The Complex

by Michael Walters

  ‘What do you see?’ Art said. ‘Look carefully.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m looking for.’ He didn’t know what Art expected of him.

  ‘Start with the eyeball.’

  Grimacing, he found it. When he looked closer, he saw there was a very thin net of black fibres covering it. ‘The lines?’

  ‘You’ve got it. And look at all this.’ Art gestured at the mess. ‘The skull shattered. Skulls don’t shatter. It was already severely weakened. The bones are like those of a hundred-year-old man.’

  The nausea came from nowhere. Stefan rushed away from the corpse and got a couple of paces before he vomited. He waited, then heaved again. He walked further out into the field, looking up at the sky, breathing the clean air. He hated throwing up.

  ‘Vomiting is a useful mechanism,’ Art said, sounding amused. ‘Our dead friend was already very ill.’

  ‘He wasn’t shot?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Art said, surprised.

  ‘On our way here, we hit a deer. Mum said someone shot it before we hit it.’

  ‘Nearby?’

  ‘Less than a mile.’ Stefan nodded towards the mountains.

  Art’s breathing sounded laboured. The silence out here was total. Art seemed to be thinking, then said, ‘The week really isn’t going to plan, is it?’

  Stefan remembered the leaf in his pocket and pulled it out. Half of it crumbled in the movement. ‘Have you seen this?’

  ‘Yes. What do you make of it?’

  ‘Trees shed to conserve energy in the winter. But it’s not winter.’

  ‘Hormones weaken the leaf stems,’ Art said. ‘Then they fall.’

  ‘But what could be stimulating hormones in April?’

  ‘A good question.’

  ‘Is it to do with the garden?’ Stefan said. ‘The tomatoes? I thought everything was just genetically modified, but perhaps it’s linked.’

  ‘Hormones control the ripening process too.’ Art put a hand to his ribs.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I think I overexerted myself with your father on Monday. Let’s go in.’

  Back inside, Art sat at the table and stared at the window where the stag was. Stefan made up two plates from the pots of chicken stew that were still warm on the hob. He kept glancing at where he knew the mountains would be through the window. He couldn’t forget how exposed they really were.

  ‘What do you think made the stag ill?’ Art asked.

  ‘Something it’s eaten, maybe? Or an infection? Something in the plants. In the ground.’

  ‘Would you like to work at Fisher Industries after your Finals?’

  Blindsided, even though Fleur had warned him this was coming, Stefan stalled. ‘Fisher Industries?’

  ‘You would be a great fit. Take the summer off, play all the tennis tournaments you want, and if you decide you want to be a tennis pro, fantastic. It’s a tough world, and you’ll know if you’ve got a shot at it. But I think your talents are in science. You’re like me, you don’t like studying when there’s no real reason for it. I’m right, aren’t I?’

  Stefan nodded. He was flattered. He knew what a miracle the offer was. His mind was racing.

  ‘We’re doing some really interesting science,’ Art said. ‘We’re going to change the world. Slowing down the ageing process. Undoing years of damage. Drugs that would seem miraculous today will be commonplace in ten years’ time. And we’re going to get there first.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘When someone gives you a gift – and it is a gift – you take it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You’d be in at the deep end. It’s a spectacular opportunity.’ Art looked down. ‘Your grandfather would have been thrilled to know you were carrying on his work.’

  Stefan didn’t think he heard Art correctly. ‘My grandfather?’

  ‘Your mother doesn’t believe this, but it’s true. Her father worked with my father in the War. They created vaccines for the nastiest biological weapons in existence. Their work saved millions of lives. That’s where Fisher Industries started.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s right. Grandad wasn’t a scientist.’

  ‘Lots of people did work in the War that they didn’t want to talk about. Or couldn’t talk about.’

  Stefan felt like Art had shaken his head like a snow globe. ‘I need to process all this. I said to Fleur I’d bring her some food.’ He lifted the plates, to demonstrate the truth of his statement, and headed for the stairs.

