The Tower: Part Three

‘Is that where the helium leak happened?’ Franklin asked.

‘Yup, that’s the cryo lab – biggest vacuum testing facility in the world. They got a test room there where they can suck every molecule of air right out of it and freeze it down to space temperatures. We use it to test all the expensive hardware before it gets launched, make sure it won’t break up in space.’

Something tightened in the pit of Shepherd’s empty stomach. ‘What are you testing in there now?’

‘Mirrors.’

‘What for?’

‘Same thing we’ve been testing all year – James Webb.’

Franklin jerked forward in his seat. ‘Driver, you need to take us over there right now.’

‘Now wait a second.’ Ellery swivelled round. ‘This is my facility. You can’t just come here and start ordering people …’

‘Yes I can,’ Franklin cut him off. ‘That’s exactly what I can do. Start driving, son.’

The driver obeyed, throwing the wheel hard over and sending the Explorer into a sharp U-turn. Ellery opened and closed his mouth like a landed fish but said nothing. Ahead of them the cryo lab swung back into view, leaking thick clouds of helium vapour like the whole place was ready to blow.

‘When did the leak happen?’

‘The alarm went off ’bout a half hour ago.’

‘And had you spoken to Professor Douglas by then?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Had you told him we were coming?’

‘No. I’d spoken to him but I didn’t say what it was about.’

‘What did you say exactly?’

‘I said some people had been asking for him, but I didn’t say who.’

‘And when was this?’

‘Just as soon as I got off the phone to you.’

Franklin shook his head. ‘Driver, you need to get us over there as fast as you can.’ The Explorer lurched, pushing everyone back in their seats as the driver floored the accelerator.

‘What the hell is this about anyway?’ Ellery growled, trying to claw back a bit of authority.

‘Those mirrors you’ve been testing, are they expensive by any chance, difficult to replace if they got broken?’

‘They cost about fifteen million dollars apiece. They’re precision-engineered and coated in gold. We got six of them in the chamber at the moment.’

‘Really? Well there’s a very real chance that right now, while everyone else is standing around outside, Professor Douglas is inside using his car keys to scratch his name on them.’

26

The speeding Explorer crunched to a stop just short of the building, sending the crowd of bunny-suited lab techs scattering. Franklin was out of the door before it had even stopped. Shepherd had clipped his safety belt on out of habit and was now cursing as he fumbled to release it. He opened the door and ran round the car, the freezing air like razors in his lungs.

Franklin stood to the side of the main entrance, listening. Shepherd noticed he was holding his gun. He undid the buttons on his coat and reached for his own, falling in line behind Franklin and standing slightly away from the wall like he’d been taught. Franklin turned and beckoned Ellery over.

It all felt so familiar to Shepherd from his recent intensive training that he had to remind himself this was not a simulation and the bullets in his gun would not fire paint. Also, the man they were looking for with drawn guns was his old professor, a man he respected more than pretty much any of the long procession of people who had lined up to cram knowledge into his head. Professor Douglas, with his sharp, kind eyes and his boy-scout enthusiasm. Professor Douglas who was a vegetarian because he couldn’t bear the thought of a living thing having to die on his behalf. Professor Douglas – suspected terrorist, wanted by the FBI.

Ellery joined them in a rustle of goose-down parka, his eyes darting around. Nervous. ‘Tell me about the building,’ Franklin said, keeping his eyes on the door. ‘Where are the exits?’

‘There’s this one and a fire exit out back.’

‘You need to get someone round there to cover it. What about inside? Tell me about the layout?’

‘The layout is kind of tricky.’

‘Then you’ll have to come with me. I don’t want to get lost in there. Shepherd, you cover the rear exit.’

‘We’re going inside?’ Ellery looked like he was going to pass out.

