“Tell us about the plan,” Robyn demanded. “It’s important, I can tell.”
“Never! This is our only chance now.”
Carly braved the abuse they poured on her and endured their sick pleasures until the next dawn.
TWO
The uniform was itchy and much too small for his large frame. They had ordered one to fit him properly from their suppliers, but it would take a couple of days for delivery, which meant he had to wear this one for now. He’d found that he could get away with wearing his normal clothes some nights – or so one of the morning security guards had told him – as long as he kept to blacks and other dark colours. Tonight wasn’t one of those nights, though.
Johnny had had to put on the too-small uniform and stretch it until it covered most of his arms. FDR Industries were having some sort of inspection, and it would look bad for the firm if someone was seen to be breaking the rules. Not that Johnny felt particularly protective of the whole company, but he really wanted to keep his job. He’d been out of work for a few years and hadn’t been able to find permanent work. Johnny had left his last job, also as a security guard, after hurting his back. It wasn’t serious and was nothing more than a distant accident. After reading that he’d had back trouble in the past, no-one seemed to want to employ him in case it flared up again and it had taken a lot of convincing to get these people to take him on. If it was that hard to find a job, he was going to make damned sure he didn’t do anything to lose this one.
“Could you tell me where I might find Mr Jordan-Smyth?” asked a middle-aged woman with glasses. “I have an appointment with him.” She pushed her glasses further up her nose and smoothed down her coat.
Johnny reached under the desk and felt around for the book. “I’ll just check for you. If you could sign in while you wait…” The woman took hold of the biro on the desk and began to write in the book as Johnny tapped something into his computer. The woman was probably something to do with the inspection. It must be important because the assistant manager had had a dozen visitors today and none of them had left the building yet, which left him with two options; a, it was going very well, or b, it was going very badly. Either way, he had to do his best to be polite. “He’s in his office. Someone will be down shortly to take you up.”
“Why can’t I just go up on my own? I’m sure I’ll be able to find it.”
“I’m sorry ma’am. It’s just a security thing. All visitors have to be escorted.” He cleared his throat then gestured to a row of cushioned chairs at the far end of the lobby. “You can wait over there until someone comes.” It was weird that anyone would have an appointment in the early hours of the morning, but Johnny had quickly learnt that FDR Industries did it’s most important work by night. Sure, the normal work was done in the day; typing, filing, paperwork. But the real work started at night. Okay, so the building was often empty at night, but the co-ordination never started until darkness. Not many civilians were willing to sneak a peek after dark so they did it then, when no0one would bother them.
“I’ve got someone to take up?” asked another middle-aged woman – Mr Jordan-Smyth’s assistant. “Another inspector probably. You know, I’ve been making tea and coffee all day.”
“Tell him to make his own bloody coffee for once,” he said with a smile that showed the gaps in his teeth. “She’s over there. What’s all this about anyway?”
“It’s a progress report. Mrs Rose, follow me.” She rolled her eyes as she started toward the door, as if to say “Here we go again.”
Johnny wished the cameras picked up sound so he could hear what was going on but he wasn’t in a position to know. He was only a security guard; not meant to know what he was guarding, just to do it. Despite this knowledge, he couldn’t deny that he was growing more curious by the hour – what was so important anyway? He could see people still milling around the corridors, and one of his cameras picked up a long line in front of the coffee machine. He was suddenly very glad that he’d thought to bring his vacuum flask of coffee with him. Idly, he began to doodle on the front page of the book, wishing he had enough battery power to play games on his mobile phone. “Shoulda charged it,” he grumbled to himself.
Professor Wright was a top scientist, who now worked at the Rashda Observatory, tutoring a small group of physics students who had shown great promise. Most of them were interested in learning from him, but he had given one or two the boot after misbehaving and being persistently absent. The students were all about 20 and each of them had the potential to become a good scientist.
