by Sean Black
‘He’s fully restrained,’ Richard shot back.
‘Like we just said, we’re here to ensure your safety,’ the second guard replied.
‘And I appreciate it. And if you get your rocks off seeing me giving a grown man a full medical, including a prostate check, that’s your business.’
‘Prostate?’ said the first guard.
‘He’s going to shove his finger up my ass,’ replied Lock.
The two guards traded a look.
‘He is in restraints,’ the second guard said, not relishing the thought of what was going to be happening in the room. ‘OK, we’ll be right outside, but leave the door open. If it closes we’ll be coming through it.’
Once they were alone, Richard began the examination, starting with a visual assessment. ‘You took a real beating.’
‘I’ve taken worse,’ Lock lied.
Richard leaned in closer as he checked Lock’s ears for signs of bleeding. ‘You think there’s a camera on us?’ he whispered. Then he drew back. ‘Are you experiencing any pain?’
‘I think that’s safe to assume,’ Lock said. ‘But as long as it’s low level, I think I’ll be OK.’
Richard took the hint and dropped his voice as he continued the examination. ‘Listen, do you know the procedure for this test?’
Lock shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’
‘In your case, yes. I’m going to give you a placebo but I want you to act as if you’re having a violent reaction right after I give it to you.’ He raised his voice again. ‘Could you raise your arms for me?’
‘What about the others? Are you going to test them too?’ Lock asked as Richard placed a stethoscope against his back.
‘I’m hoping to test you first.’
‘It’s too risky. Especially now they’ve got Josh here.’
‘They can’t blame me if the vaccine doesn’t work.’
‘You don’t think it’ll work?’
‘No, I think it will, but I’m not going to play God with these people no matter who they are.’
‘You might not have a choice, Dr Hulme.’
Sixty-three
Josh lay on the bed reading a comic, one for boys his age. Not like that horrible album. He’d already worked out that if he looked at enough other stuff he could push those pictures out of his brain. But he couldn’t seem to get rid of the smell of the place where he’d been kept. It was everywhere.
He glanced up as his dad walked into the room. ‘What was wrong with that lady?’
‘She got hurt in an accident.’
‘It looked like she’d been shot.’
‘She had. But like I said, it was an accident. That’s why you should never pick up a gun if you see one.’
‘Had she been bad?’
‘Yes, but that’s not why she got shot.’
‘Was Natalya bad?’
‘No, not really.’
‘A little bit?’ Josh looked up at his father, registering how tired he looked.
‘She trusted the wrong person, that’s all.’
*
Mareta was sleeping when Richard arrived to check on her, her breathing slow but insistent. He reached out for her hand, shackled to the bed. Her fingers folded into his as she woke. Her hand felt soft and warm.
‘How are you feeling?’
Her pupils dilated and contracted, struggling to find focus through a curtain of morphine. ‘Yani?’
Was Yani her husband? Her son?
‘No, it’s Dr Hulme. I came to check on you.’
‘My leg, did you save it?’
‘Yes, but we need to get you to a proper hospital.’
‘You know what I did to that man?’
Richard had caught snatches from the guards of how Brand met his end. Each retelling was more gruesome than the last. ‘It’s not my job to judge you,’ he said.
‘I had to do it,’ she whispered. ‘He was going to kill me. I had no choice.’
He studied her face, the olive skin, the calm brown eyes, the high cheekbones. ‘Are you comfortable? Is there anything I can get you?’
‘Maybe some water.’
Richard crossed to a sink at the far end of the room and filled a beaker from the tap. He helped her sit up and put the beaker to her lips. She took tiny sips then sank back into the pillows.
‘Thank you.’
Then she tried to reach out for his hand, the cuffs rattling against the bed frame. The tips of her fingers traced a circle on his palm.
‘Help me. If I stay here, I’ll die.’
Sixty-four
Cuffed and shackled, Lock was wheeled through an airlock and into the testing room. Red air hoses hung from the ceiling at intervals of six feet. The two bio-suited guards who’d brought him in made a final check on the restraints.
Lock lifted his head in time to see them go back through into the airlock. Another man in a bio-suit was coming the other way. On his back was a respirator. Richard Hulme looked like the world’s most unlikely astronaut.
Lock noticed that Richard’s hands were shaking as he laid out everything he would need on the bench. Swabs. Sterilized syringes. He crossed the room to something that looked to Lock like a super-charged temperature-controlled beer cooler which was plugged into the wall.
Richard opened it, took out the first of twelve aluminium vials, then closed the lid again. Lock knew that the vaccine had to be kept at a constant temperature. Richard had told him that. A tiny red heat marker on the label turned blue as soon as it moved more than three degrees above. On this vial there were two heat markers. The second had been placed there by Richard to denote that the contents were saline solution.
Richard rolled up Lock’s sleeve. Lock had attended enough executions in his life to know that the person about to die rarely exhibited any great hysteria, either because their mind was already gone or because they’d received a little something to level off their mood before they got into the chamber.
Lock didn’t like needles. Never had. So he looked the other way as Richard dabbed at a vein on his arm with a sterile swab. A near comical precaution, given the circumstances. If Lock was going to die he doubted a lack of hygiene would play any part.
