Living Hell

by Catherine Jinks

  Dygall was pointing at a damaged door. Through it, I could see a room as black as a scab – its walls bulging with all kinds of strange flaps and knots and protrusions – which was empty save for a large metal toolbox.

  Dygall pounced on the toolbox.

  ‘Quick!’ he shrieked, dragging it under the access panel.

  After a moment, my vision cleared and I joined him. I jumped up on the toolbox, but I still couldn’t reach the panel.

  ‘Here! Quick!’ I crouched down. ‘Stand on my back!’

  He managed it, somehow. Once he slipped, and nearly ripped my ear off, but I was past caring. We were both sobbing for breath, sweating and staring and incoherent. Dygall tore the access panel free with clawing fingernails, doing it some damage. Hot, white fluid dripped onto my neck. Blood dripped onto my knee from my torn ear.

  ‘Quick!’ he shrilled. ‘Help me! Help me!

  ’ I gave him a boost, springing to my feet so that he was thrust upwards. Once he was inside, he backed over the hole – wriggling and scrabbling – until he was able to lean out, extending his arms. I must have climbed up them, somehow. I certainly gave his shoulder-socket a nasty yank; it troubled him for a long time afterwards.

  I don’t really remember, to tell you the truth. I was too frantic. All I remember is the sense of relief when we were finally huddled in that stuffy, dingy, enclosed tube.

  ‘Can you seal it?’ Dygall wheezed, from behind me. ‘Can you close up the panel?’

  ‘I – I -’

  ‘You’ve got to, Cheney, quick!’

  ‘I know, I know . . .’ The panel didn’t exactly snap back together – not the way it was supposed to – but I managed. The leaking fluid was already tacky, coagulating like blood; I was able to use it as a kind of glue. We waited for a few minutes, until it had almost dried. Until it was safe to crawl over.

  While we were waiting, Dygall panted, ‘They’ll be in an air duct, too, don’t you think? Arkwright and -’ ‘Yes.’

  ‘That door closed, didn’t it? The one to the theatre?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They would have had time to make it back into the air duct.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Cheney . . .’ His voice broke on a sob. He began to sniff and choke.

  I couldn’t do anything for him. I was beyond tears, and couldn’t think of a single comforting thing to say, except, ‘They’ve probably gone back to the Vaults.’

  There was a long pause. At last Dygall said thickly, ‘Do you know which direction?’

  ‘I – uh . . .’ It was hard to concentrate. Which way had we been running? The escape had slipped by in a panic-stricken blur.

  ‘I – I think the other way,’ Dygall gulped.

  ‘I think you’re right.’ Reviewing our route in my mind, I added, ‘There should be a junction up ahead. Over the street. We should turn left there.’

  ‘Cheney?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It saw us.’ Dygall was speaking very, very quietly, and I didn’t blame him. I didn’t want to raise my own voice. I didn’t even want to move, in case I gave away our position.

  I wanted to curl up and hide, like a frightened mouse. ‘It didn’t need our wrist bands, Cheney,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So – so -’ ‘Maybe only the samplers need our wrist bands. Maybe the OTVs are different. Sloan said something about scavengers. Macrophages.’ I could hear Sloan’s voice quite clearly in my head. ‘Maybe they just . . . go for everything in sight. Maybe they don’t differentiate between people, like the samplers do.’

  Even as I spoke, I was thinking about Sloan. Sloan had run away. He had left us. Not that he could have done much to help – the OTV would have grabbed him, if he had – but still I couldn’t get that image out of my head: the image of Sloan jumping through the door to the theatre. I remembered his comment in the Vaults, too, when he had described himself as ‘expendable’. We all are, to some degree, except Quenby and Arkwright. Those had been his exact words.

  Surely he hadn’t decided that I was expendable? And Dygall too?

  No; I rejected the notion in horror. No – Sloan wouldn’t have left us if he hadn’t been forced to. He was a First Shifter; he had a responsibility. He would have tried to rescue us. He was probably trying to rescue us right now.

  Somehow, I was sure, he and Arkwright would find us again. They knew what they were doing. They always had.

  Not like me.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ said Dygall.

  I listened, but couldn’t hear anything except the beating of my own heart, and the whistle of my own breath. I could feel something, though. Through my hands and forearms.

