An icy cold breeze licked Cathren’s skin. Odd, considering flames engulfed at least half the place. She scanned the area for an explanation and spotted a cluster of people wearing hazmat outfits. They focused on some activity in the far corner of the space near frosty pipes and refrigeration units. She barely made them out through the smoke, flames, and falling debris.
These people, identities hidden by the large hazmat full-face headgear, were pulling things—she couldn’t determine what—out of the metal capsules. They next tried to force what appeared to be tiny, hairless, enraged monkeys into the egg-shaped aquariums.
Had the smoke and the heat gotten to her? She dug her fingers into her eyes. Shaking her head to rid herself of the feeling she’d lost her mind, she advanced closer to the commotion. She tried to stay hidden as she sneaked up, ducking behind cabinets, freezers, and rows of scientific equipment.
As she moved nearer, the action became clearer. The hazmat people struggled with things that turned out not to be bald primates at all. Instead, the technicians clutched human heads; no bodies, only heads. Then Cathren remembered. Of course, ATELIC’s specialty: cryogenics, frozen heads. Makes sense. Everything’s a little over the top, but I guess it is a rescue mission, after all.
Cathren let out a small yelp and stopped in her tracks. One of the heads had turned inside the “egg-quarium,” and stared right at her.
The heads were alive. Impossible, unthinkable. Cathren glanced down at her feet and attempted to center herself. Relax. It’s the smoke. The heat. The excitement. You’re not going crazy.
* * *
She couldn’t believe her eyes. She needed to get closer. All around her, the building crashed down in pieces. Instead of trying to get away from the danger, Cathren worked her way deeper into the belly of the beast. Through the dense smoke and blistering flames, past the swinging hooks and dangling cables. Sidestepping the rubble falling from the sky, into the thick ash flakes fluttering all around her, like the devil’s snowstorm.
Finally, she found herself almost close enough to touch the glass egg-quariums. From this proximity, she could clearly see that, yes, they were, in fact, human heads. And yes, they were alive. And yes, they had no bodies. Nonetheless, they were snarling and snapping at the hazmat workers. The small portions of their spines that were still attached behaved like feet or, more accurately, like flippers.
Cathren shrieked, her stomach tightening as if someone had twisted her guts with a pipe wrench. Even in all the tremendous noise and chaos, the hazmat workers heard her scream. The unexpected, shrill human voice startled them so much they bobbled the head currently in their care.
After they juggled their little prize for a few seconds, the head dropped out of their hands and plopped onto the floor. The thing skidded across the lab and spun to a stop at the feet of a terrified Cathren Whitney.
She screamed again.
The head lay there, looking up at her, snarling, drooling, foaming at the mouth, eyes wild.
Then, it bit her.
Chapter 11
People dashed about everywhere. Most remained on the outside of the fence, which bulged from the mass of bodies pressed against it.
Donovan made himself glance away from the encroaching mob. Their safe place between the fence and the spruce trees would soon be compromised. Donovan and Rudra moved along, parallel to the fence, targeting the front gate.
The crowd thinned a bit here, many having gotten past the guards and onto the property. Donovan was almost free of the mob. Their awful stink, their slimy touch, the pressure against him as they pushed him and Rudra harder against the fence.
At last, Donovan and Rudra reached the main entrance.
From their new vantage point, away from the cops and the media, Donovan studied the building Cathren had disappeared into. He could see the door she’d used. The building was engulfed in flames.
Clearly, Cathren was in danger, the very least of which was possible arrest. The worst? Death.
His mission was clear: get in there somehow, find her, and get the hell out.
That would’ve been relatively easy had the rubber bullets not started hailing down around them. A line of cops in riot gear appeared out of nowhere. The half-crazed crowd, hungry for trouble and the truth, stampeded.
Rubber bullets didn’t kill, but damn, they hurt.
