Reviver: A Novel

by Seth Patrick

  ‘There he is,’ Never said, a grin spreading. ‘How are things?’

  Jonah grinned back. ‘What are you doing in? Thought you weren’t back at work until tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m just here to say hello.’

  Sam said, ‘I’ll leave you to it. We’ll talk more in the morning, Never, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Never. Sam left, and Never gave Jonah a conspiratorial smile. ‘Sam wants me to babysit you until you go on leave.’

  ‘He told you about that?’

  ‘Of course. Now, how are you doing?’

  ‘Stressed and tired.’

  ‘I can understand it. It sounded extreme.’

  ‘It was different, Never. Sam and Jennifer kept on about how it was overwork, and that I’d been there before. But it was different. And I wish you’d been there instead of J. J.’

  ‘J. J.’s good,’ said Never, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘You keep the cameras running. J. J. cut them off the moment we got a result.’

  Like J. J., Never was a revival technician, responsible for setting up and managing the hardware needed for the task. The three video feeds were only part of it; two additional audio recordings were made, and everything was recorded onto both flash drives and hard disk. Redundancy and careful design meant that problems during a session were rare, and hadn’t yet proved disastrous. It was a system Never was proud of – he had been key in the original design. Now a countrywide standard, it was also used by many forensic revival groups in the rest of the world.

  Revival technicians needed their own skill set. Conscientious and precise, confident and resourceful, they had to be comfortable around revivers and able to stomach death. As the most senior in the office, Never was given the highest-profile and most difficult cases, which meant that much of his work was with the three best revivers – Jason Shepperton, Pru Dryden, and Jonah.

  ‘When the coordinating officer gives the word, recording can stop,’ said Never. ‘The police are usually too keen to get hold of the footage to warrant the wait. If he’d kept recording, all the cameras would have seen is you freaking out over nothing.’

  ‘And then I’d know it was all in my head. You record to the end, though. Always.’ He looked Never in the eye.

  ‘I do,’ said Never. ‘Force of habit.’ Jonah’s gaze was still on him, and there was no avoiding it. ‘All right, all right. I’ll have a word with the others.’

  Jonah nodded and smiled. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Now,’ said Never, making a point of looking at his watch. ‘Half an hour before you knock off, so let me check my mail and I’ll hang around until quitting time. Then we can share a cab.’

  Jonah narrowed his eyes. His apartment was a ten-minute walk away. ‘Why would I want a cab, Never?’

  ‘I need a drink. And you need several.’

  * * *

  It was the only sure-fire way, Never Geary knew, to get Jonah out for anything remotely social. Ambush.

  When they first met, Jonah had been nineteen, Never a twenty-five-year-old hardware whiz who’d been working in the Quantico lab on forensic data recovery, then insinuated himself into Sam’s trial forensic revival unit and realized he’d found his niche. To begin with, his and Jonah’s relationship had been more of an older-brother thing, but it hadn’t taken long for them to become friends.

  And Never knew his friend well.

  He fended off Jonah’s request to shower and change, which he recognized for what it was – an excuse to return to his apartment and attempt to talk Never into having a quiet drink there. At last, they were sitting in a dim corner of one of the few bars Jonah liked. Not busy, especially on a Monday evening, and cosy. The kind of place you could go to and still hide, Never thought. Just the kind of place Jonah would like.

  On the flight home that morning, Never had been worrying, not knowing what to expect. Jonah had always seemed fragile to him – especially after his breakdown. Here, in the wilds outside the haven of his apartment, he was quiet and withdrawn. Not for long, Never thought, buying the first round. Tray in hand, he returned to the table.

  Jonah looked up at him and raised an eyebrow when he saw what was on the tray. A pint of Guinness each, and their favourite chasers – whiskey sour for Never, and a shot of tequila for Jonah.

  ‘I wasn’t planning on getting drunk,’ said Jonah. ‘We do have work tomorrow.’

