He hung out of the window, squinting into the wing mirror and saw the private in the rain, shouting at the cars to lock their doors and close their windows. ‘Don’t get out. Don’t move,’ he was screaming, gesturing violently. The sound was deadened through the traffic, his outline blurred by the drizzle, but as he crooked his head and spoke into the radio on his shoulder, the look on his face changed, cycling down from panic to dread, and then into pure despair.
Every gun turret and and rifle swivelled to face the roadway.
And then there was silence.
The private ducked down behind a military jeep, shouldering his rifle, and the other soldiers tucked in behind him, finding cover where they could.
Aaro sat, holding his breath, neck strained against his seatbelt, watching the scene in the small reflection in the mirror, the words “Objects are closer than they appear” riding ominously beneath.
When the first chilling scream rippled through the traffic, the wind, and the rain, from some unseen woman just a little way back down the road, he had to look away. He shoved himself back into the seat and screwed up his eyes until they ached. His heart was hammering in his chest, the plastic covering on the wheel groaning under his grip.
Not again.
He tried to focus his mind, to think of a way out. To think of something. But it only went to one place. To one thing.
Emilie.
Her face shone through the darkness inside his eyes and a tear rolled down his cheek. Their song began to play in his head.
He sang along, mumbling the lyrics as the first rifle shots began to ring out behind him.
ELEVEN
PLAYING GOD
2064 AD
She pushed a button with a manicured nail and the intercom crackled softly.
Gale, McPherson’s newest overly-attractive secretary, drew a breath sweetly between her delicate lips. ‘Sir?’ she said sheepishly. ‘Florian is here.’
The silence that came in response was enough of an answer.
She smiled at Doctor Gertlinger and gestured towards the door. Gale was not her usual jovial self, but McPherson was going through a tough few weeks. She’d had a dressing down just that morning for something trivial, it turned out. McPherson had arrived to find her playing with her phone, a coy smirk across her full and glossed lips, without his morning docket ready for collection. His anger bubbled over and he took out two weeks worth of frustrations out on her. Gertlinger could tell from the colour of her cheeks and the smudges of eyeliner pushed over her cheekbones that she’d been crying.
McPherson's lack of response over the intercom was enough for Gale to know he was still annoyed. Any other week he would have let it slide. But not this week.
The door swung easily inwards and Gertlinger was once again in the corner office with the huge windows. He couldn’t believe it’d been three years since he’d first walked in there.
McPherson was standing this time, his hands clasped behind his back, facing outwards at the city. The morning looked cool, the breeze wrestling over the rooftops whipping steam from their vents. Despite the unseasonably cold weather outside, the office was climate controlled and comfortably warm.
Gertlinger cleared his throat in case McPherson didn’t notice him enter. After a few seconds, Gertlinger realised his silence was an invitation to join him at the window. He did so and followed McPherson’s eyes. There was nothing beyond the obelisks on the horizon but a canvas of grey sky. The bustling city was serene from this height, the skyscrapers cut out in diluted black like watercolour strokes, the morning sun playing on their backs.
‘It really is beautiful,’ Gertlinger muttered, half entranced.
McPherson sighed. ‘Yes, it is. But that isn’t.’ He hung his head and cast his eyes downwards.
Again, Gertlinger followed them, seeing for the first time the source of his weeks-long frustration. Below the window at the front of the building was a swarm of ants. From high up in the office, they were nothing more than animated specks, crawling angrily around the doors. They bustled and chanted and waved picket signs as all decently motivated protesters do. Gertlinger guessed at the size of the group and realised they must be at least five hundred strong.
‘It started with two dozen, and now look at it. It’s been three weeks. Imagine what it will be like in another month,’ McPherson snarled, the disdain clear in his voice.
It turned out there was such a thing as a bad press.
Gertlinger did the math in his head and came up with quite a large number based on the curve of growth. ‘Is this why I was dropped at the rear entrance? I never even saw them.’ He’d been holed up at the lab for months now, barely seeing daylight, let alone protesters.
