Soul Meaning (Seventeen)

by AD Starrling

  The Bastian Hunter grunted. ‘That was a good guess.’ He reached inside his backpack and brought out a slim, rectangular block of C4 explosive.

  It took several minutes to dig a trench in the rubble on the far side of the room. I carefully stuck the bomb inside the crack in the elevator shaft wall and joined the others behind our makeshift barricade. ‘Ready?’ I said tensely.

  ‘Not really,’ Reid muttered. Friedrich shrugged and coughed.

  ‘Here goes.’ I took a deep breath and depressed the switch on the remote control detonator.

  A thunderous boom reverberated ahead of us. Fragments of plaster and concrete filled the room. The ceiling groaned.

  I lifted my head from under my arms and peered over the lip of the trench. ‘Did it work?’ said Reid. The dust slowly cleared. I stared at the wall, a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. Reid rose to his elbows. ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he murmured.

  Where the rubble had been, there was now a hole large enough for a man to pass through. We made our way unsteadily across the uneven floor and crawled into the space beyond.

  The elevator shaft was intact. A few bricks had fallen to the base of the structure but it looked to be otherwise holding. I glanced anxiously from the wounded immortals to the metal rungs rising up the wall.

  ‘It’s a long way up,’ said Friedrich. He met my gaze steadily. ‘It might be best to leave us here.’

  There was the sound of another distant explosion. A fine blanket of dust rained down around us. I looked questioningly at Reid. He shrugged. ‘Hell, we haven’t gone through all of that just to abandon them here,’ he muttered.

  In the end, we secured the injured men to our harnesses and pulled them slowly up the ladder behind us. By the time we made it to the hatch at the top, my arms and legs were burning with effort and my breaths came in short, harsh gasps. Sweat rolled down Reid’s face above me: he looked as exhausted as I felt. Moments later, we reached the edge of the ventilation shaft. The zip line was still intact.

  ‘How’re we gonna do this?’ said Reid, staring from the unconscious immortal under his arms to the tunnel on the other side of the shaft.

  Friedrich grunted and took a thin coil of climbing rope from his belt bag. ‘Here. If you go over first,’ he wheezed, ‘you can use this to pull him across.’

  Reid headed swiftly across the duct with one end of the rope. Meanwhile, Friedrich and I secured the lifeless man to the cable and tied the other end of the rope to his harness.

  ‘You’re next,’ I said to Friedrich once the unconscious immortal had made it to the opposite tunnel safely. The Bastian Hunter nodded and leaned heavily against the wall, sweat and blood streaming down his pale face. I attached him to the line, tugged on his harness to make sure it was secure, and watched anxiously while he winched himself across to the other side. Reid grabbed him seconds later and helped him to the ground.

  I had just locked myself onto the zip line when a violent blast shook the walls around me. A jagged crack tore through the east wall of the ventilation shaft. The ground shifted beneath my feet.

  ‘Lucas!’ Reid shouted from the opposite tunnel.

  There was no time to think. Heart thudding erratically in my chest, I launched myself across the gaping space.

  Chunks of concrete rained down around me from the collapsing wall. I grunted as debris hit the cable. The wire suddenly sagged. I looked over my shoulder, alarm twisting through my gut; the steel arrow was almost out of the ceiling.

  ‘What the hell are you waiting for? Move!’ Reid barked ahead of me. I needed no further prompting.

  Six feet from the mouth of the tunnel, the arrow finally gave. I felt the abrupt slack in the line, grabbed the rope with both hands and fell through empty space. A second later, I slammed into the wall of the shaft. The air left my lungs in a stunned grunt. I slipped a couple of feet, the wire cutting into my palms.

  A thunderous noise erupted above me. I looked past Reid’s anxious face and stared at the distant roof. My eyes widened.

  The entire structure was collapsing on itself.

  I placed my feet against the wall and started to climb while Reid pulled frantically on the other end of the line. He grabbed my shoulders and heaved me inside the tunnel a heartbeat later.

  A large section of concrete and the twisted remains of a metal fan crashed against the space where I had been a second ago. I stared at the falling debris.

  ‘What took you so long?’ said Reid with a scowl.

