by Paul Teague
‘Max, we need to draw it away from Hannah. Help me. Stay there, Hannah. If you’re clear, get inside the elevator straight away.’
Max and Clay stood in front of the machine until it was almost upon them, then they went separate ways, confusing it for a moment. It chased Clay.
‘Hannah, what’s your GEN-ID code?’ Clay asked, running as fast as he was able to. Shout it to me!’
‘HjKKl’
Clay relayed the code back to Wiz.
‘You’re clear!’ Clay shouted. Hannah stepped forward and with the BioSweep completed, she entered the elevator, embracing Lucy, but terrified for her friends.
‘Mum is still out there with Damien Hunter. We can’t leave her,’ Lucy screamed.
The grinder began to work Clay into a corner, Max watched as his new friend ran out of places to go. At the same time, Hunter came running up the corridor, followed by Talya who’d been in pursuit. Behind them were the remaining two grinders, both airborne.
‘Mum, run!’ Lucy shouted. ‘Clay, it’s Damien Hunter and Mum.’
Clay was distracted for a moment. He’d been walking backwards, his eyes fixed on the grinder. He stumbled and fell. The grinder moved forward. Clay knew it was over for him. If he could only see Talya out safely, he’d be content to die.
Realizing there was no way he was getting out alive, Max ran towards the grinder.
‘Make it better in The City, Talya!’ he called out to his former torturer, before he ran directly into the path of the machine’s jaws. It scooped him up by the legs, crunching its way through the bones, then shredding and spitting out his bloody remains. He’d ended up the same way as the Justice Seekers he’d cleaned up in The Grid. Only his death would count for more.
Clay screamed in frustration as he saw Max minced alive, but he knew he had to move on fast. Talya Slater had to go down in that elevator, even if he lost his own life making it happen. He’d been reconciled to death for some time, it wouldn’t matter if he died, but Talya had to get out.
The two airborne grinders were close to Talya. She was tired and fading fast. As she ran up the corridor, Clay could see that her eyes were losing hope. She could feel the fans on the grinders blowing on her neck, they were almost upon her.
Without warning, a massive iron bar appeared from the ceiling. Talya just had time to dodge it. One of the grinders did not. It struck the bar and exploded, Talya felt the blast on her back. It had been placed there by Jacob, he was trying to keep her alive.
‘Keep running, Talya!’ Clay shouted. He was standing in front of the open elevator doors watching the grinder that had just consumed Max. It had completed the process, bought Clay some time, and was about to seek its next victim.
Damien Hunter was going to reach the elevator first. He was running and looking at his own WristCom. His family had begun to emerge from the Umbilica, first waking, then stepping out from the protective film that had sustained their lives for so many years. He was running straight for the elevator, half looking ahead, half watching the resurrection of his family on the WristCom.
‘Cassie, children, at last you’re awake. I’ll be with you soon, I’m coming my darlings, I’ll be with you soon …’
Behind him, Jacob had intercepted the final airborne grinder with a second iron bar. He was taking risks, he had to hope Talya would dodge in time. She was dead anyway if he couldn’t stop the grinders. As that device exploded, pushing Talya forward with the force of the blast, two more devices materialized and began to power up.
Damien Hunter was almost upon the elevator. Clay could see that he was going to make it, but Talya might not. The wheeled grinder was making its way back towards Talya now. She was sandwiched between that and the two airborne devices.
Clay was torn. Talya had to survive. He would do what Max had done if he had to.
‘Wiz, is Damien clear? Is he Immune?’
‘Trying to find out, can’t get into his files …’
It was over in seconds.
Hunter reached the elevator, the BioSweep scanning him as he pushed Clay away from the doors to secure his own safety. His body exploded as Miron’s had done when he’d attempted to do the same thing. Talya, summoning every last drop of energy she could muster, used her momentum to jump over the blades of the grinder, onto its top, then back to the ground. She fell through Damien Hunter’s bloody remains onto the floor of the elevator as the BioSweep let her pass and the doors began to close. Clay ducked in after her. The descent began. Behind them the two remaining grinders sensed Hunter’s bloody remains, and chewed up the severed body parts in mid-air, spewing them back out into The Grid.
