by Seth Patrick
She grabbed her bag, threw the gun and the canister into it, and left the hotel.
42
It was dark and cold by the time Jonah and Kendrick got back from Bethlehem to the safe house. The heating in the old house was having trouble keeping the chill out, but as Jonah thought about what he’d seen perhaps nothing would have made him feel warm.
They all sat around the kitchen table as Jonah described what had happened. Tess, Kendrick and Never were nursing mugs of coffee, while the only thing Jonah was nursing was a pounding headache that had been growing ever since he’d laid eyes on Silva’s child.
‘What the hell were they?’ said Jonah. ‘I’m pretty sure his wife had no idea it was there. And as for the boy . . .’
Tess shook her head, uncertain. ‘Maybe it’s more like an infection than we thought.’ She stood and went to the kitchen window. ‘I just don’t know,’ she said, frustrated.
Kendrick frowned. ‘Much of what we know about them is from surveillance I conducted shortly before I was ousted,’ he said. ‘I know that some were wary of what they’d agreed to host, but they all seemed to think they were a chosen few.’
‘But if it just spreads,’ said Jonah, ‘there’d be no limit to how many of these things are out there.’
‘It can’t spread easily,’ said Kendrick. ‘If it did, Andreas would just have to wait until it was everywhere. There has to be more to it.’
The room was silent for a few moments. Jonah looked around at them in turn. Kendrick was grim, while Never seemed exhausted, the previous day and his broken night of sleep catching up with him. And Tess . . . well, Jonah didn’t want to think about how Tess looked.
‘Have you eaten?’ he asked her. ‘I’m going to fix something.’
‘I already ate,’ Tess said. Jonah held her gaze long enough to be sure she was lying. She looked away.
‘So what’s the plan?’ said Never, draining his coffee.
Kendrick checked his phone before he said anything. ‘We wait.’
‘For what?’ said Jonah.
‘Information. I told you, I’m not alone in this. I have people loyal to me. They can focus surveillance on Silva and we’ll learn what we can over the next few days. With luck we can find out enough to disrupt Andreas’s goals. Ideally, we prevent him completing his machine. Sabotage is our best strategy.’
‘Won’t that just slow him down?’ said Never. ‘He’ll keep on trying. We need something that can stop him. Permanently. You said he was vulnerable.’
‘This is our best chance,’ said Kendrick. ‘For now. Until we know how he’s vulnerable.’
And as he spoke, Jonah saw him do as he had done: glance towards Tess, the only person who could answer that question.
*
Jonah offered to take the first watch that night, giving Kendrick a chance to sleep. Tess went to bed early too, but Never stayed up with him until well after midnight.
Kendrick hadn’t left them with any means to go online, much to Never’s annoyance. They did have a TV, though, and kept the rolling news on in the background with the volume turned down low. The safe house was stocked with a range of old DVDs and books, and they both picked out a novel to read and sat in near silence, with one eye on the news.
When an extended feature about Winnerden Flats came on, they turned the volume up and watched eagerly. The official launch of the new Baseline project had been that afternoon, and the feature included brief interviews with some of the revivers and researchers who had already made their way to the facility, to live and work there.
Stephanie Graves was interviewed at length, clearly enthused by the prospect of proceeding with the well-funded research she’d been dreaming of for so long. Uptake among revivers had exceeded all expectations, with priority given to those willing to join the project quickly. Doctor Graves estimated that all the required revivers would be resident at the site within ten days, and the research effort could begin in earnest.
Jonah found himself tensing during the few short clips that featured wider angles of those present – of the canteen, for example, or shots showing living quarters and recreation areas – to see if he recognized any of the revivers taking part. Jason and Stacy should both have returned to work by now and received their invitations, but the only warning Never had managed to give them had been by email, and was necessarily vague. Yet even if both had declined to go, others he knew may have gone in their place.
He found the interviews depressing. There was a universal display of genuine hope and enthusiasm for the research – research which Jonah thought was, at the very least, a distraction. And that was the best-case scenario – while it was certainly possible that assembling the best revivers in one place was just a means to get them out of wider circulation, Jonah wondered if there was more to it than Kendrick thought.
