Lifers

by M. A. Griffin

  A group of figures had moved into the basement. One was powering up a laptop on a low table up near the mouth of the valve, the other walking its outside, checking connections, inspecting cables and switches, pulling levers, powering it up. The big, hulking container came alive with a low rumble, breathing stickily. A figure entered, a man in a suit and a long raincoat carrying a briefcase. His polished brogues clicked as he walked. This was one of the figures he’d seen through the window from the top floor—the visitor. Some sort of government inspector, if Mace was to be believed. Armstrong, they’d called him.

  He wants to observe the next delivery, Preston thought. He wants to see the valve.

  This had to be linked, somehow, with the discussion at the fire door, the boy with the goggles. The noise of the valve was unsettling now: a strange and rising hum. Preston cursed himself for thinking such a crazy thought, but the machine sounded as if it were breathing, like the thing was an iron lung or a metal heart even, wheezing as it expanded and contracted.

  One of the figures was stooping over the laptop, punching at the keys, the blue-green light of the little screen throwing his face into sharp relief. Two other figures had appeared at the door. They were armed policemen in bulletproof jackets and black uniforms. The man in the suit had stationed himself with his back to Preston, briefcase on the floor beside him, fingers interlaced behind his back. Outside, the van—it had the sliding-door sound of a van—was being unloaded.

  Then the scene became stranger still. Preston held his breath. A line of figures had established themselves at the entrance. Each member of the queue was a kid—hands behind their backs—each one stooped and tired-looking, each one in cuffs, wrists twisted together, hands behind his back. Some looked older, as if they were maybe seventeen, their silhouettes fuller. But others looked to be his age and one lad in particular was crying, his shoulders jumping oddly as he wept.

  And all of them had dark, distorted faces. Plastic faces, it looked like. It took Preston a moment to realize what he was seeing. His pulse was thumping painfully as he watched, swallowing the desire to scream or run.

  They were wearing the big, weird goggles with lenses the size of saucers.

  And they were being checked off as they came in. The man at the laptop had a handheld scanner. The red light of the laser flickered as he checked off a tag on their cuffs. A list was updating on the laptop screen. When the first kid in line had been scanned, a man took him by the arm and led him to the machine. The handcuffed boy walked uncertainly—Preston remembered how thick the lenses of the goggles were, how dark they made everything—stumbling on one of the steps up to the mouth of the valve. The figure at his elbow paused and said something. The kid in the goggles dipped his head to hear, nodded, and moved forward into the jaws of the box.

  They were putting them in the valve.

  The queue moved forward. Preston felt sweat prickle his shoulders and neck. There was something very wrong here—a line of teenaged boys, handcuffed like prisoners, blinded by black goggles, being scanned and led into a metal freight container. Preston wondered what would happen when it was full. It didn’t look as if it could be dragged out of the basement and shipped somewhere. The whole setup looked much more permanent: the concrete base with what looked like rubberized pads, the cables feeding in and out of the machine, the energy source—it all suggested a storage container designed never to leave the basement.

  A valve, the M.I.S.T. guy had called it. Preston bit his fingernail, trying to remember what a valve was. What did a valve do? It was more than a box or chamber, it had moving parts, like for a system of pipes and liquids. Didn’t it respond to pressure and regulate flow, like a tap?

  Preston watched, cold with fear and horror, as fifteen boys were scanned and led up the steps. The youngest one—the skinny guy—cried all the way. The last one, a taller, fuller figure, raised his head as he went in, as if he were sending up a hopeless final prayer. The headlights of the van outside brightened again; the engine was running and someone was slamming its back doors closed.

  Then the heavy metal door of the valve shut firmly behind the last of the handcuffed figures. The man with the laptop punched a couple of keys, waited for something, then powered down and closed the lid. The guy in the suit moved to talk to him; there was a brief discussion. Then the remaining figures—there were three—moved outside, still in conversation. They pulled the fire door shut behind them and Preston heard the keys turn to lock him in again. Voices dropped as they moved away, back toward reception.

