by Angel Wedge
The creature dropped the battery to the cage floor, and then leapt heavily on it. I saw the plastic bend and crack, and an acrid smell filled the air as the battery shorted out. It was an expensive item, but at least I hadn’t lost something I actually needed. Then the creature lost interest, or was scared by the thick vapour coming from burning lithium-polymer cells. It grabbed the battery and kicked it hard out of the cage. The dim second-hand light from a camera that was still pointed at the fire alarm didn’t illuminate in that direction, but I could see a tiny point of sparks and flame sail a dozen feet through the air before it landed on a sack in the corner, which didn’t take long to catch light. It must have been straw bedding, for whichever of the animals merited it. I was about to panic as I realised that the room probably held enough inflammable scraps for a fire to spread anywhere. Then the alarm sounded, a deafening warble, and I heard the buzz of a hundred solenoids at once as the cages and the lab doors all released at once.
Silently thanking an unknown software engineer, I kicked the door to my own cage open and dropped to the ground. The creature next to me was almost as quick, but many of the others panicked or cowered remaining inside their cages. They probably wouldn’t even realise they were free until they barged against the doors and felt movement. As I ran for the door, I snapped pictures at random with one hand while the other yanked open one cage after another. I’d like to say I didn’t want the creatures to suffer any more than they had to, but the thought in my mind at that moment was rather more selfish: with their experiments loose around the facility, the guards would have a lot less manpower to look for me. Maybe if I got back to my room in time for whatever kind of roll call might happen up there, they’d never recognise me as the intruder in the lab. Or if a fire alarm down here didn’t merit disturbing the special guests, I’d be up bright and early in the morning, just like everyone else.
I dived into a store room again at the first opportunity, and was proved correct in guessing that security would be running straight for the lab in response to the alarm. My luck held out, and there was a crate of lab coats in here, and disposable paper uniforms that I guessed the lab technicians would use when dealing with anything particularly messy. I peered through the tiny glass panel in the door, and waited until there were no security men immediately outside before bursting free. When I saw a couple a minute later, it only took a few words to get them out of my way: “They need help in the generator room, a specimen got in somehow!”
That might work once or twice, but I knew that before long I’d meet people not panicked enough to fall for such a simple ruse. I had to get into an area where a tired reporter could reasonably be expected to have wandered, then ditch the disguise before I ran into any of the staff who’d been showing us around. It wasn’t as hard as it could have been, it was clear that the place didn’t have any proper emergency procedures. I was probably helped a lot by the fact that both the security and science staff were a mixture of Faulkner’s people and those sent there more recently by the Oversight Committee, and also the latent animosity between the natives and foreigners within both jobs.
The next challenge was finding somewhere I could change out of my stolen uniform without risking discovery. The staff quarters would be perfect, because although I wasn’t supposed to be there it would be reasonable to assume I’d gone looking for a story on hearing the alarm. The danger was that here, there seemed to be a whole block of rooms belonging to the hospitality staff. Whether they were liaisons with outside governments, the catering people, or our tour guides, way too many of them had seen my face. I couldn’t be seen here in a uniform I had no right to.
Every door had a name and job title on, and just as I’d feared there were more than a few that I recognised. But as I hurried down the corridor towards a different elevator, one name in particular caught my eye. One door that didn’t have a job description, one name without any letters at the end.
Lucretia Wellingsley Faulkner
Chapter 9 — Alone & Afraid
The halls were white. Brilliant white, a shade so bright and pure that you might think you see a tiny tint of colour only to realise it’s the influence of coloured light reflecting from a visitor’s shirt or some bright, colour-coded bag of equipment on one of the numerous trolleys that filled every available alcove. Even the floor gleamed, cleaned every four hours on the same schedule as the walls. There were no posters in the corridors or on the ward, no signs of humanity. Not even the announcements or appeals for funding that a hospital so often contained, just endless expanses of sterile white tiles. Even the medicine and defibrillator carts were concealed inside discreet cupboards wherever it was possible. The only permanent decoration was in the form of sky blue signs above the plain white double doors, giving the name of each department.
Lucretia had been in the hospital before, but that had been a more friendly place. The signs over the door had usually read “Children’s Ward”, which she had just been old enough to read the first time she’d been admitted. Hospitals, in her experience, had been staffed by quite a number of nurses. Their main duty seemed to be reassuring all the children that everything was going to be okay, and encouraging them to draw blobby pictures with hypo-allergenic crayons. The resulting artwork was displayed all over the ward, trying to make the environment feel a little more like home for the scared patients.
Sometimes, she’d been in a room signposted “Radiology” instead, and once or twice “Intensive Care”. Nobody had really explained to her what those words meant, but she’d experienced enough radiology in her life to know there would rarely be time to get bored. Sometimes there wasn’t even enough time to read a page of her book before she was taken away for another scan. It had been a novelty the first time, to be pushed on a wheelchair and not have to walk herself, but after a few visits she had come to hate it as the precursor to what felt like hours lying on a cold metal table, or listening to echoes inside an uncomfortable featureless box.
