Lost Souls

by Seth Patrick

  Jonah woke four hours later to find Kendrick and Never still sleeping. He was certain Kendrick’s words had been in a dream; tears pricked his eyes at the thought of how cruel that kind of dream was, where reality was a painful thing to wake up to.

  Then the thrum of Kendrick’s phone woke the man; he took the call and looked over at Jonah with bloodshot eyes. ‘They’ll be here in less than an hour,’ Kendrick said.

  ‘They?’ said Jonah.

  ‘Annabel and a friend of mine,’ said Kendrick. ‘I told you, didn’t I?’ He seemed genuinely uncertain. ‘You should grab yourself a shower.’

  Fifty minutes later she walked in, smiling, another woman coming in with her. One of Kendrick’s people, he assumed, although she looked decidedly less lethal than he’d been expecting Kendrick’s inner circle to be. His own age, he thought; slight, short.

  Annabel’s expression was a giveaway when she saw Jonah’s face – a shock she failed to hide, one he understood. He’d seen his own face in the mirror when he’d showered, cuts and bruises underscored by haunted exhaustion.

  Annabel, too, had been through it. She was wearing a beanie and took it off carefully, pulling a cotton pad away from the side of her head that was brown with dried blood.

  ‘Be careful,’ said the woman. ‘You don’t want to open it up again.’

  Annabel put a tentative hand to the injury and took it away, clean. ‘Busy few days,’ she said, and Jonah could hear her voice breaking as she spoke. They took a step towards each other and embraced, saying nothing. Just holding on, breathing. All they could do. All they needed to do.

  ‘This is Sly,’ said Kendrick after a discreet moment. ‘She’s tougher than I look.’ He smiled, and Sly smiled back.

  ‘I’ll vouch for that,’ said Annabel, breaking off the embrace but not letting go of Jonah’s hand.

  ‘Sly,’ said Kendrick, ‘this is Jonah Miller, and Never Geary.’

  They gave each other a nod.

  Jonah caught the expression on Never’s face as he looked at Sly, and felt himself wince a little inside; auburn hair and a great smile had often been Never’s weakness.

  ‘Aren’t you, uh, a little short to be a stormtrooper?’ said Never, his grin horribly nervous.

  Sly’s eyebrow arched high. She looked at Kendrick, her thumb jabbing back to Never. ‘Keep this one away from me,’ she said. ‘And tell me we have beer.’

  She went to the kitchen, Never following her, looking like a kicked puppy.

  *

  Kendrick left the safe house without explanation, emphasizing that Jonah, Annabel and Never were confined indoors. He left Sly there to watch them; she sulked at being a babysitter but kept herself to herself, while Never avoided looking anywhere near her when she was around. They spent much of their time resting. Jonah and Annabel slept spooned in one of the beds, the simple pleasures of contact and sleep feeling like the greatest of luxuries. They told each other everything that had happened since Bob Crenner’s car was ambushed, but neither mentioned the biggest thing on each of their minds: what the hell they were going to do next. When Kendrick finally came back late evening, they put the question to him.

  ‘Me and Sly will be gone for a few days,’ he told them. ‘In the meantime, you’ll be here, alone. Stay indoors. You have plenty of food. We’re arranging for the three of you to meet up with an acquaintance of mine who’ll take you somewhere safe.’

  ‘What about Andreas?’ said Jonah.

  ‘It’s not your fight any more,’ said Kendrick.

  There was silence for a moment, as they took this in.

  ‘And you?’ said Annabel. ‘What are you going to do?’

  Kendrick smiled. ‘Take care of things. More than that, you don’t get to know.’

  *

  A welcome two days of nothing followed.

  They were all still numb. Jonah kept his eye on news about the research at Winnerden Flats; all the revivers who had been accepted were at the site now, and in the most recent interview with Stephanie Graves she revealed that updates would be monthly.

  ‘Just let us get on with it,’ she told the interviewer, smiling.

  For most of the time, they avoided talk of what came next. Whenever the topic did get raised, it was usually Never who started it.

  ‘We can’t go back,’ said Never. ‘Our old lives are gone and I don’t even know what to feel about that. If Kendrick fails, we’ll need new identities for the rest of our lives.’

