Seen And Not Seen (The Veil Book 1)

by Bowden, William

  * * *

  Cyril, a rotund loading-bay clerk, sits in his booth watching a rolling news channel replay the Pegasus ditching in the Hudson. Robert marches in and plops down in a chair opposite.

  “Not bad, huh?” he says to Cyril.

  Cyril sizes him up with a wily look and sly grin.

  “You know they’re gonna bust your balls for this, dontcha, Bobby.”

  “We’ll see. Say, Cyril, anything unusual come through here in the past few days?”

  Cyril’s demeanor shifts from jocular to concerned. He glances at the news channel and then back at Robert.

  “What kind of unusual are we talking about? Some pretty crazy shit comes out of this place.”

  “Not out. In.”

  Cyril taps away at a desktop screen, flipping it around for Robert to see.

  “We had a big shipment for Dr. Ellis a few days back.”

  Robert inspects the details. “I know about that. His pet MBI project. Anything else?”

  “Yeah, but that’s the thing, see. We got loads more than we should have. Three trucks of the stuff.”

  Robert leans back in his chair. “Ellis? Where’d it go?”

  “Where is was supposed to—his MBI labs on the hundred and eleventh. But that’s not all. Dr. Ellis had all floors from the hundred and eleventh up restricted. No access. Then he had them Emby porters move a load of it up to the Sky Floor.”

  Robert ponders the ramifications for a moment. “Freight elevator still have access to the hundred and eleventh?”

  “Nope.”

  “Got a way round that?”

  “Yep.” Cyril picks a key from a hook on the wall, handing it to Robert. “This’ll get you to the hundred and eleventh, but no further. What the hell is going on, Bobby?”

  Robert has no answer for him, or at least not one he is prepared to divulge. Cyril can see it in his face. Robert makes to leave, but with a parting instruction.

  “In ten minutes I want you to get hold of Bertie and get her to start evacuating the building—but quietly. No alarms. No panic.”

  Landelle and Toor are waiting for him at the elevators. Robert dangles the key for them to see.

  “It’s here.”

  Inside the freight elevator Robert punches in 1 1 1. The panel responds with ‘No Access.’ He inserts Cyril’s key and turns it. The doors close and they ascend.

  SKY FLOOR

  Bold numerals identify the hundred and eleventh floor. Next to them a large set of double doors and a name plate—‘Dr. Jerome Ellis.’ Robert pushes through both doors to an open-plan laboratory that is a maze of individual experimentation areas. At the center of it all is a glass-walled vault, shipping crates scattered all about it.

  “This is just Ellis’s pet research project,” says Robert. “They used it as cover to move the lab. It must be on the Sky Floor.”

  “Whoever is up there will see us coming,” says Landelle.

  “There’s a maintenance access door,” says Toor. “We can get to it from the mass damper hall and we can get there via the electrics room. Might buy us an element of surprise.”

  “Good idea,” says Robert. “Debs, are you armed?”

  “No. And the fact that you’re asking is a bit of a concern, Bob.”

  * * *

  The electrics room occupies a whole floor. Rarely visited, it is dark and gloomy. The three of them creep past banks of humming power equipment, each labeled with the floor they serve. A metal stairwell. All ascend, Robert first.

  The building’s slim stature requires a means of stabilization—a mass damper that absorbs any movement the tower might otherwise experience. It is essentially a huge weight mounted on a hydraulic rig.

  As they creep on by a loud CLICK suddenly echoes around the space. They jump with a start. The hydraulics innocently shift the mass by three quarters of a millimeter.

  Another metal stair well. Maintenance access to the Sky Floor—an observation deck at the top of the building.

  “Now what?” asks Toor.

  Robert’s answer is action, abruptly bounding up the stairs.

  “Bob!” Landelle shouts in a whisper.

  Landelle’s immediate distress is not matched by Toor’s unrelenting cold demeanor. While Landelle is clearly uncertain about what to do. Toor is not and takes after Robert.

  Without breaking stride, Robert reaches a door and kicks it in.

