Secrets in the Dark

by Darcy Coates

  “Sorry, I know it’s a bit creepy, but it helps save fuel.” Peter’s teeth flashed red in the backwash as he joined them at the door. “The lights are halogen, but I don’t get to choose which floors to keep on. I can light the entire building or none of it, hah.”

  Clare tried to smile in return, but it came out crooked. She’d learned to hate the darkness. Darkness meant danger. It meant being blind, being lost, and being hunted. The exit light was just enough to see her companions, the walls, and the shiny elevator doors at the hallway’s end, but it felt worse than having no light at all. Something inhuman a floor below them howled.

  Peter stepped around them and followed the hallway past the bathrooms. His voice sounded unnaturally distant. “You guys probably want to share, right? This room’s the nicest. It has its own heater and a window. Not luxury, I know, but… well, we take what we can get, huh?”

  The sensor pad beside the door beeped as he unlocked it and propped it open, then he reached inside to turn on its lights. The room was small but neat. A bunk bed stood against the left wall with a minimalistic plyboard cupboard and a desk opposite. The space showed signs of having been lived in at one point; a mug sat on the windowsill, and the wastebasket was half full.

  Peter hesitated in the doorway. Clare thought he looked uncomfortable. She stopped by the desk and faced him. “Whose room was this?”

  He dragged his thumb over his lower lip, his eyebrows tight. “Um. It was Ezra’s.”

  “Oh.” Clare’s skin crawled. She looked over the space again. This time, she could pick out all of the artefacts Ezra had left behind. A shimmer of grease on the edge of the mug from where his lips had touched it. A poster of a diagram tacked onto one of the walls. A stress ball that had fissures running across its surface from months of abuse. Scraps of paper in the wastebasket scrawled with indecipherable equations in a painstakingly neat hand.

  Peter hunched his shoulders and folded his arms across his chest. “Look, how about we swap? You’ll probably be more comfortable away from all of this.”

  Clare glanced up at Dorran for his input. He gave a very small nod, indicating the decision was up to her. “We don’t mind sleeping here.”

  “Are you sure?” Peter shuffled nervously. “I know today hasn’t been a great day for either of you…”

  She forced a smile. It was just a room. The fact that Ezra had once slept in it shouldn’t have made any difference. And from the look of it, Peter was more uncomfortable there than she was. “Absolutely. I’m looking forward to trying out the heater.”

  “Okay. Okay, good.” He nodded, glancing about the place. “There should be some spare blankets in the cupboard. You remember where the bathrooms are, right? If you need anything, I’ll be next door.”

  As the door closed, Clare released her breath and unhooked the ID badge from around her neck. She hung it on a hook near the cupboard and approached the window. Very little was visible below. She turned her eyes up and was just in time to see a sliver of the moon before it was swallowed by clouds. They seemed to be moving quickly. Racing, even. She looked aside and saw the mug on the sill was still half full of coffee. “Are you sure you’re okay here, Dorran? We could probably sleep in the main office if we wanted.”

  “I don’t mind.” He came up behind her and threaded one arm around her waist. “As long as you are comfortable.”

  “Here’s good. Let’s get some rest.”

  “Hm.” He dipped down to kiss the top of her head. “May I make a request?”

  “Sure.”

  “Stay close to me tonight.”

  “Of course I will.”

  They found a foot heater by the desk and turned it on. The beds were single and bunked, but Clare felt as though even that small gap was too much of a separation. Dorran seemed to share her feelings. He gently pulled her after himself into the bottom bunk and coiled around her as they settled in to sleep.

  The bed was narrow, but they fit together well. Dorran’s arm curled protectively around her back. Clare’s head tucked into his throat. Their legs tangled. Clare tried to let her mind drift away. She was tired—she could feel it in every fibre of her body—but her mind wasn’t ready to relax. Ferocious winds created a high-pitched whistle outside their window. The storm spread crackling lightning around the tower, so close that it seemed to charge the air she breathed. No matter what she tried to think about, her mind kept turning back towards the thanites.

