27
Half an hour later I do a closer scan of Heathrow—or what’s left of it—and then hand Grayson the binoculars.
The airport buildings lie in ruins, caved-in heaps of concrete, steel, and glass. Here and there shards of the color-coded signs that once directed passengers around Europe’s busiest airport stick out, fragments of red, blue, and green dotting the gray mounds. A different shade of green predominates, though. Vegetation is slowly retaking the land. Grass, weeds, and moss creep across the lumpy ruins, but trees have yet to take hold. Perhaps they’ll rise in the coming years, when the wind, rain, and snow have pulverized Heathrow’s remains into something more like soil.
Beyond the buildings we spot the source of the light—three long white tents, apparitions glowing in a sea of tall grass. It’s hard to tell from here, but I’d guess that, put together, they’d be about the size of a football field. A halo of light rises softly above them, giving them a hazy look in the night.
They’ve cut the grass on one long runway. They expected Flight 305 to land here. I count that as a positive sign at first, but then the optimism that has been rising steadily since I saw the light and the tents fades. Beside the tents, at the end of the mowed runway, loom three airships, their silver skin hatched with long, dark marks—the scars of the two previous battles I’ve witnessed, and who knows how many others. Each is about a hundred feet long, I would guess, and maybe twenty feet tall. I wonder how they fly. More importantly, I wonder if the things inside are friend or foe. Here in the darkness, across the sea of grass and the crumbling ruins of Heathrow, there’s not a single clue.
For a long moment Grayson and I just stand here, the rusted remnants of a barbed-wire-topped fence collapsed on the ground at our feet. Finally we step carefully across it toward the tents, committing to our course.
“What do you want to do?” Grayson’s voice is low.
Though there’s little chance they can hear us from here, I answer quietly and quickly. “Find cover and wait. Watch for clues.”
Ten minutes later we’ve taken up position on the other side of a broken-down, wide-body aircraft of a make unfamiliar to me. Time is slowly dragging it—like the airport, and London itself—into the ground. Grayson and I take turns peering over the mangled hulk at the camp, our bodies huddled close together, trying to trap any warmth between us.
I’d love to catch some sleep, but it won’t come. I’m too nervous, too cold, too sore.
Sitting with my back against the metal of the aircraft, I look up as it starts to rain. It’s just a drizzle, not near as bad as the frigid, pounding downpour we endured on the ride here. But still, I could do without it.
An hour later we’ve seen nothing, not a single clue as to how to infiltrate this place. Two hours to sunrise. We’ll have to decide soon: go back or make a move. Neither option appeals.
We’ve made a little shelter under an overhang in the wrecked plane to keep out the cold and the rain. If I live through this ordeal, I’m moving to Arizona and never going out after sunset again.
Movement. A figure in a glass-tiled suit just came out of an airship. It walks quickly to the closest tent, slipping through flaps I hadn’t been able to make out before. I watch intently, waiting for it to emerge again. I wave Grayson off when he reaches for the binoculars, ready for his shift. I need to see this.
Thirty minutes later my arms are cramped, my eyes are tired, and there hasn’t been another movement. Time to roll the dice.
The jog to the glowing white tents seems endless. Through the haze and drizzle, the three round-topped structures loom above the grass horizon like rising suns.
This is a crazy move. Desperate. But it comes down to this: try to find help elsewhere, and maybe starve to death on our way, or see what’s behind the curtain—or tent flaps, literally. I’m freezing, waterlogged, and hungry, and the flaps are a hundred feet away now. Turning back, going for help elsewhere doesn’t seem like an option. I’m not even sure anybody is out there. I know someone is here. And the odds are good that the passengers are too, one in particular, if the battered airship extracted her from the Titan Hall battlefield. As Grayson and I reach the flaps, guns drawn, I tell myself this is our only play.
Neither of us hesitates at the threshold. He pulls the flap back and stands aside, allowing me to enter.
The room is small and empty, its walls made of white sheet-plastic.
Warm, misty air engulfs us from above and the sides.
Must be a decontamination chamber of some sort.
A glass door dead ahead clicks. I pull the metal handle.
Another room. White walls again, hard plastic this time. Glass-tiled suits hang on the right side, white suits made of a rubbery material on the left. Helmets with only a horizontal slit for the eyes sit on a shelf above.
Without a word, Grayson and I begin pulling the rubber suits on over our wet clothes. Leaving those here would quickly give us away.
The suit has a small tank on the back, on the interior. I assume it’s oxygen because the air inside is breathable. Interesting.
The transparent eye slit is the only thing that might give us away. Speed is the key now.
With my eyes, I try to communicate that to Grayson.
We leave the suit room via a sliding glass door. Unlike the hinged door behind us, it makes a tight seal. Another chamber, another spray of mist from all sides, and a metal door ahead slides open, revealing a long corridor with ten doors on each side. Wide windows are set into the wall between the doors, stretching from waist height to the ceiling, about twelve feet above us, giving us a glimpse into each room. They’re . . . labs. Ten labs on each side, each containing a long metal table, open shelving on one wall, and some kind of platform at the back, which I can’t make out from here.