  ‘I was admiring the view,’ I retorted drily in between coughs. Further explosions rocked through the earth.

  ‘Yeah, well, now’s not the time to sit and reminisce about it,’ Reid muttered, pulling me to my feet. We lifted the wounded men upright and headed into the mine.

  Twenty minutes later, after what felt like a lifetime of obscurity and a silence that was only broken by blasts from the underground facility and our increasingly laboured breathing, a dim light started to grow in the distance ahead of us.

  ‘We’re almost there,’ I gasped to Friedrich. Sweat drenched my face and clothes, turning the dirt that coated my skin into grimy rivulets. My arms and legs shook from the strain of carrying the injured immortal.

  The Bastian Hunter did not respond. His eyes closed and he slipped into unconsciousness again. I grunted and hauled him under the shoulders, my gaze focused on Reid’s back as I took one heavy step after the other.

  The elevator shaft to the upper mine finally appeared in the gloom. Bathed in the faint glow of torches, a group of figures became visible next to the wire cage at the bottom. They turned at our footsteps.

  ‘You must have the lives of a thousand cats,’ Anatole said with a grin, visibly relaxing.

  Bruno sighed with obvious relief. ‘I’ll let Victor know you’re safe. He’ll be—’ The immortal’s next words were drowned by a growing rumble. I looked over my shoulder.

  The shadows shifted behind us. Violent tremors shook the floor of the tunnel.

  ‘Run!’ I shouted at Reid.

  We raced the final yards to the elevator shaft just as the roof collapsed. I pushed Friedrich forward. Debris hit my back. I stumbled and fell.

  Darkness and silence engulfed me as I was buried beneath the rubble. I lay stunned for several seconds, before blinking and choking on a mouthful of dirt. I tried to move.

  The debris above me barely shifted.

  Light suddenly stabbed through the gloom. Hands reached through my earthy tomb and dragged me into a clear space. I gasped and rolled over.

  ‘You know, for a minute there, I really thought you were a goner,’ Reid said somewhere above me. I turned my head slowly.

  He was sitting on a pile of earth and rocks a couple of feet away, his breathing heavy and fast. Blood oozed from a cut on his head and the fresh scrapes on his knuckles. Several feet behind him, the immortals were slowly struggling to their knees.

  I smiled weakly through the cloud of dust and grabbed the hand he offered. As he pulled me upright, something clattered to the ground behind me. I turned.

  The canister from the lab had slipped from my backpack and fallen to the floor of the tunnel.

  Icy fear filled my veins when I saw the dent in the side of the container: the cooling liquid within it was leaking through and stained the dirt a dark brown. Reid frowned and reached down. ‘Don’t!’ I said harshly, stilling his hand.

  Reid’s eyes widened. ‘Lucas?’ he said hesitantly.

  I was dimly surprised at the steadiness of my own fingers when I crouched and lifted the canister from the ground. I opened it and carefully removed the shattered remains of the inner holder. I gazed uneasily at its contents.

  There was a small fracture in the wall of the syringe. As I watched, the split widened.

  Heart pounding dully in my chest, I looked from Reid and the frozen immortals to the cracking, blood-filled tube and the attached hypodermic needle. There was only one thing for it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘He
did what?!’ Anna’s shriek of horrified anger was audible even across several layers of insulated glass. I grimaced and stared through the porthole at the section of the interior ceiling panel visible above me. Victor drifted into my field of view. He was talking on his cell.

  ‘Ah-huh,’ he said inscrutably while he studied me. He paused. ‘How does he look?’ he repeated. ‘Guilty. No, no, he seems fine otherwise.’ A litany of Czech issued from the other end of the line: I recognised several choice expletives and winced. Victor brought the cell back to his ear. ‘I’ll get in touch when we land,’ he murmured. He ended the call, his eyes never leaving my face. ‘That was an extremely foolish thing you did,’ he said gravely, his voice muffled by the protective glass. ‘Brave, but foolish.’ I shifted in my restricted confines and remained silent.

  We were on a private plane bound for the States.

