The Reviver (49 page)

He nodded, then held her again with his eyes closed, gathering himself. He took his arms from around her, and felt her do the same. After a few moments he opened his eyes. She was gone.

He turned.

Daniel was beside him now. ‘Think I’m off too,’ said Daniel. ‘Whatever the hell that means. Oblivion or eternity. Either way, I hope they do cocktails.’ They smiled at each other.

‘Good luck, Daniel. I hope … I hope you get to see Robin again.’

Daniel looked away for a moment, his face emotional. ‘Thank you, Jonah. And good luck to you too. Take care of yourself. And of Annabel.’

Jonah smiled. ‘What makes you think I’ll get the chance?’

‘Oh, I can’t guarantee it,’ said Daniel. ‘But just look around you.’

Jonah turned to look but there was nothing to see. He turned back.

Daniel was gone.

Jonah felt tired. In the hazy sun, he sat, then lay down, overcome by a sudden urge to sleep. He closed his eyes, wondering if he would wake, and where he would find himself if he did.

*   *   *

He felt movement under him. Light filtered red through his closed eyelids. The sound of an engine. The rocking of a moving vehicle. There was a mask on his face.

He opened his eyes. A female paramedic was looking at him.

‘Try and relax, Jonah,’ the paramedic said. ‘You’re stable. We’ll get there soon.’

Jonah felt a hand holding his. He squeezed it. Unable to move his head, he looked as far right as he could. He could see Never, Annabel beside him with her arm outstretched. She squeezed his hand in return.

‘Hold on,’ said Never. ‘Hold on.’

Jonah’s mother had been right.

He wasn’t alone.

38

Pain and dreams came then, punctuated by darkness; then a gradual climb towards lucidity, until at last he opened his eyes to an empty hospital room.

He groped for his recent past, remembering coming round in hospital after his mother’s death and again after the revival of Nikki Wood. He seized at last on Andreas. The fire. Tess.

He asked about his friends and was told both were fine, released after one night in the hospital. Once he had fully stabilized, Jonah had been transferred to VCU Medical Center in Richmond, the hospital where Sam was still being treated.

After a time, a doctor explained the extent of his injuries.

The bullet had hit one of his ribs, bone fragments peppering a lung and causing enough internal bleeding to kill. For the first few days it had looked bleak. After a week, it was still touch and go. Now, it was the third week, and he was out of danger.

Jonah listened on his bed and ached, breathing with care. He could tell he was being pumped with some kind of painkiller, a vague euphoria taking over whenever he lay still for long enough.

‘Your heart was untouched,’ the doctor told him. ‘Considering how much damage there was, you were very lucky.’

The word brought back the last thing Kendrick had said. Jonah wondered what form Kendrick’s luck had taken.

The doctor discussed the injuries with him, the long-term problems that might arise, the importance of making a careful recovery. Jonah found himself tiring, and soon he slept again.

*   *   *

More darkness and dreams. When he next woke, it took a moment to realize that the faces before him were real.

‘Hey,’ he said.

‘Hey,’ said Sam, sitting by the bed in pyjamas and a robe, pale and thin and fragile. Annabel and Never were there too, standing behind Sam. ‘We nearly lost you,’ Sam said.

‘And you.’

‘I was glad when they moved you here, Jonah. Meant I could keep an eye on you. Me and Never have a bet on which of us gets released first.’

‘I bet on Sam,’ Never said.

Jonah thought of Never the last time he was in the hospital, going around to his apartment and cleaning it up before Jonah was released. The thought reminded him of something else, and worry creased his face.

‘What?’ asked Sam, sitting up, concerned.

‘Has anyone checked on my cat?’

‘Marmite’s fine,’ Never said, laughing. ‘I’ve been taking care of him. After everything that’s happened, first thing you ask about is the fucking cat.’

They sat in silence for a moment.

Then Sam stood. ‘I need to go and rest,’ he said. ‘I’ll try and come and see you later, OK?’

Jonah watched as Sam lifted a pair of crutches and took slow, painful steps out of the door. His stomach twisted at the sight.

Annabel and Never took positions on either side of his bed. Annabel took his hand.

‘You scared us,’ she said.

‘Has there been any word of Tess since?’ Jonah asked.

