by Seth Patrick
It was a seductive hope. Because if Tess was wrong, what did that mean for her?
He looked down into the chamber. Several assistants went with purpose from place to place; all of the dozen people down there were dressed in green scrubs and surgical masks. He assumed Gideon was there too, but Will Barlow was the only one he recognized. Jonah knew those eyes.
Barlow stood by a padded table on which Michael Andreas lay – pale, naked save for a green surgical gown, unconscious, his eyelids taped down. A monitor to the side of the table showed vital signs. Tubes and lines were inserted in his arms and thighs, pumping the chilled fluids around him that would allow his heart to be stopped and his brain to shut down. He was intubated, meaning it was to be a nonvocal procedure, which Jonah hadn’t been expecting. The set-up made him feel queasy, the memory of Lyssa Underwood strong in his mind.
For a moment, Jonah was puzzled by the size of the medical team, the scale of the preparations. But then he realized that Andreas would have to be resuscitated, warmed slowly until his heart restarted. If that failed, more extreme measures might be needed. If made perfect sense to have a full team ready, the area sterile.
Speakers erupted nearby, startling him. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Barlow’s voice. Jonah’s eyes moved to Barlow, noticing the headset he was wearing.
The murmurs died down. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. We are gathered to witness and celebrate this historic day. Those of Unity, you have been through this yourselves. And the rest of our guests, I welcome you with sympathy. Like many here, you are to witness an event you cannot be part of: our final Unity. At once, this is a glorious day and a sad one. There will be no more after this, and for those of us left…’ Barlow held out his arms. ‘It was not to be.’
Jonah glanced around him. Some heads were nodding, sad faces giving away those who had been involved with the hope of Unity and would always be denied it.
‘And to those of you who have been graced,’ Barlow said, ‘your presence alone is a gift to us, and a comfort. You have shown great courage in giving yourselves to this cause, this quest for understanding. Soon we will be gone, hidden, devoted to discovery. Devoted to revelation. When the first contact was made with these others that we have embraced, today seemed an impossible dream. But some dreams are fulfilled. And soon we shall see the end of the beginning.’
Barlow’s audience applauded. There were tears in most eyes, and shared looks of sincere joy. Jonah’s mind couldn’t help but flip Barlow’s phrase. The end of the beginning. The beginning of the end. He scolded himself.
‘The time is here,’ said Barlow. ‘I ask that you remain silent, and patient. Michael is still being prepared. Soon the final cooling stage will begin. It will take twenty minutes. When complete, his heart will stop. Brain activity will cease. After a further fifteen minutes, we will proceed.’
Brain activity will cease, Jonah thought. Dead enough for the doorway to form. Dead enough to open the path through.
There was another ripple of applause. Barlow held up a hand for silence. ‘May I introduce to you the person who has taken on the role of Grace, so cruelly lost to us. Finding them wasn’t easy…’ Barlow smiled and laughed as he spoke. The laughter was returned by those watching, and it jarred in Jonah’s mind. Victor Eldridge had suggested that the search for a reviver to replace Grace Ferloux was what had led to Hannerman’s attack at the conference. If true, it was what had led to Sam being so badly injured.
He thought of Sam, then – a raw pain hit him, not knowing if Sam had been brought out of his coma successfully. The memory of the stabbing came to him, Jason Shepperton’s arms flailing against the attack, Sam and Pru looking on in horror. Yet in a moment, Shepperton would enter the chamber, eager for his riches.
‘Welcome our reviver,’ said Barlow. Pru Dryden came in through a door at the rear of the chamber, dressed in scrubs like the others.
Jonah’s mouth fell open. ‘Shit…’ he found himself saying. He could sense the looks he’d earned, and the guard beside him leaned close and whispered to him to shut up.
He glared as hard as he could at Pru Dryden. So Hannerman had been targeting her. Shepperton had put himself in the way. If he did get out of here, Jonah thought, he might have to make an effort to like the guy.
