The Resurrected Man (2 page)

A dull but persistent murmur woke Jonah McEwen from the deepest sleep he would ever experience.

The first conscious thought he had was of how uncomfortable he felt. His body ached along its entire length, from a dull throb in his head to cramps in his feet. When he tried to move, his limbs encountered resistance, as though he was swimming in honey. The same happened when he went to raise his head.

That was when he realised he wasn't breathing.

He lurched forward, arms and legs flailing to find purchase. His hands struck the inside of what might have been a tank, but his fingers slid uselessly aside when he tried to get a grip on it. He had no strength, no sense of balance. He felt like a baby in a bathtub—

Something
clicked
in his head at that image. He rolled over and found the bottom of what did indeed feel like a bath; the surface was smooth, slippery and ribbed. He kicked downward, arched his back and—fighting the pain and the weakness that pulled him back down—pushed up as hard as he could.

With a sucking noise, his head broke the surface. Noise and cold struck him immediately. The muffled sound that had woken him became the shouting of people nearby; the air stung his face like a slap. He opened his mouth to breathe and found that it was full of fluid, as were his throat and lungs. Choking, he fell forward and struck his head on the edge of the bath.

He blacked out for a moment, just long enough to slip back under. When his head cleared, he tried to reach the surface again. But the sensation of weakness had doubled; all the strength had been leeched out of his muscles. Within seconds he was so exhausted he could hardly move his legs at all.

This time, however, there were others to help him. Hands slid under his armpits and hauled him to a sitting position. Again his head broke the surface. He shook it, coughed, and expectorated what felt like litres of fluid from his lungs.

When the spasm had passed, he brought his legs up and rested his arms on his knees, keeping his head above the surface of the fluid. A careful pair of hands stayed under his armpits, keeping him upright. Every muscle in his body was quivering with fatigue, as though he had been running a marathon. His eyes were gummed shut, and he didn't have the strength to clear them.

Breathing in shallow, painful gasps, he concentrated on the voices as they slowly began to make sense:

“What the hell
is
that stuff?”

“Looks like some sort of protein gel, sir.”

“I want a chemist in here to check it out, make sure it's safe before anyone else sticks their hand in. And get a medic, while you're at it. I don't want him dying on us.”

I'm not dying
, Jonah wanted to say. But his mouth wouldn't work properly and he wasn't sure if he knew what he was talking about.
Maybe I
am
dying.

“How's that ID coming along?” the first voice went on.

“He could be either Lindsay Carlaw or Jonah McEwen, according to the isobloc records.”

“The
Jonah McEwen?”

“Seems that way, but—”

“Christ. This is getting weirder by the second.”

“But the housekeeper isn't talking to us yet, sir, so we'll have to wait for Marylin to confirm it.”

“How long?”

“She's with the John Doe in the booth. Maybe five minutes until she's finished.”

“Well, tell her to get over here
now.
The other one isn't going anywhere in a hurry.”

“No need,” said a third voice, a woman. “I'm here. What's the problem?”

“Take a look at this. Ring a bell?”

Pause. “
Shit
.” From the tone of her voice it was clear she didn't swear often.

“Exactly. We found him a few minutes ago, trying to sit up.”

“Is he…?”

“Just give me a name, Marylin. I don't want to lead you.”

“Jonah McEwen.”

“You're sure?”

“Positive. See the scar on his chest? I'd recognise it anywhere.” The woman's voice hitched slightly. “And this is his unit. He inherited it
from his father.”

“Lindsay Carlaw?”

“That was his name, yes.”

Jonah shivered uncontrollably. One hand brushed his chest and he did indeed feel a rough patch of scar tissue where his right nipple should have been. He couldn't remember how it had got there, and how the woman who had pointed it out could have known him so intimately. Her voice cut him deeply, although he wasn't sure why.

“Thanks, Officer Blaylock,” said the first voice in a slightly softer tone. “Log the ID with Gillian and find out where that medic's got to.”

“But—”

“Just do it. McEwen doesn't look too good. I've never lost a suspect before, and I don't want to start now.”

Suspect?

Again something seemed to fall into place, deep inside his mind, with an almost audible
click.

“W-wait.” Jonah raised his head. “Wait. Don't—”

The hands tightened under his armpits, restraining him.

“What the hell?”

“Sounds like he's trying to talk,” said the woman.

“Anybody catch it?”

“I—” Something loomed over him, visible only as a shadow through his eyelids. “No, wait—”

Metal clattered in the background.

“Will you keep it down out there?”

“Be careful, Marylin—”

“Let me handle this, Odi,” the shadow said. “Jonah? Jonah, can you hear me?”

He rolled his head back on a neck made of rubber, and felt his spine give way beneath him. A hand cupped his chin while the pair
under his armpits tightened their grip, stopped him from sliding. For a moment, he thought he was going to faint.

“Jon?
”

“I—” With an effort, he forced one eye open. The light that struck it was painfully bright. He blinked, felt tears stream down his cheek.

“Can you see me, Jon?”

“Can't—” His throat burned as if it was full of ground glass. “Can't remember.”

“Do you know who I am?”

He squinted up at the person bending over him. All he saw was a blur.

“Closer,” he managed.

She leaned forward until her face was barely a hand's length from his. As she did so, her features sprang into sharp focus: full lips, a generous nose and light green eyes that stared back at him with startling intensity. Her face revolved around that stare as though it was the vanguard—and dissecting tool—of the mind behind it.

