Surviving the Fall: How England Died (40 page)

Chapter 7

Grace and Harry shared a few minutes of no words in the dark lab. The siren had increased in volume.

2 hours and 45 minutes

The death of the Professor played over and over in her head. She had known him for over twenty years. Had seen him nearly every day. He knew her better than anyone apart from her mum.

Harry was talking.

“What?” said Grace.

“We need to leave,” his voice wavered, he was finding his own troubles in processing what had happened. “We need to get the fuck out of here. There is some dark shit going on down here, and we need to get out.”

2 hours and 40 minutes

His eyes stared at her in the low light.

Harry was right. But first, there was something she needed to do.

“I have to go back to the lab.”

“Why?” said Harry. “I don’t see how that can help. We just need to get out of here, sooner rather than later.”

“It’s ok, you go. But I have to see the Professor. I don’t know why. We were close.”

Harry walked over to the door of the lab and peered out the glass window up and down the corridor as far as he could. “It looks empty. Let’s go, let’s be quick.”

“You don’t have to come.”

“I know, but I will.”

She was glad for the company. “Thanks.”

As they stepped into the corridor, the noise of the siren became louder. There was shouting somewhere in the near distance. They ran to the lab.

She opened the door and stepped in. Harry followed. The lights were off. She went to turn them on.

“Don’t,” said Harry.

She withdrew her hand. He was right. It wasn’t completely dark anyway - the Professor’s computer was on, its screensaver rolling through images of various complex DNA chains, illuminating the room with changing colourful tones.

She held her breath and looked to the floor, where the Professor’s body was. At first she saw nothing but a dark hulk, like a heavy sack. Then, as her eyes adjusted, the shape of a body revealed itself. Lying unnaturally, uncomfortably. A dark circle spread from the body’s head. The Professor’s blood.

She walked over slowly and leaned down beside him. She felt for this heart, just to be sure. No heartbeat, no nothing. No life. The spirit that had given him his spark was gone, evaporated in less than a second through a hole in the back of his head.

His eyes were open. She closed them.

“You ok?” said Harry.

She nodded and rested her hand on the Professor’s. She allowed herself tears, just for a minute.

“I’m sorry Lloyd,” said Grace quietly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. Take care, wherever you are.”

The countdown rudely interrupted her.

“2 hours and 30 minutes.”

“We should go,” said Harry.

Grace stood up and straightened her dress. She took one last look around the lab.

“Ready?” said Harry.

“Ready,” said Grace.

She turned to leave, then paused, her attention taken by a pattern on the Professor’s screen she didn’t recognise.

The Professor’s screen saver consisted of a series of the DNA helixes of his favourite viruses. She laughed inwardly for a second at the Professor being a man with favourite viruses.

This helix she was looking at was not one of them, however.

“Hang on,” said Grace. “I need to check something.”

She walked over the the screen and wiggled the mouse around. The operating system came back into view.

“Wait a minute…” she said under her breath.

“What is it?” Harry joined her by the low light of the terminal.

“This is Windows.”

“So?”

“The Professor hated Windows. He used Linux. Always.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Why would he be on Windows? He said he was coming here to wipe everything, but he’s on a different operating system.”

She looked at Harry, who said, “Maybe he wasn’t keen on the idea of wiping everything…”

Grace sat down by the computer hurriedly. “Ok, give me a minute. I want to restart and have a look at what’s on his Linux. I think he was only pretending to clear everything down.”

They waited as the computer restarted. A purple boot screen appeared, giving the user the option to start up Windows or Linux. She selected Linux. They sat for another minute or so as the operating system loaded up. Anxiety gripped Grace, but a different kind of anxiety from the one she had felt since waking up; this was an exited nervousness. The same as when she was on the brink of a new discovery.

Once it had loaded, she opened the file system.

“Let’s look at recent files,” she said, half to herself, half to Harry.

There was number of text documents that had been opened within the last hour.

She opened the latest one. It was a short email transcript.

FROM: Professor Angus Ferrera

TO: Professor David Lloyd

TOP SECRET

“Ferrera, he works for Government labs in America,” said Grace. “I met him a year or two ago. He was an arsehole, didn’t speak a word to me.”

She continued to read the transcript.

Well David, looks like the experiment is well and truly fucked. I suggest you get your nearest and dearest and go hide. Forever. Adios.

Grace stared at the screen in silence for a minute.

She tried to open other recent documents, but they had all been deleted, and their innocuous titles, mainly dates, did little to betray their contents.

“What the hell does that mean?” said Harry.

Grace shook her head. “I don’t know. But he wanted me to find it.”

“The experiment, you don’t think it’s anything to do with what’s going on?”

“Of course not,” said Grace.

“You sure? Come on. Why was Taylor here, what was on the flash drive? Why the helix clues?”

Grace turned sharply to Harry and was about to open her mouth to shout, but she stopped herself. She was feeling emotional, suggesting cognitive dissonance; the evidence was not aligning with her beliefs.

She took a few deep breaths. “I don’t know, Harry. I don’t know what this means. And neither do you.”

“No I don’t, but it doesn’t look good.”

“No. But we don’t have all the evidence. We need to find that flash drive.”