  ‘If Kendrick fails,’ said Annabel, ‘the rest of our lives is likely to be pretty short.’ Jonah scowled at her, and she smiled back. ‘But in good company,’ she said.

  After three days, Jonah was sitting with Annabel and Never eating through a mountain of junk food and watching terrible movies. He had almost started to feel human again. Whatever happened next, he would be with Annabel. There were worse ways to face the end of the world.

  Just after 5 p.m., Kendrick and Sly came back. Kendrick stepped over to the television and switched it off. He set the black holdall he was carrying down on the floor, with a heavy metallic thunk. Sly had one as well, and when she set it down it made the same kind of sound.

  ‘Time for answers,’ Kendrick said.

  *

  ‘My plan was always to kill Andreas,’ Kendrick began. ‘One way or another. Tess didn’t know for certain if killing him would really end this, and any attempt on his life would always be a one-off. One chance, so it would have to count. Even before Tess told us when we could make it count, we already had a means in place to get a team inside Winnerden Flats, armed to the teeth. When I found out what Andreas really was, I set about making sure people loyal to me got themselves into positions that could be important. Two of them are already in Winnerden Flats, in Baseline security. We have a good idea what’s happening on the Baseline side, but very little about the restricted areas. We know Tess and Andreas are both there. But things have accelerated. We’re out of time. We’d hoped to find out about the final component Andreas needed for his machine, and try and stop its construction, but we’ve just learned that we’re too late. The last component has been delivered. Whatever the process of Andreas’s rise is, it begins in the next day or two. We have no choice but to act now.’ He laid out a few sheets of paper, a four-page mosaic of the site plan. ‘Winnerden Flats,’ he said. The complex was, overall, a rectangle. Two sets of tall wire fencing were marked, the innermost flagged as electrified. The main gate was at the long, lower end of the rectangle. ‘This area in the middle is open, a courtyard with hard surfaces for recreation. Living quarters for the Baseline staff are here.’ His hand swept across the L-shaped building at the left. ‘Sleeping area here. Indoor recreation area, canteen. Kitchen. Gym and swimming pool at the top. There are a hundred revivers working at the facility, a further hundred research and support staff. Over here –’ his hand moved to the lower right of the rectangle – ‘this is Lab One, for Baseline research. Used only by day, this is our way in.’ Then Kendrick pointed to the top right of the rectangle, at the heart of which was the large dotted circle labelled MCH. ‘This area is called Lab Two. Officially the cryogenics lab. Off-limits to Baseline staff, and that includes the main security team. It has its own security, is self-contained, and even has supplementary power generation. Most of the complex is four storeys, concrete floor at ground level. Here, though, two levels are underground. The circular construct that houses their machine covers both levels. We know that those close to Andreas live in this area. They don’t leave it. They don’t mix with the research staff.’

  ‘Of course they don’t,’ said Jonah. ‘If the revivers caught sight of them, they might be able to see the shadows crouching on their shoulders.’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ said Kendrick. ‘There are only twelve security staff for the main facility, but we don’t know how many in Lab Two. Maybe another dozen.’ He laid out another sheet of paper, the schematic of a cryogenic chamber he’d already shown Jonah and Never.

  ‘We think this is the
centre of the machine, where Andreas will be as he undergoes whatever process they have in mind. The plan I originally devised had an eight-strong team. That team included four of my associates, long-trusted colleagues willing to do whatever it takes. Together with myself and Sly, we would gain covert access to Winnerden Flats. The two insiders from on-site security would complete the team. They would meet us, and take us to a secure storage room. We would hide there until the time was right, which, thanks to Tess, we now know means once the rise has actually begun. Two of the team would then evacuate Tess, get her out of there. The information she has access to could prove critical, even if the rest of the mission fails. The other six team members would gain access to Lab Two and blow the internal generator, then move in to kill Andreas.’

  ‘A nuclear weapon would be useful,’ said Never. ‘Given how good Andreas has been at not dying.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it just,’ said Kendrick, irritated. ‘Not quite that easy to get hold of.’

  ‘So how do you plan to make sure he’s dead?’