  After I had injected myself with the contaminated blood and burned the remains of the syringe and needle, I sat in the dim twilight at the bottom of the mine and waited for Reid and the Bastians to return. It had taken them a couple of hours to locate a suitable high containment transport pod and the necessary equipment to move me. During that time, I prayed fervently that I would get to see the Godards again.

  Night had fallen by the time we reached the military airfield outside the town of Plzeň, fifty-six miles west of Prague. A C-40 Clipper stood waiting for us on the tarmac; the military Boeing 737-700C looked well used. As the container I lay in was carefully hoisted and manoeuvred onto the main deck, I watched the cavernous dimensions of the plane’s cargo bay fill up with Bastian Hunters and crates of hardware.

  ‘Where’s Reid?’ I said presently, gazing at Victor through the transparent barrier that separated us.

  The Bastian immortal turned and glanced elsewhere in the aircraft’s cabin. ‘I don’t think he’s ready to talk to you yet,’ he said bluntly after a thoughtful pause.

  ‘Oh. That bad, is it?’ I grimaced. ‘How many has he smoked so far?’

  A wry light appeared in Victor’s eyes. ‘Five. And counting,’ he replied. He moved off and disappeared from view.

  It was another ten minutes before Reid’s irate face finally materialized through the glass port. ‘You’re a jackass,’ he stated darkly without preamble.

  I sighed. ‘It was the only option available,’ I explained for the tenth time. ‘We couldn’t afford to lose the virus or have it spread through contact with the air.’

  ‘That still doesn’t change the fact that you’re a jackass,’ said Reid. He frowned. ‘How’re you feeling?’

  I shrugged. ‘The injection site is a bit sore.’ I glanced at the red halo surrounding the needle mark at my left elbow.

  Reid went pale. ‘Any fever? Headache?’ he said harshly.

  I shook my head and felt another wave of remorse as I studied his anxious expression. He rubbed his forehead and exhaled loudly. ‘You should get some rest,’ I said quietly. Reid glowered at me, opened his mouth to say something, stopped and stormed off. Another sigh left my lips. One disadvantage about being confined to an isolation pod was that I could hardly follow people when they stamped away in a huff.

  Anatole appeared a couple of minutes later. And neither could I control the people staring in at me, I thought tiredly. The immortal was grinning. ‘That was quite a show you put on for us,’ he said light heartedly.

  I frowned. ‘It wasn’t meant to be.’

  Anatole’s grin widened. ‘The lady didn’t sound very happy.’

  I considered this. ‘No, she didn’t, did she?’ I muttered.

  Anatole nodded gravely. ‘Look on the bright side,’ said the immortal. ‘The plague might kill you first. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when she gets her hands on you.’ Strangely enough, this thought occupied my mind for the remainder of the flight.

  We touched down somewhere on the US eastern seaboard six hours later. It was still early evening. A star dotted night sky filled my field of vision when the pod was unloaded from the plane; it soon disappeared from view after I was lifted into the back of a truck.

  ‘How are you doing?’ said Victor above me while my steel and glass prison was securely latched into place.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I replied.

  Victor looked relieved at my words. ‘We’re not far from the compound.’

  Twelve hours had passed since I injected myself with the virus. I wondered how long it would be before I started to experience symptoms of the infection. An image of the three dead, bleeding bodies in the Crovir lab suddenly flashed through my mind. I suppressed a grimace.

  The truck’s engine roared into life minutes later. It rolled across the tarmac and quickly gathered speed.

  A dim feeling of claustrophobia surfaced at the edge of my consciousness: my view was limited to the ceiling and the sidewall of the vehicle. Although I was aware that the truck was full of Bastian Hunters and that Reid and Victor were among them, I still could not quell the unsettling sensation.

  An hour passed. The truck started to climb.

  Not long afterwards, the vibrations from the suspensions suddenly increased: we had left a main road. The gradient grew steeper and the ground more uneven. The pod rocked slightly on its metal bed, jarring me along with it. The land levelled out after about a quarter of an hour and the truck braked to a brief halt. We set off again and finally came to a stop several minutes later.

  Footsteps scuttled past the pod and shadows played across the glass port. The doors of the truck opened. From the way it rose on its wheels, a number of people exited the vehicle. Muffled voices rose close by. The floor shuddered as someone approached.

