The Lies (Zombie Ocean Book 8)

by Michael John Grist

  "Containment?" he said.

  Rachel held her card to the security panel, and behind the door the mechanism whirred into life.

  "It wasn't personal," she said. "Withholding this from you. What Olan wants, he gets. He's the King, after all."

  While snorted.

  Rachel granted him a withering smile. "Don't think you know everything about him. There are depths even you don't see."

  While met her smile with cold indifference, realizing something important. Yes, she had thought of him that way; a useful tool, perhaps, while she alone knew the truth.

  "Get in," he said, as the elevator doors opened.

  "Don't be angry," she answered dismissively, and stepped in. "It doesn't become you." While followed and held up a hand to stop his team from following.

  "I'm not angry. Push the button."

  Rachel pushed the button and the carriage started down.

  "I spoke to him just an hour ago," she said. "He's directing our investigation personally. He won't be happy that you're interfering. The Logchain has always conducted its own oversight."

  "I don't care if he's happy. Neither should you. There are bigger matters at stake."

  The carriage came to a halt and the doors opened.

  "Here are your tunnels," Rachel said.

  Ahead stretched a long, tall white hallway, with floor-to-ceiling glass panes set into the walls at regular alternating intervals. There was a funny feeling in the air, like a stiff nicotine buzz mixed with a chill breeze.

  "It doesn't mean anything that we have this," Rachel started, her voice becoming strange now, defensive and dismissive at once. "You'll see, there are no leaks here, nothing to investigate. You'll find-"

  While started forward, pulling Rachel with him. She lurched to keep up.

  The first glass panel drew closer on the left. His heart began to thump in his chest and beads of sweat sprang up on his temples despite the sharpening chill in the air.

  "I prefer not to come this close," Rachel said. "The shielding is far from perfect, and they make for a hell of a headache."

  While felt the headache already beginning to form in the back of his head, matched with a dark premonition of what he was about to see. Five more steps, then five more, and he was standing in front of the first glass pane, and looking inside, at-

  A gray man.

  He stood naked like a specimen in a cage, thin gray skin sucked tight to thin bones, eyes a bright, flashing white. Clamps held him perfectly immobile at arms and thighs, while in each corner of his white-lined 'display' box there were large gray triangles that seemed to waver if James looked at them for too long, like a heat haze.

  A genetic type one, in the flesh, expressed into reality.

  Just as they'd promised they'd never done.

  "I didn't make them all," Rachel said quickly. "I inherited them, I just studied them. Harrison was very clear about secrecy."

  James While stared at the figure behind the glass; far more than he'd expected to find. Rachel kept talking but he didn't look at her, as everything she said now was almost certainly a lie.

  This was it. He bit his lip so hard it bled. He'd suspected secrets but to find this at the heart of the Logchain? He should have come in earlier, using up his political capital in the SEAL, perhaps, but exposing this before…

  Before what? Before these things were tied to the hydrogen line? Maybe they already were. Maybe this whole damn thing was inevitable.

  "Come on," he said, and dragged her roughly, walking too fast for her to easily keep up. Her high heels clacked staccato on the floor.

  "I don't like to come this deep without additional shielding," Rachel stammered as he pulled her on. "We have some rudimentary protections, working with magnets, but it doesn't do much for…"

  He tuned her out and reached the second cell. Inside it was genetic type two, a giant red monster. It was enormous, easily three times as tall as a man, seated and hunched over to fit beneath the already-tall ceiling. The chill emanating from it was visceral, cutting through his skin and making his blood run cold. Its bright red eyes hung overhead in its giant head, and just looking at them sent a flood of confusion across his thoughts.

  Rachel said something. He turned the world, honing his focus to cut through the uncertainty, and looked at her.

  "What have you done?" he hissed, then started forward again, pulling her with him.

  "Stop now, it's getting dangerous," Rachel shouted, then tried to punch him in the face. He caught it on the chest and strode on.

  "Look, there are signs," she shouted, pointing.