The crush of the crowd pulled Donovan farther away from the building that had devoured Cathren and back toward the street—the opposite of what he wanted. It was an undertow with a vengeance. Fighting against it did him no good.
Of course, inevitably, the arrests began, initiated by a good whap! on the head with a billy club. The cops in blue and black targeted heads at random, and, in the blink of an eye, the cops marched right in the direction of Donovan and Rudra.
The cloying closeness of the crowd, their sweat and pizza-breath, the hot flesh and spongy flab, made him dizzy. He’d always hated intimacy with strangers. He saw it as a violation of his personal space, but he forced himself to take his mind off the herd and focus on the cops.
If I stay put, my odds of getting caught and cuffed are one-in-two. I don’t like those odds. And I’ll never get to Cathren if they get me first.
He called to Rudra, who had been pushed a few feet farther by the crowd.
“I have a plan,” he said. “Follow me!”
But in another blink of an eye, Rudra vanished. He’d just been there, and now… Nothing. Arrested or run away, Donovan didn’t know, and he couldn’t waste time trying to find out.
* * *
Donovan remembered something he used to do as a small child to see the parade pass by: he’d crawl on his hands and knees through the legs of the crowd, past baby strollers and puppies, until at last he’d get to the front of the crowd. There, he would raise his six-year-old body to its full height and be rewarded with a clear view of the parade.
He initiated Operation Baby Crawl. He felt the whooosh of a police baton through his hair as he dropped to his hands and knees.
Now at ground level, he saw mostly the black boots of the cops amid a sea of sneakers and sandals, one or two pairs of heels, and the occasional bare feet.
Donovan knew he was vulnerable where he crouched. The cops could easily pluck him from his new position like a cat snatching a mouse from the grass, so he moved swiftly toward a pocket of light to his left.
On his hands and feet, he scuffled along, moving from pocket to pocket, taking a few swift kicks in the ribs as he went.
Suddenly, just like when he was a little kid, he could dash away from the confusion, on his own if only temporarily. Not looking back, he sprinted toward the now-abandoned gate.
The conflict had moved almost into the middle of the street in front of ATELIC now.
Donovan scanned the campus to assess the proximity of the nearest cop. Then, suddenly, he broke free, running across the parking lot at full speed.
Rudra—somewhere behind him—shouted at him to stop. But stopping meant being overtaken by the crowd.
No fuckin’ way.
Taking full advantage of his sudden freedom, he sprinted to the middle building where he’d last seen Cathren. Voices behind him commanded him to return.
Rubber bullets cut through the air all around him.
In a minute, he’d put a large fuel tank between him and his pursuers.
As he ran between parked trucks, he knew that someone, maybe a whole battalion, would be after him. He’d left himself exposed and isolated from the crowd.
He’d made himself a target.
Donovan tried to identify the building where he’d last seen Cathren but they all looked identical. A smaller, three-story building near the back stood out.
The building blazed like a furnace, all of its windows blown out from the intense heat. A number of fat pipes, maybe a hundred or so, coiled in and out of the sides of the structure. Black or silver metal of different sizes made it seem as if the building was on life support.
Donovan looke
d behind him toward the gate and spotted riot cops pouring in. Off in the distance, more cops packed protesters into trucks by the dozens. These vehicles looked like delivery vans, though Donovan knew they weren’t. It was now or never.
He took off, staring only at that one building. Then, as he sprinted closer, he focused only at the door where he’d seen Cathren enter. He was only a few yards away, lungs burning as he pushed himself for the touchdown.
That’s when a peculiar feeling shuddered through his right leg behind the knee. A rubber bullet had hit a reflex point—lucky shot, really. Donovan went down.
As he fell, Donovan rolled and slid across the tarmac, ripping his clothes. Dirt and pebbles abraded his skin where the ground sliced it open.
Before he could reorient himself and jump up to finish his run, Donovan found himself surrounded by cops in riot gear. One of them addressed him through a black face shield.
“This is the end of the trail for you, buddy. Get up. Hands on your head.”
