by John McNally
If this is freaking me out, she’s bound to lose it too, and she might wake the others.
He registered all the equipment stowed on the wall opposite. Then the spiral staircase in the centre of the quarters.
Finn climbed up it and emerged in the great glass bubble of the Vitalis’s bridge, a dome of movement and light filtering through the water they were suspended in. He presumed they were in some kind of vessel being transported across the Great Cavern, but the shapes and shades were too indistinct to know for certain.
At the centre of the bridge on a raised dais was a chair for a pilot with dual joysticks and a fingertip control panel, the kind of ultimate gamer chair Finn had always craved. Around it, on screens, the craft was already coming to life, its computers beeping and flashing and running tests. Everywhere data ran. A message flashed up – “REACTOR SYSTEM SECURE: OPERATIONAL”. Gyroscopes whirred, an autopilot engaged, and outside the blades of the two great impellers turned and angled to stabilise the vessel.
At the back of the bridge was another steel door. Finn opened it and found himself in an engine room, full of gyroscopes, a turbine, and the electric motors that projected power down complex couplings and gears to the great arms of the beast. Another hatch at the back of the engine room led back down a ladder to the airlocks.
When he returned to the bridge, he saw an image on the principal screen. The outline of a man had appeared, a man made of red and blue lines, lines that branched and dived ever smaller, and Finn quickly realised what he was looking at.
It was a roadmap of Kaparis.
It snapped him out of his reverie.
He had to stop this.
The crew. He must incapacitate them. But how? Murder them in their beds? The thought made him sick. But he had to do something …
“Urrrhh …”
A groan. From below.
Finn ran to the spiral staircase. One of the Tyros was stirring, groaning in semi-conscious distress.
Finn had to hide. But he also needed to know what was going on. He noticed an intercom panel. One of the buttons read HOLD.
He hit it and dropped back down into the crew quarters. He grabbed as much kit as he could before any of the Tyros could fully wake up – then he shot back out to the hold.
By the time he was through the airlock, he could already hear abrupt Tyro voices over the intercom channel he’d left open.
Finn looked at the kit he’d managed to get out: a fluorescent yellow wetsuit, a tank of liquefied air, a helmet and a utility belt – and one of those hoverboard things too. He prayed it would be everything he’d need, and cursed himself for not grabbing some kind of weapon.
Louder voices came over the intercom as people climbed up to the bridge, voices that Finn recognised.
“Are we ‘Go’ for the Splice mission, Number One?” It was Leopold. Finn could hear the self-satisfaction in his voice.
“Yes, Herr Doctor. Systems tests complete. Crew complete.”
Pan.
“Send the following message to the Master,” said Leopold.
“Vitalis awake … all well … we beg to honour and serve the Master.”
Pan tapped out the message on a device linked to the nuclear reactor, varying the radioactive signature of the craft to create a series of dots and dashes that could be detected by the surgical team.
…- .. – .- .-.. .. … / .- .-- .- -.- . / .- .-.. .-.. / .-- . .-.. .-.. / -… . --. … / …. --- -. --- ..- .-. / … . .-. …- . / -- .- … – . .-.
Anyone could respond to events, anyone could react. Shaping events was quite another matter, and it was the business Kaparis was in.
Life was to be conquered, not revered.
Drake was dead. He, Kaparis, was surrounded by his dedicated medical team. And the Vitalis was about to enter his bloodstream and embark on its mission. Within hours, he would be able to feel again. He would be resurrected. There was no sign of any move by Hook Hall. They would do nothing in haste, even if they did find the girl. The fools! He was supreme.
The eyes of the Big Swiss Cheese surgeon appeared over him.
“There are no contra-indications. We are ready to begin.”
Kaparis flicked his eyes to Heywood, who understood he had to lift the mask.
HISSSSSSSSS …
“Fiat Kaparis,”17 croaked the old devil.
TWENTY
FEBRUARY 21 23:09 (GMT+3). Great Cavern, Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki
The operation began.
A 10mm incision was made in the patient’s upper right thigh and the femoral artery was exposed and punctured. A very fine cannula tube was inserted and fed up through the torso, past the heart, through the top of the chest and into the neck,18 then more slowly, it was twisted and turned through ever smaller blood vessels until it finally reached its destination between the first and second cervical vertebrae, or back bones, where the blood vessel was so narrow it could go no further.
The whole journey took six minutes. About the same amount of time the Big Swiss Cheese spent in his Porsche driving to work every day.
“In position,” he declared. “Launch the Vitalis.”
The phial of saline solution containing the microscopic craft was attached to the end of the cannula …
FEBRUARY 21 23:29 (GMT+3). Body of D.A.P. Kaparis
Movement. A sudden change in the light. Finn had his face pressed against the small porthole, trying to make out what was going on.
“This is it!” he heard Leopold exclaim over the intercom.
“We’re being attached to the cannula. We’re going in …” said Sir James with reverence.
“Crew to stations! Strap yourselves in!” he heard Pan bark.
They must be in for a rough ride. Finn looked around. There were no seats, but the cables were held on the racks by cargo straps. Finn released one and wriggled under it to lie alongside the cables.