Applause rippled across the observation room. Pru took a seat. Jonah continued to watch her, but she didn’t look up to where he sat. He wondered if she’d been advised they were present, knowing she wouldn’t have been happy at the news; but then, he didn’t expect she planned to go back to forensic revival anyway. He thought of the money involved and what it would mean for her. A few hours of work for a lifetime of financial security for her and her daughter. No questions asked.
The murmurs of excitement in the audience grew again. The contrast between how everyone else in the room seemed to be feeling and his own rising urgency made him reel as he looked into the chamber.
Jonah glanced at Annabel, on the other side of the guard. She glanced back and raised her eyebrows, looking just as tense as he felt.
Jonah looked back down as Tess entered the chamber. She crossed to Michael Andreas and took hold of his hand. She kissed his forehead and stepped back.
‘We’re starting the final phase now,’ said Barlow, talking more to those he was working with than the audience above.
* * *
Under his breath, Never Geary cursed his stomach.
Getting into the ceiling crawlspace had proved tricky enough, but right now he was jammed tight. A little less food would have made all the difference.
Thick cabling had been fed through on the inside of the ceiling tile supports, further restricting the gap available and limiting which tiles he could try and lift.
When he’d been taken for the shower that morning, he’d tried to keep his bearings. As far as he could tell, the other side of the wall from their prison was an empty office. He had no way to be sure if that office’s door would be unlocked, but he was optimistic.
At least, he had been. Right now, he was in trouble.
He felt around in the near-dark. The only light was from the open hatch he had come through, but it was hardly enough for him to navigate by.
He grunted a little as he managed to lift the first tile. The office underneath was almost dark, but he could see that he would have to position himself above a desk to the left if he didn’t want to fall the whole way to the floor.
He took hold of ceiling supports and pulled, wriggling, feeling the skin on his fingers complain as they gripped the sharp edges of the metal supports. To his relief, he started moving again. Pulling any harder would have been a disaster: he was pretty bloody sure that a swearing Irishman would draw attention, however hard he tried to keep it to a whisper.
As it was, he thought the noise of his breathing had to be audible to anyone within a mile radius.
At last he dropped to the desk with a solid thump that seemed dangerously loud, and stayed still for two full minutes, breathing hard.
Nobody came.
* * *
Fifty minutes after Jonah had sat down, Pru Dryden started to earn her five million.
Those in the observation room had become restless during the long wait for the condition of Andreas to be optimal for the revival, but the moment Dryden stepped over to the chair by Andreas and took his hand, the atmosphere changed again. Tension spread over all the watchers. Quiet murmurs fell away until there was silence.
He watched Pru with interest, trying to recall the last revival he had viewed first-hand. Reviewing taped footage to assess revivers for additional training was common enough (an uncomfortable image of Eldridge in that alley loomed up at the thought), but the last time he had been present while someone else revived a subject was at least a year before.
Without knowing how difficult the task would be for Pru, Jonah had no expectations of how long it would take. When he first heard the whisper it made him jump.
The whispering was shapeless, coming in short bu
rsts. Pru Dryden looked up. Her eyes moved, it seemed to Jonah, in tandem with the sounds. Jonah glanced at the other observers. Their faces were expectant, but there was nothing to suggest they could hear it.
The whispers grew. Jonah looked at Annabel, but she clearly heard nothing. She was watching Dryden with the pensive expression he himself must have had a few moments before.
Down in the chamber, Will Barlow seemed more alert. He sat tall in his seat. Then he looked to the observation window, right at Jonah, a cold smile in his eyes. Jonah looked away.
And then Pru Dryden spoke:
‘I feel it,’ she said. A few seconds, then: ‘He’s ready.’
The words provoked applause.
Barlow stood. ‘And now we wait. The Elder will find us.’
They waited. It was barely two minutes, but it seemed so much longer.