  A face appeared through the window of the transport chamber. It was Anna.

  Relief washed over me at the sight of her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and slightly puffy; the rest of her features was dominated by a severe frown. She said something in Czech. It did not sound particularly flattering.

  Reid and Victor materialised behind her. Muted words reached me through the glass. ‘Has he complained of any symptoms?’ Anna’s eyes never left mine while she spoke.

  ‘Apart from some pain where he injected himself, no,’ said Reid.

  ‘I can hear you, you know,’ I said mildly.

  Anna’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’m not ready to talk to you yet,’ she said harshly. Something drew her gaze. She turned and spoke to an unseen person before addressing Victor. ‘The lab’s ready. Let’s get him there.’

  The pod was lifted from the rear of the truck and onto a trolley. I had a brief vision of a dark, star-speckled heaven before a lintel appeared above me. A series of fluorescent light strips followed. A hundred feet or so later, I was wheeled into a large service elevator. The doors closed behind me.

  They opened again three floors below ground. I was aware of a cavernous space around me as the transport chamber was manoeuvred across the floor. Victor appeared at my side.

  ‘Where are we?’ I said, gazing curiously at the high ceiling.

  ‘Inside one of our bunkers,’ said Victor. ‘Anna and the other scientists set up their lab down here. We thought it would be the safest place on the compound.’

  I drifted past a high containment glass wall and was wheeled through a decontamination chamber and into an inner sterile room. The pod was lifted from the gurney and secured onto a metal-framed bed.

  I was patiently studying the grey ceiling above my head when I detected movement to my left. The bed slowly tilted upright by ninety degrees. A glass wall appeared in front of me as I moved into a vertical position. A window occupied the upper half: several figures were visible behind it.

  Someone punched a code into the access panel on the side of the transport chamber. Almost half a day after I first entered it, the door of my steel and glass prison hissed open on smooth hinges. A sigh left my lips when I stepped onto a tiled floor.

  Anna was the only other person in the room. She wore a white decontamination suit and her green eyes regarded me steadily from behind a visor.
‘Hi,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Hi yourself,’ I murmured. I stared at the wall ahead. Victor and Reid were visible beyond the glass. Several men and women in white coats milled about around them. As I watched, Tomas Godard and Roman Dvorsky entered the outer room and joined them at the window.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ said Anna.

  I looked away from Godard’s stricken expression and gazed at her awkwardly. ‘I’m okay.’

  Anna’s eyes narrowed while she carefully inspected me from head to toe. ‘You haven’t experienced any fever or chills?’ she said insistently.

  ‘No,’ I said truthfully.

  She reached out and lifted my left arm in her gloved hands. Her fingers slowly traced the small red mark at my elbow. ‘Of all the—’ She paused, struggling for words, and suddenly punched me in the chest.

  A grunt of surprise left my lips. Distant chuckling erupted on the other side of the glass wall. I recognised Reid’s voice.

  Anna handed me a hospital gown. ‘Put this on,’ she said curtly. ‘There’s a bathroom through there where you can change.’ She indicated a steel door in a corner of the room. ‘Place your clothes in the plastic carrier inside and give them to me.’

  For the next hour, I resigned myself to being poked and prodded by Anna and the other scientists. After taking samples of my blood as well as swabs from my throat and the injection site on my arm, they finally attached me to a series of monitors.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and glanced at the array of equipment that surrounded me. ‘Is this strictly necessary?’

  Anna paused at the door: she was the last one to leave the room. ‘Yes,’ she replied, her tone still stern.

  ‘Oh.’ My stomach grumbled loudly in the silence that followed. I winced. ‘Could I at least have something to eat?’

  Anna’s expression softened slightly. ‘Sure,’ she murmured.

  The meal was hot and filling. An hour later, Anna returned and took another sample of blood from my arm. ‘Any idea how long I’m going to be in here?’ I said patiently.

  It was a while before she answered. ‘I don’t know,’ she said finally, her eyes meeting mine steadily. ‘So far, all your observations are stable.’ She paused and bit her lower lip. ‘We should know within the next twenty-four hours if you develop any symptoms. The incubation period is quite short.’