by Andy Graham
“OK,” she said, disentangling herself from the medi-sec. “I can get you in. But you do what I tell you to do. If I say snake, you slither. Get it?”
“We go now,” Ray said.
“And how do we get out of the city without passes?”
50
The Wind at a Window
“Tunnels?” Joanna said, handing Ray a crumpled lab coat. “First, you drag me through filthy tunnels under the city walls, which got mud over my heels, are illegal and could cost me my job.”
Ray pulled the coat on, glancing at the rifle she had insisted he stash in a store cupboard. Not for the first time, he wished he had a decent sidearm. That would have solved all sorts of recent problems.
“Leave the cap gun, Soldier-Boy. There’s no way you can wander round here with that and not get noticed.” She snapped the lapels of his coat down. “Too small.”
“And some.” It was too short in the sleeves, tight across the shoulders and brushed the top of his thighs like a mini-skirt. The last time he had worn something this ill-fitting he had been teased so much he had knocked one of the other kids out. (And then he had worn the old woollen jumper of his mother’s for the next month. Just to make a point.)
“Have to do,” she muttered and gestured to a tool box that was the other part of his disguise. “Second, you bundle me into a jeep with rocks for tyres and stones in the seats. Probably stolen, which could also cost me my job.”
“Borrowed. Not stolen. Guy owed me a favour.” Ray managed to make one sleeve fit him, only for the other to ride up over his elbow. This lab coat made him feel like a hunch-backed scarecrow. And what was he supposed to do with these tools?
“Third, all I’ve got from you all night is monosyllabic answers. Fourth, I still don’t know your name.”
“This where you tell me four is not a couple?” Ray asked. Hope you and the others are raising up the hells, Nasc. Wherever you all are.
“What?” She tugged at her ponytail. “Never mind. Name please?”
“Mister Stinky-Soldier-Slag-Sir.”
She scowled at him. “That’s a worse joke than any of my dad’s. Did he owe you a favour, too? Is that why he gave you the co-ordinates to this place?”
“Kind of.” Through a slit window, the distant glow of sunrise was creeping over the horizon.
She peered round a corner. “Wait here, this area is off-access for most, you shouldn’t be disturbed.” Unbuttoning her lab coat, she smoothed down her shirt underneath it, making sure to expose the pendant nestling between the swell of her breasts. “How do I look?”
“Like someone who hasn’t had enough sleep,” said Ray, watching the pendant rise and fall.
She clicked her fingers and pointed at her eyes. “‘Dawn waits for no one.’ That’s one of James’s sayings; he’s Professor Lind to you. He’ll appreciate the early morning call. Most men do.” She gave him a pat on the cheek. “I’ll be back soon. No one should come down here, but if they do, act naturally. Smelling like you do, you’ll fit in just fine. And stay here!”
The click of her heels faded down the corridor, her scent lingering in the air. He pretended to be busy with the tool kit, aware of the dragonfly lenses in the cameras above him. Hopefully, Joanna had been telling the truth about them being off. Also hopefully, she wouldn’t bump into any guards soon. She hadn’t done this voluntarily and whatever favour she was getting from Prothero was not enough for Ray to trust her. Five minutes, that was all she was getting. That was enough time for her to disappear before he did. He still didn’t know exactly how he was going to find the info about his brother, but he had ruled out the kidnapping and coercion of Prothero’s daughter as soon as the idea had hit him.
Four minutes.
Along one side of the wide corridor was a series of metal doors, each barred with a lever handle and swipe-locked. The steel screen covering the window of the first door was open. The room behind was empty, except for a towel lying crumpled in the middle of the floor. Ray was turning away from the door when a fizz of light across the floor made him look again. A second crackle of light revealed the surfaces of the room to be one giant screen shaped into a cube with soft corners. Above the door, flashing in dull red dots was ‘Floor One, Room 0-4’. Underneath it someone had scrawled ‘The Pharos Cell’.
