Furnace 5 - Execution (35 page)

He nodded, his teeth clacking against the weapon.

‘Can you make it work?’ she asked, and he tilted his head forward then back again, as gently as possible. She
paused a moment more, then pulled the gun free, wiping the blood and spit off on her trousers. Bates spun round, his face grey. He beckoned for the other man to help him, both soldiers looking like frightened children as they inspected the levers and dials built into the machine. Panettierre was back in front of me, her face so twisted by excitement and insanity that she reminded me of a lunatic Punch doll.

‘What are you doing?’ Zee asked, even though he must have already known.

‘I’m ending this war,’ Panettierre replied. ‘I’m taking control of enemy troops. Once I can command them, it will all be over.’

‘But they’re already—’ Lucy said. I flashed them a look, shaking my head, and Zee must have recognised it because he put a hand on Lucy’s arm, stopping her from finishing. Panettierre didn’t see the exchange, her attention on the straps beside me, the ones that held the remains of Furnace. She reached up, pulling chunks of him away, his body crumbling at the slightest touch, filling the air with powdered flesh.

‘
It will kill you
,’ I said again. But there was no stopping her. Every last shred of sanity that remained had been obliterated. There was only hunger.

‘It will kill you too,’ Zee said to me. I didn’t answer.

Panettierre had pushed herself into the slot where Furnace had once been suspended, calling on one of the soldiers to fix her into place. The man didn’t argue, tightening the straps across her arms and legs, looping the belt around her waist and easing the cradle down
over her head. The pulse of the machine seemed to speed up, as if it could sense a fresh body in its grip.

‘Is it ready?’ she asked. Bates nodded, but his expression told a different story.

‘I think it’s just a case of pulling these levers,’ he said. ‘There’s a pretty simple transfusion system in place. But I don’t know what’s going to happen.’

‘I do,’ Panettierre said, her face wild.

I could feel my blood begin to race, the stranger’s excitement at the possibility of a new host. I had failed him, I had refused to give in to his requests, I had imprisoned him inside my own thoughts. Now he faced his freedom, and the possibility of revenge. I thought about what had happened to Furnace when the blood had gone, his body turned to dust. I tried not to picture the same thing happening to me. If I had to risk sacrificing myself to kill the stranger, though, then I was willing to do it. It wasn’t like I had a lot to live for.

I turned to Zee. I looked like a monster, and I didn’t want him to remember me this way, but the least I could give him after everything we’d been through was a smile.

‘Alex,’ he said, reaching out for me. But it was too late for goodbyes.

‘Do it,’ ordered Panettierre.

Bates pulled the first lever, the mechanisms inside the machine powering up. It knew what to do, those needles sliding from the frame and piercing the Colonel’s skin. She grimaced, her eyes burning, seemingly the brightest things in the half-light of the room. There was
a sucking sound, then the tubes ran red as her blood spurted into them.

‘Oh Christ,’ said the other soldier, staggering back. Panettierre was turning white, her skin wrinkling like empty sausage casings as the blood drained away. I could see the panic there, her hands straining against the straps, but she was too weak to resist. Bates swore, waiting for the pipes to start gurgling before wrestling with the second lever.

The machine changed pitch, a needle sliding into my spine, so deep that I could feel the pain even past the storm of the stranger’s blood. There was an ice-cold rush inside me as the poison began to flow from my arteries. I could see it inside the tube, pumped towards Panettierre. She was out cold, totally drained, but as it passed through the needles into her arm she was reborn, throwing her head back and howling with delight. I knew that feeling, the blood awakening every cell, exploding inside her mind, promises of power the likes of which she could never imagine. The stranger’s response was the same, I could feel his euphoria as he took control of his new host.

Both reactions lasted for no longer than an instant.

Panettierre’s face warped from joy to terror. She looked at me, her eyes already black, as if they had simply disappeared from her skull. But her expression was now one of dawning horror. I could sense it from the stranger, too, the realisation that his blood wasn’t pouring into a child but an adult. There was a moment of silence, then both of them began to scream.

It was a noise like no other I had ever heard, one that
could have been the universe ending. It grew louder and louder, inside my head and out of it, promising to turn my ears to mush, to demolish every last sane thought in my mind. It went on and on and on, for so long that I thought it would never stop, that this was my hell and it was eternal.

I heard the stranger, felt him try to reverse the flow, to hang on inside me. But there was nothing he could do. The machine was designed for a single task, and it performed it well, sucking every last drop of blood from my body and pumping it into Panettierre’s.

The world was going dark but I didn’t panic. I’d been here before, so many times, drained and then refilled. Only this time there would be no saving me. There was nothing left, nothing to put back. My vision sparked, as if there was a fireworks show in the chamber. I peered past those slivers of stardust to see Zee, tears like jewels in his eyes. Lucy was on her knees by one of the dead wheezers, rummaging in its coat. My head swung back round, the world seeming to dissolve like paper in water, separating, disappearing. But I could still make out Panettierre, hung up beside me, her mouth so wide as she screamed that it was as if her face was unravelling.

No, it
was
unravelling. Her jaw sagged, the bones beneath the skin seeming to bend as though they were rubber, her teeth dropping out, clattering to the floor like beads. Something was bubbling through her cheek, as if she had acid in her veins, her flesh fizzing as it fell away. Dark patches were appearing beneath her uniform, the blood seeping through ragged holes in her stomach, in
her arms and legs. Her throat had begun to dissolve, her shriek dying out into a wet, gargled moan.

The stranger’s cry was louder now, though, a roar of undiluted rage powerful enough to crack open the earth. But it was a song of desperation, and it was futile. He knew that his time had come.

