The Reviver (40 page)

‘I don’t think you quite get the meaning of
guest,
’ Annabel sniped.

Andreas was unfazed. ‘When you came to see me before, you already knew so much that I decided to throw you a bone and hope it would keep you occupied. The bone I threw you may only have been part of the truth, but it
was
true. Did you speak to Sam Deering, Annabel?’

‘I did.’

‘I surmise he told you what our authorities have done in the national interest?’

‘He did.’

‘Torturing the dead. An inquisition of souls. In your phone conversation, Jonah, you said you spoke with Victor Eldridge, that he told you what Unity is, and that I was behind it. I knew of Eldridge, knew that he had spoken for years about other
things
being out there, whispering to him. When his psychiatric problems first began, he’d contacted staff in MLA Research to admit to misusing the BPV variant you asked me about. Indeed, Andreas Biotech paid for his care for a time, although he abruptly stopped accepting our generosity a few years ago. I had no idea he knew anything about Unity, but believe me, whatever he told you was wrong. So, you tell me what you
do
know, and I’ll tell you the rest.’

Jonah laughed. ‘Why the hell would you tell us?’

‘Because you can’t stop this. We’ll keep you here until we’re finished, and then we’ll be gone. I would have preferred not to have involved you so directly, but now that our hand has been forced your presence seems fitting. I came to the conclusion that I’d rather you know the truth, not a Halloween camp-fire tale. Your father died tragically, Annabel, and you deserve some answers, at least. And Jonah … You may not realize it, but without you none of this would have been possible.’

Jonah stepped aggressively towards him. ‘Then I’ll tell you what I know. I know that your people were working on
live
revivals. I know they
used
me to make it work, but there’s something else out there, something that could use the live subject as a host. I know you plan to bring something ancient back and make it stay.’ He moved forward and leaned until he was inches from Andreas, his voice a harsh whisper. ‘And I’ve
seen
this thing. I
felt
it, felt the evil of it, just like Eldridge did. I don’t know why you want to do this, but I will do
anything
I can to stop you.’

Andreas nodded. ‘I heard about your experiences, Jonah. Your hallucination, your suspension from revival duties, and—’

‘You heard? You seem to know a hell of a lot.’

‘You confronted me in my own office, Jonah.
Interrogated
me. Of course I was going to make inquiries.’

‘Did you know about Hannerman?’ said Annabel. ‘Did you know before they took my
father
?’

Andreas frowned. ‘For God’s sake, Annabel, what do you think we are? We didn’t know about Hannerman until your father was found. We realized the kidnapping was connected to us, garbled and inaccurate as Hannerman’s information must have been. We changed our plans. We relocated here and delayed until the threat passed.’

‘But your plans are either crazy or dangerous,’ said Annabel. ‘Can’t you see that?’

‘There’s little I can say to convince you. But I want to
try
and show you that we are not the fools you believe us to be. And that we are not crazy.’ Annabel watched him with impassive eyes.

Jonah scowled. ‘Andreas, what I felt was something to be
feared
…’

‘Your experience was overwork.’

‘Please. Don’t do this.’

‘The world won’t end, Jonah. This isn’t Armageddon.’

‘How do you know?’

‘What we encountered was more than intelligent, Jonah. It was
wise.
Unity is a beautiful thing.’

‘Unity,’ Jonah said with a sneer.

‘The term we use both for the process and for our group. Permanent unity with these beings. We’ve been working towards that goal for seven years.’

‘What you’re talking about amounts to demonic possession.’

‘Oh, please, Jonah. Don’t be childish. Not
demons.
Not some great
threat.
As I said, this isn’t Armageddon.’

‘How do you know?’ pleaded Jonah. ‘How do you
know,
the moment you succeed, these
creatures
won’t show their true nature?’

Andreas’s smile softened. ‘Because we’ve already done it.’

Jonah paused. He turned to look at his friends, their eyes wide. He turned back, his voice shaky. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We’ve done it before. The first successful Unity was sixteen months ago.’ He allowed himself a gentle laugh. ‘No monsters.’

‘You’re lying,’ said Jonah. Fear crept over him, hot and alive.