  Preston licked his dry lips and tried to swallow, his eyes still on the valve. It was humming again. A wheezing creak emerged above the drone, then a clanging.

  Preston pulled his phone out and squeezed it hard in his fist, willing his trembling fingers to work. He was patterned in gauzy web. A couple of spiders scuttled across his sleeves and he shook them free. Meet me at the window, he thumbed, and pressed Send. There was no way he was staying a moment longer than he had to.

  There were fifteen kids trapped in a box in a basement in Manchester. This was something for the police.

  He set off up the stairs, fast.

  And as he went, he swore he could feel the basement room reach its fingers out toward him—as if the valve itself and its silent prisoners were following him upward or calling him back, using up the last of their breath to do so.

  On the top floor, all was quiet. At the third skylight, Preston paused, looking up. The little window he’d gotten in by was closed but not latched.

  “Mace,” he hissed. He was feeling steadier now. Safer.

  No answer. The expected face at the window—a bloody grin and a thumbs-up—didn’t appear. A few minutes passed. Preston began to eye the door at the end of the corridor. If the men in suits were visiting the top-floor labs, this is where they’d emerge, and he’d be caught out in the open.

  “Mace!” he tried again. Where’s he gone now? A few more minutes passed. Preston checked his phone again. Half past eleven. Ten minutes of silence since the text.

  Then came the sound he’d been dreading. The rhythmic clatter of shoes on stairs. The delegation of scientists and government officials making their way up to the top-floor rooms. Dammit.

  “Mace!” Preston called, his voice louder than it should have been. And then, his friend appeared, a pale and fearful face at the window like a head on a stamp. Preston felt a liquid rush of relief. “Thank God,” he hissed. “Someone’s coming!”

  Mace fumbled at the window and opened it. “What?” he said.

  “Get me out of here!”

  Mace began to wriggle his shoulders through the gap and leaned in, dropping an outstretched arm toward his friend. “Gimme a second here … ” he grunted. His coat, soaked in rainwater, restricted his movement and he grimaced.

  “Speed it up, Mace!”

  Preston threw a glance at the doorway. They were getting close now. Were those shadows he could see, playing across the walls through the glass door? One person, leading the group, was talking to the rest, though the words were indistinct. Preston looked in the other direction, up to the reception area. He was going to have to choose. He could make a dash for the desk—and be there safe and hidden in a matter of seconds—or he could risk escaping up and out the window.

  “Here.” Mace’s hand was outstretched, his face tight and red with effort. Preston reached up. He could brush his friend’s fingers. He jumped; grabbed. Mace’s hand held his—just. Mace slithered farther through the window as he took the weight. “Bloody hell,” he managed, blowing hard. Then he began to pull.

  It was slow.

  Mace grunted, struggling with the weight. His lip was bleeding again. Preston could hear the steps clearly now, and with a horrible sinking fear, he recognized the change in timbre as they reached the corridor at the top of the stairs. They’d be through the door in moments. He was hanging suspended in the corridor before them, his legs pedaling stupidly.

  “We keep a bank of servers active twenty
-four hours a day, so you’ll notice a change of temperature as we enter these areas of the building … ” a voice was saying on the other side of the door. Preston could hear an ID card being swiped. There was a monotone bleep—the card declined, thank God—and the user tried again. Mace gave an almighty pull and Preston felt himself rising faster now; he could taste fresh rain on the night air above him. There was another swipe of the card and this time it was accepted. The door opened, but his head was out now and Mace was on his back on the roof, gasping, and Preston was pulling himself, his fingers scrabbling for grip on the window’s edge, his muscles burning as he hauled himself out into the night.

  As soon as he was through, he lowered the window slowly and rested it on the frame, just in time to see a group of figures pass below. They didn’t look up.

  He hadn’t been seen.

  Preston collapsed, struggling for air, flooded with terror and relief in equal and horrible measure.

  For a while, he looked at the night sky and breathed in great lungfuls of air, feeling the adrenaline buck and twist as it subsided; he watched the ragged clouds blown across the moon. Next to him, he could hear his friend gasping and spitting blood, then rolling onto his side.