There was silence in the arena of death. All that could be heard were the voices of Damien Hunter’s family from his WristCom which was lying on the floor, attached to his severed hand.
‘I don’t know where Daddy is darling, I’m sure somebody will help us to find him soon …’
60 Seconds
It took fewer than sixty seconds for the elevator to make its descent. President Josh Delman had been given very little time to convince Clay that he was worthy of being kept alive. What he said in those vital seconds forever changed the fortunes of The City.
‘I thought I’d made the plague worse in the first place. I never meant to, I was trying to find the cure. President Morgan used me as the fall guy. They substituted NiVac3, but we’d told them it wasn’t ready. I was young, I didn’t know what to do. I kept the evidence, but I didn’t speak up. The world was turning to hell anyway. Millions more died because of NiVac3. I had the cure, I could have saved lives. I was captured and held in Centrum – it’s where we’re heading now. Morgan tortured me, he wanted to be sure the truth wouldn’t leak out. They couldn’t kill me because I held all that information about the plague in my head, so they froze me for nearly fifty years. They put me in Cryo. Morgan was going to take my body when his wore out.
‘A man called Edward Schaelles discovered that we were part of a conspiracy to use our country as lab rats, and he woke me from Cryo. He knew I’d worked with Morgan before the plague, and I told him how Morgan had released NiVac3. We live in a contained area which used to be a key centre of commerce: an alliance of governments used us. Our cities are just big laboratories, they took advantage of how the plague had almost wiped out our entire country. Morgan had sent us to hell with NiVac3, then he’d engineered his way out of it by making a deal with those other countries. They tested cures on us, we were lab rats. Sectors 1 and 3 are dead, we’re the only ones remaining.’
‘What do you mean, the only ones?’ Clay asked.
‘The only ones on the planet. We’re all that’s left. When our city dies, we all die. They repeated the mistakes of NiVac3 and wiped everybody out. Our cage became our protection, we survived.
‘Morgan put himself in Cryo forty-nine years after the cities were created, he was the only one who was ever going to walk away from this. He could start or stop Catharsis. His deal was to walk out after Catharsis, take my body and live out his days in a secure location. I beat him to it with Schaelles’ help. I have taken over Morgan’s body so that I can save The City. It has to be now, at the last moment. If I don’t stop Catharsis, we all die. Morgan was the only one ever getting out of here, he and some of his cronies in Cryo. His own family are being held for ransom, they’re in an Umbilica facility, I think. I can’t access his memories. If you kill me now, Clay, we all die. I’ve been trying to stay alive all this time, this is the only way I can put things right. If we don’t survive this, we all perish today.’
Clay made his decision at that moment. He’d seen incredible things since he’d entered The City’s justice system but all of the evil seemed to rest at the feet of Damien Hunter, President Delman had always been detached. He was not without guilt, that was for certain. But Clay took a leap of faith. In the end, it saved the lives of millions.
The Dead Cities
There had been three Sectors when the cities were created. Their city was Sector 2, Sect
ors 1 and 3 had died decades before.
Sector 1 had been destroyed by a cure that was inadequately tested. It had been deployed at scale to the entire population, but it was not ready. It killed everybody within its walls, Immunes as well. They died terrible deaths, their final moments were spent in agonizing pain. That was seventeen years after the Sectors were created. This so-called cure would have wiped humanity off the face of the Earth if it hadn’t been contained in that Sector. Aircraft from other countries had flown over the city, distributing the airborne vaccine. It had failed and within twenty-eight days the entire population was annihilated.
Sector 3 had perished thirty-two years afterwards. Another failed test. They’d forgotten the lessons of NiVac3. It had appeared to work at first, life in Sector 3 had gone on, the residents were testing clear of their strain of plague. Everything looked good in the lab tests. The cure was deployed to the world beyond the walls of Sector 3. Confidence was absolute that they’d got to the heart of the disease and could finally rid the world of all three strains.
