When We Wake (25 page)

Looking back at it, I still think that if I knew everything I know now, I would have made the same choices.

I did the right thing by trying to get answers, although I could have been smarter about how I did it. But there were costs I hadn’t considered, and I wasn’t the one who had to pay all of them.

Joph parked the car several blocks from the warehouse, and we walked the rest of the way. If anything, my nerves were even more hypersensitized than during our first nocturnal visit, but this time I wasn’t afraid.

We hid in the same alley while Bethari hacked into the cameras again and declared the coast clear. “I’m putting them on
loop,” she said. “If there are any cameras underground, they must be on a closed system. But the outside ones are going to show an empty warehouse until we get out.”

“If this is such a big secret, why don’t they have more security?” Joph asked. “Guards patrolling, or something.”

“Because putting a lot of security on something would be a good way to attract attention,” Abdi said reluctantly. “It’s a risk, but a calculated one.”

“Okay, I’m nearly ready to spring the gates,” Bethari announced. “You know, Tegan, things are much more exciting with you around.”

“Why, thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“Any questions?” I asked. Abdi opened his mouth. “Any sincere, nonsarcastic questions?” He closed it. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

Bethari tore down the alert system on the gate in a matter of seconds. At her command, it swung open.

“Now,
that
was too easy,” Abdi said.

“Not if you’re this good,” Bethari told him sweetly, and strolled in.

“Leave it open,” I warned. “We might have to leave in a hurry.” I’d given Abdi my sonic pistol, knowing that my uneasiness with the weapon might slow me down at a crucial
moment. Joph had a sonic pistol of her own, and Bethari had some sort of Taser thing that she was supposed to carry for self-defense. I had nothing.

The warehouse door proved to be a little more challenging, having a physical lock rather than an electronic one. Abdi eyed it. “I suppose we could try to break it down,” he said doubtfully.

“Let the past-timer at it,” I said, kneeling by the door. I’d rummaged through Joph’s lab. She had a lot of tools, and a couple of them were close enough to torque wrenches. The hairpins Tatia had used to keep my do in place were very strong and, suitably bent, provided decent rake substitutes.

“Keep watch at the gate,” I told Abdi. “Bethari, tell me if anything’s happening in the warehouse.”

Then I got to work. It would have been much, much easier with Alex’s electric pick gun, but I still had the skills that had gotten us into a lot of technically impregnable construction sites and buildings slated for demolition. Locks apparently hadn’t changed a great deal in a century.

Twenty minutes later, the fifth pin jumped up, and I felt the door give. Joph signaled to Abdi, and we stepped inside.

“You have to teach me that,” Bethari whispered.

Abdi, Joph, and I shoved the scrap-metal bin away and pulled out our weapons. Bethari braced herself in front of the elevator hatch and gestured at her computer.

“Black shoe alligator glue,” said the voice of the curly-haired soldier, shockingly loud in the empty space.

Nothing happened. My heart sunk into my borrowed shoes.

Then, smoothly and silently, the elevator rose, and the door opened.

I stepped inside, and the others came with me. We were silent as the elevator descended, clutching our weapons tight.

There was no going back from here.

The corridor at the bottom was long, dark, and empty. I said a mental prayer of gratitude. Joph started to say something, but Abdi clapped his free hand over her mouth and shook his head. Computers gave us enough illumination to see, and a door twenty meters ahead was slightly ajar, a shaft of yellow light striking across the bare concrete floor. A second later, laughter came from that doorway.

Abdi inched forward, sonic pistol in his hand, and Bethari slunk behind him with her Taser. He peeked around the door and signaled Bethari back. “Four of them,” he breathed in my ear. “Kitchen. Poker party. We can sneak past.”

Walking past that door was scary, and the relaxing effects of Joph’s breather were wearing off. Opening the other doors along the corridor was even more terrifying. We didn’t know who might be waiting inside, or if some sudden noise would bring the guards out to shoot us all down. We found two dorm rooms with two bunk beds each, shower facilities, a storage room piled with supplies, and even a little laundry room with piles of black T-shirts and coveralls. The facility had obviously been prepared for long-term stays.

