by Karen Healey
There was only one door left. Like the others, it was unlocked. I saw a big, dark room, ushered the others in, and pulled the door shut behind me. I was focused on the corridor outside, and the silence of the others didn’t seem strange until I turned.
And saw what they had seen.
The room was enormous, and the glow of our computers illuminated sturdy metal racks that towered above us and stretched out into the darkness. The racks were filled with clear plastic containers, each about the size and shape of a coffin.
There were hundreds of them.
I knew what was inside. We all knew.
Bethari was the first to step forward, holding her computer over the nearest cryocontainer. “It’s occupied,” she reported, her face expressionless.
I stepped up beside her and peered in at a woman about Marie’s age, with pale skin and dirty-blond hair in matted strands. She was naked, but there was no wound visible on her body—just the tubes connecting her jugular vein and carotid artery to the container walls, and a Texas star tattoo on her right hip. Her skin had an odd, waxy sheen, stretched tight over prominent bones.
She looked frozen.
She looked dead.
I stumbled back, and Abdi caught me, wrapping an arm around my waist. “Breathe,” he murmured in my ear, and after a moment I nodded and pulled away, looking into other containers. Was this just the place where they stored the volunteers for Operation New Beginning? Had we broken into a perfectly ordinary storage facility?
But they were so skinny. I mean, they were all dead, but they really didn’t look well.
I remembered the long list of addresses that Bethari’s computer had found in that government database, and shuddered. This was just the Melbourne location. Were they all like this?
We moved quietly among the silent dead. Bethari was scanning her computer over the cryocontainers, narrating in a whisper, and pausing every now and then for a close-up. She stopped, peered closer at something, and beckoned me down.
“What is it?” I asked, staring apprehensively at the dark-skinned man inside.
“Look at the dates,” she said, and pointed at the little screen that was attached to each cryocontainer. “They’re all the same day.”
She was right. I checked about twenty in the opposite direction, and they all read 8 JAN 2125.
“They all died on the same day?” I said.
Abdi stiffened beside me. “And the same place,” he said, pointing at a three-letter code in the bottom corner of the screen. “HOW. That must be Camp Howard. It’s one of the refugee camps in West Australia.”
“This one’s KEA,” I said.
“Camp Keating, in Queensland,” Bethari said. “And a different date—17 March 2126.” She moved down the line. “Keating, Keating, 17 March, 17 March… These must be refugees.”
“Refugees can’t afford the freezing process,” Abdi said.
“So the government paid,” I said. “But why? And what killed them? Some kind of disease?”
“In different camps?” Abdi asked. He sucked in a deep breath. “Didn’t you say you got a list of addresses connected to the Ark Project, but this was the only one in Melbourne? Where were the others?”
That list of addresses flashed into my head again. “Mostly the Northern Territory and West Australia. A few in Queensland.”
“Where the camps are,” Bethari said.
There had been over twenty of those addresses. If they all corresponded to facilities like this, that added up to tens of thousands of dead refugees.
Abdi’s face was very grim. “Maybe asking what they died from is wrong. Perhaps they died for this. Those experimental bodies your Dr. Carmen is working on; where do they come from?”
“They’re volunteers,” I said. “Like me, that’s why they had to use me. I donated my body to science before I thought coming back was a real possibility.”
“Are you sure they’re all volunteers?”
Bethari and I stared at each other, trying to come to grips with the enormity of what Abdi was suggesting.
“The army wouldn’t kill refugees,” Bethari said. “I mean, maybe if they knew they could bring them back, when there was enough food for them, when the world was safer…. But Tegan’s the only successful revival. These deaths are from before she was even brought back. They wouldn’t do that. They couldn’t.”
“Oh? Why not?”
Bethari stopped, then spread her hands hopelessly. “Because it isn’t right.”
Joph had wandered down to inspect cryocontainers farther away. She let out a low cry and rushed back to us. “Children,” she said. “There are children down there.”
“Oh, fuck,” Bethari said, and squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t think I can handle dead weens. I just—”
“Give me the computer,” I told her, and took it from her hand before she could protest. Joph buried her face in Bethari’s shoulder and shook.
Bethari’s computer seemed to know what to do without my interfering. I forced myself to look into the containers instead of just recording blindly. Abdi paced beside me. The tiny bodies were thin, with spindly limbs and every rib clear on their chests. “They’re so young,” I said.
“About six or seven,” Abdi said.
“Are you sure? They look younger.”
“Malnutrition does that.”
I stared into the next container, at the little girl with white skin and dark hair. She could have been my sister. Where had she come from—Armenia? Kentucky? How far had she come, and what had driven her here?
It was almost too horrible to contemplate, and yet I had to think about it. My army had done this. My government, of my beautiful country, had put this child in this box.
Abdi looked over my shoulder. “Do you still want to use this for blackmail?” His voice was very calm.
The horror was subsiding, and rage was rushing in to fill the void, tingling through my entire body. “No. I don’t know what’s going on, but I think people need to know about this.”
“What makes you think people will care?” he said.
“They have to,” I said, startled.
“They didn’t care before, when this same girl was rotting in the camps.”