Although a brilliant physicist, the professor was very knowledgable about space, the sun, the moon and the stars. Which is why he had come to lecture at the Rashda Observatory. It was a very good school of science which had state of the art technology, allowing him to pursue his own investigations in his own time. He hated being labelled as an astronomer or ‘space-guy’ – he wasn’t an astronomer, he was a scientist.
“Great scientists are born, not made,” he told his lecture group. “You can’t just wake up one morning and think ‘I’m going to be a scientist.’ That love of science and the world is there,” he pointed to his head, “from the beginning.”
A student put up her hand. “But how do we know if it was always there? I can’t exactly go home and ask my parents, can I?”
“You can’t use the phone?” A titter circled the room and Professor Wright silenced them with a glare. “I’m not teaching you how to be a physicist - I’m guiding you. You all have the know-how to be a physicist. The love of physics; the natural curiosity. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong, Professor, but aren’t you teaching us science?”
“Yes, I suppose I am.” The bell rang for everyone to leave their lectures, and Professor Wright sat down behind his desk. He had to mark their test papers from last week, and was planning to work on his secret project all evening.
Carly stood, limply hanging from her chains, too weak and tired to fight back. Her blood-stained top stuck, uncomfortably, to her skin, but she no longer had the energy to wriggle beneath it. The black gag now loosely circled her neck, slightly torn where she had bitten into it. “Please! Stop hurting me!”
“Are you gonna talk?” asked Mika. Robyn had grown weary and had gone to bed with the excuse, ‘It makes my eyes hurt.’ Mika himself was getting bored by this, but found it mildly amusing when she pleaded for mercy. “Because, if you’re not –“
“Okay, okay. I’ll talk. Just give me something to drink first,” she rasped, severely doubting that these two would let her out of this house alive. Mika yelled out for Robyn. She’d keep an eye on their captive and she would know if Carly was lying about anything. Robyn glided into the room and sat down. “I’ll talk,” Carly repeated.
“Good,” said Robyn as Mika left the room. “It’s for your own good. Because it’s coming. I can feel it.” She held her hands out and grabbed Carly’s hands. “Can you feel it too? It burns me - it will burn us all.”
Carly jerked her hands away, but, there not being much movement within the constraints of the chains, Robyn kept a hold of them. “I can’t feel anything. Let go of me.” Tears were still gushing down her cheeks and Carly sniffed in a feeble attempt to stop crying. It didn’t work. “Oh, don’t cry, honey,” soothed Robyn. “It’ll all be over soon – I promise. The pain will stop.”
“It will be over if we have our way,” she moaned.
Robyn shot out an arm and reached for her throat – reaching and stretching – and ripped the gag from Carly’s throat and dropped it on the floor. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
Mika re-entered the room holding a glass of water in one hand, and a plastic drinking straw in the other. He put the straw up to her lips and let her drink for a few seconds before he began questioning her again. “Tell us… hmm, tell us who you work for?”
“Does it ma
tter who I work for?”
“Maybe not, maybe so.”
“FDR Industries. I’m the Information Officer… which means I know everything about the plan.”
“And the big question: What the hell is the plan?”
“To put an end to the pain. You can find everything you want at the warehouse. I’m not telling you anything else,” she said with conviction. She wouldn’t tell them anything else. Not when this was their only chance to save humanity, to wipe the monsters from the earth. And, smart as they might be, by the time they figured it out, it would be too late for them to do anything about it.
“You might not tell us, but you will tell someone. Robyn?”
“Give me some space,” Robyn ordered. Mika stepped back and sat down on a chair by the wall, absently twirling his ring round and round his finger. Robyn reached up and took hold of her hands again, looking deep into her eyes. “I see it. The desire to tell us everything… just to make the hurting go away.” Their eyes still locked, Robyn moved her hands down until they were resting above her heart. “The longing to be free from this. Nothing can hurt you now. I can make all this stop. You just have to tell me.”
