Reviver: A Novel

by Seth Patrick

  ‘Or you could – and I mean this with all due respect – you could, maybe, just this once, actually show some fucking nerve and call her in a couple of weeks? Jonah?’

  But Jonah wasn’t really listening anymore. He was staring at the monitor, thirsty as hell, eyes scanning the last page of the file, realizing that the thirst meant there was something to be seen. Daniel Harker was still around, still watching. Still interfering.

  ‘There’s something here, Never,’ he said. ‘There’s something important on this page.’

  There were two images from a report on the apartment the police had tracked down after Hannerman’s attack. Hannerman had been renting it for over a year under a false name, using it occasionally, his presence noted far more often since the time his colleagues had died.

  The first image was a close-up on what seemed like a holiday snapshot of Hannerman with a woman of similar age: blond hair, striking features – almost beautiful, but her eyes were set too close together, her nose too long and thin. Hannerman looked much younger than in his police photograph but also much thinner, his face far closer to the one Daniel had known. Jonah could see Hannerman’s resemblance to the woman, and intuition told him who she was: Hannerman’s sister, Julia. Given the pieces of paper overlapping its edges, it was clear that this snapshot had been stuck to another surface when it had been photographed.

  The second image revealed what that surface had been: a picture of the kitchen in Hannerman’s apartment, as it had been found by the police. In the far corner was a fridge. On its door, Jonah could make out the position of the snapshot of Julia and Felix, surrounded by other assorted scraps.

  Then he saw.

  Another sheet of paper was stuck to the centre of the fridge door with something yellow. Something that was small and indistinct. A fridge magnet. Jonah stared at it, looking close, the shape of it clear.

  ‘Jonah, what is it?’

  Jonah kept staring. Maybe he was wrong. He magnified the image. The resolution had been high, and he could see it clearly. There was no doubt now.

  ‘Jonah!’

  The image showed a yellow magnet, a cartoon of a smiling circle with a single giant hand, thumb up. ‘Thanks!’ it said.

  He still had the badge he’d been given at Eldridge’s hospice in his jacket. He went and got it, and held it up for Never to see. They were identical. Like the badge, the fridge magnet was generic. Nothing to identify where it had come from. Whoever had searched the flat had ignored it because they couldn’t have known what it might mean, but Jonah did.

  Hannerman had been to the hospice.

  ‘What is it?’ said Never.

  ‘Answers,’ said Jonah. He felt suddenly cold. ‘If we want them enough.’

  29

  Victor Eldridge opened the door to a grinning man.

  ‘Mr Eldridge?’ asked the man.

  Irish accent, Eldridge noted, squinting at the silhouette before him, the setting sun low and right in his eyes. He nodded.

  ‘Detective O’Donnell. The staff inside sent me through, said it’d be OK. I’d like a moment of your time.’ The man took something from his pocket and held it up. ID of some form, dark with the sun behind it, and gone too fast to mean much to Eldridge’s tired eyes. He assumed it was genuine.

  Eldridge frowned. ‘What about, Detective?’

  ‘May I…’ said the man, and Eldridge moved back to let him inside. The man stepped around him, and there was something in his manner that gave Eldridge concern, made him wish he’d looked harder at the ID, but there was no time: as Eldridge put his hand to the door to close it, the door opened hard against his fingers. He yelped and backed away. A figure walked in, shut the door and stepped towards him. Eldridge saw his face for the first time.

  ‘You,’ he said to the reviver, contempt in his voice and eyes.

  ‘Hello, Victor,’ said Jonah Miller, Eldridge seeing the contempt coming right back at him. ‘I have some questions.’

  * * *

  Jonah watched Never, aware how uneasy his friend had been from the moment Jonah had come out of the hardware store carrying a bag and a pair of wire cutters. His agitation had peaked as Jonah cut through the fence at the rear of the Walter Hodges Hospice. The security was poor – a single camera for the area, which had a vast blind spot.

  Jonah shared the unease but was overwhelmed by a righteous fury and a resolve fuelled by the rage. Jonah didn’t doubt that Hannerman had been here, that somehow Eldridge had known him. Known, and stayed silent.