  ‘Do you know what the perfect murder is, Never?’

  ‘When there isn’t a corpse to find,’ he said with a shrug.

  Kendrick nodded. ‘Precisely.’ He reached into the holdall at his feet and produced an unlabelled black cylinder. ‘When I’m done, I’ll know Andreas can’t recover. Because there’ll be nothing left of him.’

  Everyone looked at the cylinder. Jonah wondered what it contained, but he could see the top of the holdall, and a compact gas mask sitting there. ‘Good luck,’ he said, but the look on Annabel’s face was odd. He wondered if she’d taken it as sarcasm. ‘I mean it.’

  ‘I know,’ said Annabel. She looked agitated; scared, almost.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Jonah.

  Annabel shook her head, looking at Jonah and Never. ‘Jesus, you two are slow sometimes.’ She got blank looks. ‘He just told us his plan. Don’t you get it?’

  ‘No,’ said Jonah.

  She turned to Kendrick. ‘The associates you’d been counting on . . . They’re not coming, are they?’

  Kendrick shook his head. ‘They were the team that took Lucas Silva, so no. We were trying to arrange alternatives when the news came in that the machine is ready. We’re out of time and we’re short-handed. Me, Sly and the two insiders can handle the assault. It’s a smaller team than I’d like, but it’s enough. Problem is, we can’t spare anyone to get Tess to safety.’

  Bemused, Jonah looked at Annabel, then at Never; he could see the penny drop on Never’s face just as it dropped with him.

  ‘In theory,’ said Sly, ‘all you have to do is take one of the patrol vehicles and drive away.’

  There was silence for a few seconds as the news sank in. Finally, Never spoke up. ‘You said this wasn’t our fight,’ he said.

  ‘Things change,’ said Kendrick. ‘We leave tonight. Welcome aboard.’

  49

  Jonah lay in the dark on a hard cold surface. He was completely enclosed, save for a small gap left at the top of the zip for ventilation. It wasn’t anyone’s idea of comfort.

  But then, body bags weren’t made for comfort.

  ‘There is one road,’ Kendrick had explained. ‘There are no approaches that offer cover. At the facility, the fencing is enough to keep out anything less hardy than a tank. When it was first announced, they had a few sightseers to ward off, but the coverage of the project and the remote location means that nobody’s interested in coming to see it with their own eyes now. A patrol vehicle checks the perimeter every two hours. The question you should be asking is this: how do we get inside?’

  With over a hundred revivers now at the facility, research teams were getting through at least ten revivals a day. The new Baseline had widespread support even from many of those who had vehemently opposed it before, and supply of volunteered corpses wasn’t proving a problem.

  ‘Our window is tonight,’ said Sly. ‘There’s a scheduled delivery of revival subjects. Thirty-five bodies in a chilled container unit, being collected from Reno in three hours. A four-hour drive to Winnerden Flats, and the unit is delivered ready for subject preparations to begin in the morning. Five of those bodies will not be dead.’ She smiled. ‘Dress warm.’

  They’d been met an hour later at the back of a faceless building, by a huge, slow-moving man. He shook Kendrick’s hand, nodded at Sly, then cast a suspicious eye over Never, Jonah and Annabel.

  ‘Last of the bodies came in not long ago,’ said the man, sounding anxious. ‘We need to take five of them out.’

  They all took a hand helping remove the five corpses, taking them out of their body bags and putting them in the back of a van, a look of knowing disgrace on the faces of the living.

  Annabel had been the one to voice it. ‘What are you going to . . . ?’ she started, then just gestured at the naked corpses.

  The man sighed. ‘Got a meat storage locker I’ll use. What happens then, well, they’ll turn up one way or another; the families will get them back. I don’t feel right about it, but it has to be done.’

  The five live replacements entered the shipping unit, with thirty corpses in black body bags and the morgue smell of chilled unease. There were three racks of metal beds in a single transport assembly, each rack layer with space for four bodies head to toe, three layers high. Their own beds were waiting, all five now-empty bags on the lowest shelves. Sly and Kendrick both had their holdalls with them. Sly took hers and put it in the foot of one bag, then lay down inside, zipping it up halfway.