‘Yes, I instructed your driver to avoid them. After your appearance on that poisonous excuse for a television show, your face has gone viral. Every liberal on the planet has a picture of you pinned to their dartboard. If they’d seen the car, or heaven forbid you getting out of it, they would have smashed the windows and crucified you in the street.’
Gertlinger swallowed. He had been receiving more death threats to his inbox than usual as of late. ‘So what do we do about them?’
‘What can we do? I had security try and move them on, but…’ He trailed off and shook his head slowly.
‘What happened?’ Gertlinger asked, concerned and curious in equal parts. Violence never made sense to him, but he found it interesting how lesser men gave into it so easily.
‘One of them is at the hospital. It seems that the mob has armed themselves, if not with real weapons, then with stones and bricks at least.’ He tsked loudly. ‘And they have the gall to see we’re the ones in the wrong. It makes me sick.’
‘The hypocrisy?’
‘The senselessness.’
Gertlinger sighed. ‘Are you thinking about pulling the project?’
‘Of course not. Our investors are already in it for more than twenty-five billion dollars, and that’s set to double and then triple in the final stages. And for the first time in history, we’re actually running ahead of schedule on something. No, this is still going through, and I’ll be damned if I let a bunch of sign-waving idiots stop us. We keep moving forward.’ In the quiet that followed, a wry smile played on his lips and he turned to Gertlinger, a sparkle of curiosity in his eyes. ‘By the way, how are they doing?'
‘Well. Very spritely. We’re keeping them closely monitored. The first litter wasn’t suitable, but this batch will be perfect, I hope’ Gertlinger said proudly.
‘Glad to hear it. And what generation is this now?’
‘Seven.’
‘And the others?’
‘Disposed of,’ Gertlinger said, saddened.
‘Good. And you think this is going to be the one?’
‘We’re very confident. We’ve done a lot of tweaking, accentuating the traits we want. They’re strong and healthy and they’re growing fast. But by God are they ugly,’ he laughed. ‘I mean honestly, they’re hideous.’ Gertlinger shivered at the image now ingrained in his mind.
McPherson huffed. ‘I don’t care how they look, Florian, so long as they get the job done.’
‘They will.’
‘Then we won’t have any problems.’
TWELVE
THE VEIL
2122 AD
He rapped on the door three times and snatched at his breath.
Thirty-three flights of stairs never got easier. His knees groaned and his thighs burned as he stood in her doorway, his heartbeat settling by the second. He checked his watch and saw it was just after noon. He’d taken the day off. If he really was going to be going through with this “expedition”, he’d never need to work again.
He knocked harder. She’d still be asleep, but he didn’t mind waking her. Not for this. He could hear stirring from the other side of the door. He sucked the last of the smoke from his cigarette and tossed it into the wind. It tumbled down the corridor and bounced into the sunlight beyond in a flurry of embers.
<
br /> The bolt slid on the door and it opened a crack, catching on the chain. Sorina’s sleep-robbed face appeared in the gap. She stared at Aaro with one eye closed, trying to focus. When she recognised him her face broke and she smiled. In the light she squinted, her hair half over her eye. Behind her, her windowless apartment was pitch dark. ‘Couldn’t stay away, huh?’ she rasped, sleep caught in her throat.
Aaro smiled. ‘No, guess not. Can I come in?’
‘It’s a bit of a mess, but sure.’ She closed the door and the chain slid out, clipping the frame.
Aaro stepped and she locked it again behind him. He turned to face her and found she was wearing oversized t-shirt and not much else. She looked at him, still half asleep, but trying on a sultry gaze all the same. ‘I don’t know if I’m ready for round two yet.’
Aaro had to laugh. He was struggling to keep himself from grinning. ‘Oh, you’ll definitely want to jump me when you hear what I’ve got to say.’
She rolled out her bottom lip and raised her eyebrows. ‘Really? And what might you have to say?’ She smirked and stepped closer to him, taking hold of the worn and woolly lapels of his jacket, tugging on them gently.
