Dorran bared his teeth. Ezra took a step back, but his aim didn’t waver. “Go into the right-hand chamber. Both of you. The door is unlocked.”
The atmosphere felt thick enough to choke on. Dorran was wound tight, his grip on Clare’s hand strong enough to hurt. She could see the muscles in his face twitch as he ran through their choices. But there was no choice. Nowhere to run. No way to defend against the pistol.
Clare moved first, stepping towards the glass wall, and Dorran reluctantly followed. She coaxed shaking hands to turn the handle. It beeped as it opened, and the stench of rotting flesh flooded around them. She heard Ezra gag behind her and shot him a glance.
He held one arm across his mouth and nose, eyes squinted nearly closed, but the gun remained steady. “Stand by the door there. The right-hand one. Don’t move.”
It put them closer to Peter’s body than Clare wanted. She tried not to stare at him. Even bloated, even decayed, his face had a friendly quality to it. She wished he’d been the one to greet them at the tower. Her chest ached.
The computer on the opposite side of the chamber was already turned on. Ezra backed towards it, never taking his eyes off them, and pressed a button. The chamber door clicked, and a hissing noise told her an airlock had been released.
“It’s open. Go in.”
To Clare’s surprise, he sounded subdued. Sad, even. It might not be too late to reason with him. He’s a murderer, but he’s also desperate. “Ezra…”
“In!” he barked.
She pushed on the door. It glided inwards, and Clare stepped through. Dorran’s narrowed eyes stayed fixed on Ezra as he moved behind her. As the door closed, it clicked, and Clare knew it had locked.
Ezra lowered the gun with a heavy sigh. He tossed it onto the bench, almost carelessly, and pulled out the roller seat. Instead of sitting in it, he stood at its back, hands braced on the fabric and head bowed.
The containment room was void of furniture. Its back walls were white-painted concrete. The floor was tile. The front wall was glass, as was the barrier separating them from the adjacent chamber. Clare glanced to her right. The other chamber had been unusually quiet, considering what lived in it. Frosting ran up the lower half of the glass, and Clare edged closer, trying to catch a glimpse of their companion.
Ezra sighed a second time then pushed his chair closer, until it was directly outside the door. He sat in it, facing them, and folded his hands in his lap as he leaned forward. The harshness had left his face. He looked gaunt and tired, and his lips twitched as he glanced between them. “I don’t know how to say this. But… I hope you will understand. I am so incredibly sorry. For everything.”
Clare licked her lips. She had never felt so much pressure to choose her words well. “Ezra… we can fix this.”
He lifted his head, and his eyes glistened. “Can we?”
“We’ll never speak a word of this. You have my promise. And I don’t break promises.”
One side of his mouth lifted into a lopsided grin. “You’re nice. That’s been the hardest part. When I put out the signal, I was hoping some crazies would show up. Because you’d have to be crazy to listen to a radio that played nonsense, right?”
Clare didn’t understand. She swallowed and tried again. “I don’t think you want to kill us.”
“No, I don’t.” He dropped his head into his hands, fingers digging through his hair.
“And you don’t have to. We won’t cause you any trouble. We… we just want to leave peacefully. We won’t take any of your supplies.”
He didn’t move. Thunder crackled outside the walls. She was so sick of it. The constant noise, the constant energy, charging the air and making her head buzz and her muscles ache. One peal barely died before another one began. She wanted to scream.
Keep it under control. Stay patient. He’s responding to kindness. Do this for Dorran.
Dorran stayed at the rear of the room, head down, shoulders bowed, and hands behind his back. They had an unspoken understanding. Ezra liked Clare. He didn’t like Dorran. He was afraid of Dorran, and fear could be dangerous. So Dorran sank into the darkest corner of the room, where he blended into the grey walls, forgotten. He was good at it. Clare guessed he’d learned to be inconspicuous at Winterbourne, where it would have been a survival mechanism used around his mother. Out of sight. Out of mind. Out of danger.
Clare stepped up to the glass and rested one hand on it. She made her voice as gentle as she could manage, head lowered. “Ezra, this will be all right. You’re not a murderer. And… we don’t want to push you to that. You can step back and unlock the door. We’ll go straight away. You won’t ever have to worry about us again. I’m sorry for making you worry in the first place.”
He leaned back. His face had been handsome, but now, it was creased with deep lines as his expression twisted. Lips pulled up as though he were trying to smile, but Clare thought it was more of an attempt not to cry. “You’re nice. I’d hoped I would get one of the crazy prepper types. Someone who was a drain on society, so I could lead them straight up to the labs and not feel guilty about it. But you… you looked so relieved to be here. And sad. And scared. And I couldn’t do it.”
Clare didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking.
Ezra dug his fingers into his hair. A drip of saliva fell from the grimacing teeth. He took a shuddering breath and leaned back, wiping his sleeve over his chin. “I want you to know I’m not a bad person. Everything… all of it—everything—it was always to help people. My thanites would have saved millions of lives. If Aspect hadn’t put such an unrealistic deadline on my work, if I hadn’t been pushed as hard as I was, I could have been more careful. It never would have gotten out of the lab. It wasn’t my fault!”
He stood and began pacing. Clare didn’t know what to say. He seemed to want her to agree with him and to absolve him of blame. “I understand.”
“What was I supposed to do?” He threw his hands out. His eyes bulged. “Wait for the committee to approve human trials? My grant was up at the end of the month. It would have all gone to waste—been trashed—or worse, they would have stolen it, just like Saul stole my earlier work. That snake grew fat off my blood and sweat. I couldn’t let that happen again. So I took a risk—not for my sake, but for humanity’s sake, you understand? I couldn’t have known what would happen. It wasn’t my fault. I was trying to do the right thing! The stillness affected me just as much as anyone. And Peter kept screaming at me, ‘What have you done? What have you done?’ And I-I—”
Clare’s eyes drifted to Peter’s bloated, rotting corpse and the tiny bullet hole above his temple.
“I’m not a bad person.” Ezra swung back to her. “If I was—if I was, I’d have taken the coward’s way out. But I didn’t. I stayed. Because I’m the only one alive who can fix this. I really can! I’ve been working non-stop these last three weeks. And I think I’ve got it.”
“I believe you.” Clare was so close to the glass, her breath misted over it. “You’re a good person. Which is why you’ll let us leave.”
“Oh, Clare.” He stepped closer. His hand touched the glass’s other side, pressed over where hers rested. The urge to recoil washed over Clare, and she fought to suppress it. “I was really thinking about sending you and your friend away. I fought with myself over it, telling myself that I could wait for a different traveller to find the tower…”