by Andy Graham
“We? Who the fuck is ‘we’?” Ray shouted.
Lind’s breath was coming in short gasps. Ray eased up the pressure to allow the man to talk. “A bunch of us. Most recently, the VP joined the game. He upped the ante with the bet, had you promoted, put you in situations where you’d be stressed and stretched. He was desperate for the win. He started blackmailing me. He threatened my youngest daughter, the pregnant one, put cameras in her work, her bathroom at home, had her followed by drones and their dragonfly lenses. He was never explicit, just one too many references to the serial killer hunting women in Effrea. That’s the real reason I had to complete his Purity Analysis.”
Lenka’s face was grim.
“And my mother?” Ray asked.
“My wife and I had four young kids at home when I met her. The youngest, James, was no more than six months. My wife was exhausted all the time, surrounded by kids day and night. Surely, you can appreciate what that means for a man, Ray, Rhys? Your mother was young, attractive and rebellious. Everything any straight male could want.”
Rage surged through him. He twisted Lind’s wrist and arm, forcing him onto his front. “Try clever, independent and strong. But I guess you thought you could control those traits and that appealed to you. You wanted a trophy mistress who would give it all up to be with you, a woman pining for you while you went home to your doting wife.” Ray increased the pressure. Lind’s elbow cracked as he screamed for Ray to stop. The sound of gunfire rattled the cold air outside.
“Nothing happened,” Lind said, gasping. “I promise. Rose kept her end of the bargain to the letter, at least with me.”
“What does that mean?”
“You have a half-sibling. He’s older than you. I know nothing else, I swear. The records are inaccessible. You chase that down if you want. I didn’t want to get my hands dirty with that. I had enough going on with my family.” He squirmed on the floor, trying to catch his breath. “Stop, please. I can help, with your aunt, with Lenka.”
Ray felt a hand on his arm. He turned in time to catch Lenka as she fell. The red mist clouding his mind dissipated. “No. Please. No,” he murmured to the fragile woman he held in his arms. Lenka had taken him in and raised him as if he were one of her own. She’d put up with so much for him and from him. Pale, eyelids drooping, she coughed weakly.
Lind gestured to Lenka, struggling to his feet as he spoke. “Sometimes genes deal you a bad hand; other times you are more fortunate. Lenka has a rare genetic anomaly. It’s why she was able to withstand this mutation of the White Plague for so long without the vaccine. If we could isolate what gave her that protection, we may be able to deactivate the disease or develop protection for millions.”
Lenka’s chest moved slowly, dragging in shallow gasps of air. The harsh searchlights blazing through the small window painted her a deathly white.
“We’ve relied on the newer drugs so much the bacteria is more virulent than it was. It’s developing a resistance as it did all those years ago. We were starting to make progress, except now you’ve burned out the records from the system with that grey box of yours. Her condition is terminal,” Lind said softly. “She could go on like this for days. The only option is palliative, to give her dignity. This floor’s on a separate circuit to the others,” Lind looked down on the legionnaire cradling the old woman in his arms. “The rooms are still functional. We can at least give her her last wish. You brought James, my son, back for me, after a fashion. I can do that for her.”
Ray considered breaking the outstretched hand, but chose to ignore it. “OK, I’ll get you out. Just hope that whoever’s out there waiting with open arms doesn’t have a knife hidden up their sleeve. The government is fickle when it comes to saving face.”
57
The Dead Could Wait
They placed Lenka under a thin blanket in Room 0-4, ‘The Pharos Cell’. “The walls, ceiling and floor are one screen,” Lind shouted over the gathering noise. “We use it to test visual stimuli. We can generate any image you want to see. It was normally used to generate any image the occupant didn’t want to see.” He pointed down the corridor to a door that had thin streams of smoke leaking around its edges. “The White Room was used for audio stimuli. The VP was using it to torture his father.” Beyond that room, Lenka’s cell door was banging in the gale howling down the corridor. The wind tasted of sulphur and ash. Camp X517 was a ruin.