  Peter had said the machines were too small to be detectable without a microscope. But Clare was sure she could feel them as each beat of her heart pulsed them deeper into her body. Scraping against her veins. Digging. Squirming. Alive, like a parasite she could never be free from. In her lungs. In her bones. In her brain.

  Eyes staring blindly into the darkness, she whispered to Dorran, “I feel like I’m going crazy.”

  He was silent for so long that Clare began to think he’d fallen asleep. The wind rattled a pipe outside their window, and it sounded like someone knocking to be let in. Then he pulled her tighter against himself, his breath ghosting across her ear. “It feels as though the whole world has.”

  Her eyes were full, threatening to overflow as she stared at the mattress above them. “If you ever want to split up—”

  “Never.”

  “But if I’m becoming a burden—”

  “You’re not.” The kiss on her cheekbone felt featherlight. “You are very precious to me. I know how you feel. Fractured. I wish I could do more to help; you deserve a better life than this.”

  She found his hand and held it over her chest, close to her heart. “You’ve done so much. You deserve someone stronger.”

  “I have known many callous people in my life.” She could feel his smile against her cheek. “I like you better.”

  She didn’t trust herself to talk without her voice cracking, but she still smiled. “Thanks, Dorran.”

  “Try to rest, my dear Clare. I’ll always be here for you when you need me.”

  Thunder rolled through the walls. Clare could feel the vibrations in her bones; the storm seemed to be growing stronger.

  She closed her eyes, but her mind immediately moved to the generator. If it goes out during the night, will Peter know? How long will unlocked windows guard against the horde outside?

  The warm weight of Dorran’s arm rested over Clare’s stomach. She focussed on it, paying attention to the way it shifted minutely every time he breathed. His presence, his quiet steadfastness, had always been calming.

  The thanites are in him too.

  Clare bit her lip until she tasted the sting of blood. The pain worked as a distraction for a minute, but her brain turned back to its spiral of stress like an addict seeking its fix. The tower and its fallible security system. The hordes outside. The question of when they would leave, and what they would do once they did. The USB and its promised cure… and its threat of malfunction. Ezra’s folly.

  Clare’s eyes drifted towards the windowsill. Lightning flared, painting a silhouette around the old occupant’s mug.

  Something isn’t right.

  She tilted her head to see Dorran’s face. Eyelashes twitched as he dreamed, and a trace of tension hung around his brow.

  Something’s very, very wrong.

  She didn’t want to disturb him. He’d had less sleep than she had. And even as her heart galloped and metallic fear flooded her mouth, she knew she was overreacting. It was paranoia, symptoms of prolonged stress finally breaking through the dam. That knowledge wasn’t enough to make it stop.

  Feverish sweat beaded over her skin. She was having trouble breathing. Suddenly, the arm curled over her was smothering more than comforting. Clare moved gingerly as she eased herself away from Dorran. He stirred as she left, the fingers spreading and hunting for her warmth. She pulled the blankets over his arm and stood back, waiting. He didn’t wake.

  Cold water. She would go to the bathroom, wash her face, drink, take a moment to collect herself in private. The floor was
chilled despite the heater, and Clare found a pair of Aspect-branded slippers under the bed and slipped her feet into them.

  At the door, she gave Dorran a final glance. He remained still. The paranoia plagued her, warning her not to leave him, warning her that if she let him out of her sight, she might never see him again. She felt nauseated and closed her eyes, breathing deeply. Then she took the ID badge off the hook by the door and slung its strap around her neck as she let herself out.

  The hallway was quiet. No light came under the door to Peter’s room. Clare shuffled along the hall towards the bathroom. As she reached for the door, she looked towards the exit sign that bathed her in its sickly glow.

  Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong.

  She knew where she needed to go. Clare passed the bathroom and moved towards the stairs leading up, towards the lab on the thirteenth floor.

  Chapter Fifty

  Her footsteps echoed off the marble stairs. Clare bit her tongue and rested one hand on the wall. It was ice cold, but she didn’t pull away. With the light as low as it was and the stairs foreign, she clutched at any sense of stability she could find.

