Furnace 3 - Death Sentence (13 page)

A PLAN

When we finally managed to drag our eyes away from the bank of CCTV monitors we realised they were actually the least useful thing in the room.

‘Oh man,’ said Zee, his hushed tone one of awe. ‘Oh man oh man oh man. If the warden was here right now I think I’d kiss him.’

He walked towards the right-hand side of the room where a glass and steel cabinet held a selection of weapons that would have made a terrorist blush. Zee reached in and pulled out a shotgun, his skinny arms obviously struggling with its weight. He held it to his shoulder, swinging it wildly around the room.

‘Take it easy, kid,’ yelled Simon, ducking down and shielding his face with his mammoth arm. ‘I don’t want no pepper shot in my ass.’

‘It probably isn’t even loaded,’ Zee replied, resting the barrel of the huge gun over one arm while he prodded the various clips and clasps that ran along its length. Still eyeing him nervously, Simon walked to another cabinet next to the first and I saw him slide
something long and metallic into his pocket.

I left him to it, turning my attention to the wall opposite. Set in a recess, framed in glass and wood, was a blueprint of the prison, every corridor and room laid out in a three-dimensional network of fine white lines. Even in miniature the place looked huge, the Black Fort on the surface just a speck when compared with the monstrous leviathan than lurked beneath it. The tip of the nightmare iceberg that was Furnace.

And we were right at the bottom.

‘You are here,’ I muttered to myself, running my finger down the spider web of lines until I found the room we were in. I had to crouch to see it, the warden’s quarters the size of a grain of sweetcorn almost lost in the bulk of what lay overhead. I let my finger trail back upwards, through the endless layers of gen pop, rising to the surface, to freedom.

‘Somehow I don’t think it’s gonna be that easy,’ said Simon from behind my shoulder. ‘You see any way out on there?’

I returned to my starting point, focusing hard on the blueprint. I knew that the prison’s underbelly was a warren of tunnels, wards and storerooms, but I’d had no idea how complex it truly was until now. They spilled out in every direction, seemingly at random, like the roots of a tree. But none of them led anywhere except right back where they started.

‘Those two doors were the only way out into the caves,’ I said, pointing to the place on the map where the tunnel we’d just been in ended, and another on the
north side. Both doors had been scored over with a red X. ‘But even if we’d found a way through then we’d have just been stuck out there in the dark. There is no way to the surface from there, remember? The steeple was our best bet, and that failed.’

‘So what, then?’ asked Zee, who had joined us. I could smell the cordite and grease from the gun he still held, the scent making my stomach churn. ‘Ain’t there no emergency exit from here?’

‘Nothing,’ I said, scouring the plans for any sign of a back way out or a secret elevator to the surface. An escape route made sense, if not for a fire then certainly for a riot. I mean, if the inmates took over the asylum then the warden would need somewhere to run.

Only that would never happen, not in Furnace.

No, as far as I could see there was only one way to the surface. I drew my hand up the single white line that ran through the prison from the lowest levels of gen pop towards the Black Fort.

‘The elevator?’ said Simon. ‘Hell no.’

‘It’s the only way,’ I replied. ‘You see any other link to the surface? Everywhere’s a dead end except that.’ I rammed a finger against the glass to emphasise my point. ‘The elevator, if we can get to it then it’s our way out.’

‘But that’s in gen pop,’ said Zee. ‘How are we even supposed to get there?’

‘And we know it ain’t no ordinary elevator,’ added Simon. ‘We don’t just hop in and press the penthouse button and sit back to enjoy the ride. It probably isn’t even operated from the car.’

‘One thing at a time,’ I said, studying the base of the map to try and find a path to the main section of the prison. If the undersection was like the roots of a tree then gen pop was the canopy. Although both sprawled out in all directions there was only one narrow point where they met. I jabbed my finger again.

‘This is where we need to get to. It’s back down past the infirmary, you know that junction that splits off to the solitary cells? I think that’s it. We take the other branch and it leads to this room. That thing there’s another elevator, a smaller one, goes up as far as the base of gen pop. Okay?’

‘You say so, boss,’ said Simon. ‘Let’s get kitted up and go.’

I straightened up and pulled the frame from the wall, smashing it on the floor and carefully pulling the blueprint from the pool of broken glass. It was as I was folding it up to slide into my suit that I realised Simon was staring at my chest.