  A roar of industrial air conditioning, unseen in a gloom. Power cables exit from makeshift ducts in the walls and snake off into a maze of crates and equipment stacked high enough to obscure any clear view of what lies beyond.

  Robert makes his way through it all to be almost immediately confronted with a bank of twelve ovoid glass containers mounted in cradles at eye level—the same as in the Messiah chamber, each about a meter high and half as much in girth. Egg shaped. Eleven glow with a red hue; the twelfth is empty.

  Landelle and Toor arrive behind him, Toor pushing forward to inspect the nearest container. She gets close. There is a shape inside. It floats closer. The unconscious face of a thin African child looms forward from the fluid within. Toor staggers back, rendered mute by the horror.

  “What in God’s name is this?” says Landelle.

  Robert and Landelle examine the other containers, while a wide-eyed Toor remains transfixed on the first. Tubes attached to the child resolve into view.

  “Embryonic fluid. They’ve been regressed to a fetal state and turned into hosts,” says Robert.

  “For the Messiah virus?”

  Landelle tries to comfort Toor, but her hand is batted away. Toor can’t stop staring at what she sees before her. Landelle leaves her to join Robert—he is at the end of the row of containers examining the empty one. From there she steps around to look behind the bank of pods. A hand to her mouth fails to completely silence a horrified gasp at what she finds. Robert is immediately by her side.

  Twelve stainless steel surgical tables running parallel to the bank of glass containers. On each table, save two, a bloodied corpse, horribly disfigured by lesions oozing a thick, red goo.

  Toor remains fixed before the first container, all but oblivious to what is going on elsewhere. A reflection in the glass—something moving behind her. She turns to find the figure of a man in a surgical gown, a horror covered in lesions, one eye eaten away, his teeth gone. For all that he is still just about recognizable as Jerome Ellis.

  Toor screams.

  A flesh-eaten hand flashes forward to grab Toor by the shoulder. Toor flinches and the hand catches by the base of the neck instead.

  “Help me.” Ellis can barely speak, his voice of gurgle of blood and liquefying tissue.

  His fingers melt into the flesh of her neck. Toor starts to choke. Out of nowhere Landelle grabs Ellis’s arm, struggling to release his grip.

  Robert bashes a fire extinguisher end-on against Ellis’s head, ripping away loose flesh. Ellis loses his grip on Toor, staggering back. Toor collapses, Landelle following her down. A second lunge with the fire extinguisher at Ellis’s head, resulting in a sickening crunch of bone. He takes it. Two more in quick succession knock him back further, a final blow sending him to the floor, his body convulsing. Robert tosses the extinguisher and desperately attends to Landelle and Toor.

  Landelle is all but frozen with pure horror as Toor writhes uncontrollably, a lesion opening up on her throat, growing rapidly in size as she gasps for air. Robert’s despair is absolute at the sight of her.

  “Sharanjit.”

  He reaches out to comfort her, but Landelle stops him short with the clothed side of her arm. She has her own look of desperation as she shows him the back of her hand, erupting with a spreading lesion.

  “Finish this.” It is all she can manage before slumping to the floor.

  Robert staggers back from the horror before him, tripping over cables and crashing into stacked crates, all the while his gaze fixed on Landelle and Toor. He tears himself away, stumbling back to the other side of the contain
er bank, past the surgical tables and further into the maze. The nightmare out of sight, he stops to catch himself. Looking up he sees a partitioned area, a glow of room lighting from within it and beyond that the full height Sky Floor windows, set to maximum shade.

  Within the partitioned area, seated on a contemporary couch, Robert finds Monica Satori waiting patiently, hands resting in the lap of a chic, sleeveless dress. He keeps his eyes locked on her as he weaves his way through the partitioning and furniture. She greets him a weak smile, her face pale with a slight sheen of feverishness.

  “I take it that was Jerome.”

  “Monica…”

  “Toxic shock.”

  “What?”

  “It’s what killed them,” says Monica. “Messiah fighting it out with the immune system.”

  Robert can hardly contain a boiling cauldron of anger, horror, and confusion within him.

  “But the children,” he manages.

