We don’t speak again until we reach the entrance to the mine – a square, fortified slice of blackness cut into the mountain’s side. Cole pauses at the edge of the darkness and pulls two headlamps from his pocket. Inch-wide FIPEL strips on black elastic, gold-stamped with the Cartaxus antlers. He tosses one to me, and I slip my braid through, flicking it on. The steel rails set into the rocky floor catch the light as I step into the mine. The temperature drops instantly, and my nostrils burn with a hit of ammonia and decay.
‘Oh man,’ I whisper, choking. The bare granite walls are spotted with a thick layer of bat guano. The floor is coated with sawdust to soak up the worst of it, but it doesn’t stop the smell. ‘You’re lucky it’s early. This place is unbearable in the heat.’
Overhead, countless brown-furred bats squeak and jostle as we enter. Cole swings his headlamp up, but I motion for him to kill it. The flash of light makes the bats scatter, their chittering rising into a roar.
‘Keep quiet unless you want a thousand of them in your face,’ I say. ‘Come on, the main storeroom is along that shaft. There aren’t any bats up there, so it doesn’t smell so bad.’
We hurry down a narrow, sawdust-coated shaft with boxes of broken tech lining one side. My father used these mines the way most people use their garage – to store old, dusty equipment and crates of junk. The shaft climbs into the mountain until it reaches a giant natural cave the miners must have stumbled on. White cardboard boxes are stacked on one side, and a network of shadowy, smaller caves branches off from the other. I point the boxes out to Cole, catching my breath.
‘Those are his notes. There might be some in the smaller rooms, though. We should check.’
Cole’s eyes drift to the far wall, which is split by a foot-wide crack in the rock. ‘Is there a cave through that gap?’
I nod. ‘Yeah, a little alcove. I stored some things there. I thought it would be a good place to hide out if I ever had to leave the cabin.’
‘When were you last here?’ Cole slings his rifle over his shoulder, walking to the edge of the cavern, glancing through the crack.
I drop my backpack on the floor. ‘I stayed up here for a few nights last winter. Why?’
He pulls a handful of yellow glow sticks from his pocket, cracking them to fill the room with light, and gestures to a pile of ash on the floor. ‘There was a fire here. Can’t have been more than a few days ago.’
I peer at the remains of the fire. A few charred sticks and pine needles are scattered around it. Half buried in the ash, a slender, blackened bone juts out.
It’s a human fibula.
‘Lurkers,’ I breathe. ‘You’re right. They’ve been here.’
Cole stares at the remains of the fire, his shoulders tensing. ‘OK, let’s find these notes and get out of here. I don’t like this at all.’
I nod quickly. ‘I’ll look in the smaller caverns.’
A narrow, twisting passageway takes me to a cavern with a towering, stalactite-covered ceiling. It’s empty except for a box of unused flares leaning against an orange kayak. Cole follows me in with his rifle in his hands, his eyes flitting over the dark corners of the room, checking for Lurkers.
‘Just a kayak,’ I say. ‘I have no idea why it’s here.’
He nods. ‘Check it out. I’m going to start carrying these boxes down to the jeep.’
The kayak is coated in a layer of dust. I’ve seen it here before but don’t remember using it. We had a canoe for a while at the lake, but I have no memories of anything else. I hoist it to the floor and spot a hint of something buried deeper in the cavern’s wall. A cardboard box is stuffed into a narrow crevice behind the kayak.
‘I found another one,’ I yell, dragging the box from the crevice. The cardboard is old and water stained, with only a few mouldy manila folders stashed inside. I squat down and slide one out. The pages have Cartaxus letterheads and are dated from a few years after I was born.
‘This is from years ago,’ I call out. ‘It’s from when he was working with Cartaxus.’
‘Bring it,’ Cole shouts back, his voice echoing through the caves. ‘Bring anything you think might help. I’ll be back in a minute.’
I flip through the file, frowning. This isn’t gentech research. It seems to be a diary of psychological experiments. I flip the pages, trying to understand what my father was working on, when the file falls open to a black-and-white photograph of a little boy.
He’s shirtless and skinny, his arms hanging limp beside a bandaged torso, a purple-black bruise creeping down the side of his face. An IV tube is taped into his neck, and his hair has been shaved down to the skin, where a circle of stitches winds around his head.
I drop the file in the dust, choking back a cry.
The name printed across the bottom reads Subject 5, Cole Franklin.
CHAPTER 13
‘Oh shit,’ I whisper, sinking to my knees, staring at the photograph. I can see Cole’s features so clearly in the little boy’s face. He can’t be more than five, with dark scars peeking out from the bandages across his chest, and he looks desperately unhappy. A medical report tagged behind the photograph lists his injuries: broken fingers, contusions, a detached cornea and a pierced lung. Selective mutism, tendencies to violence, chronic insomnia.
Dozens of notes are scrawled in the margins of his DNA profile, and every single comment is in my father’s handwriting. It takes me a long, sickening moment to realize what that means.
My father was experimenting on Cole when he was just a boy. The scars on his chest, the experimental code …
My father did that to a child.
I flip through the rest of the file, trying to find something that could have justified this work, but there’s nothing. I can’t imagine any excuse for doing this kind of research on children. It’s totally unethical, highly illegal. Another photograph of Cole is stapled to a sequencing report in the back, along with a single scrawled comment from my father.
No pain response while beta-6 is triggered! Tolerance off the charts!
‘Catarina?’ Cole appears over my shoulder, wiping his forehead with a cloth.
I slam the file shut, burying it in the box. ‘I’m fine. I was just seeing what was in here.’
‘I’ll take it out to the jeep, then we can go. This place is creeping me out.’
‘I’ll take it,’ I blurt out, picking up the box.
‘Wait a second.’
I freeze, expecting Cole to grab the box and pull his file out, to explain that this is how he knew my father from before the plague. I want the truth, but I’m not ready to hear it. My hands are shaking. Every time I blink, I see a flash of Cole’s scarred, bandaged chest.
He lifts up my backpack. ‘Can you put this on? I mean it when I say I need you to wear this all the time.’
‘Oh,’ I say quietly. I set the box down and sling on the backpack, not bothering to buckle the hip strap. I grab the box and shuffle along the passageway, clutching the mouldy cardboard to my chest. The bats screech as I hurry through the entrance and down the trail, my feet somehow finding each step on autopilot.
No pain response, the file said. Tolerance off the charts!
What was my father doing measuring a little boy’s response to pain?
The back of the jeep is open, and I push the mouldy box in, pausing to yank out Cole’s file and flip it open again. The little boy stares up at me, gaunt and terrified.