets facing us, and a second submarine-style hatch on the right. When we got to the one on the right, I reached down to the handle. Healy’s eyes snapped to a speaker above us and back to me. We both felt it. A chill. A deep sense of unease. Then I gripped the handle tighter and pushed the door the rest of the way.
On the other side was a long, narrow room, running for seventy feet. The stone walls were uneven and the ceiling was low, as little as ten feet in places. It was cold. Under our feet was green linoleum, and above our heads were strip lights. The room was completely empty apart from a hospital bed in the centre. Circling it was a full medical set-up: an ECG, a catheter, an IV tube and saline bag, and electrodes looped around one of the bedposts. There was a metal trolley off to the side, instruments laid out on top: surgeon’s scissors, scalpels, a mallet, retractors, forceps. The medical area was absolutely spotless and brightly lit. The rest of the room looked like something from the Middle Ages; a snapshot from the ruins of a medieval castle.
I edged further in and could make out three white doors, partially obscured by the shadows. None of them had handles. Only keyholes. The nearest to me was the one Megan was in. I darted towards it, glancing back over my shoulder at Healy. Except he wasn’t there. Back in the corridor, he’d opened the door with the rivets on. In front of him was a wall of solid blackness; a huge dark mouth.
‘Healy, wait.’
He just stared at me. He looked dazed, like he suddenly wasn’t sure what he was doing. His finger wriggled at the trigger of the gun.
‘Don’t go in alone.’
His eyes drifted to the black space in front of him and then back to me. He knew I was right. He knew it was better to wait, to go in with support. But he didn’t wait. Instead he raised the gun, put the phone between his teeth and stepped through the door. Within a second, he was swallowed up and all that remained was the glow of his phone.
Shit.
I turned back to the room housing Megan. It was locked. The door moved in its frame when I pressed a hand
against it, and had a cheap, hollow kind of feel; like two slabs of wood either side of an empty space.
I retreated a few steps, then glanced back into the darkness Healy had just passed through. I needed to get to him. I needed to back him up. But I needed to get to Megan more. Healy could handle himself. Megan couldn’t. She’d been gone six months and now all that separated us was a piece of wood.
I took another step away from the door.
And then I shoulder-charged it.
It cracked away from the frame, swinging full force into the wall. Megan didn’t even stir.
‘Megan?’
I moved around the bed so I could see her face.
‘Megan?’
Nothing. She was heavily sedated, her breathing soft. I put my phone between my teeth, stepped up to the bed and lifted her off. She wasn’t heavy, even eight months into her pregnancy. When I brought her in towards me, her head rolled against my chest and I could feel the swell of her belly.
I moved quickly, out into the white room and back into the corridor, pausing for a moment at the door with the rivets. In the darkness, nothing came back. No sound. No light. No movement. I almost called out to Healy, but felt his name stop at my lips as the sound of static rose and fell around me. Deep inside, I knew none of this was right. It was too easy so far. Everything was too easy. But when I looked down at Megan, I let it go, and headed back up the corridor. Past the windows. Through the hatch, to the ladder. Maybe there was an easier way out, maybe there wasn’t, but I couldn’t afford to take a chance. I had to get her out. I’d have to try and wake her. And then, once she was awake, I had to get her up the ladder to safety.
But the ladder wasn’t there.
Looking up, I could see the manhole cover was still open, a circle of blue sky visible, but the ladder had retreated back into the space beneath. It was too far from the floor to reach now. He raised it. He hadn’t passed us, so the ladder was either remotely operated or he’d been above ground and pulled it up manually from the lip of the hole – which meant there was another exit. It didn’t matter now either way. The only option was to go back through the door with the rivets, a thought that filled me with dread. How the hell am I going to keep her safe when I don’t even know what’s waiting for me?
I laid Megan gently down on the floor, pushing her hair away from her face. She felt cool. There was dried blood and snot around her nose, but otherwise she looked okay. A little bigger around the face, but she was carrying most of the baby weight at her front. Looking around, the only light was from the three rooms in the next corridor; everything else was coated in darkness. I needed to wake her before we could find the other exit – because, with her unconscious in my arms, we were both easy targets.
I glanced down at her, trying to figure it out.
And this time her eyes were open.
She was looking up at me, wide-eyed, fear etched so clearly and completely in her face, it was like she’d been frozen in ice. She shuffled back across the floor, away from me, her hand covering her stomach, protecting herself and the life she was carrying.
‘Megan, it’s okay,’ I said softly, dropping to my knees.
Her eyes flickered again. She was scared.
‘My name’s David Raker.’ I held up a hand, but stayed where I was. ‘Your mum and dad sent me. I’m getting you out of here, okay?’
Her eyes filled with tears.
‘But first I need your help. Can you help me, Megan?’
I looked around the room using the light from the phone. Towards the back were a series of six-foot-long metal poles. ‘Megan, I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You and your baby are safe. But I need your help. I need to know what you’ve seen of this place. I need to know how we can get out.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘Megan?’
Then the static stopped. The silence crashed along the corridor. Five seconds of absolute nothingness. We both looked up to the speaker above the hatch.
And then there was a cry.
‘Noooooooooo! No, no, no, no.’
Sound suddenly crackled through it, every letter distorting. And my heart sank. It was Healy.
‘You fucking bastard! You fucking piece of shit!’
He’d found Leanne.
Healy shouted something else, screamed it, but his words were twisted and broken; one long, terrible wail. Then he burst into tears, waves of emotion consuming him. He tried to talk over them. Tried to make sense. But, for a while, nothing came out. Then eventually he just screamed again.
‘Where are you? Where the fuck are you?’
My heart was beating faster. My mind ticking over. Should I go and find Healy? Should I take Megan with me? Should I take a chance on her staying safe? I could get her to wedge the door shut with the metal poles. But then I’d be hoping I found the surgeon first. It was a risk whatever I decided. Leaving her here would invite him on to her. Take her with me and I didn’t know what awaited.
Then I realized something: Healy.
His crying was coming through the speakers, gradually getting louder as if the volume was being turned up.
Or someone was getting closer to him.
‘I’m going to gut him, David.’
A whisper through the speaker.
Then the feed cut out.
67
Thirty seconds later we were at the door with the rivets, stepping into the darkness. I’d brought Megan with me, had her hand in mine. I could hear her breathing close to my ear – soft, short, scared – and knew I was taking a risk. But I had to get her and her baby to safety. And I had to get to Healy now too.
We moved inside. I felt a hesitation in her stride and glanced back. She looked terrified. Her eyes widened, glistening in the blue glow from my phone. I squeezed her hand and swung the light around. The room was big. It had ceilings so high the light wouldn’t stretch to them. There were no speakers inside this part of the tunnel system, and as we inched further in, the static was replaced by a gentle buzz, like an electrical current. It was freezing cold too. I could feel a breeze at ankle level and chill air against my face and hands.
A breeze. That means an exit.
There was a red-brick wall about fifteen feet to our right, wooden crates stacked up against it. We couldn’t see where the room ended on our left. In front of us, a path wound its way through more crates, some broken and empty, some unopened. We must have been going for forty seconds when the buzz got louder. It was definitely an electrical current – and powering something big.
I looked off to the right, the glow of my phone following.
And then it felt like my heart had hit my throat.
Out of the darkness, a series of mannequins appeared, all in a line, all looking straight at us. Some were missing arms. Some legs. All of them were female and completely unclothed, and all were attached to a base by a metal pole.
They were wearing latex masks.
Milton Sykes, over and over and over. Each mask slightly different, a prototype for the next. Adjusted nose. Adjusted cheeks. Bigger chin. Smaller chin. More prominent forehead. Different colouring. Some had torn and didn’t hang as well. Some looked completely realistic in the lack of light, only the dummy beneath giving it away. Megan went to scream and then squeezed a hand against her mouth, her breath whistling out of her nose in short bursts.
A noise from our left.
I swivelled and lifted up my phone. The blue light from it dropped off about twenty feet away. I could see the polished concrete floor fade off into the darkness, and some sort of base unit on the edge of the phone’s glow. It looked like a plinth. I took a couple of steps forward, pulling Megan along behind me, and the blue light extended across the structure. Another step. Another. It was definitely a plinth.
Then I realized what was lying on top.
A coffin.
It was completely transparent. Reinforced plastic. Every surface, every angle, shone in the light from the phone. Inside it, at the bottom, I c
ould see two blocks – but then realized they weren’t blocks. They were feet. I moved the phone up the side of the coffin: feet, legs, hands, arms. It was a woman. Her head was turned to the right, facing out at us, her hair hovering around her face in snaking strands of blonde. She was naked and floating in formalin.
‘Fucking hell,’ I said quietly, stepping up to the coffin and looking down through the top. Her skin had bleached white, but otherwise she could have been drifting beneath the surface of the waves. Apart from her hair, she was completely still, her body hardened, arms out to either side, legs together, eyes open. She’d been operated on before she died: there was a scar along the side of her face, running past her ear and around to the back. A facelift. The stitches were still in place, but they didn’t run all the way down. Level with the top of the ear lobe they stopped, as if the surgeon had abandoned the procedure. Flesh was visible where the stitches didn’t continue.
I recognized her as Isabelle Connors.
The first woman to go missing two years before.
I glanced back at Megan. There were tears running down her face as she looked at the woman in the coffin. I brought her into me, partly to shield her from the sight of the woman looking out, and partly to quieten the sobs she was making.
We moved on.
Out of the dark emerged more shapes, defined and frozen in the glow from the phone. More coffins. More women. All blonde, all posed exactly the same as they lay submerged. When I moved to the next, I could see she’d had the same surgery, except her chin had been cut open too, a piece of silicone visible where the stitches hadn’t been closed properly. April Brunel. The second woman to be taken. The coffins were in order.
Then behind me, another noise.
A dull clunk.
I waited for it to repeat, but there was nothing. Just a buzz. I knew then I was right: it was a generator.