Lifers

by M. A. Griffin

  “Faulkner,” said Ellwood, placing a hand on his elbow. “His mind’s made up. You won’t change it.”

  “But it’ll never work,” Preston said.

  “So you said. Tell me again.”

  Lewison said, “You were saying they can’t get through, yeah?”

  Preston nodded. “Armstrong’s set it up so you can’t go back through a valve without being killed. It’s like diving, or something. Coming back up too quickly. I have to stop them if they’re planning on trying it.”

  “I tried,” said Ellwood.

  “Yeah,” said Preston. She deserved to know the truth. If he was going to help her, he needed to tell her about the databands. This was a secret he couldn’t keep by himself, no matter how hard the conversation would be. “I’ve got something to show you,” he said, checking Ryan’s group were absorbed in their planning, then swinging the bag from his shoulders. “There’s still a way we can do this, but it’s difficult.” He dug in his bag, past the balled-up jacket and goggles. Three databands. He pulled them out.

  Ellwood’s eyes widened and they crouched low around the bag, protecting it from the gaze of others. Lewison craned his neck to look. Preston lowered his voice. “You get through alive if you wear one of these,” he said. He picked one up, demonstrated. “There’s a tiny computer checking your vital signs with a pouch of medication attached, and a row of needles that stick into you here—an injection system. It takes a few minutes to work and then you throw the valve switch and you’re through.”

  “Bloody hell,” breathed Ellwood. “How many have you got?”

  Preston packed them away, nervous hands trembling. “Welcome to my dilemma,” he said. “There’s three.”

  A couple of hours later, Ryan’s group left. Preston watched them go. Alice didn’t look back. Lewison went to check on Chowdhury. Ellwood, back from checking the hall, returned her attention to the bag on the floor between them. “Where did you get them?” she asked.

  “Nightwardens. They use them to come through when they drop off food.”

  Ellwood gave a desperate laugh. “They won’t be using many, then.”

  “You know what? Shade seems an okay guy. Esther’s all right too. I think they’ve been leaving more supplies than they should. They kept talking about shutdown like it was something they didn’t want.”

  “Yeah, because they lose their jobs.” Ellwood scowled and traced a finger through the dust on the floor.

  “It was more than that. They wanted to help.”

  “Then they should have given you more bands. What’s the use of three?”

  Preston’s stomach gave a growl and he stood up. “Maybe I can come back with more,” he said.

  When Ellwood stood up she was close to him. He wanted to touch her but he hesitated and she spoke. “You should go,” she said. “Join Ryan’s expedition. Do what you can to stop them. I’ll follow on.”

  “Come with me,” said Preston. He did his best to keep his voice casual. It still came out like a plea. “You’d be better at talking them out of it. And you know where the trapdoors are.”

  Ellwood gave a sad smile. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Whatever me and Ryan had—we haven’t got it anymore. Besides,” she added, “I need to stay for a while. Word’s got round. Folks are getting antsy. It’s down to me to give the last of the food out.”

  Back in the hall, there were kids muttering in their sleep, boys with parched lips dreaming of rain, half-awakes in desperate debate. There were the Longsight lads, watching and waiting—the redheaded Fox with the battered face and the glasses. There was a kid on his own with a face like a car crash, crying for his mum.

  It was Lewison who showed Preston as far as the long, low corridor at the far end of the hall and waved him off. Behind him, some kid had fainted and a few others were shouting for help now, calling for water.

  In the darkness of the corridor, pipes were riveted to the roof alongside old industrial strip lights in heavy iron and glass cases. After a dark half mile or so, it opened into a high-ceilinged silo. And up there, thirty feet above the floor, were two recessed squares. One still had a door. The other was an open hatch. These were the trapdoors.

  Discarded metal objects were cast about directly below the openings. Alongside the ragged-edged food cans that had been fashioned into decent tools, Preston could see other abandoned implements—belts with metal fasteners, dog tags broken from their chains, bunches of keys: stuff that had been used to hack an ugly, pockmarked upward route of irregular handholes into the wall. All the way up to the trapdoors.