‘Perhaps you’d like to meet the first?’

Jonah’s eyes widened.

Andreas shook his head. ‘There’s no need to be afraid, Jonah. No need at all. You’ve met her before.’

And at that, Jonah felt sick, felt faint, even before Andreas opened the door, even before she came into the room. The moment Andreas said ‘her’, he knew who it would be.

‘Hello, Jonah,’ she said.

‘Hello, Tess,’ he replied.

31

Jonah stared at her.

‘Who the hell is she?’ Annabel whispered to Never.

‘Tess Neil,’ said Never. ‘Kind of, uh, Jonah’s ex.
Recent
ex.’

‘Oh,’ said Annabel, going quiet.

Jonah was still staring. He took a deep breath. The moment he’d seen Tess, he’d felt a dizzying panic. Its after-effects still left him edgy. So many questions were churning in his mind, but there was one he needed to know first. ‘What are you going to do with us?’

She looked at him with genuine surprise, hurt by the implication. ‘You’re
safe,
Jonah. We’re going to keep you here until we’re done, and then you’ll hear no more from us. We’ll let you go. Two days at most. I’m sorry you had to go through this, and I’m sorry Never got hurt.’

‘Maybe you didn’t hear about Sam. He nearly
died,
Tess. He still might.’

‘I heard.’

They locked eyes, and Tess was the first to look away. He could see real pain, real regret. She was sorry, but he was so angry he wanted to scream at her.

Michael Andreas spoke: ‘Soon after Will Barlow and John Gideon broke away from Kendrick, they came to me. Their story was astonishing, and hard to believe. They said that they’d found some lost souls, trapped and needing help. Lost for so long they’d even forgotten their own names. They told me these beings had
answers.
They showed me what they’d encountered, and I felt honoured. Privileged to be one of the few to see this and be in a position to help. It’s not easy. An ordinary revival couldn’t possibly bring these beings through. The process needs a living subject to be cooled, their heart stopped, to—’

‘I know what the process is.’ Jonah could picture Tess, hooked up like Lyssa Underwood with artificial blood pumping through her.

‘Of course. When those who experienced it came to, they would feel the presence of these beings within them, now part of them. Memories came, vague and confused, with impossible images. We hoped, given enough time, that we could help them find out who they were. And we knew how important a discovery that would be.’

‘So what are they, Andreas?’ asked Annabel.

Andreas smiled. ‘An ancient race. Older than humanity. Much older. We spoke many times to the being you first brought forth in Lyssa Underwood. It was disorientated, confused, but it spoke again and again of a great cataclysm. Their own world was destroyed. It spoke of knowledge preserved, of warnings for those who would listen. Of the Thirteen, chosen from the last of their kind, who volunteered for a sacred duty. The rest we learned is open to interpretation, but I’ll tell you what I believe. They preserved all that they know from destruction in a living vault. The Thirteen were charged with passing on their knowledge, and we will be the first to hear it.’

‘Always an angle, Andreas,’ she said, and Andreas looked angry.

‘Don’t mock, Annabel. This is not for me. This is for us
all.
We’ve spent years trying to understand how to help these beings remember what they are. They have been alone, trapped in the darkness, for an unknowable time. Hundreds of thousands of years, millions. Perhaps much longer. They’ve forgotten everything they once were. Try to imagine, the long silence they’ve endured. It was Will who realized that we could bring them out of the dark. After each revival, the beings would still be present in the minds of the woken revival subject, but the effect always faded. It would last for a few hours, no longer. Yet when we spoke to the beings again,
they
had memories of that time also. It had been a true joining, a true Unity. It wasn’t a simple remnant effect. They were part of us, for those brief hours.

‘The pieces fell into place one by one. The BPV variant we spoke of was crucial. It focused the effect considerably, and without it we would have progressed no further.

