Furnace 5 - Execution (11 page)

It was just as I expected it to be, only somehow different. I could feel my brain shutting down, turning off the various pieces of my mind the way a pilot flicks switches in a plane after landing. First to go were my senses, what little was left of them. The memories were next, every last one, as if somebody was holding a giant eraser to my past, rubbing it into dust, stripping away everything that had ever made me who I was. Eventually, all that remained was a single thought – a billion actions and dreams and emotions all leading up to this final cluster of unspoken words:

It doesn’t hurt.

Then death was there. More than anything else it felt as though I was on a beach at night, a vast black tidal wave blasting towards me, unseen and unheard, but felt in every single fibre of my being. It seemed to make the whole universe groan as it towered overhead, so powerful it could shake the stars from the sky.

It fell, slamming down, pulling me into its churning heart. A moment of terror, followed by an eternity of peace.

No, not an eternity. The peace didn’t last. There was a flash of fire in that dark ocean, an underwater explosion. It lit up the world around me for a second and I realised I was sinking. I could feel the pressure growing, making my ears pop. I tried to take a breath and couldn’t.

Death wasn’t supposed to be like this, was it? I didn’t know exactly what I had expected, but more than anything I’d hoped it would be the end of everything – the end of the fear, of the pain, of the anger. But this …

There was another rippling blast, fire trapped inside bubbles of air, painting the ocean shades of gold and blue. It seemed to emanate from me, the flames bursting from my chest, making me feel like I’d been punched. I was still sinking, weights around my ankles, unable to breathe. The panic was causing my brain to reboot, words and thoughts lighting up.

I wondered whether I was going to hell. I didn’t deserve peace. How could I? I’d committed terrible crimes, against my family, against my friends. I’d
killed
people. That’s what was happening, I was going to hell. Maybe this was my eternity – forever sinking into the depths, fire all around me, unable to breathe, unable to switch off, a never-ending descent into madness.

The world exploded again, the flames so bright that they lit up something above me – had those been faces up there? A mix of monsters and men? The light was crushed before I could make sense of the view, but I thought I had seen berserkers, obsidian eyes set into
mangled faces. Or maybe they were demons, watching me fall.

I sank into the airless depths, the entire universe squatting on my chest, pushing me down. I squirmed, fighting it, trying to rise to the surface, but those dark waters were as solid as the binds that had held me in the world of the living.

Another blast, and this time it brought something else with it – pain. I could feel it in my chest, in my arm, like I was having a heart attack. I couldn’t be, though, surely, because I was already dead. Something rushed into my arm, as cold as ice water, and when I looked down there was enough light left from the explosion to see a tube there, fixed into my skin. It seemed to be funnelling the dark waters inside me, a pump that sucked the ocean into my veins, filling me with death.

Except, it didn’t feel like death. If anything it felt like life, as though the darkness was kick-starting my system. I wasn’t sinking any more, I realised. I was rising, and the ocean was brightening, as if all the stagnant water was being pulled into me, leaving only freshness, only light. I rose faster, towards the blinding brilliance of the surface, like the sun was hovering right overhead. I surged upwards, ready to burst from the depths into the glorious day. I didn’t know what was up there, but I could guess. Maybe I wasn’t destined for hell after all. Maybe destiny had taken pity on me, granted me mercy.

All that mattered was that I was leaving the darkness behind me, and heading into the light. I didn’t care where I was going, so long as it was somewhere good.

It wasn’t.

I breached the surface of death like I was being reborn into the world, gasping for breath as though I’d never taken one before; screaming like a baby. For the first few seconds there was only that blinding brilliance, so bright it felt as though my eyes were on fire. I bucked, fought to move, felt hands on me holding me down, heard words that made no sense.

There was a roar, like thunder, more voices, shouts. The brightness snapped off, then returned, then went, strobing on and off. I blinked, tried to focus, seeing a bulb above my head swinging back and forth. There was dust drifting down from a cracked ceiling, and I followed those spiralling flecks through the swinging glow, my eyes falling onto the figures standing in the room, surrounding the table on which I lay.

There were two berserkers here, the ones I had thought were demons. Both were huge, fat and fleshy like the one I’d killed back in the prison. They stood so tall that they had to stoop to keep their disfigured heads away from the ceiling. Between the creatures was a blacksuit, only he wasn’t wearing black. He wasn’t wearing much at all, just a surgical gown identical to mine, his scarred arms and legs jutting out from the flimsy material. It was almost laughable, except he was holding a scalpel, the blade held against the throat of the last person in the room.

This one was still human, a scientist by the look of
things, or a doctor. He was wearing his white overalls, his face bruised, one eye swollen shut. He was sobbing, his tears stained with blood. In his hands were two paddles, both smoking, and it took me a moment to realise they were the electric ones used by doctors to resuscitate somebody whose heart has failed. I put my left hand to my chest, felt the heat there, realised that’s why the ocean had felt as if it was exploding.