From our vantage point in the chamber I can see movement in the closest few labs, figures wearing containment suits like ours. No one has looked up at us yet. They’re hunched over their work, which I can’t quite make out.
Grayson turns awkwardly in the suit. Through the slit in the helmet, I see fear in his eyes. We’re like two turkeys in a shooting gallery: ten firing stalls, shooters on each side, any one of whom could recognize us. The labs are each about twenty feet wide. Two hundred feet to the sliding glass doors at the end. Might as well be two hundred miles. We’ll never make it without someone recognizing us, but we can’t turn back—that could draw even more attention.
I set out, my pace brisk but hopefully not rushed enough to raise suspicion. I don’t dare risk turning my head toward the labs, and I’m relieved to see Grayson following my lead.
The first lab passes. Then the second. Through my peripheral vision, I see flashes of what’s going on here. Autopsies. Human bodies laid out on metal tables, split open. Organs in pans around the room.
The third lab passes.
Fourth.
Fifth. Halfway to the doors.
At the seventh lab, the pattern changes. The body on the table isn’t human. It’s an ape. I can’t help but cut my eyes over. I can’t be sure, but I think the suited figure hunched over its body stops working and looks up. The eyes inside are human—I think.
We pass the eighth lab. Empty.
Behind us I hear the sweeping sound of a hinged glass door opening. Footsteps in the hall. I can’t tell if they’re moving toward us or away.
Ninth row of labs. Also empty.
I can see through the sliding glass doors ahead now. Rows of rolling tables hold domed plastic tents.
Just past the last two labs, Grayson reaches out and punches the round, unlabeled button beside the sliding doors. Neither of us look back as they open and we step out of the corridor, into an open space.
The tables are steel, each about eight feet long and three feet wide. There are three rows of seven, lined up neatly.
I move to the closest and peer inside the rounded, clear plastic chamber. A human body. I don’t recognize the person. I move to the next row. A woman, middle-aged. I know her. She was in the main section of the plane that sank in the lake. She was one of the first to jump and swim ashore. The last time I saw this woman, she was shivering on the bank in the dim moonlight, pleading with us to save her husband, who was still on the plane. The next chamber holds a black kid, around ten. I think I’ve seen him, but I’m not sure.
I scan the final row. Mike. Jillian. All still, eyes closed. What is this? Are they dead, or sedated?
To the left, a short passageway connects this tent to the next. More of the rolling tables with plastic domes over bodies crowd the connecting section. I bet the other tent’s filled with rolling tables.
On the far wall to my right a mechanical droning breaks the silence. A conveyor belt. It runs the length of the wall, from a dark tunnel along the backside of the labs to a small, windowless room in the corner. The belt jolts into motion, surging forward unevenly. Grayson and I wait, watching it. Slowly, a plastic-wrapped package emerges from the tunnel. A body. One they’re finished with.
I know what this complex is: a massive assembly line for some kind of experiment. An experiment—that’s why they brought us here. I’m sure of it now. And I know what we should do: get out. But I’m not leaving before I find out whether Harper’s here—and if she is, I’m not going anywhere without her.
The sliding doors behind us open, and Grayson and I freeze. I hope the suited figure will take the next body, wheel it back into the lab section . . .
It walks past the first row, still approaching us.
“I think we should have a talk.”
The voice from the suit’s speaker is human, and it booms inside the space.
I sidestep away from the table, into the aisle from the labs to the small room on the far side of the tent. Grayson mimics my movement awkwardly in his white suit, but neither of us turns. We march, probably a little too quickly, along the wide path parallel to the conveyor belt, overtaking the plastic-wrapped body.
“Hey!” the voice yells.
The sliding metal doors open as we approach, revealing a room that’s empty except for a large machine that runs the length of the right-hand wall: an incinerator is my guess. I bet there’s another at the opposite corner of the tent, serving the labs on that side.
One look at Grayson tells him what I want to do: set a trap.
He nods, draws his gun from the loose kangaroo pouch in the front of his suit, and steps diagonally back into the room’s blind spot, beside the door, where the machine meets the wall.
I draw my own gun, clasp it behind my back with my other hand, and stand my ground, trying to appear calm, as if I’m waiting patiently.
The doors slide open. The face is human. A middle-aged man. He doesn’t seem alarmed at the sight of me.
He takes one step inside. “Nicholas—”
Grayson brings the butt of his gun down on the man’s helmet, sending him to the floor. It doesn’t knock him out, however, and he pulls Grayson down with him. I bring my own gun out, waiting for an opening as they roll around on the floor, wondering . . .
Before the double doors can close, another figure rushes in, hands raised. I freeze, unable to look away from the eyes.
His gloved hands slowly reach for his helmet. He pauses, staring at me, waiting for the double doors to seal.
On the floor, Grayson and the man stop struggling, both looking up in shock. The man standing before us lifts the helmet off, and I’m staring at . . . me.
Down to the very last detail, he’s an exact replica of me.