“We did it once. We know what to expect now.”
“And once we return home, I cannot promise it will be safe there either.”
“But it’s home.” She looked at her hand, her fingers encased in his, and nodded. “I’m ready.”
He kissed her. “Thank you.”
They finished cleaning that hallway and tipped the buckets of brown liquid back into the water reclamation system. It would be filtered then fed to the gardens, or—Clare shuddered to think of it—diverted to shower or drinking water. Even though the filtration should leave it completely pure, she still didn’t like the thought of swallowing it.
As they neared the surgery, the tenor of quiet but urgent voices reached them. Dorran sent Clare a look then tapped the code to unlock the door. The voices fell silent as the metal slats slid back.
The entire crew had converged in the surgery. Niall sat on the edge of his bed, cloth-swaddled legs hanging over its side. Someone had brought a table into the room. Becca sat at one side, the laptop’s glow highlighting her face in blue. Unathi sat at the other side, a pen poised over her notepad. Clare couldn’t read the tight cursive, but she saw a series of numbers whittling down into calculations that made her head hurt. Johann had been pacing but stopped at Clare and Dorran’s entrance.
“Hey,” Clare said. The silence was uncomfortable enough to make her want to squirm. “Are we interrupting?”
“Of course not.” Unathi turned the notepad over. “Come and have a rest. We were going to find a pack of cards and play a few rounds of poker, if you would like to join.”
There was no sense in delaying the announcement. Clare took a deep breath. “We were thinking of leaving soon. We’ve already stayed longer than we meant to.”
“So you did hear us.” Johann swore and resumed pacing. “We can make it work. Don’t worry about that. We’ll figure something out.”
“What?”
“It might take a couple of weeks of rationing, but it won’t be too bad.” He waved his hands. “If we need to, I can go to town and see what I can find in the houses there. So don’t you worry.”
“Oh.” Clare’s eyes flicked back to the hidden notepad of calculations. She found a chair and drew it up near the table. Dorran stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder. “Is this about the garden?”
Unathi met her gaze, serene. “The hollows got into it. They didn’t eat anything, but many of the plants were trampled. Johann has done what he can to save them. And we have some long-term stores. Not as much as I would like, but—”
“I’ve got the second garden going.” Johann spoke eagerly. “There are enough plants in there for all six of us. We just have to wait for them to grow enough—but it’ll be fine.”
Clare chewed on the corner of her thumb. She addressed her question to Unathi. “Do you have enough food for four people to survive on?”
Unathi flipped the notepad over. She’d already done the math. “Not at full rations. But at eighty-five percent, which is enough for us all to function on until the secondary garden begins cropping. If three of us drop to eighty percent of our caloric intake, the fourth could have full rations.”
Niall frowned, catching the implication. “I’ll be eating the same as you do.”
“No, you won’t. You’re healing; you need fuel.”
“I’m a doctor. I know what I can take.”
“And I’m your boss. My word is final.”
“What would you do, fire me?” Niall’s face broke into a grin. It gave Clare a rush of relief. Since the breach, Niall had looked like a shadow of himself. He’d been too thin, too pale, and too weak. That smile held the enthusiasm and joy that had been missing. Dorran had said Niall would be all right, and, for the first time, Clare really believed it.
She turned back to Unathi. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for any of us to go into town unless it’s absolutely necessary. If you think you will be all right on those restricted rations…”
“No. We’re not making you leave.” Johann swung back towards them, hands held out. “We’re not in the business of sacrificing our friends.”
Clare gave him a fond smile. “I seem to remember you were the one who wanted us gone the most.”
“Look, I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t personal.” He wrapped his arms around his torso, his steps becoming faster. “I was just trying to look out for my team. But… but you’re my team now. We’re not going to make you leave. No way, not even if I have to fight every hollow between here and the city. We can make it work.”
“Johann, thank you. You’re a good guy; I know why you were taking a hard line back then. It was the smart thing to do.” Clare glanced up at Dorran and matched his smile. “But this choice isn’t motivated by survival. We were going to leave, even if you had food falling out of every cupboard. We’re ready to go home.”
Johann finally stopped pacing. He looked heartbroken as he glanced between his small group, as though silently asking them to object.
“You’re absolutely sure?” Niall’s eyebrows pulled together. “Johann’s right. We could make it work.”
“Thanks. But we’re sure.”
Unathi snapped the cap back onto her pen. Clare couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the older woman smile, but she smiled then. “You’ll be missed.”
“And we’ll miss you.”
“Thank you for letting us stay so long,” Dorran said.
“And thank you for keeping us alive.” Unathi indicated to Becca. “What time is it?”
“Late,” she said, glancing up from her screen. “Nearly midnight.”
Clare almost laughed. Time stretched strangely in the bunker. If she’d been asked, she would have guessed it was shortly after lunchtime.
“Don’t leave while it’s dark,” Unathi said. “We want to give you the best journey out we can. Stay the night, then in the morning, we can check over your bus and make any repairs it needs and give you a little extra food to help you reach home.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Clare knew she needed to sleep—that it would make the difference between a safe, sane drive and a painful one—but she felt too alert to drift off. The permanent day inside the ship had upended her body clock faster than she could have anticipated.
