I reached over our heads, grabbing hold of the makeshift clothesline stretched across the bunks, and tore it down, lashing Luke’s arms together against the bed frame. The rifle on my shoulder pressed against his chest as I leant over him, and he decided to stop struggling.
That decision lasted about ten seconds.
I picked the infuser up from the mattress, checking the vial one last time, and Luke started writhing again, heaving against his restraints. ‘No! Get that –! I thought you said you were sorry!’
‘I am,’ I said, free hand clenching around his face to hold him steady. A tear leaked out of my eye and splashed down onto his cheek. ‘I really am.’
I jammed the infuser down into his arm and pulled the trigger.
Luke gaped down in horror as the serum drained into him, glinting gold in the shadowy half-light of the rifle’s torch, and then gone, swallowed up by his arm.
‘What –?’ Luke shook under me but didn’t pull away. ‘Bill, what is that?’
I ignored him, counting down in my head.
Four … Three … Two …
‘Bill – Peter, come on – What are you doing to me?’
One.
I pulled the trigger again and he gasped, eyes squeezing shut as vial began to refill. Blood. Slightly too thick and slightly off-colour, infused with J_ Thomas_Tissue_Modification_Treatment_4-3-0.
I withdrew the syringe and stood up, leaving Luke thrashing on the bed. He’d given up trying to interrogate me, attention split between writhing free of his restraints and watching to see what I was going to do next.
My hands were shaking again, fingers slippery on the infuser. I sat down on the bed opposite Luke’s, begging myself to pull it together.
Deep breaths, Murderer. Don’t screw it up now.
Something glinted down on the floor. A grimy shaving mirror, sitting in a shoebox of shower stuff. I picked it up and held it in front of me, recoiling slightly at the sight of my own face. I shook it off, stilling my arms the best I could.
And I turned the infuser on myself.
The syringe touched on the soft flesh between my nose and my right eye and I winced, nearly dropping it.
I closed my eyes.
Okay.
Okay, here we go.
I pushed. My skin gave way surprisingly easily and I guided the needle in, dropping the mirror and steadying myself with both hands.
I pulled the trigger and screamed. The infuser pumped the horrible concoction of blood and serum out into my face. I clenched my teeth, forcing my finger to keep squeezing the trigger until the vial emptied out.
I dragged the syringe back out of my face.
And then my face started to move.
I hadn’t seen much in my blur of imprisonment down beneath the medical centre, but I’d seen enough to know it was a miracle Jeremy Thomas still had any blood left in him. Ever since the Co-operative had first caught wind of his fallout power – the ability to imprint his own skin tone onto someone else’s body – Dr Galton had been hard at work, looking for a way to harness it. Turn it into a weapon.
She’d almost sucked him dry to fuel her research, refining and enhancing Jeremy’s ‘natural’ ability, dragging it out of his body and into the Co-operative’s arsenal. And now here it was: crude, imperfect, but hopefully, down here in the dark, enough to get the job done.
I cried out, head between my knees as muscles writhed and realigned, teeth jutted through gums, bones shifted under rippling skin. The pain was incredible.
Luke was shouting something – or maybe just shouting. Either way, I couldn’t take it in. I was too fixated on the nightmare staring out at me from the shaving mirror lying cracked at my feet. My whole face bubbling up and melting, like I was being boiled alive from the inside.
And then, out of the shapeless sludge, my features began to reassert themselves. Only they weren’t my features. Disfiguring scars had given way to smooth fifteen-year-old skin. Brown eyes had turned liquid blue. Even my swollen gums and broken teeth had made some effort to repair themselves.
I gazed down into the broken mirror.
And Luke gazed back.
The real Luke had stopped screaming now. He lay there on his back, chest rising and falling rapidly, a look of dawning comprehension spreading over his face.
Tobias, meanwhile, was staring contentedly at the ceiling, completely oblivious to the crime against nature that had just been committed right across the room.
