Fallout

by Chris Morphew

  He put the laptop back down, leaning forward so that our knees were touching. ‘Is Tank still here?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘He and Reeve are taking us up to the surface tonight. He wants us to meet with a contact he’s made in town.’

  ‘You and Luke,’ said Peter.

  I rolled back my shoulders, edging my seat backwards under the pretence of stretching, fighting down the urge to just smack him across the head and walk out. Less than two minutes in here and already I felt like I needed a shower.

  ‘Is Tank okay?’ Peter asked. ‘You know, after –’

  ‘You smashed him into a wall, Peter.’

  ‘It was an accident!’

  ‘Was it?’ I asked, before I could stop myself.

  I braced for an outburst, but instead Peter let out a kind of strangled cough and put his head in his hands.

  ‘I didn’t mean for it to go that way,’ he said after a minute.

  ‘Which way did you mean it to go?’

  ‘I was angry. He should’ve – I don’t know. I don’t know what I wanted.’ He sat up, staring at his hands, slowly clenching and unclenching his fingers. When he spoke again, his voice was strained. ‘Do you think I don’t get it, Jordan? Do you think I don’t know what’s happening to me?’

  And somehow, the question pierced through everything else and I felt guilty for how I’d been writing him off. He was a million miles from the cocky, carefree kid I’d met three months ago, but he was still Peter. Somewhere under there, he was still the same person.

  ‘Peter…’

  ‘What?’ he snapped. ‘You want to tell me to calm down? Try being locked up in this hole for a month and see how freaking calm you feel! Meanwhile, Soren’s strutting around like he owns the place, my parents are trapped up there with Shackleton, and you guys won’t even –’

  ‘We’re trying to help you, Peter! We’re doing everything we can.’

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like!’ he said, jumping up and pacing. ‘You have no idea what it feels like to not even be in control of your own –’

  A shout of pain burst from my throat, cutting him off. I lurched to the ground, nausea rushing up inside me like there was something trying to claw its way out.

  ‘Jordan!’ said Peter from somewhere above me. ‘What’s wrong?’ But his voice was dim and warbled, like he was shouting underwater. I collapsed on my side, eyes squeezing shut, blocking out the blur of colour and noise as the whole world swirled around my head.

  Another vision. The first in over a week. And either I’d forgotten how bad they were, or this was the most head-shattering one yet. I tried to keep breathing, riding out the shakes, waiting for it all to pass, terrified of what I was going to find when it did. Because even though I called these things ‘visions’, they were quickly becoming more than that. In the beginning, all I’d been doing was seeing things. Whatever my mind was doing, my body had stayed firmly in the present.

  These days, it was a different story.

  My body spasmed again, and Peter’s shouting flickered out altogether, replaced by a deeper voice, still muffled but easier to make out.

  ‘– second iteration, approaching peak stability.’

  I rolled over, hands reaching for my head. It was throbbing violently, like it might crumble to dust under my fingers.

  ‘Event appears to be another Type B,’ a woman’s voice chimed in, ‘magnitude four, extent…two point two four metres.’

  The pain in my head began slowly easing off, and I forced my eyes open. At first, I barely recognised it as the same room. The walls and ceiling were flat and smooth, actual walls instead of the mess of concrete and wreckage that formed them in the present. But Peter’s door was still there, minus the chipping paint and smashed window.

  I staggered to my feet and turned around, swaying as the world caught up. There was a whole other room behind me now, separated by a glass wall. On the other side of the glass, two people in white coats were staring out from behind a row of boxy computer monitors: a Japanese guy who was maybe in his twenties, and an older, round-faced woman with squarish glasses and dark hair pulled back into a tight bun. Neither of them had registered my sudden appearance in the room.

  Because you’re not here, I reminded myself. Not yet anyway.

  ‘Diagnostic prepared,’ said the man, voice muffled by the glass. ‘Ready to initiate on your mark, Dr Vattel.’

  Dr Vattel.

  Remi Vattel. Kara’s mother. The woman who’d founded this place. Still down here, still alive. Which meant I’d come back at least twenty years.

