At the base of the stairs there was a fire door and a rack of torches. From above there came the sound of heavy footfalls and unintelligible shouts. The sounds of pursuit. Instinct told him that he couldn’t stay here long. Grabbing a torch, he forced open the door and exited into the gloom of the tunnels beyond. He ran without direction, without thought, he ran with a singular purpose: escape.
2.
Sleep had finally dragged him down. After five hours of shuffling through the tunnels, he had started to stumble. Then he’d started to sag, then to stagger. His mind had started to fog and his vision had become grey and fuzzy; indistinct, like looking at everything from the bottom of a pool of murky water. Sleep had sunk its claws into his brain like a cat on a curtain and pulled with all its might until he finally collapsed, consciousness toppling away into the black oblivion of slumber. He’d managed to stagger into what might once have been an old electrical room, he’d even managed to retain enough strength to switch off the torch before he lost himself. He sank to the floor like a stone, curling up in a pile of yellowed news-sheets. The mass of clotted blood and stained cloth on the side of his arm strained and ripped free. And so he quietly bled as he slept.
It was not a restful sleep. It was the sort where you wake up feeling more exhausted than you were when you closed your eyes; as if it was only your mind that had slept, while your body still meandered about, functional but pilotless. Upon waking two things were apparent, even to the dull and empty mind of this escapee. Firstly, the wound on his arm had been cleaned and dressed with strips torn from his hospital gown. Secondly, and perhaps most disconcertingly of all, he was not in the same place that he had fallen asleep. The place he now found himself in was a tiny nook behind a brace of cold, dead pipework. He checked the watch. He’d been out for twelve hours. Flicking the switch in the torch he filled his little nest with its wan and sickly light. No longer shrouded in darkness he could see that something was written on the wall next to him. The letters were made in crude strokes of dark and flaking russet. As if someone had smeared the words onto the wall using blood.
“RUN
DON’T STOP
NEED TO GET AWAY
GET SAFE
UVE GOT 12 HRS
THEN U SLEEP
TRUST UR INSTINCTS”
It was succinct and to the point, but it raised awkward questions. Who had written this? Where had they come from? Where had they gone? Why were they helping him? It was a whetstone to the edge of paranoia and fear that was his being. Part of him wanted to ignore the message, to spurn whatever “help” this stranger was offering. They’d have an agenda, they’d want something, it wouldn’t end well. But the primal thing that lurked in the back of his mind, the thing which had woken him and spurred him into the violence that had led to escape, that bestial fragment of sentience growled at this idea. It did not like it. Survival was the priority, if help was being offered it should be taken. A starving man would not refuse food. The primal thing forced him to his feet and set his legs in motion. It cracked its whip from the dark, hind regions of his dead brain. He did not go gladly, or willingly. He made every step reluctantly and resisted every prodding, but go he did. Back into the dark reaches of the tunnels. Back to the long, hard slog to freedom. In the dark.
IV.
“Heart rates and O2 sat. are holding steady. Requesting permission to proceed to phase two.” A blue gowned doctor fussed about the two deathly still forms on the operating tables. There were only a handful of them in the theatre, one doctor per patient, the administration technician and the instrument specialist. Behind a shimmer of plated glass The Coordinator sat. He watched over it all like a god, but for all his poise and power he was a worried man. This was it. After all the Institute’s work, all its dealings, law breaking and scheming, it all came down to this. He leaned forward and pressed the button on the intercom.
“Proceed.” He’d wanted to say more, something a bit grander, but the words had caught in his throat. The doctor just nodded and set about the grim task ahead of him.
“Commence insertion of cerebral probes,” the doctor said with a gulp. Drills whizzed and cored their way through the skull bone of the patients, thin rivulets of blood dripping from the holes. Crowns beset with metal spikes and festooned with wires were slowly manoeuvred over the fresh holes and lowered into position. Once the heads were cradled in the belly of these strange devices the spikes slid from their moorings and into the bloody cavities the drill had left behind.
“Insertion complete, passenger EEG within limits,” intoned one of the doctors, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his scrubs. “Sir, we’re ready to begin the transfer procedure.”
The Coordinator sat quietly, behind the glass, all alone. In his hands he held a large silver coin. Held between his thumb and forefinger he slowly rotated it about its axis, the dim light of the operating theatre catching the surface as it span.
“So this is it?” he said to himself. “Will we have enough to meet the ferryman’s toll? Or will we find ourselves one obol short of a drachma?” His hands went still, the coin no longer spinning. He raised it to his eyes and gazed at its surface. A coat of arms, an annulet at the centre, bearing the motto “Quidquid Pretium.” Vulgar, but true.
“Sir?” asked the doctor.
The Coordinator flipped the coin. It landed in his hand. Heads or tails? It didn’t matter, he didn’t even look at the result
“Proceed,” he said, tapping the intercom once again.
“You heard him. Begin dosing of passenger, 1cc a minute.”
The technician nodded in reply. A few twists of dials and a single flip of a switch and a pale yellow fluid began to snake its way along a catheter and into the passenger’s wrist. Nervous seconds passed, stretching out long and empty. The doctor’s eyes were fixed on the monitors, watching them intently, waiting. A smile hidden by his mask touched the corners of his eyes.