  Vibrations.

  ‘Someone’s coming!’ I yipped.

  ‘Shh!’

  ‘It might be Mum!’

  ‘Hello?’ A muted hail, from somewhere down the shadowy tunnel in front of me. The voice seemed vaguely familiar.

  ‘Who – who’s there?’ I stammered.

  ‘Cheney?’ A different voice. ‘Is that you?’

  My heart skipped a beat. ‘Merrit?’ I exclaimed, and struggled forward. Luckily, the access panel underneath me didn’t give way; I passed over it without incident, writhing along like a snake in a sock, until I suddenly found myself face to face with . . .

  Haemon Goh.

  ‘Haemon?’ I had to blink away tears all of a sudden. The last time I’d seen Haemon, at his birthday party, he’d been a shyly grinning, neatly groomed, perfectly content little nine-year-old. Now he looked like a different boy.

  Not that he had been injured, as far as I could see. Physically, he was unscathed. But his face had changed forever. It was all eyes – big, black, staring eyes – and beneath the grime and goo, it was devoid of hope.

  ‘Cheney!’ cried Merrit. She was right behind Haemon; I caught a glimpse of her collar-spot, flashing about as she moved. ‘Oh, Cheney . . . oh, Cheney . . .’

  ‘What happened to your ear?’ Haemon whispered.

  ‘Nothing.’ I realised, suddenly, that my ear hurt. But I dismissed the fact without interest. It wasn’t important. ‘Who else is with you?’

  ‘No one,’ Merrit quavered, and stopped abruptly. I think she had lost the power of speech for a moment. But she cleared her throat, at last, and went on. ‘Who’s that behind you?’

  ‘Dygall.’

  ‘Hello, Dygall,’ said Haemon, in a dull tone.

  ‘Hello, Haemon. I figured you’d be in here somewhere.’

  ‘Did you?’ It surprised me to hear this. If I could have turned around, I would have. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Haemon’s the air-duct master,’ Dygall wearily replied. ‘Didn’t you know? He used to spend all his free time in the ducts.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Sure. Where do you think I got the idea from?’

  I stared at Haemon, who stared back at me. Merrit said, ‘If it wasn’t for Haemon . . .’ and trailed off again, sniffing.

  ‘I bet Haemon knows exactly where we are,’ Dygall continued, with a muffled sigh. ‘Don’t you, Haemon?’

  Haemon nodded. I realised that he was on his hands and knees – that he was small enough to turn around inside the air duct. I asked him where he was going, and his bottom lip began to tremble. It was Merrit who finally answered.

  ‘We didn’t know where to go,’ she replied. ‘We . . .

  we . . . oh, Cheney, it was so awful . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We had to get out -’ ‘You should cut off your wrist bands,’ I interrupted, and heard Dygall’s scornful sniff. ‘It’s still worth trying, Dygall!’ I said sharply.

  ‘Why?’ he growled. ‘That OTV went for us anyway.’

  ‘But the samplers didn’t.’

  ‘Arkwright was wrong.’

  ‘He was not!’ Arkwright couldn’t be wrong. The very idea made my blood run cold. ‘CAIP’s still got our details on file, remember? It knows what a human being is. Even if it can’t recognise
individuals, it can still send an OTV after us all! Arkwright wasn’t wrong. If we can wipe all references to human beings from CAIP’s memory, we’ll be all right. We will.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Merrit, and I tried to explain. I tried to explain about the wrist bands, and the samplers, and the scent pellets, and the On-board Transport Vehicles. I didn’t mention Zennor. I didn’t mention Sadira. I told Merrit that Dygall and I were searching for

  Arkwright, Yestin, my mother, my father and Sloan. We had become separated, I said. But they couldn’t be far away.

  ‘You should come with us,’ I concluded, and Merrit said, ‘Where to?’

  That stumped me. I wasn’t sure. Back to MedLab? When Dygall spoke, he might have been reading my thoughts.

  ‘We can’t go anywhere near that . . . that thing,’ he said hoarsely. ‘It might bust into the air duct.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ For some reason, I felt that the air ducts were safe from the On-board Transport Vehicles. Don’t ask me why. Blind stupidity, perhaps. ‘Mum probably wouldn’t have stayed around there either . . . I don’t know . . . maybe she went back to the Vaults . . .’

