The Pattern Maker
Page 34
“I can’t move you. Close your eyes and stay still.” Garrett listened. She could hear nothing except the pounding blood in her ears. “If I stay with you he will kill us both. Do you understand? Don’t move.”
Zahra nodded. She closed her eyes. Blood lay in a bright red pool around her body. Garrett tested the tourniquets. A squeak of floor paint sounded to her right.
She moved fast, by reflex, behind a bench. Thoughts repeated in her mind on a tight loop: draw him away. Get the message out. Must get the message out!
The exit was a few feet away. It was the only way out. Bryce knew it, and knew what she was thinking.
A sudden memory of a chessboard superimposed on the lab. Jason, a smart twelve-year-old in an endgame, just kings and pawns left, both clocks running down, her red flag up, his move simplifying, removing options, leaving her in Zugzwang: all choices losing.
An old response surfaced, bloody-minded, refusing, complicating... She turned round. Right, left, right, keep using the cross benches, keep moving, back, away from the exit. Quick. Pain seeping through my arm. Ignore it. Shattered glass from a monitor. Pick up that long shard. Keep moving. Faster!
She stared at the security keypad beside the Level III hatch.
***
She remembered Zahra’s words. No actually. We took a much more cultural, historical approach. Two numbers we could all remember, rotated every six months. Dates. She had guessed at the time. And heard her key a four digit number to confirm.
Her fingers punched numbers.
2020. Enter. Invalid code.
Don’t look round. Keep trying.
2019. Enter. Invalid code.
2018. Enter. Invalid code.
Garrett stopped. Think. Scientists choosing dates? She began punching numbers again.
Einstein. Special Relativity. 1905. Enter. Invalid code.
Okay. The General Theory. 1916. Enter. Invalid code.
Damn it! Garrett glanced behind her. Bryce was criss-crossing between benches, sweeping thoroughly as he advanced.
Newton. Principia. 1687. Enter. Invalid code.
Copernicus. 1543. Enter. Invalid code.
“Christine!” Bryce’s voice held a brutal note. “Christine?”
Don’t look! Think! A committee of biologists. Biologists!
1859. Enter. Invalid code.
“I'm sorry Christine.”
Damn it! The other one!
1953. Enter.
The door hissed.
Garrett pulled hard on the hatch wheel. Metal squealed, loud in her ears. She pushed hard, darted through the gap. The sound of the ricocheting bullet fell from a high-pitch, a plucked snapping string. She followed through, using her momentum to swing the hatch door closed, one-handed, with a clang. Spin the wheel to reset the lock.
Down the changing rooms in a rush. Biosafety suits. Grab one. A helmet. Glance back – he knows the code. Must gamble some time. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash.
Go! Another keypad. The other date. 1859. Enter.
The door hissed.
Yes! Close the door. Quick!
Bryce entered the changing rooms with care. He moved past rows of lockers, inspected the changing cubicles, peered beneath each door before opening. All empty.
The box of gloves and helmets too small to conceal a person. Where was she? Where was she?
There!
Garrett’s face looked back at him through the toughened plexiglass of the Level IV lab observation window. Clever. Clever. As always, she surprised him.
Never mind. She was finally trapped. At the centre of the maze. Time to finish it.
Bryce turned to the biosafety suits. He swore. Long jagged cuts. In all of them. He looked back at the window. Garrett held up a handful of glistening glass: culture dishes, stoppered sample tubes, a solution flask. She threw them onto the floor. She returned to the containment freezers and came back with another handful of glass. She threw again. Bryce stared.
Free agents, God knows how many. Broken glass. He glanced at the suits then back at Garrett.
She was out of reach. And she knew everything.
For a brief moment he didn't know what to do. It was an unusual feeling, vertiginous, like falling off a cliff in the dark. But brief.
He nodded at her once then walked over to the alarms in the wall. He smashed the plate glass, reached in and pulled down on the red handle. A voice began speaking through a tannoy in perfect Queen’s English.
“Warning: this is a biosafety containment alarm. It cannot be aborted. Please do not proceed unless there has been a level four or higher containment incident.”
Bryce twisted the handle two full turns. Yellow lights began flashing behind him.
“Warning: this is a biosafety containment alarm. It cannot be aborted. Please do not proceed unless there has been a level four or higher…”
Bryce pulled the handle down fully. The precise voice echoed now more loudly, all around the walls.
“May I have your attention please. A level four containment incident has been raised in sector two. This sector is being sealed. All level four labs will be sealed in… one minute, level three in… two minutes. The facility will be sealed in... ten minutes. Personnel in all sectors, please exit immediately. I repeat: personnel in all sectors, please exit immediately. This is not a drill.”
Bryce sat on a changing bench and cleaned his head and hands of blood. He heard the Level 4 door locks activate, the thud of the deadbolts quick-fire silenced rounds.
“May I have your attention please. A level four containment incident has been raised in sector two. This sector is being sealed. All level four labs will be sealed in… one minute, level three in… two minutes. The facility will be sealed in... ten minutes. Personnel in all sectors, please exit immediately. I repeat: personnel in all sectors, please exit immediately. This is not a drill.”