  ‘Soren,’ she frowned at the man next to her, ‘call me “doctor” one more time and I’ll reconsider letting you marry my daughter.’

  He smirked, breaking the clinical veneer. ‘Sorry, Remi. Old habits.’

  I glanced between the two of them, thinking I must have misheard. That wasn’t Soren. Soren hadn’t even been born until after the Vattel Complex was destroyed.

  And then it clicked: This wasn’t our Soren. It was his father. We knew Soren’s dad had been killed in the explosion. Kara must have named their baby after him.

  ‘Well?’ said Vattel, staring over her glasses at the older Soren. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  ‘Right. Sorry.’ He glanced at his computer. ‘Initiating scan.’

  Whatever they were ‘scanning’, I couldn’t see it.

  A second later, I almost jumped out of my skin as Luke appeared, centimetres from my face. He reached for me, his expression desperate. Mouth open, shouting, but I couldn’t hear a word of it.

  And all at once, panic came rushing at me with full force. It was happening again.

  I was slipping away.

  Luke wasn’t here. Not really. He was back in the present, watching me disappear, trying to drag me back to reality before –

  Before what?

  ‘Luke!’ I called back, grabbing at him, my fingers passing straight through him.

  ‘Scan initiated,’ said Soren’s dad, apparently oblivious to all of it. ‘Adjusting focus. Three. Two. One.’

  The lights cut out on my side of the glass. Nothing left to see by but the glow of the computers.

  I squinted, searching for Luke in the darkness. He stepped forward again, still mouthing silently from two decades away. I stretched out my hands to meet his, but I might as well have been clutching at his shadow.

  A mechanical hum rose up. ‘Temperature: normal,’ Soren’s dad reported behind me. ‘UV: normal. EM: Slightly elevated, but still within expected range…’

  Whatever was going on in here, I needed to get out.

  I turned back to Luke, staring into his face. I tried to focus, to tune out the rest of the room, willing my body to co-operate, as though I could get back to the present by wishing it were true.

  I reached for him again, swiping at the air in front of me. Come on!

  ‘Anything?’ Vattel asked from behind the glass.

  ‘Not yet. All readings still report normal.’

  I tried again, and again, and –

  And I tripped forward, losing my balance as Luke’s hands clamped down around my wrist.

  ‘–ordan!’ he shouted, suddenly audible again. ‘Yes! That’s it. Just focus, okay? Concentrate.’

  I brought my other hand down, grabbing onto Luke’s, and felt the nausea bubbling up again.

  ‘Hold on,’ said Soren’s dad. ‘I’m getting something,’ and at first I thought he was looking at me.

  Then I saw what he was really talking about. It was glowing around me, a cloud of gas or mist or something, fluorescent blue, like white paint under a black light. A shiver ran up my spine as I pictured another empty room like this one, a Shackleton Co-operative research facility – figures contorting on the ground as Tabitha ripped them to pieces.

  ‘Luke!’ I shouted, squeezing harder on his arms as the glow grew brighter, more solid. I couldn’t see where it was coming from, but –

  The churning in my insides reached full force
, and my legs dropped out from under me. The room started collapsing again, everything blurring together, and for a second, I could see both places – both times – at once. Dark and light. Solid and destroyed. Vattel staring through the glass and Peter standing over me, screaming.

  And then it all melted away. For a long moment, the room disappeared completely, plunging me into blackness. Then it blinked back into existence again. Luke was there, another Luke, strapped to a steel chair. Then more darkness, invisible walls pressing in from every side. And through all of it, Luke was there, still holding on, the one solid thing in the whole world. I squeezed my eyes shut, biting down on my gag reflex, fingers digging into him until, finally, the universe stopped spinning and I crumpled to the ground.

  Peter’s shouts broke into my head again. ‘– are you doing? Let go of her! Give her to me!’

  ‘No,’ I groaned, as Luke’s arms lowered me to the ground. ‘Don’t…it’s okay…I’m okay.’

