Chapter 31
MESSAGES FROM THE PAST
I swivel my phone toward me as I pour the last of the boiling water into the mug and check the time on the screen—seven forty-five PM—before I look up. “Melody says she has a place for us out near the lake. It is isolated though. Too dangerous?”
Kail cranks his head off the double bed at the end of the RV. “Is anywhere safe in this town?” His feet are propped on the opposite wall. “Is here?” He casts a dirty look over the interior then sits up against the wobbly headboard.
This RV of Rasmus’s is a lukewarm hell. Every surface has junk on it, from stuff to do with his PC repairs to old magazines he’s collecting, on guns or coins or games, to other things I’m afraid to touch. I swear half an inch of dirt and mold lies beneath anything that has space under it.
We’ve been in this RV that’s parked out the back of his shop for only a day, after two at the Laramie house. Too long.
Coffees in hand, I return to the bed and slide my mug into the space we’ve cleared on the small set of drawers, careful not to spill anything on my open laptop. I hand Kail his mug then wriggle in next to him. He kisses the crown of my head, as he often does.
“You okay? I say we move on.”
My sigh accompanies some thought as I rifle through what we are supposed to be achieving, and come up with, well, nothing.
“Sure. I’m beginning to wonder if we have a hope of pinning this on Clay or the institute.
” I place a finger on the laptop keyboard.
“We’re no closer to getting the cache, and Rasmus has had my old email address to play with all day.
We don’t know how to see inside the institute as security is tight.
Moving around town from house to house, or here, is going to let them track us, eventually. They aren’t stupid.”
“I can protect you.” He places his free hand on the leg of my pink flamingo PJs and squeezes me, then says quietly, in a voice that runs deep inside me, “Your father was murdered, Hailey, and this is your fight, not mine, but I have to ask this. How will you feel if you don’t try for more than a few days? ”
I twist my mouth then blow on the surface of my coffee, which is now trembling. “Terrible.”
“Then maybe we— Someone is coming.” He rises, puts down his coffee, and leaps over me. His thuddy landing rocks the vehicle, but he’s at the RV door a second before someone raps on it.
“It’s just me! Rasmus.”
Kail unlocks and opens the door. “Hi there.”
“Can I come in?” The man hesitates and looks Kail up and down, as I’m sure I would if confronted by a frankenstruct I’d barely met. “Bring your laptop over, Hailey.”
With his red, wayward hair, Rasmus seems to brighten most rooms and, like Kail, he’s close to hitting the ceiling in here. I’ve swung my legs to sit on the edge of the bed by the time he’s edged inside past Kail. I join the two men at the compact square table, sliding in next to Kail.
“If you go to that old email address, input this as the password. I decided to let you try and prefer not to send this online.”
The slip of paper he pushes across the table to me has a string of letters and a few numbers.
“Okay.” I open the website and punch in the password.
It spins and I wait for the usual pop-up saying I’ve entered the wrong string.
Instead, it lets me in and the emails spool down the page.
Either the spam filter works well or no one has sent me anything for three years, judging from the dates on these.
“Fuck. It worked. I’m in. Drafts?” I look up at Rasmus and he nods. I hesitate, finger high, knowing in there might be Dad’s last words to me. My heart rate is skipping upward. “How?”
“I looked for your address in a few of the older hacks. Found it in one. I had to buy the whole bunch of them to see this. I really hope no one finds out as being in possession of those is legally bad.”
Kail says, “Delete the others.”
“I have done that. There were about three million in there.” He winces then looks at my still-raised finger.
“Here goes.” I huff then select the draft folder.
None of the headers make much sense to me or ring any bells of familiarity.
However, would he hide this? No. If some enemy made it this far, they’d find it.
The first date is… “Damn.” I put my finger in my mouth and gnaw on it.
“This must be it. It’s dated the day before he died. ”
I click it, scan the text.