The English voice was certain as a judge pronouncing sentence. He reviewed the containment protocols: power and fresh air would be cut to all sectors very soon; after ten minutes, no overrides would be allowed, all exits sealed, lift shafts filled with quick-set concrete foam: at that point, there would be no possibility of appeal.
He had underestimated her. Again. But for the last time. In the Level II lab Bryce stopped at his desk. The screen was still showing Richardson’s message. He hit Cancel. A message box appeared. Warning: analysis macro and output has not been saved. Do you wish to save? He clicked No. The program returned to its start menu.
On the way out he saw Zahra’s body lying on its side in a pool of blood.
Half-a-dozen lab technicians waited by the lifts, calling out questions. The panic was controlled. Outside, a slight breeze brought fresh air, like a reviving breath. He headed back to the service lift and his car. Shadows were shortening over the ground. He could see the sun’s orange disc already rising behind a stand of birch trees.
It had been close. Very close. That message. Buried in junk DNA. Yes, it might be found. Some accident might reveal it, or some talented researcher spot it. Eventually. After weeks, months maybe. After it was too late. The Rebirth was still safe.
He looked at the elegant silver birches and thought of Christine. The regret was sharp. He had offered her everything: life, a future, salvation; she had chosen the dark. He remembered her fear of the black underground space. The labs would be dark. He thought of Arshu, the love he felt for him, the absolute loyalty he owed. He had had no choice.
One tree stood over the others. Its falls of golden leaves hung over the fence, almost but not quite touching the ground.
Chapter 43
“May I have your attention please. A level four containment incident has been raised in sector two. Sector two has been sealed. The facility will be sealed in... three minutes. Personnel in all sectors, please exit immediately. I repeat: personnel in all sectors, please exit immediately. This is not a drill.”
He had not looked back at her as he had left. A
nd he understood what would happen to her. Don't think of him.
She looked around. A dozen feet away, a yellow alarm light flashed above the exit door.
Must get the message out. Three minutes! The door! The airlock.
On the other side of the lab the freezer cabinet doors stood open. She looked down. The rubbersoled boots of her safety suit were wet. The surrounding floor, darkened with spilt liquid, was frosted with grains of thawing tissue and splinters of broken glass. Spilled liquids were evaporating into the air. She remembered Zahra's recitation of the freezers’ contents, with the cross-sector comparison project underway: Cholera, Ebola, Tularaemia, Typhoid, Hantaviruses, Botulinum Toxin spores, Encephalitis, Anthrax... and she had thrown everything she could.
Would the rubber boots puncture? Well, stand here forever or else take the risk, Christine. She took two sliding steps. Glass scratched like fingernails. Sweat trickled down her arms.
She reached the airlock with a minute and a half to spare.
The door was controlled by large buttons marked with Open and Close chevrons, like the passenger doors on trains. She pressed Open.
Come on!
She pressed again. The door did not move. Open. Close. Open. Close. Open. Open. Open. Come on!
“…The facility will be sealed in... thirty seconds…”
She thought again about the released disease agents: Nipah, the haemorrhagic viruses, Poxes, MDRTB, Yellow fever…
The airlock door wouldn't open. Of course it wouldn’t. It shouldn't. She stood in the most lethal place in human history.
The lights shut off.
“May I have your attention please. This facility has now been sealed.”
Garrett stared into the darkness. There were no equipment lights. And she could no longer hear the hiss of air conditioning.
***
Operating mode: isolation. Power remaining: 52 minutes.
Letters and numbers blinked lime green at the bottom of her vision. The digits shifted humourlessly.
Operating mode: isolation. Power remaining: 51 minutes.
It was quiet, the only sound the low buzz of the helmet filters. She thought of the lab air lines. Pointless without power. She thought again of the spilled contents of the bio-containment freezers in the surrounding air. She refocused on the countdown. Fifty-one minutes of helmet power. Fifty-one minutes of clean, filtered air.
She stared past the constant subtitle. Behind it was black on black, matching the black pain seeping out of the cut below her left elbow. She cradled the forearm against her stomach. She found the pain slippery and hard to control, increasing with the silence.
Cold began to seep into her suit. It was tempting to stop for a while, sit down perhaps. She forced herself to move. She tried not to think of the glass.
A hand outstretched, she sidled around the edges of the lab, along benches, the observation window, walls. In her shuffle, she felt suddenly old, uncertain.
It was Bryce who had reduced her to this. She trembled. He was responsible. The thought spiked repeatedly through her.
Step-by-step she explored the limits of her cage. She returned repeatedly to the airlock, always trying the door buttons as if for a reward. She moved into the middle of the room. By touch alone, she made an inventory of the lab equipment. It was slow fruitless work.
One thought kept repeating: only she and Bryce knew of the message hidden on chromosome eight.
Must escape. Must tell.
When she blundered into a freezer she cried out. Pain darkened her arm, then flooded through her body. She almost blacked out. Fresh blood trickled along the fingers of her useless hand. The thought of blood loss dismayed her out of all proportion.
“No!”
Her feet were cold and wet – was that blood too? She shook herself. Stop it. She peered into the blackness behind the countdown. Must continue.
