Skyfall (28 page)

‘The bottom line is that I can find no reason for the lights to be flaring.'

‘It must have something to do with the power supply, Janil.'

‘I've checked. I've run diagnostic programs across every chip, processor and sensor. Everything comes back green.'

‘But those surges—'

‘We can manage, Father. I've got the environment boys improving the suit shielding, and the tech department is going to replace every key component in the emitters. Give me twenty-four hours and we'll be able to put someone back in that chamber.'

On a chair against the wall of his father's office, his head spinning, Lari was only half listening. They'd been going on like this for an hour now, backwards and forwards, covering the same ground again and again until Lari felt exhausted. Of course, that could have been caused in part by the exposure. Since coming out of the chamber he'd been feeling tired, vaguely nauseous and kind of displaced.

He glanced at the printout in his hand of the exposure data from detectors built into the inner layers of the suit. That second flare had taken him perilously close to maxing. If it had happened again before he'd left the room … He shivered. Still, it would have been ironic if after all those mornings sneaking out onto the balcony he'd got himself maxed right here in the heart of DGAP with his father and brother watching. The girl hadn't seemed to notice any difference, though. When the light flared, she behaved as though she hadn't noticed anything. Suddenly, she seemed a lot more alien.

‘Hey, are you listening, copygen?' Janil snapped his fingers right in front of Lari's nose. ‘Try and concentrate, will you? This is your health we're talking about.'

‘Sorry.'

‘Did you hear what Janil was asking, Larinan?'

‘No, sorry. I was thinking about something else.'

‘You've made contact with her now and protocols would normally require that you continue until the subject feels comfortable in her environment and we can commence further testing. But if after today you don't want to go back in, we'll quite understand. I'm sure Janil could—'

‘No!' Lari leapt to his feet. ‘No, it's fine. I'll keep going in.'

‘You sure, copygen? You're not too nervous? I mean, you came pretty close to shiftieland this morning. And you're looking kinda pale. Nobody will blame you if—'

‘I'll be fine. Just get the lights fixed.'

‘That's the problem. If we can't find any reason for the flares, we can't fix them. All we can do is pad up the suit, replace the circuits and monitor you when you're in there.'

‘Something must be causing it,' said their father.

‘We've been through this.'

‘It's not a problem.' Lari interrupted before his father and brother could start the conversation for the third time. ‘Just do what you can. I'd rather be doing something than just sitting around out here all day, feeling useless.'

‘Of course, there is another consideration,' Janil said.

‘What?'

‘Should we be risking our control subject in such a dangerous environment? We're trying to match up his genetic makeup with her environmental adaptations. If we irradiate him to the point where he starts to undergo genetic breakdown, then we might as well just head down to the lower levels, grab the first shiftie we find and use them instead. It'd be exactly the same.'

‘As long as we can minimise the risk of exposure, then we need it to be Larinan who begins to socialise the subject. That's the whole point of his involvement. He'll be the one who eventually—'

‘I'll be fine,' Lari said again. ‘You can't take away the one job I've been given. Not now.'

His father sighed. ‘I need to think about this. There's nothing else Larinan can do today, anyway. Janil, you keep at it here and I'll take Larinan down and put him on the maglift home.'

Lari followed his father to the hub.

‘Authorising Mann, Larinan to Dome 3327 North.'

The reader chimed and Lari's name appeared on an allocation screen.

‘There you are. Go home and rest, Larinan. You had a big dose of unfiltered sunlight this morning and it's probably knocked you around more than you realise.'

Lari did feel tired. His eyelids were heavy and the thought of sleep held a lot more appeal than it should have.

‘I'll see you later.'

‘Of course.'

The lift doors closed and Lari sagged against one of the benches, grabbed the handgrip and tried to keep himself awake as the lift dropped out of the hub and transited into the first horizontal shaft west.

Above his head, the newspanel burbled away with the usual mix of political and human-interest stories, and around him the lift hummed as it slipped from one shaft to the next.

He must have nodded off, because it seemed like only a few moments before the lift surged upwards and started slowing. As the doors slid aside and he stepped out, he knew right away that something was wrong.

This wasn't his dome. Everything was different.

The light was dirty, grey and dull and the dome's internal towers loomed close overhead, blocking what little sunlight managed to penetrate the tangle of the city above. It was like the low-level res dome except worse.

He spun round, but the maglift doors were already closing, and all Lari could do was watch helplessly as the bright, warm beam of light between them shrank to a narrow slit and then vanished, leaving him alone in the dim lower-level light.

Or not quite alone.

The moment the lift departed, two dark shapes detached themselves from the shadows beside the hub and positioned themselves on either side of him. Both wore masks of semitransparent material that covered their faces, and their features were blurred and vague inside the tight-fitting cloth.

‘Mann?'

The speaker was the smaller of the two. A girl.

‘What?'

‘Larinan Mann?'

‘Yeah.'

‘This way.'

She set out across the narrow common towards the nearest utility tower, and her silent colleague reinforced her message with a none-too-gentle shove.

‘What's going on? I'm supposed to—'

‘Hurry up. Gregor doesn't like to be kept waiting.'

A knot in the pit of Lari's stomach tightened.

‘Gregor? What does …'

Another shove, more savage than the last, almost flung him off his feet.

‘You'll find out. Now move, or I'll make you.'

Lari followed the girl and as they crossed the common he realised that not a single light was showing anywhere in the whole dome. Not one window was lit in any of the towers, and no light came from the entry lobbies or any of the sphere lamps dotted around the common. Nothing. The whole dome was sunk in a dead twilight, the only illumination the fractured sunlight that penetrated the layers of the city. The air was different, too: stale and musty.

