The Tower: Part Three

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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 (#ulink_4b3d9afd-067c-57cb-81de-ea2441345ad1)

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

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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.

‘Heartbeat steady at eight nine, BP 100 over 80.’ Kaplan stood back watching the proof on the heart monitor that it had taken over the job he had been doing for the last five minutes.

Arkadian continued to pump the air bag, too scared to stop in case it was the only thing keeping Gabriel bound to this earth. ‘You can stop that now,’ Kaplan said, ‘he’s breathing on his own.’

Arkadian stepped back, suddenly aware that he was drenched in sweat inside his spacesuit. ‘Congratulations, Doctor,’ he said, managing a smile, ‘you just saved a good man’s life.’

The doctor looked down at the figure on the bed. The infected and blistered skin already starting to sheen again with sweat as the fever came back to life too. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But for how long?’

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The heat hammered a headache into Liv before she had even made it out of sight of the compound. She was following the line of one of the larger streams that flowed out from the holding pits, tracing it through the contours of the land. She did not stoop to drink from it despite her thirst. She knew the riders would be watching and she did not want to give them the satisfaction. She felt uneasy walking away, though she knew she had no option: each footstep seemed heavier than the last, like her whole body was rebelling against leaving this place. It was as though her heart was physically bound to it and each step made the bond tighter as it tried to pull her back.

After nearly two hours’ walking, the land started to fall away and she came across a shallow depression in the ground where the water had pooled. She stopped still the moment she saw it and sank slowly to the ground.

An eagle stood on the far bank of the pool, dipping its curved beak into the water, sending gentle ripples across the surface while its powerful talons gripped the wet, red earth like soft flesh. It saw her, held her gaze with its huge amber eyes. She sensed no fear in it, or surprise at her presence, it just stared at her, so intently that she felt it must see right through her. Then the crunch of a foot on dry earth behind her made the bird take flight in an explosion of feathers and water droplets.

Liv spun round and saw Tariq standing over her, his eyes following the bird upward as it rose into the sky. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘you followed me.’

He looked down at her and smiled. ‘We all followed you,’ he replied, and stepped aside to let the rest of the refugees file past. Liv watched in silence as they walked down to the water one by one. She felt like crying.

Since Gabriel had gone she had been almost overwhelmed by feelings of loneliness. It gave her hope to see these strangers now, people who had chosen to follow her into the unknown rather than seek their own salvation. There was something happening here – bigger than her, bigger than any one person – and she knew they must feel it, as she felt it, or else why would they be here?

‘This is a good omen,’ Tariq said, looking up at the eagle. She followed his gaze to where the outspread wings gyred high above them, forming the shape of a T in the sky. She’d seen this before.

She grabbed the folded piece of paper from her pocket and opened it to reveal the rubbing of the Starmap, her eyes focusing on the first line of symbols.

The river

An eagle

A T-shaped cross

Her eyes slid across the remaining symbols and her heart thumped in her chest.

‘Stop,’ she called out. ‘Don’t drink it, don’t drink the water.’ Faces turned to her and she could see questions and doubt in their eyes.

She focused her mind on the symbols that followed the T.

The river again, a man kneeling next to it, his head hanging down and dripping, then the skull – symbol of death.

Liv looked back along the stream towards the distant compound, now just a shimmering smudge in the distance. For most of its length it ran clear, but even as she watched she could see a change. Far in the distance a current was swelling and surging down the stream towards her. It stirred up the mud as it went, turning the water the reddish colour of the earth – the colour of blood.

How long before it reached here? Ten minutes? Five maybe. Then the water in the pool would be spoiled too. Unless. She looked at the land, the way the river split, half of it flowing down into the pool.

‘We must dam the stream into the pool,’ she called out.

She moved quickly without waiting for a response, heading back to where the water split in two. Most of the flow was coming towards her, down a shallow, two-metre wide stream that was feeding the pool. She picked up one of the boulders that littered the broken ground and stumbled forward, the weight of the rock dragging her down. She reached the fork and the boulder splashed into the water, sinking almost without trace beneath the surface despite the shallowness of the stream. The water continued to flow around it unimpeded. She cast around for another rock and scrambled over to a large, brittle stone that fell apart as soon as she tried to pick it up. She grabbed the two largest chunks and hauled them back to the stream, dropping them next to the first one. Again they sank with barely a trace – and so did her spirits. She was already exhausted; she couldn’t possibly dam the stream on her own. It was hopeless.