Three minutes.
A muffled hissing from the next room drew him down the corridor. A man was sitting on a bed, hands clamped over his ears. He was wearing nothing but a white vest, stained yellow and red in places. Ray reckoned he was in his early sixties, an unkempt, greying wreath of hair sticking out at all angles. A couple of flies buzzing around a hole in the floor were the only company he had. In the same writing under the room designation, someone had scrawled ‘The White Room’.
Two minutes.
The window for the next room was locked, the numbers above it green. Whatever had been written on the wall had been scratched out.
One minute.
Reaching the last door in the corridor, Ray slid back the screen. The flash of numbness that shot through him was replaced as quickly as it came by rage and hope.
Time.
The door was locked. The figures inside sleeping, oblivious to his rattling of the handle and hissed whispers to wake up. He closed the panel and sprinted up the corridor, his belt pouch knocking against his thigh. Someone was going to give him answers. Then he was going to make good the debt to his family and friends, no matter what it took.
Prothero’s fingernails scratched at the window frame. The wind whipped his hair across his face. Tugging him into the dark sky. Teasing him. “No, please. Stop!” he screamed and the wind howled back at him. “Help. Someone help!” And then he was still. He pressed himself into the wall, trying to take root like the Midwinter tree in the corner of the room. The hands that had dragged him back hovered above him. Waiting. “I don’t know what you want,” he said through chattering teeth. “Please. Let me go. Why are you doing this?” Wooden legs screeched on the floor as the chair his great-grandfather had carved was dragged across the floor.
The hours since leaving Joanna and Ray at the Kickshaw had been a blur of bruises and threats. One moment he’d been looking for his swipe card, the next, he’d been lying on the floor in this room, staring at a pair of polished shoes and two sets of combat boots. Breathing, though. Still breathing. That had been the overriding realisation. The silence he’d come to fear since then was broken by the window-screens thumping in the wind and a voice. “Did you know that hanging someone out of the window is not technically torture?” The VP’s words were slow and measured.
Prothero was lifted back on to the windowsill. Another scream ripped through his throat. Stars twinkled as he was spun round. He landed back in the VP’s office, his real office at the top of Lesau Tower not the basement room hidden in a labyrinth of tunnels.
“No visible physical damage is being done, you see,” the VP continued. “I’m sure the scientists would be able to measure the stress hormones or some kind of elevated synaptic activity. Lind claims there may also be recordable genetic adaptations to stress.” The chair screeched closer. “But that’s not how the law defines it. Yet.”
“He’s looking for someone,” Prothero stammered. “I don’t know who.”
He was hauled to his feet. The gloves of his captors harsh on his skin. One of the men had a deep furrow in his forehead. The other was just hulking and ugly. Prothero grabbed the Midwinter tree in the corner. Decorations broke and splinters of glass shattered over the VP’s seal on the floor in a rainbow of colours.
“His brother. It’s his brother. Franklin’s looking for his brother.” The hands let him go. “He thinks he’s in the camp for some reason. I tried to tell him otherwise but he wouldn’t listen.”
The window was slid shut and the wall-screens blinked into life. Each of the five flicked through a sequence of different pictures. A balding man in a white vest screaming at the ceiling. Glass tubes running from floor to ceiling with odd shap
es in them. People in sterile corridors. An old woman and a dog on a steel bed. James Lind. The professor was talking to a woman with a pony tail and a lab coat. Prothero didn’t need to see her face to know who it was. The image of Lind slammed its fist into the table, shouting something unheard at the woman. Joanna nodded decisively and left the room. A faint smile Prothero had grown to dread over the years ghosted across her face. The image changed to show Ray Franklin in an ill-fitting lab coat and with a face of pure fury disappearing around a corner.
“You let a rogue Riverman, a Franklin, into a secret government building?” The VP’s tone was scathing.
“I thought it was just a research facility.” Prothero shuffled away from the window, trying to put some distance between him and the emptiness below it.