It was then that President James Morgan had gone into Cryo, confident that a new plague-free world would be waiting for him when he emerged. He had just one pre-determined action to perform when the Centurial came and his new life in a different country would be waiting for him. It was to be his reward for turning his own people into lab rats.
But the virus had been incubating and mutating. The plague was not cured, it had just been dormant. Released worldwide as the final solution to the pandemic, it was that which almost wiped human beings from the surface of the Earth. Those in Sector 3 died, just as the rest of the Earth’s inhabitants had perished. Sector 2 and Centrum hosted the only remaining life on the planet. Sector 2 was saved by a last-minute suggestion from a junior scientist who’d thought it would be a useful idea to preserve a population in one self-contained sector so that further live tests could be carried out in secrecy. Meanwhile, the man who was ultimately responsible for the carnage slumbered peacefully in his Cryo chamber.
Caught in The City, completely unaware of life beyond their walls, the citizens had continued to live while the rest of humanity perished. The very walls that imprisoned them had become their protection. Only President Josh Delman knew what had gone on, only he could prevent the annihilation of the last humans on Earth. He’d learned the truth from Edward Schaelles, a man he’d called his ally before he killed him with his own hands in a moment of vanity and greed. Schaelles had overheard Morgan’s private conversations while preparing him for Cryo. He’d been horrified to learn what the President had set in motion and that he’d colluded with other countries in order to use his own people as lab rats.
With Schaelles’ help, Delman hijacked Morgan’s body and fled to the relative safety of Sector 2. There he fought with successive Fortrillium heads to preserve his position. He was the one human who had to survive at all costs, but only he knew it. He needed to stay alive for fifty years until the Centurial. Only then could he finally put things right.
President James Morgan had forged a treacherous deal. After a hundred years he’d planned to emerge from his Cryogenic sleep and destroy Centrum and any surviving cities. The evidence of the live tests would be eradicated. He and his team were destined to emerge in a world that had been cured of plague. He would destroy whichever cities were still standing, banishing the planet of all remaining contamination, then claim his prize along with the other officials who’d plotted and colluded in this scheme. They would be reunited with their families, who’d been held as collateral in Umbilica units based elsewhere, and they would live out the rest of their lives in a plague-free Utopia, their bodies still youthful and healthy, their former identities completely forgotten.
Only, there was no Utopia to emerge into, and the only life left on the planet was destined to be destroyed by a timed destruction sequence which had been activated by Morgan in the certainty that a cure had finally been found.
Now those citizens would inherit what was left of the world, their walls no longer needed to contain them. And with the death of Damien Hunter and the revelations about Josh Delman, a new society could be created without the divisions and horrors of the old ways.
But Josh Delman had one more secret to reveal. He’d carried it alone for several years. It was a sign of the cowardice that had led to his downfall in the first place. It was why he’d killed Edward Schaelles, to keep his secret safe.
Morgan’s body was failing and Delman required a new vessel to travel in. He would need to make a final transference once Catharsis was averted. Like Morgan, Delman was vain enough to believe that he’d earned his place in Utopia. Seizing an opportunity and taking his final risk in The Grid, Delman positioned Reevil96 safely in Sector 1, an ally to help him navigate The Grid when the time came. He also took Tom Slater, who was destined to die in The Grid alongside his friend Matt Parsons. Delman had got to Slater before Damien Hunter, but he would need one final favour from the Schaelles family. He coerced Philip Schaelles to move Tom Slater into Cryo where he’d remain healthy and sleeping until it was time for Delman to transfer to his body. Delman would take over Slater’s form, the strong body of a man in his forties, and banish his thoughts and memories to a small electronic archive stored in an unused area of the brain. To all intents and purposes, Tom Slater would be dead, but Delman would continue to live, discarding Morgan’s spent body.
