He recalled that the guy’s name was Ash or something like that.
The nurse kept walking, oblivious to the wounded man in the suit who had just materialized in the hospital corridor.
There was a doctor at the hospital he could trust, Doctor Enstein. The same man who had given him the list of names to begin with.
Athan wondered where Enstein got the names. Who was he working for? And who sent him to find Athan in the first place? Questions that could wait, he needed help.
“Excuse me?” Athan croaked to an orderly. “Where can I find a Doctor Enstein?”
“My goodness! Why aren’t you in emergency?” the orderly squealed as she stepped out from behind her desk to lend him a shoulder to lean on.
“I need Doctor Enstein,” he pleaded.
“We’ll get the doctor for you, but you need help now. Help here! Now!” she called.
Athan collapsed, and everything went black.
“How are you feeling, mate?” a voice roused Athan from the fog.
“Where am I?” Athan tried to sit up. “Ow!”
“Yeah, you need to just chill for bit.” It was Doctor Enstein. “You passed out upstairs.”
“Passed out?” Athan said checking his body, finding his arm bandaged up and a few more bandages across his chest. “My clothes! Where are my clothes?”
“An orderly took them to be cleaned, they should almost be done.” Enstein nodded.
“You did this?” Athan referred to the bandages, stretching his arm. Testing it.
“A nurse, before I got here. Sorry, I came as soon as I could. I didn’t expect you though. I didn’t think The Fixer got broken,” he said, smiling. “What are you doing in Melbourne? I thought it was safer in Ballarat.”
“Nowhere is safe, Doctor.” Athan said through clenched teeth.
His chest hurt.
“Very true. I’ll let you rest, mate. My office is just down the corridor to the left, next to the window. We’ll need to talk.”
“Yeah, we do…” Athan laid back to close his eyes then remembered Brad and Aadi who would be wondering what had happened to him. How would he contact them?
Belinda.
“Wait! Can I borrow your phone? There are people that need to know where I am.”
“Desperately?” Enstein asked doubtfully.
“Desperately.”
“Okay, here, take this one, and just bring it down to my office when you are ready. Your clothes wont be long.” With that Enstein took a mobile phone from his pocket and handed it to Athan before leaving the room.
Athan searched his own memory for the Belinda’s number, using her phone as middle ground for communication was something that Brad and Athan had discussed on the drive to Melbourne the day before. It was a plan that the two of them didn’t think they’d have to implement, but they didn’t know they were splitting up to perform an all out skirmish on the Lucas and Associates building.
He called and left a short message on Belinda’s phone, short and sweet, so she could relay the message to Brad.
Then he relaxed back into sleep.
“Hello?” Athan snapped awake, hearing the voice. A young woman was at the foot of his bed holding his clothes all fresh and pressed. “I’m sorry, I was asked to bring these to you as soon as I could, so…” she laid them out on the visitor’s chair. “Have the police been called?” she asked, trying to be helpful.
“What? No, why?” Athan became edgy, the last thing he needed was police questions.
“Well, you’ve been shot haven’t you?” She pointed to the clothes. “Generally they are notified first.” She must have been referring to the bullet holes through his sleeve.
“It was an accident. It’s all sorted out.” He tried to sound reassuring.
She nodded, not convinced and placed the shock glove on the end of the bed. “Okay. If you need anything, just press.” She gestured to the remote control connected to the bedside.
“Sweet. Thank you so much.”
As soon as she was gone Athan pulled on his clothes, awkwardly without breaking any stitches.
His broken ribs were the most uncomfortable part.
When he was dressed he grabbed doctor Enstein’s phone and slipped out of the ward, wandering down the corridor to the office with the window.
He knocked lightly.
“Yeah?” Enstein answered from within. Athan pushed the door open and saw that the doctor was sitting casually at his desk behind a pile of forms and books. “The paperwork is the killer mate. You’d think it would be the long hours.” He smiled and offered the seat opposite for Athan to sit down.
“Thank you.”
Enstein adjusted himself in his chair and looked like he was waiting.
“I’ll start,” Athan said, as he tried to get comfortable. “Who are you working for?”
“The hospital.” Enstein nodded.
“Seriously?”
“Well, mostly. You are referring to the names on the list aren’t you?” Athan nodded. “Umm…this is awkward.” Enstein turned to the window and looked out at the car park and the adjoining buildings. “The head of my department was the one who put me in contact with you. She said you were The Fixer and you’d be able to make these patients wake up. It sounded a little bit mysterious to me, but I did as I was told. We got word of Kendra Thompson waking in the Ballarat hospital, then my department manager had a cardiac arrest.” Enstein was quiet a moment, and Athan felt there was more to the story. “She was forty-one, and she was a medical professional. It was unusual. Personally, I thought that maybe it wasn’t a real heart attack.”
“You think she was killed?” Athan said, getting to the point. The doctor screwed up his nose a little.
“That did cross my mind a few times, especially after what you were doing. Somebody made that group of people unconscious, and they weren’t happy about her getting you to wake them. Is that how you ended up in our care, Fixer?”