  ‘It’s a good salary. And you’d be working with Fleur.’ He waved Stefan on. The man looked exhausted. ‘Go and talk to her about it.’

  Art’s intensity always snuck up on him. He seemed relaxed, and then he hit you with a comment or question. Stefan was glad to be away from him. He wanted to believe the story about his grandad, it fitted with all the avoidance of talking about the War, but if Mum didn’t buy it, there was a reason. He wished he could just ask her, but she didn’t seem herself at all. He’d had such high hopes for the holiday. He just wanted to eat and go to bed.

  At the library door, he paused. He didn’t know how Fleur was going to be with him now that he’d stepped over the line. Nowhere was safe.

  Fleur was lying on her back on the table when he walked in. He could see the tops of her legs. She pulled herself up and swung her legs onto the chair.

  ‘I owe you an apology,’ she said. ‘I led you on. That wasn’t right. I’m sorry.’

  He put the plates down, along with some cutlery from his back pocket. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘It’s not okay.’

  ‘Apology accepted. Can we just eat?’

  ‘What happened up there?’ She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I saw you two talking outside.’

  ‘He offered me a job, like you said. He told me my grandfather worked with your grandfather. I don’t know about that.’

  She took a plate from him. ‘We’re practically family.’

  ‘No, we’re not,’ he said, a little too quickly.

  He pulled his chair over to join her. They ate at speed, both ravenous.

  ‘Daddy is relentless,’ Fleur said, between mouthfuls.

  ‘My grades are not great.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘He’s using me, isn’t he?’

  Fleur gave him an assessing look. ‘Maybe.’

  Stefan felt deflated. The headsets were on the table and he gestured at them with his fork. ‘You never told me what you saw in your glitch.’

  ‘Neither did you.’

  He wished he’d kept his mouth shut. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Alopecia.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shedding hair. It can be hormonal or an auto-immune disease.’ She looked up, then at him. ‘The leaves.’

  ‘How did you know—’

  ‘I saw you showing Daddy. I had a friend whose hair fell out in big clumps. It was horrendous.’ She ran her fingers through her own hair, then stopped, wrinkling her nose. ‘I need a napkin.’ And then she looked down, distressed. ‘No. My dress.’

  ‘Did you get anything on it?’

  She pushed her still half-full plate away. ‘I’m going to get changed. Meet me by the steps when you’re done.’

  She stuffed the headsets into the canvas bag and took it with her. Stefan finished his food. If Fisher Industries was working on slowing the ageing process, it seemed non-random that in the grounds it was the exact opposite. He took the plates back up to the kitchen. Art was gone. Fleur had been carrying the headsets, so that was lucky for her. There was no one around but the dead stag at the front window and the spooky sculptures behind. The light from the house didn’t seem to reach them.

  ‘I’m ready,’ Fleur said. She’d changed into jeans and a plain t-shirt. ‘Follow me.’

  She too
k him back down the stairs and across the basement. The dance floor looked forlorn and the glitter ball lifeless. He hadn’t been through the arch on the other side. It was empty. The stairwell was unexpectedly ugly. A light clicked on as Fleur walked into an unassuming space next to it, revealing a thin corridor and a smooth, steel door. It looked ominous under the hospital-white lighting.

  ‘This door was in my glitch,’ she said. ‘I’d found it before but didn’t think much of it.’ She pushed down the handle before he could caution her. She stepped through and he followed, uneasy.

  It was hot. They were in the sort of bare maintenance room you’d expect to find in a car park or shopping centre. Strip lighting went around a corner. Fleur went to look. Her mouth opened in surprise.

  ‘What?’ Stefan said.

  ‘Where do you think it goes?’ she said, as he joined her.

  He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He felt sick. It was the long corridor from his first time in the headset. ‘Was this in your glitch too?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t go through the door.’

  ‘It was in mine. This is nuts.’ He wanted to go back, but kept his mouth shut.

  ‘Where does it end up?’

  ‘Some sort of military base.’