Dearest Hailey, my wonderful daughter. If you’re reading this, I am so sorry. I know you must be grieving. I’m sending you hugs and more hugs and a father’s love to, hopefully, help you through this.
I was likely murdered by the institute. I’m guessing you found the note I left and that is why you are here now, with me, reading this.
With me. I swallow, choking up, tears welling.
I futilely cover my eyes with my splayed hand then pull it away.
Kail is staring and looking concerned. “I’m okay.
Just…this is it, and reading his words is hard.
” I tilt the screen so Kail can read it too.
Rasmus has sat back into the upholstery and is clearly giving me space. He nods, kindly.
I clear my throat and continue reading all the way to the end then check the attachment, that seems to have chemicals listed, before I look up again. How much do I tell Rasmus? How much do I even understand of this?
I wave at the screen, vaguely.
“I don’t understand all of this. My father says the research to create a frankenstruct began after a Large Hadron Collider switchover when they were probably feeding it more protons? And he walked past the Egyptian mummy in the foyer of the institute and noticed it had…”
I stare at the text again, still not believing this.
“It had moved.”
“Oh.” Eyes wide, Rasmus nods slowly. “Oh, fuck me dead.”
I almost laugh at his expression and end up contorting my face instead.
I’m sure he sees my amusement. “Sorry. Not like in a horror movie. Not walked, but it shifted, I gather from this.” I tap the screen.
“That triggered an investigation. Observations proved the LHC energy was doing something odd that only affected the dead tissue of the mummy.
So, they developed a chemical cocktail that mimicked what was in the mummy.
“Months later, they found what worked on human flesh that had been recently cryo preserved. And it all came about from this mummy. They are still researching how to control any people newly created. Discovered the flesh could heal if stitched together. Like Kail’s finger.
And Dad says they chose then to try to use this technique on soldiers who had been dismembered.
Because legally they had more wriggle room for that.
But they hadn’t succeeded when he wrote this.
He says another year and they might succeed.
” Kail’s expression is grim, and he is silent when we lock gazes.
This cannot be easy for him either. “And that is when he decided to spill all of this to someone higher up in government.
“He was afraid he might be killed before he could do that. Thought he was being surveilled. And…” I inhale. “He was. He must have been.”
“Same as I am sure they’re trying to trace you two. Maybe even all the Weirdos, by now? It’s why I brought this to you on notepaper.” Again, Rasmus nods. “There’s your proof then? And ours. The LHC is the main cause of the weird happenings in Revenant.”
“It’s a start. I’m not sure this is enough by itself. Whether you want the LHC shut down or what the institute is doing.”
Kail grunts. “I agree. This would be easily ignored. Your institute has not made any of me yet, as far as we know. If you have honest and moral officials, it might be enough, but to really nail this, you need better evidence. Images. Copies of the death certificates. Photos of a frankenstruct would be best but…” He stares at the back of his hand. “For reasons, I’m not that candidate.”
“Because,” Rasmus drawls, “You weren’t made by our institute? So where are you from? That puzzles me.”
And me. I wait to see what he will say, though he’s always dodged this.
Kail opens his hands on the table and takes a few slow breaths. “I can’t say. I’m sorry. I will help you nail Clay to a wall, if necessary, but I can’t reveal that.”
Rasmus folds his arms and leans back. I don’t think that answer pleased him.
Does it matter to me? It does, but I will lay aside that desire to know his origins, for now.
I close my laptop. “You have my permission to make copies of this, Rasmus. Give every Weirdo a copy. I don’t use the email anymore, and it’s compromised, so I will just trust you. Spread this info. They cannot kill or silence all of us.”
“Sure.” He scratches his chin and the cogwheel tattoo on the side of his neck shifts with the muscles. “Melody said you might go to the lake next? If you do, be aware she might have you wade out to get samples of dead things. Lately, there’s always a few floaters.” He grins.
Ick. What am I getting myself and Kail into?