  ‘Do you have something sharp?’ Haemon suddenly croaked.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You said we had to cut off our wrist bands.’

  We had nothing sharp, of course. Sloan had pocketed the laser-head scalpel. I tried to think, conscious of Haemon’s agonised gaze. He was looking to me for help – guidance – comfort – anything.

  I wondered what he had seen. Nothing that I wanted to hear about, probably.

  ‘The Infirmary,’ I finally decided. ‘We’ll go to the Infirmary. That’s not too far from here. It’s near Pathology, so we’ll be heading in Mum’s direction, but it won’t mean tangling with that OTV again. There’s bound to be something sharp in the Infirmary.’ I peered at Haemon. ‘Can you find the Infirmary? I’m completely lost.’

  Haemon hesitated. He looked around, with a dazed expression. Then he seemed to focus.

  ‘If we back up,’ he said to Merrit, in his soft little voice, ‘it’ll be quicker.’

  ‘Back up?’ she echoed.

  ‘To the next junction. We have to turn left. Left, left, right and left.’

  ‘Okay.’ We had a goal now. A destination. It made things easier. It gave me something to concentrate on. With something to concentrate on, I wouldn’t lose control.

  ‘Okay, Merrit, you back up until you reach the next junction,’ I said. ‘Then keep backing, and let Haemon turn left first – Haemon, then me, then Dygall. Then you can go. You can bring up the rear. Okay?’

  ‘O-okay. But -’

  ‘Haemon, when we reach the right access panel, don’t open it up. Just pass straight over it, and I’ll open it up. I’m the one who’ll be going down. Just me.’

  ‘But -’

  ‘Just me, Dygall. I’m the oldest. It’s my job.’ Even so, the thought of trying to fill Sloan’s shoes made my stomach lurch. I had never been a leader. I didn’t think I was made that way. ‘If there’s no one in the Infirmary, I’ll come straight back up again with whatever sharp instrument I can find,’ I continued, ‘and after we cut off the wrist bands, we’ll press on to the Vaults. Maybe even to BioLab.

  We’ll keep going until we find the others. Agreed?’

  There was a pause. At last Haemon nodded solemnly.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Merrit.

  ‘Dygall?’ I gave him a shove with my foot.

  ‘Well . . . I guess,’ he muttered. ‘But what if something goes for you in the Infirmary? You’ll need help then.’

  ‘No I won’t.’

  ‘Yes you will.’

  ‘All right, Dygall.’ I wasn’t about to argue. ‘If something goes for me, I want you to jump down and stick your tongue out at it. It’s about all you can do, and I’m sure it’ll really, really help.’

  ‘Very funny,’ he spat.

  ‘Or maybe you can just, like, throw yourself into its mouth. So it doesn’t eat me. That’s the only alternative.’

  ‘Not if we had a few weapons. If we had proper weapons -’ ‘Well we don’t. Not yet.’ Knowing that I had been a bit harsh, I added, ‘But it’s on my list, okay? It’s something we’ll look for. Definitely. Now.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Are we ready to go?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Merrit.

  ‘Yes,’ said Haemon.

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dygall.

  And we began to move.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  It didn’t take us long to reach the Infirmary. When we did, I thumped away at the access panel until I pushed it open. Then I stuck my head through the gap to have a good, long look around.

  To my relief, I saw that every door in sight was sealed shut, undamaged. There were no scent pellets zooming about – just the room’s original complement of samplers. They worried me, but not much. Though we couldn’t really be certain of anything, I was fairly sure that samplers were harmless to anyone who hadn’t been scent-bombed first.

  I recognised the room, despite all the changes that had taken place. It was part of the High Dependency Unit. I had been there before, when I was visiting Yestin – years ago, during one of his bad spells. I remembered how Caromy had been sitting at his bedside; she often spent time with him when he was sick, and would stay with him for hours, chatting, reading, and even (sometimes) singing. She had looked up and smiled at me, as if she couldn’t have imagined a more welcome sight. And I’ve never forgotten the way it made me feel, because in many ways it was like a mimexis moment in real life: a moment of sunlight and fireworks and vivid, burning colours.

