“It won’t, though, will it?” Johann looked towards Becca.
She murmured something non-committal. Her attention didn’t waver from the laptop.
Unathi sighed. “That was our second goal. Once our immediate survival was secured, we set about trying to understand the stillness. We wanted to see if we could find a weakness in the hollow ones. Once we were certain the stillness wasn’t contagious and that humans were surviving above ground, West and Johann ventured outside and reinforced the compound’s perimeter.”
“I saw that,” Clare said. “The metal on top of the fence to stop hollows from climbing over.”
“Exactly. It seems to work. So far. But making those modifications created enough noise to draw hollows out of the forest. We were forced to do the work in twenty-minute increments over the course of eight days. During that time, Johann managed to capture one of the hollows alive. We brought it downstairs to research.”
Niall’s smile suddenly seemed tense. “That was my job, ha!”
He held on to the edge of the table, his knuckles turning white, and Clare had the sense he was ready to change the subject, but her curiosity was too strong to ignore. “What did you find?”
“Lots of stuff that didn’t make sense.” His eyes darted across them without landing on any one person. “The hollow we caught was growing excess bones and excess skin. Both externally and internally. Unathi wanted to know how much it could survive. I…”
He swallowed thickly, his throat bobbing. The table was silent. When Niall spoke again, his voice was slightly quieter. “I cut it open. A vivisection. It bled, but it survived it. I started removing organs. Everything except the heart and lungs. It was… it was a nightmare in there. Anywhere there should have been fat was instead skin. All festering, some bits growing hair…”
“We can show them your report instead,” Unathi said.
“No, I’m okay.” He rolled his shoulders, and Clare saw perspiration shining on his face. “It survived having the majority of its organs removed. So I punctured its lungs. Somehow, it survived that. I punctured its heart. I set a timer to see how long it would take to bleed out. And… it began healing. It wasn’t quick. But after the first hour, I thought I could see the edges of the puncture wound beginning to knit together. After the second hour, I was certain of it. But the repairs didn’t look either like heart tissue or scar tissue. I took a sample and examined it under a microscope. It was growing skin cells in the wound.”
Everyone else at the table would have been familiar with the results already, but they still listened with mingled curiosity and discomfort. Johann stared at the ceiling, his arms folded. Unathi sat forward in her chair, her glasses low on her nose. Even Becca stopped tapping at her laptop.
“Anyway.” Niall rallied with obvious effort. “If you’ve been out amongst them, I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t already know. When it became clear the heart wound wouldn’t kill it, I removed its scalp and skull cap and began inflicting damage on its brain. Little cuts at first then a puncture fully through it, imitating the type of damage a bullet might inflict. It just kept hissing at me. I became more and more desperate. The brain looked like scrambled eggs by the time it finally stopped moving.”
“The thanites would have been working to repair whatever damage you inflicted,” Clare said.
Niall nodded. “It was a surreal experience, let me tell you. As a doctor, you’re supposed to be constantly aware of risk factors that have the potential to be harmful to your patients. Don’t mix these medications; that could be fatal. Don’t forget to change your gloves between patients; that could be fatal. Be on the lookout for alcohol withdrawal symptoms; that could be fatal. Everything is a minefield. And all of a sudden, I was doing the literal opposite of my job—trying to kill someone—and nothing worked.”
“They can be killed, though,” Dorran said. He’d been quiet through most of the discussion, but his eyes were bright with curiosity.
“Yeah,” Niall said. “For a while, I thought I might actually be dealing with something immortal, as impossible as that sounds. The brain scrambling eventually ended it. I left it strapped to my table for a full day just in case it came back like some kind of zombie, but I’m very relieved to say it didn’t.”
“We were trying to negotiate a second set of experiments,” Unathi said. “I wanted to bring in another of the hollows and conduct more tests. They had to have a weakness. But Niall became squeamish after that first experience.”
“I’m not squeamish. I’m fine with blood, pus, and all kinds of bodily fluids. Just as long as I know I’m helping someone.”
Unathi shrugged lightly. “You were. Indirectly.”
“I’m not some kind of—of—sadist.” Niall’s smile was wide and his voice bright, but he was shaking. “That business… slowly dismantling a human… That’s the stuff of nightmares. And all the while, it was alive and hissing and writhing. The only saving grace was that it didn’t seem to feel pain. But no. I’m done. If you want to torture hollows, you can do it yourself.”
West sent him a sad look then rose and went to the coffee machine.
“We were trying to understand them.” Unathi’s face stayed hard for a second then softened. “I know it’s not something you would have done voluntarily. But we’re all working beyond our comfort levels on this.”
Niall didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue either. West returned from the coffee machine and placed a mug in front of Niall. Unlike West’s own black coffee, Niall’s was full cream and had four packets of sugar on its saucer.
“Thanks,” he whispered, pulling the mug closer.
Unathi turned back to Clare and Dorran. “This new situation is beyond all of our scopes. We’re specialists but in industries that are, at best, tangential to the stillness. Niall is a general doctor and a recently graduated one at that. Now we’re asking him to analyse a mutation that has never been seen before.”
