Marshall grimaced, unused to anyone being so blunt.
‘I’m forty-five, Genie. Got a grown-up son of twenty-four. But you’re right. I look sixty. Lot of things happened. Lot of things still happening to me. Nothing that can be fixed, I’m afraid.’
Genie swallowed with difficulty, her throat definitely sore again.
‘I used to work at a place called the Fortress. You’ve probably seen their trucks in town. Fortransco Synetics is their real name. It’s based in two buildings, pretty much equidistant from here. I believe you and the boy have already been close to the Synchro building during the flood when the riverbank collapsed. Topographically they are exactly level, if you understand that.’
Genie shook her head. ‘Something to do with maps.’
‘It’s hard to grasp I think. Both are built at one hundred and sixty feet above sea level. Identical twenty storey buildings, but one is underground, buried under the mountain below the reservoir. There’s thirty-five kilometres between them, but you could draw a straight line between the floors of each building and they’d line up. Their real purpose, secret.’
Genie sipped her hot coffee to numb her throat.
‘There’s a huge hydro-electric power station down the valley fed by the Spur river and a reservoir not far from here. The generators can produce 1,350 megawatts of power at peak. Fully operational it might use up to 10,000
gigawatt-hours of electricity in one year. Might mean nothing to you, but that’s a lot of power and not one volt of it feeds into the national grid. That’s secret two. There’s pylons marching off into the distance but they connect to nothing. The whole power station was built just for the Fortress.’
‘The Fortress is like military stuff?’
Marshall shook his head.
‘Fortransco Synetics is a private, but military-funded, experimental site.’
‘And you worked there?’ Genie had vague memories of seeing a white Fortransco truck in Spurlake from time to time. Never thought much about it.
‘I was a researcher. I was there from the beginning when it was something UTEC University was interested in. Just theory in the beginning, you understand. We got a little funding, attracted some attention and we tried a few experiments but we never really had powerful enough computers or enough electric power to make a difference.
Then Fortransco came along and invested billions. Built fantastic new facilities – gave us everything we wanted. It changed everything, but they were always pushing for results. It’s hard science, frontier stuff, and results don’t come easy. We needed a breakthrough, or we knew they’d want to close us down.
‘One day we tried for a big leap. We knew that unless we could prove it worked, the money would dry up and we’d all lose our jobs.
‘We set up this huge test. Grabbed all the hydro power we could and it actually worked. For three crucial seconds, it actually worked . . . before it blew up and took my leg with it. Nearly took my mind too.’
Genie frowned. Tried to imagine what it would be like to have your leg blown off.
‘I was pretty badly shook up for a few months. I was sent to a specialist burns hospital in Toronto. They taught me how to walk again. Never could fix the fits though.
That’s what I must have had last night. It’s like I get an
electric shock and my brain shuts down. They say it’s epilepsy but I know it isn’t. I got rewired that day and nothing has been right since. Hardly anyone recognized me when I returned. You’re right. I look twenty years older.
‘I was retired on full pension. I guess they didn’t think I’d live so long.’
Genie didn’t understand what this had to do with her or the missing kids.
‘You look disappointed,’ Marshall said.
‘I don’t get the connection. You lost your leg, but that’s not unusual around Spurlake what with so many guys killing trees for a living.’
‘Ah, you’re a tree-hugger.’
‘I respect trees. They’re here for a reason. They help the planet breathe,’ she replied defensively. Being Green in Spurlake wasn’t an easy choice.
Marshall shrugged. ‘Well we weren’t killing trees, OK.
We were experimenting with matter transfer. You know what that means?’
Genie shook her head still unimpressed.
‘Teleportation. That mean anything to you?’
Genie blinked, then laughed. ‘You mean, like Star Trek? Beaming up Scotty and stuff? No way.’ She laughed again, not mocking, but caught by surprise. ‘Really?
Teleportation? Isn’t that just science fiction? I mean . . .’