They’d brought me back to life.

Not only that, they’d given me nectar. I saw the IV needle in my arm, the bag above it almost empty, could feel the strength returning to my muscles. I looked at the scientist and he must have seen the poison at work inside me because he staggered back until he hit the fleshy torso of one of the berserkers. The paddles clattered to the floor, the noise dwarfed by another massive explosion from somewhere nearby, this one hard enough to shake the entire room.

I opened my mouth, tried to ask what was going on, but all that came out of it was saliva. The blacksuit stepped up to me, grabbed my face in his hand, tilting it one way, then the other.

‘You’ll feel like crap for a while,’ he growled, his silver eyes flashing. ‘You were dead a good five minutes. Didn’t think you were coming back.’

There was a flurry of gunshots from outside and the blacksuit grimaced.

‘We don’t have much time,’ he said. ‘You can walk, we need to go.’

Too confused to argue, I swung my legs over the side
of the operating table, realising that the tiled floor of the room was drenched in blood. There were three corpses there, all doctors in gas masks and white overalls. I did my best to jump over them, almost losing my balance when I landed. The blacksuit steadied me with a hand. It took me a while to realise that I was taller than him, by half a metre, my own head close to the ceiling. He turned to the remaining scientist who was squirming in the corner of the room between the corpses of his colleagues.

‘Please,’ the man snivelled. ‘I did what you asked.’

‘Then I don’t need you any more, do I?’ replied the blacksuit, advancing with the scalpel. The nectar inside me wanted to watch what happened next but I denied it, looking away, trying to put my thoughts in order. It didn’t make sense that these freaks had brought me back to life – no more sense than a berserker acting as my bodyguard in the swimming pool. Furnace knew I wanted to kill him, so why didn’t he want me dead?

‘Stay close to me,’ the blacksuit ordered as he walked to the door, opening it a crack and peering outside. The reek of smoke and gunpowder filtered past him, clawing at my nose, and there were more shots, louder now. One of the berserkers stood behind him, its flesh hanging down in pink folds, its arms the size of tree trunks. The other was watching me, blinking its black piggy eyes. I peered into those twin inkwells, so deep it was like the creature had gaping sockets in its head, and for an instant I sensed him there: Alfred Furnace.

I realised the pain was still there, that same dull ache in my brain which shifted every time I moved my head,
always seeming to point in the same direction. I don’t know how, or why, but I knew the pain had something to do with Furnace.

‘What do you want from me?’ I asked, rubbing my temple with my deformed fingers, the words so deep they could have been distant thunder. The berserker just cocked its head, its expression utterly alien and yet still so childlike. Its fists were bunched, as big as anvils. But I knew it wouldn’t try to hurt me. If anything, the monster would sacrifice itself to keep me alive.

‘You ready?’ the blacksuit asked. It wasn’t an order this time, it was an enquiry. Just like the berserker, the blacksuit was here to help me.

‘We’re getting out of here, right?’ I said. The blacksuit nodded, his attention switching from me to the door and back again. I could still hear gunshots, hundreds of them, like a firework show. ‘This is a rescue mission?’

‘We should go,’ he said, and I could sense the anxiety in his voice.

There was nectar in my system, but not enough to blot out all of my memories. Through the raging vortex of my thoughts I saw Zee, Simon, the girl Lucy too.

‘I’m not going without my friends,’ I said. The suit opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out of it. He shook his head, gazing at the floor in resignation. It seemed to take him for ever before he finally spoke, and the words nearly stopped my heart again.

‘Whatever you say,
sir
,’ he said, swinging open the door. ‘You’re in charge.’

‘I’m in charge?’ I shouted, unable to believe what I was hearing. ‘What do you mean?’

But the blacksuit was already out the door, the first berserker hot on his heels. The second gave me a gentle shove and I ran after them, hearing the thud of its feet behind me. Outside was a long, windowless corridor, a thin gauze of smoke suspended below the ceiling. There were a dozen or so doors here, half of them open, but the blacksuit ignored them all, jogging past them towards a junction ahead.

‘This place was a hospital,’ the blacksuit said as we reached the end of the corridor. It stretched out to the right and left, both sides identical, still no sign of any windows. The ground shook with another explosion and the strip lights in the ceiling cut out, my eyes painting the passageways in cold silver for the few seconds it took them to spark back on. ‘St Margaret’s. The army set up here after the war began. It’s this way.’

He bolted to the left, the doors flashing by. I glanced inside, saw glimpses of red and dirty white, and something
pink which appeared to be moving. I didn’t stop for a closer look. I felt like I had to keep moving or the chaos and confusion would catch up with me, consume me. There was a door at the end of the corridor, bigger than the others, hanging off its hinges. Istooped through it, saw the blacksuit running along another corridor. The sound of gunfire was clearer. I could hear screaming, too. Not just one person but a whole chorus.