  “Let’s not … ” Mace said, still fighting for breath, “… try that again, eh?”

  Preston grinned with relief. “Agreed,” he said. He raised himself up onto his elbows, orienting himself again, thinking about the fire escape now—about the bus home, about a shower. Maybe, he thought, he might even sleep properly tonight; forget about the darkness of the basement room, the weird open mouth of the machine, the valve, and never come back. His snooping was over. There was no way he was getting himself mixed up in anything further. Now was the time to beat a speedy retreat; there’d be other ways of finding Alice. He could …

  There was someone climbing the fire escape.

  A figure reached the top, checked the alley below him, and clicked a flashlight on, sweeping the roof with its dancing beam.

  For a second or two, Preston tried not to believe what he was seeing. The man was dressed in black, a flash of silver across his chest where a shoulder bag was slung. It was him. And he had a gun.

  “Boys,” he said slowly, a flashlight in one hand, a gun raised in the other. “Don’t move.” He crossed toward them and they lay on their backs in the puddled rainwater, holding their breath again. Mace wiped the blood from his mouth and gave a long frustrated sigh.

  “Dammit,” said Preston, lifting his eyes and squinting.

  “You’ve been spying,” the man said, “so you’ll know we’ve got important visitors downstairs.” He slowed as he reached them and beckoned with the gun. The boys got groggily to their feet. “So I made my excuses and left,” he continued. “Figured you’d be up here.” His face was like a clenched fist: hard and angry. He pulled his radio from his belt. “I’m bringing them in,” he said. There was a fizz and a voice said something. “You two are coming with me,” the man said, half whispering. He nodded toward the fire escape. The boys turned and set off. Mace put his hands in the air, holding them above his ears like someone doing sit-ups. “Put your damn hands down, kid,” the man snapped. “This isn’t the movies.”

  Down the fire escape they trudged, through the darkness of Back Half Moon, under an old industrial archway of rusting iron and across a cobbled yard where a black van was parked. This adjoining building was huge—four stories high, an old textiles place—and it belonged to the same organization, Preston noticed; there was the same brass plaque with M.I.S.T. embossed on it. The man swiped a key card in an electronic reader beside another metal door. It blinked green and he put his shoulder to it. It opened inward with a scrape.

  “I really need to get home,” Mace said as they hovered at the threshold. His voice trembled.

  The man gave him a wide, sarcastic grin. “Then you shouldn’t have been up on our roof, kid. Inside.” The man held his gun up, displaying it as if Mace hadn’t noticed it before, and cocked his head toward the entrance.

  “It’s just that … ”

  “Shut it, Mace.” Preston gave his friend a scowl.

  The man nodded. “Wise words. In you go.”

  Inside, there was a small room with a concrete floor, a wall of metal lockers, and an elevator with a sliding silver door. They rode up four floors in icy silence. Preston felt his spirits sink as they climbed. This was big-time trouble they were in now. If these guys were government security, he’d be finding himself back in police custody in a blink. What the hell would Dad say? It didn’t even bear thinking about. Next to him, Mace was wide-eyed, equal parts terrified and fascinated.

  The first thing Preston noticed as the elevator door slid back was the size of the place. They were in a converted warehouse with a high roof spanned with steel joists and an exposed brick wall of grimy windows. It smelled of coffee and cigarettes and dust. Ahead of him, there were three desks, each with glowing screens and keyboards, arranged together in the open-plan workspace. Electric fan heaters hummed. Two large wall-mounted plasma screens showed CNN and the BBC streaming twenty-four-hour news. A third screen looked as if it belonged in an airport or a huge train station—a display of dates, times, and lengthy lists of figures that reminded Preston of an arrivals and departures board. There was a big map of the city dotted with colored pins.

  The central desks were unoccupied except for one where a black-skinned, round-faced woman in a jumpsuit, her hair tied back, typed. She looked up as they entered. “Shade,” she said. She was American. “Have you lost your mind?”

  Shade took a breath. “No choice, Esther. My batch of Sleeptight’s shot and the kid can’t stay away.”