And then Jonah felt something he hadn’t experienced before. A warmth, like breath, sweet and comforting, passed through him. He heard a rush of air over his ears. He looked around. No one else seemed affected.
‘I felt something…’ he whispered to Annabel, but the feeling – the nature of the feeling – had taken him by surprise. ‘It felt … good. Benevolent.’
Annabel looked puzzled. ‘What does that mean?’ she whispered, but the guard’s patience had run out and he told them to keep quiet. Jonah looked at her and shrugged, shaking his head. I don’t know. Could he dare hope that Tess was right?
Then Dryden spoke once more: ‘Friend?’ she said. ‘Friend? Are you there?’
Michael Andreas did not speak, did not move – it was a nonvocal revival, of course – but Jonah was astonished to find he could hear the reply nonetheless. Yes … I’m here. It wasn’t Andreas, he knew, although to Jonah it sounded like his voice. He was certain now. This was not the creature he had seen inhabiting Alice Decker. This was something else altogether.
Pru Dryden said: ‘Welcome, Friend.’ An excited ripple of chatter broke out and settled almost at once.
Thank you, the voice said.
‘Is it time?’
Yes. Now. Please.
Pru raised her hand, holding Andreas’s, for all to see.
Jonah had no idea what the process entailed, but he saw Pru look to Barlow for confirmation, then her fingers began to open. Jonah was struck with a sudden panic – a professional one. Pru was about to break contact. The revival would end. The impossible thought struck him that Pru had another agenda, and that this was yet another attempt at sabotage.
Pru Dryden’s hand opened fully, allowing Andreas’s to fall.
The audience gasped, and Jonah gasped too, but the thought of sabotage vanished as the gasps from around him became a cheer. A sudden break in contact, he realized, must somehow be a crucial part of the process.
Applause grew. After a few moments, Barlow urged silence and, when he had it, he spoke. ‘The indications are clear,’ he said. The audience waited, and Barlow seemed to enjoy keeping them in suspense. ‘Unity has been achieved.’
The audience stood and applauded. In all the room, only Jonah, Annabel and the guard between them remained seated.
‘I guess you’ll be letting us go soon,’ called Annabel to the guard, having to raise her voice to be heard.
The guard looked at her with a cynical smile. ‘Can’t be soon enough for me, lady. Can’t be soon enough for me.’
* * *
The first thing Never had done was move the desk he’d landed on so that it was directly underneath the ceiling tile nearest the wall. That would make the whole process a much quicker up-and-over.
He glanced around the room. It was clearly unused. Like its twin on the other side of the wall, it was a dumping ground for office furniture and other leftovers.
The slats of the window blinds were slightly open. He closed them, then looked out of the narrow slit at the side, fingers wrapped around the door handle. He watched for two minutes without a soul passing by.
He pulled the door. Part of him expected it to be locked, but it opened. He shut it again and smiled. Then he frowned. This was all he’d intended to do – try the door and get back to his prison. He looked up to the ceiling, to the hole where he had slid the tile across. But then he noticed something in the far corner. A phone.
He hurried over and picked up the receiver, not expecting a dial tone but getting one anyway. He tried the first number he thought of: the FRS office.
The rapid pulsed tones that came back were familiar to him. The phones in the forensic lab in Quantico had done the same when you dialled an external number without first getting an outside line. He got the dial tone again, hit nine for the outside line, then swore: a computer voice requested his code. External calls here were ID controlled. It probably wasn’t a security measure, he knew – more a financial one, preventing the staff from abusing the system for personal calls – but the effect was the same. The phone was useless.
He glanced around and saw something else that made him smile. Under one table, a shiny PC was calling to him. Its monitor was lying on its back beside it, cabling coiled on top.
Keeping his hopes in check, he pulled it out and started to hook everything up.
It was a long shot, but if the machine worked, if any of the network ports in the office were connected, if he could log in, if there was external network access … Maybe he could get word out that way.
