by Cross, Amy
“Who?” I ask.
“You know who!” she snaps. “Edward Doncaster!”
“The soldiers from Philadelphia haven't made it through the gate,” I tell her. “To be honest, I don't think they ever had much of a chance, it seems like they've just been throwing themselves forward to get killed. Besides, even if they do eventually make it through, it'll be too -”
“I'm not talking about the gate!” she says angrily, looking around again as if she's terrified that we'll be overheard. “I don't know what's happening! When Edward ordered everyone to attack the Project Atherius facility, he said he was going to stay behind and coordinate the battle, but then I realized he was getting ready to run. I followed him, and I saw that he was using a private tunnel to leave the city. The tunnel led all the way in here. There was a door, but Edward used the same code he used in Philadelphia, so I was able to follow him through. That was about a week ago, since then I've been hiding and trying to figure out what's going on, but it's all such a mess!”
“That doesn't make any sense,” Martha points out. “You're lying.”
“I'm not! I swear!”
“If Edward Doncaster had a private way to get into the facility,” Martha continues, “then why did he send an entire army to attack the gates?”
“I don't know!”
“Then like I said,” Martha adds, “it doesn't make a lick of sense.”
“I believe her,” I say suddenly.
Martha turns to me.
“It's too bizarre for someone to make up,” I continue, “and besides, I saw him just the other day while I was looking for you, Martha. As crazy as it sounds, I overheard Edward Doncaster talking to someone in one of the rooms right here at Project Atherius. He was asking about Maddy Crozier, and about other things too. He seemed pretty well-connected, like he had the run of the place.”
“But Edward hated Project Atherius,” Doctor Hoyle stammers. “There's no way he could ever be part of it!”
“Are you sure it was him?” Martha asks me. “Hand on heart. Are you sure you couldn't have made a mistake?”
“It was him,” I say firmly, “but that's all I know. I don't know how he ended up here, or what he's planning, or anything like that.”
“What is it with this place and people keeping secrets?” Martha mutters, before turning to Doctor Hoyle again. “Do you have any idea why this Doncaster guy would be here?”
We both wait for an answer, but for a moment Doctor Hoyle seems lost for words.
“He enlisted me directly,” she says finally. “I was nobody, I was just a researcher in San Diego, I was bumbling along and keeping my head down, and then suddenly I received this huge job offer out of the blue. The money Edward was offering was beyond my wildest dreams. He was running a project in the city, and about a year and a half ago he asked me if I could consult on some... issues he was having regarding a project.”
“Project Atherius?” I suggest.
“No! Definitely not, he never mentioned that name until much later.” She pauses. “My background, my area of specialization, concerns the cultivation and preservation of embryos. A few years ago, I assisted Doctor Simon Taylor-Holmes in some groundbreaking work, but Doctor Taylor-Holmes died shortly after we completed our analysis. I think that's why Edward brought me to Philadelphia. If he couldn't get Doctor Taylor-Holmes himself, then I was the next best thing since I – in theory – knew the subject inside and out.”
“So he hired you for a particular reason?” Martha asks.
She nods.
“And what reason was that?” Martha continues. “I'm sorry, but I'm struggling to understand how any of your work could be linked to Project Atherius. Exactly what kind of work did you help him with? What did he need you to do?”
Again, we wait for an answer, and then I realize that Doctor Hoyle now seems to be looking past us, at something over our shoulders. I think Martha realizes the same thing, because we both slowly turn and look back toward the other end of the room, and that's when I realize what Doctor Hoyle means.
Whatever she was working on, it must have been something to do with these strange, empty, trolley-like structures.
Chapter Three
Elizabeth
“I was so worried about you,” I tell Dad again, probably for the hundredth time, as I follow him into a large room with computer terminals on either side. “They told me they weren't beating you up, but I knew they were lying. I just didn't know what to do about it.”
“It's okay, Elizabeth,” he replies, stopping ahead with his back to me.
“I should have tried to do more,” I continue. “I should have -”
“I said it's okay,” he adds, more firmly this time, before turning to me. “You don't have to explain anything.”
I open my mouth to tell him again how I asked and asked to see him, but then I hesitate as I see that he looks trouble. Not panicked, but troubled. He doesn't seem to be in a desperate rush to get out of this place; instead, he simply seems as if he's got the weight of the whole world on his shoulders. I've seen this look on his face before, back in Boston when an army was about to attack, and again at the lighthouse when he was trying to persuade me to leave with him. This is the expression he gets when he's hiding something.
“What is it?” I ask finally.
I wait, but he seems reluctant to speak.
“Dad?”
“Project Atherius is far bigger than you can possibly imagine,” he says, turning and heading over to a large window on the far wall.
I follow, and I quickly see that the window looks out into the same large chamber that I saw before. The view of the rocket is slightly different, but I'm still overawed by the idea that this thing is supposed to actually go into space. I keep trying to figure out what the endgame is, although so far I feel as if none of my ideas make sense. What's the point of firing a rocket into space and then just... hanging about up there?