This hospital was different. The ward had eight beds, but the others were all empty. The men talked in hushed voices, and nobody would tell her anything about what was going on. That was worse even than the dumbed-down explanations that some doctors gave, treating her as if she was still a little kid. Father hadn’t been there to explain either, and that’s what made her really scared; Father was always there. He didn’t talk down to her, he told her the complex scientific words that she’d try to remember even if she didn’t know what they meant, so that someday she’d understand properly. Somehow, it made her feel better to have someone talk to her as if she was an equal, even though she was sure her father was the best doctor in the world and nobody else could know what was wrong with her as well as he did.
Today he hadn’t told her anything. He hadn’t even come home with a toy from the dollar store for her. When he did that, she knew to ask if tomorrow was a hospital day, and the answer was nearly always yes. The gifts he brought to help her worry less were the first part of the ritual, and she always said thanks even though she didn’t want to go to the hospital. It had been worse since the big holiday last year, because a lot of aunts and uncles took her to the hospital, and Father wasn’t allowed inside. She didn’t really know why, but she thought that some of the hospital doctors didn’t like him any more, since he stopped working at the big GWJ building. He could get her a present before she went in, and that was all.
This time there hadn’t even been a gift, or a little chat about what would happen. The first she’d heard about it was when she woke up on a bed that was shaking, surrounded by people she didn’t know and screaming sirens. She hadn’t realised until they wheeled her out, still lying down, that the tiny room was the back of an ambulance. It should have been exciting, she’d always wondered what it would be like to be in a van going so fast, with the sirens blaring and all the other cars moving out of your way like they do for someone important. But she hadn’t known what was happening, and without Father to explain she was just scared.
She was taken away for tests, but nobody ever told her what they were for, or if the answers were good or not. They drew blood, they got electronic reports from the various machines connected to her body, they wheeled the whole bed down empty hallways into one type of scanner or another. She never saw another patient. There were only the doctors, a dozen men with identical white coats. None of them had any personality in their clothes, like a colourful tie under the coat or a name badge. None of them spoke to her, they just shared glances over her head and acted as if she wasn’t there. The same went for the security men and nurses, strong silent people who acted like they were only there in case she broke some rule. She thought the nurses weren’t nearly friendly enough to be real nurses.
After four days, she’d decided that there was something wrong and that he clearly couldn’t get to her. She wanted to cry, but Father had always told her that you need to solve problems for yourself or you won’t get anywhere. She’d tried her best to memorise the twists and turns as two doctors and an angry man with a gun had wheeled her to the MRI room. It wasn’t quite like the one at her local hospital, this one didn’t have music to try to drown out the thudding of the machine, or colourful pictures projected on the walls, but it was something she recognised at least. She’d stared again at the walls and the signs on the way back to her room, and she thought she knew the path they’d taken now. A few times she’d heard muffled voices, so if she could find those places she might find somebody other than the doctors, somebody who might tell her what was going on. She thought she’d seen a sign pointing to an emergency exit, too, so maybe that would be a better alternative.
She wasn’t going to let them stick needles in her any more. She had a double line of red marks down the inside of her arm now, from some kind of test earlier in the day, and they were itching more than she’d ever thought could be possible. She decided to write in her new diary before leaving, waiting until it was night. There would probably be less people around by then, and maybe writing down her plan would help her to spot any problems with it. She never quite got it finished.
In this hospital, there wasn’t much difference between night and day. The lights were dimmed, and the doctors’ visited less often, but with the blinds being closed at all times she hadn’t even seen the sun in days. There was a shout from the corridor, and Lucretia looked up from her furtive scribbling. Someone out there was angry. She couldn’t make out the words, but she was sure nobody should be shouting like that in a hospital. The doctors usually kept silent as much as they could, as if they didn’t want the security men to catch them saying the wrong thing. So now, when she was so close to escaping, the commotion made her worry that she’d left it too late.
The door at the end of the little ward swung open. Though the square lights in the ceiling were dimmed, the corridor was still lit brightly enough to eliminate any trace of shadows. Every empty bed cast long, low shadows as the light streamed in and made the scene nightmarish for a second. The silhouette in the doorway must be the ward sister, a grumpy older woman with short dark hair pulled back in a tight bun. Lucretia didn’t like her, she was even worse than most of the nurses.
But then the shadow moved closer, and she could see that it was shaped more like a bamboo stalk than a dumpling. Not the sister, then. Not any of the nurses, whose shoulders were wide and their waists narrow, well built through a life of exercise. Lucretia was observant, she’d wondered before what kind of hospital could afford to choose so many perfect physical specimens as its orderlies and guards, so she knew the person coming in now didn’t belong here. And then her eyes adjusted to the darkness again as the door swung closed, and her panic dissolved in an instant.
