Blood Memory: The Complete Season One (Books 1-5) (53 page)

“She was right.”

Tim frowned. “Oh no, I just realised.”

“What?”

“We can’t be friends.”

“Why not?”

“Friends don’t cause each other pain. But that’s what I have to do to you.”

Jordan consciously kept the smile on his face. “You don’t
have
to do those things, do you?”

The boy’s tiny shoulders shrugged. “I don’t see any other way.”

Jordan frowned, trying to appear sad for Tim. “Let me out of this chair, and we’ll figure something out.”

“You won’t run?”

“I won’t run.”

“You promise?”

“I promise,” Jordan said. “Friends always keep their promises.”

“Yes, they do.” Tim moved to the straps and began to unfasten them.

“Quickly. The sooner I get out of this chair, the sooner we can come up with a new idea.”

Tim looked up into Jordan’s face, and Jordan’s breath caught in his throat. The boy’s eyes were big and black.
They were bottomless pits of despair, a shark’s eyes. Unrelenting, undaunted, and without a fibre of humanity. They shone with an intelligence far beyond his years. He took his hands off the straps, which were still knotted tight.

The smile on Tim’s face was small and mirthless.
“Do you take me for a fool, Jordan? You have something I want, and you’re not leaving until I have it.”

There was a screech from one of the tunnels. Tim pressed a finger to his right temple, closed his eyes and focused. The screeching stopped.

“Apologies. They can be a handful at times. Or rather, a headful.”

“You control them?” Jordan said.

“Most of the time.”

“How?”

Tim shrugged
.

“How does the wind know how to blow? The sun how to shine? The virus destroyed cognitive thinking in most, enhanced it in others. It was a lottery, our birth. Those fortunate enough to have received mental development were flung into the upper echelons of the new order.” He walked around Jordan, inspecting him. “Fate hit the reset button and when I woke up, I was no longer human. I could hear them, speak to them. Though of course they had very little to say.

“No one really knows what happened during the Incident, of course, but I think that when the virus wiped the pathways in the mind clean, it was replaced with a kind of receptor – like a computer unable to connect to its hard disk – and it started asking for input. I am that input. Without me they are animals with no consciousness.”

“How many do you control?”

Tim closed his eyes again, focusing. “As of this moment in time… ten thousand, five hundred and fifty-three… fifty-four.” A young throat screamed somewhere down the corridor. “Fifty five.” He opened his eyes and smiled. “New recruits.”

“There are so many…”

“A fraction of those out in the New World. The virus was most prolific in the poorer echelons of society, did you know? People were intentionally infecting themselves and their children with the virus. They thought they could strike it lucky. Win the genetic lottery, so to speak. No one believed they wouldn’t win. The same way that old lady in the twenty-four hour mart bought her ticket for the lottery each week. She’d been told that for every bad thing that happened in her life, a good one was on the way. She’d taken that to heart and felt she was due a rebate. Some of them were right. Most weren’t.

“But to be given another chance to be born again – to be born with a silver spoon – was worth the risk. Besides, what was the worst that could happen? To be born into a life where they didn’t understand who they were, or where their future lay? I suppose a lot of people didn’t see the difference to what
they were already living.

“But what I was surprised to discover was my pets were not empty at all. Their memories were still there,
just below the surface, they just had no access to them, as if the pathways that led to them had grown over and couldn’t be found again. They wander, lost in their own minds, forever. Until I take them by the hand. It’s quite a frightening experience for them at first, giving up their own freewill. But it’s either that or wander forever.”

“What does that mean?” Jordan
said. “You could lead them back? All the way? Make them normal again?” The possibility made Jordan’s heart race.

“Yes,” he said. “But I won’t allow them to waste their lives again. We serve a higher purpose now – the unification of our race. So much was lost in the past. So many squandered minds spent merely surviving. We have the chance to maximise the potential of us all.”

Jordan looked over at the Lurchers. “You call that maximising their potential? They don’t even know who they are!”

“I alone have access to my pets’ memories. I know everything they knew. That’s how I remember your past, even if you couldn’t. ‘Jordy. Don’t go.’ It was I who tasted your
blood on the dock.”

Jordan shook his head. “That wasn’t you. You weren’t even there.”

“It was me. All those you see around us are me. I control them. They are mine. What they see…” Tim’s eyes rolled back into his head, eyelids fluttering like he was having some kind of fit.

Queenie stepped forward and said, “
…I see. And what they Taste…”

Another Lurcher stepped forward. “…I
Taste.”

The boy’s eyes returned to normal. “And so you see,
I
was with you every step of your journey.
I
was the one who tasted your blood on the dock, the one who saved you from those marauding fools in Reedham, the one
who snatched you en route to the compound. I tasted your blood and knew immediately you were the one I had been waiting for. You alone can light the way and give me what I need.”

“If you read my memories on the dock, why do you need me now?”

“Because not all Tasters are born equal. The one you refer to as Queenie sees but fragments of memories. Therefore, when I channel him, I also only see fragments. My skills are only as strong as my instruments. He has a limited skill, but it is more than most. We share our knowledge. Queenie,” Tim called, “what was your profession before your rebirth?”

“I was… Taxonomist.”

Tim turned back to Jordan. “Taxonomists organise species by type. I often wonder how to categorise our genus beside yours. An off-shoot, perhaps – at a suitably discreet distance from humans as you once placed yourselves from apes. Queenie had a diverse set of specialized skills. Now, we all have them. With time, we shall all write with the proficiency of the New York Times’ best-selling authors. We shall all cook with the ability of multiple Michelin Star chefs. All it takes is time. So long as I live, your species will not be forgotten.