The two soldiers were freeing Panettierre as fast as they could, cutting the straps and pulling her out of the machine. They lowered her to the floor, one of her arms breaking off and sliding from her sleeve, exploding as it hit the stone. A leg followed, severed at the knee, the skin pocked with blisters. The men dropped her in disgust, and she hit the ground like a sack full of wet flesh, a butcher’s bin bag, a lake of black liquid spreading out beneath her. She somehow found the strength to look up at me, those depthless eyes flickering in a face that had melted almost to the bone. She began to spasm, a jet of oil-coloured blood spewing up from her ravaged windpipe. Then the darkness in her eyes faded, leaving two bags of bubbling pus embedded in her skull.

Panettierre was dead. The stranger was too. They lay together in silence.

I had time to understand this, before the darkness came to collect me. I had time to understand that I had won, that even though this was the end it had ended well.

One last breath. We all have to take one eventually.

It was over.

If I was dead, then why could I still hear Zee?

His voice seemed to be coming from a million miles away, muffled as though I was underwater, but it was definitely him. Nobody could manage that panicked squeak quite like Zee.

I couldn’t work out what he was saying. I was stranded in a void of absolute nothingness, not dark, not light, just absence. I struggled to remember why I was here, what had just happened. The memories had all but faded, their detail gone but their essence remaining as a single, wonderful thought:

It was over.

Was this death, then? I had imagined it so many times, tried to picture what it would be like. But never like this, a consciousness trapped and paralysed as the aeons passed, a prisoner until the very end of time.

An eternity listening to Zee wittering? I think I’d rather have woken up in hell.

I felt something sharp pierce the skin of my arm, even though I couldn’t tell if I still had limbs. Zee was
shouting now, and with his words came a familiar rush. It was nectar. Only it was different somehow. I could feel it flood into my parched arteries, coursing through my system, repairing damaged flesh. But there was none of the rage that normally went with Furnace’s poison, none of the anger. I don’t think I had ever felt so calm, so at peace.

Another jab, another rush of nectar. This one made the noises around me much clearer, as if my ears had been unblocked.

‘Find some more,’ yelled Zee, his voice an octave higher than it should be.

‘This is the last one,’ came the reply. It was Lucy, and I could hear the slap of her shoes as she ran across the chamber. A third mild pain, like an insect bite, more nectar surging into me, firing up the parts of my brain I thought had been switched off for ever. My sight flickered on like a computer monitor, seeming to wobble for a bit, everything too bright to make sense of. Then it settled, two faces looming over me, their expressions of concern so extreme that the first noise I made was a laugh. It spluttered out of me, unrecognisable, sounding more like an engine trying to start on a cold morning. I realised I was lying on the floor.

‘He’s coming out of it,’ said Zee, his eyes lighting up. ‘Alex? That you?’

Who else is it going to be?
I tried to say it out loud but the words seemed to jumble up inside my mouth, emerging as one long groan. I saw Lucy pull something out of my arm, the empty syringe glinting. She threw it
to the floor, gently pressing a scrap of cloth against the needle hole. Her other hand rested against my forehead, brushing the hair out of my eyes.

‘We need to find some more,’ Zee said. ‘There must be some out in the corridor, in those rooms we passed.’

He shot up but I grabbed him with my left hand before he could go. He crouched down again, gripping my new fingers so hard it hurt. I didn’t mind, though. The pain was good, anchoring me inside my body, keeping me from drifting away.

‘Don’t move,’ said Lucy. ‘Don’t speak, just rest. Those soldiers have gone to get help. You’ll be fine, okay?’

‘But what if that isn’t enough?’ Zee asked. ‘What if it doesn’t keep him alive? He might die if we don’t find some more.’

His agitated tone made me laugh again, and this time it must have been clearer because his frown deepened.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘You,’ I replied, managing to get most of the word out. I coughed, my throat feeling like it was lined with sandpaper. At least my voice was back to normal, though. ‘Yabbering on. I was dead and I could still hear you.’

Lucy laughed, the sound like chiming crystal. Zee scowled at her, then at me, folding his hands against his chest.

‘Charming,’ he said. ‘We save your ass and all you can do is insult me.’

His pout only made me laugh harder, until I was racked with coughs. Lucy was giggling too, and it must
have been contagious because after a moment Zee’s face opened up.

‘It’s just good to see you,’ he said, his hand squeezing my shoulder.

My strength was returning, my pulse steadying as it distributed the nectar around my body. I squirmed, managing to prop myself up on my elbows.

‘Easy there,’ said Lucy. ‘Don’t overdo it.’

‘I’ll be okay.’

I looked around the room until I saw the mess, the lake of oil-black blood which lay congealing in the middle of the chamber. There was nothing left of Panettierre now but a few scraps of clothing and what looked like a half-dissolved jawbone jutting up from the surface. The stranger too was no more. He and Panettierre had been so consumed by their desire for power that they had killed each other. The thought of that just made me laugh harder.

‘How did you bring me back?’ I asked when I had recovered my breath.

Zee nodded over at the wheezers, their coats open and the syringe bandoliers visible beneath. There must have been a dozen empty needles scattered around me.

‘Lucy’s idea. Wasn’t sure if it would work. But we had to try something. You feeling all right?’

‘I’ve never felt better,’ I said. And it was the truth. I may still have had nectar inside me, but it was no longer channelling the stranger’s evil. Without its master, the nectar seemed to function just like regular blood. I looked at Lucy. ‘Thank you.’

‘Thank
you
,’ she replied, stroking my brow.

‘How come you didn’t explode, y’know, like Furnace?’ Zee asked.

I didn’t know the answer to that. Furnace was so old when he had finally died, he had existed for centuries. Without the blood, his flesh was nothing but dust. I’d only had it in my veins for a short time. I was still a kid.