“It’s supposed to be kept secret,” Carly protested, weakly. “I’m not allowed to say.”
“Since when did that stop you? Don’t you want me to make this stop? Just tell me, and it’ll never hurt again.”
Carly raised her head and nodded. “The Crash Room,” she whispered. “That’s where we keep all the information, calculations and stuff.”
“What are all the calculations for, sweetie?”
“To turn the sun. To give us paradise. Freedom from the monsters. Heaven on Earth. And it’s nearly done.”
“Nearly done?” probed Robyn, never for a moment breaking eye contact. “How long have we got?”
“Until the new moon. One week yesterday.” Carly swallowed at a lump of guilt that had formed in her throat. “It’s already started, and it can’t be stopped.”
Robyn glanced down to the floor and slid down the wall behind, mentally exhausted and not remembering a single word that had been said. “It’s close. It pulls at my skin,” she mumbled and started scratching at her arms.
“Oh, God. What have I done?” croaked Carly, fresh tears springing from the corners of her eyes. “I never meant to, I swear, I didn’t,” she said to no-one in particular, and herself.
“But you did,” Mika reminded her. “Where do I find this Crash Room?” Carly remained silent and stared down at the still-scratching Robyn. “Come on, you might as well tell me. You’ve told me everything else, and we’ll find it eventually anyway.”
“The old abandoned warehouse just outside town? It’s not so abandoned.”
Mika held the glass up to let Carly drink the remainder of the water. Human rights and all that. “You know what I hate?” He ran his finger around the rim of the empty glass and threw it against the concrete wall, shattering it into a thousand tiny pieces of glass, which rained down on Robyn who laughed manically. “Vague people!” he roared.
“I want to sleep,” Carly told him. “Unchain me.”
“You can sleep in the chains. Everyone else did.”
“E-everyone else?” she asked, not sure if she wanted him to elaborate.
“Think on it while you sleep. Sweet dreams.” Mika put an arm around Robyn’s waist and left the room, leaving Carly to her uncomfortable sleep and disturbing dreams.
Even if her captors did manage to get the information on the plan, in the highly unlikely event that they managed to gain access to the Crash Room, Carly seriously doubted they had the intelligence to decipher the calculations. And, in the even more impossible event that they did, there was nothing they could do about it. It would soon be too late even to halt the progress of the project. Besides that, what interest did the couple have in the plan. Of course, in the back of her mind, she knew why they were so interested in the plan and why they wanted to stop it so badly, but the part of her mind that dealt with logic was in fierce denial. Logic tried to rationalise what it could and ignore what it couldn’t explain of what it saw.
In her half-asleep state, Carly could hear voices in the room above, but couldn’t quite hear what they said. She had enough presence of mind to remind herself that her ordeal was far from over. So, it was probably best to snatch a few hours sleep while she had the chance.
“The Crash Room.” Mika tested the name out, rolling each word around his mouth to see how it sounded, as Robyn lay beneath the thin covers, playing with her hair. “I like that – the Crash Room.”
“It sounds as if everything will go wrong. Crash!” murmured Robyn, distractedly. “Mika, I don’t want everything to go wrong.”
“Nothing will go wrong, baby. You’ve got my word of honour,” he vowed. “I’m not letting anything come between my baby and what makes her happy.”
Robyn smiled that smile that no-one could resist and shrank back against the headboard. “I’m tired. The girl made me tired.” Robyn couldn’t recall anything that had passed between her and Carly during their conversation, but Mika was positive she would remember it all after she had rested for a while. Robyn pulled the elastic band from her wrist and used it to tie her hair back. “Is my hair nice?”
“It’s never looked better,” he replied. He held his finger up to silence Robyn and listened. “She’s crying. I can hear her.”
