The City Unseen, page 12
part #2 of The Unseen Series
“We’re rescuing Hud?” I asked.
“Not exactly. We don’t have any idea where they’ve taken him. Our best chance at getting him back is finding out what Wheeler’s up to.”
Rachel turned and brought up a screen with data points and numbers.
“The intelligence team started working on our problem and came up with something weird. In the last eight months, there’s been a steady increase of violent crime in Coleton. Violence where there was no prior history to speak of, random men and women lashing out at the people around them like they’ve totally lost control. More than once, there’s been eating involved.”
I sat down on the roller chair next to her. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Eating. As in people have been eaten. By other people.”
I felt sick. “Why hasn’t this been on the news?”
“That’s why it’s probably Kindred related. Nothing they love more than a good cover-up. Remember, they have key players in the police, media, even Government House. It doesn’t take much to get the truth shut down.”
Noah stepped in. “The things we ran into last night were crazy. Really messed up. But one of them tried to bite you, remember?”
Shuddering, I swung slowly back and forth in my chair. “I can still smell its breath.”
“That’s why I think there’s a connection between the crime spike and your tunnel zombies.”
I shook my head. “They’re not zombies.” I laughed quietly. “There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say. But they’re smart. Even though their eyes were freaky as hell, there was intelligence behind them. It’s like they’re human, but—you know—crazy, deformed, cannibal humans.”
Noah shrugged. “The Kindred have really outdone themselves this time.”
“Is there anyone else who can help us?” I asked. “Any other Unseen cells in the city who can fight?”
Rachel sighed and shook her head. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but we’re the only cell left active in Coleton. Up until a few weeks ago, there were six, but members have been going missing one at a time. I haven’t been able to raise anybody on comms for the last few days.”
“If someone’s targeting Unseen, I think we had the right to know,” Noah growled.
“Take it up with management,” Rachel snapped, “But the fact is we’re on our own here until backup arrives from Korea. I tried to get a closer team in, but the powers-that-be don’t think our situation is urgent, and don’t want to risk exposing active teams. Nearly everyone’s on mission right now. The Kindred are ramping up their activity across the world.” She turned back to the computer screen, “So until backup arrives, here are our orders. We need to find a body.”
“As in, a dead one?”
“Yep. I don’t think heading back into those tunnels is an option, so we’re going to get the next best thing.” Rachel tapped a few keys and brought up a schematic of the city morgue.
“You have got to be kidding me,” said Noah.
I turned to Rachel. “We’re going to break into the morgue?”
She nodded. “One of the strangest things about the crime wave is that exactly zero perpetrators survived their arrest. The police had orders to shoot on sight, and some are probably still being held in the morgue. If we can get our hands on one, we might be able to find the connection between Wheeler and the creatures. Or even better, work out what he’s planning.”
“Great,” I sighed. “Let’s go rob the morgue.”
Rachel took the van from its hidden storage garage next to the warehouse and drove it around front. Despite not being field-ready yet, she’d pushed for clearance to head out on the mission with us. We needed as much experience on the team as we could get; last night had proved that.
Noah and I sat in the back, and Rachel drove. The seatbelt was broken on the passenger side, and we couldn’t afford to get pulled over by the cops, especially considering some of them were Kindred.
Rachel spoke like the Kindred were everywhere. Like they could be anyone. They’d certainly stepped up their activity. Unseen cells from London, New York, Madrid, Moscow, Beijing; every major city on the planet reported aggressive Kindred recruitment in their districts. They were growing by the day. By now, they numbered in the tens of thousands. Pretty soon it would be hundreds of thousands.
Did we have any shot at winning this? I didn’t know how many Unseen were out there; operational information was kept compartmentalised, for obvious reasons, but from what I’d picked up it couldn’t be more than a few thousand around the world. They were mostly young, like us. There weren’t a lot of old Unseen, as Noah had said. At least we seemed to have a few key players, important people who backed our operation.
My mind wandered throughout the drive into the city. Traffic was light this close to midnight, so the trip didn’t take long. Every time my mind went to Josh, I swallowed, and clenched my fists, and thought about something else.
I would have played a game on our new phones to distract myself, but I’d probably get carsick. Regardless, the phones were locked down. When I’d first arrived at Coleton, they’d destroyed my old phone and given me a new, secure one. Wheeler had that one, now, but it didn’t matter. The phones were set to wipe all data every hour, aside from key numbers programmed under our code names. We’d need new code names, now, because if Wheeler cracked the phones, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out who we were.
Rachel pulled up four blocks from the city morgue. We were right near Century Park, but on the north side, opposite to the spot where I’d melted that jerk’s car.
This side of the park was close to Downtown. From here, multi-coloured tents were visible sprawled out under the bridge. The woman whose baby Wheeler had taken was probably under there somewhere, worried sick to death. It was awful. If only I’d taken Wheeler out that first night, none of this would have happened. She’d have her baby, Hud would be safe with us, and Josh would still be alive. My inaction had thrown us into all this mess.
“Coming?” said Rachel from outside the van’s sliding door. I pulled my mind back to the present moment and got out.