‘Something got you pretty good there,’ he said. I looked down, ran a hand along the claw marks that Gary had made in my shirt, and in the skin beneath. The pain was almost gone, so much so that I’d completely forgotten about it, and a thick black scab had already formed over the wound. Simon flashed a conspiratorial look at Zee, who was still fiddling with the shotgun, then turned back to me.

‘Only reason you’re still standing is because of the nectar,’ he went on. ‘That injury there would have killed you otherwise. How you feeling? A little dizzy? A little weak?’

I shook my head, but now that he’d mentioned it I wasn’t feeling as strong as I had before. I blinked and for a second the room seemed to spin, although I was pretty sure I was imagining it. Reaching up, I unknotted my tie, throwing it to the floor and breathing deeply.

‘Sooner or later the supply of nectar in your blood is gonna dry up, and that ain’t pretty. I’ve been there.’ He waved his mutated arm at me as if I’d forgotten it. ‘It’s like a drug, this stuff. The more you have, the more you want. And without it your body gets weak. Best-case scenario: you stop being a man of steel and you start being just a boy again. Stronger than you were, yeah, and just as big, but no match for a blacksuit. I was lucky, that’s what happened to me.’

‘And what’s the worst-case scenario?’ I asked, flexing the muscles beneath my suit just to reassure myself they were still there.

‘There are two,’ he replied with a whisper. ‘First off, you just die. Body can’t handle its new shape without the nectar there to fuel it and just disintegrates.’

‘Great,’ I said.

‘That was the good news. The alternative is your body stays the same but your mind goes. You snap, go schizo with bloodlust. You become something a million times worse than what they made you.’

I didn’t reply, trying not to think about what Simon was saying. But how could I not? There was a pretty good chance, then, that even if I did get out I’d end up either dying horribly or becoming some sort of psycho monster rampaging through the streets. Simon
must have seen my face drop because he rested his hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently.

‘Just giving you a heads up, that’s all,’ he said. ‘I’ve been there, remember. I know what it’s like, and I’m still me – well, sort of. True, you’ve had a hell of a lot more nectar than I ever got, but there are probably doctors on the surface who can cure you, hospitals and –’

In such a small room the gunshot was deafening. I felt like my eardrums had been blown out, the pain so great that I thought I’d been shot. I dived to the floor, feeling Simon beside me, desperately looking to see where the attack was coming from. But there were no blacksuits, no warden. There was just Zee, holding the smoking shotgun in his hands, his face twisted into a grimace of shock.

‘Oops, my bad,’ he said. Or at least I think that’s what he said; the ringing in my ears was like a church bell. I saw Simon jump up, could read the curses on his lips. I got to my feet and threw in a few choice words of my own. Several of the monitors were now lifeless, dozens of ragged holes in the glass where there had been pictures only moments ago. Tendrils of black smoke curled lazily upwards and pooled in the corners of the ceiling.

‘You idiot!’ yelled Simon, wiping a hand across the back of his neck and pulling it away to reveal a thin red line across his fingers. ‘You shot me!’

‘It’s just a graze!’ replied Zee, laying the shotgun on the floor and holding up his hands. ‘I don’t know what happened, it just went off.’

‘You pulled the trigger, that’s what happened,’ Simon
muttered. ‘Almost blew my goddamned head right off.’

I tried to fight the smile but I couldn’t. It sprang up on my face like a jack-in-the-box, and it must have been a good one because pretty soon both Simon and Zee were imitating it.

‘Don’t see what’s so funny,’ muttered Simon, trying and failing to look serious as he rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Zee, maybe you should leave the gun here. Stand a better chance of getting out if we’re still in one piece.’

Zee nodded, kicking the shotgun away like it was a poisonous snake. I stared at it for a second, wondering whether we should take it along. I mean, the blacksuits were armed, and we needed all the firepower we could get. But we really were just as likely to shoot each other as we were a guard, and the thought of the warden’s smug expression when he found out we’d done his job for him was too much to bear.

I slotted the map into my jacket and took a quick look at the remaining monitors. There were fewer blacksuits with the warden now, which meant that the rest were probably on their way back here. We had to move. I ran for the door, back into the room with the desk, heading for the corridor beyond.

That’s when the phone started to ring.