“There were many strands to the project,” Dad continues after a moment, “but one that quickly gained traction was... a kind of escape from the madness that was about to engulf the world. A way for a select few to leave, and to never come back. Of course, while the idea might have been good, the implementation was virtually impossible. We simply didn't have the technology that we needed, and all our best estimates suggested that the necessary breakthroughs were at least a hundred years away. And that's with the best minds and an unlimited budget. So what we did in less than two decades is... remarkable.”
“Have you really been working for these people for twenty years?” I ask.
“When I think back to the first prototype we developed, I can't help but laugh,” he says with a faint smile. “I wish I could show it to you, Elizabeth. There's a video of the launch, although I suspect that's long lost now. The first rocket just went up, turned over, and crashed straight back down. It was comically abysmal, but we kept working. Twenty-two or twenty-three prototypes later, we finally made something that wasn't a complete pile of crap, and I think that's when we all realized that we had something worthwhile. After that, we kept pushing on, hiring the best people to come in and help us refine what we had.”
“Listen to that,” Joseph's voice says suddenly, curling through my thoughts. “John Marter's actually telling the truth for once.”
Startled, I look round, but there's no sign of Joseph nearby.
“How long have you been listening?” I whisper.
“What did you say?” Dad asks.
Turning back to him, I'm about to tell him about Joseph entering my mind, but then I hesitate.
“Smart,” Joseph continues. “There's no harm in keeping an advantage to yourself for a while.”
I swallow hard. I hate agreeing with Joseph, but for some reason I decide to keep my mouth shut.
“We knew something was coming,” Dad continues. “A disaster. A pandemic. Something. Project Atherius was about being ready. Of course, all the rich assholes who put money in thought that they'd be the ones
to get saved. That was never quite on the cards. We ended up taking their genetic material, and cultivating embryos that could be frozen. Even now, those embryos have been loaded onto the rocket, frozen in place and waiting for the day when they can be activated. But I insisted on spreading our neck wider. I wanted more samples, I wanted greater variability in the gene pool, and I got my way. So it's not just the rich who got their specimens on-board. There are thousands upon thousands of samples, and I'm absolutely certain that they'll form a strong basis for the future.”
“He's right,” Joseph says. “It pains me to admit this, Elizabeth, but your father was one of the less cretinous individuals involved with the project.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.
“I thought you'd like me to stick up for your old man,” Joseph adds.
“Not you,” I whisper.
“We had a model for predicting what would happen once the end of the world started,” Dad explains, turning to me. “So far, it's been absolutely accurate, and that's terrifying because it means all human life will be virtually extinct within one more year.”
“No,” I reply, shaking my head. “We're going to rebuild.”
“We're not.”
“Yes, we are,” I say firmly. “Of course we are. It'll take time, but we can do it!”
“Small pockets of individuals will survive,” he explains, “perhaps for a few generations. After that, the predictions become more difficult, but the old world is never coming back.”
“You can't say that for certain!”
“A few weeks ago, we managed to access an old observation satellite,” he replies. “Not for long, just long enough to get a glimpse of how the rest of the world has been impacted by events over the past year.” He pauses. “A series of incidents at nuclear facilities caused a continental crack to open up across Europe. Wars raged in southern Asia for a while, before burning out. The zombie virus seems, for some reason, to have been particularly strong in the southern hemisphere. The scenes in Africa, South America and Australia are beyond horrific. Then again, we were no better here, not really.”
“But we can recover!”
“This is not the time to be backtracking,” he replies.
“There it is,” Joseph whispers. “There's that John Marter stoicism that I remember from the old days.”
“Dad, we have to get out of here,” I say, hoping to shake him out of this negative mood. “Who cares about Project Atherius? That name is all I've heard over the past few weeks, but what does it matter to us if some asshole wants to launch a rocket? Let him! Let Maxwell Carver sit on top of the damn thing and pop champagne if he wants, how does that hurt us?” I grab his arm, hoping to start pulling him back the way we came, back toward the exit. “I came here to find you, and I've found you. Now let's go!”
“You don't understand, Elizabeth.”
“I understand that this place is nothing to do with us!” I tell him. “There's nothing keeping us here, so let's get to the exit and leave Project Atherius far behind!”
“It's not that simple.”
“Why not?”
“Do you trust your father, Elizabeth?” Joseph asks. “Look into his eyes now and tell me that's not a man who's keeping secrets from you.”
“What...” I pause for a moment, but I know he's right. “Dad?” I continue finally. “Why are we still here?”
“I need you to accept that you don't know better than me,” he replies. “You're smart and you're tough and I respect you, Elizabeth, but just this once I need you to do what you're told.”
“Like a child?”
“No, like somebody whose life I'm trying to save.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “Dad, you're starting to scare me. There's no reason for us to still be here.” I pull on his arm, but he still refuses to budge. “What are you waiting for? Dad, are you stalling?”
He looks out at the rocket for a moment, and then slowly he turns to me. I've never seen him look so worried, or so filled with doubt and self-loathing. He looks as if he's about to throw up.
