Paper Children

by James Fahy

  “What… how?” Coldwater stuttered. I have rarely seen the director look stunned or flustered. I suppose being caught red-handed in a subterranean child prison by one of your employees, a zombie and a vampire is enough to put anyone on the back foot. I could see from her wide-eyed expression that she hadn’t expected to see us. She clearly hadn’t known we were down here at all. Which meant she hadn’t followed us down here deliberately. I swallowed hard, fighting down the bald horror of this space. She has simply come to work. Another day at the office for Felicity Coldwater.

  “How did you…” Her eyes widened further still, first as she recognised Allesandro, and then myself. “Harkness?” She sounded aghast.

  Chase levelled his gun at her across the room, the metal glinting in the dim light of the weak bulbs above. “Don’t move, darling,” he suggested. “Not unless you want that up-do decorating the walls there behind you. You’ve been well and truly caught with your trousers down.”

  Her eyes flicked from him to me. I could see her shaking herself mentally, overcoming the shock of having her little kingdom invaded, and becoming indignant and furious. Her lip trembled a little in shock and fury. The rows of kidnapped children lay between us, silent and horrifying. I didn’t recognise any of them. Celeste wasn’t amongst them. Neither was the Cunningham Bowls or the Winterbourne girl. These were children stolen from the Slade. “Harkness…” Coldwater stammered. She swallowed, still clutching her DataPad to her chest. “I don’t know what in the hell you think you’re doing here,” she said, regaining herself. “But this is a breach of command! This lab is high access, and you have no right to be here… I don’t even know how you got here… but… but you’ve broken more Cabal protocol than I care to count.”

  “Report me then,” I replied bitterly, calling her bluff. “I doubt very much that your little hellhole here is on the books, Director. Even Cabal wouldn’t sanction…” I gestured around the room with disgust, “…this.”

  Coldwater narrowed her eyes at me. She looked completely unfazed by Chase’s gun. We had caught her by surprise, yes, but she had regained her footing swiftly. The woman managed to intimidate Veronica Cloves with her level of power, she was used to being respected and feared. My insubordination was utterly alien to her. “Have you lost your mind?” she asked incredulously. “You’re threatening… me? You? I can have you erased on a whim so thoroughly there wouldn’t be a trace record of you anywhere. Even your ridiculous supervisor knows not to cross me. You’ve dared to breach every possible security? Followed me here?” She pointed a finger at Allesandro. “Released my test subject?” she added furiously. “Bad mistake. Very bad.” Her thumb flew deftly over her DataPad, which pinged. “You just ended your career, you insufferable little upstart.” She held up the DataPad like a crucifix to ward us off. “I’ve just marked you code black. Not only are you fired, there is now a city-wide alert for you. You’re blacklisted.” Anger dripped from her words. “The second, and I mean the absolute second, that you step foot outside of this place, you will be detained under charges of insubordination, trespassing, medical terrorism… you will be incarcerated. No one will ever hear from you again.” She was incandescent with rage. “How dare you interfere with my work!”

  If she really had sent that message, then what she threatened was true. Code Black, a designation ordered only by a director, was effectively a death sentence. If I was truly blacklisted, then every member of the police force, every Cabal servant and Ghost, would have just instantaneously have received the alert and command. They would all hunt me. There would be no place to hide, not in a walled city. And only another director of the board had the power to reverse the order. Sadly for me, I didn’t have any friends in high places.

  “Can I shoot her yet?” Chase asked me.

  “Listen to me, you uppity, self-important bitch. You are going to tell me what the hell you are doing with these kids,” I snapped. I saw no reason to moderate my tone. She wasn’t my director anymore. I was effectively a dead woman walking anyway, and right now, surrounded by the unconscious bodies of innocent children, I couldn’t have given less of a shit. “You are going to tell me why you unearthed the Seraph Project. Why you have been stealing children off the streets like bloody Krampus. Why you have been working with a psychotic vampire to kill his own kind all over the bloody city.” I pointed upwards furiously. “Do you even know what is happening up there right now? What Dove is planning? His hatred for humans? And he has them all dancing in the street. How do you think that’s going to end?”