A clear screen ran the length of one wall. He could see Stafford watching him. As the needle slid in, Lock gave him the finger. It was what Stafford would expect. And if Stafford was looking at him he wouldn’t be too focused on Richard.
It seemed to be working. With Lock strapped down and plenty of firepower between the two men, Stafford smiled, waving four fingers in a goodbye gesture.
Richard finished filling the syringe. He tapped the barrel to force out any tiny bubbles of air.
As the needle pressed against Lock’s skin, Stafford stepped forward and pressed a button on the console in front of him. He leaned forward to speak into a microphone. A speaker on the wall inside the testing room relayed his voice. ‘Change of plan.’
‘But . . .’ Richard started to object.
The airlock hissed open and the two guards rolled another gurney in. The man on it was of indeterminate age, his skin weatherbeaten, the rest of his face almost entirely obscured by a bushy beard. He was muttering to himself. The guards pushed the man’s gurney level with Lock and left. Richard shrugged his annoyance and reached for a new needle.
Stafford got back on the Tannoy. ‘Shouldn’t you use the syringe that’s already filled, Dr Hulme?’
Richard picked up the syringe intended for Lock and pressed the needle into the man’s arm. The man closed his eyes with a look of serenity worthy of a junkie. Maybe he was dreaming of all those virgins, Lock thought.
Richard pressed down on the plunger, emptied the contents of the barrel, withdrew the needle from the man’s arm and swabbed it down again.
The man’s eyes opened. A look of vague disappointment crossed his face.
‘Now Lock,’ Stafford ordered.
Richard opened the cooler again, broke out a fresh syringe from its pack and filled it with a batch of li
ve vaccine.
A thin film of sweat settled on Lock’s palms. His mouth was dry and tasted of copper.
On the other side of the screen, Stafford’s face remained neutral. ‘Just think, Lock. You’re making history here.’
Lock flipped him the bird for a second time. This time he meant it.
Preparations complete, Lock stared stoically at the ceiling. The last thing he wanted to see of this world was Stafford’s smug features.
The jab of the needle barely registered against the background of pain his body was already experiencing on an ongoing basis. He felt a warm sensation spreading across his forearm. Too late now to do anything, except wait. He’d thought about sticking to the original plan and feigning a fit, but Stafford wouldn’t buy it, even if everyone else did. Plus, he didn’t rate his acting skills.
The next thing he knew Richard was dabbing at the puncture point, a tiny blush of blood spreading across the swab. Richard secured it with some surgical tape.
‘How do you feel?’ Richard asked him.
‘As bad as I did before.’
‘OK, contestant number three,’ Stafford said, with all the gaiety of a gameshow host.
‘What happens now?’ Lock asked Richard.
‘We give it twenty-four hours and then you’re exposed to the live agent.’
‘And then?’
‘We wait to see if the vaccine’s effective,’ said Richard.
‘And if it’s not?’
Richard broke eye contact. ‘You’ll die.’
Sixty-five
The procession of trial subjects took over an hour to work through. Led in two by two, to save time, most of them proved compliant. Some less so. In one case, a lot less so: subject number eleven laid out one of the guards cold with a devastating head butt, the default method of attack for someone whose arms and legs are bound. Richard had to inject the man in the leg. None of the subjects showed any reaction to the vaccine.
When it was over, Richard joined Stafford in the observation room.
‘Good job.’
‘A charge nurse could have done that,’ said Richard, stepping out of his bio-safety suit.
‘They could have, but it’s important that you feel part of the team,’ Stafford said.
This hadn’t occurred to Richard until now. By making him perform the menial task of actually injecting the trial subjects, he was complicit. He’d breached their human rights as much as anyone else. He could claim duress, but what had Meditech done bar ‘rescue’ Josh from the animal rights people and then keep him safe? Any claims he made would now look like special pleading. Stafford had played his hand beautifully.
‘Don’t look so downcast, Richard,’ Stafford went on. ‘If this does work, think of the lives that could be saved.’
‘And the money you’ll make.’
‘The money we’ll make. This is a collaborative venture, which is why we all have share options.’
‘Am I done here?’ Richard asked. ‘For the time being.’
Richard walked back, unescorted, to see Josh. There was a tangible air of relief to the place now. A collective tension that had built in the lead-up to the initiation of the trial seemed to have dissipated. Even the guards, who’d been hyper-vigilant bordering on trigger-happy since the incident with Brand, appeared to have taken it down a notch. One of them even managed a mumbled acknowledgement as Richard passed.
Maybe it would all turn out OK, he told himself. If the vaccine worked, Stafford would be appeased. Richard could leave. Forget it ever happened.
Clinging to those thoughts, he opened the door into his room. Josh was snuggled under the duvet. He sat on the edge of the bed and reached out a hand to stroke his son’s head.
But his fingers found only pillow. Frantically, he pulled it out, tossing the duvet on to the floor at the same time.
The bed was empty.
Sixty-six
A light above the bed spotlighted Mareta. Beyond that was semi-darkness. The guard detailed to look after her was gone. From what she’d noticed of his breath and the pallor of his skin she guessed that he’d stepped outside for a cigarette.