“I am your future, Jordan. Destroy me, and you de
stroy the memory of your race, your past. I know things no living human remembers. Are you willing to lose what you are? We must consume you all. Blood never forgets. And neither do I.”

Jordan hung his head. “I don’t know what you want to know.”

Tim peered at Jordan with accusing eyes. “Come now. You must know.”

“I don’t. I have my memories now, but I don’t know what value they are to you.”

The boy leaned in close, peering at Jordan with searching eyes. “You really don’t know, do you?” He grinned, touching an oversized finger to Jordan’s head. “You have great knowledge. It’s locked up inside you and we have to figure out a way to get it out.”

On ‘out’ Jordan felt excruciating pain, like someone had driven a bodkin into his brain.

“Painful, isn’t it? I feel that every second of every day.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Jordan said through gritted teeth, “but I don’t know anything. Really. You’re going to be very disappointed.”

“And you know what is of value to us? It varies with each person. Everyone has something worth knowing. It’s a worthless piece of information to you. Let me have it.”

“I told you, I don’t know-”

“You don’t need to know. I would not burden you with it.”

“Why would I ever let you have my memories?”

Tim smiled.

“Because I can give them back to you, Jordan. Rachel… Mia… Even Stan. You just have to grant me access to your memories, that’s all I ask. Would you like to see them? Did you ever watch that show, ‘This is your life’? I loved it. The sight of all those happy loving people being brought
together… families. It never failed to bring a tear to my eye. Well, tonight is your life.” Tim clicked his fingers and squeaky wheels creaked from the darkness. “He’d become like a father to you. You thought you’d left him behind on the empty farm plains of Norfolk, but here he is… Stan!”

Jordan gasped, his hands gripping the chair, as Stan rolled into the light in a rusty wheelchair
, the wheels creaking like the metal might snap. Half his face was scorched black. His torso had been stitched back together with crude staples, his entrails half-hanging out of his exposed ribcage. One half of one leg to the top of the knee had been reattached, hanging useless and immovable. Something leaked from a hole in the seat that smelled like excrement. Saliva dripped from the mouth of his lobotomised expression.

“Oh, Stan,” Jordan said, eyes filling. “Stan… No…”

“How does it feel to be reunited?” Tim asked, imaginary microphone at his mouth.

“This is how you knew, isn’t it?” Jordan said in a small voice. “This is how you knew where we were headed… How you knew we would go to the compound for help. Stan’s chill pill didn’t work
either. You read his blood. Somehow you beat the pill.”

“Yes, we beat it,” Tim said, momentarily dropping his TV
host persona, “though through no success on our part, but thanks to human weakness. Frank switched your pills for his sweets. Remarkable how similar they look, isn’t it? What Stan here ate – and what I suspect you ate earlier – was a small candy.

“Warm blood is so much easier to read than cold. The memories lose all their vitality. But I ascertained enough about your plans from Stan. You took your sweet time in returning to your boat, I must say. I was beginning to worry you had changed your plans. Thankfully that didn’t prove to be the case.” He grinned, and his TV host persona was back. “And now, the loved ones you thought you’d abandoned, leaving them to their fate…”

“No,” Jordan said. “Don’t. Please.”

“It’s Rachel and her beautiful daughter… Mia.”

They stepped out of the shadows. A cursory attempt had been made to stitch their faces back together. A matching scar ran from eye to lip. Maggots wriggled in the open wounds. They were both naked, their bodies crisscrossed with lacerations.

“I found her, Jordan. She is here. She can be yours again. I can give her back to you. You desire them, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes. Let me have what I desire. I can bring them
back – make them them again. You can be with them, Jordan. Just let me have what I need.”

Rachel and Mia were blurry through Jordan’s shimmering eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. I was so weak
… I didn’t mean… I didn’t think.”

Rachel and Mia stared with dead eyes.

Tim moved in close. “Remember the Christmases you spent together, Jordan? Those happy moments? You don’t need to lose them. They can be yours again. You could do it again. Do it forever. Relent, Jordan. You have nothing left to fight.”

Jordan shook his head. “Not without knowing what you want.”

“Isn’t it obvious? Let me give you a clue. Tell me at which camp you trained.”

“Burgh Castle.”

“But that wasn’t the first time you’d been there though, was it?”

“No.”

“When were you first there?”

Jordan’s mouth fell open.

Tim smiled. “Now you’re getting it. Tell me what it is I’ve gone to all this effort for.”

“You want me for the memories I have of Burgh Castle when I was a boy.”

Tim nodded, eyes shining. “And why would I want those memories in particular?”

“Because I explored. I climbed over the walls. Went underground. Went into the restricted areas with my father…” Jordan looked Tim in his shiny eyes, black as night. “I know where all the secret passages are.”

Tim nodded. “Yes! No matter how many times I attack the compound, I can never seem to breach their defences.” He smiled. “Today, that all changes. Thanks to you.”

“Y
ou’ve attacked compounds before?”

“Of course. I’ve become quite adept at cracking them open. They’re often badly defended, led by inexperienced have-a-go heroes.” His expression turned dark. “But this latest compound was proving difficult. When we discovered a weakness, they strengthened it. No single soldier knows about more than a section of a single wall’s defences, and only a handful of them know about any of the secret entrances and passageways, and are prevented from ever leaving the compound. And many of the soldiers corrupt their own blood with their pills before we get to it. We need to know the strengths and weaknesses of the compound if we’re to overrun
it.”