20 Years Later (35 page)

It shone from strips set into the ceiling, glowing so brightly he couldn't look directly at them. They fascinated him and yet frightened him at the same time, alien and artificial to a boy who had never lived in a world with electricity.

A door opened at the far end with the same click and hiss, and then several suited figures stepped through into the corridor. Zane heard Radley make a noise, perhaps of surprise but it was hard to tell. One of the figures was dressed in a suit like hers, but with some kind of symbol on the upper right chest; the other figures looked like Guardians. He could tell the one with the symbol was a man as he was taller than Radley, and that perhaps his hair was grey, but not much more. From the way the Guardians fanned around him, he seemed to be in charge. Zane recognised that behaviour from the gangs up above.

Zane was pushed along the corridor to meet them halfway, Radley staying near him. As he passed the doors, he took the opportunity to glance at the clipboards. He managed to pick out what looked like a patient's name, a temperature chart, and a couple of notes, but the writing was too small to read quickly.

“Doctor Radley,” the man said. “It seems you've had another eventful evening up above.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, and Zane could hear the tension in her voice, even through the helmet. “But I'm not sure this is anything that requires your attention. I mean, I'm not sure I believed what I saw.”

He raised a hand and she stopped talking. Zane shook, gripping the edges of his sleeves tight in his hands. This man acted like a gang leader. Maybe he was the leader of the Unders
gang. Maybe he would say that Zane was in their territory and then …

“It's not for you to decide what I should see or not, Doctor,” the man chided, breaking Zane out of his fearful thoughts.

“No, sir, sorry,” Radley replied nervously. “Shall I go to Decontamination?”

“No no, stay here. I'm sure you're just as curious as I. Besides, you've never seen this spoke, have you?”

“No sir.”

“Then I'm sure it will be an enlightening evening for you.” He switched his attention to Zane, peering at him through the visor as one would peer into a shop window full of curiosities. Zane could see now that his hair definitely was grey, and that he was old, at least as old as Callum. “Come with me.”

He went to the nearest door and as he tapped numbers on the keypad, Zane read the clipboard. At the top of the page, printed in letters made by a machine rather than a hand, was “Eve 17. 15 year old female. Batch-2-trial-3” and it was all he could do to stop himself from being sick.

A loud click sounded from the door frame and the door swung open. Inside was a featureless room, containing nothing more than a wheeled hospital bed, a set of metal drawers, and a chair. It was brightly lit and smelt strange to Zane, his sense of smell not accustomed to chemical cleaners.

The man entered while Zane and Radley were shepherded in by the Guardians, some of whom remained outside as the room wasn't big enough to contain all of them. Just as Zane had feared, the girl he had spoken to in the dream room lay in the bed, stirring in a deep sleep. He noted the drip in her arm, recognising it from the medical textbooks he had pored over for years, and the bruising on the inside of her elbows just like Lyssa had.

The noise of the heavy boots woke her, and Eve struggled into an upright position, her gaze immediately falling onto Zane.
Before there was even the chance that anyone could guess that they knew each other, the man flicked a hand towards her and told the Guardians, “Hold her down.”

“What are you doing?” Zane shrieked as two of them pressed down on her shoulders and ankles.

“Performing an experiment,” the man replied calmly as he opened the top drawer with a key and carefully removed a large handled scalpel, locking the drawers again afterwards. At the sight of it, Eve began to whimper and struggle as a sheen of cold sweat shone on her forehead.

Zane instinctively moved towards her, only to feel one of the guns in his back again. “Don't,” was all the Guardian needed to say, and the threat of the lightning froze him in his shoes.

The man held the scalpel above her arm, poised to cut, and then scrutinised Zane. When he was sure that Zane was watching, he sliced into her arm and she screamed out as blood emerged and chased after the blade.

Tears sprang from Zane's eyes as he watched Eve writhe in pain. “Don't, don't hurt her!” he begged and the man removed the blade, the incision several inches long and bleeding profusely.