‘Well,’ he started as she pressed herself against him, looking up through her fringe. He stumbled over the sentence as his mind kept returning to a single thought. Why the hell did she still have that t-shirt on?
He reached down and began pulling it up over her stomach. She dug her fingers into the material and stopped it around her navel. ‘Uh-uh,’ She whispered against his cheek, on her tiptoes now. ‘You had something to tell me, remember?’
Aaro swallowed and bit his lip, taking a step back. He exhaled, his eyes unwavering from her stomach as she toyed with the hem, rolling it this way and that, pulling it tight against her hips, lowering it with every passing second. ‘It’s a job,’ he blurted out, before the words were gone again.
She moved towards him. ‘A job?’ She was still playing with her shirt, the little finger on her left hand sliding slowly into the waistband of her underwear.
‘Yeah, a good job,’ Aaro said quickly.
She cocked her head curiously, but still kept advancing. ‘A job for you, or for me?’
‘For both of us.’ He grinned, feeling his face flush.
Her eyes flashed. ‘What kind of job?’
‘Welding for you, engineering for me. Same as now.’
‘Okay. And how did you come by these jobs?’ She stopped now. Her arms had folded across her chest and her shirt hung crumpled and limp.
‘We’ve been headhunted,’ he lied. He’d been headhunted, but she didn’t need to know that.
‘For what?’ she probed.
‘It’s one job.’ He held a finger up. ‘And the payout is insane.’
‘What’s the job?’ she asked bluntly, wary of the vagueness of the offer. She could tell he was hiding something.
‘We’ll be heading to Stockholm. A million in credit between us, and there’s a house in the suburbs with our name on it. A real house, with a lawn and everything.’ He couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice, but she didn’t seem to be sold yet.
‘What’s the job, Aaro?’ she repeated, more sternly.
‘Didn’t you hear what I just said? A million credits, Sorina. A million. We’d never have to work again.’
‘No, I heard you. But that sort of thing doesn’t exist. No one gets paid that. So I’ll ask again, what’s the job?’
Aaro cleared his throat and stood straight, trying to sound casual. ‘They need us to pick something up.’
‘Courier work? In Stockholm? And they need a welder and an engineer from Oslo for that?’ she asked, raising an eyebrow doubtfully.
‘Well, it’s a little more complicated than just picking it up.’
‘Of course it is.’ She exhaled slowly, waiting for the catch.
‘We have to go and collect a nuclear reactor core and bring it back for the plant they’re building.’
‘Bring back? As in bring back to Stockholm? You said the job was in Stockholm.’ She wasn’t letting him get away with anything.
‘No, I said the house was in Stockholm. The job is in Murmansk.’ He said it a little more defensively than intended. He wasn’t sure how it’d gotten like this so fast.
‘Murmansk? That sounds like it’s in Russia. Please don’t tell me it’s in Russia.’ She shook her head in disbelief now.
‘It is… but it’s close to the border,’ he said reassuringly.
‘Near Saint Petersburg?’ There was a hint of hope in her voice.
‘North.’
‘How far north?’
‘About seventeen hundred kilometres.’
She shook her head and threw her arms down, laughing. ‘You’re crazy. It’s suicide. You know what’s beyond those walls. What’s out there.’ She pointed at the wall emphatically. ‘You know that it’s stupid to even think it’s possible.'
‘But think about the house in Stockholm, the money,’ he pleaded.
‘They’re only offering you that much because they know you won’t come back! The could offer you a hundred million and it wouldn’t matter because if you go out there, you’ll die. Everyone who goes out there dies. That’s why we’re in here! Like fucking monkeys at the zoo, safe in our cages!’ She flapped her arms, her eyes shining and glassy.
Aaro sighed. ‘I know it’s crazy, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life staring through the bars. If we do this, if we make it, we’ll have a life. We could be together.’ He moved towards her now and reached for her hands. She pulled them away but on the second try gave them to him. He squeezed her fingers. '’The woman that recruited us, she told me how they intend to do it. It sounds doable. I think it could work. Will you just hear me out at least?’