‘I can guide us,’ Shepherd said. ‘I worked in this building for a while. There’s a door leading away from the lobby to a changing room. From there you pass through a scrubbing station and an airlock to get to the central chamber. The coolants are fed into it from storage silos on the far side of the building. They come in through deep underground pipes to aid the insulation. If there’s a leak then it will probably be in the main chamber.’ He looked at Ellery for confirmation. He badly wanted to go inside and be there when Franklin confronted Douglas, for the Professor’s sake as much as anything.

Ellery nodded, all his earlier bravado now gone. ‘That’s about the size of things. You’ll need access codes for the doors but they’ll all be the same because the system is in evac mode. It’s star, four zeros then the hash key.’

Franklin nodded. ‘OK. You go organize your men to cover the exits. We’ll go in the front and try and flush him out.’

Ellery nodded and hurried away. Shepherd watched him go, taking in the crowd beyond him – the emergency vehicles, the shivering people – his senses made sharp by adrenalin and fear. In the distance he noticed that the trees were heavy with snow and what looked like black fruit. A car door slammed and the fruit took flight, rising in the air like a column of living black smoke, thousands of migratory birds flying out of season and resting on trees that had never known snow. Nature turned on its head.

End of days.

‘Ready?’ Franklin said.

No – Shepherd thought. ‘Yep,’ he said, turning back to the entrance and raising his gun.

‘Good, ’cause you’re on point.’ He stepped around and behind Shepherd so the front of his body was tight to his back – nuts to butts. ‘Cover and move,’ he murmured, ‘just like in Hogan’s Alley.’

Except the bullets are real – Shepherd thought. The bullets are real.

Then he stepped forward and opened the door.

27

Shepherd went in low, sweeping the entrance lobby from left to right while Franklin stayed high and swept in the opposite direction. It was exactly as he remembered it, a row of five chairs stretched along the far wall below a huge picture of the space shuttle, a water cooler in the left corner with a waste bin next to it half full of paper cups, a heavy door to the right with a thick window built in at head height and HazMat and Radiation symbols below it. Nothing else.

He stepped forward and moved across the foyer, heading for the door and repeating the training mantra over and over in his head: Check and move, check and move.

Franklin stayed close enough to make them a single entity with two sets of eyes and two guns.

Star, four zeros then the hash key. Through the door. It swung shut behind them with the suck of rubber seals, cutting off all sounds from outside. In the quietness they heard something new, a low, steady hiss as though a huge snake was waiting for them somewhere inside the building.

Shepherd stepped to the side of the door – gun in front, heart pounding – and scoped as much of the room beyond as he could through the small window. The gowning room was all white tiles, bright lights and shelves full of rolled-up suits and gloves. There were some full suits hanging like ghosts on the wall, which made his finger tighten on the trigger.

He glanced up at Franklin who had taken a position on the other side of the door. Nodded once. Reached out with his left hand and punched the code into the door. The lock clicked. Franklin twisted the handle. Shepherd pushed it open from the hinge and followed it low, just as before, left to right, corner to centre, while Franklin stayed high and swept the opposite way. A movement made Shepherd’s gun twitch round. One of the hanging suits had moved. He blew out a long breath realizing it was only the air from the opening door that had shifted it.

The hissing sound was louder now. It was coming from beyond the air shower that led into the main chamber.

They moved towards it, their shoes catching on the sticky mats there to pull impurities from the soles of lab boots before they entered the high-pressure air shower that would blast off the rest. Shepherd stopped as he reached the clear screen that marked the entrance. ‘Let’s go,’ Franklin said, joining him by the door and seeing there was nothing inside.

‘We should be suited up before going in there.’

‘Really?’ Franklin turned and opened the door.

‘Wait!’ Shepherd ducked in after him just as a tornado of wind rushed at them from all sides sounding like a thousand hand dryers going off at once. Franklin ducked and crabbed over to the far door, leading with his gun as if the noise was some kind of attack. The racket lasted for ten seconds then cut out. Franklin turned back to Shepherd. ‘What were you saying?’