Once the Baseline story ended, the news channel gave a brief recap on Jonah’s own kidnapping. It was surreal to watch, and painful when it included footage of Ray Johnson standing beside Bob Crenner’s wife, comforting her as he praised his partner’s courage and dedication. At least they finally knew that Ray was safe. They turned the TV off once the story finished, and Never went to his bed.
The requirements of Jonah’s shift of keeping watch were limited. Around the outside of the house were three motion-sensing closed-circuit cameras that would alert him if anything needed attention.
Kendrick came downstairs just after 2 a.m., red-eyed and monosyllabic. Jonah took the novel he’d started reading up to bed. After an hour he was still no closer to sleeping; too much was circling in his mind, too many images that he knew would stay with him. Bob Crenner’s death; Torrance’s shadow coming towards him, preparing for the kill; the pulsating darkness on Heggarty’s shoulder. And Silva’s wife and child, oblivious to the shadows that had laid claim to them.
Thirsty, he decided to get something to drink. Being as quiet as he could, he made his way downstairs; something hot, he hoped, would let him settle. He reached the kitchen. There was no sign of Kendrick. There was, however, an open laptop on the table.
Jonah stared at the image on the screen.
It was footage of a small bare room. The camera was high up, looking down at a man lying on something flat, possibly a gurney.
The man was strapped to it, restless but barely moving. He was gagged.
Jonah felt cold. He’d come downstairs in T-shirt and underwear, and the house was chilly, but the real cold was deep within himself.
He recognized the man.
It was Lucas Silva.
43
Jonah heard the flush of the toilet down the hall. The other internal door in the kitchen led to a small utility room; he stepped inside, hiding in the shadow but still with a clear view of the laptop.
Kendrick came into the kitchen, careful to close the door to the hall behind him. He sat in front of the laptop and waited.
Jonah kept his breathing as quiet as he could, the cold working its way up through his feet and into his bones. After a few minutes a window opened on the laptop screen, showing a bearded face. A gruff voice came out of the speaker. ‘Are you there?’
‘Here,’ said Kendrick. ‘It took an age to come up, but the feed is showing now. Was he as easy to take as you thought?’
‘Yeah,’ said the bearded man. ‘It was a good choice. His house is out of the way, no risk of being seen when we did it. By ten his wife was asleep. He came out with the trash. No problems. He might not even be missed until morning.’
‘And he’s said nothing yet?’
‘Nothing about his work, no. Just clams up when we ask him.’
‘What about his wife and kid?’ said Kendrick.
‘He claimed they weren’t involved,’ said the man. ‘We told him we’d seen the things on them, and he denied it but he didn’t look happy at the idea. I got the feeling he doesn’t know about them. Hell, I don’t think he’s that clear on what he’s carrying. The thing you asked us to try with the lights was interesting, th
ough.’
‘You’ve already done that?’ asked Kendrick.
‘Yeah, we left him alone, like you said. Didn’t take long for something to show up on the sensors. You can see it in the image. I’ve uploaded the footage for you to take a look. Like you thought, it’s visible when it detaches from the host. Physical, too – it couldn’t get out of the room. When it got more aggressive we hit it with the sunlamps, full on. The thing vanished.’
‘You sure you didn’t kill it?’
‘Absolutely. We repeated it a dozen times, same thing. It definitely went back to him. Same thing happened when he lost consciousness while it was detached. We remotely pushed Propofol through a cannula in his arm. The moment he was out, the shadow was gone. Also, it can’t even detach when those lights are on.’
‘Good work,’ said Kendrick. ‘How much longer will you try getting him to talk?’
‘Depends,’ said the man. ‘Something’s stopping him saying anything. It’s like he can’t.’
‘Damn,’ said Kendrick. ‘The shadow?’
‘That would be my guess. We’ll see how it goes later.’
‘If he doesn’t talk, there are other questions we need the answers for,’ said Kendrick. ‘I’ll leave the decision to you.’
‘Understood.’
Kendrick ended the call. He took a long slow breath and poured a bourbon, waiting for a progress bar to fill; Jonah assumed he was downloading the footage the bearded man had mentioned.
