Eva

by Simon Winstanley

  •

  Before the lunar shards’ assault, the Warren’s collection of tunnel-linked rooms had existed as a separate entity to the USV. However, during the peak of the impacts, the decision had been taken to break through into a collapsed spur tunnel of the larger underground facility.

  Izzy Kitrick knew that Monica Walker had been faced with an unenviable choice. Either keep the dozen ‘Substandards’ in isolation and risk being buried alive, or open a connection to the more stable USV structure and risk their genetic differences being discovered. As one of the twelve, Izzy still wasn’t sure how she’d have handled it if the decision had been hers.

  She saw Marcus enter the room and make his way through the cramped dining quarters, exchanging smiles and brief words with those around him. He’d apparently assisted Monica in bringing several of the others here, including Sabine Dubois.

  After a last-minute scramble to reach safety, Marcus and Sabine had been forced to seek refuge for months within the USV, avoiding the ever-present drones and surviving on whatever food rations they could steal. Izzy dreaded to think what might have happened if Nathan hadn’t stumbled on them during one of his supply excursions.

  She could see that Sabine was now speaking with Marcus. There was a look of concern on her face, but after he leaned closer and whispered something, her expression softened. Her eyes appeared to dart between his, then presumably acting on impulse, she kissed him. Izzy could see from his reaction that it was not totally unexpected, and he reciprocated.

  “More people watching, Iz?” a voice intruded on her.

  “What can I say, Flitch, it’s a gift,” she shrugged, “You seen Nathan?”

  “Er… try AR1?” he suggested, then left her to her observations.

  Marcus and Sabine drew apart and, after tucking his laptop under his arm, he headed towards the exit where Izzy stood.

  “Just gonna get some readings,” he patted the laptop as he approached her.

  “You’ve cleared that with Nathan?” she asked.

  The emotion that flickered over his face bordered on offence, but it was soon masked.

  “Of course,” he replied, “Back in a minute.”

  She stepped aside to allow him through.

  Something seemed amiss, so she walked back through the dining quarters and made her way along the narrow passages, the sound from her own footsteps echoing off the cold, rough-hewn walls. She passed the intersection that gave access to the lower levels then continued towards Arrivals Room 1.

  Ahead she could see the wooden door of the Arrivals Lounge; a reminder of Cal Dawson’s sacrifice. When the tsunami had hit Dover, the Arrivals Lounge had flooded, but Cal’s swift actions to barricade the door from the inside had saved the Warren. Three and a half months had passed since then and Cal’s plain wooden door had somehow continued to hold back the sea; its frosty, magnetic surface providing no clues about how he’d achieved it.

  On the right, she approached AR1.

  The corridors and walls in the rest of the facility were untreated bare rock. By contrast, AR1 had vertical smooth walls, carpeting and soft furnishings. On one wall, despite there being no window at this depth underground, a pair of thick velvety curtains hung closed. The room was designed to give the impression of a comfortable pre-collapse home. Apparently, the thinking behind it had been to gently acclimatise the Warren’s new arrivals.

  She saw Nathan Bishop sitting on the comfortable sofa inside the room and he appeared to emerge from a deep and disturbed contemplation.

  “Hey, Izzy, what’s up?”

  “Did you clear him to leave the Warren?” she walked into the room, “You know… Blake?”

  “Marcus?” he frowned, standing up from the sofa, “No. You’re not saying…?”

  “Yeah,” she nodded, “he said you’d cleared it.”

  “No,” he shook his head, “No, I didn’t. Alright, let’s hope he didn’t go far.”

  It seemed that her intuition had been right.

  Nathan led the way out of AR1 but then stopped in the passageway to inspect something at his feet. It took her a moment to realise that he was staring at a paperclip sitting in a shallow puddle of water. Following his panicked line of sight, she could see what was wrong.

  The door to the Arrivals Lounge was no longer frozen.

  Thick rivulets of seawater were freely running down the edges of the door frame. Water was beginning to seep under the base of the door.

  “No, no, no…” Nathan began pushing her away from the door.

  “Nate, I swear this wasn’t here a second ago!” she insisted, “I didn’t see a -”

  “Just get everyone out!” he shouted as they began moving along the narrow tunnel, “Is anyone in the lower levels?”

  She was struggling now to remember the faces of those she’d seen a few moments before.

  “No, I think everyone was up there, meeting the new -”

  A sound of creaking wood came from the end of the passageway and the veins of water became thick torrents cascading down the surface of the door.

  “Evac!” Nathan yelled repeatedly as they ran.

  Behind them, came a low, shuddering groan. A long crack split the door from floor to ceiling and a high-pressure wall of water sliced through, dousing the rough rock and low-hanging cables. The content of the Arrivals Lounge continued its relentless, creaking push. With an ear-splitting crack, the door ruptured and was engulfed by rushing seawater.

  •

  Sarah became suddenly aware that the windows of the Ant Farm were now brightly illuminated and for a moment she thought that she’d talked through an entire night. A quick check of her watch confirmed that although it was still night, the sunlight system of the USV had been advanced to become full daylight. Abruptly, the bar’s music cut off.