  There were signs on the walls. Biohazard. He ignored her and kept walking

  At the next cell was type three, a single fizzing black creature draped in dangling white ribbons of skin. His headache thickened but he couldn't stop now, even though Rachel Heron was lashing at him with both her fists and feet, shouting.

  He had to see it all. The glass windows stretched on and on.

  Beyond type three was four, a pink one with too many arms, then five was a melted yellow thing, then six a shimmery black wraith, then after that Rachel passed out and he couldn't drag her any further. The black thing pressed to the glass and seemed to reach directly into James While's head, forcing needles of uncertainty into his thoughts.

  He spun the world, dragged Rachel Heron up into his arms, and started back at a run.

  By the end of the hall his nose was bleeding freely but he couldn't stop moving for fear he wouldn't start again. The blood pooled on Rachel's belly until he got into the elevator and hit the button, then the headache kicked into high gear and he dropped to the floor.

  The doors closed slowly, and the hallway shimmered ahead, the end not even in sight. How many glass cells, he wondered, as he slumped on his side. How many pieces of the T4 had already been 'expressed' onto the real world, and how long had they been here, waiting to be broken free?

  11. READ ME

  In a mile or two I'm almost dead. Every trudging step cracks ice somewhere in my clothing. After a time I jettison the sled, even though it has everything I need to survive up here, because I'm not going to survive with it.

  There's nothing. This land is a waste. I'm ready to lie down and die, but the wispy pieces of the Feargal/Sandbrooke-wraith inside me pushes on.

  It doesn't talk. It's bits of different people only, shards of the upper half and not the legs, but I suppose that's bad enough. It just keeps working my muscles, and on I go.

  In time, there's a house, and I break in. It's not a normal house; it's a mansion, some billionaire's lakeside palace on the edge of existence, acting like a Bond villain. I pass through like I'm seeing only one frame of my life out of five, out of ten, barely registering a room before I'm through it.

  I smash up furniture and put it in the middle of a marble floor. I have a little bottle of gasoline in my pocket, saved for just this eventuality, and a fresh box of matches. Feargal's touch guides me as I spray the juice and set the spark, then I lay back and wriggle out of my freezing, damp clothes. I see my black feet. I see the cut on my thigh turning dark. The marble is freezing but soon the fire licks up, and I lie on the seared, icy bedding of my clothes and shiver.

  It's dark when I wake, and the air is empty. For a time I feel lost, not in space or time but in myself. I can't remember who I am, gasping for the line to hold onto, but there's nothing there.

  The air is thin.

  I pull myself together slowly. My clothes are mostly dry, and I shrug on the inner thermal layers. I feed the fire, then remember the USB key in my jacket pocket, and dig it out. I turn it in my hands, like I'm inspecting a fine diamond. So much effort, for this.

  I don't waste time. A search of the mansion reveals everything I need, but none of it working. A flashlight with no working batteries. A laptop with no power supply. A can of ravioli with no can-opener.

  I improvise on the last one, and eat cold old pasta huddled on a leather sofa next to my fire. Outside the storm rages on
, tearing at the house, but inside it is warm. Probably I can just stay here forever, but the wraith-shreds inside me push awkwardly. I push back, but right now they have more willpower than I do.

  By the morning I've got a generator working, dug out of one of the huge garages, amongst various Ferraris and Porsches. There is no attachment to run it to the laptop, so I improvise that too, shelling cables, fusing wires and using the transformer from a lawn mower. I carry it all over to my fire and switch on the computer. It lights with a reassuring chime, just audible over the chutter of the generator. Damn, they build these things to last. All I need now are some VR goggles and I'll be back where I started, opening the prepper bible Cerulean made for me before he died the first time, tucked away in Sir Clowdesely.