“I won’t lie to you, you know more of the story than I would have expected, and for all I know you are now a target.” Athan said with a shrug. “Sorry.”
“Awesome.” Enstein said, sitting back and taking a mouthful of his cold coffee.
“They want me and I came to them without even knowing. So they will be hot on my trail. The coma patients are the past, part of a plan that is now underway, that we need to stop.” Athan said, becoming aware of the pain in his chest.
“We?” Enstein raised a brow.
“Well not you specifically, I mean me and the people I’m working with.”
Dr Enstein sat staring at his desk, considering all he had heard so far.
“There is another thing.” Enstein looked at Athan again. “Dr Schulz told me to tell you something if I ever saw you again. She said tell him to go through you.” Enstein adjusted his glasses and shrugged.
“What?”
“Through me. Do you know what she means?” Enstein tilted his head with curiousity.
“I think I might.” Athan rubbed at his now whiskered face.
Enstein leaned forward. “What is it about? And what exactly is happening? Should I fear for my family? And do I get to know your real name?”
Athan sat back and thought about all these useless questions.
Telling Enstein anything won’t help me, if anything it could put him in more danger.
What really concerned Athan was that the person who had the answers was, once again, dead.
I guess I need to go through him.
“Go through you, yeah?” Athan asked, hoping he knew more than that request.
“That’s what the message said. Are you going to leave me hangin’ or what Fixer? I need to know something!” the doctor pleaded.
“I’m a Post-Human. Do you know what that is?”
Enstein adjusted his glasses. “Yes of course, we covered that in advanced genetics. But’s incredibly rare.”
“Hmm…not as rare as you might think, Dr Enstein.” Athan said with a half smile.
“Well, it’s a thing, and I’m not alone. People like me are the ones in danger, if these guys go through with their plan.”
“Like some sort of cure?”
“Sort of, but mostly like genocide. A seek and destroy, fear of change thing.” Athan waited for the scientific questions that an expert might ask.
Enstein nodded slowly, still looking doubtful. “And the message?” he asked. “How does that relate?”
“That, I think could be related to my ability. Do you mind standing up Dr Enstein?” The doctor stood in his office, with a look of utter curiosity on his face. Athan stepped around the desk until he stood directly in front of the doctor. “Thanks for everything,” he said before disappearing into the man, who stood with an expression of dumb shock on his face.
Then he vomited into his waste paper basket.
The landscape was similar to what he was expecting, slightly hilly with a few skeletal shapes protruding through the leathery skin of the ground. It was definitely what passed for daytime here.
The white glow through the mist made everything look a little shiny, like scar tissue that was a little stretched.
He couldn’t feel the presence of anything new either, no exits, no black-cloaked beings and no weird dog-like caterpillars. The place was quiet and empty.
Then the side of a hill began to open.
It was a sickening sight, like a great sphincter was slowly loosening till it presented a stretched fleshy cave.
A cave with bony steps.
This had to be what Dr Schulz, Enstein’s mysterious supervisor, was referring to. Why else would he have been asked to go through Dr Enstein?
Athan shook his head.
How is a Melbourne doctor linked to this place? How did they know to direct me here?
He climbed through the cave entrance and plodded down the ridged bony steps.
After about half an hour of continuously going down he reached a flat platform with a sign standing next to the edge of the next flight. It was the sort of sign you would see at the front of a restaurant or café with the day’s specials.
Athan blinked at the sight. This was not something he had ever seen before.
On the sign, in chalk was written Mr Harper, please report to reception which almost made Athan want to run back up the stairs to the fleshy door.
What was a sign addressed to him doing in a damp organic tunnel?
Alice in wonderland…
It was like a surgeon finding a working television in the intestines of a patient during surgery.
It seemed to Athan that the mysteries of his metaphysical plane had thrown him another unusual sight. He hoped that he wasn’t wasting his time in this place. His friends needed him.
Down the rabbit hole…
He chose to follow.
The second flight of bony stairs led him down to a suspended platform inside the biggest cavern he had ever seen. It was like the space of entire countries suspended at different levels like flat fungus.
It was so complex.
Where the hell am I?
Walkways connected different platforms and ridged ladder like structures or stairs connected higher platforms with lower ones. It looked altogether like a gigantic meaty version of M. C. Escher’s never ending staircase.
Each platform had its own forests and mountains, and some things that looked like towers or cities.
It was while Athan was being captivated by this new world, under his metaphysical world, that he heard a cough from behind him.
He turned quickly, ready to use the shock glove to defend himself, but was surprised by a gangly creature, half resembling a man sitting behind an old mahogany desk.
Curiouser and curiouser…
“Hello. Can I help you at all?” The creature said with its narrow dark pink almost-human face.
“What?” was all Athan could manage.
“Are you Mr Harper?” it asked tilting its head in a very human way. Then it began to leaf through an organizer that was laid out in front of him.