“Just finish what you’re doing,” Ray shouted as he peered through the small window.
Drak was curled up beside Lenka. The paw he had laid across her thigh had already stopped twitching. The two were bathed in soft light from the moons displayed on the ceiling. Around them, the constellations danced a twinkling counterpoint, sparkling in the silent sky. Ray watched until Lenka’s eyes closed. He waited until the ripples on the blanket covering her chest were still. Ray stood motionless, unable to take that first step away.
“You did the right thing,” Lind said, breaking the moment. “You gave her her last wish.” He pushed a keyboard back into a concealed space in the wall and gestured to the syringe in Ray’s hand. “It was better this way. Quicker. She’s gone.”
“Not gone. Dead. Call it what it is.” Ray slid the small window of the Pharos Cell shut.
They ran.
Ray and Lind fled down the corridor Miescher had led him along not so long ago. He had known who he was then, what his name was. He ignored the shouts, gunfire and the sound of the building being ripped apart by bare hands. Lind called after him, struggling to maintain the pace.
Ray swiped the next set of doors open with Lind’s card and swiftly immobilised the two wide-eyed legionnaires on the other side. He recognised one of them from the parade ground, the one who had been vomiting in his shield during the up-downs. New recruits with new weapons — prototypes linked to the owner’s swipe. Every shot traceable to a time, place and person. Useless to anyone else. He pulled a sidearm out of the holster of one of the groaning men. Useless, but proof of sorts.
He hadn’t planned past finding out what had happened to his twin. This was new territory for him, unmapped and unplanned, empty of the people he had loved. Lenka, Hamid, Aalok, his brother. Four debts for four deaths. Four deaths to appease the Four Horsemen grandad Taille had told so many tales about around the Hallowtide Fires: The Lords of Misrule.
Brooke, if she was alive, could take care of herself. She was a legionnaire; she knew the risks and the rules. He’d catch up with Nascimento and Orr when he could. But Stella? She had inadvertently started this avalanche of revelations. He owed it to her and her family to find her. The dead could wait for their answers.
58
Epilogue
The sun was crawling up over the horizon, insects flitting through shafts of light that danced with frost-rimmed leaves. The undergrowth rustled as animals scurried away from the woman disturbing their peace. President Bethina Laudanum wiggled her toes in her boots, regretting her choice of socks.
The heartwood tree in front of her momentarily eclipsed the rising sun. Half-kneeling on the natural platform between the branches was the man she had agreed to meet. His silhouette was framed against the diamond-ring sun.
Following his hand signals, the president walked to the back of the thick trunk. The tree was covered in a fine dusting of soot. Steps were carved into the bronze heartwood. They were narrow at the bottom, widening as they led up to a natural pulpit set with the branches.
The legionnaire squatted in front of her, a half-skinned rabbit in his hands. His rifle and helmet were propped up next to him. A type of revolver she didn’t recognise lay between them.
“Dr Laudanum.”
“Captain Rhys Franklin.”
“I’ll stick to Ray, thanks, ma’am. It’s the name I grew up with and it seems a fitting tribute to my little brother.”
“As you wish.” She gestured to the enormous tree they stood in. “This Preacher Tree of yours was hard to locate. It seems the records we have of the Settlements’ tradi
tions and nomenclature are sketchy, to say the least. Your Weeping Woods are our White Wood, and this heartwood tree is also the Preacher Tree. When did the former become the latter, exactly?” She poked one of the dead animals hanging from a branch. The rabbits seemed smaller than she remembered.
“I’m not sure. But my mother sometimes brought us coney to eat on Midwinter’s Day,” he said with a laugh. “I used to think it was an exotic animal that would make a change from the rabbit we used to eat most weekends. Same principle, I reckon.”