My breath fogged in the night air, illuminated by the red traffic light at the end of the street. It was almost like I was breathing fire. Then, it switched green, even though the street was empty. I turned backwards and tuned into the black road behind us. Not to change anything, but just to hear the city. Feel it breathe. Even the quietest places are brimming with sound if you know how to listen. A part of me secretly hoped I’d hear Josh somehow, tune into him, his resonance. But he was lying dead in a lake somewhere under my feet, so I didn’t.
The city pulsed with its own sounds, though. A touch of static for a moment, and then it went away. Noah or Rachel had probably glanced my way and realised what I was doing. The road hummed, an earthy, warm hum from the rocks and gravel held by oily tar. Lamp posts shimmered with a clear metallic buzz. The newsagent at the end of the street was a cacophony of sounds, glass and paper and plastic. The whole city was alive. But underneath it all, something else. A single, clear, pulsing note. Wheeler’s sound. I glanced around the street. No static meant no-one was around. But Wheeler’s note was still there, churning and bleeding through the city’s veins. He had infected the city with his sound. The more I listened, the more I heard it under everything. The whole place buzzed with his note. The city was sick, and Wheeler was the cause.
I turned to tell Noah and Rachel, but they were already far down the street. When I caught up to them, I told them what I’d heard, and they both tried to tune into it for themselves.
“I can’t hear it,” said Rachel.
“Me neither,” Noah added. “That doesn’t mean it’s not there, though. Maybe you’re just more tuned to it from the time he spent interrogating you. I hardly saw him back at the docks, but you were with him for a while. It’s possible you’re more connected to it.”
Or he’s infected me, too.
Rachel kept walking, and I followed. The City Morgue was right next to the police station, which meant we had to be super careful and go around the back into the access alley they used as parking. There were no security cameras there, just several places on the wall with bare bolts and wires sticking out. Someone had removed the cameras, which was helpful for us, but concerning as well.
The back door was solid steel and locked with a security panel, hand scanner, and padlocks
“You want to melt the locks, or should I?” Rachel said.
“What about security alarms?” I asked.
Rachel swung her pack around to her front and rifled through it. “You know our mysterious paramilitary benefactor?” She pulled out a small oval device the same size as our phones and pressed it to the security panel. After a few seconds, the panel beeped and turned green. “It’s nice to have friends in high places,” she smirked. “So, door melting. Any takers?”
Noah and I were drained from the night before, so we were happy to let Rachel do it. She melted the locks in a few seconds and pushed the door silently open.
Inside, everything was black.
Outside, Wheeler’s note still rang bleeding through the city streets.
TWENTY-THREE
Rachel and I closed our eyes, and Noah tried to tune.
“No static,” he said. “No security cameras in here, either”
“That confirms our intel,” said Rachel.
The three of us switched on our torches and the hall lit up. The corridor was long and straight, doors branching off into rooms that glowed dimly now that my eyes were adjusting to the dark. Stepping forward, my shoes stuck slightly to the yellowing linoleum floor. It was cracked in places, running blackish-brown lines across the hallway, and lifting off around the edges. A mechanical hum echoed off the white walls. On my right, a stain ran down the plaster from the roof, probably caused by a water leak. The whole building needed a major renovation. Although, I thought grimly, the occupants probably didn’t mind too much either way.
My thoughts went to Josh again, but I steered it back to our mission. We had to know what Wheeler was planning.
“The cold chambers are two doors down on the right,” said Rachel. She was whispering, even though no-one was around. What we were doing wasn’t just illegal, it felt sacrilegious; trespassing on the dead before they were even properly buried.
The door was locked with a key-card reader, which Rachel overrode with the oval code-breaker. She pushed it open slowly in case of backup alarms, but none went off. A rush of cold air hit me, carrying a musky, pungent scent mixed with antiseptic. This room was enormous; at least a hundred tiny doors lined the walls like a bank’s safety deposit room. Each door was square, and I’d seen enough cop shows to know what was in there. The hum I’d heard before made sense now; it was the noise of the fridges that held the dead, keeping them cold to stop them decomposing. Still, nothing could stop time altogether, and the stench in my nose was of death and bodily fluids. In the middle of the room was a stainless-steel table with raised edges, sitting on a giant metal platform. Above, a machine hung from the roof. It looked like a giant claw and was probably used for moving the heavier bodies. A glowing exit sign lit the room from above our heads, and on a melamine desk in the back corner, a computer sat logged in, cursor blinking.
Rachel moved straight for it, bringing up the storage records. “There’s a body in number 43 that was connected to one of the violent crimes.”
“Let’s try it, then,” said Noah.
Noah and I walked to the door marked 43 and, taking a breath first, swung it open. A rush of stale, rotting air blew out, and we gagged. I lifted the collar of my shirt up over my nose, and Noah did the same. Rachel came and stood next to me.
Grey feet faced us from inside the chamber. Three sets of them, pointing all different directions.
“Uh, guys, we’ve hit the jackpot,” I said grimly.
“Either that body grew a bunch of bonus legs, or there’s more than one person stored in there,” Noah frowned.
“There’s only one listed on the manifest. Let’s find out,” Rachel said, and slid the tray out.