  I was advancing toward her down the length of the room as I talked, passing beds on either side, listening to the faint hitching breaths of sedated girls.

  Just children, lying alone on slabs in hell, trapped dreaming in this dark place as though under a curse.

  “You are in no position to make demands,” Coldwater trilled. She sounded flabbergasted. “How dare you. You honestly believe that someone like me,” she actually laughed lightly, “answers to someone like you?”

  “I’ll make her answer,” Allesandro said quietly, emerging from the shadows behind me. “Do you remember me, Director? I’ve been off my game for a while. That diet you put me on didn’t agree with me. I have a hankering for fresh blood.”

  “Coldwater, we don’t have time left,” I snapped. “Dove is up there right now, and a lot of people are in danger. His fucking ghoul is down here right now, with us.”

  Coldwater’s eyes registered shock at this. I wondered why. Surely the walking barbecue was on her payroll?

  Chase held out his hand. “Give me the DataPad,” he commanded. “I might be able to hack that blacklist code, if I have the original issuing terminal.”

  Coldwater seemed for a moment as though she were going to give it to him. He had lowered his gun as he held out his other hand expectantly. She held it before her a second, then, swift as a viper, dropped her arm to her side, bringing her other hand up. I barely had time to register the fact that she had a gun, a small pistol cupped in her hands, before it went off. She shot Chase point-blank in the chest, sending him flying backwards where he collapsed with a clatter between the beds. The noise of the gun’s report was enormous in this enclosed space. Coldwater threw the DataPad against the wall viciously, shattering it, and turned the gun on me.

  Allesandro moved so fast he was a blur, grabbing her wrist and jerking her hand aside as the gun fired again. I felt the heat of the bullet as it passed my ear, missing my head by millimetres.

  The vampire had his other hand around her throat, and he lifted her off the ground, slamming her into the wall and the bank of monitors behind her, causing several of them to blink into life, showing fuzzy CCTV of various dark corridors of this underworld maze. He slammed her arm back hard, and the gun fell from her hand, clattering on the floor. His face was animal-like, inches from hers, sharp teeth bared.

  “You really are a relentlessly nasty piece of work, aren’t you?” he growled. Coldwater, choking for air, legs kicking helplessly, still managed to glare at me over his shoulder.

  I span on my heel, still deafened by the bullet which had missed me by less than an inch, a high ringing in my ears, and stared at the body of Chase. I expected, in horror, to see him spread-eagled and glassy-eyed, staring up at the ceiling in death.

  He was in fact, sitting up unsteadily, clutching at his chest, coughing and looking thoroughly pissed off. I helped him to his feet, nearly falling myself as he struggled up woozily. He wagged a finger at the suspended woman. “Nice… try…” he gasped. “But that’s not going to work I’m afraid. I’ve already been dead, you see. You can’t kill a zombie you know.”

  I turned on Coldwater, my eyes momentarily alighting on the smashed DataPad. She had made perfectly sure that the blacklist could not be repealed. “Talk!” I snapped “Now!”

  Allesandro was peering over his shoulder at Chase with a tiny frown of interest. I didn’t have time to explain what he was. The vampire still held the struggling woman off the floor, t
he muscles of his arm tensing. I could see he was using every ounce of self-control not to just snap her neck.

  “I wouldn’t give you… the satisfaction,” Coldwater gurgled, half choking. Allesandro lowered here reluctantly, slightly loosening his grip, but still holding her firmly pinned. “It doesn’t matter whether I kill you here or not,” she sneered at me. “You’re as good as dead out there now anyway. You couldn’t possibly begin to understand what I’m trying to achieve here.”

  Chase was rubbing his chest as though he’d been merely winded, although his shirt and hand were both smeared with blood. He looked around the room. “Trying to achieve?” he wheezed sarcastic as ever. “World’s creepiest sleepover?” He stumbled off towards the nearest bed. “I’m waking these kids up. We’re getting them out of this pit.”

