Clare’s heart beat faster as she moved deeper into the space. She knew eventually she would come across the name she dreaded, and needed, to see.
She found it at the back of the room. Dr. Ezra Katzenberg had one of the largest sections in the lab. The glass wall ran across nearly the entire rear of the room, and Clare could see more glass enclosures inside. She stared at his plaque for a second. The bronze name badge glittered in the harsh light. She lifted her ID and swiped it, just in case, but the lock didn’t respond. Then she noticed the usual red light was missing. Clare pushed on the handle and found, to her surprise, it had been left unlocked. The airtight door hissed as it unsealed and slid back to grant access.
Clare clamped a hand over her mouth and doubled over. The air was overwhelmingly foul. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass, taking tiny, sharp gasps between her fingers. Any time she moved, her stomach threatened to revolt. All she could do was hold still and endure.
I shouldn’t be here. This was a mistake.
She peeked stinging eyes open and tried to take stock of her surroundings. Ezra’s work area was divided into three sections. Her part, the observation area, was narrow but long. A desk had been set into one end, its dashboard looking like something out of a flight deck. A cheap swivel chair was tucked neatly into it. At the room’s other end lay a heap of discarded lab coats waiting to be taken out for cleaning.
The observation area ran the length of the two glass enclosures in the back wall. Eight feet square, they had frosting across the lower half of the glass, but Clare thought she could see a dark shape huddled in the corner of the area to her left. Ezra.
She swallowed the thick, metallic slime that had developed over her tongue and straightened. She’d come to see the orchestrator of humanity’s fall. She was too close to back out.
Clare approached the containment room, her hands shaking as they clutched her ID tag. The door had no access bar to swipe. She guessed it was operated by the machine on the desk to her left. The glass was blurred by greasy hand smudges, but she could still see inside well enough. She breathed through her mouth as she approached.
Ezra’s body lay in the back corner, huddled over. A thick, torn grey jacket obscured his form. He was smaller than she’d expected. A crushed fabric shape had been discarded nearby. Clare tilted her head, trying to make out Ezra’s form.
It trembled.
Clare’s mouth opened, but any noise she tried to make became trapped in her throat. Her mind went numb. Full of horror, she reached out and tapped her fingertips on the glass. The shape twisted, one blind eye staring at her, then lurched forward. Clare bit down on a shriek as it hit the barrier.
This isn’t Ezra. Open palms slapped the glass, and a wide jaw gnashed, spilling saliva across the divider. Wiry grey hair grew from its face, poking through holes in the cheeks and throat and matting in slimy clumps. One eye had been lost. The other was scratched into blindness.
Clare curled her arms around herself and took a step back. Her attention flicked towards the discarded shape in the containment room’s corner, and she realised it was a damaged hat with a pink fabric flower. Peter’s words came back to her. “His neighbour… wearing her best coat and hat, waiting patiently.”
“Oh,” Clare whispered. The woman in the containment room was patient zero. Clare hadn’t even considered that she might still be alive.
The woman slapped her fist on the glass, adding to the layers of grease she’d built up and exhaled a rattling hiss through her choked throat.
Clare turned away. The observation room smelt foul, but it wasn’t the kind of stench she’d learned to associate with the hollows. This odour was sour and yet sickly sweet, a unique tang that seemed perfectly designed to make her gag. Rotting flesh. But not the hollow. That means…
Her eyes landed on the pile of lab coats in the room’s other side. They were shaped oddly. She took a step closer then stopped. The toes of a sneaker poked out from under the cloth.
Clare tilted her head back, her heart thundering, her stomach in knots. Her legs didn’t want to move, but she forced them forward, towards the shape. The smell grew impossibly worse as she neared it. She reached towards the coat Peter had draped over his fallen friend, pressed the back of her hand across her mouth, and pulled the fabric back.
Chapter Fifty-One
The coat made a horrible tacky sound as it peeled away from the flesh it had fused to. Clare buckled over, nearly losing the war against her nausea, and had to face away from the body as she waited for the ringing in her ears to fade.
Do it. Get it over with quickly. See him, then leave.
She picked up the coat’s collar a second time and tried to ignore the way the stiff fabric cracked as she pulled it back. She didn’t stop until the body below was completely uncovered, then she stepped back, eyes leaking and rough sobs escaping between clenched teeth.
The room had been airtight. There were no maggots to devour the flesh, but it hadn’t been immune to bacteria. The skin had swollen and burst in places. A dark, pus-like ooze seeped out from the form. His face was sunken and distorted, a small hole in his temple marking the spot the bullet had entered.
Despite all of that, the freezing temperatures had preserved him better than Clare would have expected. And he didn’t look the way she’d imagined.
Ezra was large—probably over six feet—and stocky. That was clear even after the decay. His cheeks had lost their tautness, but she thought his face would have been round in life. Black hair lay in a limp side-part across his olive forehead. Full lips hung open, giving her a glimpse of the still-white teeth inside. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five.
When she’d pictured Ezra, she’d imagined a wiry, tense man. Someone ruthlessly efficient. Someone who fit her idea of an obsessed, delusional scientist. But Ezra’s clothes, stained by decay, were casual. An oversized sweater hung over a T-shirt and jeans.
Why, Ezra? Clare tilted her head back, being careful to breathe through her mouth. You knew the thanites better than anyone. You could have helped reverse this. Is the situation really so impossible that you believed the only way out was death?
The hollow’s fist landed on the glass. Each slap sent reverberations through the room, jangling Clare’s nerves and making her skin prickle. She couldn’t stop staring at the dead scientist. The man had killed her aunt, her sister, and nearly everything good.
Peter had said he was trying to save the world. She didn’t know if she should pity him or hate him. Part of her wished he’d stayed to salvage what they could of the ruins. Another part of her knew, if he had been alive, she would want to see him dead.
His ID tag peeked out from under his sweater. It lay face-down, half buried by the folds of decaying skin and fabric. She braced herself and reached down. The corner of the badge was clean. She dragged it out and flipped it over.
The plastic shimmered in the harsh white lights. Clare took a step back and stared down at the picture on the placard. Like she’d guessed, he’d been plump in life. He was smiling. The picture had most likely been taken on his first day at Aspect, and she could feel the nerves and excitement radiating out of it. He looked like he’d probably been a cheerful soul in life.
Beside the photo was a name. Peter Wiesner.