  I gave it a minute, and then opened my eyes again. Luke was kneeling over me, looking ready to pass out. Peter was red-faced from shouting. He hadn’t seen me go through this before. No-one had, except for Luke and my dad.

  Peter crouched on my other side, and the two of them hoisted me to my feet.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Luke, tugging me gently away from Peter as I found my feet again. ‘I’ve got her.’

  Peter’s expression blackened. I struggled to get my head back together, ready to intervene in whatever came next.

  ‘Don’t,’ Luke told him, surprisingly forceful. ‘Not now. Don’t make this about you.’

  Peter stared at him for a moment longer, then swore and dropped my arm. He grabbed his laptop and slumped down onto his bed, not even looking up again as we closed the door on him.

  Chapter 7

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 1

  12 DAYS

  ‘You know, I’d almost convinced myself it was a one-off,’ I said, voice low as Luke and I crept through the bush, a few paces behind Tank and Reeve. ‘The disappearing. At least, it’s never been as bad as that first time, when I saw the Complex getting attacked.’

  ‘It has now,’ said Luke. ‘I thought you were gone, Jordan. You were gone for a couple of seconds there.’

  ‘Wherever gone is,’ I said.

  Because that was the question, wasn’t it? What would happen if I faded out altogether? Would I fade in to the other time? Or would I just vanish completely?

  I tried to push it all aside. Right now, the best thing I could do was focus on not finding out.

  It was just after midnight, and we were closing in on the makeshift graveyard at the north-west corner of town. The air was bitterly cold. How had these two survived so long out here without getting hypothermia or something?

  Luke shot me a nervous glance, like I might disappear again at any moment. ‘You do realise there’s no way I’m leaving you on your own after this, right?’

  He hadn’t seen any of it. It might have looked to me like Luke was with me in the vision, but as far as he was concerned, he’d just been standing there with Peter, watching my body fade away in front of him.

  I reached over and squeezed his hand.

  ‘Right,’ said Luke. ‘I’m going to take that as a yes.’

  It was amazing how quickly he’d become this critical part of my life. I’d known him for all of three months, but already it was a struggle to remember a time when he hadn’t been there. It was as though the life I’d had before Phoenix wasn’t even mine, just memories of something that had happened to some other person – netball games and family barbeques and being driven to school.

  Somewhere along the line, I’d started seeing Luke’s survival and my survival as pretty much the same thing. Like those two realities were tied together. And in a very real way, it was starting to look like maybe they were.

  When I’d started fading out the first time around, Luke and my dad had both tried to grab hold of me, but only Luke had been able to do it. And this afternoon, Peter had apparently stood over me for almost a full minute, trying to make me come back, before Luke got him out of the way. Why was Luke the only one who’d been able to reach me? And what would happen if he wasn’t around to do it next time?

  Reeve and Tank came to a stop in front of us, just short of a little clearing in the bush. We were here. Reeve whispered something to Tank, who nodded, and took off around the edge of the clearing.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ asked Luke, crouching low in the grass beside Reeve.

  ‘Just making sure we’re alone.’ A smile crossed Reeve’s face, and something about it reminded me of Dad. ‘Good kid, that one. Good head on his shoulders.’

  It struck me that this was probably the first time I’d ever heard someone say a positive word about what went on in Tank’s head. Even more striking, it seemed like Reeve was kind of right. Something in Tank had changed. It was like he’d finally found an identity beyond being Mike’s bodyguard.

  ‘I think you’ve been good for him,’ I said. ‘Nice for him to have someone decent to follow for a change.’

  Reeve shrugged off the compliment. ‘We’re all following someone.’

  He looked out across the clearing, fingers drumming on the butt of his rifle. I watched his gaze drift slowly from the path to the marble tombstone in front of us, marking the empty grave the Co-operative had dug for his funeral. Reminders of a time when Shackleton was still bothering to cover up the messes he made.

  A few metres away, a mound of upturned soil marked another burial site. A real one. The place where Calvin had unceremoniously dumped Dr Montag’s body after his murder, the night we broke into the medical centre.

  If not for Reeve, we might’ve been down there with him.