“Aaaaaand we have mind state separation. Beginning transfer.” The metal crowns pulsed and glowed an eerie electric blue. Building charges arced and discharged. The passenger’s EEG went dead. The doctor turned to the observation window “Transfer complete. Now we just need to wait and see if it worked.” But the Coordinator had already left.
3.
The message had implied pursuit. It hadn’t said it directly, but he knew that it had meant it. The quiet voices in the hinterlands of his brain whispered to him, a faint sub-audible hum swallowed by the crushing sound of the darkness. They were recommending a cautious urgency. Fast enough to get away, but slow enough so as not to exacerbate injury. His mouth was dry, too dry. It had been too long since he’d had a drink. The absence of water made his mouth taste grey. It was not a good taste. His destination remained as nebulous and intangible as ever. He wasn’t lost. Being lost implied that at one point you had known where you were. Only faint tingling spurs of instinct guided him, an inclination to always head up, to avoid the branches of tunnels where he could see the rank stench of damp hanging in the air, heading towards where it smelt the least foul. Water was important, but there wasn’t any down here. None at least that would be drinkable. Down here in the bowels of the earth there was only the putrescent run-off from the sick and bloated cityscape far above; the dribbles of puss from an open wound in the landscape. They’d kill him just as sure as thirst would. His desperation had not yet reached such a height.
The cone of light that guided his path suddenly exploded out into a wide disk as it hit a wall; this was the end of the tunnel. A dead end. A dead end with a ladder. Standing at the base of the ladder he looked up into the gloom. Its top was lost in the darkness of its small, vertical confines. A tunnel up. Up was always good. The smell of grit beneath his bare feet stung, but it was a good sting, it reminded him he was alive. It wouldn’t be an easy climb, it would hurt, he’d have to do it in the dark. But it was either that or head back the way he came and that held its own, special risks and its own, special kinds of hells.
Turning o
ff the torch he began his slow climb, the echoes of his slow ascent pressing tight on his skin.
III.
The man who had once been Doctor Gessner lay on an operating table, now he was just a test subject. His limbs were bound by thick straps of leather, restrained despite his state of drug induced unconsciousness. It was a precaution, The Institute was big on precautions. Gessner wasn’t going anywhere soon. One of the Institute’s medical staff methodically shaved the hair from his head while another studied his vitals on a series of monitors, making occasional notes on a clipboard.
The man who had doomed Gessner to this fate sat behind the observation window. His dead, grey eyes watched the ministrations of the medics; there was a look of profound detachment upon his face, as if the man strapped to the table was nothing more than a tool, or a sack of meat. Perhaps he was both. Regardless, The Coordinator couldn’t help but notice the stillness. Even despite the restraints Gessner was still, his breathing barely even seemed to be there. The rise and fall of the chest was sliver thin and glacially slow, so much so that you barely even noticed it happening. He didn’t look peaceful, or look like he was sleeping, he didn’t even look dead. He looked beyond sleep, occupying a stillness that wasn’t entirely real, as if he were the shape of a man hewn out of marble or ice, or crafted with great care from clay. But even though he may not look dead quite yet, soon he may as well be. They were sending him into one of those grey areas. The places where things got “fuzzy.”
It took a while before The Coordinator realised that the door had opened and that someone else was in the observation room with him. With them they had brought a subtle tang of sandalwood, The Coordinator knew only one man who smelt like that.
“How long have you been there Doctor Wöller?” he asked.
“Not long sir.” the doctor replied.
The two men fell into an uneasy silence, both knowing that there were things to be said but both of them lost in the awkwardness of actually articulating them.
“Is this really necessary?” asked Wöller eventually. The Coordinator sat bathed in his own little world of silence before replying.
“Unfortunately yes. We didn’t have time to procure a second test subject that matched our requirements. It was a necessary action.”
“But did it have to be Gessner?” Wöller pleaded. “What did you think he was going to do? Start shooting people? The guy’s a consummate pacifist.”
“Using him will increase the chances of success. He has more experience in this than anyone else,” replied The Coordinator. “And I was never worried about him showing his opposition to the plan in a physical manner. But he would have done something much, much worse than try to kill us.” The Coordinator paused. “He would have talked and in doing so would have wreaked so much more damage. And that, Doctor Wöller, is something I could not allow.”
“When do we begin?”
“Not long now Wöller,” the Coordinator sighed. “Not long at all.”
4.
These tunnels were different. Gone were the wide bores of grey, faceless concrete; gone were the rails and sleepers and the myriad of sharp edged stones; gone were the faint smells of dead dust and unearthly musts. Those tunnels had been a grim perdition, to walk in them was a misery of pain and a gnawing of hope. Those tunnels felt endless; featureless; merciless; angry. These new tunnels were different. The bore was smaller and narrower; every inch of the walls was filled with neat, white tiles. Before, the light had stopped dead and been absorbed by the hungry, grey murk of the walls, whereas now torchlight danced across their surface and pirouetted down the length of the tunnel. Most noticeably of all, these tunnels were clean. Despite however long it had likely been since man had last set foot here there was scant little dust or grime. It was a preserved and ageless place, something neglect couldn’t quite touch. But, for there was always a ‘but’, they were cold. The non-heat of it built and weighed you down. The old tunnels had been uncomfortable, perhaps even oppressive, in their warmth, but the cold was not a respite, it was violent and offensive. A claustrophobia built not just of stone, but of the air itself.
