After ten years of destruction, even the university and the DRA couldn’t replace equipment. Food and arms had manufacturing priority. Adam was doing whatever he could with items salvaged from bombed schools and doctors’ surgeries, repairing them himself. The lab was a bizarre mix of state-of-the-art computers and jury-rigged test benches.
Just like the Stranded. I go for walks in the rubble at night and loot ruins like a scavenger. Where’s your Octus Medal laureate now, Chairman Dalyell? Where’s the man who saved the world? Lying, looting, and doing high-school biology experiments on the most dangerous life-form on Sera. God help us all.
A thought crossed his mind, but he knew it was insane. How long had it been since he’d talked to Myrrah? His last visit to the tunnel cities had been just before E-Day. They’d spoken since—if radio transmissions that were never answered or notes left hidden at cave entrances could be called conversation—but the message was always clear. She’d put her trust in him and he’d failed her. She had no choice but to invade the surface and displace humans to save her own species.
You know what we are, Adam. He could hear her voice more clearly than Elain’s sometimes; authoritative, patrician, human. You know where we came from. We deserve to live, we have the right to live, but you’ll never let us. Just remember that what’s killing us will one day kill you. And I shall be there to see it.
He pulled open the bottom drawer of one of the filing cabinets. The transmitter sat there, wires coiled around it, looking more like a very old hair dryer connected to a cigar box than a radio set. The Locust had always been adept at recycling human technology. Now they had their own, very often organic. Elain would have been fascinated by their skill at engineering other species into living weapons for their war effort. Perhaps she’d glimpsed some of it before she died. He almost hoped she had, that she’d had at least one final moment of the revelation and discovery that she lived for.
They’re a civilization in their own right. They’re the enemy, but nobody can deny what they have and what they are.
Adam hefted the receiver in his hand and blew off the dust. He knew it was too late. There could be no truce, no accommodation. Even humanity was divided, COG against Stranded, unforgivable and unforgiven. As many people had been killed by the Hammer strikes as by the Locust.
Maybe even more. Pin a medal on that. Another mistake to atone for.
He set the transmitter on the bench and plugged it into the power supply. If he didn’t try, he’d never know. But with every day he kept this to himself, every scrap of research carried out in secrecy, his guilt compounded itself. Could he possibly do any more damage?
He stared at the transmitter for a full minute before flicking the switch. The faint buzz of a circuit that hadn’t been used in years suddenly filled the room. There was probably no receiver at the other end now.
“Myrrah?” Even saying the name was an effort. The circuit did sound as if it was functioning, though. “Myrrah, this is Adam Fenix. We need to talk.”
When Adam read quotations from the great leaders of history, their words at pivotal moments, he always wondered how they chose them so well. They always had a memorably perfect phrase to hand. Now he realized they did nothing of the sort, and that whatever they actually said had either been written for them in advance, or transformed after the event by publicity experts. They said dull, unimaginative things that weren’t the stuff of history.
“The Lambent are going to destroy you, Myrrah,” he said. “I know you never found a solution yourself. I can see it. So you need us—you need the COG. Stop this. It’s not too late.”
Adam stared at the handset for a few more minutes. He could still hear the faint hiss of static. For a moment, he could have sworn he heard a slight pop on the other end, but it could have been anything, and he felt foolish for imagining someone would be there to listen after so many silent years.
He locked the laboratory, put his briefcase in the safe, and took the autopsy files out of the cabinet. Then he phoned for a staff car to go to the office. In the echoing hall, the long case clock ticked so loudly that it sounded like a thudding heartbeat.
Sometimes inanimate objects spoke more eloquently than any statesman.
COG DEFENSE RESEARCH AGENCY, JACINTO.
They said there were remote South Island tribes who were afraid of photographs because they believed they captured souls. Nevil never mocked that belief. He understood it.
