Shattered destiny, p.27
Shattered Destiny, page 27
Although feeling empty, inside he found two loose sheets of paper. A form, some sort of medical document covered with barely legible scrawl and two cartoon style drawings of a male body, each with an oversized head. On the left, it depicted a featureless person staring out from the page with their hands stretched out to the side. The other was of the same drawing but side on in the same pose.
An inked cross marked the centre of the head on both cartoons. Fisher attempted to read the scrawl again, but it contained too many acronyms.
The second page was a high-quality printout of an x-ray film. Even without a day studying medicine, Fisher knew the mass wasn’t meant to be inside the guy’s head.
Hearing Harris, he looked up and spotted her moving between the piles of boxes. Pushing the file back in a random place, he plucked the next, this time a darker orange.
Skipping the name and the age, his gaze went straight to the bold seven in the corner and Type 3 underneath. With a similar form at the front, it ran to three pages and the biro marks were in different places on the cartoon. To the left and close to the front of the head. As before, an x-ray followed. This time it was the original film, and showed another mass, smaller than the last and matching the location on the cartoon. The third document was a form from an accident and emergency department, dated ten years ago. The details described that he’d presented to the A&E at Addenbrooke’s with a head injury, which concluded with a referral to a specialist for further investigation into the unrelated mass inside his head.
Remembering waking in the hospital, he pushed the file back.
So much had gone on since then, he’d not given it a second thought.
Scanning along the sea of cardboard sleeves, his gaze caught on a deep red file, in the corner a ten and a Type 4. He glanced at the name on the file, David Simon, born 31st August 1984. Unsure why he thought the name would stick in his mind, he scanned the wall of files, still not understanding the significance of the colours. Looking higher at the next row, he counted only a few dark red files amongst the sea of beige and orange.
Cameron Roberson. A7, Type 1 in a faded dark orange file, its thickness singling it out from the crowd. He read through the pack, skipping to the last page of the report dated two years ago. He read through the clipped English on a sheet titled Profile.
Observations showed the subject’s abilities appeared to have reached their plateau, making tracking and further investigation difficult. A recent operation to detain the subject for study failed when he used his abilities to evade, and he disabled three operatives. Studies of the affected concluded the damage irreversible.
Fisher read the line again, unable to stop himself from imagining what the damage could have been.
Moving on, he found the last two lines inked bold and underlined twice.
All future type ones with a potency greater than five are to be detained at an early stage before abilities reach full bloom.
Consider JFM10T1 extremely dangerous, should he advance to his potential.
Fisher looked up from the words, searching for meaning as he stared into the distance, but as he rolled the thoughts over, his vision came from a blur, his gaze running along the continuous parallel line of folders packed against each other, only stopping on the large handwritten F separating it from its neighbours.
His feet seemed fixed to the spot and his legs felt heavy as he tried to step. With the first file just out of reach, moving in time with the pounding in his chest, he traced across the anonymous spines, then pulled out a wedge of folders.
Toby Fearn came into view, but he pushed it back into place. Feasel, then Finch, came after a beige file. The name was next to a large four. The words Type One beneath.
The next stole his breath. With his surname written across the orange file, he searched his memory for the name. Annabel Fisher. With no recollection, he heard a heavy noise from the corridor, followed by the sound of snapping plastic a few rows over.
Pushing forward to the last of the files, he opened a gap in the row on the shelf with the tips of his fingers, leafing to the faded pink of a dog-eared jacket, its contents substantial, but the name on the cover showed no more Fishers. The bold black mark confirmed the guy had died over ten years ago.
As he slipped his fingers into the next, and the one after, he pulled apart file after file as disappointment tugged at him when he hadn’t found his name, sure the code mentioned in the last one was him. But if it was, then what did the M stand for?
71
With his breath thick in his throat, Fisher’s gaze darted the short distance between the markers for O and N, before finding M in the row above. Although the row stood out of his reach, he soon spotted the faded pink edge of a scarlet folder.
On tiptoes, he pulled himself high, just about able to tug at the corner. With not enough purchase, the card fell from his grip, sending pages fluttering across the floor. Peering down and scanning the fallen sheets, his attention drew to the red cover.
Type 1. Solid in dark marker, his name jumped from the scarlet, giving him his first understanding of the initial. Montez. The surname in brackets after Fisher.
Shaking his head, he forced himself from lingering on the name, instead scooping up the closest sheet to find medical notes from his brief stay in hospital. After a flash of the van hitting for a second time, he read the summary.
No apparent injury, but he requires an appointment with the representative from the U of Cambridge to review scans of a mass in the brain.
Appointment missed, ran in red across the sheet pinned behind, the words scrawled in a hurried hand.
Looking back to the floor, he found the page he’d dreaded. A cartoon of his oversized head with the cross of ink buried deep inside, the notes pointing it out as the anterior insular cortex. Choosing a perfect print of a life size x-ray next, its date matched the report and was only a couple of months old. Had it been such a short time since this all began?