“This is sick,” Radley gasped, putting an arm out to the wall to steady herself.

“This is science, Doctor Radley,” he replied. “Now we'll see if he's telling the truth.”

“I need to touch her,” Zane wept and the man beckoned him over, stepping away from him as he approached but staying close enough to watch.

With his tears dripping onto her clammy skin, Zane touched her arm on either side of the wound and pressed it together, then focused in that unearthly way. In moments, the cut skin closed and knitted itself together again, leaving only the drying blood as any clue that the harm had been done.

Both Zane and Eve panted for breath. Eve caught hold
of his hand and they squeezed tight, their eyes meeting and exchanging the fear they both felt.

“Interesting,” the man finally said, prodding at the place where the wound had been. He stared at Zane, examining him as one would a slide beneath a microscope. “You said up above that ‘maybe' you could heal people with the virus.”

Zane couldn't speak; his mind was reeling. It was only a movement from one of the Guardians towards him that shook him out of his paralysis. “I … I don't know.”

“Have you ever healed anything other than wounds?”

Zane blinked. “No … no I haven't. People don't get sick very often.”

The man nodded. “The ones up above have remarkable immune systems.”

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Radley muttered, over and over again, clearly in a state of shock at what she'd seen. “It wasn't a trick. Oh my God.”

The slightest frown crossed the man's face as she drew his attention, then it was gone. “I think it's time for the next experiment,” he said, moving over to her, but continuing to stare at Zane. “After all, it seems to me that there's only one way to see if you can cure the virus.”

There was barely a movement. They all heard it before they saw what he'd done. The quiet hiss of escaping air as his scalpel pierced Radley's suit, and then the sound of her screaming.

The Guardians pinning Eve to the trolley threw themselves against the wall, forgetting their duty in the process. The other Guardian, the one who had been cool all along, backed off a few steps to the opposite corner of the room, leaving Radley to stumble into the far corner, clawing at the walls like a wild animal trying to escape a new cage.

Eve curled into a ball on the bed, covering her ears and head as tight as she could. Even the gang leader stepped away, taking care to hold the scalpel as far from the flailing arms of Radley as he could.

Zane, aghast at what the man had done, watched dumb-struck for several heartbeats before his gift focused his attention onto something else. Even though he didn't want to see it, his vision began to penetrate through the suit into her body and then into her lungs. Now he could see why her chest heaved, why she seemed to be gasping for breath; tiny blood vessels were spontaneously bursting, releasing blood into the spaces where there should be air. The virus was making her drown in her own blood.

Then he was moving; without another thought he launched himself at her, planting his hands on her shoulders in an effort to hold her still and make that connection with her body. At the contact, her hands grasped his arms desperately and her eyes, bulging with panic, bored into him through the glass visor. It began to steam up, then a cough splattered droplets of blood onto the inside of the helmet and her legs buckled beneath her.

Zane fell to his knees, maintaining the contact by half holding her up. Everything else, everyone else in the room
ceased to exist as all of his consciousness worked within her. As if he had a thousand deft fingertips moving at once, he mended every ruptured blood vessel he caught sight of as fast as he conceived of it, the healing being so miniscule. But as fast as he healed one, another burst as the virus continued to attack, and all the while her breathing became more and more laboured.

He paused only to force some of the fluid out of the lungs with a swift upward motion of his hand, blood erupting out of her with a violent choking cough. She breathed in again, momentarily relieved as he returned his attention to stopping the bleeding, the man watching intently all the while as he fingered the handle of the scalpel.

Zane's body shivered with the exertion as his mind ignored the demands placed upon it and pressed on, intent on saving her life. He alternated a few seconds of fighting the bleeding with an occasional evacuation of the fluid, giving her vital breaths. But soon, for every vessel he healed, two would burst until more blood seeped into the lungs than he could push out in time. Then his own body, unable to withstand the effort any longer, made his head spin and muscles turn to paper.