‘Never mind.’

The window in the final door revealed little of the large chamber beyond. The entire upper part of the room was hidden behind a thick wall of white vapour, like someone had captured a cloud and was storing it here. ‘Helium,’ Shepherd whispered.

‘Poisonous?’

He shook his head. ‘There’s a danger of oxygen starvation if you inhale too much. Other than that it just makes your voice sound funny. It’s the same stuff you get in party balloons. Biggest risk is frostbite and cold burns. It boils at minus four hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit and in the pipes it will be liquid, so even colder. The Professor won’t be in there if it’s a liquid spill. Not unless he’s dead. No one can survive long in cold like that.’

Franklin smiled and stepped behind him. ‘You first.’

Shepherd looked again through the window at the gas cloud and took a breath. He felt the grip of the gun pressing into his palm as he held it tight in one hand and punched the code into the door with the other. The lock clicked, he pulled it open and stepped inside.

It was beyond freezing inside the room and the hissing was sinister and loud. Above him the underside of the cloud shifted as the opening door stirred the air, making it look like something was moving inside it.

He swept the room the same way as before. The vapour in the air reduced visibility but he could make out the lower third of the circular door to the vault in the centre of the room. This was where the hardware was tested and where the leak would most likely be coming from. He moved toward it, keeping low and well below the freezing cloud. It had been cold outside in the freak winter weather but nothing compared to this. His breath was frosting the moment it passed his lips. He glanced up at the thick cloud above his head, formed by the lighter than air helium filling the chamber top down like smoke. There was something wrong about it being there. He dredged his mind for what he knew about the facility. Fragments came back to him, bits of technical information about how it worked – then it hit him.

Laminar flow.

He looked back up at the cloud. The room kept itself clean using laminar flow, air blown constantly in parallel streams from top to bottom to sweep particles down to the filters in the floor. But the cloud was not being blown downwards. It just sat there, filling the upper part of the room with freezing vapour. He remembered how it had shifted when he had opened the door. There was no airflow in the room at all. Maybe it had been damaged by the leak. Maybe not.

He spotted something else that was wrong. In the clinical environment of the clean room, nothing should be out of place, everything had to be stowed away and locked down to prevent dangerous and potentially costly accidents: but there was a laptop lying on the floor over by the vault door. He moved closer to it, squinting through the thick air to get a better look. Shifting hardware in and out of the cryo unit was incredibly precise. Even a scrubbed glove could leave contaminants on a component, so it was all done by computer-controlled robotic lifting arms. The laptop was hardwired into the control panel of one of these. The arm was extended, the gripping claw disappearing into the dense cloud above his head. Shepherd took a step towards it, moving sideways to bring the screen of the laptop into view. There was a number on it, two zeroes followed by a one and an eight. As Shepherd watched, the eight turned to a seven. Then a six. Then a five.

Countdown.

He darted forward, grabbing one of the high-pressure hoses used to clean components and pointed it up at the cloud, pulling the trigger at the spot where the top of the arm had to be. The hiss of air joined the shushing sibilance of the room as the cloud parted above him, just long enough for him to see what the arm was holding.

He dropped the hose and span round, grabbing Franklin by the arm. ‘GET OUT!’

In his mind he was already sprinting back to the entrance, dragging Franklin with him, but the world had gone into slow motion.

How long left before the counter hit zero? Not long enough and he dared not turn to look. Say ten seconds at most. Ten seconds to get as far away as possible.

Something tugged on his arm, holding him back. He looked back and into Franklin’s face, confused and angry. ‘RUN!’ he screamed, pulling him towards the door. No time to explain. No time for anything.

He counted every step, imagining each one corresponding to the countdown on the laptop.

… nine …

… eight …

Until now, Shepherd had not been fully committed to the idea that his old Professor was in here somewhere, sabotaging key components of Hubble’s successor.