One thing was wrong, though. He was sure about that, somehow—

Click

“You recognise me, don't you, Jon?”

“Yes.” His other eye came unstuck with a slight pop. He blinked twice, and it cleared. “You're Mary.”

She half-smiled. “Yes, I am.”

“You've changed—something.”

The smile disappeared. “Can you tell me what you're doing in here?”

“In where?” He looked around him. Apart from her face, the room was blurry. The colours were familiar, though, and she had mentioned the unit had once belonged to his father. It was
his
unit, now. What had happened to his father?

There were three more people in the room: one behind him, supporting
him, the other two squatting near the woman he knew as Mary. They were out of focus, too.

He swallowed. “This is my bathroom?”

“Yes.”

“I must be in the spa.”

“Yes, Jon.”

“What happened? Did I fall asleep?” His hands slapped at the gel encasing his body; it was a translucent purple and gave off a bitter, chemical smell. “What
is
this stuff?”

“We're hoping you can tell us that,” said one of the others in the room, the one with the gruff voice.

“I don't know,” he said. Frustration made him feel dizzy. “I can't
remember.
”

“You're going to have to do better than that, McEwen.”

“Don't, Odi. He's obviously disoriented. At least give him a chance to recover before you interrogate him.”

As he listened to the woman defend him, memory stirred in his hindbrain.

Good cop, bad cop: he had known the routine well, once. It felt like a long time ago.

Click

“Mary,” he asked, clutching at the detail like a man reaching for a life-raft, “when did you change your hair?”

She turned back to him. “Six months ago.”

“That doesn't make sense.”

“Why not? You remember that far back, do you?”

“No, not exactly.” He shook his head. “I'm getting flashes. It's hard to explain.”

“You have to try, Jon.
Really
try. I don't think you realise what sort of trouble you might be in.”

“Trouble?” He tried to analyse her expression, but she had retreated out of range and become a blur again. “I don't know anything
about trouble.”
Click
“But I do know that you were blonde the last time I saw you, which was definitely less than six months ago.”

“No, it wasn't.”

“It must have been.”
Click
“A couple of weeks, at the most. We'd just closed the Banytis file and gone out to dinner.”
Click
“You were trying a longer length, and I said—”
Click
“I said that if you grew it any longer, you'd look like Monroe.”
Click
“I did, didn't I?”

“That wasn't two weeks ago, Jonah.” Her voice was hard. “It wasn't even six months.”

Click
“Oh god, Mary. Oh god.” More memories fell into place, and they were worse than he could have imagined. He folded his face in his hands to hide the tears from the people surrounding him. Their blurry silhouettes looked like vengeful ghosts at his deathbed. “Oh god.”

His father was dead!

“The last time I saw you, Jonah, was three years ago. You've been missing ever since.”

He hardly heard her, the sense of dislocation was so strong. His body didn't feel like his any more—so weak and hairless, so thin his arms looked like sticks—and he didn't even know how he had come to be this way.

Had he died too? Was this how Lazarus had felt?

Two more ghosts edged into his tomb. The woman he had been talking to backed away, made room for the others. One looked into his eyes and placed something down his throat. A new voice asked him questions he could no longer understand. His body went limp as the effort to think took its toll. His eyes slid shut, but the ghosts wouldn't let him sleep.

He didn't feel the hands move under his back and around his legs, but he did feel himself being lifted out of the gel and into the air. There was nothing he could do to stop them. His head lolled back and he was too weak to raise it. His body no longer responded at all. All he wanted to do was drift away, leave his body behind, rest forever—

Something cold pressed against his neck. He felt a sharp sting, and blackness enfolded him again.

Marylin Blaylock followed the stretcher out of the bathroom, feeling sick to the stomach. As she passed through the lounge, she avoided looking at the d-mat cubicle on the far side of the room. She had already seen its contents in explicit detail, and didn't want to be reminded just yet. There would be time later, once she had assimilated the reality of Jonah McEwen's reappearance into her mind-set. It was too easy, too tempting, to associate facts that might be separate, to prejudge before all the data was in.

Still, she had had two bad shocks that morning—one in the d-mat cubicle, the other on seeing Jonah again. It
was
him; she could not deny that, but at the same time she could hardly believe it.

The skeleton on the wheeled stretcher tried to move as the medic brought it to a halt in the spare bedroom, the only space in the unit not already taken over by the MIU away team.

“Easy.” The medic administered another injection to the skeleton's throat, pinching the skin to bring invisible capillaries to life. Vertebrae stood out like bony fists. Try as she might, Marylin couldn't see a single vein, let alone a pulse, in the waxy flesh.

“Is he going to be okay?” she asked.

The medic looked up. He wasn't the team's usual medic and looked too young for Marylin's liking. “I think so, if we get him to proper facilities soon.”

“Are you sure? He looks
terrible
.”

“He's lost a lot of weight, obviously, but we can fix that. His heartbeat is regular and strong. He's responding to external stimuli, so his brain is functioning on some levels at least. I've seen people worse off than him make a complete recovery within a week or two.”

“But how did he get like this?”

“My guess? A combination of viraemia and starvation. He's been in that bath a hell of a lot longer than he should've been.”

Three years?
she wanted to ask, but was interrupted by the arrival of Odi Whitesmith, officer in charge of the MIU away team. With him was the team's chemist.

“The gel is a military nutrient cocktail,” said the chemist, still holding a sample of the stuff in a plastic flask. “It's loaded with waste products, hence the colour.”