“It is. It’s what it is researching that Ray Franklin cannot be allowed to discover.”
Finding Joanna had been more down to chance than skill. Whether the half-awake people Ray had encountered were finishing or starting their shifts, they had been too tired to be bothered thinking about why a lab-tech in an ill-fitting white coat would need directions. He’d heard the telltale click of her shoes first, then the trudge of the guards’ boots and the voices. The red light on the camera above him was quiet. He hoped these older models behaved like they should.
“What are you doing?” a man’s voice protested. “I was working. You have no right to drag me away from my lab like this.”
The feet came to a stop. Ray replayed the sound in his head, trying to work out how many were waiting round the corner. Joanna, the man, and maybe three guards? Ray opened the lid of his tool box. He pulled out a hammer, wincing as it clinked on another tool.
“There’s no point playing dumb, Avery,” Joanna said. “We know what you’ve done. We know where your sympathies lie.”
The sound of struggling was brought to an end by a crackle and a groan of pain. The sweet smell of her perfume, laden with unwanted images of Brooke and Stella, wafted around the corner.
“I knew you Bucket-born had an affinity for each other, but letting in a deserter to this facility is more than just career suicide.” Her voice dropped. “Once Lind gets back from wherever he’s just gone, I’m going to ask him for personal oversight of the next stage of the trials. I think you may find it fascinating to witness them first hand.”
“I didn’t let anyone in. I don’t know what you’re talking about!” The struggling started again.
Ray stepped out from behind the corner. Two guards, not three. Joanna gaped at him. He hooked her legs out from underneath her and she crashed to the floor in an ungainly heap. Ray threw the hammer at the younger guard and the tool box at the legs of the second. By the time the first had turned back, Ray was on him, knocking him to the floor in a vicious hail of elbows and knees. He twisted the guard’s crackling stun baton back on him, forcing him to the ground. The second guard ducked under Ray’s feint, dived into a roll and came up into the point of the baton. Blue light flared. The guard fell next to his colleague.
Ray stood over the two unconscious bodies. “Never hero-roll,” he whispered, “it’s a stupid move you only ever see in movies.”
A redheaded man in a lab coat got to his feet. His upper lip was swollen; there was a rip in one of his latex gloves. He picked up the other stun baton. A blue crackle sparked at the tip. Joanna tried to scoot along the floor, clutching her ankle. Ray’s grip on his own baton tightened as Avery loomed over her.
“Intellectual theft wasn’t enough, was it, Miescher?” Avery said. “Now you want me dead?”
“No! Not dead. Just—”
“Did you not think this through? If you get rid of me, who are you going to steal your ideas from?”
“It’s not like that. Listen, we can work together. We could—”
“I don’t need you, Miescher.”
“I can help with Lind. He likes me.”
“Be quiet.”
She shrank away from the blue crackle in front of her face.
“This baton worked on me and those guards. Do you think it will work on you? After all, reproducible results are a cornerstone of what we strive for,” he said, mocking.
“Avery,” Ray said. “This won’t work out the way you want.”
“I’m not so sure.” He flicked the baton round and offered it to Joanna. She took it, confusion sliding across her face. “I’m not sure I liked what this place was doing anyway.” Avery pulled the latex gloves off and stuffed them into his pockets. “And when news of it gets out, my hands are clean, literally.”
“You were part of it!” she shouted back.
“My name never got credited on the research, remember, Joanna?”
51
You Are a Hypocrite
Prothero clung to the arms of the wooden chair. He had crawled there to escape the kicking boots of the VP’s thugs. He was shaking so hard his teeth rattled in his skull. The uglier heavy, who was “bored now”, took his gloves off to redecorate the Midwinter tree in the corner of the VP’s office. He held the baubles in sunken-knuckled fingers, placing them with delicate care. The other, the one with the groove in his forehead, just stared at Prothero with unblinking eyes.