I stood up, tore off the shredded remnant of my medical gown, and scanned the mess of clothes around the room. I needed something to wear. Something to hide the rest of me, still as mangled and scarred as ever. My eyes landed on a mud-stained tracksuit, and a pair of shoes strewn on the ground. I pulled them on and slung the rifle back over my shoulder.
Luke was still watching me, eyes welling up again. ‘Peter …’ he began, but then couldn’t work out how to continue.
I reached down the back of my pants, the closest thing I had to a pocket, pulled out Galton’s phone and her key card, and dropped them on Luke’s stomach.
‘Get her home,’ I said, in a voice that was not quite mine, but not quite his either. ‘You take those bastards down and you get her home.’
I jumped the bed in the doorway and stumbled away down the corridor.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 2.10 A.M. 14 HOURS, 50 MINUTES
Minutes later, I was deep inside the Complex, sprinting towards the room of Luke’s murder. My insides burned but I didn’t stop moving, didn’t slow down, because every second I wasn’t hurtling forward was a second I might lose my nerve altogether.
The rifle bounced against my chest, splashing light across the walls of the passageway, all of it glinting and blurry through the tears.
Just shoot him, pleaded the part of me still screaming for an escape. Just put a bullet through his head and –
And what?
Shooting Peter meant shooting me. How exactly was that supposed to work?
Forget it, Murderer. Keep moving.
For once in your life, be something other than a coward.
I shrugged off the rifle and tossed it aside, then pulled the hood of the tracksuit up over my head.
A few more metres through the dark, and I was there. I crouched at the mouth of Soren’s tunnel and felt the dread overwhelm me again. Tears poured from eyes that weren’t my eyes, down cheeks that weren’t my cheeks. My breath caught in Luke’s throat and I swayed on the spot, paralysed.
Do it, Murderer. Move.
I crawled into the tunnel.
I was about halfway through when a bright light flashed into my face. Jordan, flicking on a torch. I squinted, pushing forward, over the edge and down into the blood-stained half-room on the other side.
And there she was. Awesome and beautiful and shaking like crazy.
‘No!’ she said, and for a second I thought she’d somehow seen through my disguise. ‘Luke, please – please – you’re not doing this. You can’t …’
I kept walking, opening my mouth to speak and coming out with nothing except a wet sob. In a few steps I was close enough to touch her, to breathe in her smell, and for a second, everything else flew straight out of my mind. I met her in the centre of the room, hands slipping to her face and her waist, and she didn’t flinch, didn’t shrink away from it. I pulled her closer, electricity firing through me as our mouths found each other in the dark.
Jordan returned the kiss, all love and desperation, and I knew it was wrong, knew it wasn’t meant for me, but it was tender and real, and I drank it all in anyway. She tightened her grip on me, her whole body trembling now.
And then suddenly she was wrenching away from me, throwing herself at the mouth of the tunnel. Trying to get away. Trying to stop it all.
I grabbed at her, but she dropped out of my grip, collapsing to the floor with a groan. It was starting.
I crouched beside her, my body straining with the effort, ignoring her attempts to bat me away.
‘No! Run!
Leave me! I won’t let you –!’ She twisted into the foetal position, gagging her lungs up. I slipped a hand under her head, trying to calm my own shaking enough to help with hers.
‘Please …’ she choked.
‘It’s okay,’ I said, spluttering up the words. ‘Just – just try to –’
Her eyes glazed over. ‘I’m sorry …’ she murmured. ‘I’m so, so sorry …’
Her head slipped through my hands – straight through them – and thumped into the concrete.
‘No! No, get back! Get back here!’ I threw my hands out, but couldn’t make contact. Couldn’t do anything but watch as she squirmed in agony on the floor.
I kept trying. Trying and failing, again and again until, at last, the seizure passed and she sat up, eyes fluttering open.
‘Jordan …?’ I croaked.
No response. Jordan stared vacantly across the room, and then slowly got up. I followed, reaching out, only to watch her slip through my fingers again.
And then, as if that wasn’t already a perfect enough metaphor for the last twenty years, Jordan started to disappear, fading away in front of my eyes, like all this time she’d been just a hologram and now someone was turning down the power.