  Gale-force winds assaulted the tower, and Clare imagined she felt the structure tilt. She closed her eyes and waited for the sensation to pass. The queasiness in her stomach took a while longer. When she resumed climbing the stairs, each step was more cautious.

  It’s a tower of stone and metal. It was designed to withstand this.

  Thunder cracked, loud enough to make her ears ache. She wished she’d woken Dorran. She looked over her shoulder, down the stairwell, and towards the hall saturated in hellish red light, then continued climbing. He needed rest. The stairs turned into a landing between the floors. She passed around it and began climbing the second flight.

  The change in atmosphere was palpable. The air was colder. Clare felt cut off from the floor below—and from the only life in the tower.

  No, that’s not true. There’s plenty of life here.

  She could hear banging noises reverberating down the stairwell, coming from the floor above the lab. The other people—changed people—were locked in rooms across the building.

  Her chest felt sickeningly tight. The thirteenth floor loomed ahead. Even before she reached the landing, she could see the massive steel doors blocking the pathway. A plaque had been fixed into the metal: Restricted Area, Authorised Personnel Only.

  Clare clutched the badge around her neck. Whoever Michael Billings had been during life, she hoped he’d had access to the labs.

  The banging noises were louder, blending in with guttural howls. The floor above held more than one hollow. She held the ID up to the black box beside the steel doors. It beeped faintly. The light flashed green. The doors drew back, wrapping her in a gust of freezing air.

  Inside was pitch dark. She squinted, hoping her eyes would adjust. A heavy body slammed into the floor above, and she flinched. Clare took a slow breath and stepped into the blackness. As the door slid closed behind her, she reached out to find the light switch.

  Her fingers grazed cold tiles. She felt forward, running her hand in cautious circles, holding her breath. A plastic ridge disturbed the icy ceramic. She found four switches and turned them all.

  Lights came on across the space, starting above her head and flickering as they progressed along the room. They reflected off expanses of tile, glass, and stainless steel. The lab took up the entire floor. It seemed to never end. Clare’s eyes fought for some kind of frame of reference, first focussing on one glass partition, then the glass behind it, then the glass behind even that. Dizziness swelled, and she turned to face the door she’d just come through.

  How do people work here?

  As her breathing slowed, she turned back to the room. Near the stairwell were a series of washing stations: sinks armed with seemingly endless antibacterial soap, a steel chute in the wall for dirtied lab coats, and bins still half-stuffed with plastic gloves. Past that was a decontamination room. The glass rectangle looked airtight and held a myriad of hoses.

  The lab contained multiple sealed work areas. Each space had either windows or half-glass walls. Some areas were as simple as tables holding petri dishes. Others looked like miniature workshops. Some held machines Clare didn’t even have names for. Endless charts and whiteboards littered the area. The labs had been well-used before the stillness.

  Tiny bronze plaques had been fastened into the work-area doors. They bore names and had been designed for easy removal to compensate for Aspect’s high turnover.

  She read the names as she passed them. Near the front of the room, she found Michael Billings, the donor of her own ID card. His workspace held something that looked like an X-ray machine and not much else. A little farther beyond that was Peter’s station. Eye diagrams were stuck above the desk, and the whiteboard was covered with complex calculations scrawled in messy handwriting. There was very little dust, but the desk still held a sense of abandonment.

  Clare’s heart beat faster as she moved deeper into the space. She knew eventually she would come across the name she dreaded, and needed, to see.

  She found it at the back of the room. Dr. Ezra Katzenberg had one of the largest sections in the lab. The glass wall ran across nearly the entire rear of the room, and Clare could see more glass enclosures inside. She stared at his plaque for a second. The bronze name badge glittered in the harsh light. She lifted her ID and swiped it, just in case, but the lock didn’t respond. Then she noticed the usual red light was missing. Clare pushed on the handle and found, to her surprise, it had been left unlocked. The airtight door hissed as it unsealed and slid back to grant access.

