After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1) (35 page)

I lurched into the stairwell and leapt, one hand skimming across the railing and the other flailing as I attempted to maintain balance.  I cleared the whole flight of a dozen or so steps and thudded onto the landing below, somehow keeping my footing, dust exploding from the impact.  My knees creaked and my body quivered from the vibrations that ran up my legs.  It
hurt
.  But I didn’t slow down.  I did the same on the next flight and the one after that, hurling myself down the stairwell with a kind of reckless abandon.  My own welfare seemed a distant concern.  I just needed to get down.  I needed to get
out
.

Arsha’s voice echoed down in my wake, a ghostly patchwork of noise that was incomprehensible amid the slapping of my feet on concrete. The echoes of one impact reverberated even as the next one arrived, such was the rapidity of my descent. The stairwell became a cacophony of scuffs and thuds and grunts of exertion. I slipped and fell more than once, but the pain didn’t seem to register. I just kept going, tripping down steps, getting up, my shoulder cannoning into walls, ribs scraping on metal railings. I swept it all aside like a man brushing away cobwebs as he staggered toward the light at the end of a tunnel.

I didn’t count floor numbers on the descent, never once raising my eyes from the objective in front of me: the next set of stairs. There was no attempt to track my progress, no milestones. Just one landing, then the next, and the one after that. I felt like I was entering an infinite loop, caught in a stairwell that had no beginning or end, and no matter how many floors I descended, there would always be another one below to greet me. A paradoxical quest that only got longer the further I went. Another version of Hell.

Then, suddenly, I was there at the steel door, wrenching it aside and limping out into the alleyway. Outside, twilight was shedding its last light across the city. I kept running, down to the dumpster, through one side and busting out the other, bits of wood and debris bursting around me. I pulled myself off the pavement and got my legs pumping, careening down the street, headed west.

In minutes I was at the West Street Bridge, weaving through car wrecks and hurdling anything that got in my way, the fire on the other side of the river lighting my way. The dragon-like curves of the bridge swept above me, and at the far end that arc of flaming buildings was like its fiery breath. I could feel the heat of it already, like standing in the midday sun at the peak of summer. At another time I would have sat back to marvel at the spectacle of it, but right now, my only thought was to find a way through it.

As I neared the end of the bridge, the heat became overwhelming, stinging the skin with its intensity. The storm hadn’t reached this side of the river and the fire had gone unchecked. The smoke pouring out of the inferno was thick, clogging the street to such an extent that I couldn’t be sure there was safe passage through. Even if there was, I doubted I could withstand the temperature at such close proximity. I had no choice but to turn south along the river and head down a block, away from the fire, and turn back. It was an aggravating detour, but one that was necessary.

The streets one block down were brightly lit by the fire and visibility was good, allowing me to keep up a steady pace. I came across one major obstacle - a tangled wreck of cars that consumed precious seconds as I negotiated my way across. Once free of them I was able to turn back north and resume my heading along West Street, out to the Displacer lab.

Thoughts were trampling through my head like a herd of deer. I tried grabbing at them, holding them so I could place them in some kind of order and establish a plan, but I couldn’t secure any of them for more than a few seconds. As soon as I touched one it was swiftly replaced by the next, bumping and thrusting its way forward and knocking any previous notion aside. With every stride it seemed a new question came to mind.

How did the lab catch on fire when the first outbreak was several clicks away? What was I going to do when I got there? Was there a way to douse the flames? Could I relocate the gear that was inside? How long before the whole building came down? What would happen if I didn’t make it in time?

They kept coming, question after question. But I had no answers.

Skipping over a pile of debris, my foot caught and I was sent sliding and scraping along the asphalt. I bumped heavily on the unyielding surface, but didn’t waste time licking my wounds. I didn’t feel the pain. My palms slapped on the ground and I pushed myself up, hobbling forward again. The second fire was close. Minutes before it had been just a dull glow in the sky. Now I could see the flames over the rooftops, hear it crackle, see the plume of smoke drifting up into the night sky. I gave one last surge to close the distance between us.

Finally I rounded the last bend and it came into view. The fire had already swept between a number of buildings, not as intense as the fire at the river, but enough to engulf one whole side of the street. The lab sat between the larger shapes of the buildings around it, the roof ablaze. The noise seemed deafening, the insistent roar and crackle of flames punctuated by the sounds of things inside the buildings popping and fizzing - long dormant chemicals and appliances meeting a fiery end.

A single coherent thought came to me: the inner lab substructure had been lined with fire retardant.  It had been built to withstand earthquakes and extreme weather events.  It could still be intact. 

Dimly, I saw the entrance to the lab behind a curtain of smoke and flame. There was no time to consider options or to reflect on the best course of action. I just had to act. I had to get in there. Gritting my teeth in determination, I started forward.

“Brant,
wait!
” came Arsha’s voice behind me. She had followed, somehow keeping up with my breakneck pace. Now she stood there, her face a mixture of anxiety and desperation, her hand held out, entreating, her feet rooted to the spot as if she dared come no closer. “You can’t go in there!”

“What are you talking about?” I spat.  “We
have
to get in.  Our whole future is in there!”

“You won’t
make
it!”  She gestured uselessly up at the fire.  “You won’t survive that.”

“There’s no choice, Arsha.” Resolute, I turned my back on her and began to walk, the heat on my face intense. I glared into the flames, challenging them. Daring them to stop me.

“Brant!” Arsha cried. She was at my side, grabbing at my arm and half turning me, half trying to drag me back. “Don’t do it!”

I resisted her, tried to pry her fingers from my arm. They were like steel.

