Tiberius Found

CHAPTER 23

  Dryden barely blinked as he watched the final minutes of the Extermination process finish in the Claudius room – ten minutes had been determined as the optimal death time, despite the high toxicity of the poisonous gas. The system stopped pumping the barely visible Very Dirty Martini gas into the room and there was a faint change in sound as the extraction fans activated; sucking out the deadly gas through a series of filter and neutralisation processes. A minute later the amber lights changed to green, the blue-tinted room lights brightened and finally there was an audible click as the magnetic locks on the door released.

  Dryden glanced over his shoulder and saw through the viewing panel in the other door that Oscar was practically hopping in his eagerness to move back up to him. Dryden gave the slightest of nods and Oscar moved forward, the trio of other technicians following him like a line of ducklings.

  ‘What would you like done with …’ Oscar indicated towards the Claudius room, ‘with the bodies?’

  ‘Where do we normally move the contaminated material? Take them to the secure area in the morgue, of course.’

  ‘Yes sir. Sorry.’

  ‘Bag them up and get them isolated until the residue’s left their system. Keep Tiberius separate from the others and get the duty pathologist to notify me when he’s ready to start cutting.’ Dryden turned away from the door and started moving back down the corridor. ‘I wouldn’t want to miss that.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Oscar repeated as Dryden reached the other door, ‘of course.’

  Oscar tapped on his Tablet; notifying the Haz-Mat Team that he needed thirteen body bags and a secure transfer from the Claudius room to the morgue in the sub-basement.

  One of the Asian men standing between Cross and the metal door, the one whose neck was as wide as Cross’s waist, held a finger to one ear and tilted his head a little. From the expression on the man’s face Cross could tell he was being given an order. Maybe they’d tired of him being there? He wasn’t in any mood – or condition – for a fight, but he wasn’t prepared to just walk away. Or limp away, as the case may be. His leg ached and he’d lost the sensation in his toes below the cast half an hour ago.

  The Asian man muttered something in response to the message, holstered his automatic pistol and beckoned Cross to come closer. ‘You packin’?’

  Cross shook his head as he moved forward. ‘Be pretty dumb if I was, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yeah, I do. But you’d be surprised.’ The Asian beckoned for Cross to raise his arms.

  Cross did as he was told, wincing as he took the weight on his broken leg. The man patted him down, searching for any hidden weapons. He didn’t find any.

  ‘What about your leg?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got an assault rifle tucked down there.’

  The Asian man’s face remained blank.

  ‘It’s a joke,’ Cross added. ‘Scan me, if you like.’

  The Asian nodded. He pulled out a cell phone from his jacket and tapped the screen, activating the phone’s X-ray app. ‘Keep still.’

  He held the phone close to Cross’s leg and moved it slowly along the length of the cast. The screen showed a pale-blue image of Cross’s bones, along with several pins and screws holding the tibia together, but no other inconsistencies.

  ‘Okay,’ the man said. ‘Come on.’ He turned and banged three times on the metal door. The sound of a bar being drawn back came from inside and it swung open. ‘The crutch stays here.’

  Cross scowled at him and reluctantly handed over his crutch. The other men blocking Cross’s way parted for him to move through. He half-limped, half-hopped through the open doorway, acknowledged the skinny man standing on the other side then groaned as he saw the concrete steps leading down into the dank and gloom. He popped open the vial of pills the hospital had given him and swallowed three of the small, yellow tablets.

  He was dripping with sweat by the time he’d gone through the security door at the bottom of the steps. He popped several more into his mouth and followed the same man-mountain of a guard who’d escorted Daniel, along the modern corridor.

  ‘The Boss is in there,’ the guard said. ‘He’s told me to stay out here but believe me: I can move a lot quicker than you think I could. Any funny business and you’ll need casts over every part of you. You get me?’

  ‘Crystal,’ Cross replied. ‘I’m not here for a fight.’

  ‘Damn right you’re not.’

  The guard knocked on the door to Pickford’s room then made his way back down the corridor.

  ‘Yeah, come in,’ Pickford called.

  Cross wiped the sweat away from his face and opened the door to find Luca standing by the perspex table with his arms folded across his chest. The beginning of a tear glistened in the big man’s eye. Cross moved into the room.

  ‘This your place?’ he asked as he took in the equipment stacked on the shelves.

  ‘Nah,’ Pickford muttered, his small body hidden behind Luca’s bulk. Luca stepped to one side. ‘It’s mine.’

  Cross took a step closer and Luca mirrored his movement, blocking his way with an out-stretched hand.

  ‘I’m not here for trouble,’ Cross said. ‘I’m –’

  ‘Here about the kid,’ Pickford interrupted. He rested his good arm on the perspex table and looked at the floor. ‘Yeah, I guessed as much. It’s okay, Luca.’

  Luca took another step to the side.

  ‘I know you helped him when he was here the other day,’ Cross continued, keeping his eyes on Pickford. ‘You gave him the phone, right?’

  Pickford remained looking at the floor. ‘Just what is it you want, exactly?’

  Luca puffed out his chest and clenched his fists, cracking his knuckles.