“But this is different,” I argued. My voice sounded weak in my own ears.
“I guess we’ll see,” he said, sounding skeptical, and then the lights flashed overhead, and we spun to face the doorway.
One of the guards was standing there, eyes wide as she stared at the four teenagers roaming around her top-secret facility. “What the—”
Bethari shot her.
The Taser prongs hit the guard square in the chest, and she gurgled as the voltage coursed through her. She convulsed wildly, limbs flailing as she dropped.
“Go!” Abdi shouted, and we ran out of that room of the dead and bolted for the elevator.
The guards were facing the wrong way, prepared for someone breaking in, not out. Joph shot the next guard, and Abdi got the third, and they fell, inner ears ruptured by the sonic beams. But even with intense vertigo, the soldiers were conscious, and they were professionals ready to fight. One of them grabbed Bethari’s ankle as she rushed past, and she fell full-length to the concrete, wind knocked out of her. Before I could react, Joph ran back and tugged Bethari’s shoulders, urging her to rise.
The fourth guard’s bullet took Joph in the thigh. She screamed and fell on top of Bethari, clutching at the wound. Blood spurted out between her fingers.
“Halt! Disarm!” the fourth guard thundered, pointing his gun at Abdi. The downed guards were staggering to their feet, using the walls to steady themselves. Joph’s lips were white with pain.
“Please be calm,” Abdi said.
“Are you joking, kid? I’m not messing around. Put your weapons down or I’ll shoot.”
I shoved the computer into Abdi’s hand and stepped forward, covering his body with my own as I pressed him back into the elevator.
“I’m Tegan Oglietti,” I said
calmly. “The Living Dead Girl. If you kill me, you’ll be in so much trouble.”
The guard hesitated. His hand dipped toward the other side of his belt, where the sonic pistol rested in its holster.
“Go!” Joph screamed, and threw herself against the soldier’s leg.
“Black shoe alligator glue,” said the voice from Bethari’s computer, and Abdi’s hand shot past my waist, sonic beam dropping the last guard to the ground. The elevator rose, and Abdi dragged me out into the warehouse, hand firm around my wrist.
I yanked out of his grip. “What are you doing? We have to go back!”
“We can’t. They’ll have reinforcements on the way.”
“But the girls are still down there!”
“They’re alive.”
“So far as we know!”
“Tegan, she said go; we have to go!” He grabbed my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “This is the only proof we have. We have to get it onto the tubes before we get caught. All right?”
The elevator began to descend.
“All right!” I said. We ran out of the warehouse, through the yard, and into the street. There were trucks coming, army vehicles with ominous shapes on their roofs, but we ran through the dark streets, choosing turns at random as we hunted for some kind of safety.
Abdi stumbled to a halt, clutching his side.
“What’s wrong?”
“Can’t run anymore,” he gasped, and gave me the sonic pistol. “One moment.”
I dragged him into a side street, wondering what to do. Should I leave him? Upload the footage right now? Did we have time for him to catch his breath?
“Tegan, stay still,” someone said from behind us.
It was Zaneisha Washington’s voice.
I didn’t even look over my shoulder to make sure it was her. I darted left, right, and kinked around a corner, yelling at Abdi to move.
Bless the dark and narrow streets. They were a maze. If I’d been trying to find a specific building, I might have been in trouble, but all I was looking for was escape.
I hit what might have been a dead-end alley for many people. For me, it was a way out. I jumped onto a recycling bin, hauled myself up a brick wall, used a windowsill to hike myself higher, and finally scrambled onto a roof.
When I flattened and wriggled close to the edge, I couldn’t see Abdi. Keeping away from the rooftop’s ridge, I slunk along it and let myself down onto the next roof. I didn’t have to go too far. Zaneisha had him pinned against a wall, and she was talking into his ear.
No backup had arrived, which was weird. I crept a little closer until I could hear Zaneisha’s words.
“—need to find her,” she was saying, her voice tinged with something very close to desperation. She pulled Abdi away from the wall and shoved him in front of her as she moved down the alley. She had her sonic pistol jammed into his back. It couldn’t kill him. But it must have felt like a real gun, a real threat. I caught a glimpse of his eyes, wide with fear, and wriggled back from the edge, trying to reason out the situation.
Moving an unbound prisoner was a really stupid move if you had backup, and Sergeant Zaneisha Washington was anything but stupid. Therefore, she had no backup. Whatever Zaneisha was doing, she was doing it alone.
Therefore, I might have a chance to extract Abdi and escape with him.
“Tegan,” she called softly. “Tegan, come out.” She moved her light beam around. I ducked as she flashed it across the rooftops. “You can’t get far. Come back with me. We found Dr. Carmen.”
I stifled my gasp.
“She’s safe, but we really need you to come in and explain. Tegan, she said something about an Ark Project. Is that what that Inheritor was talking about? If you tell me about it, I might be able to help.”
I wavered. If she meant it, if she truly didn’t know, then maybe she would help us. But it could be a trap. Could I take the chance?
“I don’t want to have to call the others in; someone might get hurt. Come with me. I won’t hurt you or Abdi, I promise.”
