by Darcy Coates
They were circling around the most important subject—the quiet zones. The hollows. Clare did her best to ease them towards it in a gentle way. “Were many of you in the tower when… it happened?”
“Not many. To be completely honest, I was one of the lazy ones who lived here instead of driving home each night. So I was in the tower when everything went south. But most of my co-workers were at home or on their morning commute.” He took a deep breath and folded his hands in his lap. “You’ll want to know how it happened. It’s a bit of a story, so settle in.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Clare leaned forward in her seat. Dorran stayed perfectly still at her side, but she knew he was no less attentive. Peter turned his eyes towards the ceiling. He licked his lips and was silent for an agonising minute as he collected his thoughts. When he started his story, his smile was shaky.
“So, you know a bit about Aspect Laboratories. It liked to pluck the brightest minds fresh out of university and give them eighteen months to prove their worth to the company. All expenses paid and complete freedom to do whatever we wanted, within certain ethical restraints, of course. At the end of eighteen months, we were released if our results were underwhelming. But people who performed well were given full-time positions at the company. Often very lucrative ones. Being picked for the program was the dream for a lot of students in the medical science field. It was seen as the place to be if you wanted to make a difference.”
Peter picked up a bottle of water. He cracked the seal on the lid but didn’t drink from it. Instead, he screwed and unscrewed the top repeatedly. A nervous tic, Clare thought. He needed something for his hands to do.
“Nine out of ten students never amounted to much. Eighteen months sounds like a lot of time, but it’s really not, and it’s easy to fritter away on busywork if you’re not disciplined. Aspect relied on the one out of ten who discovered something or invented something that would go on to make them millions. For a program that was largely unsupervised, it was surprisingly lucrative for them. I was given a grant for my thesis on robotics. I was trying to develop an artificial eye. Something that would provide feedback to the brain. Not proper sight. That’s still a few years away. But my prototypes could feed in a sense of colour, shapes, and lights.”
“Couldn’t you just…” Clare shrugged. “Put a camera in there?”
Peter laughed good-humouredly. “That sounds like a great idea, huh? But the hard part is actually hooking it into the brain. And finding a way to make it comfortable and safe for daily use. While some parts of it were artificial, I found the product needed to be made from mostly biological material. But that’s beside the point. My artificial eye probably won’t ever see the light of day now.”
He sighed through his nose as he turned the bottle over in his hands. “There were sixteen of us in the program at a time. I liked most of my co-workers. A lot of them were pretty eccentric. It’s a cliché to say madness is just the other side of genius, but I think that’s sometimes true. There was one guy, Bobby, who was given a permanent position in the company about six months ago. He created a new strain of antibiotics. Created, not found! The implications of that alone were immense. But the guy was one of the most disgusting individuals I’ve ever met. He kept a foot bath under his desk and used it constantly. But he never cleaned the water out. He just topped it up every other day. Each morning, he came in, turned it on, and poked his feet into this disgusting slime of weeks-old foot soup. We used to joke that the antibiotic came out of that primordial sludge.”
A flash of fondness passed over Peter’s face then faded. “Well, I had one co-worker who seemed bound for great things. Ezra Katzenberg. He entered the program at the same time as I did, and I guess we became something like friends. We used to talk about our projects, use each other as sounding boards, commiserate and celebrate, that sort of thing. He was intensely passionate. And I really thought he’d be one of the ones who got their name into the history books. His area of focus was molecular science. Specifically, molecular cures. You’ve heard of nanobots, right?”
Dorran was silent. Clare did her best to fill him in without making it obvious. “Tiny machines that can enter the body, right?”
“Pretty much. They were supposed to be the future of medicine. Microscopic robots that travel through our blood and tissue and repair a whole host of issues. Ezra got his grant for a thesis on nanobots. When he entered the program, he was working on a model that was supposed to be one of the first viable prototypes. Its whole purpose was to clear blood clots out of arteries. Basically, you injected tens of thousands of the nanobots, and they would travel through the vessels, searching for blockages. When they found one, they broke up the clot without the need for surgery. It would have been a huge leap forward for how hospitals responded to strokes and could replace the need for stents.”
Clare glanced at Dorran. He still clasped the apple as he listened attentively. This world had to be painfully foreign to him, but he was absorbing everything Peter said.
Peter tilted his head back to rest it against his seat. “Ezra’s biggest issue was that he couldn’t duplicate the nanobots with any kind of cost effectiveness. He needed thousands of them for each trial, and the costs were blowing out of control. A hospital’s not going to pay forty grand for one dose of the nanobots, no matter how effective they are. He was working on a few methods to bring the cost down. He just needed time. But, well, Saul got there first.”
“Saul?”
“He was the black sheep. No one knew what he was working on, only that it had to do with advancements in surgery. For the eleven months Ezra had been developing his clot nanobots, Saul had been watching in secret and developing his own strain. He borrowed many of Ezra’s discoveries to leapfrog his own research forward. And he found a way to make them cost-effective first.” Peter shook his head. “He took them to the commissioners and graduated from the grant program.”
Clare leaned forward. “But that’s got to be illegal, right? Couldn’t Ezra contest it?”
