Whispers in the Mist: Black Winter Book Three

by Coates, Darcy

  Dorran didn’t try to stop her from changing the subject. “I liked her well enough. I don’t believe they intend for us to leave immediately. She wanted to know more about the code on the USB, but I asked her to wait until you were awake. You understand it far better than I do.”

  “Right. That’s good.” Clare, compelled to reassure herself that he was still solid and real, ran a hand across Dorran’s chest. “It’ll be good to meet her properly. And figure out our immediate future.”

  “She implied they wanted to hold the meeting soon, but I’m sure they wouldn’t object if you took a moment for yourself first. We have access to the showers, and they left a change of clothes for you.” Dorran plucked at his own grey suit. “They are perhaps not the most flattering, but they are comfortable, at least.”

  The mirror to her side had been fogged from a shower, but the haze had gradually subsided. Clare saw her reflection and winced. Dorran must have washed her face and hands while she slept, but she still bore the remnants of her drive to Evandale. Dried sweat had caked grime to her skin. Dorran’s blood stained her clothes and hands. It was a small miracle they had let her into the institute at all. “Okay. Yeah. Showering’s going to be a priority.” Clare looked back at Dorran and realised she’d been spreading her grime onto him. “Oh, no—”

  “Don’t worry about that. I am just happy I get to hold you again,” Dorran murmured.

  That was one sentiment Clare could share.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Clare felt more like herself by the time she emerged from the bathroom, running a comb through her damp hair.

  “Hello,” Dorran called. He carried an armful of blankets he’d stripped off Clare’s bed and shrugged down at them. “I was trying to be useful by getting these ready to wash, but truthfully, I don’t know where to put them.”

  “Hah. Maybe we can add that to the list of things to ask them.” Clare wore one of the grey uniforms provided by the institute. It was comfortable, like a more formal cousin of fleece, and kept her warm. The room wasn’t cold, but it was air-conditioned, which was odd in its own right. The institute didn’t seem to be trying to moderate its power usage in any way. The lights had been left on, and the shower water ran hot.

  Dorran dropped the sheets into a neat pile on the bed then offered Clare his hand. “Are you ready to venture out, then? Beyond just answers, we might also be lucky enough to gain some breakfast.”

  “Ready.” Clare took his hand and let him lead her through the door. She’d seen parts of the institute on the night she’d brought Dorran there, but her mind had been so fractured, she barely remembered it. The halls were wide and had a high ceiling, and unlike the room Clare had woken in, they were painted in a softer, warmer shade of white. There was very little decoration except for occasional alcoves that held tasteful, modern pots of thriving plants. Dorran seemed to have a sense of the space as he turned right.

  “Were you awake for long before me?”

  “A little less than a day. I haven’t had much opportunity to learn about this place, except for a brief talk with Unathi this morning. She gave me directions for where to find her when we were ready, though.”

  He took another right. As far as Clare could see, the institute was utterly deserted. They passed an open room that seemed to be designed for relaxation; comfortable chairs were ringed around a coffee table, and bookcases were spaced along the walls, filled with books. The building could have housed hundreds of souls, but there was no sign of anyone.

  Then, in the distance, Clare caught the murmur of voices. They were muted but then abruptly swelled before dying back down again. It sounded like an argument. Clare had a horrible suspicion she was the cause.

  Dorran didn’t falter, though, and he seemed surprisingly calm. They passed a wall covered entirely in a vertical garden of ferns and came to face a meeting room. A glass wall allowed her to see the five occupants spaced around a rectangular meeting table. The woman Clare had spoken to on arrival, Unathi, stood at the table’s head, hands braced on the wood, her glasses low on her nose as she peered at her companions. She looked thunderous.

  “Ah—” Clare tugged on Dorran’s hand. “Maybe we should give them a minute before interrupting.”

