The House Next Door Trilogy (Books 1-3)

by Jule Owen

  “Whenever you like. We’ll put a car at your disposal. But it won’t do her any good if you get sick as well.”

  Mathew nods his assent. He still has his gloved hand firmly in Hoshi’s. She grips it as she sleeps. He has to gently prize it open. He stands up, leans across the bed, touches her face and kisses her awkwardly through the shrilk. “I won’t be long,” he says.

  7 Green Fairy

  DAY TWELVE: Friday, 3 December 2055, London, England

  Gen’s dinner party seems a lifetime away.

  As they pass through the house, Mathew spots the laid dining room table, the cutlery, the glasses, the good table cloth, place settings and candles. It is like one of those museum rooms for the famous dead, frozen for posterity, or the scene of a crime, taped off to preserve the evidence.

  Mathew follows Gen through to the kitchen and takes a seat at the scrubbed wooden table at her request. She clears away the meal she had prepared the night before.

  “What would you like for breakfast? Eggs? Cereal? Toast?”

  “Maybe some toast,” Mathew says. “We should have had breakfast at my house. Leibniz would have fed us.”

  “I needed to clean this away anyway,” Gen says.

  “I’m sorry about your dinner, Gen.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake. That’s the last thing that should be on your mind.”

  Gen makes hot tea and toast and Mathew eats mechanically. “Another piece?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Not hungry?”

  He shakes his head. The toast tastes like cardboard.

  Gen says, “You should get some rest. I have a spare bed.”

  He shakes his head. “No, don’t worry. I’d like to go home and sleep. And there’s O’Malley. He’s been alone all night.”

  “Of course.”

  “The car will come for me at one,” he checks his Lenz for the time. Gen doesn’t have a Canvas in her kitchen. It is nine am.

  “I’ll come back to the hospital with you,” Gen says.

  “Don’t you need to work?”

  “I’m due some leave.”

  “You need to be here at four for Clara’s lesson.”

  “Mathew, I’m coming with you. Clara will manage without me for a few days.”

  “Thanks, Gen.” He is incredibly grateful. He remembers what his mother said about Gen. That she is kind.

  Back at number nineteen, O’Malley greets him at the door, vocal and upset at being left alone all night. Mathew gathers him in his arms and perches on the bottom of the stairs for a few minutes, stroking him, but really he is comforting himself. Upstairs, he showers, goes directly to his bedroom and logs on to the Blackweb as he walks. There is a tech support advert waiting for him. He accepts.

  “Greetings. You are Burning Crusade. I am the Lich King.” Lich King’s voice is strange, like it’s run through a bad simultaneous translation filter.

  “Hi, Lich King.”

  “How goes it?”

  “Not great, as it happens.”

  “Are you still at Panacea?”

  “No, they let me go. I’m at home.”

  “Did their tests find anything? Are you sick?”

  “No, I’m clear.”

  “Whoa. Close shave, man.”

  “And your mum?”

  “Not so good.”

  “I’m sorry to hear.”

  “Yeah. Did you manage to find anything?”

  “Affirmative. Hoshi Mori’s thick on the Blackweb but mainly in relation to her husband, Soren Erlang. You didn’t tell me who she was. I mean, to you.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You know about the Helios Energy trial, then?”

  “Yes, of course. What about Hoshi Mori and Panacea?”

  “Not a thing.”

  Mathew doesn’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed.

  “Which is surprising. Usually the Blackweb publishes stories before the roaches know it themselves.”

  “Roaches?”

  “You know, the men in suits? Cockroaches. Highly adaptable, indestructible, low-level intelligence, no imagination, no souls, live parasitically off humans. Will be there at the end of the world.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “One for your personal dictionary. Anyhow, there’s not a sniff of suspicion around Hoshi on the Blackweb, other than this trial and she’s the wife of… well.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You got my blood up. So I decided to play a little.”

  “Play?”