  ‘We’re not getting drunk, we’re getting relaxed. This,’ he said, lifting his sour, ‘is to knock down my jet lag. That,’ pointing at the tequila, ‘is to take the fucking frown off your face.’

  Jonah shrugged and lifted his drink, and Never thought there was the ghost of a smile creeping onto Jonah’s lips.

  By the time the pair had started on their second round of drinks, Never was dishing out conference dirt.

  ‘Pru got massively drunk on the first night,’ he said, ‘and by God you should have seen the fella she ended up with. Definite groupie.’

  Reviver groupies were a bizarre breed, seeking out close encounters with reviver kind. Many of them had chill; apparently that was the point.

  Chill, the sensation that most non-revivers got from the touch of a reviver, came in many degrees, depending both on the reviver and the sensitivity of the person. Typically, it was a moment of cold, like a hand plunged into icy water, fading as soon as contact was broken. At its worst, it was a bitter ache that filled every part of you, leaving behind it a taint of death and a deep fear.

  Half of the FRS staff who weren’t revivers didn’t get chill at all, Never Geary being one. It meant he had no direct experience of how it felt, but Jonah certainly did; both the reviver and the person they touched experienced much the same thing. Some revivers wore gloves routinely to avoid it. Jonah’s own level of chill was particularly severe. It wasn’t something the light gloves revivers favoured could mask. He wore leather gloves when they wouldn’t be conspicuous – in cool weather, when he was outside – but the rest of the time he found any kind of glove hot and restrictive. Instead, he preferred to be very careful.

  The idea that anyone would seek out even the mild form of chill gave Never the creeps, but with Pru it would have been strong. Sufficiently drunk and she wouldn’t feel it, but Never and Jonah both knew just how drunk that would mean.

  Conferences were common enough – as a co-designer of the standard revival recording protocol, Never typically attended three or four a year. Pru Dryden attended even more. Overall, she was probably the best reviver they had. Not the same level of raw revival ability as Jonah, but she was unflappable in court and her revival questioning was always canny and precise.

  Jonah avoided conferences if he could, but Never spent much of his waking life trying to get him to come along, convinced that many of Jonah’s problems could be traced back to his reliable lack of sex. Conferences were a hotbed of that kind of extracurricular activity, particularly for revivers. Chill simply didn’t happen between revivers, and with everyone else, you would know who had chill and who did not.

  It was always handy, Never knew, to have Jonah around in an environment like that. While Never’s accent and near-constant grin drew in the occasional admirer, Jonah was way up on the scale. Not that Jonah was aware of it, paying little attention to how he looked or what clothes he wore. He’d get his black hair cut as rarely as he could, meaning it varied between extremely short and its current tousled look, but it suited him either way.

  It added up to a moth-to-the-flame effect that typically worked in Never’s favour; more than once Never had found himself talking to a gorgeous woman who’d come over to get introduced to Jonah, only to find that Jonah had lost the power of speech.

  This year, the International Forensic Revival Symposium was being held in Richmond, as a mark of respect for Sam Deering’s retirement. Jonah had agreed to give a presentation, but it had been more than a year since Never had been able to get him to go further afield. In the one encounter Never had managed to engineer at the time, the woman in question had turned out
to be complicated: married, confused, and highly strung. It didn’t end well. Even so, Never thought it had been a success; that for one day at least, Jonah had pulled the broom out of his ass and relaxed.

  They gossiped like old women until ten, when Jonah made noises about work. True to his word, Never agreed that it was time to call it a night. They left, Jonah laughing and unaware that, for the first time in five days, Alice Decker was not in his thoughts at all.

  4

  Wednesday morning was unusually quiet. Jonah found himself scything through his backlog of paperwork, after a solid night of sleep that had been welcome, if unexpected. His spirits were high – it had been seven days since the Decker revival, and the week-long tail Jennifer Early had insisted on was over.

  Things got busier that afternoon.

  Shortly after two, Sam leaned out of his door and called to the other side of the office, ‘Pru, you’re up. Traffic fatality outside Greensboro. Sort out your technician with Never and get there.’