  Unathi’s eyes met hers. She raised a hand, and the murmur of conversation immediately fell silent as all heads turned towards Clare. Unathi crossed to the door and pulled it open. “There you are. I was going to send Niall to check on you if you hadn’t woken by this afternoon. Come in.”

  Clare glanced at Dorran. He was watching her, waiting for her lead. “I hope we’re not interrupting—”

  “Of course not.” Unathi was already halfway back inside the room. “This conversation could benefit from your input. Take your seats, both of you.”

  Two chairs had been left vacant, next to an older woman who had a laptop open in front of herself. Clare moved to take one of the seats, but Dorran remained standing.

  “Pardon us.” He dipped his head respectfully. “I don’t want to delay your work, but Clare hasn’t eaten yet.”

  Clare’s eyebrows rose. Dorran had always been reluctant to talk around strangers. Maybe being around Beth had brought him out of his shell. Or, she suspected, the more likely answer was that his natural protectiveness was winning out over his discomfort.

  Unathi clicked her tongue. “Of course. I forgot. Can you eat while we talk?”

  “Yeah,” Clare said. “Definitely.”

  “West?”

  The man opposite Clare was already out of his chair. He disappeared through the door as Unathi resumed her seat and folded her hands ahead of herself. “Well, let me introduce you to my team. They have been eager to meet you. Clare, you already briefly encountered Johann and Niall.”

  Clare made eye contact with the two men closest to Unathi. The bulkier one, Johann, lounged with one arm thrown over the back of his seat, his expression grim as he used a fingernail to pick at his teeth.

  Next to him was Niall, the younger one with curly blond hair. A wide grin spread over his features as he raised a hand. “Hey. I’m the doctor. I mean, I do other stuff too. Mostly cleaning and running errands. They didn’t think they would actually need me to do any doctoring down here, but I guess the insurers wouldn’t sign off without some medical experience on board, so here I am. Talk about luck, huh?”

  A proper doctor. There probably aren’t many left now. Too many of them would have been living in populated areas or working in hospitals when the stillness hit.

  Niall looked young. Clare suspected the insurers hadn’t cared so much about their expert’s experience, only his availability and price. Still… he’d saved Dorran, and that meant she would never stop being grateful to him.

  “Thank you,” she managed. “So, so much—”

  The door banged as the third man used his shoulder to push it open, and he moved through, carrying two bowls. He was large, like Johann, but had a rounder, softer face fringed with a salt-and-pepper beard. Muscled arms placed the bowls in front of Clare and Dorran then laid out a napkin, knife, fork, and spoon, taking laborious care to line them up.

  “Thanks.” Clare glanced at the bowl. It held roasted vegetables, some kind of green paste, and a lump of white substance. They had both been given generous portions. She was ravenous and picked up her fork.

  “That’s West,” Unathi said as the man sank into his chair. “And, lastly, Becca. She’s been responsible for looking at your code.”

  The woman beside Clare had a pleasant, soft face, with streaks of grey running through her brown hair. She gave Clare and Dorran a thin smile and a nod before turning back to the laptop. Her fingers moved blindingly fast as she typed.

  The group wasn’t made up of the kinds of people Clare would have expected to find in a research institute. When she’d envisioned it, she’d pictured men and women in white lab coats, humourless and focussed. But Unathi was the only one of the party who seemed to speak with authority.

  “Are there ma
ny other people living here?” she asked.

  One corner of Unathi’s lips rose into a bitter smirk. “Just us five.”

  Only five. As she took a bite of breakfast, Clare looked around the table with a renewed sense of awe. She was likely looking at the last pocket of humanity in that region. “The building was so big, I assumed there would be more.”

  “It was intended to house many, but we were still years away from that,” Unathi said. “The five of us were staying here while working on a model of an underground habitation for the eventuality of nuclear fallout, ecological collapse, or solar flares that could make life on the surface untenable.”

  “Like a bunker?”