“Oh, he tried. I watched Ezra beat his fists against that metaphorical wall for weeks. Saul had been careful about how he adopted the stolen ideas. There was no direct proof of theft, so he could argue they developed their ideas independently. And Aspect… well, if we’re being honest, they didn’t so much care about what was sacrificed during the developmental stage as long as finished products made it to the market.”
Clare glanced across the long room. So many people working so close together, sharing ideas, brainstorming… she could imagine intellectual theft would be not just easy, but common.
“Ezra didn’t take it well.” Peter scratched his scalp, knocking the carefully combed hair askew. “Not only was another man getting the glory for his hard work, he was facing the end of his grant period with nothing to show. And people who flunk out of Aspect’s program tend not to have good careers afterwards, you know? By that point, he only had five months left. The rest of us all thought it was the end for him.”
Peter finally pulled the cap off the bottle properly, took a drink, rescrewed it, and threw it back onto the table. In the distance, thunder crackled. Clare was suddenly grateful that the blinds on the windows were closed. She didn’t want to watch the storm as it grew.
“Ezra spent a week away from the tower. To be honest, I was a little shocked when he returned. I’d thought he was gone for good. But when he walked through the door, he exuded a manic kind of energy. ‘I know what to do,’ he said as he started up his computer. I don’t think he left it for nearly three days straight, survived off energy drinks and coffee. There were plenty of workaholics among our group, but he outperformed the lot of them. It was like…” Peter waved a hand. “Like a religious experience for him. It wasn’t about revenge. It wasn’t about getting a position at Aspect. It was… more. As though he’d been given a purpose in life.”
Clare frowned. “What was he making?”
“I was the only one who knew.” Peter leaned a little closer
and lowered his voice, as though the secret were still too sacred to share. “He didn’t trust anyone else in the office. He’d been burnt once by being too open, and it had made him paranoid. But he told me.”
Thunder rumbled again. It was growing closer. The radiation heater seemed to have lost some of its warmth. Clare shivered and felt for Dorran’s hand. He took it and threaded his fingers between hers.
“It was a step beyond his original nanobot creation.” Peter’s eyes were bright. “It was biological. He managed to make a machine that could replicate itself. It harvested carbon and metabolites from the air and multiplied, growing and splitting like a cell. It solved the cost issue. There was no cost. Give it fuel, and it did all the work itself. That alone would have earned him a career at Aspect. But he didn’t stop there. He didn’t want to just create self-replicating machines. He wanted to save humanity.”
“Save…” Clare’s mouth was dry. She thought she could hear it again: the scratching and scrabbling, like the noise of a thousand creatures clawing at the base of the tower.
Peter’s shoulders sagged as he exhaled. He looked at his feet, his fingers interlaced but held limply so that they drooped. “I knew Ezra. He wasn’t trying to… make this. He really, truly thought he was saving humanity. Free healthcare for third-world countries. Salvation for the terminally ill. He wasn’t doing it for the glory. He did it because he believed it was what the world needed.”
Lightning sparked through the slats in the blinds, streaking across the floor. Clare knew she was holding Dorran’s hand too tightly. “What did he do?”
“He called them thanites. That’s from the Greek thávma. Miracle. They activated our own stem cells and were supposed to regrow and repair anything that had been damaged. Teeth. Lost limbs. Surgically removed organs. Dementia. Anything.”
Clare blinked, and she saw the waking nightmare she’d been living in. All of the hollows they had encountered. Excess skin. Excess limbs. Too many joints. Painfully human, yet so desperately removed from their humanity.
“It went wrong. It wasn’t supposed to leave the lab. But it got out, somehow. On the sole of a shoe. On the hem of a lab coat. Somehow, one of the thanites was taken out of isolation, and once outside, it did what it was designed to do. It began to multiply.”
In the distance, Clare thought she heard one of the creatures wail. She squeezed her eyes closed.
“Ezra didn’t realise.” Peter rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes in a quick, angry motion. “The thanites were small enough to be invisible. Designed to be dormant until activated. Without anyone knowing, they spread and spread and spread. From what I’ve calculated, it would have taken them about two months to populate the entire globe. Blown over oceans by the wind. Carried in airplanes. They are attracted to, and utilise, compounds that humans breathe out. They need carbons to grow, and those exist everywhere, but the thanites are designed to flourish in a human-heavy environment by utilising metabolite combinations that are unique to us. That meant the thanites naturally clustered in places where humans lived—cities, towns, and communities. Then, nearly a month ago, they were activated.”
Lightning exploded directly over them, and the following thunder was deafening. She tried to reel her thoughts back in. When the stillness caught up to her, she’d been just inside Banksy Forest, an area far secluded from human habitation. Dorran would have been near the forest’s other side, having left his family’s caravan hours before. They had both grazed dangerously close to thanite exposure. “So… Dorran and I weren’t affected… because we were in a remote area when it happened. Because there weren’t any people around, and that meant there weren’t any machines in the air to infect us, either.”
Peter’s smile was sad. “Are you hurt? I can see a bandage on your shoulder.”
Clare glanced down at it. The off-white bandages, still damp, were visible under the lab coat. She licked her lips. “What—”
“Take the bandage off.”