  While he began to fiddle with the restraints and IV’s, Allesandro took his hand off Coldwater’s throat and cupped her jaw instead, not gently.

  “You think not talking is an option?” he asked. “You forget what I am.” He jerked her head around to face him. “Look at me, Coldwater.” Her eyes met his. I saw his narrowed eyes peering intently at her and felt her struggle in his hands. Coldwater was a tough, strong-minded creature, but the vampire had just fed. He was stronger. I watched him roll her under his mind. After a moment, her eyes glazed and she stopped struggling.

  He released her from his hand. She stood staring at him, slightly unsteady on her feet.

  “Now,” he said calmly. “You will answer our questions.”

  Coldwater looked from him to me. All the aggression had drained from her face. She looked woozy, a little drunk. “I’ve only ever tried to help,” she said determinedly, still certain of her own self-righteousness. “To find a way, to even the scales. We live with monsters, for goodness sake, Harkness.” She paused briefly. “The Pale threat. I’ve only ever searched for a way to stop it.”

  “A way that involves experimenting on stolen children?” I glared at her. “Are you even human yourself?”

  “People like you can never see the big picture,” Coldwater shook her head. “That’s why you need people like me in charge. People who can make the hard decisions. Give the orders to do… unpalatable things. Do you think I enjoyed giving the green light to fire-bombing Cambridge? I knew how many innocents would die when I did. But I know the value of the greater good. Our city was almost overrun. It was them die… or all of us die. I stand by my choice. By all my choices.”

  “The last time you invested in the greater good,” I said. “Every Genetic Other on the planet nearly died. You’ll understand if I don’t trust your judgement.”

  “Scott and his project were a side-note”, Coldwater said, waving a hand dismissively. “Project Seraph? That was already well underway when that particular mess at the power station fell apart.”

  “What is it?” I demanded. “Really? And how in the hell did you come by it?”

  Behind me, I could hear Chase working along the rows of girls, unfastening electrodes, adjusting substances being pumped into their bodies. There was the occasional low murmur, as though some of them were coming around from a deep and dark sleep. There were a dozen girls here to wake, I’d counted the beds as we’d walked the length of the room.

  “Seraph was an old program,” Coldwater told us. “Dangerous, yes, and at the time, a complete failure. It was spearheaded by PAPER, with both the Cunningham Bowls in charge. After one of them died, the other lost his courage. It was discontinued and filed away. Too dangerous, too immoral, apparently. The company passed to a board of trustees while William fled to his home to mourn his dead wife and nurse his sick child. None of them had enough vision. The world moved on to more…” She laughed humourlessly, “benign ways to solve the problem of the Pale. Redundant and ineffectual places like your lab, with your epsilon formula. Your noble designs to reverse the infection.”

  She looked me over. “Despite what you believe, we’re more alike than you think, Doctor. We both want the same things. We just have different methods.”

  Very fucking different, I thought. “These are girls,” I swallowed. “Young children. They’re not lab rats.”

  “As I’ve said,” she nodded. “Not everyone is strong enough to make difficult decisions. Human experimentation… frowned upon these days. But what a small sacrifice if we could save the world.”

  “Tell us about Seraph,” Allesandro demanded. Her eyes flicked to his.

  “The project was two-fold, not that you’d grasp half of it,” she said. “PAPER have always invested in improving on creation’s handiwork. To make humans better, faster, stronger, healthier. Seraph aimed to heighten the mental capacity of humans to the same level as vampires.” She smiled at him. “We would have all your tricks. It would level the playing field.” She looked over to me. “The other aspect of Seraph was a re-designation of our basic matter. If we couldn’t beat the monsters, we could be as strong as them. Heal as well, die as hard. It involved splicing between species, taking aspects of Genetic Others and introducing them into a human host. We would be as mentally agile as vampires, faster and stronger than Tribals, maybe even have the powers of Bonewalkers ourselves.”