“Yes. Who are you?” Athan managed to say with wide eyes.
The thing smiled a little, showing rows of little pointed teeth. “I’m the secretary, of course.”
“The secretary of what?”
The creature frowned. “The ones in charge, obviously.”
“And who’s in charge?” Athan said still lingering on the spot.
“Wow. That is why the ones in charge don’t talk to your kind. You just start asking all these stupid questions that you think you have the right to know. You are as bad as the regular flavour humans.”
“Flavour?” He had no idea where he was or who this thing was, or if it meant him harm or not. He was fairly sure he was a bit scared.
“Last time, some dude asked me to prove my power as a god. Weirdo right? You guys were fairly primitive at the time, but still. I’m just a secretary. Geez! I’m not even paid that well!”
“I’m lost.” Athan shook his head.
“No you are in just the right place. I’m supposed to give you the saving the world memo as usual, but it appears the humans in your plane have come up with an ingenious loophole to the ‘Hope System’ the Big Guy’s set up. So there’s a little more to tell.”
Athan blinked and stared blankly at the being in front of him. He had never seen or heard anything about any of this before, it was all a bit much to take in. Athan decided to take it a little bit at a time.
He took a deep breath.
“Who are you?”
The being sighed. “The secretary.”
“What are you?”
The being sat his head in his hands in a very human gesture. “A person that lives here…”
“The ones in charge?” Athan asked, squinting at the creature.
He was a little shaky. He had no concept of this world beneath his metaphysical plane, or strange lanky beings that speak perfect English. This particular creature was claiming to be a secretary of some kind, and he was referring to beings with greater power.
Athan’s head was spinning.
“The Big guys, Athan.” The creature raised an eyebrow, then rolled his eyes as if to say that Athan was particularly thick. “People where you come from call them Gods or prophets and stuff. They are guys that don’t have a real plane of their own, and when they try and have a normal conversation with anyone people get a little crazy. This one time your guys went berserk and built a bunch of big stone pyramids for them, then Huitzilopochtli went to a spot on the other side of your planet and tried the same routine and they did it for him too. Those two always love a bit of competition though. Healthy, they think.”
Athan stood with mouth agape.
“They are not from here, they have their offices here sometimes, or they visit friends. They are a little advanced to be hanging around in this stink hole.” The creature gave a laugh at the thought, but Athan said nothing. The being shook his head, tried to look more serious.
“You and your kind were created by these Big Guys. They do a lot of work in this plane, in yours and in a few others and nobody knows anything except for them.”
“They created mankind?”
“No. The special ones. You call Them Post-Humans. They were an idea of He’lenanos, ah…Horus, I thinks some of your guys call him. Called him. He’s the man when it comes to premeditated social and cultural outcomes assisted by genetic interference.” He smiled a toothy smile. “He initiated the genetic interference. Tweaked stuff way back, and more people are coming up with this fun anomaly these days.”
“Anomaly? This is incredible stuff, and kinda too much for me to take in in one sitting. I’m still coming to terms with meeting you, no offence.” Athan said rubbing at his whiskered cheeks and trying not to stare.
“Yeah, I know the feeling. The first time I saw an interpl
ane being I was batty! Anyway Athan, we don’t have all the time in the worlds, and the guys in charge won’t deal with interplane complaints and malpractice suits personally, so I am your guy.”
“Okay,” Athan said slowly, not really understanding a lot of this. “Where’d you get a desk? It’s made of wood. Wood is a thing from where I come from.”
The creature hissed a little and gave Athan a guilty look. “Yeah, my people are what you might call collectors, and we collect stuff from places you might not expect.”
“Try me.”
“Human minds.” The secretary shrugged. “Sorry. We have some of the coolest stuff around, but once we get it from a human subconscious it’s ours. It’s like long-term borrowing. Ever forgotten something? Yeah, that was one of us. Its how we get by. Anyway, back to you and saving your world.”
“Bloody hell.” Athan looked around him at the strange place and shook his head.
“Yeah, it’s a big deal actually, but I can’t tell you exactly what’s happening without giving you the whole story.”
Athan thought of Furnace locked in a cage, or under the control of that evil man, Boothe.
There wasn’t time for long stories, but he realized that he couldn’t run in to rescue her without the support or information from this strange being. If this was supposed to be the help he was going to receive, he had better take it.
“Go on then, I guess.” Athan took a deep breath.
“Okay, where was I? Oh, the Post-Humans! Yes, so this Horus guy and a couple of others did this experiment that was supposed to push human evolution and cultural development further and faster. Worked okay, but the anomaly doesn’t occur very often, plus your people are scared of their own kind, which is hilarious, FYI.”
“You just said ‘FYI’.” Athan screwed up his nose and shook his head.
“Yeah, we pick through your languages too. We learn tons of them, and heaps of trendy abbreviations.” The secretary grinned proudly.
“Fair enough I guess. Can I sit or something, I’ve been just a little roughed up before I came.”
The Post-Humans (Book 1): The League Page 19