  “Well, hey there folks,” Bradley Pittman’s voice emerged from the nearest speaker, “here’s a wake-up call.”

  Her father was using the public-address system for the entire USV.

  “What the hell?” she shot an alarmed look at Vic and made quick strides through the resulting commotion towards the exit.

  She emerged from the Ant Farm into broad daylight and saw that people were beginning to wander out of the other buildings further up the street. A slight rumble filled the air then a different voice spoke.

  “This is Monica Walker…”

  Sarah recognised the name as the last of three people detained by her father. The thought of Geraldine Mercer’s electrocution presented itself and she had the horrible feeling that she knew what her father was about to do.

  “… with a message for Mr. Anti-social Networking, standing on the Glaucus stairwell.”

  Blinking her eyes several times to adjust to the new daylight, Sarah turned toward the stairwell and could see that high up on the metallic stairs there was a single figure.

  “I can think of at least a dozen reasons,” the voice continued to reverberate, “why you wouldn’t trust what I’m saying, but I want you to come back to the centre of the USV.”

  The village square, she thought. He’s going to do it again. She fumbled for the radio at her belt and clicked the transmit key.

  “Dad, are you there?” she tried, but the radio remained silent.

  “The Peace Keepers will give you safe passage, so that we can talk things through,” Monica continued.

  An air of confusion began to descend on those in the street; at the mention of Peace Keepers, several chose to return indoors while others set off at pace for their homes.

  “Vic,” she turned to him, “Walker was being held in the detention block, can you get over there and check that my dad’s not doing something stupid?”

  Vic seemed hesitant at the thought of confronting her father, but he gave her a nod and then headed towards the centre.

  “Deliberately putting everyone in danger, is the wrong thing to do,” Monica’s voice echoed out.

  Sarah turned again to look up at the figure on the stairs. Now that h
er eyes had adjusted to the light, she could see that a Peace Keeper drone was hovering a few feet from him. Perhaps this explained why he hadn’t moved, she thought.

  As she watched, she spotted movement further up the stairwell; someone was descending. She knew that the Glaucus Dock was inactive, there should be no personnel up there. A thought suddenly struck her. Where the inspiration came from she couldn’t tell, but it was persistent. Monica had just used the words ‘putting everyone in danger’. There were other people inside the USV that Monica was trying to protect.

  “Wait for me,” Monica instructed.

  Sarah thought she understood: Monica intended to join the others who were in hiding.

  There was a muffled commotion over the public-address system followed by what sounded like a gunshot. A sound that had never been heard within the walls of the USV. The effect was immediate. The people in the street doubled their speed and panicked voices filled the air. Above this noise a new sound arrived: the droning of Peace Keeper rotor blades. From the volume, it sounded as though a great many had been released at once.

  The Peace Keeper that had been hovering near the stairwell figure suddenly made no sense; if there was already a drone next to him, why hadn’t it acted? Before she had time to dwell on the issue, she saw something fall from the man’s grasp. As it twisted and fell through the air she could tell that it was a laptop. After falling for a few seconds, it disappeared behind the roof of a building but, against the general noise filling the USV, she couldn’t hear an impact.

  In a flash of movement from above, she saw the man leap out from the metal stairs and grab hold of the drone’s stun baton. Under the additional weight, the drone’s rotors were obviously straining, and it began to sink towards the USV floor. A floor that gave a brief rumble.

  She whipped around to face the centre of the USV and saw that above the buildings the light had suddenly changed. A second later, what appeared to be a massive electrical bubble expanded to fill the space above the lake and she found herself frozen were she stood. In silhouette against the glow, she saw drones simply falling out of the air and, horrifically, she saw someone falling from the centre of the USV’s artificial sun.

  Abruptly, the bubble shrank and the power grid began to fail. The sun suddenly faded, plunging the USV into a brief darkness before the emergency lighting began to flicker on in neighbouring streets. The only light reaching her now was the ambient spill reflecting from the USV’s dome.

  In the relative gloom of the empty street, she heard the approach of dying rotor blades and turned to face the noise. It was difficult to make out the details, but the figure who’d leapt from the stairwell was still struggling underneath the failing drone as it succumbed to his weight. Amid an explosion of swear words, the drone crumpled inertly into the ground and the man struggled to his feet.

  A light at the far end of the street flickered on and she could see him more clearly. Standing over the drone wreckage, he was dusting off the arms of his black leather jacket. The man had his back to her and was repeatedly waving his arms upward, signalling to someone else on the stairwell.

  “Go,” he was saying quietly, as though his accomplice could hear him at this distance, “Go.”

  Sarah looked around at the disarray within the USV. The man’s advice suddenly seemed quite timely. Clearly the man had found a way down into the USV. If he could get in, she could get out.

  She pulled the cylinder from her bag and approached him.

  “Mr. Networking?” she called out.

  The man swiftly turned to face her. She placed her thumb over the end of the cylinder and held it up so that he could clearly see it.

  “I push this button and my father’s security will be here in seconds,” she improvised, “So unless you want to taste concrete, you’ll need to listen to me.”