When it completed, he started to play it.
Silva lay there, the light in the room low. After a while it started to become visible – a smudge of darkness, on his shoulder. It became more defined on the screen, the fingers discernible now, clear of the flesh. It fell, sliding from the man, out of sight on the floor.
There was nothing for a minute or so. Then it crept back into shot, and it was growing. Jonah thought of the creature Torrance had unleashed, looking like it had unfolded itself, stretching impossibly. Here it was again, but on a smaller scale. The resulting shadow was the size of a large dog, pacing the room, trying to look for a weakness, a way out.
The lights in the room brightened suddenly, washing out the image. Jonah saw Silva spasm in pain, screaming past the gag covering his mouth, tears in his eyes. The shadow was gone.
‘You wanted to capture one of them,’ said Jonah, stepping out of his hiding place. Kendrick turned round slowly, looking irritated at being caught in the act. ‘That’s really why you rescued me, whatever Tess thinks. That’s what I was for. You wanted one of their lower ranks identified, to interrogate. To experiment on. To torture.’
‘Of course I did,’ said Kendrick.
‘He’s going through what I was going through,’ said Jonah, his voice raised.
‘Yes, he is. More or less.’
‘And will you let him go?’ Jonah was trembling now, the cold engulfing him.
‘We’ll hold him as long as we need to.’
‘That’s not what I asked!’ Jonah shouted. He lowered his voice again. ‘Are you going to kill him?’
Kendrick raised an eyebrow. ‘He’s too valuable to kill.’
There was a folded blanket on a table in the corner of the kitchen. Jonah shook it out and wrapped himself in it, the trembling becoming worse as his anger grew. ‘We’re supposed to be better than this,’ he said, dejected. He sat in the seat across from Kendrick and put his head in his hands. Then he looked up again. ‘I was just getting used to thinking of you as the good guy.’
Kendrick drained his glass and poured himself another. ‘Good?’ he said. ‘Hell no. But there are worse things than me. You live in a world where the terrors have all been pushed back until most people have forgotten them. Those in the First World, at least. There was a time when pain was the norm, when fear was universal, when justice was the exception. Go right back, Jonah, back to the dawn of humanity. When people gathered around a fire forty thousand years ago, they would look out into the night and they would know what was out there. Hungry creatures, sharp teeth; pain and death. Civilization is a fire that holds back the dark, Jonah. The fire grew so big people forgot there was a fire at all. But the dark didn’t really go away. Fires can die, no matter how big they are.’ He took another drink, and jabbed an accusing finger in Jonah’s direction. ‘You’re happy for people like me to go off into the night, as long as you don’t see what we do. We dig around in the muck and bring back the firewood so all of you good people get to sit and warm yourselves. Sit in the glow and congratulate each other about how damn clean your hands are. But whenever things go wrong, whenever you’re scared that the fire is dying . . . you turn to people like me.’
‘This is different,’ Jonah said.
‘Oh, it’s always different,’ said Kendrick. ‘You people are never to blame. I’m just someone who’s prepared to do what it takes to get the job done.’
‘I’ll risk my life for this, Kendrick, but I won’t sink to what you’re doing.’
‘Easy to say, Jonah, but the line is not defined by what you would risk. The line is defined by what you would have someone else risk, to achieve your goals. And whether you’d have the decency to acknowledge it and accept your own guilt.’
‘You kidnapped a man so you could torture him for information. What the hell does that say about us?’
‘Oh, I know exactly how much guilt I bear, and I’ll accept the burden rather than ignore the blood on my hands. But what about you? What would you get someone else to suffer, when it suits your objectives?’
Kendrick’s words caught Jonah off guard. What sacrifices was he prepared to get others to make, in the name of what he thought was right? Revivals of unwilling subjects, dragged back to relive traumas in the name of justice whether they wanted it or not. Guilt? His career was one long trail of it.
A trail that had ended with Mary Connart, screaming.
‘And what would you get Tess to risk?’ said Kendrick.
Jonah froze.