He had days when he could face Emil’s picture and others when it was still too much even five years later. Most of the time it lived in his desk drawer, face-down on top of a dog-eared staff booklet on the DRA pension fund that had vanished along with the rest of the Tyran economy. Today he felt strong enough to take out the framed photograph and position it to the right of his computer screen. It showed Emil in the uniform of the Duke of Tollen’s Regiment, a big guy with a big grin, all pride and commitment. Nevil stood beside him in a formal suit, all regret.
Emil had written on it: My kid brother, the one with the brains.
It looked like a military medal ceremony, as if Emil was the focus of the event. But it had been taken on the day that Nevil had become Dr. Estrom in a plain suit he’d last worn for their father’s funeral. Tyrus no longer made luxuries like academic gowns. Emil had found the phrase hooding ceremony very funny, “like some goddamn gang initiation.”
Nevil would have traded his doctorate and every useless piece of fucking paper telling him what a clever boy he was for the chance to serve alongside Emil. Today, they were so desperate for Gears that he would have been allowed to. But now he was deemed too valuable to the war effort to do even that.
Safe on my ass. Sorry, Emil.
Mom, as usual, hadn’t bothered to show up at the ceremony. Nevil thought that was for the best. He leaned back in his chair and tried to concentrate on the power requirements of a ground-based Hammer laser generator, but all he could think about was Emil and all the things they’d never had the chance to do. Outside in the corridor, the snack trolley rumbled past and shuddered to a halt at the end of the corridor. It was so quiet in the building with so many people gone that the remaining canteen staff didn’t need to yell “Tea!” any longer as they went on their rounds. Some routines carried on regardless of grubs. They had to, to give the day some focus, to remind everyone that life was worth carrying on and that one day it might return to normal.
Normal? Just take a look at the news.
The television was never switched off now. It sat on the tall filing cabinet opposite Adam’s desk, permanently tuned to the news station that was now pretty well all that was left of Tyrus state broadcasting. Nevil debated whether to step out and get some coffee from the trolley but decided the news was more important for the time being. He found himself watching recon footage from Raven patrols. The southern edge of the Ephyra plateau was a national park, an idyllic landscape he’d seen on picture postcards all his life, and it still looked pretty until the shot swung around with the Raven to show the shattered buildings and columns of smoke that marked the path of the Locust advance. Nobody could accuse the COG of feeding its citizens upbeat propaganda. Ephyra itself was next. The footage said it all.
What are we going to do with all the records if we have to evacuate? We can’t move them all. We’re five years behind on transferring them from paper to computer. How the hell will we ever start over if we lose all that?
The DRA had contingency plans like every other government department, off-site recovery drills to move essential data and equipment to a safer site and set up again. But they were running out of safer sites. Nevil sometimes wondered if anyone really had a handle on all this. After the first year—the total shock of E-Day, the immediate slaughter, and then the even bigger losses from the Hammer strikes—the war had turned into a slow-burning fire. There was time to move what was left. Nevil tried to imagine a world with no national library and archive, no universities, and no museums. All governments had stashed away what they could, even d
uring the Pendulum Wars, but this was different. This was the final phase of an apocalypse.
Nevil found himself thinking that—surely—someone on a higher pay grade than his had this all under control, and then remembered there was no such concept in government. Not even the COG thought of everything.
And I’m as responsible for the Hammer as Adam is.
Seismology. What were the university geologists doing while the Locust were tunneling all that time?
This war was so full of unanswered questions and things that didn’t make sense that people had stopped asking, even those whose job it was to keep asking. The why didn’t seem to matter half as much as the how these days. Nevil found himself unable to concentrate on power requirements. His attention was too torn between the news, working out what he’d grab first if the contingency plan went belly-up as plans so often did, and the vague, nagging anxieties circling around in his semi-conscious like sharks.
He found himself staring at Emil’s photo when the standby fire alarm went off, three short blips that meant they should wait for instructions while some emergency was checked out. It was only when the alarm changed to a single continuous bell that it was time to drop everything and get out. Nobody else seemed to be moving around. Nevil did as the blips told him and waited, but he slid his desk drawer open and took out a few key things—filled notebooks, calculator, the pistol he knew he’d never use—just in case. He stacked them next to the photo, ready to shove them in his briefcase and run.