“Why are you so interested in Franklin?” Prothero asked. His mouth was full of blood and bits of teeth. He knew the answer to his question. He just needed time for help to arrive. It always arrived.
The VP was swiping through images on his screen quicker than Prothero could make them out. “A disgraced dermatologist called Wu-Brocker set up a prospective study a long time ago. The doctor was infamous for her medieval approach to research. She was nicknamed Lady Left by her subordinates, or Lady Flay, if they thought the cameras were off. Her hypothesis was that nature and nurture are not equal, that genes can be controlled; epigenetics trump genetics. Professor Lind fell in love with this theory. He became its most vocal champion and stated it was the solution to any disease known, ‘from the glint in a couple’s eyes to the grunt of a box being lowered into the ground’. He’s always been a little more loquacious than he likes to let on.”
Prothero half-heard the VP. The thug who had been redecorating the Midwinter Tree had pulled a knife from his belt. It was a blade from Mennai, huge and jagged with a triangular blade. That in itself didn’t scare Prothero; the man pretending to slit his own throat did.
“Wu-Brocker’s theory, expounded on by Lind, agrees with the general consensus that personality traits can be nurtured, trained, scared or bought out of you.” The VP spoke without looking up from what he was doing. One by one the pictures on the wall-screen disappeared until just a still of Lind and Joanna remained. “I disagree. You are what you are born – life only makes you a truer, more exaggerated version of yourself. Franklin, with his rebellious genes, was a perfect choice to test Lind’s theory, especially when he enlisted.
“Lind appeared to be right for a long time. So I encouraged Franklin’s move to the 10th. The discipline is looser within the Rivermen; they encourage their people to think and operate independently, to question orders. Much as I enjoyed watching Franklin have his previous rank stripped in the acceptance ceremony, as happens to all 10th legionnaires, I felt he needed a dash of responsibility in order to flourish. I suggested his promotion to corporal and then captain. I thought it would give his seditious tendencies a chance to express themselves. I even had someone tinker with the gear he and his squad used in both power plants, the one in Mennai and Substation Two, just to keep things fun.”
The VP glanced at the picture of Lind and Joanna, the tip of his tongue moistening his lips. “I came late to the table but it turns out I was right about Franklin. Not so good for Lind, though.” An expansive smile split the VP’s face. “But at least Lind isn’t the mastermind behind the terrorist attack on Substation Two. At least Lind isn’t about to be named responsible for the ensuing living crisis for millions over the winter.”
Through the pain and the fear, Prothero suddenly felt very, very sick. “What are you
talking about?”
“My team managed to clean up some footage from Substation Two. You appear in several of those images. Care to explain what you were doing there just before it blew up?”
“No, listen, you don’t understand.”
“Not good PR for a man of the people, is it?” The VP leant over the back of the carved chair, toying with Prothero’s hair. “Except they’re not really your people, are they? It was a cartographer’s mistake that put your town under the protection of Ailan.”
Keep him talking. Just keep him talking! “Borders are arbitrary. People are not.”
“You and Chester with your romantic ideals of a universal nation. Borders may be arbitrary but finances are finite. That’s the bottom line.” He was facing Prothero now, close enough for Prothero to make out the glistening white points of the man’s teeth, to smell the mint and stale alcohol on his breath. “The same applies to our medical system. The duty of care is to the shareholders. Without profit there can be no care for anyone. But then you should be very aware of that. Your family did very well out of the security backlash over foreign investment in the health service that became the First Great Trade Conflict. After the coal mines were closed in New Town, you were the only family with any money.”
Prothero could end this now, stop the torture. All he needed to do was tell the VP who he really was, tell him the truth. He had promised not to. ‘There’s too much at stake,’ he had been told. ‘You can’t.’ He reached into his pocket, his fingers closing around the familiar shape of his watch as he heard Beth’s whispered warning, ‘The plucky underdog doesn’t always win against the big bad giant, David, not like in the stories read to children. Be careful with the VP.’