  Monica can’t hide a brief flash of remorse as she averts her eyes for a moment.

  “We infected them with a retrovirus, to weaken the immune system and give Messiah free rein.”

  “Good God.”

  “Takes time though. Not enough time for us. Jerome resorted to chemo. Had to guess the dosages. He lasted longer than the others.”

  Robert can see Monica looks sick, but no lesions. He spots a medical syringe gun on a coffee table, snatching it up. It is empty.

  “Messiah?” he asks.

  “Eighteen hours now. Doubled Jerome’s chemo dosage.”

  Her demeanor shifts, rising to confront Robert with steely cold eyes and a grim determination about her.

  “I can feel it coursing through me, rebuilding my immune system it is own image.” She comes much closer to him. “And strengthening me. We never imagined that. It’s tuning my body.”

  She runs her hand along the bare skin of her arm. The skin shimmers, mesmerizing Robert. She brings her face close to his, her mouth to his ear.

  “Still not over me, are you? Sent Alka on a wild goose chase so you could get to me first.”

  She waits seductively for a response, but he has to clear a sense of deep anguish from his mind before he can bring himself to whisper back.

  “You’re a monster.”

  Monica withdraws to face him with a mock pout.

  “And for what?” he says. “You’ll never be able to peddle Messiah. Miracle cures and extended lifespans equal socioeconomic chaos. Remember?”

  Monica laughs, only to snap to a deadly seriousness.

  “But controlled by an elite equals new-world-order.”

  “Not going to let it happen—”

  Monica whips him violently across the face with the back of her hand, the force enough to knock him back into a chair behind him. She looms over Robert with a wicked grin and angry eyes, her hand shooting forward to grab him by the throat.

  “It was the perfect cover. All eyes on you, none on us. And you, lost in your own little world. Took your eyes off the ball, Bob.” Her grip tightens, choking him. He claws in vain at her hands. “But then you went and got yourself some new friends.” She hoists him up out of the chair. “Who are they?”

  Robert is unable to answer.

  “Cat got your tongue? Makes no difference. And do you know why? Because Trinity isn’t going to save the world, Bob. Never was. I mean, do you honestly believe you can hack the planet’s ecosphere and get away with it?”

  She draws him closer, her muscles rippling under shimmering skin.

  “Mother Nature won’t take kindly to that kind of meddling. She wants us out. We can’t change her, but we can change ourselves.”

  Robert manages to splutter a response, “By kidnapping and experimenting on children?”

  “They were left for dead! We saved them!”

  “Maybe they were better off dead.”

  “Give it up, Bob. It’s too late. The genie is out of the bottle.”

  Out of nowhere Robert’s left hand bears down on Monica’s neck. In its grasp is the virus dispensing gun from the Trinity labs—it fires with a phut.

  Monica grabs the gun from him with lightning speed. Pushing him back to arm’s length she inspects the dispenser. It’s coated with a black residue.

  “Destroyed by the Trinity bomb radiation. Should have guessed you’d have a way to dodge the Thin Man,” she says.

  Robert is still choked by her grip, “Not destroyed. Rendered inert.”

  A tinge of concern on Monica’s face. She tosses the syringe and slaps her hand to her neck, withdrawing it to inspect her palm—more of black residue. A snort of contempt.

  “What is this?”

  “The active virus in your body will see the inert form as an invader,” Robert says.

  The contempt turns to deepening alarm, “What have you done?”

  She lunges forward at him with her free arm, but Robert is quicker, grabbing both her arms, prizing them apart with all the might he can muster.

  “Messiah will attack anything that matches the protein signature of the invader, including itself.”

  He gets the upper hand, shoving her away.

  “I’m putting the genie back in the bottle, Monica.”

  She comes at him with a snarl to be met with a blow across her face with the full force of his fist. She takes it like it was nothing, the virus coursing across her facial skin, causing it to shimmer as the bruising is repaired. Her contempt returns with a sneer.

  “Pathetic.”

  He strikes again and again, Monica just standing there, taking the beating.

  In a snap move she grabs an incoming blow, both hands on his arm.

  “My turn.”