  The man shifted his weight uncomfortably as though assessing his options, so she adjusted her grip on the cylinder.

  “Alright,” he held up his palms, “I’m listenin’.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “You and your friend up there have a way out,” she positioned her thumb over the end of the cylinder, “and you’re taking me with you.”

  •

  Mere minutes had elapsed since an icy, ring-shaped structure had formed around the Sea-Bass submarine. The folding, geometric distortion within the surrounding seawater had now subsided, but the ring and its intersecting icy sphere had persisted. The water beyond its boundary was no longer the North Atlantic continental shelf.

  In an attempt to pinpoint their new position, the submarine’s Topography Overlay system had begun comparing bathymetric data against sonar readings. However, a simpler clue had presented itself. Docking cameras below the submarine were relaying an image of a large metallic hatch. The words embossed on its surface read:

  ‘Glaucus Dock - USV3 Access.’

  In an entire ocean of possible locations, Tristan Westhouse knew there was only one place this could be.

  “This is Dover,” he turned to Mat Kaufman, “Right?”

  Mat nodded, “We’re above the UK survival village.”

  “Can we check that?” Lucy Jacobs exchanged a look with Pavna Jones, “We could restart the pattern comparator.”

  “Centre the search on the British Isles?” Pavna suggested.

  “I don’t think that will work,” Tristan countered, “This access point was originally built on dry ground. Landscape terrain isn’t part of our seabed model. There would be nothing for our pattern comparator to compare.”

  He walked over to the submarine’s bubble window and stared out at the ice anomaly that still encircled their vessel; an intertwined double helix, broken in one place by the presence of a perfect sphere.

  “We could just let the comparator slowly run its course,” he said, “but I get the feeling that we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be.”

  The two-dimensional circle-dot version of the ice anomaly had appeared countless times to him over the past few hours. It had appeared within coffee stains on paper, scuff-marks around rotary dials, even within the blueprint of his father’s Glaucus Docking Ring system.

  He found his thoughts turning to his father.

  “My dad named his original capsize rescue system after a Greek sea-god,” Tristan found himself speaking aloud, “According to mythology, Glaucus would come to the rescue of those lost at sea. So…”

  He turned away from the window to face the others.

  “… Are we here to rescue?” he pointed at the Glaucus hatch image, “Or be rescued?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Mat shrugged.

  Tristan nodded, “We open the hatch.”

  ROSE

  21st March 1989

  Capillary action was drawing the red colouring up the rose’s stem. The action had taken a whole day, but Ivan Meznic had been patient; unlike his mother, he’d had the luxury of time.

  They’d begun the experiment together, but she hadn’t seen the conclusion. The disease had moved too swiftly.

  With every second, the flower’s own biology had hastened its own demise; drawing the contaminated colouring through the petal’s soft skin. Despite the dye’s invasion, the flower’s final statement would be one of beauty and serenity. A final illusion that vibrant life was still present.

  He raised the rose from the thin vase and tapped the stem against the rim. Shiny red drops fell and dispersed into the still water.

  He walked the few paces to be by her bedside.

  “This is for you, Mummy,” he whispered and tucked the flower into her still hands.

  He looked at her face, willing her to turn and thank him yet knowing that she couldn’t speak to him again. Somehow she seemed more at peace now than when he’d seen her sleeping; each line of pain was absent from around her eyelids.

  In the same way that the vase of water had given the flower the ongoing appearance of life, the machines that surrounded her had been doing the same. But he knew that their
support would end soon. Soon their intrusive tones would fall silent and he’d be left alone.

  He looked away at his clasped hands and saw a bead of blood on his finger; in laying the flower, the thorny stem had pierced him. He’d controlled the flower’s colour, but now he imagined having the power to alter the rose itself; ridding it of its deathly sting, making it sweeter smelling, more vibrant, stronger. Perhaps if the flower had changed colour faster, his mother would have been able to see it.

  A distant earthquake broke, deep within his chest and he welcomed the flood of warm tears.

  “My dear child,” a soft voice arrived at his side as a hug surrounded him, “My poor, sweet child.”

  Though he hadn’t heard her approach, he knew it was Aunty Dot. Her embrace strengthened and she cradled the back of his head.

  “You won’t ever be alone, Ivan,” her soothing voice connected with him, “I promise. We’re going to take such good care of you.”

  Though his eyes were blurred, he could see that the men in white coats were now moving around his mother. The machine noise stopped and, as the silence rang out, he felt the air leave his lungs. Seemingly without slowing, the men pulled a white sheet over her.

  As the air escaped from under the sheet, it carried with it a small red blur: one of the rose’s weak petals that drifted to the cold floor.

  DISCOVERY

  21st December 2112

  From her position in the Discovery cockpit, Cathy could just see the faint distortion of the background stars; confirmation that there was an active Chronomagnetic Field enveloping the central ISS axis and surrounding modules.

  Within the cupola window, she could see Lana Yakovna, arm extended in a motionless waving pose. Whilst at the Floyd Lunar Complex, Lana had earned a nickname; it seemed somehow ironic that the ‘Ice Queen’ should now appear frozen in time.