  I fell for her then. When I was only fourteen.

  But there wasn’t any point dwelling on the past.

  So I returned to the present, and scanned the room for something useful. Though the walls and floor were now a tangle of huge, ropy veins – though the quarantine pods were now fluid-filled cysts – some of the equipment had remained untouched. Drugs were piled high on a metal tray. A wheeled trolley, containing all kinds of promising drawers, had been released from its floor grips. Crumpled insulation sheets were piled in one corner.

  ‘This looks good,’ I observed. ‘This looks very good.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Dygall, behind me.

  ‘Positive. It’s sealed up. The door can’t have been opened since the red alert.’

  ‘Then go! Quickly!’

  I went. I lowered myself through the access hole and dropped onto the floor, which bounced when I hit it. I found it very hard to walk on that floor because it was so corrugated and unstable. I must have stumbled, or fallen over, about twenty times. But I managed pretty well, despite this drawback. I found a pair of scissors in the trolley, along with various instruments that were probably gas-jet hypodermics or molecular deconstructors or something – I didn’t know, so I decided not to touch them. The scissors, I realised, would be just as effective, and far easier to use. After I’d passed them up to Dygall, I examined the food dispenser, which was still vaguely recognisable. What I mean is, there was still a definite serving hatch, and a sort of menu pad – though the input key was the only real console feature left. (It had turned into something not unlike a giant wart.) When I pressed it, however, nothing happened.

  ‘Damn,’ I said.

  ‘Cheney!’ It was Dygall. His red face was hanging out of the access hole. ‘What are you doing? Come back!’

  ‘The dispensers don’t work any more!’ I exclaimed.

  There was a faint, confused noise from up in the ceiling.

  ‘Merrit says they do,’ Dygall related. ‘Merrit says she used one a little while ago. Haemon had to have a drink.’

  ‘Well I can’t make this one work.’ Something struck me.

  ‘Shit. The wrist bands! I never thought of that.’

  ‘Never thought of what?’

  ‘Did anyone ever try to order food withou
t a wrist band on?’

  We stared at each other, Dygall and I. Then he said, ‘No one ever stopped wearing a wrist band before.’

  ‘Damn it, Dygall!’

  ‘Look – just come back, okay? Just come back in here, Cheney, please.’

  ‘Wait.’ I’d had another idea. There were several Dewar flasks lined up along a bony bulge that might once have been a bench-top. They were scattered among various cryogenic capsules that made my heart leap. What if -?

  Could it be -?

  ‘Cheney!’

  ‘Hang on, Dygall, look at this.’ I fumbled for the nearest flask, and checked the label reading. ‘Liquid oxygen!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Liquid oxygen! We can use it!’ Seeing his blank expression, I almost screamed. ‘Against the OTVs, stupid!’

  ‘Oh!’ Light dawned. ‘You’re right!’

  ‘There’s only one, though.’ The other flasks were empty.

  There was nothing on their labels except pressure readings.

  ‘It doesn’t give us much . . .’

  ‘Is there any powdered magnesium?’ Dygall queried. ‘Or paraformaldehyde? Or titanium? Liquid oxygen explodes, when you mix it with any of that stuff.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. How can we risk an explosion? We’ll blow ourselves up.’ I hurried back to the access panel, the flask tucked under my arm. ‘With this, we can just unscrew the lid, and splash it around. Liquid oxygen burns like anything.’ I was about to say ‘It’s as bad as acid’, but changed my mind. The word ‘acid’ conjured up pictures of Zennor and his smoking face. ‘It’s a killer,’ I finished, passing the flask to Dygall. ‘Give that to Merrit. Help me up.’

  ‘Is there anything to stand on?’

  I looked around as he took the flask. I couldn’t use the trolley; it would have rolled out from under me. There was a stool, though, and I fetched that.

  I was a bit worried about its stability on the mushy floor, but I didn’t have much choice.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Just stick your arms down. Come on, Dygall – I told you to give that to Merrit.’

  ‘Uh -’

  ‘What? What?

  ’ ‘It’s my shoulder,’ he explained. ‘You did something to it, last time.’ He rolled it in its socket, and winced. ‘You pulled a muscle, or something.’