The blast from the shotgun had been loud, but this was a million times worse. Only it wasn’t the same sort of loud. This felt like something was exploding right in the core of my brain, a noise so sharp that I could almost see it – a blinding white light that made me stagger and fall. I clamped my hands to my ears but it
didn’t help, the shrill ring burrowing into my head like a wasp laying its eggs.

And those eggs hatched into visions that made everything else I’d seen look like something from a kids’ book, even the nightmares that sprouted from the warden’s eyes, even the dreams I’d had when they were pumping the nectar into me. It was as if the carvings on the desk were coming to life, each scene played out in terrifying detail. I watched each of those poor souls die again and again and again, those few short seconds dragged out into an infinity of pain and suffering.

It was Zee who ended it. Past the churning ocean of blood that sat across my vision I saw him lurch forward, one hand leaving his ear to swipe the telephone from the table. Its flight was arrested by the cord that linked it to the wall, the receiver spinning off and hitting the floor by my head.

The ringing ended, but it was replaced by something even worse – a presence that seemed to engulf my mind in a fist of shadow. I stared into the holes of the earpiece, from which there appeared to emanate something rancid and rotten from the darkest part of the world.

Furnace. Alfred Furnace.

I clawed my way up, half running and half crawling towards the door, feeling invisible fingers in my head, probing my thoughts, leaving filth and decay wherever they went. Only when I’d wrenched it open and fallen into the corridor beyond did the sensation recede, literally purged from me as I unloaded my stomach over the
red stone. Zee and Simon fell by my side, retching and crying, wiping the blood from their ears and the puke from their faces.

Together we ran, not caring where we were going or who saw us so long as we got away from that room, from that phone. But we couldn’t run fast enough to escape the voice, a soulless whisper that seeped from the receiver and followed us down the corridor, which was both silent and deafening, which held no words but which transmitted images of relentless fury, and which all of us understood.

I am coming for you
.

RISING

The further we got from the room, the less terrifying the voice became, although it had carved its message into our heads like a chisel on a gravestone. Our pace slowed, the unnameable dread replaced by a much more realistic fear – of being caught in the corridors by a blacksuit. That first might have scared the life out of me, but the second would mean instant death.

Even in our panic we had managed to take the right path, bolting up the passageway that led towards the solitary cells. I could see the plastic slats of the infirmary up ahead, and we all kept our hushed whispers to ourselves until the curtained door was well behind us.

‘That didn’t just happen, did it?’ asked Zee, his voice little more than a rasping breath. ‘I mean, it was a group hallucination or something, right? I saw a programme about it once, people imagining the same stuff and thinking it was real.’

‘It was real,’ answered Simon, his head constantly swaying back and forth as he checked the path ahead and the corridor behind. ‘I’ve heard that phone go off a
few times now, always the same thing, like there’s a vice around my mind. Alex felt it too, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ I answered, thinking of the time I’d heard the phone before, the pain in my head unbearable yet my body unable to move away. ‘I wasn’t standing right next to it then, though.’

The end of the passageway was approaching, the T-junction visible up ahead. We slowed to a crawl, tiptoeing in case there was anything waiting for us. I couldn’t hear any voices or growls, though, and when we poked our heads round the corner there was nobody in sight in either direction.

Something was glinting on the floor to my right, and it took me a moment to recognise the hatches of solitary confinement. My throat seemed to swell at the thought of being down there, back before they started carving me up, back before the nectar was pumped into me, back before I knew the truth about Furnace.

Back when Donovan was still alive.

It seemed like months ago – years, even. But how long had it been? Days maybe? Weeks, at most. I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious during the procedure, how much time the warden had stolen from me while he turned me into another of his blacksuit monsters.

‘Who was it?’ asked Zee, his voice louder now, more urgent. ‘Who was on the other end of that phone?’

‘Furnace,’ Simon and I said, and even though we’d spoken it together the word was barely audible, as if we were worried that by saying his name we’d magic him
into existence. Hell, maybe we would. I’d seen weirder things here.

‘Furnace? You mean the guy who built this place?’ Zee went on. ‘But how’d he get in our heads like that? My ears are bleeding, for Christ’s sake. Yours too. That isn’t right.’