… seven …

… six …

But everything was so deliberate and planned. He made it to the door and yanked it open, heaving Franklin through and charging after him.

… five …

… four …

The roar of the air shower kicked in and for a second he thought he’d got his timings wrong. He carried on running, straight through the second door with Franklin right next to him.

… three …

… two …

So clever.

Evacuate the building so no one gets hurt … flood the upper part of the chamber with freezing gas … lift a reserve tank of coolant into it with the arm so the gas keeps it cool … until the countdown tells it to drop the tank onto the hard, relatively warm floor …

… One …

In front of him, Franklin was halfway through the final door and Shepherd threw himself forward, bundling him out of the scrubbing station and down onto the floor of the entrance lobby.

Down.

Stay down. Helium is lighter than air. Helium rises.

… Zero …

Shepherd heard a muffled crump then the percussive wave of the explosion ripped through the building, turning the world into torn metal and broken glass.

And then darkness.

III

What man is there that hath built a new house, and hath not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle

Deuteronomy 20:5

28

EIGHT MONTHS EARLIER

Old Town, City of Ruin

Southeastern Turkey

Gabriel died shortly after noon on the same day he rode into Ruin.

A man in a HazMat suit appeared over him, his visor fogging with hurried breath, drawn by the cardio alarm.

‘Over here!’ His voice was muffled by the hermetic suit, lost amid the wail of the alarm and the howls of other patients. ‘HERE!’ He reached out a gloved hand and placed it on Gabriel’s chest, pumping hard on the breastbone to massage the still heart beneath it, cursing the fact that his other hand was strapped tight to his chest by a sling.

Another suited figure looked up from another bed and started to walk over, any urgency blunted by the now commonplace nature of death. It was the third time a cardiac alarm had sounded that day and, with so many infected and suffering so hideously, it was hard not to see the release of death as something of a blessing.

‘Do something,’ the man at the bed said, still pumping rhythmically on Gabriel’s chest with his one good hand.

The new arrival glanced at the monitor, the heartbeat flat-lining. He looked down at the still form, bound to the bed. ‘He’s gone,’ he said, flicking a switch to silence the alarm.

The man at Gabriel’s side looked up, anger lighting his face, his breath fogging his visor as he spoke. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Dr Kaplan, I’m the senior physician in charge, why do you ask?’

‘Because I want to spell it right when I write up the charge of medical homicide by neglect.’

The doctor’s eyes dropped to the ID displayed in the clear pocket on the front of the man’s suit and read the name: Chief Inspector Davud Arkadian, Ruin City Police. Pushing Arkadian’s hand away he moved up to the bed and continued the CPR on Gabriel’s body. His bulky helmet turned back towards the other doctors. ‘Over here,’ he shouted, loud enough to be heard above the din. ‘Make it fast and bring the crash unit with you.’

Gabriel felt like he was floating upwards, flying in a bright sky. Below him he could see fields and rivers rushing past, flitting between clouds that grew thicker the higher he flew. He felt weightless, peaceful – free.

Through the clouds he saw the land fall away and the vast mirror of the ocean stretch out. Huge flocks of birds flew past him, all heading in the same direction towards land. Even at this great height he could see other things moving across the water below. They left lines behind them, long straight, white wakes like scratches on the surface of the sea. Ships. Thousands of them, all heading back to land, the lines of their wakes slowly converging the closer they got to port.

He continued to rise, as if some force was pulling him up to the bright sun that warmed and welcomed him. No. Not the sun, more vast somehow and indistinct. It continued to grow the closer he got, bigger even than the ocean below though he could not see the edge of it. Moving towards it required no effort, it was as easy as falling. But there was something about the ships and the birds that plucked at something inside him. They were all going in a different direction to him, and it made him feel uneasy. He felt like he should be going the same way too, back to the land, away from the soothing sun that filled the sky.