‘We were able to slow down the degradation of the effect, and make it last days rather than hours, but it wasn’t enough. We hunted for a more permanent solution, using imaging, live scans of the brains of our subjects. After identifying areas of the brain that contributed to the degradation, we speculated that small lesions could be created in a handful of sites, and brought in a neurosurgeon to—’

‘A neurosurgeon?’ said Jonah. The word jumped out at him. He thought of the scar he’d seen in Tess’s hair that night, and her explanation.
Surgery. A minor tumour. Benign.
She’d been unwilling to say more, and he’d respected that, assuming it was difficult for her to talk about. But no: it had been difficult for her to
lie
about. Suddenly he understood the operation Andreas himself had gone through, the shaved area on his head. Jonah felt shaky. ‘Christ, Tess. You let them hack at your fucking
brain
?’

‘The surgery went off without a problem,’ Tess said. ‘We proceeded with the revival ten days later, and Unity was achieved. It had worked.’

Jonah looked at her, astonished. He had always thought of Tess as self-confident, independent, intelligent. Here she was admitting to being a train wreck, so desperate to find meaning in her life she was willing to let someone take a knife inside her skull.
We’re all a little lost,
he thought.
Some just hide it better.

‘Yes,’ said Andreas. ‘It had worked. But it would take time for these beings to recover their identities, their memories. And as we brought them back in turn, the next was revealed. They had formed a series of protective shells, with the last, the Thirteenth, at its heart. Each was weaker, more difficult to bring out than the one before it. We persevered until only the last remained. Then our best reviver died in a car crash. A French woman called Grace Ferloux, the strongest reviver I’d ever met. We’d thought it was an accident, then. Now … I’m not so sure. We needed her for the final revival. The weakest of all these beings, yet their leader. The most respected. An Elder, if you like.’

‘And let me guess, Andreas,’ said Annabel. ‘By the look of the work you’ve had done to your own head, you’re the one the Elder will have Unity with? Since it’s your money paying for it all, makes sense you get the pick of the seats.’

Andreas looked at her with irritation, ignoring the comment. ‘Only a very strong reviver stood any chance at success. Grace was the only one who could do it. We needed a replacement and drew up a shortlist. But the process needs the reviver to use the extreme variant of BPV, and few can tolerate it. To find a reviver strong enough who suffered no ill effects required, well … lateral thinking. I own the company that supplies medication to revivers worldwide. The strongest revivers have their doses precisely tailored, their medication individualized. We added the variant in small amounts, then we waited to see who we could rule in or out.’

Jonah was glaring at him. ‘The side effects…’

‘With such a small dosage, for most it would be a slight reduction in revival success, a slight increase in how long it took to bring a subject back. Any detected reduction in performance, information that is routinely passed back to us as part of their medication assessment.’

‘But for some … hallucinations. And remnants.’

Andreas said nothing in reply, just nodded.

Jonah put his head in his hands. The medication that Eldridge first tested. The medication that had caused Eldridge’s remnants. Here it was, at last. The link between Eldridge and Jonah. And before Daniel Harker’s revival, Jonah had taken a double dose of his old, tainted BPV – triggering the worst case of remnants he’d ever had. ‘I was on the list. You doctored my medication. That’s why you’re so sure what I saw with Alice Decker was in my mind.’

Andreas nodded again. ‘You had a particularly strong reaction. For most, it was barely noticeable. When we had a dozen possible candidates, Will Barlow put them in order, and we approached them one by one.’

‘How did Will know?’

‘He had a feel for it. He’d been the one who found Grace. He said it was instinct, but whatever it was it worked. Then one of us would meet with them, and rule them in or out.’

Jonah turned to Tess. ‘Was that why you came to see me?’

Tess smiled. ‘You’d already reacted to the medication, Jonah. Even if you hadn’t, I knew you wouldn’t take the offer. I knew the money wouldn’t sway you. No. I came because I wanted to see you before I left.’

‘So how much were you offering?’

‘Five million.’

Jonah paused. He hadn’t expected anything like that. ‘Christ.’

‘One by one,’ said Andreas, ‘we crossed people off until we found our reviver. And this will be the last. When we’re done, we’re going where we can’t be found. We achieve our final Unity today, and then we’ll be gone for good.’

Jonah looked at Tess again. ‘You weren’t lying, then. About it being good-bye.’

‘No, Jonah,’ she said. ‘We’ll be gone. If you hadn’t come here, you wouldn’t have seen me again.’

Jonah looked right at her. ‘And why did you…?’