Harry sat in the chair next to Grace and let out a heavy breath. “You know what that means?”

“I do,” said Grace. “We need to find Taylor.”

“You think he’s just going to hand it over?”

“No. But he killed the Professor remember. I would say all is fair.”

“Christ,” said Harry. “What a day.”

Chapter 8

They ran in the low light of the corridors, the sirens now making conversation difficult. The corridors echoed with the heavy and quick steps of running employees - hurrying to collect their belongings; to clear down their confidential research; to escape.

Grace and Harry passed two exit stations as they made their way towards the administrative wing, as good a place as any to start their search for Taylor.

The exit stations where bulging to breaking point. Shouts of anger bubbled from the doors, along with crowds of people carrying holdalls, suitcases, and plastic carriers stuffed with files and clothes.

“How long until one of those soldiers gets it?” said Harry through quick breaths.

They passed into the administrative wing. It was calmer. Still the same sirens of course, but less human traffic. And those that were there moved quietly and without panic. Men and women in suits carrying briefcases and little else.

The administrative wing was a sprawling mass of around fifty or so offices. To search each one would be impossible.

“Two hours and twenty minutes.”

“I know where Davis’ office is, we can start there,” said Grace.

She had been to the Secretary's office once, with the Professor, a few years ago. The Professor had been receiving a commendation for work on self replicating intrusive DNA strands.

“Here it is,” said Grace opening the door quietly and peering in. It was empty.

“We should be careful,” said Harry.

“What is he going to do, fire us?”

“I was thinking more shoot us,” said Harry looking around the empty office.

Grace paused. Harry was right. She closed the door behind them. “Let’s be quick then. Now what are we looking for?”

“Who knows. Let’s just look.”

It was a large room, with oak wood panelling completely out of place in the otherwise clinical Facility. A little piece of Westminster hundreds of metres under the ground. They began digging through the various drawers and cupboards.

“I don’t see any laptop, do you?” said Harry.

Grace shook her head. So far all she had found where empty drawers, stationary, photos of Davis with politicians, and in one drawer a large weathered paper folder.

Grace pulled out the folder and scanned through the documents inside.

“Requisition, budgets, nothing that I can make any sense of immediately,” she said.

“Put them in here,” Harry passed over his backpack. Grace tucked the papers in and passed it back to Harry.

“There’s nothing about Taylor,” said Grace.

“I didn’t think there would be. What now, he could be anywhere?”

Grace walked over to the window and peered through the blinds, moving them as little as she could. Two women in pencil skirts and white shirts walked passed dragging wheeled suitcases behind them. They talked nonchalantly, ambling gently as if on their way to catch a plane, not escape an underground lab about to go nuclear.

“What looks strange to you about here?” said Grace.

Harry joined her and peered out the blinds.

“Well, they all seem pretty relaxed as if…”

They looked at each other, a sudden joint realisation. Grace vocalised it. “The Admin wing has its own exit station.”

“Of course,” said Harry. “The government employees aren’t going to mingle with us plebs when it comes to escape time.”

“They’ve always used the normal exit station before though,” said Grace. Only two months ago she had shared the elevator with Davis. A very auspicious moment.

“Of course they have, the sneaky bastards,” said Harry, a smirk on his face. “They don’t want to give the game away.”

“Take off your lab coat,” said Grace, taking her own off. Harry did so and they stowed the white coats in one of Davis’ empty wardrobes.

He was wearing a shirt, a good pair of clean Levis, and trainers.

“I guess that will do,” said Grace, looking at the trainers. “I’m sure some of these guys dress down at times.”

Grace herself was wearing a plain blue dress, with flat shoes. Perfectly smart.

Checking that no-one was approaching the office, they stepped out into the corridor and set off in the same direction as the two woman.

They soon found themselves in a flow of administrative staff as they walked deeper into the admin wing.

Ten minutes of walking and the crowd became thicker. Not as bad as it had been back in the labs, but enough to cause Grace worry. Her and Harry kept their heads down, not wanting to be recognised.

“Up ahead,” whispered Harry, “look.”

Grace craned her neck past the crowd in front of her and saw a large set of double doors. They soon filtered through the doors into a large cavernous room, some sort of conference hall. It was lit brightly, in contrast to the dim glow in the rest of the Facility, and buzzed with conversation and agitation.

Eight queues started halfway down the hall, and led towards the end of the hall where the wall had lifted to reveal eight large elevator doors.

“One hour and fifty five minutes.”

“Plenty of time,” said Grace, speaking freely. All eyes were focused on the lifts - she didn’t think anyone cared who her and Harry were anymore.

“What now?” said Harry.

“We have to find Taylor.”

“I imagine he’s long gone.”

“Even so, let’s look.”

They walked slowly around the edge of the crowd trying to be inconspicuous in their scanning of the queues.

Harry put his hand on Grace’s shoulder. “Look, over there.”

In the corner a group of men stood, talking amongst themselves, looking clam, relaxed. Taylor was among them.

“We can’t do anything here,” said Grace. She motioned to the soldiers standing by the elevator doors. “We’ll be shot within seconds.”

Within seconds, however, their problem was solved. But another one began.