  Pru Dryden was twenty-nine years old. Her small size and good looks always drew confused glances when people saw her for the first time, arriving on the scene like some kind of revival fairy. She stood up from her desk and walked over to Sam without enthusiasm. ‘Any details?’

  Sam handed her a printout of the request form. ‘Take a look.’

  A request had come in for an in-situ revival at a traffic incident: a white van swiping a family’s hatchback on a country road, sending it into a tree. The father, driving the car, had been killed; his wife was unconscious and critical, their two young sons injured but stable. In the van had been a man and his girlfriend, two rough pieces of work more concerned with the damage to their van. The man had been drinking, but their story had the girlfriend driving, the hatchback coming round a bend too far into their lane to avoid. Traffic fatalities were not routinely revived, but there were inconsistencies here and no other witnesses, and a clear suspicion that the girlfriend had not been driving as they claimed.

  The dead father’s testimony could resolve these issues. The severity of injury required a highly skilled reviver.

  Pru lowered her voice. ‘Boss, I have to be honest. I woke up with a migraine. I’m not feeling up to it.’

  Sam looked at her. ‘You’re the only person who has much of a chance, Pru. Do your best.’

  Pru trudged over to Never. He reached behind him and grabbed an orange plastic pack from a pile behind his desk; Revival Kits contained various items useful for the job, but it was the protective clothing and cleaning equipment inside that revivers found indispensable. To varying degrees, revivers were obsessive about cleanliness. It was something Never could understand, but some were damn near OCD. Nails trimmed past the quick, and hands scrubbed red.

  He gave Pru the pack; she let out the strap and slung it onto her shoulder.

  ‘A tough one, Pru,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ he told her. ‘Take Ross on this one, he’s down in the equipment room. Have fun.’

  She grimaced and left, passing Jonah on the way.

  ‘Good luck,’ Jonah said, and she nodded. She looked anxious, and he didn’t envy her. Even with his past, he took traffic fatalities. They tried to give them to the others – his mother’s death was a raw wound, and the association risked affecting his performance – but sometimes there was just no choice. Two years before, he’d had a non-vocal revival that had involved reaching into the twisted wreckage and gripping the corpse’s shoulder, unseen. It was one of the revivals that would stay with him; the only one he had ever performed where he couldn’t even see the subject.

  It would stay with him for other reasons too – it had started the deterioration that had led to his breakdown. Those around him thought the stress had been the biggest factor, and he had let them think it. The full story was something he kept to himself.

  Half an hour later, a call came for another in-situ case. Handgun to the back of the head, it was one of the most challenging injuries for a reviver.

  In his mind, Jonah was already there, but Sam sent Tunde. Wishing him luck, Never threw him a kit, then smiled as Jonah approached.

  ‘Do I sit and do nothing all week?’ Jonah asked him.

  ‘If by “nothing” you mean the mountain of paperwork you always moan about, then yes. That’s the plan.’

  * * *

  The plan came to an end the next morning.

  Revival took a toll. Rules on workload were stretched in every way but one – after a revival, there was a thirty-six-hour minimum before another could be attempted. It didn’t matter if revivers were short-tail and their ability would have returned in full before then, the thirty-six-hour rule was strictly followed.

  The previous day’s work had taken two of the best revivers out of play. Anything tricky would have to be handled by Jason Shepperton, back from vacation, or at a push, by Jonah.

  In a normal week, there would be perhaps two or three cases in total requiring the highest-level revivers, so there was a good chance things would be quiet. But when Jonah reached his desk at eight-thirty to hear there was a possible murder, he knew that Sam Deering would send Shepperton. Jonah didn’t mind this, necessarily – if the case profile gave Shepperton a similar chance of success, it was justified.

  But Jonah disliked the way Shepperton did things. He was casual about death, and short on respect for the victims. He treated them, to Jonah’s eyes, with disdain. That lack of respect may have been subtle, and certainly Shepperton did nothing that attracted official disapproval, but Jonah found his attitude intolerable.