She turned on the spot, looking for me. Looking for Luke.
‘Jordan!’ I yelled. ‘JORDAN!’
Her head jerked around, but not to me. She was staring into the wall. Her eyes dropped downwards, but I couldn’t tell what she was looking at.
I grabbed at her shoulders, trying to jerk her around again. ‘Jordan, come on!’
Nothing. Fistfuls of air. I shifted around to face her, getting between her and the wall. She stared blankly through me. What if I couldn’t do it? What if I couldn’t even bring her back?
‘Please!’ I cried, breaking down again. ‘Please – please – you have to –’ I jumped as she reeled back, finally seeing me. ‘Jordan!’
She reached out, tripped, reached again. Still nothing.
And then a noise behind me. Heavy breathing, shuffling hands and knees, and the chink, chink, chink of a knife blade bumping against the concrete.
He was here.
Jordan was still fading, almost invisible now. Her eyes pierced into me, mouth wide, screaming and screaming with no sound coming out.
Chink. Chink. Chink.
Peter crept closer. Taking his time, knowing he had me cornered. Savouring it.
I made another pointless grab at Jordan, barely breathing now. If he killed me here, before she could get me into the past, then all of it would be for nothing.
‘Jordan!’ I gasped, still reaching and reaching. ‘Jordan, come on, you need to get me out of here! I have to go –’ My hands crashed into her. ‘– BACK!’
She was real again. Blurry, semi-transparent, but real.
And I knew it wasn’t me. I knew it was Luke that was bringing her back, that the only reason she could reach me again was that she thought I was him. And I was okay with that. Face to face with Jordan’s furious love for Luke, the love that had driven me to madness …
And I was okay.
Chink. Chink. Chink.
I glanced behind me again, and then wished I hadn’t.
Minutes, now. Minutes left to live.
‘Please –’ I begged, sick with tears. ‘Please – you have to let me –’
I almost lost her as she lurched backwards, convulsing again. Her body was getting clearer now, more solid, just enough for me to see her eyes lose focus as she started retching.
Chink. Chink. Chink.
‘Hurry!’ I begged, catching a flash of Peter’s knife blade in the torchlight. ‘Please! Whatever you – You have to let me in!’
Instantly, like she was responding to my orders, Jordan started flickering in front of me. Not fading away this time; it was almost the opposite. Like she was filling up with light.
We clung to each other, her terrified eyes boring into me. She grew brighter, brighter, unable to keep it in anymore, her whole body drifting apart, melting into the air.
Chink. Chink. Chink.
I spun around, letting her go.
He was right there. Right behind me.
I turned back, taking Jordan’s face in both hands, kissing her again. ‘I love you,’ I told her, and it was the truest thing I’d ever said.
There was a thump behind me, two sneakers hitting the floor.
Peter Weir. Red-faced and shuddering, dripping sweat. He raised his knife, screaming his throat raw, all of his vitriol and spite finally pointing in the right direction.
You’re dead, Murderer.
And I was. But not for nothing.
Peter hunched forward, preparing to charge.
I looked him square in the eye. Turned my back on him. And ran.
Into the blinding, blazing light.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 3.11 A.M. 13 HOURS, 49 MINUTES
We wasted maybe a bit too much time reuniting against the wall of Bill’s excavation room.
Everything else pulled back into the shadows, like the whole world had slowed to wait for us. Nothing to do but soak up the impossible wonder of being alive. Eventually, though, the tiny form of Tobias pressed between our bodies was enough to remind us that the day wasn’t over yet, and we crept back up the deserted passageway, Jordan’s hand locked tight in mine.
I tried to think, tried to focus on everything we had to do, but my mind refused to co-operate. I felt my feet pushing against the stairs and my fingers dragging along the mouldy concrete and my skin prickling at the cold and the memory of Jordan on my lips, all of it so vibrant and real and alive, and in that moment, all of the horror up ahead of us felt frail and small next to the awesome privilege of being able to feel anything at all.