  ‘Military?’ Fleur frowned. ‘But there’s no security.’ She started walking. ‘Those cables must connect to something.’

  He wondered why she didn’t ask more about his glitch. Because it would mean she would have to reveal her own. He jogged to catch up with her. The black cables were tied against the ceiling. They were organic-looking, bulbous in places, and shiny, like they were oozing moisture. He reached to touch one as he walked but quickly pulled his hand back.

  ‘They’re scorching,’ he said.

  ‘Stefan.’ Fleur tugged his arm.

  ‘Hm?’ He turned. ‘Oh.’

  A door. The door. The big man. His legs felt weak. This was where the villagers were taken. He looked back towards the house. He reckoned they were somewhere under the tennis court, perhaps the clubhouse. A little further the other way was a ladder bolted to the wall. The air was dense and still. His chest felt tight. He realised he was listening for the electric hum of the vehicle carrying all those people. He tried to relax. His mind was playing tricks.

  ‘It’s probably locked anyway,’ she said, putting a hand on the handle.

  It opened. Stefan felt the air thicken further. He couldn’t warn her because he couldn’t speak. Then, she was already inside. This was what claustrophobia must be like. He was a mosquito in amber. The strip lights gave the slightest flicker. Dust drifted lazily down from the ceiling. There was a razor­thin crack running towards the house. He had no idea if it was new or had always been there. The corridor was deathly quiet.

  It was better to be with Fleur in there than alone out here. He forced his limbs to move. He crossed the threshold.

  It was just a cluttered office. Or makeshift laboratory. Fleur was on the other side of the room rifling through some papers on a desk. A pile of blue notebooks slipped to the floor. She picked them up, cursing. The centre of the room was taken up by a square workbench, covered in lab equipment. There were cables, tubes, two microscopes, boxes of different sizes, lids, papers in disarray, and transparent gloves. On the right of the room, against the wall, were stacks of storage boxes. Opposite, on the left wall, was a long desk covered in computers, keyboards and more papers, and mounted above it all, four large screens. It was like a haphazard control room. The screens were all off.

  ‘Look behind the door,’ Fleur said.

  There was a single bunk. It looked recently used.

  ‘We shouldn’t be here,’ Stefan said. ‘They might come back.’

  ‘Will you relax?’ Fleur said, squinting at a photograph she had picked up. ‘Nothing was locked. We’re staying in the freaking house. They are the ones trespassing.’

  ‘Why wasn’t it locked?’

  Fleur’s eyes widened. She dropped the photograph and looked at the stacks of boxes. She went to the nearest stack and took the lid off the top box. There were more notebooks, these ones black. She lifted one out and flicked through it.

  Stefan took one out for himself. It was full of tightly written equations, formulae and chemical symbols he didn’t recognise. The ink was black. There were no dates, no separating marks, just one line after another.

  ‘This is a seriously intense individual,’ he said. ‘Probably a serial killer.’

  ‘It’s my grandfather’s writing.’ She showed him a page from the notebook she had chosen. The script was larger than in his notebook, more relaxed.

  ‘Look at mine,’ he said. ‘Are they even the same man?’

  ‘He was really ill by the end. Perhaps he lost the plot a bit. He mentions Fisher Industries. Here.’ She had a finger on the paper and slid it along.

  He looked at the bed. ‘Who sleeps there?’

  ‘It must be Daddy’s.’ She looked over at the desk she had been going through. ‘That mug is his. I thought he’d broken it.’

  Stefan saw a NASA mug on top of a stack of papers. He went to look at the photograph Fleur had dropped. It was an old one. A woman holding a paintbrush, giving the photo­grapher a playful smile.

  ‘Who’s this?’ said Stefan, but he recognised her the moment the words were out of his mouth.

  ‘My grandmother.’

  It was the woman from the gatehouse. She was even wearing the same hat and veil with her white dress. The canvas she was waving the paintbrush at was blank.