‘None,’ said Never. ‘And good fucking riddance.’

Annabel leaned closer. ‘We assumed it was Tess that shot you. Then we heard that someone had seen the other men there. Nobody has any idea who they were.’

‘Kendrick,’ said Jonah.

‘I wondered if they were from Kendrick.’

‘One of them
was
Kendrick. They’d managed to find out something about what Andreas was doing and wanted to know exactly what was revealed. He said they’d been there to watch. The fire took them by surprise.’ The image of the inferno loomed up in his mind. ‘How many people died? Did anyone else get out?’

‘Maybe thirty people dead,’ said Never. ‘The intensity was so bad, it might be impossible to know for sure. There were two regular building security guards who both got clear, and one of the six security staff Andreas had brought for the occasion got out, but badly injured. Nobody else survived. Some bodies have been recovered, some identified.’

‘Anything on Pru Dryden? Barlow? Andreas?’

‘Pru was already at home. She must have left right away. Nothing on Barlow, but Michael Andreas’s remains were identified a few days ago. Dental records. DNA check pending.’

Jonah thought of the heat, of the flames, and closed his eyes. Thirty people dead, but Andreas gone too. He hoped Michael’s sacrifice was worth it, that he’d been right about the creature’s mortality.

A thought struck him. ‘Were any of them … Jesus, was
Andreas
…’

‘Revived?’ said Never.

Jonah nodded. He’d barely been able to think it, let alone say it, but the thought must have crossed Never’s mind too.

‘No. I guess that was why Hannerman chose fire. By the time they were recovered, none of the remains stood a chance of revival.’

‘Thirty people, and Michael Andreas is dead. I don’t know how to feel about that.’

‘Put it out of your head, mate. What’s done is done.’

Jonah nodded, knowing damn well that he’d give it plenty of thought in the weeks and years to come.

‘So how have people been taking it?’ he said. ‘What have you gone public with? Just the interrogation methods or Unity as well?’

Annabel and Never shared a look.

‘Well, that’s the thing,’ Annabel said. ‘The police will want to get your side of things, and we need to get our stories straight.’

‘What do you mean? We just tell them all we know.’

‘We can’t go public with Unity, Jonah. I need time to nail it. If we went public now, it’d be ridiculed. Sources would clam up.’

‘What have you told them, then?’

‘We kept to Andreas’s own cover story. Turns out he’d said that he was having a private function for a select group of friends and investors. I said I’d been invited as a mark of respect to my father. I was allowed to bring two friends. You and Never.’

Jonah couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘What, is the fire supposed to have been accidental? Didn’t they speak to Pru?’

‘They don’t know Pru was there,’ she said. ‘As for the fire, some documents were sent to the
New York Times
a few days ago, claiming responsibility and laying out the reasons. They seem genuine. It may indicate that others were involved, although maybe only as far as holding on to a letter, mailing it if they didn’t hear from them by a specific date.’

‘What did it say?’

‘It didn’t give their sources, but it set out what they thought Andreas was doing. Bringing evil into the world. It said they were preparing for war in case they failed to stop it. If you want a taste of how the truth would be received, you only have to look at the response their polemic got.’

‘Not pretty?’

‘You could say that,’ said Never. ‘Everybody thinks they were a bug-shit crazy outfit of paranoid nut-jobs who murdered one of America’s all-time greatest geniuses.’

‘So when the police come, I tell them I was at a
party
?’

‘More or less,’ Annabel said. ‘Anything awkward, say you don’t remember.’

‘Do they know about Tess?’

‘They know a woman escaped the fire, not who she was. Your shooting was put down as just another part of the attack. For Christ’s sake, plead ignorance about Kendrick’s ID.’

‘And what about what Kendrick was doing, Annabel? Murder for interrogation? The documents Sam gave us? Have you kept quiet about that?’

‘It’ll have to be up to you, Jonah. I don’t think people will have trouble believing it, but if we want to bring it into the open, we have to do it right. I need those documents, if you still have them.’

Jonah nodded. But there was one condition. ‘Only if people can’t see
how
it’s done. Any documents that describe that, I’m still going to burn them.’