Seeing the mass the size of a pea, the thought fell away.
Closing his eyes, he concentrated as if trying to feel it inside, but shook his head when everything felt like it always had.
Glancing at each of the gathered pages, he recognised the handwriting from many of the other files.
Continued observation confirms the subject is still in first stages, with the next milestone expected in a couple of years. However, the timeline is affected by environmental conditions. It is clear the subject will reach stage three a few years after, and we’re very hopeful the subject will continue to stage N, the stage of which has never been observed in a Type One before.
A loud clunk at the door pulled Fisher from the words. Despite a desperate need to look at each file, interrogating every page for answers to his growing list of questions, he stuffed the sheets back into the cardboard.
Feeling the need to look for Luana next, the girl raised in this place, he scanned the files for her name. But Montez was her lie, and his, but differently. Pausing at the sound of Harris fumbling somewhere a few rows over amidst the muffled klaxon, his gaze fell on a black jacket amongst the Ps.
As he pulled the wide cardboard free, taking more care than he had before, he realised there was more than one black file in his hand. Two bulged with pages, the other thin and limp, but reading a word in red across a white sticker on the front, he realised why.
Deceased. He pushed it under his arm and opened the next. Hunter Penfield. Female. Born 3rd December 1985.
Its pages were filled with multiple films. The earliest was of a baby with a mass in the same place as his. A dot on the image. As the heads grew on each film, so did the mass, but with age, growing bigger in proportion and not round like Fisher’s or the others he’d seen. With each film, the spikes grew further outward like the protective capsule of a conker. Spikes twined out like tendrils from a wild creeper. In the last film he saw the mass much larger, its alien-like suffocation of the brain near indistinguishable from the native matter.
Glancing back at the cover, he found a white sticker in the corner he’d missed. She was a Type 1, like himself, but above it was the number four. Scouring through the notes, he searched for an address, when a square of thick paper fell. A photograph of a little girl stared back from the floor. With her head shaved, the red of a fresh scar along her hairline made him wince.
Fisher slipped the glossy polaroid back between the pages and continued leafing through the sheets. A heavy sound caught him from the door, but when he glanced over and the noise had stopped, he turned back, sending the files spilling from his grip. Cursing as the pages fluttered to the floor, he dropped to his knees and scraped the papers into a pile. The word Profile at the top of a page made him pause, and he read the scribble beneath.
The subject exhibits a captivating likability by those in her proximity. Previous extensive reviews have determined we should limit human contact, and we have taken several steps in order to remove all possible contamination, including isolating siblings and her mother. The only measured change, however, is the deterioration in the subject’s mental state. We have yet to determine if this is an environmental factor or a result of the primary condition.
It has been a year since the subject has been restricted to one main contact and there had been reports of a physical relationship between the two which resulted in a pregnancy. This could not be allowed to go full term. Examination of the early stage embryo determined the offspring was viable.
Fisher’s heart sank as he read the reports. Only once did an author ask that, even in the surroundings of the questionable ethical framework, and the subject being over the age of consent, if what they subjected her to was justifiable. Isolated and insular, she was in no position to give consent.
The ink changed and so did the hand that wrote it, the words more scientific and recording a tendency for mood swings along with an ever-diminishing empathy. He re-read a phrase buried in the middle of the text.
Both are likely due to the seeding location. Had the effects been stronger than a level five, the risk to wider society would mean the project would be terminated. A large dose of prednisone has found to be the only way of holding back the symptoms. Although opioids had a similar result, the side effects were significant and dosing difficult to judge.
Fisher looked up, squinting as he turned back to the words. The last entry was six months ago and ended with a stark outlook. The mass was still growing, and they didn’t know how long she could cope.
Pulling his stare from the page, he looked around the room. Feeling a deep sorrow and desperate for perspective, he drew a breath.
As he turned the last page, the files dropped from his grip again as Luana’s pale, smiling face stared back at him from the floor.
72
Shaking from his stare, he reassembled the pages into the sleeve, pulling out the thin file from under his arm.
Joshua Penfield, deceased. From the date of birth, perhaps she was a twin.
With a glance at the last file in his hand, he corrected himself. A triplet.
They’d died five years ago, almost to the day. Fisher watched the tumour grow in the macabre flick book of x-ray films at his fingertips. The shadow of a dot growing. The feelers of the anemone feeding out, encircling the brain at a rate that made the black writing at the head of the file inevitable. The last page reported the obvious. His brain crushed from the inside, the vice like pressure incompatible with life.
A photo pinned at the top made Fisher gag as he looked at Joshua’s brain sat on stainless steel scales with blood drooling from its surface and long pink tendrils encasing the grey matter.
With one black folder left, he drew a deep breath, taking heart in the file's thickness. It’s weight similar to Hunter’s. The name read Lucy Penfield. Looking back at the row, he was relieved to find no other black folders.
The first page could have been a carbon copy of her sister’s, but as a thump of steel against the door echoed the warehouse, that was as far as he got.