  A sound started behind the furthest wall, a low rumble. Stefan looked at Fleur, who was engrossed in the notebook. A crack appeared on the floor between them, hair-thin and jagged. The room started to shake. Losing his balance, he grabbed at the workbench.

  ‘Stefan?’

  He snapped back to himself. There was no crack in the floor. Fleur had her head cocked to one side.

  ‘I’m okay,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you freak out on me.’

  She got a blue notebook and compared a page with one from the black notebook.

  He looked back at the doorway, half-expecting to see a figure standing in it. Or one of the sculptures. The air in the doorway was shimmering. He looked to Fleur to ask if she could see it, but Fleur was gone.

  ‘Fleur?’

  He was breathing fast. The feeling of unreality was strong. He wasn’t even sure if Fleur was really gone, or if his brain had decided he wasn’t allowed to see her. He put his hands to his head, but of course, if he was in a simulation, or a glitch, he wouldn’t feel the headset anyway. He went to where Fleur had been standing and stopped, all senses alert. The corner of a piece of paper lifted on the desk to his right. A draught.

  There was another door, obscured by a large cabinet. He might not have noticed it at all if it hadn’t been ajar. It looked like it was designed to be hidden, the exact same grey as the wall, with a small round handle.

  ‘Fleur?’

  There was another room, much like the lab, but empty of all furniture. Across it, Fleur was looking down at something.

  ‘You okay?’ he called. The quality of the air was different. He realised too late that the shimmer he had seen in the corridor filled this whole room. ‘What are you looking at?’

  She swayed and stumbled backwards, turning to him. Her eyes were wide.

  ‘What it is?’ he said.

  ‘You were right. We shouldn’t be here. This is a bad place.’

  She walked past him and he followed. Back in the lab she took some of the blue notebooks and went to the stacks of boxes. She took the lid off one, then moved to the next and took that lid off too. She froze.

  Stefan moved closer. The box was full of headsets.

  Gabrielle: Wake up

  Gabrielle couldn’t remember how she got to bed. The sheets were pulle
d up to her neck and the room was dark. Waves of dizziness and disorientation came and went, and when she swallowed her throat hurt. She tried to turn onto her side, but her body wouldn’t obey. She tried again. Something was holding her down. Her arms wouldn’t move. She was like a swaddled baby. There was panic, but distant, separate. Her fingers wouldn’t even wiggle. The bathroom door opened, and the light hurt her eyes. It closed again.

  She tried to say Leo’s name.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Gabrielle,’ Art said quietly

  There was a rattle in his voice. He sounded resigned. Fear woke in her chest. She tried again to move, but she could only blink impotently.

  ‘I’m out of ideas,’ he said. ‘It’s all become a bit complicated. The week is not going how I hoped.’ As he spoke, he brought a chair from the other side of the room to sit next to her.

  ‘You’re having a reaction to the medication.’ He looked down into her face, checking each eye.

  She wanted to crush his skull in her hands. She focused completely on just her right thumb, trying to break whatever chemical lock he had on her. Her rage was all-consuming. She blinked away a tear and felt a cold line roll down her cheek. Her hate was like a forest fire.

  Her arm stung. His face faded.

  She was in the amusement arcade. The wind whined gently in the wood-beamed roof, occasionally rattling the walls with harder gusts. The slot machines were turned off, the front and back doors locked, and through the back windows she could see the empty pier stretching to the horizon. She stood on tiptoes to look through the front windows, left and right, hoping, but there were no people. It was daylight and the sky was a flat grey. It was always like this. At some point her father would come back. She knew it.

  Behind her one of the machines chimed. Her favourite machine, at the centre of the arcade, had lit up and the START button was flashing.

  ‘Daddy?’ she called.

  She went to the machine. A blast of wind shook the building making the lights on the machine flicker. She quickly pressed START before the power went off.

  Cherry, BAR, BAR.

  Someone had said, once, she could have as many goes as she liked, but she didn’t think that was true. Time was running out. The START button flashed again. She pressed it.