The Deepest Cut

by Conor Corderoy

  I said, “Is this where you develop the hybrids?”

  She nodded. “We grow them. They start as buds. She pointed out at the forest. “Those are mainly Seraphs. Upstairs, there are Grays and experimental strains.”

  I froze and felt my skin crawl. “Those buds… Those cabbage things…”

  She nodded. “They will grow into bodies that we will store in vats like these. When you killed Golika, who you called Rinpoche, it was easy to transfer his brain, which was largely undamaged, into another body. In this way, we can live for centuries, replacing our bodies every fifty years or so. The knowledge and wisdom we accumulate are beyond your imagining.”

  We stared at each other a minute. The hostility was palpable.

  I said, “Are you sure? How would you know? You still want to be like us, don’t you? But, you know, we wouldn’t really want to be like you.” She didn’t answer, just stared.

  I said, “Where is this damned loading bay?”

  She turned away without saying anything then led me through the lab into the chamber with the tall, slim vats. Each one emanated a soft, green light. Plastic tubes ran between them, feeding into them, an endless network of artificial roots. Soft sighs and gentle bubbling noises whispered and echoed around the cavern. I filmed as we went. It had a strange feeling, like an alien forest—or a cathedral built to an alien god.

  After a few minutes, we came to the other side and passed through an arch to a broad ramp that descended, turning gently to the left. She took hold of the trolley and we eased it down the ramp into a large loading bay. A truck with a container was pulling out, accelerating away down a long tunnel.

  The scale of the place was surprising. To the left, a bank of hydraulic elevators opened onto a raised platform that must have been at least two hundred feet long. Beyond it was an open area where I could see a fleet of trucks. They were painted with the livery of several well-known corporations. She pushed the trolley to the right and we began to move toward a line of smaller vehicles, vans and saloon cars.

  I said, “What the hell is this for?”

  She said, “It’s the invasion of the body snatchers, Murdoch, only much worse.”

  We had pulled level with a white van and she slid open the side door.

  Then she paused, studying my face. “We are taking you and modifying you. We take you in and ship you out—by the millions. We make politicians, civil servants, actors, directors, whores—lots of those. You name it, and we make it.”

  She pointed down the tunnel. “That was a shipment bound for London, pleasure models for an exclusive club. Del Roble and Banks will be there to enjoy them—only they won’t. The girls’ memories will be implanted. They will never know where they came from.”

  She turned back to me. “This is not the only facility, Murdoch. We are changing you into submissive drones. We are jealous of you. We hate you because you can feel and love and grow, and we are stuck in hell. You know what hell is, Murdoch?”

  I shrugged, shook my head. “Pain?”

  She smiled. “No, pain is just a very strong motivation. Hell is not being able to move, to grow. Some of us have lived a thousand years and more but never changed. We assimilate information, but it doesn’t change us. We are stuck. We want what you have.”

  I helped her slide the trolley into the van and secure it. She slammed the door shut and stood close to me with her hands on my chest.

  “Take me with you, Murdoch. I have felt things with you. I came so close…”

  I touched her face. “What about her? What about Maria?”

  She gently held my hand and rubbed it with her cheek. “We’ll take her back. She’ll be okay. She won’t remember anything. I can help you. I can provide facts, evidence, names and dates, and in exchange you can help me to feel, to grow, to be like you.”

  I cupped her face in both my hands and kissed her. I said, “You know you own me. I have felt things with you I have never felt with any other woman. But I need to know what you have implanted in her brain.”

  She faltered. “We got out before—”

  “Don’t lie to me. Tell me the truth and you have your ticket out of here.”

  She closed her eyes and spoke without opening them. “It’s a hard habit to break for us.”

  “Lying?”

  She opened her eyes. “Loyalty to the Seraphs. It’s a biochip.”

  “What does it do?”

  “It’s connected to her handler. She will unconsciously transmit information to him, and he can control her actions and her behavior.”

  “Only her handler?”

  She nodded and shrugged. “Yes, it’s personal to the handler.”