Beth smiled emptily. “How is Rose?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. It would be convenient if she were with Dr Swann.” He sheathed the knife he had been using to skin one of the rabbits. His fingers were stained red.
“I don’t know where either is. Yet. All this talk of Swann’s of empowering patients has brought her some unwelcome attention, even before you dragged her into your personal game. There are those that believe freedom is a disease that needs to be eradicated.”
“And you?”
“I prefer to manage it. Push down too hard, and you get pushback. A little bit of perceived liberty goes a long way. David Prothero and I realised that after the Window Riots.”
Franklin’s pale skin stood out against the black bark of the tree branch, his eyes narrow and probing. “Is it true about Prothero and the VP?”
“It depends on what you’ve heard.” The president forced herself to relax. Franklin had called all the shots so far, the location of the meeting, the terms and time, but she had dealt with worse situations than this. “I have revoked the diplomatic and post-diplomatic immunity of the latter until this situation is resolved. I didn’t want to, but I need to be seen doing something and he forced my hand. The VP will be back. I believe he wants a chat with you about some personal issues.”
The upside of the current situation in Ailan was the growing power struggle in the upper echelons of government. It was refreshing to watch. The staid old guard had been kicked into life by the recent developments; some new blood would be good. Franklin’s hand shot to his knife as she reached into her coat pocket. Slowly, she pulled out a small screen and flicked it on, laying it down in front of him.
“What do you want from me in return?” he asked, scanning the document.
“Extreme views and opinions tend to be neighbours rather than opposites. Politics lives on a spectrum shaped like a mobius strip, not a straight line. I’d rather have you as a partner than an opponent. Besides, you have a responsibility to society after what you did, now more than ever with Prothero gone.”
“A pardon, a promotion and a newly created post as Emissary to the Free Towns. A one-way guilt-trip to submission through bribery and emotional blackmail.”
“This is not about acquiescence,” Bethina said, “I need society and society needs me, or at least someone like me. Most people are incapable of self-determination and thinking for themselves. You can help provide the balance society needs.”
“I freed those people in camp X517. I have no debt to them or anyone else.” He pushed the screen back over to her with his foot, peering through the branches to the large clearing around the tree.
Her crystal-clear laugh bubbled between the leaves. A family of ice thrushes burst out of the branches with a flurry of squawks and indignant cheeping. “Aren’t you people in the 10th Legion trained to think? No, don’t scowl at me. A belief in simple ideas and stereotypes is for children and those too lazy or scared to have their assumptions challenged.”
“What are you talking about?”
The moon Lesau had finally dipped below the horizon. The bark of the tree around them twinkled like black diamonds. Beth’s laugh had triggered something. The woods were coming alive with the noise of animals foraging and fighting.
“You have no debt? On the contrary, Captain. You have released hundreds of people with no official ID, no swipe card and no homes. Many of those are in various stages of genetic disorders that most medics have never heard of. Their relatives mentally buried these people years ago and society has no space or means of looking after them. There is no welfare state. There are no jobs waiting to be filled.
“You have a massive debt to all of us, a huge responsibility to society. You cannot just break something you don’t like and then walk away from it. That is the path of the coward, the bully and the emotionally inept. You are none of those things.”
Beth’s anger was not only because of Ray. She had been unaware of the extent of camp X517’s work. Other camps were also giving up more secrets. She had not got where she was by not knowing. Nor did she allow blatant disobedience. To top it all off, in the process of salvaging the Population Project from the remains of camp X517’s mainframe, her scientists had found some disturbing documents. The files, seemingly commissioned by the VP, spoke of a genetic dirty bomb to be targeted against the people of Mennai. The weapon she had explicitly told him not to design.
“Use those gwenium deposits I helped locate to pay off my debt,” Ray said.
