They had reached the hallway to their offices. Peter pulled out his ID tag and unlocked the door. “Well, I didn’t want just anyone to hear me. So I disguised my transmission. Remember the signal that played while you were trying to get to the tower? That’s mine.”
“What? The station that plays second-long clips of noise? I thought it was nonsense.”
He laughed as he held open the door for them. “It mostly is! But once every four minutes, I include part of the address. Helexis Tower, Floor Twelve, Inner City. Spoken a syllable at a time. You would have to listen to the station for a while to realise those clips are connected.”
Clare had hated the station. It unnerved her. But she’d had company and security with Dorran at Winterbourne. She imagined her sister’s situation. Beth had been trapped in the bunker with nothing except her radio. Alone, despairing, unable to find any other signal, she might have listened to the station as her only source of human contact. She might have caught the hidden message. And blind in the dark, she might have scored the words into the metal walls.
“Oh,” Clare moaned. Her mind was threatening to spiral, so she pulled it back with some effort. “What…”
Peter reached forward, looking concerned. “Uh, maybe eat some more of the chocolate. Or what about some water? The chairs are over here.”
“No. I’m fine. I just…” She shook her head. “Why did you broadcast it like that? Why not just… tell people?”
Peter settled into his chair, though he still looked concerned. “Caution. To survive the thanites, you needed to be somewhere painfully lonely or in an airtight environment.”
Airtight. That’s why Beth was safe in her bunker, despite living in the suburbs. The room had its own air-filtration system.
“That means an eclectic mix of people made it through the stillness,” Peter continued. “Some were just normal folks who happened to be on a camping trip or were in the right place at the right time. Others lived in seclusion, homesteads that were off the grid or so remote that they had to drive hours to reach a town. Those kinds of people are a mixed bag. On one hand, they can be a little intense. On the other hand, they are really good at surviving on their own, in the way the city people aren’t.”
Clare nodded. Without Dorran, she didn’t know how long she might have survived. He was adaptable and skilled in a way she never would be.
“Then there’s a third group of people. The paranoid ones. The ones who had bunkers, airtight panic rooms, or gas masks, and thought to use them.” He shook his head. “They’re surviving better than the city people, since they were actually prepared. But they’re also the most dangerous group out there. They’re more likely to have guns and to use them. I was frightened of inviting those kinds into the tower. It would be a gamble of whether they would help me or whether they would shoot me dead, loot the place, and run.”
“I guess I can understand that.” Clare glanced up at Dorran for confirmation. His expression was unreadable. “But if it was such a risk, why did you send out the signal at all? If you wanted company, couldn’t you have listened to the broadcasts and travelled to meet one of the survivors?”
“Not quite. I need to stay at the tower.” His grin widened. “I didn’t call you here because I was lonely. I called you because I need help. I’m working on a cure.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Clare’s heart lurched. “A cure?”
“Ezra’s research is all still here. The development details, the code, everything. Now, it’s not my field of research, but… I’m trying to unravel it.” Peter nodded towards the only computer that was turned on. “And I’m making progress. It’s slow. But I’m getting there.”
“Do you think you can reverse the mutations?”
“No. Not that, I’m afraid. Once the stem cells are activated—once stuff has grown—there’s no reversing it. Or restoring the brain. What I’m trying to do is find a way to kill them.”
“Oh.” Clare tried not to be disappointed. Of course curing the hollows had to be impossible. They had changed too much to hope to bring them back. But the idea of killing them was difficult when they still carried hints of the humans they had once been.
“People are dying in masses every single day.” Peter’s voice caught, and he cleared his throat. “The ones who were travelling when the stillness happened are faring the worst. They were unprepared and don’t have the skills to survive on their own. But the preppers are struggling too. They’re taking too many risks. Some of them are treating this like a live-action fighting game, and their luck eventually, inevitably runs out. The group best equipped to survive right now are the ones who lived outside civilisation; the homesteaders. But they’re starting to vanish too. The hollows are wandering. Every night, they travel farther, looking for more food. Not even the most remote locations are safe anymore.”
Clare chewed her lip. “I used to hear people on the radio. I’d tune in every day to listen to what they’d found and seen. But there are fewer and fewer of them all the time.”
“Poor souls. You saw how many hollows were outside the tower, right? That’s because of my own station. Hollows are attracted to radio broadcasts. The thanites are receptive to the signals—it was how they were activated. Any time a survivor talks through their radio, they’re basically calling to any hollows within a twenty-mile radius.”
Dorran muttered something under his breath. Clare felt cold. She squeezed her hands together until the knuckles bulged.
Peter’s eyes flicked between them, then he leaned forward and pushed the vending machine food a little closer. “Don’t panic. It’s not too late. There are pockets of people surviving, and we’re going to give them the best damn chance possible. Humanity can recover from this. But only once the hollows are gone.”
“People were hoping they might kill themselves.” Clare’s tongue felt stiff, but she forced it to move. “That they might starve or…”
“Yes. Eventually, they would die out. But… not quickly. They are capable of surviving with shockingly poor nutrition. The thanites make them almost immune to injuries, since it fast-tracks healing and destroys infection. Now, the thanites will eventually be deadly. The mutations will continue growing and spreading, unceasing, until it kills them in some way or another.”
Clare remembered the hollows with bones growing into their skulls. She grimaced and nodded.
“It’s already killing some of them,” Peter said. “But not fast enough. I ran some calculations. At the current rate, it would take close to a year until the hollows stop outnumbering humans a thousand to one. At least five years until there are more humans than hollows. Perhaps twenty before the creatures go extinct entirely.”
Five years until they stop outnumbering us. The queasiness crawled back up Clare’s stomach.
“I don’t know how many people are still alive, but it’s not a lot. And less every day. We can’t afford to wait until these creatures kill themselves. But maybe we don’t have to.”
“How?”