  Bracing herself she swings him about, leveraging her whole body, the force sufficient to throw him over a chair, his body crashing down onto a table.

  Monica bounds over the furniture, both feet thumping down next to Robert’s dazed head. She looks him over, choosing a couple of handholds. A good grip and she hoists him up. A shift of position and she has her thrust under him, raising his body above her like it was a set of weights. She marvels at her strength.

  Robert shakes the daze from his head. He struggles violently, catching Monica off balance. They both go down, Robert wriggling free from her grasp. He’s not fast enough and in a flash she grabs him from behind in an armlock around the neck, her head next to his as she squeezes the life out of him.

  “What goes around comes around, hey, Bob? Haven’t had a tussle like this since we were…” jerking his head back, “…kids. Remember the corn fields?”

  “Wheat. They…were…wheat.”

  She releases him, letting him crumple to the floor. Another handhold and she coils herself like a discus thrower.

  “You see, your trouble has always been that you are the perfect gentleman.”

  With a grunt and all her strength, she unwinds, flinging Robert at the floor to ceiling windows, back first. He slams against a pane of toughened glass, bouncing off to fall flat on his face. Monica is back on him in an instant, propping him up against the glass.

  “But you know, it’s just not the done thing to…,” a brutal right hook across his face, “hit a woman.”

  She beats him again, this time with a true rage on her face.

  Robert is out cold, his face bloodied. Monica is ready for another blow, but she can’t quite manage it, a turmoil of anger and remorse threatening to consume her. She drops to her knees beside him, the anger evaporating to leave behind a deep sadness.

  “And I loved you, too.”

  She leans in to give him a delicate kiss on the lips.

  Robert comes around, his eyes creeping open. Monica gently caresses him.

  “But that was then and this is now.”

  Two pairs of sad eyes gaze into each other with the memories of happier times lost.

  Robert’s eyes widen. Horror flashes onto his face.

  “Monica…”

  Observing his distress, Monica tentatively puts her
hand to her face. Her fingers sink into a mush that was her cheek. Withdrawing her hand she finds the flesh on her fingers liquefying. She tries to rise to her feet, but topples back.

  Robert strains to lurch forward, just managing to catch her. The two of them tumble to the floor, Monica struggling the get her words out.

  “You… mustn’t… touch.”

  She writhes in agony, a distressed Robert not knowing what to do.

  He reaches out. She knocks his hand away.

  But it’s too late—he sees the brown spot on his right palm, at the base of his index finger, grow larger. He stares in horror as it erupts, oozing out a thick, bloody goo that spreads out over his hand.

  He stands, staggering backward only to bump into some furniture, topple off balance and come crashing back down. He tries to rise once more, but collapses, lesions breaking out all over his body.

  DAY 79

  Landelle is already awake. She finds that the routine helps with the monotony. After the hell of the first few weeks had come a full month of probing, prodding, and general intrusion at the hands of medical Embies, guided at a distance by their human masters. But that came to an end and these past weeks had become a waiting game. Eleven more days to the all-clear, the full ninety days having been a hasty dictate of the Supreme Court, in whose care she had been placed as a ward.

  As a causality she had experienced nothing of the immediate aftermath. Dr. Felton’s team had found the horror on the Sky Floor, taking considerable personal risks in the extraction, despite all the precautions they could muster. The whole of Manhattan had been evacuated for a full three weeks. Even now a three-block radius marked an exclusion zone around the Cantor Satori tower, enforced by the National Guard.

  But today promised a respite from all that.

  She checks herself out in the mirror. Despite the unflattering medical gown she agrees with herself that she looks great. Amazing in fact. It would normally have taken a good couple of weeks of vacation, with daily visits to a health spa, and a considerable amount of buffing in a beauty salon to get her approaching anything like what she now sees in her reflection. And she feels just as amazing as she looks.

  A set of double doors leads from her small suite of rooms to the main facility. Pushing them open, she is greeted by the usual crowd. Medical staff for the most part, but also the armed guards. All stand behind a thick, yellow line on the floor, several meters away. Felton stands foremost.