Marshall took a swig of his coffee. ‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me. Sixty years ago the idea of everyone having a telephone in their pockets was science fiction.
Our whole way of life is science fiction, if you look at it from the past.’
‘And you invented teleportation?’
‘No. I told you, I was a researcher. We were working on the Steeple project for NASA. They had this idea of setting up a base on the moon and once you had that, well you wouldn’t need rockets to get up there anymore. It’s easy to swallow a billion dollars on a project like that. It was cancelled in the mid-Nineties. I was seconded to another parallel project based here, but that too was cancelled in ’98.
‘I was taken on by Fortransco, who had development money and could get things done. My specialism is genetic holding patterns. DNA stability in photon transmission.’
Genie almost made sense of that. ‘Like making sure your arms and legs come out in the right order.’
He smiled. ‘I knew you were bright.’
‘And they’re still experimenting? They made it work yet? It would be cool to go anywhere you wanted without using a plane or car . . .’
‘And that’s why the money pours in to develop it.
Only it was hijacked by the military and some other investors. Think about it, Genie, you could ship a whole division of GIs to a trouble spot, catch the locals unawares and you’d stop a revolution or take out a dictator in no time at all. They’d never see you coming.’
Genie frowned. ‘Sounded better when it was aiming for the moon. So, how does this connect to the kids on your bathroom wall?’
‘It’s connected. The people in charge now. They’re new.
Got a different agenda. They are searching for something else entirely.’
‘What?’
‘Eternal life.’
Genie laughed with surprise. It sounded like a sick joke. ‘Eternal life? Who’d want to live forever? Why?’
‘We were supposed to be developing teleportation.
Matter transference. But, and this is theory only, you could take out the ageing genes. You could add new DNA strings, renew, replenish, rebuild. Every ten years you could completely renew yourself. Discard fat, old skin, thinning hair, renew your heart, lungs, liver. It’s Pearson’s Law.’
‘Pearson?’
‘Whatever your purpose in experimentation is, you will find three alternative uses for it and each one will be greater than your first idea. Pearson invented a chewing
gum that never lost its flavour.’
‘No such thing.’
‘Of course there isn’t. You’d never need to spit it out.
The gum business would go under overnight. What he was really looking for was something to make gum disintegrate on the sidewalks in the rain. I knew him. He’s just one of the many bums on Hastings now. Total breakdown. No one even cares. That’s what happened at the Fortress and the missing kids are part of it.’
Genie knew what he was going to tell her. Knew everything suddenly. ‘They’re experimenting on these kids.’
Marshall nodded. ‘I can’t prove it. I don’t even want to believe it, but somehow the kids know how to hook up with the Fortress and—’
‘Rian thinks some kids are finding it on some chat forum. It’s aimed at kids thinking about suicide. Y’know, promising money for participating in experiments. All you
have to do is get to some place near here and they’ll pick you up and pay you two thousand dollars.’
Marshall looked surprised. ‘I hope you’re kidding. I need to speak to my son about that. He’d be interested –he’s been trying to find a link for a while now.’
‘Promise any kid two thousand dollars for doing practically nothing, you’re going to get plenty of volunteers,’ Genie said with a shrug.
‘Not you though?’
‘I might be crazy, but experiments? No way. You really think all those kids on your bathroom wall were suicidal?
Spurlake’s a snake pit, but I don’t believe it.’
‘You and Rian made it thirty-six. That’s how it grows.
God knows how many more disappeared in the flood.’
Marshall searched his dressing gown pockets and took out his pipe. He stared at her for a while before speaking again.
‘If they ended up at the Fortress, those kids are dead, for sure. I don’t have any proof of course. Teleportation is an impossible quest. You can’t keep it stable. It’s possible there will never be enough computer memory to keep that much information stable for any length of time.’
Genie was thinking about a face on the wall. She was thinking about a boy in a glass building, a boy called Denis Malone. Was he a dream or was he real?