I think she meant it. That’s the thing that pricks my conscience, like a splinter worked deep into my memory. Zaneisha really thought she was doing the best thing for me, trying her hardest to protect me, even from myself. And if it had been just me, I might have taken the risk.
But she had Abdi. And whether she knew it or not, she had the footage that was our only proof of the Ark Project.
So the next time she flashed her flashlight in my direction, I rose over the top of the roof ridge and shot her in the face.
I truly hate guns. But I was weirdly calm and my hands were steady, and, most important, I had a clear view and a big height advantage. Zaneisha fell. She did it perfectly, breaking the drop with her arms to protect her head and rolling nearly to her feet. Then the vertigo caught up with her, and she staggered, vomited, and fell again, this time with much less grace.
I could hear her cursing as I climbed down, but by the time I jumped off the recycling bin, Abdi had Zaneisha’s gun in his hands and was pointing it steadily at her.
“Don’t shoot,” I told him.
Her eyes narrowed, focusing on my lips. With ruptured eardrums, she probably couldn’t hear me. “Don’t run,” she said as I slipped off her EarRing. Her hand groped for my wrist and gripped hard. I broke the grip with a move she’d taught me herself. “It’ll be worse if you run,” she insisted.
Zaneisha’s computer was flashing a message. I glanced at it and swore. She must have managed to trip the alarm even as she fell that second time.
“They’re coming?” Abdi said.
“Yes.”
“Let’s go.”
“One second.” I couldn’t trust Zaneisha with our precious footage. But I scribbled a note for Zaneisha on her computer and tucked it into her pocket. Maybe she could do something to help Joph and Bethari. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I really am.”
Then I turned my back on her and ran.
“Stay,” Zaneisha called after me. “Tegan, please stay!”
We got a few blocks away, but while Abdi had obviously gotten his second wind, I was flagging.
He cast a look around and tugged me into another alley, where he yanked out the computer and crouched over it. “We’ll upload it now,” he said.
I nodded, pressing my hands to the ache in my side.
But he never got the chance. Because that’s when they caught us, the people who had been following me, patiently and professionally.
They wore plain linen in pale colors, what I had come to think of as the uniform of the Inheritors of the Earth. There were two of them, and they carried long-barreled weapons that looked like plastic rifles.
“Wait—” I said, and then they shot me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
“Tegan. Tegan, wake up. Tegan.”
Someone was patting my face. “Don’t,” I said, pushing the unwelcome intrusion away with hands that felt like cotton wool stuffed into rubber gloves.
“It’s Abdi.”
“We’re alive?” I tried to sit up, but everything swayed around me. “Why is the world moving?”
There were hands under my arms, propping me up. “We’re on a boat.”
“A boat?”
“Do you remember anything?”
I tried to concentrate. “The Inheritors?”
“Yes. They tranquilized us. I woke up just before we got to the boat. You’ve been unconscious for a few hours.” It was only later that I thought about what that must have been like for him, sitting there with an unconscious girl and not knowing for sure if she’d wake up. At the time, I was too confused to think about anything but my spinning head.
“What’s—” I said, and tried to stand up. Which prompted my stomach to crawl up my throat.
Zaneisha’s revenge, I thought, and was then so messily sick I couldn’t think of much at all.
After a while, I became aware that Abdi was gripping my shoulders, ke
eping me balanced. He’d helped me over to the toilet—no humanure here, only a chemical toilet in the corner. I retched violently into it. “What’s wrong with me?” I asked. “I don’t get seasick!”
“I think whatever they shot us with reacted badly with the drugs Joph gave you. Do you know what it was?”
“No. She said it would make me feel good.”
“Did it?”
“All the everything floated away. It was wonderful.” I considered. “I don’t think I could have gone into that warehouse without it. It made me so brave.”
“Now you tell me,” he said, sounding resigned.
I sat up, clipping my head against his chin. “The footage!”
“They took Bethari’s computer. And our weapons.”
“Oh god. It’s all gone wrong.” My stomach convulsed again, but there was nothing left to come up. I spat thin yellow saliva into the bowl, closed my eyes, and leaned back against him. “Where are we going? What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know. They wouldn’t talk to me. Are you feeling better?”
“Not really.” I sat up straight again. “They shot Joph!”
“I know.”
I gagged again and sobbed through the heaving. “Oh god. It’s all my fault. You warned me. You said I’d get us all killed.”
He hesitated. “It was her decision to go.”
“But—”
“No. You can’t take the responsibility for her choices. She was brave, and you can’t take that bravery from her.”
“Do you blame me for being kidnapped?”
There was a pause while I threw up again. Then he said, “No.”
“Don’t lie to me, Abdi,” I said. “Everyone lies to me.”
“It’s tempting,” he admitted. “But blaming you wouldn’t be fair. I made my own choices. Here.” He pressed a water bottle into my hand.
I rinsed and spat, then sipped cautiously. My stomach didn’t revolt. “Zaneisha said that if they take you alive, it’s so they can do worse things to you.”
“Where there’s life, there’s hope,” he said quietly. “I saw your interview, by the way.”