Leave personal belongings behind—sure. Can’t replace all that.
And there was still no sign of Adam. The clock on the wall, its faded cream face marked COLNA BROS., JACINTO in ornate script, showed just past midday, 1306 hours. Nevil checked his watch and forced himself back to the calculations on the screen in front of him, one ear still on the alarm. In the background, the news continued to remind him that things were deteriorating fast.
Okay, concentrate. How do I get that power output up twenty percent? Because that’s what it’s going to take.
He slipped back into the trance of staring at the figures on the screen until the alarm bell switched to a continuous tone and the public address system burst into life.
“Attention all staff. This is not a drill.” It was Gordie, clearly uncomfortable with using the PA. “Please evacuate the building. Off-site recovery procedure. Mainframe shutdown in five minutes.” He cleared his throat. “Apologies for scaring everyone with the fire alarm, sirs, but I’ve only got two signals to choose from, standby and run.”
Nevil heard a burst of laughter from an office up the corridor and the sound of filing cabinets opening. Yes, everyone knew the drill. And the order to evacuate must have come from Adam, which meant he was in the building somewhere. Everyone was used to running. Every civilian was ready to move out at a moment’s notice, every office and business practiced at a hasty exit, because that was how people had survived for the past ten years—by staying ahead of the grubs.
Except this is Ephyra. We always thought we were safe here, more or less.
Nevil logged out of the mainframe before the shutdown and then grabbed everything on his must-take list at a steady pace, knowing he had time. Boots clattered along the parquet corridor. For a moment they were fading, moving away, but after a few seconds’ silence, one pair of feet came back down the passage at a brisk stride, and the door burst open.
“Hi, Adam,” Nevil said. “Why are we clearing out this time? Precaution, or what?”
Adam looked terrible. It was the only way to describe it. He usually looked tired, but now he looked anguished as well, and it wasn’t a look that Nevil was used to seeing.
“Not my call,” he said. “Hoffman’s orders. He’s prepping for a ground assault on Ephyra and he wants all non-military personnel out of here.”
“Are you okay?”
“No. I’m not.”
“Look, we’ve done this before. We give it a couple of days and then we roll back in.”
Adam looked at him with a frown as if he thought Nevil didn’t get it, then hauled a sheaf of folders out of his briefcase and laid them on the desk. It seemed a crazy, confused thing to do when they were supposed to be taking as much as they could carry out of the building.
Nevil stared. So it was Adam who’d taken the autopsy folders from the archives.
“Sorry, Nevil. I should have returned them.”
Nevil wasn’t sure what to say. It wasn’t that Adam had taken the folders that surprised him, but that he hadn’t said so when Nevil mentioned it.
“They’re not supposed to leave the building.” Nevil, ready for this moment, shoved the contents of his in-tray into his case, including his folder with the e-hole image he couldn’t explain. “It’s academic now, though. Come on, Adam.” He indicated the bulging briefcase. “I’ve cleared your drawer too. Let’s go.”
Adam stood frozen for a moment, looking around the office. Nevil felt guilty for nagging him. Damn, this wasn’t just his boss: Adam was a veteran Gear, a national hero, a man who’d earned the right to break a few bureaucratic rules. Nevil jerked his head in the direction of the fire exit.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” Adam said.
“It can wait.” Nevil shut and locked the door out of habit. Adam walked ahead of him down the corridor but kept half-turning and holding them up. “We’ve got to get to the rendezvous point.”
“No, I mean it.”
“Keep moving.”
“Goddamn, this is important, Nevil.”
“Have we left something behind?”
“No. But—”
“Then it can wait until we’re out of here.”
Adam took the hint and the two men quickened their pace, then broke into a jog that Nevil was determined wouldn’t turn into a panicked sprint. They’d been here before. They’d always come back later when the alert was over. But for the time being, they were getting on the transports to the east side of Ephyra, Jacinto itself, the unbroken granite core of the plateau that swept down to the sea.