‘Denis Malone,’ she said suddenly. ‘Is he on your wall?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’
Genie left the table. Ran out of the room towards Marshall’s bathroom. She had an urgent need to see all their faces. She arrived short of breath, her chest was tight as a drum and the porridge still burned in her stomach.
She sat on the edge of the bath and stared at the wall in the gloom of the unlit bathroom.
Sixth picture. Denis looked just like he had in her dream. The room began to move, the pictures on the wall shook loose. Denis slid off his poster, other kids began to do the same. She was hallucinating, but she checked them all, the photographs were disappearing, one by one, they were going, sliding into the bath. Her eyes began to flutter, she felt light as a feather again, sensed she was falling.
Denis was kneeling beside her. She was back in the glass building, lying on the floor beside the computers. It was warm. Denis was smiling.
‘You came back.’
‘Denis?’
Other faces came into view. Some boys, a couple of girls, one she knew vaguely as Julia. They were almost naked or wearing odd one-piece body stockings.
Something was wrong with their skin, some had arms and necks that were red or burned like they’d been over exposed at a tanning store, but they all looked happy to see her.
‘Where am I? Who? What’s going on?’
‘It’s the Fortress, Genie. You’re in the Fortress.’
‘But how?’
‘You’re next,’ Denis told her. ‘We’ve seen the list.’
A girl with red hair came forward and gave her a hand
to pull her up. Genie grasped it and although she felt an electric static shock, the hand passed through her own and she fell back.
‘I don’t get it?’
‘We’re here, Genie. We’re alive. You’ll be here soon.
We know it.’
‘No!’ Genie protested. ‘I’m not going there. I can’t go there.’
Denis pressed a hand to Genie’s shoulder. Her skin fizzed a little, even though she couldn’t feel any substance.
‘We’re waiting for you, Genie. You can get us out.
You’re the one.’
‘Get you out of what?’
‘The Fortress,’ several called out at once.
Genie shook her head.
‘Denis, I don’t understand? You haven’t changed a bit.
Do you stop growing here? What are they doing to you?
How do you get here?’
There was a sharp electronic noise that hurt Genie’s ears. A red light began to flash around her and abruptly they were gone.
Genie rubbed her sore head. She discovered she’d fallen in the bathroom. Woke to find Marshall was putting a plaster on her forehead.
‘Cut your head on the bath. You’re going to have a nasty bruise.’
She couldn’t speak. She’d been inside the Fortress and the kids were alive! She glanced at the wall. The cuttings were all still there. She looked more closely at a Japanese girl. Miho Tanaka. She had been standing behind Denis, silently watching her. She’d been missing two years, like Denis. Several of the faces on the wall were familiar and none of them had aged. How was that possible?
‘I was there,’ Genie whispered. ‘They’re still alive, Marshall. I’m telling you. They’re all still alive.’
‘Best you lie down a while, girl. I got to feed that pig of yours.’
He walked her out of his bedroom and over to the old leather sofa in the lobby where she let him sit her down, swing her legs over. He put a cushion under her feet. ‘You stay put for a while, OK? You’re still sick and you need rest.’
And then he was gone.
Rian woke suddenly. There was someone in the room. He saw movement. A light was flickering, then came on bright. Somewhere a radio snapped on and music floated up from below. ‘Genie?’ he mumbled. He turned, realizing that the sheets he was lying on were damp. His
throat was red raw, he felt twenty pounds lighter and he had a pit of despair in his stomach.
He saw the flicker of movement again and turned. He saw nothing but the window and the sunlight casting a shadow on the wooden floor.
He sat up. He blinked. There was a girl sat right across the room from him staring at him. It wasn’t Genie. Then the girl was gone, vanished, didn’t move a muscle, but vanished all the same. He decided he was delirious.
He’d just seen a weird ginger-haired girl with wild green eyes and bushy eyebrows. He had to be going crazy.
‘Genie?’ he cried out again, but his voice was weak and he sensed no one could hear him.