“The element is too toxic, too unstable. James Lind Junior died in vain. How he and the rest of Sci-Corps missed it, I don’t know. It was right in front of them. Academics, they’re worse than medics, unable to see the picture for the paints. The Donian tribes have been sitting on a dirty weapon for millennia. With the right processing, it could have given them superiority over us, Mennai and the mainland. The Cloud People’s way of life is about to change dramatically.” She held her hand out for the screen Ray had just pocketed.
“They call themselves the Angel Nation. You start mining those mountains to death, and you may discover that they and their legends aren’t as toothless as your experts think.”
Bethina was tired of this. She was cold and hungry, and the damp was seeping through her shoes. “Don’t tell me you’re going native on me for an old lover?”
It was a stab in the dark, a gamble, but his wide-eyed stare gave her another piece in the puzzle. This was more accurate and satisfying than anything the scientists could have told her. Time to roll the dice again. She only had rumours to go on but it was worth a shot. “We found someone under the Donian mountains in the early stages of pregnancy. Come with me and I can keep you safe.”
The sound of dogs barking slid from the trees, followed by the crash of feet. She felt a surge of irritation. When would those muscle-headed guards get over their inane urge to protect her? Their job was to let her do her job, not to satisfy some ancestral, hormone-driven need to prove themselves. Ailan was supposed to be past that. She and the VP had spent years trying to hammer that into the system.
“Clever,” Franklin said finally. “Dangling half-truths in front of me, whipping me with gentle threats, but not actually giving me any real facts or promises. I guess my mother was more right about people in suits than I ever realised. I saw Brooke die, ma’am. That story is over.”
Franklin gathered his things together, slinging his rifle across his shoulder and clipping his helmet strap under his chin. She watched him squeeze the sidearm into the holster on his thigh with a growing sense of disquiet.
“There’s an odd thing about heartwood trees, especially the ancient ones like this one,” he said, pulling a spark-box from his belt. “The bark is much thicker than on other trees. It will burn for hours but regrows easily. The old preachers used to save that effect for special occasions.”
The dogs were closer now, the shouts louder.
He fixed her eyes with his, unblinking. “Stay away from me and my family, Dr Laudanum.”
“I can’t, we are more deeply linked than you can ever imagine.”
Ray pressed the skinned rabbit into her hands. It was warm and slimy, glistening in the sunlight. ”Stay away.”
Her dogs burst out of the tree line. They raced across the clearing, barking and snarling. Ray vaulted off the leafy pulpit. Landing lightly, he threw the spark-box at the base of the staircase. Flames exploded around the tree, licking up the bark. The heat blocked the stairs and
put her in the eye of the torch.
As Franklin disappeared into the Weeping Woods, her aides crashed into the other end of the clearing. Their noisy pace quickened when they saw her trapped in the burning tree. It probably did make a great sight, she conceded. Beth considered sending the men after Franklin but that was a waste of time. She was not sure they were up to the task.
Shouts to stay calm drifted up through the fire. She stood statue still, her mind racing. It was a shame Franklin had said no. With a little moulding, he would have been both a valuable ally and a great distraction. She was reluctant to send the 10th or the 13th after him, but she was increasingly convinced they were the only people who stood a chance of bringing him in. She hoped Ray’s former colleagues’ obedience to the military outweighed their loyalty to him.
Her newer bodyguard gesticulated up at her. Is that really the signal for helicopter?
One of the dogs was barking at the flames, having tried to get up the stairs once and failed, slipping back down in a bundle of fur and teeth. A bird exploded from the forest roof where Franklin had disappeared. “We’ll see each other again, Ray,” Beth whispered, “but it’ll be on my terms.”
The story continues in A Mother’s Unreason
A murderous brother. A country in chaos. A desperate mother.
Ray Franklin is on the run, chased by men he once served with and haunted by his past. His brother, a man determined to gain complete power at any cost, is directing that hunt. As Ray is slowly dragged into a trap in long-forgotten tunnels under the streets of the capital, his mother seeks a way to stop her surviving children from slaughtering each other.