“But, wait, you can’t—” Donovan pleaded.
He stole an instinctive glance at the building and thought he saw a shape fade from one of the windows. Cathren?
Donovan jumped to his feet in one last, desperate attempt to save her—but the gun barrel rammed into his groin put an end to any further heroics.
Donovan’s head spun. He couldn’t focus. He suffered from blurred vision, aching nuts, and his cramped position. Then the explosions roared.
One. Two. Three.
Men shouted, then more explosions.
Four. Five. Six.
The seventh boomed somewhere behind him, very close by.
“Fuck this,” Donovan said.
He got up on one knee, and then—slow and easy—forced himself to stand up. He turned around to look, hands on his head, fingers intertwined.
“Cathren!” he shouted against the roar of the fire and the hysteria of the hordes. He took a step and then collapsed in pain.
Though weak, disoriented, and dizzy, he continued to search for her just the same.
She was gone. And maybe for good.
Chapter 12
Welcome back. I’m Zoë Krant and you’re watching Investigation Nation. Now, for our exclusive interview.
Burkart Egesa, welcome.
Thanks for having me, Zoë.
Now what’s this about our local water supply being contaminated, courtesy of ATELIC Industries?
I think there’s been some confusion, and frankly, hysteria on this topic.
But, Dr. Egesa, a powerful reanimation solution contaminated the water. You’ve admitted as much to the press earlier this week.
Yes, of course. But is it dangerous? That’s always been my assertion: the solution leaked into the aquifer, yes. But is that bad? Look, this is a solution successfully proven to ‘awaken’ dead heads. It’s a powerful life-giving force.
Yes, but people drink these chemicals. From their kitchen tap, from swimming in lakes and ponds and ingesting a bit unintentionally here and there. From bathing in it.
True, Zoë. But if you knew anything about water treatment plants, you’d know they put many, many chemicals in your drinking water. Chlorine. Ammonia. Sulfur. As well as sodium, calcium, magnesium, and fluoride. Actually there are over 2,000 trace elements in tap water. A lot of the substances ejected out of ATELIC turned out to be, in fact, quite common. The same used in soaps, shampoos, and cosmetics. I’m talking about chemicals such as propylene glycol, sodium lauryl sulfate, bentonite, propylene glycol, and diethanolamine. Which is why the leak went undetected in our water system for so long, both by the local officials and by us at ATELIC.
Dr. Egesa, I believe you are being a bit evasive here with your list of chemicals. The truth is, the chemicals coming into the aquifer from ATELIC’s lab were chemicals which were either never tested or only allowed in very, very low concentrations. Something like one part per billion.
The difference here is in the ratio, Zoë. For example, you’re fine with H2O, one part hydrogen and two parts oxygen which is water, of course. But mess around with that ratio, say HO2, you have hydrogen peroxide. Not something you’d necessarily consider a thirst quencher.
Hmmmm, no.
Yet in chemical makeup it’s not far off from water. I believe what we were ultimately pumping into the drinking water here in San Francisco, truly, was also not far off from water itself.
Well, there you have it. Burkhart Egesa’s cocktail, a potent mix of both dangerous and benign chemicals. Blended in a particular combination, in certain concentrations, and seeped slowly throughout the entire system, drip by drip over time. What you have is a population saturated with a chemical bath proven to wake the dead.
I’m Zoë Krant. We’ll be right back, with more from the founder and CEO of ATELIC Industries.
Chapter 13
Donovan got out of jail the next morning, along with everyone else arrested. The charges were dropped.
When he returned to his apartment, he turned on the television with the sound off. Not much coverage. Nothing about the arrests. Behind the talking heads on CNN were publicity stills, images of the way ATELIC used to be. As if the buildings Donovan knew burnt to the ground still stood intact, bravely holding their special contents still frozen and protected.
Abruptly, Cathren’s face was front and center on the screen. Donovan cranked the volume on the remote.