Lucretia jumped out of her bed, struggling with the tightly tucked sheets, and squealed with a sudden rush of emotion. She didn’t even notice the tubes pulling out of her arm as she threw herself off the side of her bed and leapt at the intruder.
“Father!” He caught her straight away, and held her tight as if he was afraid to let her go. Then he helped her to free herself from the rest of the wires connected to her body. She could see from the way he winced that he didn’t find it easy to take her weight. He was getting old, and he looked sad in a way she couldn’t even imagine.
“Quiet, Luci,” he whispered, “I’m not supposed to be here.” But even while he was talking, he peeled off the tape that held a needle under her skin and quickly pulled it out.
“Why?” she answered, just as frightened as before but her father’s strong arms reminding her that she didn’t have to do this alone. “Why am I here? They won’t let me see you, they won’t tell me what’s going on or anything, they keep on doing tests and nobody will tell me anything.”
“They think you’re sick, Luci. They think I… They said I was testing you, and that’s what made you ill.”
“Like Mom?” She knew right away that she had said the wrong thing, as she saw the tears spring up in her father’s eyes. But he nodded, then continued what he was doing.
“Yes, like your mother. I did my best to save her, I tried everything I could think of. I hope you’ll remember that, even if nobody else believes me. I couldn’t help her get better, but I invented a new medicine now, so you’re going to be okay.” All the needles were gone now, the only thing still holding Lucretia in her bed was a couple of wires, going to the machine that beeped every second or two. It was going faster now, but her father ignored it. He tore a strip off the bed sheets, and used it to bandage her arm where she’d pulled out a needle too roughly in her mad dash to hold him close.
“It’s epsperimental, isn’t it?” It was something she’d heard before. She’d heard her parents use that word when she was very young, and it had become so ingrained in her mind that she never quite learned to pronounce it properly. The connotations went over her head, but she knew that it might help her feel better, and that the doctors would all be angry if she told them.
Faulkner just nodded as he gathered up all he could see of his precious daughter’s possessions. Then he held her on his hip, like she was a baby again, and hurried towards the exit with a cell phone pressed against his ear.
“Don’t worry Luci,” he sobbed quietly, words she hoped she could forget as soon as they were written down. “I failed Marianna, but I won’t fail you. Daddy won’t let you die.”
* * *
I closed the diary, and tried to understand how what I was reading could square with all the stories I already knew. It was strange to read of the infamous Faulkner as a family man, but then I thought back to the home video they’d shown on the news. It was still ingrained in my memory, if only because of the argument with Paul on the day I first watched it. The scientist had been looking away, not watching his daughter play, and at the time I’d wondered if he was alienating himself on purpose to avoid feeling bad about whatever research he’d done. But now, thinking back, the look in his eyes could just as easily have been the regret of a father who can’t do anything to save the one he loves. He can’t look at her without seeing what he knows is going to happen.
The choice of words was clearly a child’s, as were the caref
ul, rounded letters on pages that had clearly been spliced into the book some time after they were written. There were receipts, and some of Faulkner’s notes, inserted into the book because Lucretia had written or drawn pictures on the back of them. Some scientific documents. The book was bound in cloth, the kind of thing you’d get from a gift shop, but there were pages from a school exercise book expertly spliced into the middle, and that was where the book naturally fell open. Those details said that Faulkner truly loved his daughter; because he’d gone to the trouble and expense of having her diary re-bound, when it couldn’t be of any value to him.
I flipped to the back, hoping to find more notes that could help to explain what had happened. There was more writing there, the handwriting a little more legible. I guessed this had been compiled from a number of smaller books, and even had the spine widened to include all the drawings and other material she’d had inserted. That was a lot of work for a child’s diary, and I wondered if it might mean something more. Further towards the back of the book were pages of an incomprehensible scrawl of pencil. Those must have come from when the girl was too young to write properly, but then why were they included in the diary, and at the back, too? Every answer I guessed at just raised more questions.
I let the book fall open again, hoping I’d have time to read one more section, and that by then the corridors outside would be empty of people running to deal with the chaos I’d caused at the base of the cliff. This page was filled with inserts like a photo album, and the mix of careful precision and almost random arrangement made me think that Lucretia had placed some of them, while an adult had added to the story. A plane ticket to Oimbawa and a couple of letters from Dr Barishkov and someone called Maxwell filled in the gaps in the story of Lucretia’s kidnapping from the hospital. Maybe Faulkner had intended it this way, providing information about things that Lucretia herself had been too young to understand, so that whoever found the diary would know the truth. But why would he do that, unless he couldn’t make his case himself? Had he known he was going to die? This only made me more confused about what had been motivating him.