  “Who’s her handler?”

  She smiled. “Was. Her handler was del Roble.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was just after eight. I said, “I’ll drive. You keep an eye on Maria.”

  We climbed in. I pulled out of the parking lot and headed into the long tunnel out to the desert and the long highway that led to Algiers in the north.

  Nobody tried to stop us.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  We exploded into the morning. The sun was low in the east, but there was already a heat haze on the hills. The tarmac gave out and we were on a broad dirt track, moving fast toward the black ribbon of the highway maybe a mile or two away. I heard Maria moan in back.

  Joanna turned instinctively to look at her and said, “It’s okay. Rest. You’ll be safe soon.”

  Maria seemed to settle, and I smiled at Joanna.

  “You know what? You might make a decent human being after all,” I said.

  She gave a small laugh.

  After a moment, I said, “You bring everybody in and out by road?” I shook my head. “The logistics would be impossible.”

  She laughed again. “No. We have ships. We have technologies you only fantasize about in your science fiction.” She turned to face me. “You remember when you were driving down here? You had fallen behind at Algeciras…”

  I nodded. “Yeah…something weird happened in the desert.”

  Her laughter was like the crowing of a bird. She said, “You were abducted by aliens. That was one of the ships. Don’t ask me to explain how they work. We have reached heights in particle physics you can’t even imagine.”

  “Not even in our science fiction?”

  Something in the tone of my voice made her glance at me. I swung the wheel and we rattled off the dirt track, half sliding down the side of a hill toward a shallow valley about half a mile away, where two low hills cast a pool of shade in the morning light.

  She said, “What are you doing?”

  I said, “Bear with me.”

  Maria had started moaning again.

  Joanna turned in her seat and muttered, “It’s okay, baby. You’re going to be safe soon.”

  We hit the floor of the valley and I started to accelerate toward the two hills. I could just make out the shape of the Land Rover in the shadows. The van was bouncing like it was about to fall apart.

  Joanna frowned at me. “Take it easy. What the hell are you doing?”

  I glanced at the clock on the dash. It said eight-forty a.m. I slammed on the brakes and we skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust six feet from the Land Rover. I said, “Get out. Fast.”

  She climbed out. She was looking around her, a bit wild, like a person who feels she’s losing control.

  I said, “Help me.”

  I ripped open the side door to the van and started dragging Maria out. I could see by her face that she was fretting.

  Joanna grabbed her and helped me pull her from the trolley, muttering, “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.” To me, she frowned and snapped, “What the hell are you doing, Murdoch?”

  I said, “There’s no time, Joanna. Shut up and help.” I dragged Maria around to the Land Rover and bundled her in the passenger seat.

  Joanna kept repeating, “What are you doing? What are you doing?”

  I said, “I’ll explain as we go.
Help me at the back.” I half ran to the back of the vehicle and ripped open the door.

  She came around behind me and saw me grabbing the spade. She just had time to frown and say, “Wha?” before I smashed her between the eyes with the handle. She staggered back a few paces. I took the spade with both hands and swung it like an ax, over my head with all my strength and let out a bestial roar. The blade split her head in two, right down to her collarbones. Her legs twitched and danced for a second then she dropped to the sand, soaking it with a pool of thick, glutinous blood. I beat her head a few more times until her brains were mashed and mixed in with the sand. I fired up the van and positioned it over her so she was under the fuel line. Then I crawled under and cut it so the fuel tank started to drain out onto what was left of her head.

  I climbed into the Land Rover and saw that Maria was awake. She had her eyes open and was staring out of the windshield. She didn’t look at me or say anything. I fired up the truck and drove away from the van, about thirty or forty feet. Then I stopped, climbed out and took careful aim with the Sig.

  The tank must have been full. The van leaped five feet into the air. The flaming body was tossed up the side of the hill where it lay twisted and smoldering, the shattered stump that had been the head blackened and in flames. I climbed back in and closed the door. We took off, headed west across the desert. After about five minutes, we crossed the highway and plunged on into the desert.