  How big a problem it would be for Jason to take this would come down to the nature of the case.

  He saw Never emerge from the kitchen, bleary-eyed, nursing a mug. Jonah intercepted him on the way to his desk and asked about the case.

  ‘Girl, nine years old,’ Never said. ‘Apparent burglary, kid walked in on it. Discovered dying by the father at four a.m.’

  ‘Straightforward?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Never said, with a wince. ‘Revival should be OK, though. Here…’ He handed Jonah a few sheets of paper: the email requesting attendance, and a preliminary report covering the extent of the victim’s injuries.

  Jonah looked it over. It had happened in Manassas, a suburb of Washington, DC; it was usually the larger, North East office that dealt with cases in DC, but they were even more stretched than the Richmond office. They often relied on Richmond taking on the harder cases – after all, as the first FRS office to have been formed, Richmond had attracted the best, and as a result had quite a portfolio of skilled revivers.

  Nikki Wood, the girl’s name. Minor head trauma. ‘Shit. She was unlucky to die from this. So why not straightforward?’

  ‘There’s some suspicion about the father.’

  Jonah drew in a breath.

  ‘Bob Crenner’s the detective on it,’ Never said. ‘Good cop, I’ve worked with him before. The begging email’s from him. If we can’t send anyone immediately, North East will do it in-house the day after tomorrow.’

  The unpredictable ebb and flow of revival work sometimes meant that on-site revivals were impossible to staff; all the FRS offices had revival suites, rooms where revivals could be done in-house in more controlled surroundings, with cold rooms to keep the body in good condition and observation areas for interested parties. It all took more time, of course, and the revival chances took a hit, but often there was no other option.

  ‘And Sam’s sending Jason?’

  ‘Sam’s not in until the afternoon,’ said Never. ‘So it’s Hugo’s call and he’s not in yet either. I’m sure he’ll send Jason. The only … Ah.’ He stopped, recognizing Jonah’s tone. ‘The only options are Jason and you. And he won’t send you.’

  Jonah glanced around the office, a gentle bustle of morning coffee and gossip. His voice was low. Conspiratorial. ‘Shepperton in yet?’

  ‘No.’ Never frowned. ‘But any minute.’ A brief pause, and the light
dawned in Never’s eyes. ‘Uh uh,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘No way.’

  Jonah smiled. ‘With Sam and Hugo out of the office, the decision’s left with the senior reviver and senior technician, right? Me and you.’

  ‘I’ve been told to keep you away from anything tricky.’

  ‘It’s not severe trauma. Nothing to suggest it’ll be a difficult revival.’

  ‘Apart from the fact that it’s a nine-year-old girl?’

  ‘We’re talking about a family who’ve lost a child, a child who may have been killed by her father. A father under suspicion who may be innocent. You want to send Shepperton into that?’

  While Never didn’t have quite as strong an opinion as Jonah about their colleague, he had been the technician for Shepperton many times. He knew that subtlety and compassion were not the reviver’s strong points. The thought of Shepperton handling this case made him uneasy.

  Torn, he took a swig of coffee and looked Jonah in the eye. ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘You win.’

  * * *

  They took one of the six FRS cars, Never driving. Two hours later, they arrived at the scene, a cosy street of semi-detached homes, the road outside swamped by vehicles and a large white forensic tent. They’d taken an angry call from Hugo Adler by then, but Jonah had talked him round.

  It was ten-forty in the morning and the heat was already oppressive, the sunlight harsh.

  A crowd of onlookers was being held at bay three houses back on both sides by metal barriers and tape, guarded by a handful of young uniformed cops.

  Jonah observed the people watching with fear and intrigue as paper-suited investigators searched the front garden, and one by one, turning to see the dark green car with ‘FRS’ in discreet white lettering on the doors. A ripple of interest spread through the crowd, and more and more eyes were directed his way. They know, thought Jonah. They know what I am.