The corpses were stacked on top of each other, shoved in like sardines, and as Rachel slid them out, one toppled and fell towards me.
I put my hands out to steady it without thinking, and cold, slimy skin met my palms. “Guys, help!”
Rachel and Noah came around to my side of the tray and tried to roll the body back onto the stack. It was too unstable to balance back onto the tray, though, so Rachel pushed the stainless-steel autopsy table over to us, and we lowered the body onto it. The two bodies left on the tray were mostly stable. My hands felt gross, but now was not the time to worry about that.
Once everything was steady, we took a step back and examined the bodies.
They were all naked, as were probably all the people in here. There was a male on the autopsy table—the one that had fallen out—leaving another male and a female on the fridge tray. All three were grey and gross, with big Y shaped stitches on their chests from their autopsies. The man on the table looked thirty, maybe. The one on the tray was twenty at most. And the female was about my age. I felt a pang of sadness rush through me, and a sudden need to know their names, their stories. But I couldn’t. I shouldn’t know their names. I couldn’t think about them as human. That was too awful. Instead, I thought about them as statues, like the plastic cutaway torsos we used in science class.
“What now?” I asked.
“I’ll check out the autopsy reports,” said Rachel. “You examine the bodies more closely, see if there’s anything that might be connected to Wheeler. Noah, check the other fridges. See if there are more stacked up like this.”
“Sure, you take the desk job,” grumbled Noah. “Leave me to play corpse bingo.”
He moved to the drawers near the door, covered his mouth and nose again, and started opening them.
I looked more closely at the body on the table. The torso had a bullet hole above his heart. His head was shaved, and stitches ran in a ring around his skull just above his ears. They’d looked inside his head. Two eyes stared at the ceiling, milky and grey. I forced myself to look closer at them. The pupils were dilated almost completely.
Just like the creature in the tunnel.
Mouth twisted into a grimace, I walked over to the other two. The female had three bullet holes and the Y cut, plus the same ring of stitches around her head. The other male was the same. Their eyes were closed, but I had to know. I reached out my hand, shaking, and pulled open the male’s eyelids.
Black irises, now milky with death, same as the body on the table and the creatures in the tunnel. Whatever had happened to those things had happened to these people, too, although the creatures were much worse. These bodies didn’t quite have the same inhuman quality as the things in the tunnel, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why.
The girl’s eyes were closed, too, and I walked around the table to look closer. I had the overwhelming urge to cover her with a sheet, give her some privacy in this awful, frozen room. Her dignity had been stripped away along with her life and, judging by the creatures in the tunnel, perhaps some of her humanity as well. She was just a shell, now, but a shell I felt I should protect. My stomach turned, suddenly, as I became fully conscious of how awful this all was. Bodies stuffed together like sardines, stripped and cut and examined and studied. It was a human abattoir. A place to butcher the dead. Head spinning, I sat for a moment on the floor, leaning against one of the drawer doors for support.
“You okay?” called Noah from across the room.
I nodded and took a deep breath before returning to my feet. I had to see her eyes. From this side of the table she looked almost calm, although her lips were blue-grey, and her skin was pallid. Each cheek was just starting to draw back, to furrow slightly into her bones. She’d been here for a while. Her eyes were drawn, too, sinking in their sockets. I reached my hand to her eyelids.
“I’m really sorry,” I said, and pulled them open.
Her irises, too, were black, pupils dilated beyond possibility. Strangely, her eyes weren’t milky with decay. They almost looked alive. I looked at the huge Y cut into her chest, leftover from the autopsy that had weighed heart and lungs and liver. There was no way she was alive, and yet…
Her chest moved. Only slightly, but I was sure of it. The Y expanded, opening her wound a fraction, causing the incisions to tear from slits to canyons. I didn’t move. Couldn’t. I checked her face. A tiny burst of fog escaped her lips. Her blackened eyes turned to me.
TWENTY-FOUR
I backed away, knocking over an equipment stand, scattering scissors and scalpels to the floor.
Rachel swore. “Ari, be careful!”
“The girl, she—” My voice cut off. Her eyes were closed again, and her wound no longer moved. Whatever I’d seen, it had either been in my head, or it was over now. Either way, there was no point telling the others.
“I tripped,” I finished, picking up the stuff I’d knocked over.
This was the second time I’d seen a body move. The first was in the Chapel, where the body had become me—my eyes, my face. This time had been different, but I felt like I was supposed to know something, like she was trying to communicate.
My heart was still thumping, but hers remained still. If I could only reach out to her, turn back time perhaps, and let her know I cared, that there was at least one person in this world who was sorry for what had happened to her.
Maybe the only way to make things better was to kill Wheeler and everyone involved in this, to make them pay for what had happened to this girl, and to Josh, and for whatever they were doing to Hud somewhere out there.
“Hey guys, come check this out,” murmured Noah from the middle of the room.
Tearing my eyes from the girl, I stepped over to see what he was looking at. My mouth dropped open. Noah had opened all the doors, and each compartment was stuffed full of bodies. Almost every single one had at least three bodies in it, sometimes four if the corpses were small enough.