  There was a chilly silence. Fan heaters whirred and tech hummed.

  Then someone started talking. “Large, open-plan room,” said a shaky voice. “The space is dominated by a series of three desks … ” Mace and his damn voice memo.

  “What’s he doing?” Esther said. She rose to standing, kicking her chair back. “Kid!” she shouted. “What the hell?”

  Mace blanched. He fumbled with the phone. “I’m pausing it,” he said. “Sorry. I’m pausing it.”

  Esther gave him an icy stare. Then she returned her gaze to her colleague. “You did dose him, though, right?” She placed her palms over her eyes and rubbed. “Jesus,” she said eventually. “A couple of schoolkids here? What now?”

  Preston tried to place the American accent. East Coast, he reckoned. Philadelphia or New York, maybe. He wiped the rain from his face, trying to organize his thoughts. Whirring servers, winking lights, a water cooler, a tattered sofa with side table and ashtray, laminated street maps, two-way radios and plasma TVs—some kind of surveillance operation?

  Preston felt a familiar nudge: Mace, nodding toward a third desk. A tidy, orderly space with a photo frame and a pile of paper clips and Post-its. Esther and Shade weren’t the complete team. There was a third person.

  “Double dose,” Shade continued, not noticing. “And he still came back.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Esther, crossing to a table where a pile of medical blister packs were neatly stacked. She checked them carefully. “Same as last time,” she said. “We got a bum dose?”

  Shade opened his hands out and shrugged in exasperation. “Yep. Cost-cutting pen-pushers trying to save cash have landed us with this problem.” He indicated the two boys shivering shoulder to shoulder behind him as they adjusted to the warmth. “They were snooping around.”

  Esther plunged her hands into the pockets of her cargo pants and stared at her boots, kicking at the dust for a second, a frown creasing her forehead. “What did they see?” she asked. Shade looked at her and shook his head in silent reply. Preston watched the two of them. This was bad news. Esther worked a knuckle against her eye, then blinked. “Goddammit,” she spat.

  Shade scratched his chin. “It gets worse,” he said. “Armstrong’s here.”

  “Tonight?” said Esther, straightening. “He isn�
�t due until the end of the week.”

  Shade nodded. His jaw was tight, his eyes solemn. “Wanted to see the delivery. Stood there and watched the … ” He paused, made an enigmatic face. “You know.”

  The valve, Preston thought. The missing word is valve.

  Esther pinched the bridge of her nose. “This means he’s considering shutdown, right?” she said quietly, scanning the room. “Before the conference. He’s going to make it all vanish before anyone finds out.”

  “Could be. A full inspection, I’d guess. Not just operations. He’ll want to see security too. Shutdown’s possible.”

  Preston wondered what shutdown was, and why it was so bad.

  “Where is he now, exactly?” Esther said.

  Shade cocked his head. “The labs.”

  “He’ll be coming over here.”

  “Likely, yes.”

  Esther opened her palms out. “The files. The transit records. The dormant valves. He checks the paperwork and sees what we’ve been up to, we’re finished.” She paced. “Jesus! What do we do, Jonathan?”

  Shade crossed the office space to a pair of filing cabinets, then threw his hands up in exasperation. “We need to clear this stuff. We need to wipe the hard drives.”

  “Then there’s the other valves,” Esther said. “If he realizes we’ve kept them open … ”

  “Shit.” Jonathan Shade clenched a fist and ground his teeth.

  “And we’ve got a couple of trespassers too.” Esther gave Preston a calculating gaze. There was a long silence. Tension tremored in the space between them. Eventually, Esther said, “Say I go and check the Castlefield valve, check Cooper Street, I call Frankie out at Blackstone Edge and make sure the food valve’s all good. Then I go over the dormant ones.”

  Shade nodded, taking his jacket and gloves off and flexing his fingers. “Right,” he said, direct and clear. “I’ll deal with this place. They’ll have to help,” he said, jamming a finger in the boys’ direction. “It’s the only way. I’ll give ’em triple-dose Sleeptight when we’re done.”