“The web’s down too.” His laugh was shaky. “That was, like, the only thing that got me through to graduation.”
Unathi continued, “As project manager, all I can do is keep pushing my co-workers to do things they were never equipped to. My psychology degree will probably be useful once the stillness ends, if it ever does. There will be a lot of damaged people who’ll need help. But right now, I can’t even do much for Niall, because I have to keep driving him.” She shrugged. “I’m not a good psychologist. There was a reason I got out of patient-facing work.”
Clare wouldn’t have guessed Unathi’s background. She was clearly intelligent and perceptive, but her clipped tone didn’t encourage emotional vulnerability.
Unathi spread her hands on the table. “Becca is a biologist and had some coding experience to keep the life support systems running. Working with Niall, she was able to discover the machines inside the hollows’ flesh while they were scanning for viruses three days ago. We didn’t know the official name for them, so we just called them bots.”
“Wow.” Clare looked towards the older woman with grey streaks running through her hair. “You figured it out? That’s impressive.”
She finally looked up from her laptop. A sad smile lifted her thin lips. “In a way. We didn’t know how they got into the body, how they worked, or how to stop them. I tried electrical currents, low temperatures, and high temperatures. As long as the flesh stayed alive, the nanobots kept working.”
“Your code is helping us jump forward substantially,” Unathi said. “But we are still highly limited in our skills and abilities. If you need someone to design a bunker that will still be running in forty years, my team and I can deliver everything you need. But ask us to treat mutations and understand nanobots, and we’re barely more qualified than you. We have no resources to consult or peers to speak to. If there was anyone else we could pass this on to, we would.” She sighed. “I wish there was someone else to pass it on to. But I suspect we’re going to have to be it.”
Clare looked between the five of
them, scanning their faces. Each one bore some level of resignation. “Can you do it?”
Chapter Forty
Becca took a deep breath. Clare waited, hands clasped ahead of herself. Seconds ticked by while Becca stared at her laptop, her mouth open. Then she released the suspended breath in a heavy sigh. “I don’t know.”
“She’s been like this all morning,” Unathi muttered. “Becca, just give us a status report.”
“Well…” Becca pushed the laptop around so that they could see the screen. It was split down the middle: one side had white text on a black background. The other side held black text on a white background. “Right now, I’m not changing anything Ezra Katzenberg created. I’m just picking through it and making notes. The code is complex. Sometimes it reads like pure nonsense, but then the nonsensical bits actually seem to tie back and work in a weird, convoluted way. I honestly can’t tell whether Ezra was a madman or a genius. And he obviously wasn’t a fan of markups, so most of the time, I have no idea what he’s thinking.”
Unathi raised her eyebrows. “But can you use it?”
“Probably. Maybe. No promises.” Becca picked up her pen and used it to point at Dorran. “We know the detonation code works in some form or another because of what it did to Dorran. But that’s the question: what did it do to him? We’re assuming it destroyed his thanites—but we didn’t have enough time to take blood samples to make sure. And even if it destroyed the thanites perfectly, we don’t know what other damage it might have caused in the process.”
“You had a whole host of issues when you arrived,” Niall said, nodding to Dorran. “I was honestly surprised you were still alive. The worst was advanced sepsis, which may have been sparked by the code or may have come from any of several infected wounds. You had a low temperature and extremely low blood pressure. It’s very likely there were other complications—I saw signs of massive organ failures, and there could have been clots, haemorrhages, or damage to your lungs too. But this trial version of the ship wasn’t intended to be a medical centre, and we don’t have any imaging equipment onboard. I thought your best chance of survival would be to get some of the thanites back into you, so that’s what I focussed on.”
“With the transfusions,” Clare said, nodding to Niall. “Thank you, by the way.”
He shrugged, looking pleased. “You should thank Johann and West. They donated their blood, since they were the only ones here who matched. Two units apiece.”
Clare blinked, surprised. Johann had appeared so hostile that she was shocked he’d agreed to the transfusion. “Thank you both. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
“Yes, thank you,” Dorran echoed.
West beamed. Johann grunted and raised one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.
Becca continued, “Without any test results, all we have to go on are Niall’s theories and Dorran’s description of how he felt. He said he was unwell from the moment the code was tested on him, so we can assume it had harmful side effects. We just don’t know what. And, unfortunately, he survived, so we couldn’t perform an autopsy.”
Dorran made a faint noise as he tried to stifle his laughter. He shot Clare a grin. “Unfortunately.”
“Oh.” Becca scowled. “Sorry, that wasn’t what I meant.”
He shook his head, still smiling. “It’s fine.”
“Regardless, without knowing what damage was caused by the code, I won’t know what to do to mitigate it. And I can’t even talk to Ezra Katzenberg to get any insight. Working on this code… It isn’t like looking at a building plan, where you can clearly see what was envisioned and what’s been implemented to make it happen. This is more like… trying to add the finishing touches to an artist’s masterpiece when you yourself struggle to draw stick figures.”
Unathi leaned back in her chair, her lips tight. “And there isn’t any room for mistakes.”