  At eight-fifty a.m. I saw six black specks appear over the horizon in the northwest. In seconds, they had turned into low-flying Typhoon FGR4s. The sky tore open with a terrible shriek of jet engines as they thundered overhead, tearing up the sand from the desert and rocking the Defender on its suspension. I braked, opened the door and leaned out. Ten seconds passed and the earth shook. It shook six times in rapid succession. Huge billows of black smoke mushroomed into the air, spilling blackened dust into the upper atmosphere. I watched the Typhoons fan out, curl around in the darkening air and come in for a second run.

  The second lot of explosions were more muted, but you could feel the tremor in the ground, like a distant earthquake, and I guessed they were using deep penetration bunker-busters. As I climbed back in the cab, they were coming in for a third attack. I slammed the door, put it in gear and plowed into the desert. Maria was sitting with her elbows on her knees and her hands over her head.

  I gave her a minute, then asked, “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t answer.

  We drove for an hour in silence until I saw some steep rock cliffs on my left, about four or five miles away. I headed for them, found a shallow cave and parked inside, where it gave us some shelter and shade and we would be hidden from view until sundown. Then we would move on. Maria curled up on the ground and went straight to sleep.

  * * * *

  At just after six, the sun touched the horizon and began to sink. I woke Maria and told her to get in the Land Rover. She was so groggy that I almost had to drag her to her feet. It gets dark really quick near the equator, and as I started the engine, the sunset was draining into blackness.

  I watched her a moment and said, “Are you up to talking?”

  She was silent for a couple of beats then nodded. “I don’t remember. Why are we here, Liam? Why are we in the desert? Who have I been with?”

  I’m not ashamed to admit that I had to bite back tears right then. I said, “We’ll come to that, baby. Right now, let me tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to head north toward the N107, maybe lose the Defender in Ghardaia and take the 107 west toward Morocco. We’ll cross the border south of Tlemcen, then catch a flight to Heathrow or Gatwick from Rabat. Okay?”

  She stared at me. Her cheeks were sunken and she had deep shadows under her eyes. She was struggling, trying to read my face. I just wanted to take her in my arms and tell her everything was going to be okay, but I knew I couldn’t. Not yet. I had to be sure.

  I pulled out of the cover of the cave and headed west. I glanced at Maria a couple of times to see if she had registered the direction, but all she did was close her eyes and try to get comfortable.

  I drove west for about ten hours. We made occasional pit stops, but we had no food and little water, so the stops were short and we didn’t talk. It was back-breaking, but finally, about four in the morning, I began to see a faint glow of light on the horizon. It was a town called Igli. We wouldn’t stop there. I didn’t think they’d be expecting us, but I was pretty sure two Americans—one a girl—in a Land Rover would arouse some interest if we were seen. No, Igli was good news, not because we could stop and get food and water—we couldn’t—but because it was just eighty miles from the border with Morocco. And Morocco was one step closer to escape.

  If there was ever any escape.

  I noticed Maria was awake. She was staring dully at the haze of light on the horizon. She said, “Is that Gardaia?”

  I said, “Yeah. We’re on the second tank and it’s holding out. So, I’m going to give it a miss and hit the N107. I want to get as close to the Atlas Mountains as I can tonight. We’ll cross the border tomorrow, at Maghnia.”

  She didn’t answer. She just stared ahead. After a few minutes, she said, “You killed Joanna so ruthlessly. It was as though you felt nothing. How could you do that? What did you feel?”

  I went cold and my skin prickled. I said, “How do you know about that, baby?”

  She gazed at the dash a long while. Eventually I realized she wasn’t going to answer.

  I said, “You were asleep. What do you remember?”

  I glanced at her and saw she was watching me.

  She said very quietly, “I’m not sure…”

  A few minutes later, we crested the hill and there, maybe twenty miles away, was Igli. It was as dull and dead as every other place I had seen in this forsaken, blasted desert, but I wasn’t planning to go searching for hot nightspots. The N6B passed close by on the south, and that’s what I was looking for. That, and the Moroccan border that lay just beyond it.