Just in time.
SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH! The Vitalis lurched, spinning in a hundred directions at once, struggling, its turbines and impellers crying out as some unstoppable force, some incredible turbulence, thrust them into instant total darkness – then blinding red. Finn clung to consciousness as lights sprang on around the craft as it fought to control the energy singing through its structure.
SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH! Through the porthole, Finn saw walls of red glass flashing past – the red silk lining of an endless spinning tunnel …
All eyes watched the monitor as the nuclear trace – picked up as a distinct blue spot by the scanner embedded in the operating table – made its way directly up the tiny cannula through the arterial system until it was deposited exactly where it was required, high in the neck.
The surgeon withdrew the cannula and the blue dot stayed in place. He had parked the Vitalis in just the right spot.
“There,” he said, beaming. “All better.”
“Idiot …” Kaparis muttered beneath his mask.
But nothing could defeat the euphoria he now felt.
He even felt moved to say a few words.
He made eyes at Heywood to lift his mask and Heywood obliged. HSSSSSSSSSS …
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen …” he started, looking around at their eager faces.
Then he felt his mood turn (and there was nothing he liked more than a sudden change of mood). They were pleased as punch in their moment of triumph. And what had they done? They had performed a function under his instruction. All the organisation and inspiration, all the genius, had come from him. If he should be thanking anyone, it should be himself.
So, just to let them know who was really the hero here, who could truly command life and death, who was paying their life-changing fees, he added: “You may kiss my hand.”
Sweat beaded on their brows. Then, one by one, they bent to brush their lips against his lifeless fingers.
Dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu …
Finn came round with his head still spinning as the Vitalis finally levelled o
ut.
While his mind and body recovered some sense of balance, he noticed the light through the portholes was now a steady red. He loosened the cargo strap and got up to take a better look. He could barely believe his eyes.
Red …
It was as if they were part of a thick shoal of fish. He had once been to an aquarium with his mum. In one of the rooms, you walked through a tunnel of glass beneath a tank full of tropical fish. That was exactly what it was like now. But red …
The giant shoal of fish were up close, touching the porthole, as if inquisitive, and the craft was floating free, going with the flow, being part of it. But Finn knew that what he was looking at weren’t fish. He knew because he’d had to draw them, colour them, label them, and look at them through a microscope in a biology lesson the year before at school. They had a distinct form, like a frisbee, and he knew they were suspended not in water but in a translucent plasma.
“Blood cells …” Finn said, aloud, to confirm he wasn’t dreaming. “We’re inside him …”
He felt a strange euphoria. Over the intercom, he could hear technical chatter as the Tyros returned to the bridge, but also manic laughter.
“Corpuscles!” cried Leopold.
“Magnificent!” said Sir James.
“Dear Nico, I present to you the eighth wonder of the world,” Leopold declared.
“Or rather, blood vessels leading to the gap between the first and second cervical vertebrae,” said Sir James almost in a whisper.
“No, this can’t be …” Nico began, but could not continue, her voice suspended in awe.
Finn pressed his face to the porthole as the Vitalis eased along the blood vessel, caught in the blood flow. The red frisbees were streaming past, urged on by an unseen force – dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu – the beat of a heart, the essence of Kaparis. Among the red blood cells were occasional whites, floating like baby blankets among the hurried fish: the body’s own Siguri, there to protect against invaders. There were much smaller sponges in the mix too – platelets, Finn remembered, whose job it was to plug gaps and form clots.
Gaping holes appeared in the walls of the tunnel as they sailed by, sucking blood cells into them, branches of smaller arteries that led off to who knew where, each with a place in some great scheme. As they drifted close to them, Finn could see that the waxy arterial walls themselves were a mosaic of millions of tiny cells. It was inside-out brilliant engineering, just one tiny part of one human body, on a planet spinning on the outer edge of an insignificant galaxy, billions of years old …
Dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu …
Life – so little, yet so much. Finn felt dwarfed by it all, and his heart ached for Al to be there, for Grandma, for anyone else to see this with him—
A line of thought that snapped as he remembered. “Carla!”
Carla stayed in her bunk, trying to control her fear. Where were they? What was going on? She dreaded to think.
No! Don’t dread, don’t think, she told herself. Just try and control your breathing, just try and stay alive. Do what they do. And don’t smile … Though admittedly smiling was now the very least of her problems.
Finn heard the Vitalis’s impellers whine as the vessel turned 180 degrees and held its position in the flow in a particularly narrow part of the blood vessel, the shoals of red frisbee fish having to squeeze past its bulk.
“Coordinates achieved. Firing anchors.”
Tzzzzot – Tzzzzot – Tzzzzot – Tzzzzot –
The hull twitched as anchor lines shot out of the Vitalis and pierced the rubbery walls of the blood vessel. Servomotors whirred as the lines were automatically tightened. Directly ahead was the entrance to a branching artery of a good size, easily big enough to swim through.
“There it is – AE347567,” said Leopold.
“My God …” said Nico.
“God had nothing to do with it,” said Sir James.
You want to try arguing that one with my grandma, thought Finn in the hold.