  She looked imploring, as if she were talking to idiots who simply wouldn’t see sense. “Don’t you understand? With this strength we could eradicate the Pale. Genetic Others are immune to their bite, and so would we be. We could drive them back, reclaim the country, free ourselves from cowering behind walls in fear. And most importantly, if we could get the formula right, we could do what you, Harkness, and all your lab rats, have failed to do.”

  Her eyes shone. “We could reverse the infection. We could bring these monsters back… to humanity.”

  I knew Coldwater had a son once, lost to the Pale. She was delusional, perhaps, I could understand the burning urge to reverse that. “The price is too high, Felicity,” I said simply. “You can’t kill all these kids, just to get your own back.”

  “Project Seraph didn’t work the first time around,” Coldwater ignored me, my lowly opinion clearly considered beneath her station. “Not because it was impossible, but because of William Cunningham Bowls.” She looked angry. “The man was… is, a genius. If only he had continued his work, if he hadn’t given up, so close to a breakthrough. But he lost heart after the death of his wife. She had been as brilliant as he was. The poor sap was lost without her. And his daughter was ill. Very ill.” She looked at me pointedly.

  “Melodie?” I frowned. I’d heard she was ill in her youth, but Coldwater seems to be implying more than a weak constitution.

  Coldwater nodded. “The cancer was already moving fast when he mothballed everything, and no one expected the girl to last the year. She was only five years old.” She shrugged. “He wasn’t strong enough to put the world before his own family, his own wants. Seraph disappeared into the darkness.”

  “But Melodie Cunningham Bowls didn’t die of cancer, or anything else,” I glared at Coldwater. “In fact, from everything we researched while looking into her disappearance, she was the healthiest, happiest thirteen-year-old you could imagine. Riding lessons, gymnastics, ballet class. That’s one active teen for a kid who was apparently at death’s door eight years earlier.”

  “Exactly.” Coldwater raised an eyebrow, still looking slightly off-kilter as Allesandro concentrated on keeping her under his will. “Daddy clearly took his work home, don’t you agree?”

  “If this project was put in a dark drawer somewhere, hidden away and never to be seen again,” Allesandro said. “How did you come across it?”

  Coldwater was silent for a moment. I could see her struggling mentally to fight against him. She gritted her teeth, but it was no good. I’ve been rolled once myself. It’s no use trying to resist. It’s like holding your breath, eventually, whether you want to or not, you will open your mouth and gasp, your mind simply overruled.

  “Bonewalker,” she spat with effort, as though she had been trying to hold the word in between her teeth<
br />
  All three of us peered at her.

  “What?” I frowned.

  “A Bonewalker,” she confirmed, sighing. “It came to my office at the Liver.” She shook her head, remembering. “It was late, I’d been working all day, some tedious but necessary funding meeting that had dragged on for hours, as they always do. I was alone in my office, just about to clock off and go home. I was in the middle of my dealings with Marlin Scott at the time. I was already under a lot of pressure trying to ensure that the funding I was giving him for his cure-all project were not going to show up anywhere. And then, out of nowhere, there was one of those things, right there in my office.” She looked at me, nodding slightly. “You know how they can just appear and disappear whenever they want. Silent as the bloody grave. I nearly had a heart attack. I spilled coffee all over my desk.”

  “The Bonewalker told you about the old Seraph project?”

  “It didn’t ‘tell’ me anything,” Coldwater snipped. “When have you ever heard one of those things talk? But it had the files. It placed them on my desk, tapping it with its long fingers.” She shivered a little. “Those things make me as uncomfortable as anyone else. Staring down at me through its blank mask, black eyes like oil. It left me the files on Seraph, and then it took a photograph I have…” she swallowed. “On my desk… it’s of my son.”

  I knew this already. I’d seen it myself. I didn’t really care at this point if Coldwater knew I had broken into her office, but I wasn’t about to interrupt her.

  “It placed my framed photo… on the file,” she continued, looking distant now, remembering. “And then it just… looked at me. It’s like… it’s almost like I could hear it, whispering in my head.” She shuddered.