A two or three-thousand-year-old mummy that moved by itself is bad enough.
“Any luck figuring out how the bodies are transported to the institute?” Kail asks.
“Not yet. I’ll let you know if anything seems likely to be that.”
He said he would look at the port admin site. What if they don’t import any often? If once a year, or even month, this house and car-swapping arrangement will fall apart. None of this will be practical for long. Clay could end up winning.
“And the phone I gave you?”
He sniffs, and a pained expression fleetingly crosses his face. “That thing is diabolically different. I managed to charge it, had to jury rig a connector, but the encryption and the operating system are a whole other level. Where is it from? China?”
Kail simply shakes his head.
“I’ve seen some weird programming but nothing like this. You’re from the institute but not our institute. You have inexplicable devices that can’t be explained by our current systems. I’ve seen that movie, Looper. Maybe you’re from an alternative future?” Rasmus raises his eyebrows.
“You’ve got to be joking.” I chuckle but all I get from Rasmus is a shrug.
Kail grins and remains silent.
“Not telling? Okay. I’ll get it in the end.” Rasmus makes a finger gun and pretends to shoot. “I got this. See you both when I see you.” He exits and closes the door.
I don’t blame him for speculating on how Kail ended up here in Revenant. One day he will tell me, if he even knows the full story, and I can wait.
We head out to the lake in Molly and Ron’s spare vehicle—a rundown Jeep—to where a hunter’s cabin gets used for science, sometimes, when she asks nicely, or so Melody phrased it.
I’m not sure what that means, but I decide not to get on her bad side so as to avoid wading out after floating dead things. Kail grunts at me when I suggest this.
Note to self: let Kail do all the dead thing sampling.
The road here is rough, and the Jeep seems willing to rattle itself to pieces on the potholes and ridges.
After we turn off onto a side road, a cabin looms ahead of us at the end of a track.
I run to a halt where the track ends and switch off the engine.
An owl hoots overhead then swoops across the pale night sky, where a small moon lurks above the horizon of pine trees.
Mountains rise to either side of the lake, and a wind gusts and rattles the branches, ripples the section of lake that I can just see to the left of the cabin, before dying away again.
Melody aims to be here early tomorrow morning. I peel my fingers off the steering wheel and we exit. Kail leans on the hood, looks as if he intends to stay there a while, so I join him.
“So, that’s what began all of this. Your dad saw a mummy move.” He shakes his head, and I slip my hand over his, then under it, tangling our fingers.
“Yes. It’s bizarre but then nothing has been normal since I came here. Not even you…” I nudge my head into his biceps. “For which I am grateful. Without you, I’d be lost in this.”
“Even though I used to be dead?” He’s staring off into space, or at the surrounding forest, or maybe at the shine of the moon on the lake.
“I can’t imagine how this must be to you, but yes, what you are is just who you are.
I think therefore I am. You exist. You are as important or, or…
meaningful? As any human on this planet.
” I’m unsure what he needs to hear or even how to say it.
“Do you need a hug?” I finally ask, a little wistfully.
Kail looks down at me then wraps an arm around me and brings me to him. “Don’t worry about me. Am I pissed off that someone re-used my body to remake me? Yes. But if they hadn’t, I would not be here, with you. Pros and cons. Swings and roundabouts. I just wish they asked me first. Consent matters.”
“It does. It’s something no one has ever navigated before. It confuses me, not being sure what to feel about Dad’s revelation when it brought you to me.”
I vowed not to get too attached to Kail, didn’t I? That’s gone out the window, fast. We do feel right together. I stand with him, quiet, gazing out over that piece of lake, and I shiver as I imagine something bobbing to the surface. “Is that where…you know?”
“The deer with the weird holes?” He bumps my hip with his, folds me in closer with his arm. “I’ll take care of all the dead things, whether in the lake or out of it.”
“Thank you.” I smile up at him. How did he know?