She and Dorran had opted to spend the night in the surgery again, using the blankets and pillows Clare had brought in the previous night. No one had actually voiced their motivation, but Clare knew the others felt it as much as she did. They didn’t want to be apart on that final night together. Unathi, Johann, and Becca stayed, as well, each building their own little nest.
Dorran slept well, his breaths slow and deep, one arm cast across Clare as though he needed to hold her close even in his dreams. Clare tried to relax, but every time she closed her eyes, anxiety began to creep in. The room still had light—a lamp from Unathi’s office had been left on in one corner—but the pale glow wasn’t enough to stop the darkness from clawing at the edges of Clare’s nerves.
She rolled over, trying to find a better position without waking Dorran. Something shifted close by, then a voice whispered, “Clare, you awake?”
“Yeah. Can’t sleep.” She squinted up at Niall. He’d lifted his head from the pillows, and the lamplight behind him turned his messy hair into sparkling gossamer strands.
“I can’t either. Everyone here expects me to rest, but I think I’ll go mad if I don’t do something. Did you want to have a game of cards?”
Clare grinned. “Absolutely.”
She gently, carefully, worked her way out from under Dorran’s arm. He murmured as she left him, so she tucked her pillow in at his side to keep him warm. He relaxed again.
Clare tiptoed to Niall’s bed as he slipped his legs over its edge. She pulled the table up next to him then found the pack of cards perched on one of the medical trays. Clare had to smile as she slipped the cards out of their holder and began to shuffle them. The surgery had lost any claim to being a sterile environment thanks
to the past few days. “What do you like to play?”
He cast a glance at their sleeping companions. “How about rummy?”
“Good for me.” She began dealing cards.
Bare feet padded over the tiles behind them, then Becca appeared at Clare’s side, rubbing her upper arms as she blinked owlish eyes. “Can I join you?”
“Of course.” Clare moved her chair back to make room for Becca. “I’ll deal you in.”
Becca smiled, but the expression didn’t extend past her mouth. She took the cards Clare handed her and stared at them with unfocussed eyes. Niall played first, but when it reached Becca’s turn, she didn’t react. Niall lightly nudged her arm, and she looked up, lips trembling. “I think I figured out what to do with the thanites.”
“Oh?” Clare lowered her cards, her heart spiking with hope.
“I’ve been going over that code again and again, looking at it every which way, trying to understand it. It’s been madness.”
Niall gave her a sympathetic smile. “I’m glad it’s you and not me.”
She chuckled, but it came out awkwardly. “I don’t do well with pressure. And this… It’s like the most pressure I’ve ever had. The fate of humanity, resting in my palm. Part of me hoped I would get eaten by those hollows just so I wouldn’t have to deal with it any longer.”
Clare hadn’t even suspected Becca was feeling that way. The older woman had been consumed by her laptop, but Clare had assumed that was just her personality, not a symptom of anxiety.
“But I think I finally figured it out. And it’s so, so simple, it seems crazy.” Becca gave a nervous smiled, shuffling her cards in her hands, then placed one on the pile on the table. “We can assume the code basically works. It destroys the thanites. But it has side effects we don’t yet understand.”
“That’s about right,” Clare said.
“I kept returning to one idea. What if there was a way to destroy the thanites that lived in the hollows but not humans? It would be the closest to a perfect solution, except there’s no way to do that. The code doesn’t delineate between hosts. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, though, and that train of thought eventually led to my solution.”
Niall placed a card on the pile without looking at it. He’d put a queen of spades on top of a five of hearts. Clare didn’t try to correct him; she was too riveted by Becca.
“I can’t differentiate between hosts, but I can restrict the number of thanites destroyed. It’s a simple snippet of code… each thanite flips a metaphorical coin. Half of them detonate. Half aren’t affected.”
“Oh,” Clare said, starting to understand.
“With no new thanites being manufactured, there’s a finite supply,” Becca said. “If we destroy half of the machines, every person will feel the side effects, but they’ll still have the remaining thanites inside of them to heal any damage. Just like what happened with Dorran, except without the need for transfusions.”
“I think I get it,” Clare said. “It won’t stop the damage, but it leaves a way to heal. That might work.”
“Then, after a few weeks, I can run the code again. Another half of the thanites will be destroyed, with a quarter of the original supply left to repair the damage. And again and again, until the remaining thanites are so negligible that we can wipe them out completely without any ill effects.”
Clare nodded. “And the hollows…”
“The hollows are a nightmare. You’ve seen them. Open wounds, organ damage, severe mutations that would kill a normal human. The only thing keeping them alive is an absolute swarm of thanites constantly making repairs. Reduce the thanites, and they’ll die from infection. The worst ones will probably go down with the first run of code.”
Clare’s pulse thrummed. She placed a two of diamonds on top of Niall’s queen, and no one cared. “That’s smart, Becca. Really smart.”
Becca put her head down, a nervous smile growing. “It’s not foolproof. But… I think it’s our best shot. I’ll still need to go through the code carefully and look for any compatibility issues it might cause. But it’s somewhere to start.”