  “Yes but long term. Until now, bunkers have only been designed to hold humans for a few months or a few years. You eventually run into the same problems: no way to produce new food or, even if you have a garden, inadequate nutrition. No sunlight means bones grow weak and immune systems suffer. Mental problems arise from a lack of stimulus. We’ve been developing ways to ensure humans can stay underground for decades, even lifetimes, without sacrificing quality of life.”

  Clare tried for a smile around a mouthful of food. “It’s a lucky place to be when the stillness hit.”

  “It absolutely is,” Niall said. He bobbed forward, switching his grin between Unathi and Clare. “I mean, we weren’t actually at the point of being ready for a long-term trial. This was just meant to be for four months to troubleshoot pathogen scenarios. What would we do if a new, deadly strain of viruses emerged? Would our quarantine area cope? Do we have all of the necessary precautions in place to ensure it didn’t spread? And if it did spread, what would be the end outcome?”

  “No real viruses involved,” West added. His voice was slow and deep. “Just running different scenarios and trying to poke holes in our plans.”

  “Exactly.” Niall pointed at a whiteboard at the other side of the room. It was littered with notes and equations. “Before the stillness, we were keeping score of our theoretical population’s condition. We were only partway through the second scenario, and it looked like we were going to lose that battle. It was a super bug, though, a nasty one, and we were seeing what would happen if there were no doctors left alive.”

  Clare frowned. “Did you have to run these experiments inside the bunker? Couldn’t you have done the calculations from a desk somewhere more comfortable?”

  “We could have,” Unathi said, “but it would have only given us half of the picture. A place like this has so many working components that it’s a fallacy to look at any one element in isolation. Being here and running the scenarios in real time, we were able to seek out complications we hadn’t predicted. For instance, how does the isolation from the rest of the world impact our ability to think rationally?”

  “It must have been an expensive project,” Dorran said.

  Unathi smiled. “Yes, yes it was. We were sponsored by Aspect. I believe they intended to modify our findings for interstellar travel. Underground living quarters could be one solution to surviving in an inhospitable planet.”

  Clare’s heart missed a beat. The name, Aspect, was unpleasantly familiar. “That…”

  “Aspect Laboratories in Helexis Tower was where you met Ezra Katzenberg, wasn’t it?” Unathi leaned forward, hands folded on the table ahead of herself. “Both of our projects were sponsored by the same parent company. I believe that is how he knew where we would be. Our project was one of the biggest and most expensive running at the time, so it must have been discussed in his office.”

  “Our ship used to be a military bunker.” West picked up his coffee mug, examined the dregs in its bottom, and put it aside. “When they decommissioned it, Aspect bought it up and helped us redesign it. It didn’t come cheap.”

  Dorran paused his meal. “Your ship?”

  “That’s what we call her. Our own little slice of life floating out in the wide ocean. While we were in here, we weren’t supposed to contact anyone outside. Preserve the integrity of the experiment. That’s how you phrased it, eh, Unathi? We were supposed to act as though the rest of the world had been obliterated. I’ve gotta say, this current simulation is a bit too realistic for me.”

  Niall laughed, and even Johann chuckled, but Unathi’s eyes narrowed. “I would ask you to show more tact in front of our guests, West. We cannot overstate our fortune in living here. But they may not find the current situation as humorous as you do.”

  West shrugged, picked up his mug, and shambled towards a coffee machine near the whiteboard.

  Clare put down her spoon, no longer as hungry as she had been a moment before. “How did you hear about the stillness? And does the ship have any tools to help you analyse it? Please, I want to know everything.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “We were only down here for five days before the stillness hit.” Niall scratched at the back of his neck. “Because of the no-contact rule, we didn’t even know anything had happened until nearly a week after.”

  “There were ways for people to contact us in case of an emergency,” Unathi said. “But from what we’ve since learned, the world fell apart so quickly that it seems no one thought of us.”