  His silence could have cost Sam his life.

  Eldridge looked more papery than he had two weeks before. He was glaring at Jonah. ‘One shout from me,’ he said, ‘and you’ll both be in jail within the hour.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Victor. I think you know damn well why we’re here, and police involvement is the last thing you want. Now, sit.’

  They put him in his chair. Jonah took a roll of tape from his pocket and began to work on Eldridge’s forearms, securing them to the armrests, then taping his legs to those of the chair. Behind him stood Never, his discomfort clear on his face.

  ‘I’m dying,’ said Eldridge. ‘I’ve nothing to fear from the police.’

  ‘This is how they left Daniel Harker,’ said Jonah, watching Eldridge’s wide eyes. ‘Strapped to a chair and abandoned. Left to die. I don’t want to hurt you but I will if you don’t help me.’ He was counting on Eldridge not seeing through the bluff, but the anger in his voice was unmistakably genuine. He had brought the police picture of Hannerman and held it up. ‘Do you recognize him? He’d have been much thinner, so think hard.’

  Eldridge shook his head, but Jonah saw the lie in his eyes.

  ‘Think very carefully, Mr Eldridge. Do you recognize him?’

  Again he shook his head, then he looked away. Jonah thrust the photograph back into his line of sight. ‘The man in this picture was responsible for the kidnap and murder of Daniel Harker. Then one of my friends – someone I love – was almost killed when this man stabbed him. He’s unconscious and could still die.’ Eldridge’s body sagged. He was staring into space. ‘You can appreciate how we happen to be quite so fucking angry.’ Eldridge started at Jonah’s suddenly raised voice. Holding up the photograph, Jonah asked again: ‘Do you recognize him?’

  Eldridge said nothing.

  ‘You can’t protect him, Victor. I know that’s what you think you’re doing. You can’t protect him because he’s dead.’ He looked for the reaction and saw it, Eldridge’s face slackening at the words. ‘He killed himself after the attack. Incinerated before anyone could ask him why. Just like all the rest of them.’

  ‘All dead…’ said Eldridge.

  ‘Even Tobias Yarrow,’ said Jonah, seeing the recognition in Eldridge’s eyes. ‘Did Hannerman tell you he’d killed Yarrow? Was it you who told Vernet the story?’

  Eldridge shook his head, eyes closed, and Jonah thought he was going to keep on denying everything. But when Eldridge opened his eyes again, Jonah could see there was no fight left in him now.

  ‘I don’t know a Vernet, but I know Tobias. Knew. Hannerman told me Tobias had lost his nerve and run. He didn’t mention he was dead. Tobias Yarrow had heard a rumour and spent years tracking it down. By the time he did, the man he’d been looking for was dead. But he found me, and I told him.’

  ‘And he believed you.’

  ‘It was the truth.’

  ‘No, Victor. It was a ghost story to hide the truth, that a military intelligence goon had turned revival into just another weapon. Foolproof interrogations, murdering people to find out what they knew. It was…’

  Jonah trailed off. Eldridge had his head down, and he started to jerk softly, in a way that made Jonah assume he was sobbing.

  When the man looked up, Jonah realized he’d misread it. Eldridge was laughing, and the laugh became a series of coughs.

  ‘What’s so funny, Victor?’

  Eldridge glared at him. ‘What makes you think they can’t both be true? You com
e here trying to find some answers. What are you going to do when you know? Hannerman had the courage to face it, and he risked everything. You think you’re the good guys? You’re just bystanders. They were the good guys. Now they’re all dead. There’s nobody left to stop it.’

  ‘Stop what? Tell me.’

  ‘He wanted to expose Unity.’

  Jonah stared.

  Victor Eldridge looked into Jonah’s eyes. ‘Cut me free. Then I’ll tell you everything.’

  Jonah watched him, thinking it over. Then he fetched a knife and cut through the tape.