  ‘Pick your quarters,’ Kendrick told the others. ‘You’ll want to zip yourselves in to retain heat, but give yourself enough ventilation. When this door seals, we don’t talk again unless absolutely necessary, and even then only in whispers. The drivers are not my people. They have no idea we’re here. If they catch the corpses chatting, you can be damn sure they’ll cause us trouble.’

  With everyone in, Kendrick pulled out a flashlight and went to the door, where the big man was waiting outside.

  They shook hands again. ‘I don’t like it,’ said the man, ready to close the cooled unit and shut them in.

  Kendrick nodded. ‘There’s nothing to like.’

  And with that, the door was closed.

  *

  After three hours the ground started to get uneven, the ride becoming a series of lurches and rolls as they reached the final stretch of the road to Winnerden Flats.

  They slowed, then came to a halt. From outside they could hear muffled exchanges. The end of the container opened. Metal clanked, followed by a rattle and a shuddering thunk as mechanisms latched onto the rack assembly.

  ‘All good,’ said a voice. Jonah felt movement again, the assembly being removed from the container to a secondary transport. His body bag was ruffled by a breeze for a moment before they came to a halt again.

  Some small talk followed, as the paperwork was signed. The drivers wished the security guards goodnight and drove away; after a few more seconds, the rack of bodies began to move, the effortful whine of an electric motor audible in a more restricted space now, the sense of breeze vanishing.

  They were in the building.

  After a minute or so they stopped. There was the sound of a large door closing, then total silence and a creeping sense of cold. Delivery complete.

  Wordless, Kendrick came to each of them, unzipping their body bags, signalling them to get out quietly.

  They were in a large chilled storage area, dimly lit and over twice as wide as the rack assembly was long. There was a floor-to-ceiling gate in the far wall with a smaller inset door. Three other rack assemblies were beside theirs, all filled with body bags.

  ‘They’re well stocked,’ Jonah whispered to Never, nodding at the other racks.

  ‘OK,’ said Kendrick. ‘Me and Sly will wait by the door for Rico, one of our insiders. He should be here within thirty minutes. He’ll take us to a storage room where we can hide out until the time comes, which may be thirty hours or more. As soon as Andreas b
egins, Rico can get Tess to us. Then, our attack on Lab Two is also your cover. You’ll take a patrol vehicle and drive.’ He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and gave it to Annabel. ‘Here. Details of where you’ll be able to change vehicles and get further instructions. Clear?’

  Annabel nodded.

  ‘You three wait here,’ Kendrick said, handing his holdall to Jonah. ‘When we signal, follow with the bags, and stay quiet.’

  ‘Make yourself useful,’ said Sly, handing her bag to Never.

  ‘Christ,’ he whispered, feeling the weight. ‘What’s in here?’

  ‘Plenty,’ said Sly. She and Kendrick both held handguns; they checked their weapons before crossing to the far wall.

  They waited in silence. After a minute, Never knelt down and slowly opened the zip on Sly’s bag. He peeked inside. ‘Christ,’ he whispered. ‘There’s some meaty stuff in here.’ He stood, holding a small black rectangular card and something that looked like a hockey puck.

  ‘What are they?’ said Jonah; Never handed him the puck and held up the black card for him to get a better view. It looked like a security card, but a cable ran from it to a small black square device an inch or so across, which had several other short cables running off it.

  ‘Oooh,’ said Never. ‘Very nice. Security hacking kit, I’d guess.’ He looked up at Jonah with a completely earnest face. ‘I wonder if Sly would let me keep one of these?’

  ‘And what about this?’ said Jonah, looking at the hockey puck.

  ‘Not sure,’ said Never. ‘Probably explosives.’

  Jonah’s eyes widened. He knelt by Never’s bag and gently replaced the puck, catching sight of some of the rest of the contents. As he looked up to Never, he realized Sly was staring right at him. She started walking towards them. Jonah hurriedly zipped the bag up and stood, guilt on his face.

  ‘Don’t fuck about with this stuff, understand?’ she whispered. Jonah mumbled a ‘yes’; Sly went back to Kendrick.