“Kaparis has brought us to this point,” said Leopold.
And you want to try arguing that one with my uncle Al.
“And we are here to serve him. Come. Let’s get started,” ordered Leopold.
“All crew: check helmets, tanks, valves and power status,” said a Tyro voice.
They’re coming, Finn thought. He jumped down to retrieve the kit he’d stolen and started to climb into it.
“Shall we go through?” said a smiling Leopold, leading his two medical colleagues down from the bridge.
The Tyro crew were releasing themselves from their bunks and beginning their equipment checks. They wore bright yellow wetsuits and Nico thought they moved like robots; all apart from one girl who seemed scared and whose hands shook as she fumbled with an air regulator. Pan and Amazon, the lead Tyros, were the only ones that seemed to have independent intelligence – of the cruellest sort – and they were kitted out in fluorescent green wetsuits like the medics. Pan noticed Nico staring and scowled back.
“We are at the narrowest navigable point in this intervertebral artery,” explained Leopold, pointing out their position on a screen, a tiny channel between two bones in the back. “From here on in, we must swim through the foramina to reach the spinal cord.”
“Swim?” said Nico.
“Using the scoot,” he said, detaching one of the hoverboard-like units from its rack. It was like a fat snowboard, with a grilled intake at the front and jet openings at the back.
“Just clip your feet in and tip forward and they drive jets of plasma through the unit. Very simple. Now you know why I gave you both a hoverboard for Christmas!” laughed Leopold. “But don’t be nervous. We will guide you anyway – and it’s only a short distance to the spinal cord.”
Leopold turned to his old tutor.
“Sir James, I would like to give you the honour of breaching the blood–brain barrier. It’s vital that we make the smallest practical incision using one of the laser scalpels …”
He took what looked like a bazooka of some kind from a rack on the wall.
“Just enough to get us through one at a time, and of course to feed through the cables. This is precisely why we needed you on the mission. Hopefully, the bleed into the spinal fluid will be insignificant.”
“It would be an honour,” said Sir James. He regarded the laser scalpel and tried its weight. “A clean incision in the meninges, the barrier that protects the spinal cord, should allow an opening that will close in on itself, like an elastic curtain. The body’s natural structures should do the work for us.”
“Exactly,” agreed Leopold.
“But what about its natural defences?” said Nico. “We’ll be attacked by antibodies at once, then those white blood cells will move in and we’ll be consumed or trapped within minutes.”
Leopold laughed.
“Oh, we thought of that. You can see already no antibody has stuck to the Vitalis. That’s because a small positive electrical charge is being carried through the hull. This prevents the antibodies attaching, and so they don’t send out any alarm to the whites. The wetsuits all carry a battery pack –” he indicated a black unit the size of a paperback book on the utility belt – “which will send a similar charge through the suits. There’s enough power in each of these to repel antibodies for up to twenty hours. Also, the system allows us direct communication. As long as two parts of our suits are in direct contact, we can converse through headsets in the helmets.”
Nico watched as Leopold and Sir James donned utility belts and checked their helmets. When she made no move to do the same, Leopold looked at her with incomprehension. Sir James was less understanding. He grabbed a belt and thrust it at her.
“Don’t be a fool. You have been invited to take part in a miracle. This is the future!” Sir James was convinced; insistent. “Just imagine the capacity for good. Imagine the thousands who may walk again, the tumours we can starve of blood. We are the pioneers in a medical revolution!”
“Do you really think this man has good intentions? Have you even thought that far?” said Nico.
Before Leopold or Sir James could answer, Pan stepped between them. He had heard enough. “Disobey, Dr Sharma, and your children will suffer.” He nearly spat into Nico’s face.
“Now wait a min—” Sir James began.
But Pan snapped. “No more talk. Action!” He almost punched the utility belt at Nico, who had no option but to swallow her pride and put it on, while Sir James, because he was too ashamed to meet her eye, quickly put on his mask instead. Only the nervous Tyro girl whose hands had shaken dared look at her.
Listening at the intercom in the hold, Finn thought, Talk to Dr Sharma.
He still had no plan, but at least he had a list:
1. Save Carla.
2. Talk to Dr Sharma.
3. Sabotage the mission.
4. Kill the giant.
The details he would have to work out along the way.
Dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu.
TWENTY-ONE
“Crew to airlocks,” crackled the intercom.
Finn grabbed his helmet and stuck it on. Surely, with so many Tyro crew members on board, he’d go unnoticed? He flicked a switch on what he presumed was the battery and heard a click in the speakers in his helmet. As his visor began to steam up, he turned a dial on the regulator and fresh air hissed in to clear his view.
The last he heard from the intercom before it automatically shut off was: “Flood the hold.”
Straight away, valves clicked open and liquid began to roar in.
At the back of the cable racks Finn checked the seal on his helmet and tried not to panic. He had no choice but to hunker down in the rising plasma. It was soon over his helmet and, a few moments later, the hold doors began to open with a whirr. As they did, illuminated by lights all over the craft, red blood cells poured in, bouncing around every nook and cranny like dumb, insistent creatures with a life of their own.