‘Yeah, tell me about it,’ said Simon, leading the way down the left-hand tunnel. It seemed to stretch into nothing but shadow, even my bionic eyes unable to make out what occupied the darkness. ‘There ain’t nothing right about that man. You ask me, let’s just forget it until we get out of here.’

‘But he said he was coming for us –’ Zee started, the rest of his protest cut short as Simon grabbed him and pushed him up against the wall.

‘I said let’s forget it,’ he spat. ‘We got enough to think about just staying alive in here without his mind games messing us up some more. Okay?’

‘Okay! Jesus, chill, man,’ said Zee, his voice choked. Simon let him go and carried on walking, Zee’s scowl shifting from his back to my face. ‘What did I say?’

‘Simon’s right,’ I said. ‘It’s not worth thinking about. We gotta give everything we have to finding a way out. If Furnace comes then we’ll just have to kick his ass the same way we kicked the warden’s.’

I thought Zee had answered, then I realised the noise hadn’t come from him. There were shouts drifting up the passageway behind us, the familiar thunder of blacksuit boots punctuated by the savage barks of their hideous skinless dogs. They were onto us.

Swearing under my breath I doubled my speed, the ache in my legs now nothing to do with my imagination. I was growing weaker, like a car running out of fuel. I could feel the nectar’s power ebbing in my blood.

‘You remember which way?’ Simon yelled from up ahead. The shadows had parted as though we’d chased them off, revealing another split.

I pictured the blueprint. ‘Left,’ I shouted back. ‘Head left and then you should see the door to the elevator.’

Simon reached the end of the tunnel, vanishing to the left. I was right behind him, running so fast round the corner that it was all I could do to duck in time as a shotgun went off in front of my face.

The lead shot missed me, but the plume of fire that followed it from the barrel scored a direct hit. I spun round and collapsed on my back, momentum causing me to skid across the smooth floor into the legs of the blacksuit. He came down on top of me like a tree, his elbow catching me in the gut and knocking the wind from my lungs. The guard was shouting something but my eardrums had been pummelled again, his voice swallowed up by a dull, continuous chiming.

The gun went off again, but I don’t think the suit was aiming at anything. I could see arms around his neck, one small and one massive as Simon fought to get the upper hand. I gasped for some air, then lashed out at the suit’s face. I don’t know what I was trying to do but something obviously worked as the man slid from my chest and crumpled to the floor. Simon’s grip was
relentless around the guard’s throat until I snatched his hand and pulled it away.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked. ‘Gotta finish him off.’

‘He’s one of us,’ I wheezed, pushing myself up. ‘Simon, he’s a kid like us. We can’t kill them, not if we can help it. Maybe they can be saved.’

The guard groaned and Simon wrapped his giant hand around his throat again.

‘You really think that when he comes round he’s gonna be on our side, see the error of his ways?’ Simon hissed, pressing down with all his strength. I saw the look in his eyes, silver slits screwed shut with hatred, and this time I didn’t try to stop him. ‘Nah, he’s gone. They’re all gone. You and me, we were lucky, maybe a couple of others might remember who they were. But I’m not going to send a questionnaire round to find out who while the rest skin me alive. They’ve all got the warden’s poison in them, and they’re all killers.’

He spoke some more, mumbles lost beneath grunts, as if by talking he could distract himself from what he was doing. The guard juddered, an engine stalling, then he was still – one last bloody breath bubbling up from his lips. Simon rocked back on his knees, then used the wall to help him up.

‘Did he give you a chance to prove yourself before he pulled that trigger?’ he asked me, not waiting for a reply before turning and walking away. ‘Nothing gonna stand in my way – not now we’re so close.’

The voices behind us were getting closer, too, and I
looked back in time to see Zee reel away from the corner, stumble past me and then bolt after Simon.

‘They’re right there,’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘Jesus, Alex, they’re right on us.’

I didn’t wait to find out if he was exaggerating, almost tripping on the dead guard as I legged it. Simon had already reached the end of the corridor, pushing open a heavy steel door and vanishing into a pool of bright light beyond. Zee was in after him, looking back over my shoulder with about the widest eyes I’d ever seen.