  “You know, tinker. See if their servers have any soft spots. It was ridiculously easy. If I didn’t hate them with every living molecule of my body, I would contact their security team. They clearly need help. Anyway, I waltz in, like the door has been left wide open for me personally. Once you get through the doors they have a few quite nasty guard dogs, but before one of those got hold of my ankle, I managed to swipe Hoshi’s files. There’s a whole bunch of correspondence about a project called Project Green Fairy. I downloaded them. I’m sending them to you now.”

  “Did you look at them?”

  “Yeah, some. It’s pretty heavy shit. Biological weapons, I think.”

  Mathew’s heart freezes.

  “You should post this stuff on MUUT you know. It would cause a shitstorm. Psychopomp would kill for it.”

  “No. This must stay between us for now. Promise?”

  “Okay. But it’s burning a hole in my virtual drive.”

  “Delete it, then.”

  “Look, I gotta go. I’m way behind on my support calls. Let me know if you need anything else. And take care of yourself. Keep away from the viruses.”

  Mathew gets into bed, sick with tiredness. He doesn’t have the energy to study the files.

  It’ll wait until tomorrow.

  O’Malley is curled on the duvet. Mathew has to shift him across. He mews loudly in protest, pads around and settles on Mathew’s chest, purring like a tractor.

  A call comes through from Clara. He answers.

  “Hi.”

  “Hey,” she says, “Where are you?”

  “In bed.”

  “Oh jeeze, I’m sorry. I’ll hang up.”

  “No, don’t. It’s good to speak to you.”

  “Did you get to see her?’

  “Yes. They let me sit with her.”

  “Is that safe?”

  “They gave me one of those suits and a mask.”

  “Oh. How was she?”

  “Barely conscious. Completely drugged up. They said they are trying to save her, meaning she’s dying.”

  “Oh Mathew. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Mathew is silent. She hears him swallow.

  “I wish I was there with you,” she says.

  “Me too,” he says.

  “It’s unreal. Do they know what it is?”

  “Some kind of rare virus. An incurable one. Probably the sort of virus that will be automatically neutralised by a medibot five years from now.”

  “Perhaps they will still find a way to help her. It is Panacea, after all. They must have all the latest experimental drugs at their disposal.”

  “Yeah,” Mathew says. “They do.”

  “And she’s one of their own.”

  “That’s what Dr. Assaf said.”

  “Who is Dr. Assaf?”

  “The doctor who is treating her.” He yawns. “Sorry,” he says.

  “You should get some sleep.”

  “Yeah. I’m shattered.”

  “I’ll hang up.”

  “Stay with me a little bit, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know, I can’t shake my dream, the one where Mr. Lestrange’s house is a sort of time machine. You take a history book off the shelf and you put it on the table. You turn to the page you want, open it and leave it there. Then you go to his Darkroom and join the game. There is this incredibly long corridor with lots of doors. One of the doors is unlocked. If you open it and step through, you will
step into another time.”

  “It’s a very elaborate dream.”

  “I wish it was true because if it was, I would use Mr. Lestrange’s house to travel into my own future and ask myself how to cure my mother. You know, Clara, if anything happens to my mum, I will spend the rest of my life finding a cure for this virus.”

  “You didn’t mention the book being a kind of key before. I mean, you told me about the books; you dreamt you fell through some kind of door, but you didn’t say the book controls where you travel to in time.”

  “That’s because the book part wasn’t a dream. I saw it.” Clara’s silence is loud across the connection. He knows he sounds crazy. “Oh, never mind. My mind is scrambled. I can’t think straight.”

  “Yes, you should sleep now. I’m hanging up. I will be thinking of you. Call me if you need me, whatever time it is.”

  “Thanks, Clara.”

  “No need to thank me. Now I am actually going.”

  And she hangs up.

  In the afternoon, back at the hospital, Mathew is alone with Hoshi. She hasn’t spoken since he arrived and is asleep now, still gripping his hand. Mathew is exhausted and his mind is a mess, turning over and over. He doesn’t dare move, worried he will wake her, and he does not want to doze off - he is terrified she might die while he sleeps.

