Hell's Teeth (Phoebe Harkness Book 1) (16 page)

I looked around nervously, acutely aware that any second someone could turn up and catch me in the act. Plus, surely Griff would be arriving back in the lab soon with my coffee. I really didn’t have any more time to waste down here.

I rather hated Trevelyan for getting me mixed up in all of this in the first place. Why on earth she decided to hide her secret files on
my
workstation, I had no idea. Why make me take the R&D lecture instead of her? She had clearly given
my
name
to her torturer, Evil Pliers Guy. Why else would he have mentioned me by name in the DataStream clip?

In a moment of inspiration, my fingers twitched. I typed in the box and hit enter.

Password: Harkness

Password Accepted

To my surprise, I was in. Information rolled across the screen, files and subfolders galore. It was like Pandora’s box opening in front of me. I frowned at what I was seeing.

+ Gamma Strain test results, subjects 01-50

+ Delta Strain field test results

+ Gamma Strain results, side effects on subjects 20-40

There were countless others. I clicked open a file at random and scan read the date.

This was
my
work. All the work my team had done at Blue Lab; the failed retardants, the cures we had tried which hadn’t worked but which had had other, less
desirable
effects.

The data had been transferred down here and from the detailed schematics I was now seeing rolling through these files, they had used it to make designs for handheld weaponry, modified military vehicles, light aircraft. Everything I had ever retired as not fitting or useless, every strain of virus I had mutated and tampered with before discarding, they were being further developed.

My hand froze on the screen as I realised what I was looking at.

Blue Lab was weaponising my work. In my fight to cure the Pale, I had been helping develop chemical warfare. To use against the Pale? Or against anyone the Cabal saw fit?

The air down on this level was cold. Goosebumps had risen on my arms. So that’s was what ‘MA’ was.

Military Application.

I clicked open the file titled ‘
Delta
Strain
test
results
’ and, with some trepidation, read the reports.

The Delta Strain has been
almost
successful when we tried it on the rats. It had calmed the Pale in large doses, and made them manageable. The problem we had with it was that it had calmed them to the point of coma and then death. What use was a retardant which reduced its subjects to dribbling mindless vegetables, I had thought? Useless. Evidently someone amongst the higher powers disagreed with me.

The files before me detailed the further development of Delta. It had been weaponised as an aerosol. There had been field testing, according to the data, and it had been in Cambridge; crop dusting the city for blanket coverage of the populated areas.

My eyes stared at the words scrolling in front of me.

Pale Eradication level: 74%.

Human Civilian Casualties: 89%.

Protocol Rejected.

Refinement needed, further development required for effective combatant usage. Suggested downgrade to handheld gas canister/grenade dispenser for localised cleansing solution.

The date of the field test was three years ago.

Three years ago, the year that the city of Cambridge had burned to the ground in uncontrolled fires. A terrible tragedy. Fires had been started by the Pale, rampaging through the city, or so we had all been told by the Cabal over the daily DataStream.

My hands were shaking.

They had killed all those people? To stop the Pale from spreading, to
experiment
?

This was friendly fire on a massive scale. No, this was chemical warfare. And we, the rest of the world, had never even known it had happened. They had experimented on a human population at war with the Pale, exposing the mutants and the people alike to the retardant.

I pictured the city, filled with fallen bodies. Humans and Pale lying together, every one of them reduced to drooling mindless creatures, physically and mentally ruined. And then came the fires, of course, to hide the evidence, to cleanse the strain away, to get rid of the bodies.

My mind was reeling.

I clicked open another file. A list scrolled before me:

Gamma strain side effects on subjects 20-40

Subject One: Deceased

Subject Two: Deceased

Subject Three: Deceased

Subject Four: Deceased.

The world rolled along, a roll call of death. These were not rats. These were actual Pale, as far as I could judge. I became blind to that word until, right at the end of the list, something changed.

Subject Twenty: Damaged.

Held for further testing. Room Four.

I clicked on this subject.

Gamma Strain had been useless to us and, apparently, also to the military guys who were poaching my work as well, assuming of course that they had higher ambitions than killing off the Pale one monster at a time.

Room Four, Subject 20.

+ Hostility 100%

+ Sedation 90%

Observation requested: Y/N

My finger hovered over the option for a moment. I had already learned more than I ever wanted to know, but I had come this far…

I selected observation.

A sudden noise behind me, a whirring hydraulic rush, made me jump almost out of my skin. I span, half crouched in surprise. In the long corridor of locked doors behind me, there was now an oblong of light. I had clearly just opened door number four.

Lucky me.

Not wanting to leave the workstation open, I logged off, grabbed Trevelyan’s swipe card, and made my way slowly back along the corridor. My mind was still reeling.

Cambridge … good God, was that really true?

I was not sure what was going to be in Room Four but I was pretty sure that whatever it was, I wasn’t going to like it.

The room hadn’t opened, not really. The heavy metal door had indeed slid to one side and into a recess. My way into the room, however, was blocked by a thick pane of glass.

The room beyond was small and dark. The floor, walls and ceiling were all bare and tiled, like a wetroom. There was even a small drain in the centre.