  And there were three figures using the holes to climb.

  Ryan was ahead and was picking his way upward, one handhold at a time, reaching, testing, then hauling himself closer to the hatches in the roof. There was about nine feet to go, Preston calculated. It was a perilous-looking journey. The holds, hacked from the chalky plaster, crumbled at their edges. Showers of grit and dust fell in twisted drifts as the three climbers toiled upward. Hoyle was second, watching Ryan’s progress carefully, pausing to rest with one foot pressed into a depression and his spare leg hanging free, neck craned. Alice followed, her hat crammed into her jeans pocket, her hair loose and dusted with chalk, bare arms straining.

  Their concentration was entirely on the climb: three silent, gasping figures heaving themselves toward the trapdoors, hand over hand. Once near the top, there was an awkward readjustment necessary so the climber—Ryan in this case—could reach for the lip of the hatch in the ceiling with one hand while clinging on to the highest handhold with the other. With a scramble and a swing, he was up and through, legs pedaling wildly, then he was lowering a hand, white with plaster dust, for Hoyle.

  Below them was Alice. She was shorter, her build more delicate—the move toward the hatch was harder for her. She reached out, her right arm taking her body’s weight, the floor thirty feet below her.

  Then something went wrong. It must have been her grip; a clod of plaster broke free, sending a shower of debris down into the room. Her balance went. She windmilled wildly, reaching for Ryan’s hand, and in a horrible parody of a slow-motion swan dive, seemed to be falling.

  Preston ran hard, making for the wall.

  Above, he heard her scream, and Ryan shouting instructions. As Preston reached the first handholds and hauled himself upward, he half expected to hear the dull crunch of her body hitting the floor. But she was still up there, suspended. Ryan was yelling at her to calm down. Alice let out a high shriek. Preston climbed, scrambling recklessly from hold to hold, arms and legs burning. He was weak with hunger and fatigue, and his eyes stung with sweat and dust. He could hear Alice breathing hard now, dry terrified sobs. Preston craned his neck as he pulled himself up. Ryan was bent at the waist, his upper body over the lip of the hatch, both arms taking Alice’s weight as she swung above the drop. Her grip looked as if it was loosening and Ryan’s gritted teeth and desperate eyes confirmed it.

  Preston pushed himself on, exhausted.

  When he reached her, he had no time to think or feel. High above the hard floor, he pushed himself under her legs, stepping upward as he did so. Alice’s kicking feet slithered against the bag on his back. Preston strained, his fingers tightening against the hacked handholes.

  Then her weight vanished, suddenly—she was through. Preston clung to the face of the wall, feet tucked into one hole, fingers crammed into the fissure of another, taking great dusty gulps of air, hoping some strength would return to his arms and allow him to move. He was dimly aware of a fuss above him—Ryan shouting, Alice holding an arm out—but when he finally had the courage and energy to look up, it was Hoyle he saw first, his face a malignant frown. “Jesus,” he hissed. “New boy’s come to join us.”

  Preston closed his eyes against the sweat dripping from his brow. “Screw you, Hoyle.”

  Ryan and Alice were above him at the trapdoor, side by side, offering their arms. With all the strength he had left, Preston held himself steady and began to reach t
oward them.

  “Thanks, Press,” said Alice, hand outstretched, face all relief and wonder. “Come on. You’ve really got to see this.”

  Through the trapdoor, everything felt different.

  There was a white hall with a polished floor and lights lining the roof. Preston took a moment on his back, taking it all in.

  The corridor was clean and white. Everything was all right angles—all plush interior, like a hotel. It smelled like disinfectant. Alice touched his arm. Her hair was plastered to her forehead, her cracked lips bleeding. She’d brought a half bottle of warm water. They shared it in silence.

  Ryan crouched over him, sarcasm curling his lip. “Guess the boss sent you,” he said. “Come if you have to, Faulkner. But don’t think you’ll change the plan. You won’t.”