  * * *

  ‘I had a friend,’ Eldridge began. ‘When I was a kid in Vancouver. Robert Durmey. Good with cars. Left for a girl in Boston at nineteen, lost the girl but found a job. We kept in touch, on and off. Two years after revival appeared, he showed up in Vancouver again. Hadn’t seen him in a while. I was thirty-four and in a rut, doing odd jobs to get by, then Rob appeared and he had this news. He was a reviver now. Getting well paid. Then he told me I had the talent too, said he could tell when he’d shaken my hand. He was much better than I was, even ended up working in Baseline while I did shitty insurance jobs for people I disappointed half the time. But he did right by me over the years. I saw him now and again. It was him got me the gig at MLA Research, paid a damn sight better than what I’d been getting.

  ‘This was about eight years back. After that, I didn’t hear from him again until a little over two years ago. By then, I was spending half my life in psychiatric care. They’d let me out, but I couldn’t cope for long. Not when I could hear it whispering, knowing that something is out there, waiting for us. Back when Ruby Fleming happened, back when I first heard the whispers, I’d told Rob all about it. He listened better than most, but like everyone else he told me it was just in my mind.

  ‘When he came back, though, he was frightened. Told me it all. He’d come to me because he believed me now. He’d come because he wanted to see if I knew what it really was.

  ‘It was Rob Durmey that Tobias had been looking for all that time, but when he managed to track him down, Rob had died. Hit by a car, four months after he’d come to me. Accident or not, I still can’t decide. I was at his funeral, and so was Yarrow, asking questions.’

  Eldridge stopped and pointed to a glass of water that was sitting on a table next to Jonah.

  Jonah handed it to him and waited for Eldridge to take a drink. ‘So what was it that Rob Durmey knew?’

  ‘He’d been working with a man called Kendrick. The goon you mentioned. Secret things. Interrogation techniques for use in revival. They had it down, countermeasures, anti-countermeasures. There was a reviver called Barlow working with Kendrick that Rob didn’t like. Didn’t trust. Kept coming up with odd ideas that the team would work on. The BPV variant research at MLA, that’d also been on a hunch from Barlow. But there was one idea. A crazy idea. Kendrick liked it. Hell, he thought it was positively humanitarian.

  ‘Think about it: a revival interrogation is the only way to be sure someone’s telling the truth. The only way. Normal interrogation can be beaten. Lie detectors are easy to fool, whatever they tell you. And torturing the living? Unreliable. Desperate people are very inventive. Revival is the only cast-iron way. Problem is, you have to have a corpse. The need to kill limits how useful the technique is. It draws more heat, and you only get one shot.’

  Eldridge paused and took another drink. ‘They were still at Baseline, doing all this. It wouldn’t be long before suspicions were raised and they had to leave. But you already know about that, yes? I know who you are, Jonah Miller.’

  Jonah stared back. ‘What does this have to do with me?’

  ‘When you said your name, I couldn’t believe it. Yarrow was always going on about destiny. It worried me about him. Hannerman was the same. But when you came here … Tell me, do you remember a subject called Underwood?’

  Jonah felt his skin turn to ice. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Rob Durmey told me all about it. Kendrick’s little plan was failing. Barlow’s crazy idea wasn’t working out, and they brought you in. You made a big fuss afterward. An internal investigation found the paperwork for the corpse was fake, and Kendrick got booted out of Baseline. All because you thought there was something wrong with Underwood.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jonah said. ‘There was something unusual, something different.’

  ‘You were right. The paperwork was fake because there was no corpse.’ He reached out and gripped Jonah’s arm tight enough to hurt, ignoring the chill they could both feel. The man’s face became urgent, desperate. Jonah wanted to pull away, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Eldridge’s own. ‘She wasn’t dead, Miller. She wasn’t dead.’

  Silence. Jonah stepped away, staring at Eldridge. ‘What?’ he said at last, barely audible. He looked at Never, but his friend was pale, and was staring at Eldridge as well.

  ‘Please,’ Eldridge said to Never, ‘could you pass me those pills? Behind you?’ Eldridge took two, closing his eyes for a few seconds, his breathing ragged.

  Jonah waited for his own shock to settle before speaking. ‘What exactly was Kendrick doing?’