  ‘It’s a long story and I don’t have a lot of time,’ Cross continued. ‘Look, I’m sorry about what happened before. Your men were a little too keen to move me on.’

  ‘Looks like someone moved you on pretty good, all the same,’ Luca said.

  Cross gave a faint laugh. ‘Yeah. Another long story. I’m not your enemy, okay? I’m not Daniel’s enemy either.’ Cross’s smile faded and his demeanour became more serious. ‘Some people are after him. I was sent over here to keep an eye on him and –’

  ‘You’re too late,’ Pickford interrupted him.

  ‘I know that he’s gone back in England,’ Cross continued, ‘but the thing is he doesn’t realise how much danger he’s in. He’s –’

  ‘Are you having trouble understandin’ what I’m sayin’, or somethin’?’ Pickford interrupted him again. He eventually looked up. ‘You’re too late.’ He took a deep breath. ‘He’s dead.’

  Cross paused for a moment as the words sunk in. ‘What?’

  Pickford turned to Luca. ‘Seriously, am I speakin’ a different language here?’ He looked back to Cross and spoke like he was talking to a child. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘What would make you think that?’

  ‘I just know, okay?’

  ‘No it’s not okay. How do you know?’

  ‘What does it matter? I just do.’ Pickford wiped away a tear. ‘He died about a quarter of an hour ago.’

  Cross glanced at Luca and understood the cause of the glistening in the big man’s eyes. If their body language was anything to go by then the two Americans were genuinely upset. Cross noticed Pickford’s phone sitting behind the small man on the perspex table; its screen was flashing red. Realisation came to him. ‘You synched him up with a haema-tag?’

  Pickford shrugged his shoulders. ‘So what if I did?’

  Cross frowned. ‘Just who the hell are you?’

  ‘I’m a business man that was tryin’ to look after a client,’ Pickford yelled. ‘Okay? Some job I did.’

  ‘This is important,’ Cross said moving closer to Pickford. ‘Tell me exactly what happened.’

  The morgue complex covered the whole of the northern wing’s foot-print, set three storeys below ground level and access to it only allowed to a privileged few. The development lab
s may well have been where the PathGen research was conducted, but it was within the series of rooms that comprised the morgue where that research was fully analysed.

  A series of morticians wheeled the twelve gurneys containing the Claudius children from a wide service elevator into a broad, sterile cold-room that looked more like an industrial fridge than part of a morgue. Each body was held in its own black zip-locked bag, with a crudely written C# written in red on one corner followed by a number to identify each corpse. The maroon-suited form of Gregory Dryden, standing next to his private lift at the end of the corridor, watched the morticians go about their business.

  The cold-room’s creamy white walls were punctuated with a series of gun-metal grey hatches at waist height. The morticians – each dressed in an orange, germ-free environment suit – opened a dozen of the hatches, revealing a coffin-shaped hole behind every one, going back into the wall. They pulled out a sliding rack from the holes and placed the bodies into one of the spaces. After the bodies had been pushed back into the wall they slammed the hatches shut.

  All but one of the morticians then pushed the gurneys out of the room as the last one recorded the location of each of the Claudius children into a Tablet.

  Daniel lay on another gurney sealed in an identical black zip-locked bag as the other twelve children, but the top left hand corner his bag held the T#1 moniker. An orange-clad mortician pushed Daniel’s gurney past the room holding the Claudius children and followed the corridor to a door leading into the furthest corner of the morgue. He entered a ten-digit sequence into a keypad and pressed his suit-held bio-reader against the scanner. The door opened into another “air-lock” chamber. Once past the second, inner door the mortician pushed Daniel into a clear, polymer cell in the middle of the room.

  The cell had tubes running up from the floor to its uppermost four corner which ended flush against the top. Sitting in the centre of the cell was an oblong plinth, with drainage channels running along its length. The mortician moved Daniel alongside the plinth, heaved him onto it and un-zipped the bag.

  Trails of blood showed from Daniel’s closed eyes, nose, mouth and ears, and pooled against the back of his head.

  The mortician maneuvered Daniel off the bag, closing the zip back up. He placed it back on the gurney then wheeled it outside the cell and closed the door. He tapped on a display panel by the door and set the programme to deliver the pre-determined three percent mix of chemicals that would counter the effects of the haemorrhagic fever. He activated the system and a number sequencer started counting down from sixty minutes. The tubes running into each corner started to pump a white gas into the cell.

  The technician then slid Daniel’s body-bag into a wall-mounted incinerator, returned to the “air-lock”, and initiated the de-com programme. He nodded to Dryden.

  Dryden turned and pressed his manicured thumb onto the encoder pad by his lift’s doors. After a moment the doors glided open and he stepped into the polished metal box.

  ‘Eight.’

  The doors closed silently and the lift ascended using the identical inertia-free drive system as the one in Brinkley House. Seven seconds later the lift doors opened into a small lobby area which led onto Dryden’s opaque, glass-fronted office. He pressed his thumb against another encoder pad and a set of glass doors opened. His suite was just as austere as his office in London, except for one difference; this room held a tall, metal seven-drawer filing cabinet to the side of his desk.