  Through the conversation, Johann had mostly kept his eyes on the table, his arms crossed as he lounged back in the chair. Now, his lips twisted. “Because we could be holed down here for months at a time, Aspect liked to pick people who didn’t have too many family ties above ground. That doesn’t mean we didn’t lose anyone. My sister and nephews were up there.”

  “My parents,” Niall said, and his ever-present smile dipped.

  “I had a husband. Greg.” Becca’s fingers stilled for a second then returned to typing, more furious than ever.

  West returned from the coffee machine, his mug full of a black steaming mix. He grunted as he lowered himself into his seat. “I lost my baby. Polo. A neighbour was looking after him. I’ll never forgive myself for not bringing him with me.”

  “Would you shut up about your damn dog?” Johann snapped. “The rest of us are grieving, damn it.”

  West looked hurt. “I’m grieving too. Polo was my best friend.”

  “Anyway, I broke the rule first.” Niall raised his voice to break up the brewing argument. “We weren’t supposed to talk to anyone outside, but I was lonely and maybe a little homesick. I called my mother.”

  “A little homesick, eh?” Johann chuckled under his breath.

  Niall ignored the jab. “She didn’t answer the call, which was unusual for her. So I phoned my father next. Same deal. I went through every contact in my phone—and I have a lot of contacts—waiting for someone to pick up and tell me what was going on. At the time, I was trying to figure out what would keep people away from their phones, like maybe there was some big sports game everyone was extra-invested in. Or maybe the clocks in my room were all slow, and it was actually two in the morning. There’s no natural sunlight, you know? It took me a while to actually go to Unathi about it.”

  “For good reason.” She frowned at him. “You weren’t even supposed to have a phone.”

  He shrugged and smiled. “If I hadn’t, we might still be completely ignorant and looking forward to opening the doors in two months.”

  Unathi sighed. “I got on the radio. It didn’t take long to realise something was very wrong. Our project managers weren’t answering. I tried dialling into other stations but with no response. That was when I realised it was more than Niall accidentally breaking his phone or reception in our area being cut. Very slowly, we started to pick up on transmissions from survivors and pieced together what was happening.”

  Johann slouched back into his chair, his jaw working. “West and I wanted to go upstairs—open the doors and have a look around—but the other three voted us out. We didn’t know what had caused the stillness. We’d spent the week running pandemic simulations, and they were worried we could be exposed to some airborne pathogen.”

  “And as it turns out, that wasn’t far from t
he truth.” Unathi indicated towards the whiteboard. “Just one that was no longer active.”

  “It must be airtight down here,” Clare guessed. “There would have been thanites in the air, but with only five of you to encourage their growth, they wouldn’t have gotten out of control before the stillness hit.”

  “That’s what we’re thinking,” Niall said. “I’ve been monitoring everyone for possible signs of mutation. So far, we seem okay.”

  Johann narrowed his eyes at Clare. “I think my toenails are growing quicker than they should. Is that a symptom of these nanobot things?”

  She could only shrug. “I have no idea.”

  “Since the stillness, we’ve had two purposes.” Unathi took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She looked tired. “Primarily, we had to protect our long-term survival. That was exactly what this building was intended for, but it was only equipped for the four months we planned to spend here. We’ve had to scramble to make it sustainable.”

  Clare looked around. The lights were all on, the coffee machine emitted a faint hum, and she was pretty sure the air conditioning was still running. “Where are you getting your power from?”

  “That was one of the key elements of this bunker,” Unathi said. “We have a small-scale nuclear reactor. It’s Johann’s area of specialty.”

  He grunted. “It’s a beauty. It can bear the energy load produced by four hundred civilians, which is what this compound is designed for. And not just necessities. Hot water, electronic entertainment, security systems, the works.”

  Unathi spread her hands. “I’m confident, with gradual improvements, this could be a long-term survival solution. Perhaps somewhere we could live the remainder of our lives.”

  Both Johann and West made faint noises of reluctance.

  Unathi glared at them. “You won’t be complaining if it comes down to a choice between spending your life here and not spending your life at all.”