Radley's body fell away from him as his vision pulled out of her into the harshly lit room. He watched her eyes rolling backwards, barely visible behind the glass panel slick with blood. He was dimly aware of an awful gurgling cough and then nothing, as his own vision tunnelled to a grey speck and he collapsed next to the dead woman.

After the terrible noise of her death had passed, the room was quiet again, save for the respirators of the Guardians and their leader. Eve stayed tucked in a ball but moved enough to peer out from between her shaking knees.

“Is he dead too?” one of the Guardians asked.

The man bent slightly to hold the scalpel blade an inch from Zane's mouth. At the sight of the mist condensing onto it, he stood and said, “No, he's alive.” He looked around the room
at the men, still pressed against the walls. “Have the cleaners remove the body and sterilise the room. Move her.” He pointed at Eve. “Down the corridor.” He looked down at Zane as one of the Guardians began to whisper the orders into his mouthpiece. “Put him on a gurney and take him to a high security cell. Have blood and DNA samples taken. And be careful with him. I don't want him damaged.”

“They'll definitely be dead?” Jay peered through the doorway. His burning torch lit the black stairway slanting deep into the ground.

“The main power supply was cut, and the fail-safes,” Shannon replied. “The virus incapacitates in less than a minute, kills within three to four minutes, if that. The seals were breached,” he checked his watch, “over an hour ago and there just aren't that many suits and oxygen supplies down there.”

Erin still held an arrow notched as she stood behind the men and Titus as they peered into the entrance to the Unders. The wave of Guardians who had emerged when the power went down had been despatched quickly by the Red Lady's Hunters, but that didn't mean that one wasn't biding what little time he had left on his air supply in the hope of catching them unaware. She watched her father returning from his sweep of the street and noticed how he nodded slightly when he saw her still alert. The adrenaline still coursed through her and his approval only added to the buzz.

“So the ones who's got them Giant suits,” Jay continued. “They'll be dead too by now?”

Shannon sighed. “Yes. There may be one or two with spare tanks, but I doubt they'll be quietly waiting to defend one entrance after all this time.”

Jay hung back, wily after years of fighting the Gardners, and tossed the torch into the blackness ahead of him. An arc of lightning rippled up from below and he yelped in surprise,
hurling himself further back.

Luthor ducked into a crouch and fired an arrow down the stairwell. There was a tell-tale hiss and a soft thud as the arrow hit its target and Luthor nodded to himself in satisfaction.

“You said they'd be dead!” Jay yelled, shoving at Shannon in anger.

Titus shut his eyes as Shannon defended himself against Jay's insults. Learning everything he had about the Unders, and seeing what they did to his sister, had built up a large tank of fury inside him. But all of the death and ripples of distress sensed on another level had worn him down, depleting that reserve until he was left numb.

“You ok?” Erin whispered in his ear, pulling him out of himself.

He nodded. Then shook his head. “Maybe Zane was right,” he whispered back, instantly regretting it.

“Zane doesn't live in the real world,” she replied softly. “He doesn't know what it's like outside of his mum's garden. The Unders are worse than the Gardners. The world's better off without them.”

Titus nodded but said nothing, not trusting the sound of his own voice.

“Remember Eve,” Erin added, and then noticed the others beginning to climb down the stairs. “We're saving her and the other children, and this is the only way.”

It was enough to bring back his resolve. Besides, he reasoned as he crept into the darkness, it was too late now, and as Lyssa had taught him a long time ago, regret did nothing useful.

Jay retrieved his torch at the bottom of the steps, rejuvenating the guttering flame. He looked at the gun.

Shannon followed his eyes and shook his head. “It's run out of power,” he said, pointing at a dull red light next to a
charge symbol. Jay swore beneath his breath.

Titus was relieved to hear that; he didn't like the thought of Jay with one of those guns. He found a wind-up torch near the Guardian and switched it on. The five of them moved slowly into the tunnel, soon reaching stout metal doors that were slightly ajar.

“These would have been hermetically sealed,” Shannon whispered.