  Preston made it to his feet and somehow found the will to walk, trailing plaster dust as he went. Dizziness swung the space around him and he had to lean against the wall, leaving a filthy shadow of grime. At the end of the long white space, Ryan pushed open a pair of swing doors.

  What came next changed everything.

  Preston arrived last to find Ryan, Hoyle, and Alice robbed of speech. There was an open space. There were glass-fronted cabinets with interior lights. A wall-mounted fire extinguisher, a muster point. And, weirdest of all, there was a set of escalators.

  They were hissing and creaking in the big space, revolving endlessly like a hamster wheel in a cage. No one spoke for a long time—even Ryan and Alice, who’d already seen the place, were reduced again to disbelieving silence. Somewhere near them, that deep and regular boom he’d first heard when he emerged from his valve had increased in volume. It wasn’t mechanical, Preston realized—it was something organic.

  The place smelled of floor polish and air-conditioning and it looked like a shopping center, or an underground train station. There was something dreadful and cruel about it, something inhumanely unfair about two such different places being next to each other. Ryan said, “It’s up here.”

  Preston followed toward the escalators, unsteady, swaying like an astronaut. The ride upward was ridiculous. Four kids, faces blurred with grime and lined with fatigue and hunger, clothes torn and twisted, staring shell-shocked as an escalator carried them as calmly as if they were shopping for kitchenware.

  At the top was a reception area.

  “I don’t believe this,” said Hoyle.

  There was a big, white, curved sweep of desk with a telephone and a computer. A deep-blue wall-mounted sign, glowing a little, like neon, announced “Welcome to Axle Six.” Underneath, it said “Technological prototyping and development for criminal justice.”

  There was a waiting area. A low table and comfortable chairs. The place was a polished and glowing front for some sort of company that traded in prisoners. This was the kind of sanitized, guilt-free space that hid a horror beneath it, like the foyer of a mental asylum. Except there was no one here. Whoever had built this wasn’t hanging around to take responsibility. Shutdown meant closing both ends of the Kepler valve.

  Ryan pointed. “This is the way out,” he said.

  To begin with, it looked as if he was walking toward an opaque black wall. Preston couldn’t get his eyes to register. Then, as he stepped forward, the jumpy reflection of the reception lights shifted, and his whole perception of the black wall changed.

  It wasn’t a wall at all. It was big glass doors.

  Looking out was like changing the way you thought about everything. Like when you’re convinced you’re moving because the train opposite you is pulling out of the station—and it’s only when it’s gone and the platforms around you are still that you realize you’re the stationary object. Preston stared.

  That sound he’d heard—that deep, rolling boom—it was the sea. It was the thunder of breakers against a sheer cliff wall. Outside there was a storm. It was lashing down in sheets against a curved concrete loading bay. There was space for trucks or cars and what looked like a landing pad for helicopters. It was hard to make it out because it was night. The four of them cupped their hands against their temples and pressed their faces to the glass. Out there, beyond the entrance space, ornamental shrubs and grasses were being whipped about as wind tore at the greenery.

  Past them, a steel fence rose up around the space—thick vertical struts, conductors and wires, which meant it was electrified—then, farther beyond, Preston could make out a cliff edge in the velvet blackness, and a black body of water beating the rocks below.

  Across the compound from them, a short dash away, was a second building, glass-fronted, inside which were Ryan’s valves. He’d been right. There were a dozen, all lit up. Shutdown hadn’t reached them yet. They could be the way out. No wonder he was fired up.

  All they needed to do was find a way through the doors.

  “This isn’t Manchester,” Preston said, his breath clouding the glass.

  Alice dropped her forehead against the cold, black surface. “The Count of Monte Cristo,” she whispered. It was the first thing she’d said for ages.

  Ryan said, “What?”

  Preston remembered. “It’s the prison on the island, right?” The book she’d been reading—the story of the prison off the coast of France. He looked out into the darkness.

  He was pretty sure that wasn’t France out there either.