‘Run!’ he screamed, the word lost behind the crack of a gunshot. I felt the pellets slam into my back; it was like being stung by a hundred bees at once. The impact pushed me forward but I kept my feet, literally throwing myself into the room. I rolled awkwardly, catching a glimpse of the view through the door as Simon slammed it shut – a corridor roiling with dark suits and glistening dogs, their silver eyes like the crest of a tsunami crashing and spitting towards us. Then it vanished behind a plate of steel, Simon bending the lock round to jam it in place.

‘Grab that desk!’ he yelled, the urgency of his words propelling me to my feet again. I saw a metal desk and a chair, presumably a guard post where the blacksuit had been sitting before he heard us approach. By the time I’d grabbed it the door was being pounded from the outside, bulges appearing in the metal as the suits unleashed their full strength. I remembered how I’d punched my way through the river-tunnel hatch. It wouldn’t hold for long.

‘There,’ Simon directed, helping me upend the heavy table and lay it against the door. It rattled and trembled from the force being directed against it, like a picket fence in the path of a hurricane. We scanned the room looking for anything else we could use as a barricade, but it was empty.

Except for one thing.

‘The elevator,’ Zee said, pointing at the wire gates that sealed off one wall. Beyond was a platform, much smaller than the main elevator that went to the surface, but easily big enough for the three of us.

We ran to it, the thunder of the guards as they tried to break down the door almost matching the wail of the siren. Simon grabbed one of the gates while I took the handle of the other and together we wrenched them open. By the time we had closed them behind us the door to the tunnel was almost off its hinges, two sets of hooked canine teeth bared through the widening gap.

‘Get us out of here!’ I yelled, seeing a control panel behind Simon’s shoulder. He spun round, slamming a fist against the topmost of two buttons. The elevator started to rise, agonisingly slowly. Through the mesh I saw the outer door finally succumb, crushing the desk under it as the guards poured into the room. For a second the elevator floor was alive with sparks as the suits fired their weapons, then we passed from view and the onslaught stopped.

None of us spoke, waiting for the suits to flick a switch that would bring the elevator down, or to rip
out the plug and leave us stranded here, waiting for them to come and get us. But the lift just carried on rising, pulling us up towards the lowest levels of gen pop.

‘You okay?’ asked Zee. I wondered what he meant, then remembered the wound in my back. It didn’t hurt so much as itch like crazy, but the fact there was any feeling there at all meant the nectar was running out. I wondered what would happen when the last of it was used up. Would the wounds I’d sustained be healed by then, or would they end up killing me anyway?

‘I’m fine,’ I said when I realised Zee was waiting for an answer. ‘Just a scratch.’

‘Yeah, shotgun blast to the back, just a scratch,’ he said, although there was no humour in his voice. ‘Want me to take a look?’

I shook my head. Better nobody examined it, then maybe I could pretend it would be okay. I turned to the wire gates, my eyes giving light to the rock that passed us by. It hadn’t looked it on the map, but gen pop was obviously pretty far above the prison’s underbelly. That distance was good, helped me breathe a little easier. I hadn’t seen any other way up, the warden and his suits would have to wait for us to get out before calling the car back down. And if we could somehow lock it in place …

I heard the gears struggle as the elevator slowed, the entire cabin shaking in protest. Then a room began to fall into view as we gradually drew level with it. There was a blacksuit sitting in a chair with his back to us, and
he obviously hadn’t been paying attention to events below. Simon and I pulled open the gates before he could turn, running at him like twin juggernauts.

‘This siren is getting on my –’ was as far as he got before Simon had rammed the suit’s head into the desk he was working at. I threw the unconscious guard to the floor, then hauled him into the elevator.

‘Help me with this,’ Simon said, pulling the metal table from the wall. Zee and I both grabbed the other end and we slid it towards the lift, leaving it half in and half out of the gates. With any luck, when the elevator went down it wouldn’t get far.

Only when it was wedged tight did we let ourselves relax, leaning against each other as we surveyed the new room. Like the warden’s quarters, it was full of monitors, rows and rows of them covering one entire wall. Beneath them was a bank of electronic equipment dotted with switches and buttons. I saw a few words stencilled onto the metal –
ARMED RESPONSE
and
CELL
RELEASE
– and felt my heart lift.

‘You know what this place is, don’t you?’ I said quietly, my heart thumping in the back of my mouth.

‘What?’ asked Zee, nervously glancing at the motionless suit behind us.

‘It’s a control room,’ I replied. ‘And we, my friends, are finally in control.’