The tiling was reminiscent of old hospitals. Clinical, unfeeling. Their appearance indicated that he had found his way into one of the long abandoned station complexes that studded the underground. How he knew this he wasn’t sure. He just did. It was one of those things that just made sense. A great many things were beginning to make more sense than they previously had. Not long before leaving the rail tunnels he had seen a rat. It was fat, grey and easily the size of a cat. He had watched it hop onto one of the rails and seen it cooked alive. Needless to say he had avoided that rail, but he had known that it was a good sign. The deep and dark extremities had been cut off from the grid long ago, but there were some parts still inexorably wired into the main network. Places near the surface, near the bigger stations. He hadn’t known how he’d known it, but he had. It was a fact. It was right.
That he had made it this far he counted as no small miracle. There are limits on man and his control over the universe at large. A man is capable of only what tasks he can achieve with the resources at hand. You’ve got to be realistic and play with the hand you’re dealt. A man can only be pushed so far and can only achieve so much, no matter how great or mighty he is. But sometimes, when the chips are down and there’s nothing left to lose, you can, with a bit of blind luck, pull off something amazing. Even if your hand of cards is truly abysmal, if you can bluff hard enough and long enough you can fool the whole of creation. It is only in times of hardship that the inner qualities of people really float to the top. Only by facing hardship can you truly know what you’re capable of and just how much you’re willing to risk on reality not being able to see through your poker face.
His hand had been truly abysmal. By rights he knew he should probably be dead. Even a grazing bullet wound could be fatal; blood loss, sepsis, shock, gangrene; it was a long list. And yet, without any real medical attention, he was still going. Though the absence of drinking water meant he was on borrowed time. He mused that this knowledge was likely a result of acute bleed-through of distinct neurological states. Something indicative of improper dosage and induction wave combinations. They had been sloppy. This made him smile. Though seconds later he no longer knew where these thoughts had come from.
The watch on his wrist told him it had been fourteen hours since he had woken up. Hadn’t the message said he would only have twelve? It was a cause for concern. Possibly. The torch flickered and died, plunging him into a darkness that danced with the rainbow swirls of after-images and dying reflections.
He swore.
His mouth was thick with thirst, but it felt good to curse and mutter. Swearing was cathartic if nothing else.
Speaking, he thought. That was something he hadn’t done in a while. It was a good sign. Possibly.
Lost in the darkness and without a light he was painfully aware that he was just one piece in a puzzle. A puzzle of infinite pieces; none of the pieces of this puzzle matched up properly; you’ve got black pieces next to white pieces, all jumbled and mixed together to form a grey soup of featureless nothingness which you have no hope of being able to interpret or understand. The big picture, the one that encompasses everything, is not for mortal minds to fathom. You can think big all you damn well please but at the end of the day, big thoughts aren’t going to get you out of a hole. You’ve just got to accept your part of something bigger and grander and more alien than yourself; something which doesn’t care about you and isn’t going to give you any special favours. You need to get over it and just move on with whatever the hell it is you’re trying to do. He wasn’t still alive because of miracles or luck. He was alive out of sheer bloody-mindedness and no trifling inconvenience like not having a torch was going to get in his way now. He was going to find his way out and the universe could just go hang.
With that in mind, he marched purposefully on, through the black. Still having no idea where he was going, but freed from the
tyranny of actually having to look at it all.
II.
It was rare for the lead scientists of The Institute to be in the same room. A life on the run had made them less trusting then they used to be, paranoid by necessity. Any gathering symbolised a risk, an exposure. So many of them in one single location, even within their own stronghold, would make it all the more easy to snuff out the last flickering embers of its leadership and consign it to the forgotten corners of history. Everywhere they looked they saw potential traitors, turncoats and sell outs. And to be summoned by The Coordinator himself? This did not bode well.
The Coordinator stood at the head of the table, his back facing away from the assembled scientists.
“The Institute has survived many things. We have survived three world wars; innumerable set-backs, investigations, both criminal and political; Witch-hunts; ridicule; being ostracised by the entire scientific community. Over the centuries there has been one, sole, immutable fact: The Institute endures.” He turned to face the rest of the room. “We have advanced humanity in ways that the public can scarce even imagine! Behind every great endeavour has been our auspex.” The Coordinator sighed. “But despite our best efforts we are on the verge of destruction. We are at a crossroads gentlemen. One road leads to our extinction, it is the easy path and requires us to do nothing at all. The other road? Now that road is more difficult. It will require bold action, but will ensure our survival. And it is on that subject that I have gathered you all here, despite all that is arrayed against us. For as ever, I have a plan.”
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