  Ryan spoke. “That’s our way forward,” he said, finger on the glass.

  What happened next was quick and crazy. Ryan turned and strode across the reception area, vaulted the desk, and manhandled the receptionist’s chair back. All Preston could do was watch as he swung it like an ax—an ordinary office chair with casters—and slammed it hard against the glass with an animal yell.

  He may as well have tried to dent metal with a feather.

  He staggered backward, dropped the chair—the plastic casing of the seat had shattered—and swung it again. It split into bits on contact with the glass and spun away. Ryan pitched the distorted remains across the reception floor and put his hands on his knees, breathing heavily. “There’s got to be a way through these doors.”

  “They’re electric, right?” Alice said. Her gaze was on a wall-mounted panel. There was a shoulder-height keypad and a little grille to speak into. “Is there a code or something?”

  They crossed to the wall next to the doors and stood in a half circle, staring at the problem. “Anyone handy with this stuff?” Ryan said.

  Hoyle grinned. “Well,” he said. “I’m pretty good at hot-wiring cars.”

  Hours later, it was clear the system was rather more sophisticated than a Mercedes-Benz. The first hour had been spent in gouging the front panel free, working in shifts trying to pry open the casing of the keypad using the same tools that had hacked a chain of handholds into the wall below the hatches. It was Ryan who did it eventually, giving a great shout of victory as the housing split open and he pulled it free, fingers bleeding. Beneath was a rubber membrane, a motherboard, and a tangle of wires as delicate as a nervous system.

  Hoyle peered at it. “Holy shit,” he said.

  The following hour was the slowest of Preston’s life. His knees ached, his stomach grumbled, and the muted storm beyond the glass raged ceaselessly. He spent the time exploring the reception area. He checked the phones—they were dead—dug through desk drawers, and tried to start the sleek desktop computer.

  No luck. Until the little plastic card with a magnetic strip. Preston found it tucked against the back of the top drawer of the receptionist’s desk and pulled it free.

  “Hey, Hoyle,” he said, holding it up. “There’s not a slot for a key card, is there?”

  “Course not,” spat Hoyle, sweating over his work, his yellow fingers probing and pulling, detangling wires, following them to their source in the wall. Preston pocketed the card, spirits sinking.

  After forty minutes, Hoyle had the motherboard out, though it was still connected to the machine by a maze of wiring. Then he was decoupling and recoupling connectors, using
his dog tag as a makeshift blade, cutting the fine copper free from its plastic and twisting wires together.

  He’d been on it almost two hours when the explosion came.

  There was a flash, a bright cloud of light that burst from the wall. Hoyle was cast backward like a doll, arms flung outward, silhouetted against the spray of vivid whiteness, then he was on the floor and there was a loud bang.

  The lights went out. There was a horrible smell of fused plastic and burning circuitry. Only the outside lights remained on; enough to see Hoyle on his back and Ryan over him. As Preston moved forward, there was an unfamiliar clang and shudder, and the interior lights came back on. They were a third as bright, pale red. Emergency power. A generator somewhere.

  “Hoyle?”

  The lad on his back was stirring, and then up on his feet, Alice steadying him. “I’m okay,” he was saying. He sounded drunk. “Get off me. I’m fine.” In the red light, he shrugged aside any help and moved forward, peering at the circuits, wincing at the burns on his hands. Eventually, he said, “Interesting.”

  Then he started again, slower this time.

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?” said Ryan.

  Hoyle turned. “I do now,” he said. He flexed his fingers, staring at a tangle of connectors. “This will either kill me, or get us through,” he said emotionlessly. “You guys ready?”

  “Any final words?” Ryan said.

  Hoyle gave him the finger and returned to work. A moment later he’d located what he wanted. “Right, then,” he said with finality. “Let’s go.”

  They stared in mute silence as the thin kid in the tracksuit bent over his work one last time. There seemed no sign of fear in him. As if it didn’t matter that much one way or another. He touched something against something else. There was a crackle and click.