Maladapted

by Richard Kurti

  As if sensing their approach, the boy suddenly stopped and raised his head, staring intently. Cillian flinched and turned away, but he could still feel the boy’s unrelenting eyes on him.

  They passed more “Posture Cells” containing young children. Some could only crawl, others had to slither across the floor as if they’d been cursed.

  “They’re kids!” It made Cillian feel sick. “They’re just kids.”

  “I think these may be the lucky ones,” Tess said ominously. She looked over the glass balustrade down into the lobby, where medical staff clustered around a monitoring hub. Doctors were quietly talking as they studied screens and flipped between displays, but Tess knew this wasn’t about nursing. No-one was being healed here, they were being studied like specimens in a bell jar.

  A clattering sound drew Cillian further up the ramp to a large cell criss-crossed with bars. Several children, no older than 7, were leaping around the frames with incredible ease, like free runners let loose in a zoo. Even though their physical prowess was extraordinary and their reactions razor-sharp, they seemed to have the minds of animals, and could only shriek and yell to communicate with each other.

  And yet even they fell silent and huddled together, staring at Cillian with unblinking eyes as he approached.

  With every cell they passed, new horrors unfolded. There were children with no mouths or noses, but with gill-like slits in their bodies for breathing. Whoever had done this to them had been experimenting with different configurations. One child had a row of slits in his neck, another all down her back.

  As Cillian and Tess walked past, the children rolled into tanks of water that dominated their cells and stared out from the safety of underwater, slowly breathing through their gills.

  Further up the ramp led to fresh abominations. A teenager alone in a cell with skin so translucent you could see the blood pumping in her veins and her sinews tensing. She stood by the far wall, compulsively drawing with an electronic stylus, covering the white space with intricate patterns.

  Another teenager in the adjacent cell had the same paper-thin skin, but he was covering his walls with numbers; not randomly, but in a calculation, a massive calculation.

  Cillian was immediately drawn into the numbers, his mind hunting for patterns, trying to follow the game. Suddenly he got it. The boy was creating a complex 3-dimensional maze-solving algorithm.

  “Beautiful,” Cillian whispered.

  The boy turned his head and a smile flickered across his face, as if this stranger was the first person who had really understood what he was doing. But in the next instant the boy’s smile vanished and he curled up, wrapping his arms across his body, suddenly ashamed of his own naked transparency.

  Cillian closed his eyes and leant forward, resting his head on the glass wall. Tess could see he was unsteady, as if he was about to faint. She grabbed his arm and pulled him through some doors that led to a medical supplies bay. “Pitying them won’t help. Stay focussed.”

  But Cillian was overwhelmed. He reached out to a WallScreen and gazed in horror at the gently glowing map. “If that’s a ward … what happens there?” He pointed to even more ominous areas—

  Non-Viable

  Psychosis

  Maladapted

  Suddenly a set of warning lights started blinking on the map.

  “That’s not good.” Tess opened the door and peered back down the ramp. Nurses were running from cell to cell. Something seemed to be wrong with the patients.

  And then Tess realized – all of them were staring up the ramp, their eyes searching for Cillian.

  The nurses looked up, following the patients’ gaze, and Tess flung herself back against the wall.

  “We have to get out of here!”

  41

  Tess kicked the Maintenance-Bot hard and watched it pick up speed, hurtling down the spiral ramp towards the nurses, who yelled for help.

  An alarm started sounding—

  Medics shouted over each other. “Lock down the ward!” “Keep the patients safe!”

  But as the Cleaning-Bot ricocheted like a lethal pinball, cracking glass walls and shorting out the BioDisplays, it spread fear and panic from cell to cell. Already patients were throwing themselves against the floor, seized by hysteria.

  “Use sedation!”

  “Don’t let them self-harm!”

  Grimly Tess looked down at the disarray. “We’ve got about 30 seconds!” she shouted to Cillian.

  As they bolted up the ramp, Tess unholstered her gun and fired a burst of bullets into the glass dome that arched over the ward hall. There was an ominous groan as cracks grew like frost, then with a massive punch the entire glass curve shattered.

  Cillian watched, mesmerized, as glass rained down into the chasm, lacerating the hands of the medics who tried to protect their faces. Spatters of red appeared like paint-bursts on the white floor—

  Blood sprayed over pristine monitoring stations—

  For a few harrowing moments Cillian was plunged back into the Metro crash; the chaos of death—

  “MOVE!” Tess’s voice snapped him forwards again. She gripped his arm and hauled him up the ramp towards the gaping hole where the dome used to be.

  She stopped at the last cell and aimed her gun at a patient cowering behind the glass wall.

  “NO!” Sick with horror, Cillian tried to grab the weapon but Tess pulled away.

  “Stand back!” she yelled at the patient. “BACK!”

  She fired into the wall which shattered, punching glass fragments all around the screaming patient.

  “It’s all right! I’m not going to hurt you!”

  But the patient scrambled into a corner in terror, hands clamped over his head.

  “What are you doing?” Cillian yelled.