“She longs for her mate,” said Robyn. “Her heart breaks for him.” She giggled as she listened. “Beautiful sound. The crying. Painful and lonely and hopeless.” Seeing that Robyn was about to drift off into her own little world again, Mika left her to rest and went up to the attic to inspect the fire damage. He would go out to scavenge himself a new computer tonight.
Professor Andrew Wright hesitated a moment before picking up the phone and putting it to his ear. He hesitated a further moment before punching the number into the number pad. Even now he had made the decision to go through with it, he wasn’t sure he was doing the right thing. But he couldn’t exactly back out now. It had sounded like a good idea when it had first been thought of, and now things were starting to happen, he wasn’t sure if it was such a good thing after all. At midday tomorrow, it would be too late to turn back.
After a few rings, the phone on the other end clicked into action. There was no voice at the other end, but the professor knew he was simply being listened to. “It’s Professor Wright,” he said, with no indication of the uncertainty he felt. “Things are starting to change now. Soon, it’ll be too late to stop this from going ahead. We need to meet today at two o’clock. Normal place.” He put the phone back on the hook and let out a deep breath he hadn’t even realised he was holding. Professor Wright was using one of the payphones on campus in case anyone was trying to track him. He and the people he was working on this project with were getting into some pretty deep stuff now and the consequences would be… substantial, to say the least, if something went even remotely wrong.
“Professor?” began one of his students. “Does last weeks’ test count towards our final grade?”
“No,” he replied, his facial expressions ranging from mildly not-bothered to utterly pre-occupied. “It’s just a routine assessment.”
“Oh, that’s good then.” The girl sounded relieved and fiddled with the strap on her backpack. “’Cos I think I bricked it. I was having a bit of a bad day and I couldn’t think straight. I can do a make-up test if I need to.”
“No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. And I’m sure you haven’t done as badly as you think you have.” Her mind put at ease by his words, the student walked away to join her group of friends under the old oak tree. He fondly remembered what it was like to be that young and carefree, then he grimly reminded himself that it had been his own choice to take on this huge responsibility.
To some extents, the shaman led a more or less human existence. He lived in
the middle of a small city, held down a job working from home, okay, he had no real family, but there were people, of sorts, who cared about him. The robes his tribe required he wear at all times meant that he was usually prevented from going out during the day. Mostly, he was able to blend in with the humans, as long as it was in the dark or dim lighting where his unusual clothing was less noticeable. He took a large bite of his maggot-infested apple, savouring the crunchyness of the tiny worms. Where most people would have retched and ran for the bathroom, the shaman ate the apple mainly for the nutrients found in the bugs.
The open book on the table at his side contained writings in a long-dead language that he wasn’t sure he remembered. It wasn’t Latin, or even one of the more common demon dialects, as many spells and scriptures were. It had been so long since he had been required to do anything like this, the shaman had at first been worried that he might get things wrong. But when he had obtained the materials needed for the beginning of the sequence, it had all come flooding back to him. “Like riding a bike,” he said to himself, no hint of an accent. “You never forget it.”
He dipped his fountain pen into the green demon excretions it used for ink. It smelled a hell of a lot worse than it looked, though purely on sight, he wouldn’t have thought it possible. Between eating bugs and writing in demon… bodily fluids, the shaman did very simple data inputting tasks for various companies. Indoors, where he wouldn’t be seen, the tribe allowed him to wear his own clothes provided he wore his dark hood, meaning that today he was padding around his tiny ground floor flat in his blue jogging suit and trainers, his entire head covered by a dark hood he didn’t wear outside. There was an entirely different set of tribal clothing the clan were to wear when they were outside, whether they were mixing with others of their kind or not.
“What the hell does that mean?” he grumbled, peering more closely at the book, then looking at a second volume which contained the same word but in a different context in the hope that it might suddenly mean something. “Cow eats sky in sun. That’s not right. Actually, it’s not even in the same time zone.” He shut both books with a bang and took a final bite of his maggoty apple before taking a shot at getting the core in the waste bin. “Bullseye!”