“None whatsoever. It’s literally life or death for every remaining human. I wish there was some way to only detonate the thanites in hollows and not touch the ones in human hosts, but that’s not how the code is written. It’s all or nothing.”
“What happens if we do nothing?” Unathi asked.
Clare realised the older woman was looking at her. She licked her lips. “I’m sorry. I really don’t know much about any of this.”
Unathi gestured lightly. “I only ask because, out of everyone at this table, the two of you have the most experience. You’ve travelled the outside world. You connected with other survivors, hid from the hollow ones, and sought out supplies. These are experiences none of us have. With what you’ve seen, what do you think the outcome would be if we never used the code?”
They were all watching her, expectant, curious. I see what she meant about all of us being underqualified. We’re the blind leading the blind.
“Ezra said the mutations would eventually destroy their hosts.” Clare spoke carefully. “But he also said it would take at least twenty years for the last of them to die. That’s a long time to co-exist with a near-invincible predator.”
Johann tapped the desk to get her attention. “If the mutations grow worse with time, will humans eventually start changing too? We all have these, these, uh, robots living in us. Will they be trying to turn us into monsters, just at a slower pace?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
West chuckled. “Worried about your toenails again?”
“I’m telling you, I trimmed them just last week—”
Unathi held up her hand to silence them. She kept her gaze levelled at Clare. “The hollow ones can be killed, though. Humanity could regroup and begin to eliminate them. It wouldn’t necessarily take twenty years to live freely again.”
“Unless they eliminate us first,” West said.
Clare thought of everything she’d seen. Owen, the man driving his daughters up and down the country as he tried to find a secure home for them. The way rural farmhouses had been cleared out of their necessities, forcing survivors to travel into the more dangerous, more populated towns. The safe havens that Beth had been afraid of, that welcomed any travellers with supplies to trade. She chewed her lip. “My sister, Beth, thought fuel supplies would run out within the next one or two months. Without fuel, there’s no way to keep the lights on, and that’s one of the few things hollows fear. And you’d need to keep the hollows away to begin producing necessities. Food could probably be grown inside compounds, but I can’t see a way to mine for minerals or cut down wood for construction without being vulnerable to the hollows. Most of what we need would have to be scavenged from towns, and as long as we keep doing that, our numbers are going to inevitably drop.”
“How many humans are out there?” Niall asked.
“I don’t know. Not many.”
Unathi asked, “Enough to feasibly win in a war against the hollows?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
The table was quiet for a moment. Then Johann shifted in his seat, looking frustrated. “Sounds like it’s a roll of the dice whichever way we go. Do nothing, and we might slowly die out. Use the code, and it might turn into an instant kill for everyone still out there.”
Unathi hadn’t taken her eyes off Clare. “Do you think humanity could weather the storm for five or ten years, until the hollows’ numbers are depleted enough that we could begin rebuilding?”
“Maybe.” Clare looked up at Dorran.
He seemed lost in thought, twirling his fork lightly in one hand even though his bowl was empty. He gave a grim smile in return. “We are less than two months into the most catastrophic loss of life the world has ever experienced. It is hard to predict how we will recover, but I have the unpleasant sense that our challenges are still in their early days. Currently, the greatest risk comes from the hollows. But I am concerned for how the population will handle the escalating risks posed by human-to-human violence, starvation, malnutrition, and exposure.”
Unathi, eyes narrowed in thought, nodded. “Becca, your sole responsibil
ity from here on out is to work on the code. Please try your best.”
“I can convert a room to an isolation chamber,” Niall said. “We can test the code on one of us before releasing it to the rest of the world.”
“Good. But testing will have to be limited. With only five members, we cannot rely on blood transfusions to save us from side effects.”
“That brings us back to our earlier topic.” Johann pointedly stared towards Clare and Dorran.
Becca dragged her laptop back towards herself and put her head down. Niall looked uncomfortable, and West downed the last of his coffee.
“Yes.” Unathi picked at an invisible speck of dust on the table. “Clare, Dorran, we need to decide what to do with you.”
“The ship can’t carry the extra strain.” Johann shrugged. “It’s nothing personal. We just can’t afford it.”
They assume we want to stay. Clare opened her mouth then closed it again. Do we?
She’d been so focussed on reaching Evandale that she hadn’t thought about what would happen once they dropped off the USB. In the back of her mind, she’d pictured them ending back at Winterbourne, Dorran’s home. That was where everything had started; it had seemed natural that it was where their journey should end.
But, suddenly presented with the idea that they could live somewhere else, Clare’s mind turned blank. Did they want to stay at Evandale? Did they want it enough to argue their case, to make deals, to beg?
The team had been debating it before she and Dorran interrupted the meeting, which gave Clare the sense that they had a fighting chance of being accepted if they pushed hard enough. She looked to Dorran, trying to read his expression, and saw he was watching her.
Evandale represented an unparalleled opportunity. It was safe from hollows; it had power, not just for necessities but for luxuries. It was probably the closest a person could come to returning to a pre-stillness life.
By all rights, they should want to stay. But deep in Clare’s stomach, it didn’t feel right.
Whispers in the Mist: Black Winter Book Three Page 27