Clare looked over her shoulder, towards where Dorran slept. His features were relaxed, his breathing deep and even. She whispered, “Hey, Dorran, are you awake?”
He didn’t stir, except for how his lips tugged up at their corners. “I am.”
“You’re too good at faking sleep. I can’t trust you at all.”
He chuckled, a deep, rumbling noise that felt oddly good in Clare’s soul.
“You lost your thanites once. You’ll know what it feels like better than any of us. Do you think Becca’s plan will work?”
Dorran rolled onto his back and frowned at the ceiling. “It sounds as though it might. After the encounter with Ezra Katzenberg, I felt… weak. Not just in my muscles, but in my bones and in my core. As though I had been diced into a million pieces and put back together. But once I had some thanites replaced through the transfusion, that sensation began to recede.”
“I think it sounds like a plan,” Johann said. He was still tucked into his bed against the opposite wall but stroked his beard. “Weaning people off them might be a better approach than doing it all at once. People are going to have cuts and infections. If we can warn them in advance, tell them they’ll only have the thanites for a limited time, they might have a chance to patch themselves up before they lose the robots.”
An irritated sigh floated out of the room’s other corer. “Is anyone actually sleeping?” Unathi asked.
Clare bit her lip. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake everyone.”
“I’m honestly mad that you didn’t try to,” Johann said.
“None of this is anything that can’t be discussed in the morning,” Unathi grumbled. “Just go back to sleep, all of you.”
Clare gave Niall an apologetic smile and stacked the cards back into their pack. She slid off the chair and returned to Dorran, who pushed the pillow out of the way so that she could resume her spot at his side.
As she lay in the dark, listening to her companions toss and turn around her, Clare wondered if they felt the same way she did. Like a giant clock was counting down. Too soon, it would chime that morning had arrived, that it was time for her to leave the safest location she had found since the stillness. But its countdown wouldn’t stop there. It would continue ticking, invisible hands moving, clawing time in with painful reliability as it pulled them towards an inevitable resolution.
They were going to end the war against the hollows.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Johann and Dorran moved in and out of the bus, boots thumping every time they leapt down from the step, ferrying armfuls of supplies in each direction.
The bus’s external structure had held up reasonably well, but the insides were a mess. None of the blankets or clothes had been washed. The bus had sat in the ship’s parking garage for days, undisturbed and festering, and when its doors opened for the first time, Becca gagged.
“We’ll only need to be in it for a few days,” Clare had said, trying to reconcile herself to the idea.
“You cleaned our home,” Johann responded. “Let us return the favour.”
Bottles of bleach and upholstery cleaners had been brought in. The basement’s elevator dinged every couple of minutes as supplies were ferried in. The old blankets—the ones stained with blood and caked in dirt—disappeared into the ship, either for the laundry or the incinerator. Fresh blankets were brought to replace them. Johann filled up their empty cartons of water and reorganised their food stores.
“You should have enough for ten days,” he said, shoving the last box back into place.
“We won’t need that much,” Clare said with slightly more conviction than she felt. “The trip back can’t take more than two or three days. You should keep the extra food.”
“Don’t even think about it.” He gripped her shoulders, turned her around, and pushed her back out of the bus. “We’ve got enough to last us until the garden
is back up and running. I’d rather know you two aren’t forced to take on too many risks.”
Dorran worked on the engine, moving through every component with meticulous care. Johann scrubbed the outside, tightening the bolts on the plywood window covers and cleaning the fractured front screen.
Niall came down to the garage to see them off. Clare thought he shouldn’t have been moved, but his stricken look made the rest of the group relent. Unathi had brought him down in a wheelchair, blankets wrapped around his pale limbs. He watched the activity keenly, not fully able to hide how much he wanted to join in.
When the bus was finally up to Johann’s standards, he stepped back, looking pleased. “That’ll make the trip home nicer.”
Clare realised they were finally on the cusp of leaving. She blinked at the four surviving researchers, and a lump appeared in her throat. “Thank you for taking us in.”
“No, thank you,” Unathi said. She carried something small under her arm, which she offered to Clare. “This can’t transmit, but you’ll at least be able to listen to what’s happening. I’ve tuned it to our own station. Keep an ear out; we’ll begin broadcasting when we’re ready to enact Becca’s protocol.”
Clare took the radio and bit her lip. “Are you sure? Don’t you need it?”
“Technically, we weren’t even supposed to have it.” Unathi sighed. “But one of us smuggled in a significant quantity of contraband that would have ruined the experiment.”
“My bad,” Niall said, fidgeting and unable to hide his smile.
The four friends moved in, hugging Clare and Dorran in turn and murmuring goodbyes.
“You’re a good guy.” Johann clasped Dorran’s hand then pulled him in for a brief bear hug. “Take care out there.”
“Same to you,” Dorran said.
“Listen to the radio,” Unathi said. “It might take us weeks. But we will be here, working on the code, working to reverse this, and we’ll tell you when we’re ready. I’ll open the shutters for you in a couple of moments. Safe journey.”
Whispers in the Mist: Black Winter Book Three Page 35