I was feeling doubtful now. Maybe Abdi was right, ludicrous as it seemed. Maybe there really was nothing to find.

There was only one door left. Like the others, it was unlocked. I saw a big, dark room, ushered the others in, and pulled the door shut behind me. I was focused on the corridor outside, and the silence of the others didn’t seem strange until I turned.

And saw what they had seen.

The room was enormous, and the glow of our computers illuminated sturdy metal racks that towered above us and stretched out into the darkness. The racks were filled with clear plastic containers, each about the size and shape of a coffin.

There were hundreds of them.

I knew what was inside. We all knew.

Bethari was the first to step forward, holding her computer over the nearest cryocontainer. “It’s occupied,” she reported, her face expressionless.

I stepped up beside her and peered in at a woman about Marie’s age, with pale skin and dirty-blond hair in matted strands. She was naked, but there was no wound visible on her body—just the tubes connecting her jugular vein and carotid artery to the container walls, and a Texas star tattoo on her right hip. Her skin had an odd, waxy sheen, stretched tight over prominent bones.

She looked frozen.

She looked dead.

I stumbled back, and Abdi caught me, wrapping an arm around my waist. “Breathe,” he murmured in my ear, and after a moment I nodded and pulled away, looking into other containers. Was this just the place where they stored the volunteers for Operation New Beginning? Had we broken into a perfectly ordinary storage facility?

But they were so
skinny
. I mean, they were all dead, but they really didn’t look well.

I remembered the long list of addresses that Bethari’s computer had found in that government database, and shuddered. This was just the Melbourne location. Were they all like this?

We moved quietly among the silent dead. Bethari was scanning her computer over the cryocontainers, narrating in a whisper, and pausing every now and then for a close-up. She stopped, peered closer at something, and beckoned me down.

“What is it?” I asked, staring apprehensively at the dark-skinned man inside.

“Look at the dates,” she said, and pointed at the little screen that was attached to each cryocontainer. “They’re all the same day.”

She was right. I checked about twenty in the opposite direction, and they all read
8 JAN 2125
.

“They all died on the same day?” I said.

Abdi stiffened beside me. “And the same place,” he said,
pointing at a three-letter code in the bottom corner of the screen. “HOW. That must be Camp Howard. It’s one of the refugee camps in West Australia.”

“This one’s KEA,” I said.

“Camp Keating, in Queensland,” Bethari said. “And a different date—17 March 2126.” She moved down the line. “Keating, Keating, 17 March, 17 March… These must be refugees.”

“Refugees can’t afford the freezing process,” Abdi said.

“So the government paid,” I said. “But why? And what killed them? Some kind of disease?”

“In different camps?” Abdi asked. He sucked in a deep breath. “Didn’t you say you got a list of addresses connected to the Ark Project, but this was the only one in Melbourne? Where were the others?”

That list of addresses flashed into my head again. “Mostly the Northern Territory and West Australia. A few in Queensland.”

“Where the camps are,” Bethari said.

There had been over twenty of those addresses. If they all corresponded to facilities like this, that added up to tens of thousands of dead refugees.

Abdi’s face was very grim. “Maybe asking what they died from is wrong. Perhaps they died
for
this. Those experimental bodies your Dr. Carmen is working on; where do they come from?”

“They’re volunteers,” I said. “Like me, that’s why they had to use me. I donated my body to science before I thought coming back was a real possibility.”

“Are you sure they’re all volunteers?”

Bethari and I stared at each other, trying to come to grips with the enormity of what Abdi was suggesting.

“The army wouldn’t kill refugees,” Bethari said. “I mean, maybe if they knew they could bring them back, when there was enough food for them, when the world was safer…. But Tegan’s the only successful revival. These deaths are from before she was even brought back. They wouldn’t do that. They couldn’t.”

“Oh? Why not?”

Bethari stopped, then spread her hands hopelessly. “Because it isn’t
right
.”