  ‘How dead is dead? That was Barlow’s question, the one that started it all. The human body can be shut down, cooled until lifeless. People have survived drowning in frozen waters, pulled out after an hour or longer. Surgery using body-cooling techniques has been routine for years. You can stop somebody’s heart, do what you need to do and start it up again. In that state, it’s effectively a corpse. So, how dead is dead? How dead does someone have to be before you can bring in a reviver?’

  ‘They have to be dead,’ said Jonah.

  ‘Easy to say, Miller, and I felt the same when Rob Durmey told me. But it seems Barlow was very persuasive. Everyone had a reason to want it to work. Kendrick hoped it’d allow an interrogation to go ahead without the need to kill. Not that he was squeamish; it would just have made everything less complicated. Their lead researcher was called Gideon, one of Andreas Biotech’s best, and Gideon found the idea fascinating, hoping he could pinpoint the precise moment when revival became possible. Michael Andreas’s interest in cryogenics had led to some of the technologies used in low-body-temperature surgery. They took the equipment and tried it with living subjects. It didn’t work, but Barlow thought it was close. They kept failing, until they realized what the problem was.’

  Jonah knew where Eldridge was going. ‘They felt too fresh.’

  ‘If anyone was going to be able to do it, you were their best chance. You were the only reviver who’d ever brought anyone back so fast. The only case. You were unique.’

  ‘My mother.’

  Eldridge nodded. ‘They said she’d been dead less than ten minutes, possibly as little as three. So in you came. And you started it all.’

  ‘This is bullshit,’ said Never, bewildered and dismissive. ‘What the hell does it mean to revive someone who’s alive? How can that work?’

  Eldridge sighed. ‘Oh, it didn’t work.’

  Jonah glared at him. ‘But you said Underwood –’

  ‘It didn’t work. Think about the answers you got to your questions, Miller. They didn’t make sense. Think about what she said.’

  The cities are burning. The shadow has come. ‘What are you telling me?’

  ‘It wasn’t her. It was something else. Revival opens a door, and on the other side of that door you find the soul of the person you revived. But this … You open that door when the soul is still in the body. The door’s open, but there’s nothing to come through it. It’s an invitation.’

  ‘For what?’

  Eldridge’s eyes were manic and frightened. His breathing was growing ragged again. ‘Something long dead. Waiting for a way out. After you stirred up trouble, Kendrick’s team went elsewhere. Rob went with him. They gave up on live revivals soon enough. The results were useless. Kendrick thought it was simply not working, that the words that came were nonsense, end of story. Gideon and Barlow left. Rob spent the following years be
ing very well paid to do things he didn’t want to tell me about. Shameful things he didn’t have the decency to be ashamed of.’

  ‘And then, two years ago, Rob heard that right after parting company with Kendrick, Gideon and Barlow had gone to Michael Andreas for funding. They’d been working on it ever since and were ready to do it. Bring something ancient and evil into the world. They’d worked it out. They called the act Unity. It was something very few revivers could have pulled off, something that needed the BPV variant researched so long before. That had struck a chord with Rob. He’d told people about it, then sought me out. For so long I’d known there was something out there, and finally someone believed me.

  ‘I don’t know if Rob’s death was to silence him. Kendrick may not have believed any of this, but Rob was talking out of turn and he knew what Kendrick had been doing all these years.

  ‘I told Yarrow everything Rob had told me. I didn’t hear any more until Hannerman came to see me. He said they’d managed to stop them, for a while; Andreas had found only one reviver capable of creating Unity, and Hannerman’s people killed her. Andreas had problems finding a replacement. Hannerman had been trying to discover who the replacement was.’

  ‘Do you know why Hannerman’s group was planning some kind of bombing campaign?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me the details, but I know they wanted to cover every eventuality. He came to me after his friends died. He was alone, and needed to be sure he was doing the right thing. I told him he had to stop them, whatever it took.’

  ‘Whatever it took? They killed an innocent man, seriously wounded another.’

  ‘I meant what I said. Because I felt it. For years, I felt what was out there. It had managed to use me to prey on Ruby Fleming, but I could tell it was trapped somehow. The whispers I heard were eager but distant. When you came to see me before, you talked of Ruby. You said the same thing happened to you.’

  ‘It did. A woman called Alice Decker.’

  ‘Did you … did you hear the whispers?’