He walked unsteadily on weak legs to the bathroom.
The sun was pouring in through a small window. How many days had he missed? As he emptied his bladder, he was looking at the yellowing newspaper cuttings on the wall. He was startled to see the girl. Renée Cullins, from Cedarville. Colour of hair – ginger-red, particular markings: broad eyebrows, green eyes, small tattoo of a rose on back. Hadn’t seen the tattoo, but the hair and those eyes were exactly her. This girl had been in the bedroom watching him. What the hell was going on? He shook his head. He was absolutely delusional.
He tested the water in the sink. It was surprisingly hot.
The power was back on. He took a shower and felt a million times better for it.
‘Hey, not fair. I wanted a shower. Don’t use all the hot water, OK?’
Genie was looking at him. She was smiling. She was real. Please God, he hoped she was real. She had a nasty bruise on her head and a small plaster on a cut.
‘How do you feel?’ she asked, stripping off to join him in the shower.
‘You coming in here?’ Rian asked nervously. He hadn’t been expecting that.
Genie laughed. ‘Yeah. You shy? You’ve been lying next to me naked and sweating like a pig for days – so I’m sure you can’t be so shy, Rian Tulane.’
Rian got out of the shower. He wasn’t ready for this.
Nearly lost his balance too, his legs were made of rubber.
Genie blew him a kiss and walked under the hot spray.
‘Hell, I need this. I stink. I washed our clothes. Power came back on four hours ago. Nearly jumped out my skin when the radio came on.’
‘You OK? What happened to your head?’ Rian asked, quickly covering himself with her towel. She was acting so spookily normal. She really seemed happy. Just like the girl he’d fallen for so many months ago.
‘Fell, knocked myself out.’ She shampooed her hair.
‘Lot of weird stuff to tell you, but I’m glad your fever’s gone. You are better, right? There’s oatmeal to heat up in the kitchen. J
ust add some milk. It’s still OK.’
‘Where’s the old guy?’ Rian asked.
‘Gone to Cedarville to get provisions.’
‘You trust him?’
‘I guess. Hey, you stole my towel. Can you find me another? God, it’s so good to be clean. You look like hell, by the way. Who’s Renée?’
Rian nearly jumped out of his skin. ‘Renée?’
‘You were talking about her in your sleep.’
‘I was not.’
‘Sure you were. I came up an hour ago and you were going, “Oh Renée, Renée,” like she was loving you up.
Someone I should know?’
This was too much. ‘I was not talking to anyone called Renée.’
‘I didn’t say you were talking, but she was . . .’
Genie had rinsed off the shampoo and was looking at Rian and what he was staring at. She turned to face the wall and the missing kids newspaper clippings.
‘There’s more of these downstairs in his bathroom.
Thirty-four in all. Can you believe that? Every kid missing from Spurlake and Cedarville, right the way up to Lytton, not counting us.’ She was looking at the seventh
one along. Renée Cullins – aged fourteen when she’d gone missing last year. She looked back at Rian and he seemed utterly freaked. ‘What? Was she here? Did you see her?’
Rian handed her a fresh towel from the cupboard as Genie turned off the shower. ‘She was sitting in the room, watching me. I wasn’t talking to her. I was asleep. I don’t get it. How did she get here?’
Genie now knew for certain that the same thing had happened to both of them.
‘Don’t be spooked. They just want to talk, they’re lonely, I think.’
Rian was looking for his clothes. He wasn’t sure how to deal with this or just how normal Genie seemed to think it was.
‘Are they . . . are they ghosts?’
Genie smiled. ‘Uh-uh.’ She leaned forward and kissed Rian on the shoulder. He put out a hand towards her, still nervous about the whole situation for some reason.
‘They aren’t ghosts. They’re alive. They’re alive just like me or you.’
‘But why here?’
‘Because they can, I guess. I fell and hit my head on the bath downstairs. See the bump on my head? They came to me when I was out. Denis first, came with a few
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