She refused to meet his eyes and stared every which way but at him. Since he’d arrived in the city, and since she had too, they’d never left. No one had. There was no need or reason too. Everyone here was a survivor. The ones who lived and managed to get to safety. Aaro had lost Emilie and his daughter, and Sorina had lost her sister and her parents. Out there was death. Old death and new death. It terrified Aaro and it terrified her even more. But even though she wouldn’t look at him, her lip quivering and her fingers gripping his told him that she was at least entertaining the idea.
‘I’m tired of surviving. I want to start living.’ He said it quietly, bringing her fingers to his mouth and pressing his lips against her knuckles. She turned slowly and met his eyes over their hands.
‘I don’t know, Aaro.’ She was barely a whisper. ‘We can be together here, where it’s safe.’
He smiled warmly. ‘I’ll keep you safe out there, and then I’ll keep you safe in Stockholm. Just hear me out?’
‘Okay,’ she nodded, her jaw flexing a little as she grit her teeth, and allowed him to lead her to the bed. They sat and she kept her fingers in his.
He sighed and then began, reeling off the information he’d memorised on the walk over. ‘We’ll take a chopper to Stockholm and then start prepping. It will be a four-day trip. Two days there and two back. Murmansk is in Northern Russia, just across the Swedish border. We’ll go in a convoy of two trucks. We’ll drive straight into the harbour, where there are dozens and dozens of rusting Soviet-era submarines. We move as a team and extract the nuclear core. We put it in the back of the truck and drive home. Simple as that. The trucks are modified, fortified, with solid steel hulls and reinforced run-flat tires. At night they hunker down flat to the ground on a hydraulic system. There’ll be electricity, plumbing, food — everything we need.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘We’ll travel in comfort, but more so, in safety. One truck will carry the core, the other will carry extra fuel and supplies.’ He smiled warmly, rubbing her knuckles with his thumb.
She returned the smile, but tears formed in her eyes. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know if I can go back out there.’
‘We’ll be fine. The trucks have got mounted swivel turrets. Guns. B
ig ones. Steel boxes with dual barrels, fifty calibre each, five hundred rounds a minute between them. Kat says they can tear through concrete like butter, so they’ll rip apart anything else out there like it’s nothing.’
‘Who’s Kat?’ Sorina asked, eyes glistening.
‘She’s heading up the expedition,’ he replied with a reassuring grin.
‘So she’s coming with us?’ she said, perking up, instilled with some confidence that the person planning the trip had enough surety in its success to be there too.
‘No.’ He knew that wouldn’t go over well.
She laughed emphatically. ‘Of course she isn’t.’
‘Hey—’ Aaro squeezed her hand again, putting his arm around her slouched shoulders. ‘It’s a skeleton crew. We travel as light as we can. Fast. Get in, get out, then kick back in Stockholm. In luxury. Can you imagine it? We could get a dog. You always wanted a dog, didn’t you?’ He was still hoping she’d come around.
She sniffled a little and stifled a smile at the notion, turning to look at him, inspecting his face for any waiver, any signal that he wasn’t absolutely sure about it. He gave none.
She sighed. ‘I’m not saying yes, or no. It’s a lot to process, and I need to clear my head.’ She pushed up from the bed and paced a little ways into the room before turning.
Aaro remained seated. ‘You wanna take a walk or something?’
She shook her head and sniffed back what was in her nose, wiping her cheeks roughly with her thumbs. The deaths of her family still stuck with her. It’d be nine years, but she was still raw from it. They were all heading to Oslo when they were attacked. Most of their group were killed, her family included.
‘Then what did you want to—’ He stopped as she pulled her shirt off and hurled it against the wall, her eyes full of sadness. This wasn’t the first time this had happened. She wasn’t a talker and she wasn’t a walker. No, when Sorina got sad, she liked to her lose herself doing this.
‘Like I said, I need to clear my head,’ she growled moving meaningfully towards him. He fell backwards onto the bed and she kissed him hard, his hands moved over her hips and back. He could feel her cheeks wet against his.
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