  When the desktop comes up, showing a background photo of a tall, well-muscled man and his beautiful wife with three cute kids, I take a deep breath then insert the USB key. The drive icon pops up, unlabeled, and I open it. Inside there are dozens of folders and one text file. The text file is titled:

  READ ME

  I scan the folders, which have names like:

  Multicameral Array

  Logchain

  Olan Harrison

  SEAL Heads

  Apotheo Net

  Ark 12

  T4

  I get the dizzy sense of standing on the edge of a huge precipice. I don't know if I'm ready for this moment, because perhaps it's all here. Everything I've wanted to know, everything I need to find somebody to blame.

  I remember shark-eyes in the lobby of the research facility, telling me it's not about revenge, or justice, but about protecting the people I love. Lara, I think. My kids. That's a good thing to think. I hold them close, pushing away the chill shreds of Feargal in my middle, and doing this for myself.

  No folder looks better than another for me to start with, so I click on the top one, Multicameral Array. That only leads to another 'READ ME' text file, along with dozens more folders. There are Alpha, Beta, Gamma and so on, as well as 'Pre-Event', 'Event', Post-Event', and many more.

  I click further through folders, but within each there are dozens more like Russian nesting dolls. I scan what must be thousands of neatly organized files. There are images, videos, text, spreadsheets, pdfs. They have names like:

  Multicameral Alpha remit SEAL 11/16

  Gamma Post-Observation sign-off.354

  Permissions High-wave Trancing – log99

  I feel myself tumbling down into the rabbit hole. I click more rapidly, looking for the end to this endlessly branching inner system of folders, but I can't find it. I get twenty levels deep into the organizational tree, but it doesn't end. It's overwhelming and reinforces the dizzy feeling.

  I pull all the way out to the root directory and try another thread, digging into the Logchain folder. Just as before, there are dozens of folders with strange names like they're written in a different language. Screens rush by, and excitement blurs into frustration. It's like the first time I discovered the Deepcraft user-made worlds portal. It gave me a migraine for weeks before I figured out the specific route through its menus to the best place to build my calm, static, real world, non-violent, limited-player Yangtze facility.

  It just keeps on going.

  Deep in, I randomly click on a video.

  It shows a long white hallway ahead, high-tech looking, like a sterile lab of some kind with clinical strip lighting above. Someone's breathing heavily. The camera starts to jog side to side, as whoever's holding it runs forward. There are floor-to-ceiling glass panels set into the walls ahead, and as the cameraman runs ahead I catch a glimpse of what's behind each, and-

  Jesus goddammit, I know the occupants, though they're on the blurry screen for an instant each only.

  A gray zombie. A demon. A leper.

  I lean in, glued to the little screen as the panting gets louder and the jolting motion from side to side becomes more violent. More glass panels pass by; a blue thing, a yellow one, another wraith, and then we're beyond the types that I've seen and onto the truly bizarre, things that hardly look human, like something out of a Ripley's Believe It Or Not. A giant jellyfish thing, spurting feebly, hanging from metal stakes. What might be a hugely enlarged human cell, oozing fluids. A kind of electrical zag twisted into a helix, like bottled lightning.

  I'm barely breathing by the time the camera goes down. The floor rushes up, a hand flies out but fails to stop the fall, followed by a thump, jolt and the lens cracking on the floor. The cameraman shouts in pain as the camera comes to rest on its side, so the gray concrete floor fills most of the frame, along with the white hall stretching onward.

  The hand comes back, pawing at the floor, then the cameraman coughs and blood sprays across the lens.

  "Here!" he tries to shout, though the sound gets dampened by the blood in his mouth. The camera jostles as he rolls beside it, then lifts at an awkward, lolling angle, to point at the nearest glass cell wall. I can't see into it yet; we're not close enough, the angle is too tight. The cameraman crawls onward. He coughs more and blood spatters the floor before him. The footage begins to warp, with electric grid lines cutting across it like the signal is cutting it out on an old TV.

  The cameraman crawls round the edge of this last glass cell and peers in, and it's something very different. Behind the glass is a man, not like the bizarre science fictional monsters that came earlier, but healthy, handsome, muscular, and motionless. His eyes are closed. He's too tall, too perfect, too calm.