Harris rounded the shelving, pausing for a moment when she saw the files. She carried an orange plastic container, the black words CMB1 stencilled on the side and with two iComms resting on the lid.
When steel rammed hard against the door for a second time, they glanced over but saw no movement.
Fisher stepped over and took his iComm.
“Thanks,” he said, his voice low and head still lost in the words.
“They’ve shelved the project,” Harris said, pulling open the leaves of the container, her iComm in her hand. Fisher didn’t need to voice his question. “I don’t know where it is, or why they shelved a discovery of such monumental importance.”
“Maybe they don’t understand the significance?” he replied, not raising his voice.
“They do,” she said, her eyes pinching as she read the single sheet of paper, leaving the container empty.
“Maybe they’re going to bury it?” Fisher said. “The project, not the rock.”
Harris spoke again, shaking her head.
“A corporation with a conscience turns down trillions to save the status quo?” she said. “I don’t think so. It’s more likely they’ve found where it came from.”
“Or another use?” he replied, staring at Harris.
“Something more significant than infinite energy?” she asked.
He nodded, turning towards the shelves of files towering over him.
“What are these?” she said, stepping forward, but before he could answer, the thump of the metal at the door was replaced with the high-pitched squeal of a cutting wheel. “Time to go,” she said. “Are you okay?” she added when Fisher didn’t reply.
“The answer’s here.”
“The answer to what?”
“Everything,” he said, then paused as he looked back at the rows of cardboard sleeves. “To what I am. To where I came from. They’ve been cataloguing for years. This is bigger than the rock.”
“You’re not making sense,” Harris replied, her brow furrowed as she stared at the files. “We’ve got to go.”
Fisher pushed the three black files under his arm and grabbed the pages spread at his feet, the bundle pinched in his armpit as he peeled away from the shelves. He paused for a moment, staring back at the towering folders.
“Come on,” she said. Only her tug at his arm broke his gaze and he followed her along the rows until she stopped, eyeing the door and the gaps between the shelves.
“How do we get out?” Fisher said, his eyes flitting around the vast room.
“I don’t know,” she replied. Fighting the urge to run at her heel, he followed her calm walk, despite the shrill call of the attack at the door.
As if finding purpose, her pace soon increased, as did his, rushing as he clutched the folders tight.
Arriving at the far wall, Harris pulled crates from the stack, their lids snapping open as she rummaged through the contents, stopping only when silence fell around them. With caustic fumes filling the air, they both peered at the door just as a thump of metal called out like a dulled bell.
Fisher spun on his heels, leaving Harris to continue her search and rush around the room’s perimeter only to confirm there was only the one door. His despair cut short when a deep groan came from up high and he looked up to the air vents in time to see both stainless louvres seal closed. Still staring at the louvres, Harris soon joined at his side.
Halfway back to the wall, he’d spotted the ceiling broken up by a hatch in the room’s far right corner. Swapping glances, Fisher’s eyebrows raised before he turned back to the hatch’s over-painted edges in between the wall and the first shelf, and then his gaze found a rust-pitted ladder sticking out from the wood to hang below, set back from the wall but it ended with sharp edges where a long time ago it had been cut, leaving only four rungs behind.
“Fuck,” Fisher shouted, his anger echoing around the chamber.
With a deep breath as the pounding on the door continued, he took comfort in Harris’s blank expression until the hum of the lights and the brightness vanished, plunging them into darkness. The hectic grind of the power tool lit up again, its screech growing louder with each moment.
Fight or flight, that was normally the choice, but all they could do was hope there weren’t too many people for their bullets.
Light sprung out from Harris’s hands, illuminating her face before she turned her phone around, sending shadows dancing across the shelves and wall.
In the new light, he sized up the shelf he stood beside, then leaned against the unit’s thick pillar. When it didn’t give, he pushed harder, adding more pressure. When it still didn’t deflect or complain, he relaxed.
“Not going to happen,” Harris said, pointing the beam to the thick bolts holding the shelf against the floor. Grabbing the uprights as best she could whilst holding the phone, she raised her foot and climbed.
Fisher pushed his hand out, trying to gauge the distance they would have to cover before they could reach the bottom rung, even if they could climb the shelves in the darkness. With one arm still pinning the folders, he reached out, watching the walls shimmer as her torch cast a meagre dash of light, until the full beam shined in his direction. She was at the top, but even with her arms outstretched, she was only halfway to the wall, which even for her was too great a distance to make.
As the constant scrape of the grinding wheel paused, replaced with the thump of weight banging shoulders against the door, the whine of the grinder was soon back to work. With Harris’s light shining from above, Fisher shoved the folded cardboard under his belt, tightening the buckle by two notches, then gripped the metal struts and climbed.
With each step the metal swayed but he was soon by her side staring at the painted edges of the escape hatch and the rust covered uprights of the short ladder.
“What now?” he said, turning towards her as she shone the beam across the gulf. Shaking his head, he looked at her again, this time taking no comfort in her unflinching expression. “We can’t make that,” he said, still shaking his head.
