Майкл Салливан - Deep Magic. Fourth Collection

Website:wendynikel.com/

Twitter:@wendynikel

5,400 Words

LAURA CHECKED THE front of the chamber, reading down the columns of flashing blues and greens and reds, then entered the reading for each one into the computerised log pad.

Experiment number: 1012

Date: 8 July 2058

Time of commencement: 14:00 hours

Current duration of experiment: One hour, fifteen minutes

Chamber status/condition: Working/normal

Visibility level: High

Condition of subject: Normal

With a deep sigh, Laura stepped back from the metal doorway. The chamber’s soft humming was immediately lost under the sound of the shrieking wind. Up here on the fifteenth floor, you could actually feel the building rocking softly to and fro under the onslaught of the summer storm. Laura strolled back to her desk, glancing through the windows at the surrounding skyscrapers—shivering towers of steel rising from the glowing, fog-shrouded sprawl of London far below her.

The display on her digibracelet said it was nearly twenty past three. She had to boost herself soon, or she would start feeling drowsy. Her stomach tightened as she rolled up the right leg of her overalls, took the prepared syringe from her handbag, then braced herself, gritting her teeth as she slid the needle into her thigh. She shivered at the pain. The thigh was probably the most painful place to inject herself, but it had the most immediate effect. She ran her fingers over the needle-scarred skin of her slightly flabby leg, imagining the solution racing through her veins, revitalising her blood, making it healthy.

A bright green light flashed on the front of the chamber. There was a loud click, then the massive metal doorway swung inwards on its pressurised hinges. A figure dressed from head to foot in shining black stood inside the flashing archway. The figure reached up to its head, pulling off its black helmet, revealing the thin, bony face of a middle-aged man.

“Hello there, misery guts,” the man said.

Laura forced a smile as she took his helmet. “Hi, Ben. Good trip?”

“Very exhausting.” Ben looked tired as he stepped out of the chamber. He was tall and almost painfully thin, with a heavily lined face, the occasional tuft of grey showing in his otherwise black hair. Laura knew the location and purpose of every experiment was always a secret, known only to the time operative involved, but she still felt a pang of almost childish disappointment at Ben’s tight-lipped response.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” Ben touched her shoulder. “You look as sad as a little girl who’s been banned from eating strawberry jam.”

Laura smiled. She ran her hands through her curly blond hair. “What’s the point of me, Ben?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why am I here?” Laura gestured around the huge almost empty room.

“You know why you’re here.” Ben sat down on the recuperation bench. “Someone has to monitor the chamber while one of the operatives is inside.”

“But that’s just it,” Laura said. “There’s no real need for anyone to be out here at all. In over one thousand experiments, there has never, ever been a repeat of ‘the event.’ The safety measures we have now are so damned strict that nothing ever could go wrong.”

“I know what you’re saying,” said Ben. “But what if, somehow, it did happen again? Never forget how dangerous what we do is, Laura. Outside of the operatives themselves, you are the only person who understands how the chamber works. You’re the best safety measure we could ever have. We need you, kid. You’re essential.”

Laura forced another smile.

He’s right, she thought. They picked me out of a thousand applicants, just so I could sit up here and be the world’s most expensive guard dog. So I could spend every day of my life sitting in here, watching this . . .

She looked into the open doorway of the metal chamber.

. . . this machine . . .

The wind screamed against the windows as déjà vu tugged at her mind. It had been on a day just like today, five long years ago, that she had sat in the interview room on the ground floor, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her heart pounding so hard in her chest she could barely speak as the pale-faced woman in charge of personnel studied the data screen between them.

They’ll never give the internship to me, she had thought. Not to someone with my condition.

“So you were born with the infection in your blood?” The pale-faced woman’s hair was fluffed around her head in a stylish Afro.

“Yes, miss.” The rain pounding against the windows almost drowned out Laura’s tiny voice.

“But it’s a common enough disease. Can’t a cure be grown?”

“No, miss.” Laura’s face flushed. Speak up, she yelled at herself. For god’s sake, Ashcroft, make yourself heard!

“The bacterial cure has to be grown from a sample of blood from someone who’s almost genetically identical.”

The woman pulled her spectacles down, gazing at Laura over the lenses. “I see,” she said. “You’re an orphan.”

“Yes, miss. My father died before I was born. He was killed in the war.”

“And your mother?”

“She died giving birth to me.”

The woman’s eyes were icy cold staring over their glass shields. “That’s very sad.” She looked back at the data screen. “It says here you’re a Cambridge graduate. Top two percent of all your classes.”

“Yes, miss.”

“And now you want to work for Ministry D?”

“Yes, miss. I want it very much.”

The woman didn’t blink as she asked her next question. “Why?”

“Because . . .” Laura’s pounding heart strangled her voice. She knew her next words would decide the entire course of her life.

“Because, miss, I want my life to mean something.”

Two hours later she was on the fifteenth floor.

Dr. Stuart Marcus, head of the research unit for Project T, stroked his greying beard as he regarded the newest addition to his team with his keen dark eyes.

“Laura,” he said. “Tell us what you know about terahertz radiation.”

Laura stood, meeting each pair of eyes around the steel table.

“Terahertz waves are like the ghosts of the subatomic world.” Her heart pounded as she spoke. “They can pass straight through any other form of matter, but they can also be focused as light beams. Until very recently it’s been heavily debated whether they even truly exist. A device that receives and transmits terahertz waves could, theoretically at least, allow people to see straight through solid objects. Be it a brick wall, or a mountain.”

Dr. Marcus placed his hands in his lap. “Excellent, Laura. You’ve just perfectly described the very purpose of Project T.” He gestured around the table. “We six people are going to design and build the world’s first ever T-ray imager.”

Two years later, Laura stood inside the prototype of the quasi-optic chamber, staring with puzzlement at the giant screen before her.

“Dr. Marcus, it’s happened again.”

The headless red figure floated before her, its shining arms and legs splayed outwards, suspended like a phantom in front of the brick wall. She looked from the screen to the outer room where the wall actually stood, seeing the top of a flashing metal cone peeking over the bricks.

“It’s showing the radiation suit we put behind the wall two days ago.” She looked back at the screen, her stomach clenching with anger. “We’ve taken the damn thing to bits and rebuilt it a hundred times! How can it keep on happening? How can it show an image from the past ?”