  Whispering, he issues the voice commands to open the files Lich King had found for him. He browses through them and searches for Green Fairy. They are mainly technical, internally focused documents he doesn’t understand but he recognises some words and phrases: entomological warfare, mycoherbicides and anti-crop capability. As far as he can make out, Green Fairy is a military project to use insects to deliver fungus-based herbicides to kill crops. There had been a report on the news. An email catches his eye from James Truville. He scans it and reads,

  You will be aware of the escalation of tension between the US and Russia. In the event of war, we would have no choice but to shift our focus to human-grade infectious agents and pull more resources from other projects, including Green Fairy. In other words, you should be prepared to move projects at short notice. I know your feelings on the matter and I truly hope it will not come to that.

  He stares at his mother in horror. She was working on a biological weapon. That is why she is dying.

  8 Dragonfly

  DAY THIRTEEN: Saturday 4 December, 2055

  The Aegis car snakes through deserted streets as Mathew makes his early morning journey home. A winter mist hangs over London. He’s left Gen at the hospital. They are working shifts, taking it in turns to watch over Hoshi. Mathew took the night shift; Gen is sitting with her during the day.

  Hoshi has been asleep or delirious since she last spoke to Mathew. Dr. Assaf says it’s partly the morphine and partly the virus. Mathew hasn’t told Gen what he has found out about his mother. He hasn’t told anyone.

  Bone-tired, he exits the car. The door of his house unlocks and swings slightly ajar as he walks towards it. O’Malley jogs down the stairs, mewing in a complaining way. Mathew smiles sadly and picks him up; he contemplates breakfast, decides he can’t face it and makes his heavy legs climb the stairs, still holding the cat. He puts O’Malley on his bedroom floor and throws himself onto the bed fully clothed. He falls asleep wearing his boots.

  He wakes at noon, his mind thick and disorientated, and lies staring at the ceiling. He closes his eyes again, trying to sleep, willing it, knowing he hasn’t had enough, but the light streams through his curtains and messages scroll across his Lenz, including several missed calls from his grandmother who had tried to reach him at various points during the previous afternoon and evening. He feels guilty not calling her, but he is overwhelmed by the thought of facing her grief and the interrogation he is likely to get. He tells himself he will call her once he has showered and eaten and is stronger.

  There are messages from Clara too.

  In the shower he starts to worry about school, whether he would be expected to continue his studies, but he doesn’t think he can. With a sinking feeling, he remembers the collaborative robotics project session due to take place on Monday and he also remembers his dragonfly.

  Downstairs, dressed and waiting for his food, he writes to Professor Absolem. He explains what has happened and tells her he doesn’t think he will be able to log on to school the next day. He writes up his notes to explain the prep work he has done, gathers the blueprints for the robot to send and then decides he should also provide video evidence. The dragonfly is on his desk upstairs. He boots up the program that allows him to control it and flies it into the kitchen, filming a few flypasts and then a 360° close-up with a voice-over of his design decisions. Then he packages all the material up, attaches it to a message and hits send.

  Now, the dragonfly is settled before him on the kitchen table. He picks it up absently, placing it in the palm of his hand, and stares at it. His mind cycles through the events of the last fortnight, dreams and conversations, a muddle of memory he can’t even hope to unpick. So what is the point in clinging to things he is unsure of? Nothing will matter anymore, if his mother dies. He stares through the kitchen window at the garden. Inside his brain, neurons spike and send signals circulating through his grey matter circuits and networks. From the depths of confusion and exhaustion, he feels the strange flush of pleasure of an idea; of things falling into place. When he stands up and heads to the door, he is thinking, But I do not want to have to go back into Mr. Lestrange’s library.

  Outside it is biting cold and the dull steel sky presses low on the slate rooftops of London. He’s only wearing his t-shirt and stands shivering in the garden. Bending, he puts the dragonfly on the flagstones and connects to the control software through his e-Pin and Lenz. Then he fixes his gaze on Mr. Lestrange’s chimney and considers the wind buffeting the trees around him. There is nothing for it but to try.