“Arsha, this is crazy.  We’ve waited
decades
for this.  I’m not throwing it all away!”

“It’s too late.  It’s gone.  Just
leave it!
” she bellowed.

“No,” I shouted back defiantly.

“We don’t need the lab,” she said, her desperation mounting. “We don’t need the Displacer, or our human bodies. Come with me, let me show you!”

I rammed my palm into her chest, propelling her backward.  She lost her grip and gasped, shock and surprise written across her face. 

“I said
no!
”

Free of her grasp, I ran forward, shielding my face from the fire. My body was built to withstand harsh conditions, but not prolonged exposure to this kind of heat. I had to do this quickly. With haste, I closed the distance between myself and the door, fumbling for the access panel. Smoke clogged my eyes, it was down my throat. Somehow my fingers found the catch and I pulled it back. Hesitating, I stared at the readout. For a horrible moment I thought I wouldn’t remember the passcode, but my fingers jabbed forward almost of their own volition. The passcode was accepted. The door swung open and I plunged inward.

As I moved past the outer threshold the door closed softly behind me. The fire retardant had done its job. Although the exterior of the building was charred and intensely hot, the stairway that led inside was cool and dark. It was like abruptly passing through a maelstrom and into a void, another world. Within, there was no hint of the chaos going on outside. There was not a sound.

I felt my way down in the darkness, my fingertips tracing along the smooth edge of the passageway.  I’d been here many times before, and my feet instinctively found each successive step without fault.  There were maybe fifteen steps in all, and with each one I was drawn further into the darkness, into this vault that had been sealed for decades. 

I’d played out this scene so many times in my head - this triumphant return to the presence of my true self, considering a hundred variations on the possibilities, but I’d never foreseen one quite like this.  In my mind I had always pictured myself stepping triumphantly toward the cryotank, seeing my body lying peacefully within, the shell that awaited my spirit to once again fill it with life.  Arsha was always there too, looking down serenely on her own cryotank, her
face a mirror of my own emotions. We’d lift our gazes to each other and smile, primed for what was to come. The long wait over.

This rushed, chaotic and uncertain mess that I now found myself caught up in had never been taken into calculation. It seemed absurd, but here it was, suddenly a reality.

The automatic lights clicked on as I alighted from the bottom step. The first test had been passed: the cells still had reserves. A good sign. On the down side, there was little illumination forthcoming, an indication that they were running low. On the wall to my right, a red beacon glowed softly, almost too faint to see. It was a panel displaying a fire proximity warning, advising occupants to evacuate the building immediately. There was no accompanying audio alert, possibly a malfunction in the system. I took a couple of steps further into the lab as my eyes adjusted from the blinding light outside to the dull glow of the lab interior.

I began to discern the outline of several objects.  They were fuzzy, indistinct, but becoming clearer.  A bench.  A wall.  The expanse of the floor.  I tried to orientate myself with the layout in my memory, but they weren’t fitting in the right places.  Nothing was where it should be.  It was all disjointed. 

Had I forgotten so much?

I swung my head from side to side, taking it all in and attempting to make sense of what I saw, but the more I looked, the more I began to realise that this was not the lab I remembered. As I paced forward I could see that there were no cryotanks lining the wall, no terminal screens where I remembered running countless repetitions of analysis. No instruments. No gauges. Instead, there were just a few dusty cardboard boxes and a large cone shaped object in the middle of the room, covered with a black sheet.

My heart leapt. 
The Displacer machine.

I stepped forward hurriedly, my boots echoing in the close confines of the lab. I tugged at the sheet, and it slipped to the ground with a soft whisper and began to pool around my ankles. Such a soft and gentle thing to hide such secrets.

As the last folds of the sheet drifted down I saw what lay beneath.  Saw, but couldn’t quite believe.  A stack of broken furniture.  Books.  Old terminal screens.  Other bits and pieces I couldn’t make out in the gloom.  They were all piled together, reaching up almost as high as the ceiling.  A jumble of useless objects.  Garbage. 

The Displacer wasn’t here.

“I didn’t want you to find out this way,” came Arsha’s voice from behind me.

I spun on my heel at the sudden sound. I hadn’t heard the door open and had no idea how she’d gotten there. Perhaps I’d just been so intent on finding the Displacer that I hadn’t noticed her making her way inside. I stared at her stupidly, a paralysing kind of numbness spreading over me.

“Find out what?” I said. My own voice sounded disconnected, like it was someone else talking.

“The truth,” she replied quietly. There was sadness in her voice and her eyes couldn’t seem to lift above my feet.

I ran my fingers through my hair, tried to get a hold of myself. “Arsha, where’s the Displacer?” I demanded. I was fighting through that numbness but it clung to me, thick as molasses. I turned back and gestured at the empty lab. “Where are the cryotanks? Where are our bodies?”

She sighed, and her eyes crept up to meet mine.  “There
is
no Displacer.  There never was.”

I stared at her blankly. “You’re not making sense.” I shook my head. “What’s going on here?”

She held out her hand again.  “Come back outside with me. 
Please.
”

I pressed my lips together and pointed a shaking finger at her. “Arsha, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but we need to find our bodies-”

“You were
never human
,” she shouted suddenly. The sound echoed about the room for what seemed like minutes, those final two words assaulting me again and again from every direction, like a hundred people shouting it in turn. Something pressed against my back and I lurched forward. The stack of debris crumpled and sagged to the floor, scattering everywhere. Somehow I’d taken a few steps back without realising it.

Now my mind was reeling. I fought to regain control of myself. “No... Arsha, that’s... that’s not true.”