‘I saw the way you looked at her earlier,’ said Kendrick. ‘You know she’s the only person with the information we really need. Tell me you wouldn’t want her to do it. That you wouldn’t want her to risk her sanity on the slim chance that she can tell us the way to defeat Andreas. You want her to go through hell, to be tortured. Just to get information you can’t even be sure she has. Sound familiar?’
Jonah glared at Kendrick, furious that he’d try to make the link between Tess and Silva. ‘Tess is ill,’ said Jonah. ‘Either it’s the medication killing her, or the separation from whatever she’s host to, but it comes down to the same thing. You said it yourself. There may not be a choice.’
‘Even if there was a choice,’ said Kendrick, looking almost bitter, ‘you’d rather she faced something that could destroy her, on the slim chance that it’d help us. You’d risk her sanity on a whim. Tell me you wouldn’t. Tell me.’
No matter how much he wanted to deny it, Jonah said nothing. He looked away from Kendrick.
And saw her there. At the door, watching.
‘Tess . . .’ he called, but she was already gone.
44
The atmosphere in the house the next morning was sombre and uneasy. Fresh from a full night of medicinally aided sleep, Never had emerged from his room to find himself in the midst of a cold silence, which became even chillier when Jonah explained what had happened the night before.
The physical chill of the house was more pronounced, too, as the overnight temperature outside had plummeted. Once he’d eaten breakfast, Never excused himself. ‘I’m going down to the basement,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if there’s something I can do about the boiler. Maybe I can improve the heating before we all die of pneumonia.’
Jonah gave him a sceptical look. ‘You’re not just going to hit it, are you?’
‘Not just,’ said Never.
Kendrick muttered inaudibly and went upstairs to his room, taking his laptop with him. Jonah watched the man leave, knowing exactly what he was doing: getting an update o
n Lucas Silva. His mind had been going over it endlessly in the early hours, and he’d slept very little – wondering exactly what Kendrick’s team was doing to him.
Tess sat with coffee and toast, looking even more pale and dark-eyed. She’d hardly moved since Jonah had come downstairs, and had avoided making eye contact with him.
‘Maybe Never’s right,’ he said, trying to break the silence. ‘This cold can’t be good for any of us.’
She looked at him, hurt and wary. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Although I doubt it’s me he’s doing it for. I don’t think Never likes me very much.’
‘He’s a little overprotective,’ said Jonah. He smiled, hoping for one in return. It took a few moments, but he got it, albeit tentative.
‘Because every time I show up, it’s bad news?’ said Tess. ‘I’m sorry, Jonah. If I hurt you. Coming to see you after so many years, then leaving the way I did. I’d hoped it would be a kind of closure.’
‘It was,’ he said. ‘You didn’t mean for things to turn out the way they did. You hadn’t even wanted me to be involved in Unity.’ He took a breath. This was old news; they were talking around the real issue, avoiding it. But it had to be faced: ‘I’m the one who’s sorry, Tess,’ he said. ‘About last night. You were the first friend I had at Baseline. I was a frightened fourteen-year-old, and you made it OK. You’ll always be important to me. I’m ashamed at how I behaved last night. This isn’t your fault, and—’
‘Don’t be so sure,’ she said. ‘I was the first to achieve Unity. I was the best placed to see the dangers that were coming. If I’d been able to integrate, embrace the Elder I was host to, if I’d understood . . . maybe everything could have been avoided.’
‘There were eleven others who went through the same process after you, and before Michael Andreas. None of them managed it either.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But the others are dead. I’m the last. My failure to bond with the Elder within me is my failure, Jonah.’ She paused. ‘They came through like waking dreams, at first – these memories that weren’t my own. Vistas of such beauty, skies with impossible colours. Cities that were inconceivably vast and complex. But most of it seemed like visual noise, things I couldn’t hope to understand. We all thought understanding would come eventually – that we would take shelter, and have time to learn how to see the truth in these visions, and help each other. Then I found out the real truth. That by taking the Elders into ourselves, we’d made them abandon their posts, and the evil they’d vowed to guard was free. I could feel the Elder within me flinch, then hide from it. Its fear was what made the visions turn to nightmares. Absolute terror. Absolute despair. I couldn’t cope with it. Whatever I learned seemed to be so pitiful in comparison.’