His security was Teanna Schaelles. He took Philip Schaelles’ precious daughter as his guarantee, to make sure that Schaelles would complete the transfer in secrecy when Catharsis was aborted. Philip Schaelles had had no option but to comply, though he’d warned his daughter not to trust Delman, before she left Centrum. His own father, Edward, had told him about Delman, and how they’d colluded to stop Morgan destroying them all. He’d carried that terrible knowledge for almost fifty years, it had worn him down.
When President Josh Delman exited the elevator, he was met by Matt Parsons and The TriPlex guards. Delman didn’t know about Matt Parsons, he’d always thought he would be able to pass through The TriPlex undetected. But they were expecting him. Although Schaelles had kept his secret, Matt had shared as much as he knew as his trust of the Centrum team grew, still keeping his word to protect Jacob in Sector 1. Delman understood immediately that it was over for him, he knew exactly where to go and what to do. If he didn’t deactivate Catharsis, they would all perish, there would be no more life for anybody. He would get to live, but he’d lost his leverage, there would be no new body for him to transfer to now.
As he placed his hand on the panels of the console and registered his retina ID, the program that had been set up a hundred years ago booted up. He entered the codes he’d so meticulously committed to memory and it was switched off in a moment – the entire future of humanity held in a single electronic process. Had the real President James Morgan been allowed to execute his treacherous plan, he would have entered the death codes and set in motion the destruction of millions of his own people, oblivious to the knowledge that there was nobody coming to rescue him and reunite him with his family. They were all dead, he’d set those events in motion before he took his place in the Cryo-Labs.
As Catharsis was averted, The Grid powered down, leaving only a vast open hangar and the bodies of those who had died there.
Teanna and Joe were taken to the Med-Centre. Matt was in a state of panic about Joe, his son was pale and lifeless. President Delman was given medical attention, then placed in a holding cell pending further investigations. Sector 2 was safe, Centrum was protected, Catharsis was over.
In the Med-Centre, a medic desperately fought to revive Joe Parsons whose heart had stopped beating fourteen minutes beforehand …
Final Wish
Harry got her final wish. She wanted to be buried in the way that had been customary when she was a child. It was fitting that she should be the first to be buried. Talya had suggested it. It would mark the coming together of the world that Harry had known, the past hundred years in The C
ity, and the future – whatever that held for them.
With The Grid deactivated, those living in Centrum had reunited with the citizens of The City. The standoff at the gates of The Climbs had resolved peacefully, as Talya had hoped it would. The dividing gates were opened and the residents of The Climbs poured out onto Silk Road. There was no violence. Those who’d lived on Silk Road took their first steps into The Climbs, they were horrified at what they saw. Many on Silk Road welcomed families from The Climbs into their homes. The Centuria who had defended Fortrillium until the end removed their helmets and lay down their weapons in peace. Jacob Carley was finally relieved of his isolation in Sector 1 and there was a period of fourteen days when everybody got used to each other and to the removal of the barriers.
It was clear there would have to be new leadership, there was no doubt that Talya Slater should head any transitional government. She was acceptable to all parties. Representatives from The Climbs met with Talya and others from Silk Road and the way ahead was agreed upon.
Firstly, there would be no more divisions. All citizens would be equal in terms of rights and opportunities. Secondly, the justice system would be abolished, The Grid would be destroyed so that it could never be used again.
It was a huge mess. Some who had lived in The Climbs or on Silk Road would need to answer for their crimes. There were Centuria and Law Lords who would have to account for themselves.
There were several graves alongside Harry’s. It was thought to be a fitting tribute to those who had laid down their lives in the name of The City. For some of the Justice Seekers, there was no grave, just a headstone – there was nothing left of them to retrieve from The Grid. The holes in the ground had been dug outside The City’s walls. Some explosives had been taken from Fortrillium’s armoury to blow an opening through the vast concrete wall leading to the outside world. It had taken many days to break through the wall, hence the delay to the funerals, but Talya wanted the burials to mark the beginning of the new era. The funerals were shown on the screens and the entire city came to a standstill as a mark of respect for those who had fallen.