When they got outside, about fifty or sixty DRA staff were milling around, feeding a human chain with filing boxes to load another truck. It was more than a lifetime’s work being saved. It was the labor of generations of scientists. Adam was rooted to the spot, stricken, not his usual focused self.
Poor bastard. He’s the Director. He’s been under a lot of strain.
Nevil put his hand under Adam’s elbow to get him to move. Maybe a military approach would galvanize him. “Mount up, sir.”
“No. I need to tell you something. The files. That image.”
“So what if you take work home with you? No harm done.”
Adam grabbed Nevil’s arm and led him a few meters from the evacuation team, none of whom seemed to have noticed that their boss was as close to freaking out as Nevil had ever seen him. This wasn’t Adam Fenix at all. He stared into Nevil’s eyes, almost nose to nose, grip tight and showing no signs of relaxing.
“You mentioned an image.”
“Adam, you’re starting to scare me.”
“The image. Tell me. Which image?”
Nevil had clipped it inside the flap of his working folder. The trucks didn’t seem close to moving off, so maybe it would be easier to humor Adam and avoid a scene. “Here. An emergence hole. No date, but it was taken years before E-Day. See the building in the background? Demolished during the Pendulum Wars. It doesn’t make sense.”
Adam took it and stared at it, anguished, as if it was a picture of a dead relative, then pinched the bridge of his nose. It was his oh-shit gesture. Nevil had seen it all too often when the Hammer tests had been going wrong and Adam had despaired of ever getting the satellite array operational.
“I’ve been working on something,” he said. “I need to tell someone now. I need to tell you.”
Nevil’s gut flipped over. This was it: this would be the miracle in the nick of time, the brilliant plan or device that would finally see off the grubs. This wa
s Adam Fenix, after all. Nevil started to feel a weirdly excited relief hiking his heart rate.
“You’re cutting this pretty damn fine, sir …”
“I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“The Locust. I found them. I knew.” His words were perfectly clear but they made no sense whatsoever to Nevil. He had to be mis-hearing all this. “I tried to talk them out of emerging. I tried to stop them. You have no idea what’s down there, Nevil, no idea what made them do it.” Adam seemed to be waiting for a reaction. Nevil looked around for a moment, expecting the others to be staring at them, but everyone was too busy clearing out. “For God’s sake, Nevil, are you listening to me? The Locust. I knew about them before E-Day, five years earlier, and I thought I could avoid a holocaust if I came up with a scientific solution.”
No, Nevil hadn’t misunderstood. He hadn’t misunderstood at all. And he couldn’t say a word. There was nothing in his brain that would come out as a rational sentence.
He knew. He knew.
“Nevil, we couldn’t have defeated them anyway, whether we knew they were coming or not.”
My boss knew. The man I trust. The man the Chairman trusts.
“Nevil, say something.”
No, it can’t be. Why would he do that? Why would he keep it to himself?
Adam shook him. “For God’s sake, do you understand what I’ve told you? I never told anyone. Ever. Not even Marcus. I just couldn’t. Forgive me, Nevil. Please. But I can still stop this. I know I can.”
All Nevil could see now was Emil, watching the chaotic, terrifying footage of the Locust invasion on the news flash and saying that he was going to do something about it. He enlisted the next day. He waited in line at the recruiting office for three hours, he said, because there were so many volunteers who wanted to fight.
And now Emil was dead.
Nevil prided himself on clarity. He was a physicist: he saw both the bigger picture of the universe and the subatomic detail with equal ease. But right then all he could do was stare at Adam and try to place a few random thoughts together, small thoughts, fragmented thoughts, like trying to put a priceless broken vase back together and not knowing how to make the pieces fit again. He couldn’t take in the global enormity of a once-heroic man who knew the grubs were coming but said nothing, but he could certainly join up the smaller pieces—his dead brother, a man he’d respected and adored, and the speechless, confused pain that now gripped him.
Gears of War: The Slab (Gears of War 5) Page 7