Curled in one corner of this strange cell, rocking back and forth like a lunatic in an asylum, there was a thin figure, naked and very emaciated. Its skin was a mottled pale grey. It was tall, male and utterly hairless, it’s sinewy arms and legs like bunched coils of wire, its sunken chest and protruding ribs heaving in a fast rhythm, like a dog panting fast. The crouching figure was covered in a sheen of sweat, making it look oiled and feverish, its bald bullet of a head tucked between its knees, with long fingers clasped over the back of its head protectively.

I took a step back from the glass, horrified as realisation dawned as to what I was seeing. The fingers and toes, I now saw, were elongated, far longer than any normal humans. They ended in wicked-looking claws. I couldn’t help but gasp and at that small noise, the intake of my breath, the creature’s head whipped up immediately.

Its face was monstrous; sunken hollow eyes, black from lid to lid, above a collapsed nose, upturned like the cavity of a skull. It had no lips, its mouth merely a mass of scar tissue from which large, sharp teeth protruded, too many for its face, like a shark grinning.

It was one of the Pale.

They used to look human when we first made them, but that didn’t last long. They had mutated further during the years since the collapse of the old civilisation and the wars that followed. None of them had lips now, they chewed them off themselves, making their faces nightmarish death-heads, ghoulish and oddly naked.

It stared at me for a second and we both stood frozen, eyes locked across the small space. Then, with terrifying speed, the Pale leapt up from its crouch, throwing itself across the cell and hurling violently into the plate glass, which shuddered and boomed in a muffled way.

I stumbled backwards instinctively, arms held up defensively to shield myself from the expected attack, and fell on my backside, slamming into the floor against the opposite wall of the corridor. It took me a moment to realise it hadn’t gotten me.

The glass hadn’t shattered. It must be reinforced, bulletproof even.

The creature thrashed against it frantically, its head slamming again and again against the barrier, teeth gnashing at the smooth surface, leaving bloody trails of spittle smeared across the glass as it tried in vain to get at me. Its arms and legs beat against the wall vehemently and relentlessly, making it wobble each time. The long claws scraping against the surface, it was like a mad dog and it wanted nothing more than to tear into me and rip me apart.

My heart felt like it was going to explode. Shakily, I felt for the wall behind me and slid myself up to my feet.

There was a Pale. Right here in the city. In the fucking lab where I worked every day!

This mutant – the embodiment of rage and hunger, a spectre of living death – growled and keened, furious and desperate, unable to understand why it could not reach me through the transparent barrier. It flung its wiry body against the glass again and again.

I stared at it, frozen in horror, convinced that any second the glass was going to smash.

A few more seconds passed and then there was a loud hiss, a pale mist erupting out of the small drain in its cell behind the monster, diffusing through the room.

The creature struggled a while longer and then began to twitch, as though losing control of its limbs. It shook its head in confusion, losing coordination, and after a few moments, fell backwards into the thin mist. It hit the ground hard, gasping and gnashing its teeth, arms and legs flailing wildly around, fighting the thin air as it fell into convulsions.

The mist poured into the room until eventually the Pale lay immobile on the floor, bucking its hips and gnashing its horrible long teeth. Its skeletal, naked body twitched and jerked painfully, as though being electrocuted.

With monumental effort, it managed to roll onto its stomach and I watched as it dragged itself laboriously back into the corner, where once again it curled up on its side in a foetal position, hacking and spasming against the pervasive, relentless mist.

Gamma Strain at work. A paratoxic nerve gas.

The metal door slid back across the glass with a hiss, cutting off the nightmare vision, and locked itself in a very final and thorough way. Observation complete, I gathered.

I’d seen enough. I felt as though I was going to throw up, my legs barely holding me upright. I stood, propped against the wall in the suddenly quiet corridor, trying to catch my breath.

Movement in the corner of my vision made me jump. My panicked mind was convinced that it was another of the creatures, somehow loose in the corridor, and that any second it would be on me, tearing, ripping me open and burying its snapping jaws in my soft wet insides.

It wasn’t one of the Pale, however. It was a regular human person, back at the workstations I had just left. A woman, she had appeared around the bend and was staring at me in surprise.

“Dr Harkness?” she asked, incredulous. “Is that you?”

I stared at her stupidly. For a moment, my mind was completely blank. But then she smiled at me, and my brain kicked into gear.

“Melanie?”

Trevelyan’s young assistant, she of the impossibly pert chest, adorable dimples and perfect hair. Part of me wanted to run over to her and hug her fiercely, gibbering insanely about monsters. The other part wanted to run away, to scarper like the trespasser I was. What she was doing down here, I had no idea. She was evidently thinking the same of me, and was peering at me quizzically.

“I’ve not seen you down here before,” she said.

She looked around at the utilitarian corridor we stood in, frowning slightly.

“Grim as hell, isn’t it? I hate it down here. I keep thinking I’m going to turn a corner and run into a serial killer. Hey, are you looking for Vyvienne?”

I nodded, tucking a pale strand of hair behind my ear and trying to regain my composure.

“In a manner of speaking,” I managed.

“I think she’s on sabbatical,” Melanie said, friendly enough. “Some Cabal bigwigs have been in her office these last couple of days. I think they’re picking up her stuff while she’s away.”

She looked back towards the workstations, as though checking if anyone could hear.

“To be honest, they give me the creeps, skulking around her offices, breathing down my neck all day. One of them sent me down here to pick up her personal effects.”

She rolled her eyes as she walked towards me, her smart heels clicking on the concrete floor, a black box file hugged to her chest.