  Up the little robot flies, blowing to and fro precariously, until it is hanging above the clay pot mouth of the chimney. Mathew wonders if it is now blocked, if Lestrange has taken action to protect the weak point of entry into his house. He takes the dragonfly lower slowly and switches on the small light he fitted to its nose. The camera on the base of the machine faces the brick wall but light filters up from below. The chimney isn’t blocked after all. The way is clear.

  The dragonfly emerges into the familiar room. It turns on its axis, pans around, and spies the wardrobe, the bed, the sash window. The door is only slightly ajar, but he is lucky it is. He would not have got it through the keyhole or under the door, as he did with the beebot.

  Down the stairwell, and into the library, the camera on the device beams back an image of the hundreds of books that line the walls. Mathew flies the dragonfly towards the shelf that contains the book that bears his name.

  It is there. He experiences a peculiar mixture of triumph and disquiet.

  He flies the dragonfly beside the shelf and with painstaking care, extends its arms. The dragonfly gets a grip on the spine of The Book of Mathew Erlang and slowly retracts its arm, pulling the book with it. He wonders if the dragonfly will be unbalanced with the weight, the way it was with his Chinese art book, but it has a better grip this time. It dips, but he manages to steady it and fly it towards the table. There he gently rests the book and lands the dragonfly. The tiny craft adjusts its position by shuffling its six feet. It extends its right arm and retracts the left, grips the front cover and flips it open. He takes his time, turning the pages of the book until he is near the end.

  That should do it.

  Finally, he parks the dragonfly on top of the book, to make sure the pages don’t flip back.

  Once he has done all of this, still outside in the garden, he jumps onto the bench, grabs the wall and pulls himself up, landing hard on the conservatory roof. It shudders but does not give. He jumps, cautiously at first, but then with increasing force until the glass gives way beneath him.

  He falls feet-first and lands upright, surrounded by a mess of broken
glass and shrilk. He takes a deep breath and opens the door to the kitchen. It takes him only moments to reach Mr. Lestrange’s Darkroom, get into the chair and pull on the skullcap.

  An eye-blink later and he is staring down the white corridor. He walks forward tentatively, trying doors as he goes. His eyes search for a parachute or something like it; a prop, a strange object that stands out against the whiteness. Eventually he sees it. A bright orange dot that grows larger as he walks towards it. It is a lifejacket. He takes it off its peg, pulls it over his head, then tries the door.

  It opens.

  He holds it there, partially ajar, and wonders what he will find on the other side, whether he will fall thousands of feet, or into an ocean.

  9 The Lake

  DAY THIRTEEN: Monday, 12 February, 2091, London

  Through the gap between the door and its frame, he spies no ocean, only darkness. He pushes the door cautiously until it is fully open and peers into a room. Just a room. Long abandoned, with misaligned desks, overturned chairs, office equipment, mildewed electrical devices, drawers open, things all across the floor, broken ceiling tiles fallen from the roof, wires, cables and twisted air-conditioning pipes with peeling silver foil hanging, everything dust-, grime- and dirt-layered.

  Why this, then? he wonders, looking down at the lifejacket.

  There is brightness ahead. He moves towards it, crushing rubbish underfoot, and carefully makes his way around rotted furniture. There is a powerful smell of damp and decay.

  He reaches the source of the light. A window runs around the four sides of the large room. Years of green mould growth have besmeared the glass, but he realises that if he cleans the inside with the cuff of his sleeve, he can make it just clear enough to get a view.

  He looks at London, but it is not his London, the one he grew up in. This is an alien place. He stares east towards the City, or what used to be the City and what now appears to be a huge lake. He knows he faces east because he sees the Shard at London Bridge, the Gherkin, Tower 42 and beyond, Canary Wharf. St Paul’s is gone, it is a shock to realise, a missing eye in the ancient face of the city. Skyscrapers, church steeples and the tops of tall historic buildings pierce the lake’s surface like upturned cruise liners, like the Titanic the moment before she sank beneath the waves. He walks around the perimeter of the office, close to the window, and stops to scrape another view from beneath the greasy green and grey sludge plastered on the glass. The carpet under his feet is decomposing and it trips him as he walks. He swears.