“I don’t—”
Peter’s smile remained unchangeable. “Just take the bandage off.”
Slowly, numb fingers fighting against the movement, Clare pulled at the tape edging the bandages and peeled off the material. Underneath were red marks left by hollow teeth. The skin had knit together and begun to scar.
“That’s, what? A few days old?” Peter tilted his head to the side, and Clare was suddenly hit by the impression that his smile was empty, devoid of any feeling. “Normal cuts don’t heal that fast. You didn’t escape the thanites. No one did.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Clare could barely hear the storm through the ringing in her ears. She stood. The impulse to run was overwhelming, but there was nowhere to run to. Sickly heat rushed through her. She staggered to the bin and threw up.
Shaking, sweaty, she reeled back from plastic container and was caught by warm arms. Dorran held her up even when her legs wouldn’t.
She turned her head and saw the marks on her shoulder. A frantic terror gripped her. She dug her fingernails into the healing skin. “Get them out.”
“Clare!” Dorran grabbed her hands, pulling them away.
Blood beaded in the cut she’d re-opened, but it wasn’t enough. She thrashed, trying to break free from Dorran’s hold. “Get them out! Get them out!”
The hollows were all she could see. Saliva slick over distended jaws. Eyes missing lids. Ribs poking through their sides, rubbing against raw flesh with every movement. It was coming for her.
“Get them out!” Her hand was slick with blood, and she wrenched it out of Dorran’s. She twisted just far enough that he couldn’t capture it again then began digging.
“No!” Dorran slammed her into the ground. He lay over her, using his weight to pin her, holding her hands at her sides.
The impact was rough enough to shake some of the wildness free. Clare lay still, face pressed against Dorran’s shoulder, shaking violently as she struggled to breathe. The pain in her shoulder began to make itself felt. She scrunched her face up, but it wasn’t enough to stop the tears.
Peter swore quietly. She heard him jog across the room and open a closet.
“Clare.” Dorran waited a second then shuffled up, resting his weight on his elbows so that he could look down at her. “Focus on me.”
She didn’t think she could speak, so she nodded.
Dark eyes flicked to her shoulder then returned to search her face. “If I let you up, will you leave it alone?”
Another nod. Shame was coming in to mingle with the horror. Dorran waited for another second then loosened his hold on her arms. Clare pulled them close to her body. The impulse to scratch at her skin was maddening. She could feel the machines inside her, floating through her blood and burrowing into her bones. They itched.
What kind of changes are they making, hidden under my skin? In her mind’s eye, she saw hairs sprouting around her lungs. Teeth growing between her organs. Flaps of skin developing around her brain, pressing into it and crushing it.
She clenched her teeth as shivers ran through her. Dorran shifted so that he sat at her side, one arm at her back to hold her steady. A second later, a blanket was draped around their shoulders. Then Peter crouched beside them, unscrewed the cap from a bottle of water, and held it out to Clare.
“I’m so sorry.” He looked like he meant it. Sweat speckled his forehead, which looked even paler than normal. “I was so eager to tell my story—I didn’t even think about how it might affect you.”
“Please get them out.” She’d promised Dorran she wouldn’t dig anymore, but her fingers twitched, desperate.
“You—” He hesitated, seeming to weigh his answer. “Look, it’s not going to be bad for you. You’re not going to become like them. I’m really sorry, but we can’t get rid of the thanites once they’re inside you. But they’re in everyone. Me, you, everyone else out there, even your terrifying friend here. It’s just a case of how badly.”
Peter still held the water bottle out for her. H
e shook it, eyebrows raised. Her throat burned from the sickness. She hesitantly took the water and swallowed as much as she thought her stomach could handle.
“Wherever you were when the stillness hit, it must have been somewhere with a sparse thanite population.” Peter rocked back on his heels, forearms braced over his knees. “You probably have less than a hundred thousand in you.”
Clare choked on the water.
“Which is nothing!” Peter held his hands up, pacifying. “Those blighters out there? They’d have tens of millions. Maybe billions, for the worse ones. That’s why they’re becoming twisted from it. Millions of thanites, all trying to repair damage, all creating fresh damage with their over-eagerness, then trying to repair that in an escalating spiral of disaster. You… whatever you have is small enough that it’s not deforming you. It’s behaving more like it was supposed to. Repairing actual injuries.”
“What about…” She swallowed and sat up straighter. Dorran rubbed her back, comforting. “What about inside. Could it be… growing… stuff where I can’t see it?”
“Eh. Who knows?” Peter glanced towards Dorran and cleared his throat. He quickly amended, “But almost certainly not. If you can’t see anything on the surface, you’re probably fine. Absolutely.”
Clare looked up. Dorran’s chin rested near her temple. His expression was murderous as he glared at Peter. It had been a long time since Clare had thought of Dorran as frightening, but Peter didn’t know him like she did. “Even your terrifying friend there.”
“Look—how about we get you sat up.” Peter rolled to his feet. “We’ll stop that bleeding and get you something else to eat. Something with lots of sugar.”
“I don’t need that.” Clare pressed her eyes closed. “I just need to understand this.”