  ‘Thanks for that, by the way,’ I whispered. ‘Drawing those guards off. Letting us escape. You saved us.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Reeve shrugged again, ‘you saved me too.’ He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out an old watch with half the strap missing, tilting it so its face caught the moonlight. They were late. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘If this Tobias of yours is anywhere, it’ll be in the Shackleton Building, right? Up on the restricted level, where Shackleton can keep a close watch on it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Luke. ‘Probably. But going up there didn’t work out so well for us last time.’

  ‘Last time wasn’t smart.’ Reeve’s focus flickered back to his tombstone. ‘I should have told you that myself. Should’ve taken the time to do it properly. But back then, I was too caught up in keeping my family out of harm’s way. For all the good that did.’

  ‘What do you mean, properly?’ I said. ‘We did everything we could.’

  ‘Not everything,’ said Reeve. ‘There’s an armoury. Out in the bush, near the warehouse that holds all the town’s food. I’ve never actually been posted out there myself, but –’

  ‘There’s another building on that road?’ said Luke. ‘Why didn’t Bill tell us about it?’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t know,’ I said.

  ‘He went all the way out to the warehouse and then didn’t bother to check what was further down the road?’

  I shrugged. ‘We didn’t.’

  ‘Yeah, but – we had other things on our minds at the time,’ said Luke.

  ‘Tank and I went to check it out last week,’ Reeve said. ‘We’ve been looking at getting into Shackleton’s communications room, and so first we need to pick up a few supplies. The armoury’s guarded, but it’s not impenetrable. Not like the Shackleton Building. I’m working with my guys in town to figure out how to get in and get what we need.’

  I bit my lip. ‘Weapons, you mean.’

  The idea of picking up a gun made me seriously uncomfortable. I tried to remind myself that Reeve wasn’t a violent guy, that he wouldn’t use force unless we really had to. But still, even talking about it made me feel sick.

  ‘I don’t like it either, Jordan,’ said Reeve. ‘But if we’re going up there, we need to do everything we can to make
sure it’s not a repeat of last time.’

  ‘How are you even still here after last time?’ asked Luke, and I shivered as my mind dredged up images of Reeve handcuffed to a table, getting slashed to pieces by an early iteration of Tabitha. ‘We saw what Shackleton did to you. You were…’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Reeve. ‘I can’t explain it, but –’ He reached down and plucked a stalk from the sharp, spindly grass at our feet. ‘Here,’ he said, holding the stalk up in front of us. ‘Watch.’

  He yanked the stalk across his other hand, flinching as the sharp edges sliced into his skin. Then he held his palm up in front of us.

  A line of blood oozed up where the grass had cut him, silvery blue in the darkness. But then, almost immediately, the wound began to scab over. The bleeding stopped, and the skin began to knit back together, healing right there in front of us.

  Luke leant in closer. ‘Whoa.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. Since we’d arrived in Phoenix, everyone here (well, everyone except Luke and his mum) had developed a kind of accelerated healing ability. Something to do with the fallout that had saturated this area since the destruction of the Vattel Complex.

  But this was way beyond that. If my body had got a boost, Reeve’s had been strapped to a jetpack.

  ‘I’m not the only one, though, am I?’ said Reeve. ‘I mean, not this specifically, but all of us who were getting tested on in the medical centre –’

  He broke off. There was a rustle of leaves from the far side of the clearing, and two men stepped out cautiously from between the graves. Security guards, both armed. One of them pointed at Reeve’s tombstone. He turned towards us and I got a proper look at his face.

  ‘Officer Miller,’ I whispered.

  ‘You know him?’ said Reeve.

  ‘He’s helped us out a couple of times.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s a good bloke,’ said Reeve. ‘First one to jump onboard with all this.’

  The two officers stopped at the tombstone. Miller let go of his gun and scratched his left elbow.

  ‘All clear,’ said Reeve, standing up. ‘Let’s go.’

  He walked into the clearing, and Luke and I followed. There was a clatter of metal as the two guards raised their guns, saw that it was Reeve, and relaxed again.