  Clare clamped a hand over her mouth and doubled over. The air was overwhelmingly foul. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass, taking tiny, sharp gasps between her fingers. Any time she moved, her stomach threatened to revolt. All she could do was hold still and endure.

  I shouldn’t be here. This was a mistake.

  She peeked stinging eyes open and tried to take stock of her surroundings. Ezra’s work area was divided into three sections. Her part, the observation area, was narrow but long. A desk had been set into one end, its dashboard looking like something out of a flight deck. A cheap swivel chair was tucked neatly into it. At the room’s other end lay a heap of discarded lab coats waiting to be taken out for cleaning.

  The observation area ran the length of the two glass enclosures in the back wall. Eight feet square, they had frosting across the lower half of the glass, but Clare thought she could see a dark shape huddled in the corner of the area to her left. Ezra.

  She swallowed the thick, metallic slime that had developed over her tongue and straightened. She’d come to see the orchestrator of humanity’s fall. She was too close to back out.

  Clare approached the containment room, her hands shaking as they clutched her ID tag. The door had no access bar to swipe. She guessed it was operated by the machine on the desk to her left. The glass was blurred by greasy hand smudges, but she could still see inside well enough. She breathed through her mouth as she approached.

  Ezra’s body lay in the back corner, huddled over. A thick, torn grey jacket obscured his form. He was smaller than she’d expected. A crushed fabric shape had been discarded nearby. Clare tilted her head, trying to make out Ezra’s form.

  It trembled.

  Clare’s mouth opened, but any noise she tried to make became trapped in her throat. Her mind went numb. Full of horror, she reached out and tapped her fingertips on the glass. The shape twisted, one blind eye staring at her, then lurched forward. Clare bit down on a shriek as it hit the barrier.

  This isn’t Ezra. Open palms slapped the glass, and a wide jaw gnashed, spilling saliva across the divider. Wiry grey hair grew from its face, poking through holes in the cheeks and throat and matting in slimy clumps. One eye had been lost. The other was scratched into blindness.

  Clare curled her arms around herself and took a step back. Her attention flicked
towards the discarded shape in the containment room’s corner, and she realised it was a damaged hat with a pink fabric flower. Peter’s words came back to her. “His neighbour… wearing her best coat and hat, waiting patiently.”

  “Oh,” Clare whispered. The woman in the containment room was patient zero. Clare hadn’t even considered that she might still be alive.

  The woman slapped her fist on the glass, adding to the layers of grease she’d built up and exhaled a rattling hiss through her choked throat.

  Clare turned away. The observation room smelt foul, but it wasn’t the kind of stench she’d learned to associate with the hollows. This odour was sour and yet sickly sweet, a unique tang that seemed perfectly designed to make her gag. Rotting flesh. But not the hollow. That means…

  Her eyes landed on the pile of lab coats in the room’s other side. They were shaped oddly. She took a step closer then stopped. The toes of a sneaker poked out from under the cloth.

  Clare tilted her head back, her heart thundering, her stomach in knots. Her legs didn’t want to move, but she forced them forward, towards the shape. The smell grew impossibly worse as she neared it. She reached towards the coat Peter had draped over his fallen friend, pressed the back of her hand across her mouth, and pulled the fabric back.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  The coat made a horrible tacky sound as it peeled away from the flesh it had fused to. Clare buckled over, nearly losing the war against her nausea, and had to face away from the body as she waited for the ringing in her ears to fade.

  Do it. Get it over with quickly. See him, then leave.

  She picked up the coat’s collar a second time and tried to ignore the way the stiff fabric cracked as she pulled it back. She didn’t stop until the body below was completely uncovered, then she stepped back, eyes leaking and rough sobs escaping between clenched teeth.

  The room had been airtight. There were no maggots to devour the flesh, but it hadn’t been immune to bacteria. The skin had swollen and burst in places. A dark, pus-like ooze seeped out from the form. His face was sunken and distorted, a small hole in his temple marking the spot the bullet had entered.