‘So did he change it or not?’ said Jordan, releasing my hand to steady herself against the wall. I watched her move up the stairs ahead of me, just a shadow in the darkness but enough to make my heart feel like it was bursting out of my chest. ‘I mean, it was still all just a loop, right? Everything happened exactly how we saw it in the video.’
‘Jordan …’
‘But that doesn’t – We still chose it all, too. It didn’t happen because it had to. It happened because – Like, Peter still chose to go back there in your place. But then, was it ever even you he was saving, or was he always –?’
‘Jordan,’ I said again.
She broke off, losing track of where she was going. ‘What?’
‘I’m alive.’
‘No, I know, I’m just –’
She smirked, shaking her head. ‘Right.’
I smiled back at her. An actual smile, for the first time in forever. ‘I mean, please, go ahead, give yourself that headache if you want, but …’
‘Yeah,’ she said, reaching out to squeeze my hand. ‘Maybe later.’
I felt light. Dizzy.
Peter was gone. Both of them, burned up into the past. One trying to kill me, one trying to save my life, both of them somehow the same person. It was totally confusing and impossible and tragic, but the thing was …
I was alive.
Alive.
Through the night I’d been running from for so long and out the other side.
The world was still ending and Mum had been kidnapped and my dad was missing on the outside and I was meant to be dead again by five o’clock tonight, and yeah, normally I was the king of thinking everything was hopeless. But turns out it’s pretty hard to feel hopeless when your life’s just been handed back to you.
What was the point of a second chance if I wasn’t going to pick it up and run with it?
At the top of the stairs, I killed the torch on my rifle and opened the trapdoor. Cool air and the smell of smoke wafted in as I stepped out into the bush.
Jordan slipped an arm around me, holding tight to my hip. I looked down at Tobias, huddled against her chest. He was sleeping again.
The shield grid hummed above our heads, nearly invisible but still oppressive. Smoke hung in the sky but, here
and there, the stars were coming out again. It looked like security were starting to get the fire under control, which was bad news for our guys in town.
I stared around at the darkness, pulsing with a kind of wild energy, a need to run out there and do things. ‘Bill said the others have all been taken to the Shackleton Building. To the bomb shelter place underneath.’
‘We need to get them out,’ said Jordan. ‘The longer they’re down there –’
‘Yeah, but – How? He said Calvin’s got the whole place under manual lockdown, which means we can’t use the key card he gave me. Plus, what about Tobias? We can’t drag him into a firefight.’
‘So, what, we just take him out to the release station and forget about everyone else?’
‘No, that’s not –’ I closed my eyes, head spinning with the weight of it all. ‘But what else can we do? We can’t split up. What if you have another vision? – and if we get caught, then –’
‘We don’t even know where the release station is,’ said Jordan, voice straining. ‘I mean, it’s out there somewhere, but –’ Her head snapped up and she broke away from me. ‘Reeve!’
A white glow shone out from her hand. Ketterley’s phone. Reeve had a matching one, taken from another of Shackleton’s newly deceased top guys. I shuddered at the memory of pulling the phones from the dead men’s pockets.
Jordan hit the call button. She waited, phone in one hand, baby Tobias in the other. A muffled voice buzzed out of the speaker at her ear.
‘Reeve!’ she said, and I felt a rush of relief. He was alive. ‘Where are you? Are you okay?’
The voice buzzed again.
‘Yeah,’ said Jordan. ‘I’m still – Yeah. We’re at the Complex. Luke’s here. But listen –’
She broke off as Reeve spoke over the top of her.
‘Yeah, we did. We found him. It’s the baby.’
Incredulous buzzing from Reeve’s end.
‘Yeah, I know. But it’s – Yeah, we’re sure. Long story, but – Reeve, listen, Calvin’s been here. He took everyone.’
Jordan blinked hard, getting hold of herself as Reeve responded.
‘The bunker under the Shackleton Building,’ she told him. ‘They’re – No, we’ve got Tobias with us. He’s – No, I know. I know, but –’
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