I lifted a hand, surprised to discover that I hadn’t been strapped down, pressing my swollen fingers against my chest, then my face. I could feel the touch, but that was all. There was no scream of ravaged flesh, no sting of stripped skin, no burning of strained muscles. It was as if my battle with the rats had never taken place.
Maybe it hadn’t. Even now the memory seemed vague and distant, like something I had watched in a film or dreamed many years ago. It didn’t seem possible that I had escaped a tunnel of ice-cold water by pounding my way through a metal hatch. It didn’t seem possible that I had taken on an entire nest of deformed, rabid creatures and won.
And surely it wasn’t possible that I had … had killed an innocent kid.
I clamped down on the thought before it could unfold, refusing to let the image of Ozzie’s face enter my head. I had done what I’d needed to do to survive, that’s all. Ozzie hadn’t been one of us, he’d been one of them, one of the weak. He had died so that the killer in me could live, so that I could be whole.
All blacksuits had to go through the same thing, I knew that now. I remembered Monty, way back in another life, when I was a different person. He’d been taken, his body ripped apart and put back together the same way mine had been. And he’d been brought back to the cells in general population, let loose on his cellmate Kevin. I’d never been able to figure out why, but it made sense now.
Because once you’d killed in cold blood there was no going back. It changed something inside you. It turned you from one of them into one of us, a blacksuit. That was the true test, I realised. Not the water, not the rats, but the taking of an innocent life.
It was an accident, a part of me argued. But had it been? I’d known the rats were all dead. I’d known there was nothing more to fear. Something else had made me lash out – anger, yes, and hatred of what I had once been, what Ozzie still was. Somewhere in the darkest part of me I’d known exactly what I was doing.
I felt a sudden pang of guilt. Not over the death of Ozzie, but of Monty. He had shed his weaknesses and become a blacksuit, and I had killed him. If only I’d known then what I knew now, known the truth about the warden and his prison, known what it could offer me, I never would have tried to escape.
I heard something stirring and looked across the room to see ten or so blacksuits rising from their beds. They moved as one, pulling back the sheets and getting to their feet, stretching their knotted muscles before donning suits and boots. In less than a minute they were dressed and filing from the room. One caught my eye as he passed and flashed me a silver wink.
‘You’re awake. Good,’ he said without stopping. ‘I’ll inform the warden.’
They vanished through the door, before returning seconds later. At least I thought that’s what had happened until I studied the men walking into the room and realised these blacksuits were a different bunch. Their suits were creased, their faces drawn, their hands dirty. None of them looked my way as they slouched to a set of beds further down the ward, pulled off their suits, collapsed onto the mattresses and hooked IV needles into their arms. With a shudder of exhaustion they all seemed to drift into sleep together.
I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. There were bandages across the areas where the worst injuries had been inflicted, but although each showed a halo of dried blood there was no other indication that I had been so much as scratched. Even the surgery wounds had lost their stitches, now nothing but faded scars beneath fresh skin.
The warden was right. I was superhuman. And it felt great.
My grin must have been visible from the far end of the room, because it’s the first thing the warden seemed to notice when he entered.
‘I told you you’d feel better after a good sleep,’ he said. I looked up, saw that he was carrying something over his shoulder.
‘How long was I out?’ I asked, my voice like treacle. I was relieved to find that I could form words again.
‘Only a night,’ he replied, ‘though it probably feels like a lifetime.’
I nodded as he reached the bed, careful not to look him in the eye. I had changed, become far stronger than I had ever been, but the warden was still the warden, and his eyes spoke of truths that I never wanted to discover. He stood before me, using his free hand to pull my eyelid back, studying something beneath.
‘You’ve recovered fully,’ he said. ‘No pain, no aches, am I right?’
I nodded again.
‘Then you’re ready for this. Stand up.’
I did as I was told, pushing myself off the bed. For an instant I thought the warden had shrunk, until I realised it was me who had grown taller – by at least half a metre. I had obviously been too exhausted to notice the previous night. The warden looked me up and down, then lifted the object from his shoulder and held it out like a gift.
My heart seemed to explode with joy, causing my muscles to lock and my throat to tighten. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, what the warden was offering me.
‘This is yours,’ he said. ‘Wear it with pride, and know you were one of the first. Because when the world turns and the strong have their way, then you will be amongst us. Here, try it on. It will fit.’
And I knew it would. Because surely nothing in the world could fit me more perfectly than the white shirt and black suit draped across the warden’s arms. I choked on my thank you, but neither of us seemed to notice as I reached out and slotted an arm into my new uniform. The linen shirt was cool and soft, a new outer skin against my new inner one, and in my excitement I fumbled with the buttons. The warden cuffed my hands aside, straightening the jacket over my shoulders then doing up the shirt like a father dressing his child.
Seconds later I stood before him fully dressed while he knotted the tie around my neck. He patted it down against my shirt and took a step back, and I swear I could see my glowing pride reflected in his face as he looked me up and down once again.
‘Perfect,’ he said eventually. ‘Welcome home, Soldier of Furnace.’