  "It's this," the cameraman croaks. "Thirty-seven."

  Then he takes a ragged breath and his head cracks off the floor. The camera clunks beside him, phasing crazily with static bands.

  A moment later the camera starts to drag backward, as if pulled on a string. There is only the grating on the concrete, as gradually the camera slides away in this amateurish zoom-out. In stages I see the body of the cameraman, wearing some kind of protective haz-mat outfit but still lying sprawled, with blood spreading beneath his head. The figure of the naked man recedes out of view then the electrical disturbance flares up, until the image is so corrupted there's nothing left to see but static.

  The video ends.

  I find I'm holding my breath. What the hell did I just see? I scan up and down the folder, looking for some kind of explanation of what that was, but I can't find anything obvious, just the label 'Event 3:17'. I'm tempted to watch it again, but there's time for that later. My hand is shaking as I click on another file, this one an image.

  It's a series of graphs, what might be brainwave patterns, with dozens of tiny red crosses marked out on each of them, scribbled with indecipherable notes.

  I click another, a text file, which begins all in lower case then shifts to upper case, written in a kind of scientific shorthand I can't follow, rife with complex equations and ungrammatical sentences. It seems to be about the feasibility of something to do with the brain, but I have no idea what feasibility it's measuring.

  I click on.

  In another folder I find hundreds of time-log reports, pay claims, with dozens of names and percentages next to them. Is this a staff appraisal sheet? A high school grade transcript? I click on, out of Logchain and into ARK 12, where I finally find something that makes some sense.

  Zone 1 Maine MARS 3000

  Zone 4 Gap Fallout Bunker

  Zone 5 Brezno Nuclear Weapons Silo

  Zone 6 Istanbul Airport Storage

  There are twelve zones listed in total, but I can't see beyond the first four. I stare for a long few seconds, my mouth going dry. I know all of these from our days of planning Anna's assault. I've been to the first four of them. I've killed the first four of them.

  Something in my stomach rebels at that thought and I almost vomit to the side. I swallow it back, then click feverishly on Maine. Inside there are dozens of folders, but many of them I recognize.

  Lars Mecklarin

  MARS3000

  Command Roster

  Habitat Roster

&
nbsp; Event

  Post-Event

  Unification

  I click on Lars Mecklarin, and end up rifling through folders and files detailing his life and works in uncompromising detail. His books are here, many of which I've read, as well as his doctoral research papers. There are early drafts of the MARS3000 building plan, with all of his notions about alternating a rich environment, using people as entertainment, total knowability of human responses, and so on.

  It's familiar, almost comfortable to find and read through, but I only have to look up to see the context; I'm sitting in a Russian millionaire's Bond-villain retreat, hours after breaking into some psychotic pseudoscience facility intended to test and perhaps develop some kind of psychic ability.

  It's mad. Lars Mecklarin was a part of it, even if he didn't know what part that was.

  I keep searching through the Roster files until I find her; not for any real reason but just to see her there. Salle Coram. Of course I know her file backwards, along with just about every other person listed here. I know their names and their doctoral subjects, their projected roles in a future MARS colony, their research specialization, along with Lars' planned route for them through the social jungle of an enclosed underground bunker. I memorized all of them in the months after Maine. I've been to some of their houses, but seeing them here, scrolling through lists of their lives, makes them real in a new, weird way.

  All this same detail is there for Gap, Brezno and Istanbul. I don't see Bordeaux, but it's surely here somewhere. I sit back and take a breath. It's a damn treasure trove of intelligence, enough to fill a lifetime's study. I'm guessing that's just what it represents. Someone's entire record of the SEAL, of what they did, what happened and how. It's a dense forest of data with no clear way through.

  Then I remember the text file from the opening folder, and click back to find it. Yes, just one labeled 'READ ME' here, but it's a doozy; dozens of megabytes. If that's all text, I know from my days editing self-published books, it's millions of words. Longer than Game of Thrones.