He tilted himself downwards, his head pointing back towards the earth and swept his arms through the air, pulling himself down and away from the light. The steady rise stopped, just a little, then started again, pulling him up like he was a cork bobbing in water. He fixed on a spot of dry land far below him, reached out with his arms again and pulled forward, kicking hard with both legs.

‘Clear!’

Two of the three HazMat suits stepped back from the bed. The third held the defibrillator paddles to the smears of conductive gel on Gabriel’s chest and pressed the twin fire buttons.

Gabriel arched upwards, his bound hands twitching into claws at his sides.

Dr Kaplan stepped forward, checking the ECG monitor and resuming CPR. The line on the screen jumped then settled back to nothing. ‘Nearly had him. Give him another milligram of epinephrine and get ready to try again.’

The second suit fumbled a syringe into the cannula fitted to Gabriel’s arm, the urgency and his gloved hands combining to make this simple task ten times more difficult. He emptied the plunger and sent a milligram of adrenaline into Gabriel’s veins. Inside his inert body the peripheral vascular system responded, constricting to send a shunt of blood to his core, thereby raising his blood pressure. The doctor placed the syringe on a stand and pressed a button on the defibrillator unit to prime it again.

‘Charging,’ he called out. The insectile whine of building electricity cut through the air.

Dr Kaplan continued to pump Gabriel’s heart with his interlaced hands, forcing blood through veins while Arkadian made himself useful as best he could with his usable arm. He stayed by Gabriel’s head squeezing the bag valve mask fixed to his face, sending a steady pulse of oxygen to his immobile lungs. He watched the line on the screen flicker but stay flat, the heart still not beating on its own. The second doctor got ready with the paddles, placing one high and one low with the heart in between.

‘Clear!’

Gabriel arched. On the screen the ECG jumped.

They moved back to their positions, three people working together to carry on functions that were normally automatic, keeping him alive by hand while the ECG continued to dance but refused to settle.

‘We can’t keep on with this indefinitely,’ Dr Kaplan said between pumps. ‘CPR and artificial respiration only go so far in keeping a patient viable. His brain is already being starved of oxygen. Any longer than a few minutes and it becomes increasingly pointless.’

‘Then you’d better get a move on,’ Arkadian said.

Kaplan nodded. ‘OK spike him up with another mil of epinephrine. Let’s go again.’

Arkadian focused on the bag in his hand, squeezing and releasing it steadily at the same pace Gabriel would breathe if he could. ‘Come on,’ he whispered, dipping his head down level with Gabriel’s ear. ‘Don’t go out like this. Not like this.’

Gabriel could see the land beneath him getting closer but the effort to reach it was exhausting. Occasionally a gust of wind would help him out, blowing him downward in a sudden surge, but it never lasted long and the upward force would start to pull on him again, working on his mind too, telling him to give up, let go, relax and float away.

The land was also taking form and he continued to focus on it, using it as a hook to pull him down, fixing on a patch of green in the middle of a vast, dry desert. He continued to kick and pull with his arms, swimming in the air like he was trying to get to the bottom of a crystal-clear lake.

He could see more now, trees and rivers and a lake at the centre of the green, reflecting the bright sun behind him. And there was something else, a person, a woman, standing by the edge of the pool and looking around as though she had lost something. She was calling out but he was still too high to hear her. He could feel weariness flooding his whole body and again the voice from above told him to just let go. Then another gust of wind pushed him down, halving the distance so he could finally see who it was and hear what she was calling.

‘Gabriel!’ Liv hollered into the same wind that had pushed him close to her. ‘Where have you gone? Why have you left me here?’

Gabriel kicked harder, the sound of her voice and the sight of her pulling at him now with far more strength than the light in the sky. ‘I’m here,’ he called out. ‘My love, I’m here. I’m coming for you. I’m coming back.’

Then he kicked once more and something seemed to snap. The lights went out and he was suddenly falling through darkness, down to the earth that he could no longer see, and down to the woman he could no longer hear.