She blundered on. Blood thudded in her head. She always tried the power switches, on centrifuges, microscopes, the freezers. After a while she realised she'd exchanged hope of escape for a new craving – for light, any spark or glow or flame, to push back the blackness.
It was the animal instinct to be still, and exhaustion – physical and of logic – that drove her to ground in the end. She remembered the containment protocols. She felt her pulse miss and catch. The lift shafts would be sealed by now. She kicked down deeper, for purchase, and found nothing. She stopped in a corner and sat on the floor. After a few minutes, she made a pillow of her right arm on her knees.
Thirty-five minutes.
She closed her eyes against the subtitles. Tiredness swept through her with the cold. A loosening, like the release of sleep, slowed her circling thoughts. She opened her eyes briefly. Thirty-four minutes.
***
What do you reach for in your extremity? Your fears? Your lover? Your God?
Garrett saw Jason’s punctured body in her arms, the image in her mind’s eye vivid as light stained through the memory of film, his mouthing ‘mother’ silently, once, eyes closing, lips beginning to mutter his holy syllables; she understood then, and accepted his giving up of her in that moment for the peace he had learned to find. Acceptance. To see the facts as they are, not as wished, an objective subject. A hard and holy spell he had called it. He had been right about that much.
Under her closed eyelids beneath the blanketing dark she sought memories of his childhood. His first steps, holding a single finger; his tantrums at night, a three-foot-long body rigid from head to toes with the injustice of bedtimes. After some minutes she stopped. The memories were not bearable.
She sat absolutely still. Further movement was a waste of energy. Jason’s spell returned like an offered gift. Perhaps clearing her mind was not. She raised her head and settled her back against the wall.
Operating mode: isolation. Power remaining: 12 minutes.
Time. She dealt with that first. A breath every three seconds. Twelve minutes. Two hundred and forty breaths left to her. So be it. Take one.
Next: Rheinnalt Bryce. The only other person who knew of the existence of the Paris formula. The man who had trapped her here. He was out of reach. Let him go.
Now the plague: how many were already infected? In Brighton, Glastonbury, Aberystwyth, London… as a doctor she knew only too well the horrors they would face and the possible numbers of dead.
Something flickered behind her eyes. She didn’t want to die. For a moment an ancient impulse bowed her head. She waited in silence, like a lover for a single word. She realised she was straining to hear a voice, to see some light. She turned her head. The dark was an uninterrupted wall around her.
Two hundred and thirty-one breaths. Two hundred and thirty breaths. Two… hundred and… twenty-nine... Panic filled her mind, together with the image of the Harrowing in St Andrew’s Church. The one sin that cannot be forgiven. She didn’t want to die. Just one prayer. She felt her balance go. Without thought, her weight settled on a knee. It is never too late for Confession. She considered the offer.
No.
Her thoughts steadied. She opened her eyes. Fear of the closed underground space rushed through her and she accepted it, again and again, as it burned away. She waited. The silence held.
The focus of her attention swept round and round the lab, her mind a still centre as she stared into the black. Keep thinking. Keep searching.
She returned again to what she knew of the complex and its systems. It was based on a ring design. Yes. What else? Concentric circles of increasing biosafety, sectored by labs of different specialisms. That’s right. What else?
Level II led on to level III led on to level IV and so on. What else? The lift shafts had filled already. What else? At the centre there was a level V storage facility.
Operating mode: isolation. Power remaining: 11 minutes.
She rose to her full height in the dark. Breathe. Steady – use every breath. Plenty of time to be cold and still. Her feet moved inside her rubber galoshes. Now think again.
Yes.
An idea loomed through her fears, suddenly visible, clear and entire. Level V was accessed through the Level IV labs.
There was another door.
She moved by touch and shuffle to the spot marked in her memory, opposite the airlock. It felt good to be up and moving again, even if she was heading away from the exit. The exercise warmed her blood. Her free hand reached out to wipe the walls, head-high down to her feet, a gesture like a wizard’s incantation; except she guided her hand along a curve differentiated to maximize probabilities with a minimum of movement.
Operating mode: isolation. Power remaining: 10 minutes.
There! A wheel. Set low, hip-high, recessed into the metal, with a keypad, just as she remembered. It would be red. The door fit into its frame fingernail tight.
How had she missed it earlier? She had been tired, frightened, reaching out only head and chest high. Use the keypad!
1953. Enter.
The door hissed. Garrett smiled at her thin victory. The predictability of scientists! Her smile widened. With her good hand she gripped the wheel and turned.
Operating mode: isolation. Power remaining: 9 minutes.
The room beyond was small. She explored by touch. There were fridges, and a series of doors set in the circular wall allowing entry from other sectors, each secured via a keypad.
Operating mode: isolation. Power remaining: 8 minutes.
Her dates didn't work. Nor obvious number patterns. She used precious breaths trying every combination she could think of, at every door.
7 minutes.
All these doors and she was still trapped! She turned round and round. The new room had felt like a brief escape. To know it was only an extension of her prison was too bitter to accept. There must be another way!
Operating mode: isolation. Power remaining: 6 minutes.