  Tess ignored him and stepped into the cell. “I’m not going to hurt you! I promise,” she said to the patient who was now frenzied with fear. It was the portable control panel she was after – a mobile console linked to the main system by a long loom of cable. Ripping the plugs out, she grabbed the cable, dragged it from the cell and thrust it at Cillian.

  “Throw it up there.” She pointed to all that remained of the dome – a curved steel girder 10 metres above them. “DO IT!”

  Cillian wound the cable around his arm like a lasso, looked up at the girder … and paused as energy permeated his body like a wash of warmth.

  Suddenly everything felt easy, his arms understood what needed to be done. He threw the coil of rope-wire … watched it ripple through the air … bounce off the girder … and flip over.

  Tess grabbed the loose end, tied it off around the handrail and swung out into the void, slithering up the wires. At the top she grabbed the girder and hauled herself outside.

  Cillian gripped the cables and followed her up, hand over hand. But halfway something made him pause. He looked down into the space plunging away beneath his feet and felt a rush of exhilaration; a moment of pure freedom, suspended in the void, the strength in his own arms the only thing holding him here.

  “Hurry!” Tess shouted down.

  Cillian’s hands moved again, hauling himself onto the roof where Tess was pacing the parapet, looking for the best way down.

  “Their security is all about stopping people getting in,” she said. “They’re not so used to dealing with people getting out.”

  She peered over the edge of the building. On one side was a sheer drop into the rock-strewn ocean, but on the other side the wall intersected a series of sloping roofs that terraced back to ground level.

  “That’s the way,” she said, pointing down the vertical wall. “The granite blocks should give us finger grips.”

  Cillian peered over the side of the building into the precipitous drop, and for a few seconds was seized by the urge to jump. He felt so empowered, as if nothing could harm him.

  Slowly he leant out…

  “Cillian!” She grabbed him as if realizing what he was thinking. “Be careful.”

&n
bsp; “It’s OK.” He crouched down and swung his legs over the edge until they found the first crack in the stones.

  I see it.

  In an instant he glimpsed a pattern of larger gaps between the granite blocks and knew which was the least treacherous route down.

  Tess watched him climb, hardly able to believe how easy he made it look. She swung out and tried to follow his path – same toeholds and ledges, but every move was painful, the freezing granite cut into her fingers and her feet slipped on the damp walls.

  When they were a few metres from the lower roof, Cillian let go of the wall and dropped, rolling down the slate tiles to the next level.

  “How hard can it be?” Tess muttered to herself, and let go as well.

  A moment of free fall—

  Then she smashed into the roof and slid down, out of control, leaving a jagged spray of broken tiles in her wake.

  As the end of the roof rushed closer, she reached out to try to grab the gutter, but she was going too fast and overshot…

  THUMP! Onto the next roof down.

  Half-falling, half-scrambling, Tess finally managed to slow herself just enough to make the final leap into the service yards.

  Cillian helped her to her feet. “You all right?”

  She looked up at the sheer walls, amazed that she was still alive. “Let’s hope that was the hardest part.”

  They ran around the base of the building towards the quad bike. Tess fired it up and gunned the engine; as Cillian sat behind her she opened the throttle and roared across the grounds—

  When suddenly an ugly rising wail echoed off all the buildings. The General Alarm.

  “Too late to worry about that now.” Tess accelerated hard, heading straight for the gap in the fence where the workmen were still wrangling wire.

  “We’ll have to find another way!”

  “They’ll move!” she shouted back.

  Tess saw the foreman try to marshal his men into a cordon, but they just ran for cover.

  Furious, the foreman leapt into a bulldozer and started to position it across the gap himself.

  Tess twisted the throttle wide open, making the quad bike bounce violently across the uneven ground, forcing Cillian to tighten his grip around her waist.

  The bulldozer roared, its tracks churning up mud—

  Tess closed her eyes and prayed—

  The gap grew smaller and smaller—

  As the quad hurtled through, its rear wheel clipped the ’dozer’s front blade and it twisted round.

  Still Tess refused to let go of the throttle.

  The bike did a massive wheelspin as it landed, sending up a curtain of mud, then she jammed the steering left and headed for the cover of the trees.

  Finally they were away.

  Outside Gilgamesh.

  Only now they were prey.

  42

  The densely packed trees forced Tess to slow the quad down. There was no easy way through the forest, no path to follow, just a tangle of snow-covered branches.

  “How much fuel have we got?” Cillian peered over her shoulder to see the readout.

  But Tess had already clocked an ominous engine sound approaching fast from above. “I don’t think fuel’s the problem.”

  Seconds later a helicopter roared low over the tree canopy, its powerful searchlight hunting through the forest.

  Instinctively Tess veered away from the beam of light, but that just pushed them into denser forest which slowed them even more. Every time she tried to open the throttle, low-hanging branches snapped viciously at them, trying to pull them off the quad; but when she eased back, the implacable searchlight swept closer.

  As the trap tightened, Cillian’s senses started to over-process.

  I see it.

  A way through the complex mesh of trees.

  Moments later he felt that strange sense of empowerment flood through him, urging him to surrender to his reflexes. His body was screaming that it knew how to survive this, how to tap into primal skills to elude a predator.

  It knew.