  Behind Igli, the land rose steeply into a rocky tableland. Climbing the rock in a vehicle would be slow and difficult, so for this stretch I needed to risk the road. I figured that at four in the morning, four-hundred miles from where they probably expected me to be—if I was right about Maria—I could risk the road for half an hour.

  We descended the sandy, rocky slope at a bone-rattling fifty miles per hour and hit the N6B just south of the town. We passed a couple of small residential areas that seemed more like barracks, then turned a sharp left, with the brakes squealing in the gray, predawn silence. I was scanning left and right, searching for a suitable prey. I had very little time in which to act, but I saw what I was looking for as we approached the exit to the town.

  Hook’s state-of-the-art GPS had told me that Igli was a commune that depended heavily on agriculture. Agriculture, especially in this kind of terrain, meant one thing—4X4s. We had some real rough terrain coming up. I knew the Defender could handle it, but we were about to run out of gas, and we couldn’t afford the time or the risk of refueling. Now I smiled to myself, eased off the gas and swung in among some cypress and palm trees by a house with a broad front garden. There in the drive was what I had been searching for. Another indestructible, indomitable Land Rover Defender.

  I pulled my lock picks from my bag, said, “Stay here,” to Maria then sprinted silently to the house. The Defender may be the best 4X4 ever made, but they are not sophisticated. I was in after three seconds. I loped back, grabbed the rucksacks and some water then pulled Maria from the passenger seat. She came with me like she was sleepwalking. We got in. I hotwired the engine and we were out of there, climbing steeply through sparse woodland into the bare stone of the highlands. I followed the road up in a broad sweep, turning right and west. All the way, I kept my eyes glued to the mirror, searching for any headlamps or movement. There was nothing, just the still, empty highway.

  Twenty miles south of Igli, the N6B joined the N6 going north and west. I tur
ned onto it as my watch hit five a.m. Then I floored the gas pedal for the next sixty miles. It was a strange drive through the darkest hour before dawn. There was empty desert all about us. Not sand, but bare stone, rolled like a petrified ocean. The funneled beams of the headlights searched out the few yards of blacktop ahead of us, while the stars drizzled ineffectual light out of an impenetrable sky.

  Suddenly, Maria spoke out of the shadows. “These are not the Atlas Mountains, are they?”

  “No.”

  After a silence, she said, “Why did you lie to me? Why don’t you trust me, Liam?”

  I was silent for a long time, fighting back the tears of rage, knowing I had to tell her but hating myself for it. Finally, I said, “They put a biochip in your head, babe. I think I killed it, but I don’t know for sure. It may still be active and I don’t know what it’s programmed to do.”

  I felt, but didn’t see, her turn to face me.

  “What have they done to me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I remember things that have never happened to me. I know things…”

  I glanced at her. She was staring out at the blackness racing past.

  I said, “What things?”

  But she didn’t answer.

  At six a.m. the sky started to turn a grainy gray color. Up ahead I saw we were approaching a dogleg junction. The nearest turn-off doubled back south and west, the farther one turned north and east. I didn’t take either. I just kept straight on, off the road and into the desert sands again.

  The next four hours were some of the most exhausting I have ever lived through. We hammered across dry sand and stone, rarely dropping below thirty miles an hour. For two-and-a-half hours, I just kept the Defender pointed northwest, slamming through ruts and dips, shaking the chassis and rattling our bones, kicking up clouds of dust into the early morning sun. At some point, after the second hour, I knew we’d crossed the border into Morocco, and about half an hour after that, the ground began to slope down in a vast sweep that must have been ten miles across. On the other side of the slope, a wall of rock rose steeply out of the sand. We were almost there. I began to bear left, half-driving, half-sliding across the sand, headed ever down toward the river Ziz Valley below, and the Errachidia Road that would lead us, by and by, back to Ceuta.