A lot of ifs, but it was worth a try.
At first, the computer sat stubbornly silent when he tried to switch it on, but once he’d found a pair of scissors he could use as a screwdriver, it took him only two minutes to remove the case and get the thing booting again. He crossed his fingers and tried every common admin password he knew, all the ones that made any half-decent IT administrator wince. He got in on the ninth attempt.
He started to investigate how the network was configured, having a look around the machine for any clues to their system. And as he looked, his heart sank. The network wasn’t configured at all. The hard drive was pristine, with nothing but the operating system installed. He gave network configuration a shot, trying a few common choices, but with no luck.
The damn thing was just too new.
‘Bollocks’, he said, and knew it was time to give up. He considered risking a look around nearby offices for other machines but decided he’d been fooling himself. If their phones were set up to prevent abuse, he thought, then chances were good that Web access was restricted too.
He powered the machine down, then was suddenly aware of how much time he’d spent working on it. As the thought hit him, he heard footsteps in the corridor outside the office. He took a cautious peek out the window.
Two guards. Every muscle in Never’s body started to tighten.
They stopped a little way down the corridor and started talking about the imminent start of the football season and the first Pittsburgh Steelers game against the Cleveland Browns. Almost holding his breath, Never waited.
The guards changed topic to how much they were looking forward to their share of the celebratory food that night, and how much alcohol they could ‘borrow’, something which brought a smile to Never’s lips in spite of his nerves. No better time to get away than when your guards are half drunk.
‘I’ve got to do an exterior sweep now,’ said one. ‘I’ll see you later.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ the other replied. ‘Time I checked on Geary, anyway.’
His smile plummeting away, Never turned and spotted the shifted ceiling tile in the far corner. He took a deep breath and moved.
* * *
The applause settled as Barlow addressed them.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, champagne has been arranged. We will begin the process of resuscitation now. Over the next forty minutes, Michael’s temperature will be brought slowly up, his blood supply restored. Only then will we allow his heart to beat once more. There will be little to see until then. After that, our celebrations will begin upstairs. Michael will be kept unconscious for another hour, then he will be c
arefully monitored until we’re happy that he is fully recovered. Then he’ll join you all at midnight, to complete the festivities. Please, first, if you would, some appreciation for my colleagues…’ He gestured around the chamber at the medical staff. After the applause, he switched off his microphone and got back to work.
The door to the observation area opened and trays loaded with champagne were carried through. As the drinks were distributed, the room grew noisy with excitement again.
Annabel and Jonah watched the medics busy themselves below, readying Andreas for his careful resurrection. Tess was watching from the side of the chamber, Pru Dryden next to her. Barlow stood in a far corner, unmoving.
‘You think this was real, Jonah?’ asked Annabel. The guard sitting between them had stood to stretch his legs, and it was the first time they could talk with any privacy since being brought there.
‘I could feel it, Annabel. Something came through but not what I’d seen before. Not something evil…’
He stopped, sensing a noise on the edge of hearing. A whisper, again, as he had heard during the revival.
But this time the whisper became a laugh, distant and cruel. He looked around, alarm on his face.
‘What is it?’ said Annabel.
‘I don’t know.’
He knew she sensed nothing. He glanced around. There were no signs that anyone else was sensing it, either. The whisper grew.
He felt a shadow fall across him. He could feel movement, around and beneath.
It’s below me, he remembered Ruby Fleming say. The sensation of movement intensified, and he could feel it shoot upwards, and around, then down again. The whispering was horribly loud.
‘Oh God…’ he said. Something else. Something else had come through.
Annabel grasped his arm. ‘What is it, Jonah?’
He looked at the people in the room. Not one person seemed alarmed. Not one person seemed distracted. He stood and moved to the glass window. Looking down into the chamber, he saw the look of distress on Pru Dryden’s face. She was seeking something out, eyes darting this way and that.