  The phone buzzed in his jacket. He winced when he saw who the call was from. ‘Margaret. It’s been ages. I was beginning to miss your voice.’

  ‘I got your message.’

  He moved through the office and sat at his desk, taking his time to reply. ‘Good.’

  ‘So you have him?’

  Dryden paused a fraction to emphasise the importance of his words. ‘I do.’

  ‘Was that before or after he triggered the Claudius fail-safe? Afterwards, I’m guessing. I do hope that your heavy-handed methods haven’t damaged him beyond being useful.’

  ‘You know as well as I do that the protocols are designed to leave the brain intact so, please, save your sarcasm. The important thing is that I have him in custody.’

  ‘And in the process you managed to lose a significant amount of material.’

  ‘There’s no need to wet your pants, Margaret. Twelve is hardly a significant number. And besides, there’s no real harm done.’

  ‘Apart from the fact that it would seem the two main locations under your direct authority are about as secure as my youngest’s piggy-bank.’

  ‘The important thing,’ Dryden replied, his voice hardening, ‘is that the matter has been resolved. Isn’t that what the Board wanted?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Then back off.’

  Margaret paused for a moment. ‘My, my, Gregory. You do seem agitated. Perhaps this is all getting a bit too much for you?’

  ‘Just remember who it is you’re talking to.’

  ‘Oh, I do. I’m only relaying what the Board are thinking.’

  ‘Then relay this to them: tell them to let me do my job. They’ll have what they want by the end of the day. Surgery on Tiberius will begin as soon as his system has been flushed of the haemorrhagic contamination. I’m going to oversee the operation myself. Believe me, within two hours he’ll be nothing more that meat on a butcher’s slab.’

  The first change happened deep within the mitochondrial membrane of Daniel’s eukaryotic cells. The cyanide molecule strands were stripped from the protein particles and the previously overwhelmed immunoglobulin antibodies finally had the opportunity to neutralise the foreign material.

  The next modification came in the endothelial cells lining his blood vessels. Destroyed cells were generated anew through mitosis and the damaged ones repaired themselves. The platelets re-formed, allowing normal coagulation, and halted the seepage of blood. The narcotic effects of the codeine were neutralised and the opiate flushed from his system. His adrenal gland activated, producing high levels of epinephrine, and the newly-cleaned blood vessels carried the effect throughout his lifeless body.

  The hormone acted like a defibrillator on his heart.

  Similar to a car trying to start on a freezing winter’s morning, his heart juddered into life.

  ‘So, I’m thinkin’ that you don’t need to be here anymore,’ Pickford said, looking up at Cross. ‘Given the fact that you don’t need to be here anymore.’

  Luca took a step forward.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Cross said holding his hands up. He limped towards the door. ‘It’s a shame that this couldn’t have turned out differently. I wish that it had.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Pickford muttered. ‘You an’ me both.’

  Cross was halfway through the doorway when Pickford’s phone started bleeping. Cross glanced back over his shoulder and saw that the screen now flashed green.

  Pickford grabbed the phone and held it before him. ‘I don’t believe it.’ His eyes went saucer wide. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Does that mean what I think it means?’ Cross asked, turning back into the room.

  Pickford nodded but didn’t take his eyes off the screen. ‘It’s impossible.’ He looked up to face Cross. ‘He was dead. He was dead.’

  Cross limped across to Pickford, who held up his phone so that Cross could see. The screen showed various life-sign displays – heart rate, blood pressure, brain activity. It also displayed the twelve-digit GPS location of Daniel’s whereabouts.

  ‘It’s impossible,’ Pickford repeated.

  Cross pulled his phone from his jacket and tapped its screen. He rapped his fingers nervously against the cast on his leg as he waited for Brennan to answer. ‘Come on, come on.’

  The call clicked through. ‘What?’

  ‘There’s been a development.’

  Daniel’s eyelids fluttered; the first outward sign that life had returned. His chest rose slightly, held for a moment then dipped. His mouth opened and he d
rew in a rasping, urgent breath of air. His first breath felt like swallowing shards of broken glass.

  Almost as soon as his lungs filled Daniel curled up on the plinth, wracked with a violent coughing fit. Yellow bile forced its way from between his lips and he let it drip onto the sterile floor until the fit had ceased. He drew in more lungful’s of air – it had the faint tang of ammonia – but with each one his breathing eased.

  Daniel looked at his hands; they were covered in blood, and he turned them around trying to comprehend what had happened. He sat up on the plinth, inspected the perspex box surrounding him and noticed the thin, white gas coming in from each high corner.

  ‘Time to get out of here, I think,’ he muttered swinging his legs off the plinth. ‘Wherever here is.’

  He pushed himself off the plinth and wobbled a little as his legs took his weight. He stepped up to the doorway and halted – wide-eyed – as he caught sight of his reflection. It wasn’t the fact that he still had all of his belongings that made him pause; it was the expression in his eyes. They seemed more haunted than before; somehow distant and remote. The trails of blood across his face and his tangled mass of dark, blood-matted hair did little to lessen the effect.

  Daniel stared back at his reflection and he knew, deep down, that he’d made a decision.

  For all of this to end then Dryden had to die.