‘What's wrong with this dome?' he asked, but the only reply he received was another shove.

The internal tower loomed over them in the same state of disrepair as the rest of the dome. Several windows were cracked and broken, which was odd in itself, because as far as Lari knew the domes used clearcrete, not glass, for all their windows. Debris littered the three steps to the lobby and the front door had been smashed off its guide runner and was permanently wedged open. Inside, the darkness grew thicker. Broken furniture was strewn across the floor and dark, empty spaces opened like hollow eyes into the shafts where the building's internal lifts should have been.

‘Larinan. How nice to see you again.'

Gregor sat on the far side of the lobby. Beside him, a small powerlamp threw a glimmering puddle of yellow light onto the floor, and behind him in the shadows loomed two enormous bodyguards wearing the same face coverings as his escorts.

‘Come. Sit down.' Gregor gestured to an upturned box. ‘Don't be afraid, Lari. You won't come to any harm. You have my word on that.'

‘What's going on?'

‘All in good time, Larinan. Can I offer you a glass of water? Probably not up to the standard of your upper-level stuff, but thirst-quenching, nonetheless.'

‘I'm fine.'

In the dull light Gregor's scarred visage was even more hideous than Lari remembered it.

‘No, I insist.'

Lari found himself pushed down firmly onto the box and a grubby glass of liquid was pressed into his hand.

‘I'm not thirsty.'

‘I don't care.' Gregor's eyes were cold. ‘Now, cheers. Make sure you drink it all.'

Lari looked at the glass. Whatever was in it wasn't water. It was cloudy and gave off a faint odour of ammonia.

‘What is this?'

‘I told you, Larinan, it's water. Or at least what passes for it in lower-level domes. Now drink it, or I'll get one of my friends to feed it to you. You have my word that you won't come to any harm.'

The scarred man leaned back and watched expectantly. Lari lifted the glass to his mouth and the ammonia smell tingled at the back of his nose.

‘Trust me, Larinan.' Gregor's smile didn't waver, though his eyes were grim. ‘People down here drink this every day.'

Taking a deep breath, Lari took a sip and gulped.

‘There. That wasn't so bad, was it? Still alive.' Gregor leaned forward now, resting his hands on his knees. ‘But you haven't finished it, Lari. Go on.'

‘What do you want?'

‘I'm getting bored, Larinan.' A menacing undertone crept into Gregor's voice. ‘I'm not going to wait a lot longer.'

‘But I …'

Lari didn't get to finish what he was going to say. Gregor nodded and the man behind him seized Lari's arms, twisting them savagely and sending a bright bolt of pain through his shoulders. At the same time, the girl grabbed a handful of Lari's hair and pulled his head back hard until Lari was staring at the roof.

‘Drink up,' she said, and poured the rest of the glass into his mouth. Most of it went into his nose, his lungs and over his clothes.

Lari writhed, gasping in their grip, but to no avail.

‘Not good enough,' Gregor observed, his tone almost casual. ‘Too much spillage. Get another glass.' The girl released his hair and disappeared behind him, but his arms were kept pinned. ‘You're going to drink a whole glass, Larinan, whether you want to or not. I suggest you get it over with before I decide to get more … extreme.'

Seconds later the girl was back, another glass in her hand, filled to the brim. She leaned close to his ear.

‘I'd drink this one if I were you.'

Her breath was hot against his skin. Then his head was pulled back again and she was holding the glass to his lips, leaving Lari little choice but to swallow.

The water burned slightly as it slid across his tongue. His gorge rose against it, but Lari forced it down, swallowing mouthfuls as large as he could manage. It took five or six large gulps before the glass was empty.

‘Good. More?' Gregor asked.

Lari could only shake his head.

‘Fine. Let him go.'

As his arms came free, Lari sagged on the wooden crate, his vision swimming.

‘So, what did you think of our water, Larinan?'

‘That wasn't water.'

‘Yes, it was. I told you. That's what we get down here. Ninety-six percent human greywater, badly filtered and swimming with sky-knows-what microbes. Slightly different from what passes for water in Dome 3327 North, I imagine.'

‘Is that why you kidnapped me? To half drown me?'

Gregor laughed. ‘Kidnapped? Goodness no, Larinan. You're not kidnapped. Hijacked, perhaps, but only temporarily. You'll be free to go back up to your home shortly. All you need to do is listen to me for a few minutes and then we'll send you right back as though your lift had never been intercepted.'

Gregor stopped speaking and for a moment there was silence.

It was true silence, Lari realised. In this dome there were none of the usual noises that formed the background to skycity life: no whirring ventilators, no gurgle of water in pipes; even the constant hum of electricity though the walls and conduits was absent.

‘What is this place?'

‘I wondered when you'd ask. Welcome to Dome 87b, Larinan Mann. One of the oldest domes in the city. One of the first hundred built, in fact. About the last of them still standing.'

‘I thought all the domes still stood. Plascrete doesn't degrade.' Gregor laughed again and the dark figures standing around him chuckled too.

‘Is that what they teach in the advanced school these days, Lari? Plascrete breaks down, just like everything else. It crumbles, and decays, and rots. Just like flesh. It's the way of the universe. And these early domes that they built before they'd knocked out all the flaws in the plascrete compound rot more than most. That's why they're the ideal place for underworlders like us. Shifties. Burned men and women. Dregs.'

‘Why have you brought me here?'