THE TOUR
I followed the warden with my head held high, enjoying the sound of my new boots as they beat out a rhythm on the stone, and the crisp coolness of the suit that clung to my muscles like silk. Every time we passed a guard in the corridor he would nod at me, and I returned the gesture, knowing at long last what it meant to belong, to be a Soldier of Furnace.
‘You have seen most of the prison, from one side of the bars or the other.’ The warden spoke over his shoulder as he walked, with only a trace of annoyance in his words. ‘But we shall forgive your past trespasses. Only now will you understand the truth of what takes place here, of what we have created.’
He reached the end of the passageway and turned left, stopping at another guarded door. The blacksuit released a huge lock, then pulled the gate open, slamming it as soon as we had passed. I recognised the corridor we were in by the junction up ahead – the right passage ending in the incinerator, the left heading up past the surgery rooms into the infirmary. But the warden led us straight ahead.
I’d been up this way before. The ghost of a memory haunted my thoughts, showing me a corridor leading off to the right, and dozens of crooked creatures in filthy jackets and gas masks staggering down it.
‘Wheezers,’ I said, fear slowing me down. The warden looked over his shoulder and spat out a dry laugh.
‘So you have been down here,’ he said. ‘Did you get as far as their cells?’
‘No,’ I replied, picking up speed again and joining the warden. ‘No, there were too many of them.’
‘You had just killed one of their brothers. They don’t take too kindly to that. They won’t recognise you now, though.’
The corridor ahead was deserted, with no sign of the creatures who had infested it before. It ended in another door, this one unmanned. The warden gripped the handle and twisted, opening it with a squeal that sounded almost human. As soon as that had faded I could make out music beyond, the sound chillingly unfamiliar after so long in Furnac
e. I moved towards it but he held out a hand to stop me.
‘As I said, the wheezers won’t remember that you’re the one responsible for the death of their brother. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous. Stay in the middle of the room, don’t approach any of the cells, and don’t look them in the eye.’
It might have been my imagination, but I thought I could sense the slightest trace of anxiety in the warden’s voice. However, without another word he turned and walked through the door, his broad steps if anything more confident than before.
Beyond was another room the same size as the infirmary. The music came from an old-fashioned gramophone perched in the middle of the rock floor, a record spinning unevenly on the turntable and the sound spiralling out from its large horn. A woman sang in a strange language, the same one as from my dreams, her voice scratchy and faint but beautiful all the same. I felt something inside me melt at the sweetness of her song, the melody like a knife that cut through the fog and let distant memories bob to the surface of my mind. It lasted only a second as I let my eyes take in the rest of the room.
There were no beds this time, but the ward was far from empty. Even with my new body and the strength it contained I felt my step faltering. It wasn’t quite fear, more a faint echo of it, but it still made my legs weak.
Lining both sides were open metal cages, almost like cattle stalls, bolted into the wall. And inside almost every one stood a wheezer. They all seemed to be convulsing, their bodies juddering and spasming, moving too fast for any human. As soon as they saw us, their piggy eyes narrowed and they let loose a collective wheeze, a chorus of hoarse screams that made me want to run from the room, black suit or no black suit.
The warden must have sensed my hesitation, ushering me on with an urgent wave of his hand.
‘Don’t stop,’ he hissed over the music. ‘Don’t attract their attention.’
Even as he spoke, one of the wheezers staggered forward from its cell, moving like somebody who had just been stabbed. It lurched across the stone floor towards us, using one unsteady hand to pull its jacket aside, revealing the needles strung up beneath. The warden seemed to shrink away for an instant before collecting himself.
‘Back!’ he barked, moving towards the wheezer with frightening speed. ‘Get back to your cell, now!’
The wheezer ground to a halt, watching the warden through the lifeless lumps of coal that served as its eyes. It twitched a couple of times, its head snapping back and a sickening gargle rattling out from behind the gas mask stitched into its skin. Then it slowly turned, traipsing like some zombie back to its cell.
‘Come,’ the warden said, his voice much quieter but carrying the same authority. ‘Before they all start to take an interest.’
I followed him down the length of the room, barely able to take my eyes off the legions of convulsing wheezers. There must have been fifty in here, at least, all identical with their pale, wrinkled skin and their filthy jackets. Luckily none seemed remotely concerned as we opened a door embedded in the far wall, and the only thing that chased us out was another symphony of wheezed screams that concealed the end of the song.
‘The north wing is theirs,’ the warden said once the door had been sealed. We were in another corridor, this one lined with several openings that resembled the storerooms on the other side of the prison’s underbelly. He marched down the passageway, casting his words over his shoulder. ‘It isn’t wise to come here alone, only if they call on you.’
‘But what are they?’ I asked, my heart still running up and down my ribcage. I thought back to my dreams, visions of young men in trench coats and gas masks, and found myself answering my own question. ‘They’re the same as the men in my nightmares, aren’t they? They used to be soldiers.’
The warden peered back at me and I caught his eye. In the space of a single heartbeat, time seemed to unravel, the world disintegrating into a mosaic of brutal images – bombs exploding in mud, dead bodies in trenches, and the same wheezing figures stalking the shadows. Then I blinked and reality reasserted itself with such force that I felt my head spin.