“...leading to her whereabouts would be appreciated. She has unfortunately been exposed to dangerous chemicals at the ATELIC plant. What she needs, we are told, is a quick and easy detox. This must happen soon, within twenty-four hours experts say. Now, let’s get over to Bob Cullens at our weather desk.”
“Thanks, Marra. Well, it seems some strange black clouds have been forming over the west end of the city in the last few hours…”
Donovan muted the TV and wondered what happened. Where was Cathren? He kicked himself mentally for not doing more last night to help her. He scratched his head, pondering these questions, when someone started banging at the entrance. It scared the crap out of him, causing him to jump to his feet.
“Yeah? What? Who is it?” he asked.
No one said anything at first, and then a female voice whispered against the doorframe, “Let me in. It’s me.”
Donovan got up, snapped open the deadbolt, and threw open the door.
Cathren.
Should’ve known.
Before he could say, “oh, it’s you,” she entered, then closed and locked the door.
At first, Donovan couldn’t say a word. He wanted to hold her and tell her how glad he was to see her. Instead, he asked, “Okay. What’s going on, Cathren?”
Cathren hesitated. “The chronological events are simple, but what the hell’s happening to me… I don’t know.”
Cathren told him what she’d seen last night. The tumbling head, the bite.
“It bit you?”
“Yes, the damn thing bit me.”
“That can’t be good,” Donovan said.
Cathren stood at the door, weaving and wobbling, and then took two steps forward and fell face-first onto the corner of Donovan’s coffee table to land face-up on the rug, still as a stone.
Donovan ran to her. She had a nasty bruise on her forehead, but there was no blood. Her lids drooped and all he could see was a thin stripe of the whites of her eyes. Her mouth gaped open, and she was breathing heavy, almost snoring. Then, abruptly, it stopped.
He knelt beside her, his ear near her cheek, and listened for her breath. Gently, she inhaled. She was all right. He didn’t raise his head at once, though. Now that he lingered so close to her, he was struck by her beauty. Her lips, parted as she breathed, glistened. Her lips were so close, so delicious, he found himself leaning in to kiss her.
“What. The. Fuck.” She opened her eyes and rose to her elbows.
“I, er, thought you were dead.” he said.
“If you thought I was dead, why the hell were you thinking about kissing me?” She
glared at him, reaching out at first to slap him. She stopped an inch before making contact with his cheek and, instead, raised her hand back up to her own forehead.
“Owww,” she said.
Chapter 14
Welcome back. I’m Zoë Krant, and you’re watching Investigation Nation. We’re speaking with Dr. Burkhart Egesa, founder, CEO, and chief scientist at ATELIC Industries.
Dr. Egesa, how did this crisis we are witnessing today come about?
I don’t see it as a crisis at all. Rather, it’s a fantastic opportunity to explore the far reaches of the science of immortality, if you will. And, please, call me Burkhardt. Look, the technology for using stem cells to recreate certain body parts is already available. Right here, right now. Some labs are inserting stem cells into living, human bodies. To repair injuries. To recover from surgery. To generate a new finger, nose, or breast. Like a salamander can re-grow its own tail.
Yes, but, grow a whole entire human? Dr. Egesa, that’s a far more complex equation. Infinitely more complex. It might happen, a long time in the future from now, or it may never happen, you must agree.
With all due respect, Zoë, I don’t. ATELIC’s whole reason for being is reanimation, which ultimately means immortality. We are not simply in the frozen head storage business. We need to know: would the head—the brain—be alive after being frozen? Frozen, possibly, for centuries. It’s our charter, our raison d’etre.
Fine, Burkhardt, let’s move on. So the experiments began. As I understand it, various algorithms were run on computers, software models built.
Yes, ATELIC had an entire compute cluster—hundreds of computers—with petabytes of data, processing complex computer models in parallel. But nothing was done in the real world; it was all just silicon-based. Year after year of computer simulations, all ending in failure.
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