But she wasn’t alone. Next to the bed, Josh perched on a seat.
‘What happened to your leg?’ he asked. ‘I mean, what really happened?’
‘A man shot me.’
Josh didn’t react. ‘That’s what I thought. Why’d he shoot you?’
‘To save himself.’ She paused. ‘And perhaps to save me.’
Josh’s brow creased as he tried to follow the logic and came up blank. ‘Do you get bored lying here all the time?’
‘Very,’ Mareta said.
‘Me too.’
Mareta turned her head and smiled at him. ‘Maybe we could play a game.’
Richard rushed from the accommodation block, a guard at his side struggling to keep up.
‘Don’t worry, Dr Hulme, we’ll find him. He probably just wandered off.’
Richard spotted Stafford getting into his car. He raced over to him. The guard stepped between them.
‘What have you done with him?’ Richard demanded.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Josh has gone.’
‘This game sounds difficult,’ Josh said, counting off the things he had to do on the fingers of one hand.
‘I thought you were good at games?’
‘I am.’
‘OK, so prove it to me.’
Josh’s chin jutted out. ‘OK then, I will.’
‘So I’ll count to two hundred,’ Mareta said, and closed her eyes.
‘A thousand.’
‘OK, a thousand. One. Two. Three . . .’
Josh turned and ran out of the room.
Having reassured Richard that he’d help with the search for Josh, Stafford ducked into his car and put in a call to his father. ‘It’s going like a dream,’ he told him.
‘Stage one’s complete?’
‘Vaccine’s eliciting no adverse reactions so far.’
‘It didn’t in the animals either,’ Nicholas Van Straten said coolly.
‘But it’s been tweaked since then.’
‘What about Brand?’
‘What about him?’
‘You think word wouldn’t reach me, Stafford?’
‘We had a security situation. It’s been resolved now.’
‘Let’s make sure we keep it that way. I’ve been catching a world of shit from the media over this footage.’
‘What footage?’
Josh had been on scavenger hunts before, but not ones where he’d had to try not to be seen. It was hard. Especially as there were so many people rushing around. The good thing was that he only really had to find one item, although how he was going to get to it he didn’t know. All he could do was try his best.
As he ducked into a recess in the corridor, one of the guards passed him. He had it, right there on his belt. That was no good. He had to find someone who didn’t have it on their belt. He knew where the guards slept when they weren’t on duty. Missy had shown him when he’d first arrived. Maybe he could try there.
The guard stubbed out his cigarette as the man in the white lab coat ran towards him. One of the science guys, a pretty senior one if he remembered rightly.
‘I was just heading back inside, sir.’
‘Inside where? Where were you supposed to be?’
‘The medical block.’
Richard grabbed at the guard’s sleeve. ‘Show me.’
Josh handed the keys to Mareta. ‘What number were you up to?’
‘Nine hundred and ninety nine,’ Mareta said, palming the keys into the folds of the sheet.
‘Wow, I made it just in time.’
‘You did really good.’
The door burst open and Richard rushed in, flanked by two guards. He snatched up Josh into his arms, pressed his son’s head into his shoulder.
‘He OK?’ asked one of the guards.
‘Why wouldn’t he be?’ Mareta sai
d.
‘We were just playing a game. Am I in trouble?’ Josh’s voice was shrill with worry.
‘Just don’t do that ever again, do you hear me?’ Richard scolded him.
‘What did you think I was going to do?’ Mareta asked, the tiny set of cuff keys clutched tightly in her hand.
She waited an hour before calling over the guard.
‘May I have some water?’ she asked, her voice rasping.
‘Sure.’
He brought over a glass. She struggled to sit up. As he put his arm behind her back to help her, she brought her free hand up and jabbed two fingers as hard as she could into his eyes. Her other hand grabbed the hair at the back of his head, pulling his face so close that she could smell the tobacco smoke on his collar. Then she bit down as hard as she could on his nose, taking off the fleshy tip and a strip of cartilage with her front teeth.
Too close to get a punch in at her, he flailed his arms. Quietly, deliberately, Mareta balled up a corner of blood-soaked sheet and forced it into his mouth to muffle the screams.
Sixty-seven
Lock snapped awake, surprised by two things. He was alive, and his cell door was wide open. He struggled to his feet and made it out into the corridor. Empty. No guards in sight.
He stood there for a moment, trying to orient himself. He’d had his best sleep in weeks, even if it was for only a couple of hours. The coppery taste was still in his mouth, but otherwise, beyond the usual aches and pains, he felt fine.
There was a click, and the cell door next to his opened. Like the external doors, it must have had some kind of remote override. A man stepped out, the man who’d been injected with the placebo intended for Lock. He blinked his eyes and reached out to pat Lock on the shoulder, as if physical contact would reassure him that this wasn’t a dream.
There was another click. Another cell door opened. Then another. And another. In under two minutes all the trial subjects had emerged. All of them looked well.
They gathered in small groups, some of them talking in urgent whispers. One of them crossed over to Lock, squaring up to him. Placebo guy stepped in between them, talked to the aggressor. He backed off.