‘Soldiers?’ the warden asked, stopping beside yet another door. He made no move to open it, staring at the worn metal as if lost in thought. ‘We all used to be soldiers.’
‘But where? When?’
‘A long, long time ago,’ he replied, his face suddenly as old as his voice. He was still for a moment more, obviously dwelling on some distant memory, then he seemed to remember I was there. ‘Come, let me show you something. It might help explain.’
He turned the lock, pulled open the door, and led me right through the gates of hell.
My first thought was that the room ahead was some kind of grotesque zoo. The air was filled with screams, roars and strangled growls, the sound seeming to battle for supremacy with the stench of waste and decay that clawed its way into my nose, making me want to puke. I reeled back, but the warden stopped me with a scowl.
‘There is no escaping it,’ he said, gesturing forward with a leather glove. ‘This is your destiny now, your home.’
My hand dropped but I kept my back pressed firmly against the cool metal. It was the only thing stopping me from sinking to the floor. I let my gaze wander, but I didn’t truly see anything. It was as if my eyes were too scared to settle on the horrors that lay before me in case they were dragged into the madness.
The room was the same as the other wards, red stone walls stretching into shadows above my head, lights hanging down from the ceiling and painting every sick detail in their crimson glow. But while the infirmary and the blacksuit ward were ordered and still – and while even the wheezers had largely remained in their stalls – this place was bedlam.
To the right of the room were a dozen or more cages, like the ones I’d seen in my dream. Glowing silver eyes peered at me from the darkness that swelled at the back of each iron box, and when the figures inside moved I saw that they were dogs. Some were covered in fur and cowering against the bars, others were twice as large, their skin peeled away to reveal the muscles beneath. These monstrosities threw themselves at us, causing the cages to bend outwards, their teeth serrated knives already stained with blood.
Directly opposite them lay a canvas screen, much larger than the ones in the infirmary. Behind it I could glimpse more cages, although the pale forms that lay lifeless in these had none of the characteristics of dogs. I turned away before I could make sense of what I was seeing, the horror boiling up inside my throat.
The warden paced slowly forward, his hands clasped behind his back. I wasn’t sure what to do so I trotted after him, eyes on the floor to avoid the sights that surrounded me.
‘Don’t hide from it,’ the warden’s voice curled up from the cacophony, a bell-clear whisper in my ear. ‘You are part of this place now, just as it is part of you. And it is part of you. It flows in your veins, an infinity of power brought about by an eternity of suffering. Because all progress must come from pain. Look.’
I reluctantly obeyed, raising my head to see another cage on the same side of the room as the dogs. This one was much larger, at least three metres high and half as wide. And the creature inside almost filled it completely, its misshapen head ducked low to avoid touching the top, and its immense frame so grotesquely muscled that it bulged through the bars. There were four IV stands positioned around the cage, each with two bags of nectar connected to needles in the creature’s arms.
It howled, rattling its cell so hard I was convinced the metal wouldn’t hold, but then stopped when it saw us, cocking its head. I looked at its face, at the dripping, drooping maw, at the sunken eyes like silver pennies pressed into a ball of pink dough. And although there was no way I could have known who this creature was, somehow I did.
Gary, I thought, and almost spoke the word aloud before remembering what had happened last time. I couldn’t quite recall why I wasn’t supposed to know its name, the knowledge like an itch inside my skull. The warden stopped and I could feel his gaze on my
skin, scouring me for any sign of emotion.
‘Do you know who this is?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I lied. The warden studied me for a moment longer before nodding.
‘Another subject,’ he explained. ‘Although this one has had an unusual reaction to the nectar. The procedure has wiped all trace of humanity from it, all its powers of rational thought and cognitive reasoning. It has become a creature of pure destructive power.’
‘A rat,’ I said. Again the warden nodded. Another memory flashed across the darkness of my mind: a boy called Gary, devoid of emotion, willing to kill for nothing more than a thrill. The nectar hadn’t turned him into a monster. How could it? He had already been one. Again the itch seemed to burrow into the bone of my skull, a tide of memories wanting to be released, and I spoke just to chase it away. ‘If he’s a rat, then why hasn’t he been incinerated?’
‘Look at him,’ was the warden’s reply. ‘Physically he is far superior to the other specimens who have undertaken the procedure. The nectar has made his body grow at almost twice the normal rate. And it doesn’t seem to be stopping.’
The warden approached the cage and held out a hand. The creature took the bait, lashing through the bars with hooked fingers. The warden was too fast, ducking out of range with a humourless snigger.
‘I want to know why, and so do the wheezers. We’ve had a number of specimens react this way, but we don’t yet understand it. If we can find out what it was about his body that reacted so effectively with the nectar, then we can change the formula, we can ensure that all our new recruits’ – he said the last word with the same chilling laugh – ‘match his size and strength. Besides, specimens like this are of extreme interest to Alfred Furnace himself. They are his personal project, the berserkers. He takes very special care of them.’
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