‘Deal. As for Unity, it’ll take time. There are people who knew what they were doing, and with Michael Andreas and the others dead, I hope they’ll be more willing to talk on record. But the hard part is how to do it so it’s not just written off as lunacy. Face it, Jonah, even the best damn piece I could write might just be ignored. Let’s just say I don’t think it would bag me the cover of
Time.
And there’s something else you have to face: if the world ever
does
believe us, revival will be in the firing line. The Afterlifers will have a much stronger position.’

‘Revival isn’t the problem.’

‘I hate to say so,’ she said, ‘but people will see it as
exactly
the problem.’

He stayed silent. She was right. He knew that revival itself carried no risk. Even if anything else
had
remained, it would take a group as obsessed as Unity to bring it through. Only the revival of a living subject could open those doors to them. He thought of the healed scar on Tess’s scalp, and the fresher one on Andreas’s. Without those extreme preparations, even if something
did
come across, it could not stay long. There was nothing to fear from revival alone. He knew this in his heart.

Convincing anyone else would be a different thing altogether.

He nodded slowly. It was something he would have to face. In time.

Right now, though, he needed to talk to Annabel alone. He caught Never’s eye and looked to the door. His friend’s eyes widened as the lightbulb went off, and he nodded.

‘I’m … going to get some coffee,’ Never said. ‘You want anything, Annabel?’

She declined, and Never went out of the room.

Annabel looked Jonah over, and he looked back, uncomfortable at the inspection. She took his hand. Her eyes were wet, her voice unsteady. ‘You look good,’ she said. ‘Considering.’

‘No. I look like shit. And you look tired.’

‘Yeah. Haven’t really slept properly in weeks. I’m going back to London soon, and when I do I’ll probably sleep for a straight week before I’ll be fit for work.’

As she spoke, Jonah felt his heart sink. She was moving back into her own world, her own life.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked as this hint of despair rippled over Jonah’s face.

Jonah forced a smile. ‘I was just remembering when I…’ he said, catching himself.
When I had my name on the cover of
Time, he had been about to say. Some of Daniel’s memories would always remain, he thought, but the idea didn’t worry him anymore. It had stopped being like having another person in his head. The memories felt second-hand now, events read rather than lived. ‘I remember when I saw your dad’s
Time
cover,’ he said. ‘Long ago.’

‘Last
month
seems long ago.’

Jonah nodded and tried to sit up a little, wincing at the stab he felt. ‘It was six months before my mom died, before I found out what I am. I remember being so … excited, I guess. That there was some magic left, some mystery. I remember talking to my mom about it, and she was the same. My stepfather was away, and we had a whole weekend where things were just so
right
…’ He drifted into silence. He looked at her, his expression grim. ‘Annabel, when I revived Julia Hannerman. When she gave me the code…’

‘You don’t need to talk about it, Jonah. You had to do it.’

‘Even so, I’ll always feel sick about what I did. But that’s not what I mean. I asked her something else. I asked her why your father died. Why they left him.’

Annabel stared at him, dumbfounded.

‘She didn’t tell me, not as such. The knowledge of it poured out of her, sudden and complete.’

He paused, feeling the pressure of the expectation on Annabel’s face.

‘
And?
’ she said.

‘They were preparing to move location. One night they went on a reconnaissance trip. On the way out, they realized they were being followed. They shook the tail, but they had a dilemma. Was their hideout already compromised? Should they go back and get Daniel, or was it too risky? If they didn’t, they knew it was a death sentence. Daniel wouldn’t be found, but they’d gain the extra days they needed. They took a vote. That was the way they were organized. Felix Hannerman may have acted like a leader, but when it came to decisions everyone was equal, and however the vote came out they would abide by it. So they voted. It was split. Two for, two against, Felix Hannerman with the deciding vote. He voted to leave him.’

Annabel nodded, and they sat in silence for a while before she spoke. ‘Thank you.’

‘I wasn’t sure if—’

‘It’s better to know, Jonah. It’s better to know.’

Jonah nodded, wondering if he’d done the right thing. It had been a small lie, after all, and the truth was so much more brutal.

The final vote
had
been split, two for, two against, but with one abstention. Felix Hannerman had already voted to leave Daniel. No. The final vote hadn’t been his. When they’d first organized themselves, they’d agreed how a tied vote would be decided, and that was how Hannerman resolved the issue.