  He stretched his arms past Tess and gripped the handlebars. “Let go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can do this.”

  “No!”

  “Trust me,” he said.

  Tess heard the eerie calm in his voice, then she seemed to feel the energy around him shift. Praying it was the right call, she took her hands off the grips.

  Cillian jammed open the throttle, his body reacted and his whole world slowed to a beautiful tranquility. They were gliding slowly, softly through the forest like ghosts. The numbers on the speedo were shooting up, but his own mind was now revving so fast it became effortless to find a path through the tight forest.

  For Tess it was a terrifying, chaotic blur of branches as the quad lurched violently from side to side. No-one could drive this fast without killing themselves.

  No-one.

  She closed her eyes and waited for the devastating crash and searing pain that would destroy them—

  When suddenly the brakes slammed on.

  She opened her eyes. By some miracle they were out of the woods. Tess looked back. The helicopter was way behind them, still searching above the trees. They had outrun it.

  “You may want to close your eyes again,” Cillian suggested, as he veered the quad to the right and over the crest of a snow bank. Below them was a terrifyingly steep slope leading down to the valley.

  “No!” It wasn’t just the angle of the drop, it was the swathes of ice that zigzagged across it.

  “We’ve got to get away.”

  “Not down there!”

  “There’s no choice.”

  “It can’t be done!”

  “I think the trick is not to brake.” And with a roar of the engine, Cillian plunged the quad over the edge.

  Tess barely breathed as they careened downwards, skidding wildly across the ice, veering past jagged boulders.

  But Cillian had never felt more in control. His instincts were calculating every move and swerve with unnerving accuracy. It was like having a sixth sense that could read momentum and gravity and friction without thinking.

  Without thinking.

  As the quad finally roared off the side of the mountain and into the snow-covered valley, Tess was overwhelmed with nausea from the adrenaline rush.

  She knew what they’d just done was impossible for any normal human being; and that proved beyond doubt what Cillian really was.

  But she also knew that no normal human being could have just saved her life like that.

  43

  Moving low and fast across the snowy landscape, surrounded by nothing but mountains and the biting cold, they could have been running with the wolves. It was only the roar of the engine that kept it real.

  Tess glanced over her shoulder at the wooded ridge far behind. The helicopter was still sweeping the trees with its spotlight, outwitted for now, but she knew it wouldn’t be long before they broadened the search area. She glanced at the long, straight tracks the quad was leaving in its wake. Even though the wind was blowing the snow smooth, their tyre tracks were still visible.

  “We need to head lower,” she shouted to Cillian. “Out of the snowfield.”

  “OK. Whatever you think.”

  She took control and steered the quad bike towards a wide gulley where several streams converged, but after a few minutes the snow gave way to marshy ground and every jolt sent the chunky wheels plunging deeper into cloying wet ruts. Tess gunned the engine to keep going, spraying them both with rank mud, but the ground became softer and softer.

  “We’re going to get swallowed up!” Cillian shouted over the revving engine.

  But Tess kept the quad slithering through the mud until they reached one of the streams winding across the marsh, then she jumped it down into the icy water. Immediately the wheels hit the pebbly bed they got traction, and roared off again. “Just because you did the trees doesn’t mean you know everything!” she called back.


  “I never doubted you.”

  “Right.”

  They powered along the stream, trying to ignore the bitterly cold water that soaked them. Cillian held Tess tightly to preserve the warmth of their bodies, but the further they went the deeper the cold cut in, until even the warmth of the quad’s engine started to fail. The more it whined, the harder Tess pushed it, willing it to keep going.

  2 agonizing kilometres later, they saw the lights and steam-stacks of a vast, sprawling industrial plant in the distance.

  “Looks like a BoilDown,” Cillian said.

  Tess brought the quad to a stop. “We should hole up there. Try and get warm.”

  Neither of them had ever actually been to a BoilDown, but all school kids learnt about them – vast recycling centres in the middle of nowhere which broke down the millions of tons of junk and unwanted stuff that poured out of Foundation City. With just a skeleton crew controlling the massive, lumbering machines that ate through twisted mountains of debris, a BoilDown was the perfect place to hide.

  By the time they reached the outer garbage field, the quad was on its last legs, sputtering painfully like an exhausted beast. Cillian and Tess rolled it next to a pyramid of assorted mechanical junk, gave it an appreciative pat on the fuel tank, then headed deeper into the trash.

  “This is really weird,” Cillian whispered as they wandered through huge avenues of unwanted goods.

  Plumes of smoke rose from the TechnoSmelters, where robot parts and circuit boards were boiled and their precious elements skimmed off. Satellite-controlled diggers shaped and reshaped the landscape of trash to make sure the smelters never went hungry, and the whole thing was powered by an array of vast wind turbines whose blades chopped the air with a menacing thud.

  “How about over there?” Cillian pointed to a labyrinth that had been built out of LCD screens patiently waiting for destruction.

  Tess nodded. “At least it’ll be out of the wind.”

  As they made their way across, she studied the sky and saw a cluster of dots on the far horizon, hovering over the marshland they’d just crossed. “Surveillance drones. They’ll be searching with infrared.”