And then, suddenly, I hear a door creaking open behind me.
“I'm sorry, Elizabeth,” Dad says softly, “but sometimes we all have to agree to things we don't really want to do.”
I open my mouth to ask what he means, but then I turn, and to my horror I see that Maxwell Carver has stepped into the room.
“Elizabeth,” he says with a satisfied grin, “it's so nice to see that you're with us. Has your father explained the new arrangement?”
Chapter Four
Thomas
“In theory,” Lucy Hoyle explains, as she holds up a small glass bead containing a tiny speck in the center, “these cells can be activated at any point within five thousand years. The key was developing a method of preserving them that didn't require their temperature to be altered. That was really my major contribution to the project.”
“So that thing is... a kid?” I ask, staring in horror at what looks like nothing more than a fleck of dirt.
“Good question,” Lucy replies, clearly lost in awe at the sight of what she's holding between two fingers. “That's a debate that's been raging for a long time, Thomas, and I'm not sure that we're gonna be able to settle it right now. I'm sure a lot of people would hate the work that we did, especially if they saw all the... mistakes that had to be tossed aside along the way. But what matters, what really matters, is that these little things can survive anything.”
“But what -”
“Anything!” she says firmly, turning to me. “Extreme heat. Extreme cold. I honestly think this world could burn, it could explode, and the specimens would survive. They could float through space for five thousand years, maybe for longer, and they'd still be carrying the secret of human life in their centers.”
“Okay,” I say cautiously, “but...”
“You don't get it, do you?” Lucy continues, clearly frustrated. “The key was developing the little pods, because those act as a kind of life preserver. Or like eggs, you could say. The point is that the cells survive in there until the pods start to bring them back to life, and at that point the system should be entirely automated. In theory.” She pauses, momentarily lost in thought. “I wish there'd been more time to test them,” she adds, “but at the time I didn't understand why I was being asked to do all that work. Why didn't they trust me enough to let me in?”
“That's all very well and good,” Martha says after a moment, “but in the context of space, five thousand years isn't that long, is it? It doesn't matter what fancy gubbins you've locked those cells inside of, they'll still die eventually.”
“You don't have much of an imagination, do you?” Lucy replies.
“I've got more than enough imagination,” Martha says, clearly pretty annoyed. “For example, I can imagine all the reasons why your stupid little plan is gonna go wrong.”
“Wait,” I say, taking a step toward Lucy, “I don't get it. You were never part of Project Atherius, were you?”
“Of course not!” she spits, as if the idea is obscene. “I worked for Edward. He told me he was part of a company that was developing advanced technologies. He talked about how much he hated Project Atherius, so how...”
She pauses, staring again at the trolleys.
“So how did my work end up here?” she continues. “It doesn't make sense. Did Project Atherius have spies in the city? Did they somehow break into our systems and steal our work?”
“Or were you the victim of a good old-fashioned double-cross?” Martha asks. “It's pretty obvious that your buddy Edward had his feet under the table here. Maybe he just wanted to fruits of your labor, without actually letting you know what he was up to.” She smiles. “You wouldn't be the first person to -”
“Shut up!” Lucy yells suddenly, interrupting her. “I know enough about Project Atherius to know how they might apply my work. I even applied to work here, but I got turned down. Edward told me not to feel bad, but now...” Her voice trail
s off for a moment. “Was he lying to me the whole time?”
“Probably,” Martha replies, “but that doesn't really matter right now. Shoot your little seeds out into space, and see if anyone cares. We're gonna get out of here.” She turns to me. “Thomas, are you ready?”
“We have to wait for Elizabeth to get back first,” I tell her.
“Do we?” She rolls her eyes. “I'm not convinced, but fine, whatever. Let's at least make sure we know where we're going though.” She turns to walk away. “I'm going to find the -”
“No!” Lucy blurts out, and suddenly – as if from nowhere – she produces a gun and points it straight at Martha.
I step forward, but Lucy pulls away and aims the gun at me, and in an instant it's clear that she's got us both covered.
“I have to go with them!” she stammers, with tears in her eyes. “There's room for two live people on the rocket, but only two. The people here developed a way of sustaining two humans for the duration of the rocket's journey, there were lots of discussions about who should get to go, but right now I think I'm by far the best candidate. The seeds are going to need someone on the other side who knows how to care for them. That's me! It has to be! I created them, so it's only right that I should get to be there when they finally grow!”
“Put that thing down,” Martha says, taking a step toward her.
“Don't come any closer!” Lucy yells, and now she has both hands on the gun, although she's shaking pretty bad. “We're going to go and find Edward, okay? He'll make everything alright, he'll see sense and he'll understand that I need to go with him. One seat for Edward, and one seat for me. Then, when we finally reach our destination, we can make sure that the human race survives.”
“Are you high?” Martha asks.
“Don't piss her off!” I whisper.
“Are you completely out of your mind?” Martha continues, apparently ignoring my warning as she takes another step toward the crazy woman. “There's a giant rocket filled with all sorts of weird crap, being controlled by a complete lunatic, and you want to run toward it?”