The Afterblight Chronicles Omnibus, Volume 1 by Simon Spurrier

Author:Simon Spurrier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

NEXT DAY I was back in the lab, researching a problem whose answer I already knew. Still, the source of the infection might be obvious, but how it had metamorphosed remained a mystery. A couple of years as a research assistant had taught me to perfect the art of looking busy while remaining essentially idle, and I didn’t think the other scientists in the room had any idea that the tissue cultures I was taking, and the slides I was carefully preparing, were entirely meaningless. The only thing I managed to establish for sure was that the virus was transmitted though blood and not an air-borne contagion. That at least was something I could tell Queen M.

Kelis and Soren were back, shadowing me from the moment I woke up. Their decision, I guessed. I wanted to believe that Kelis hadn’t told Queen M what happened the night before. My eyes twitched briefly, involuntarily, to the autopsy table in the centre of the room. To the convenient little grooves to carry away the blood.

I felt the tension in the lab before I saw her. I felt it most of all from Kelis, and when I looked up to see Queen M standing in the doorway of the room, I didn’t know if it was because she’d betrayed me or because she hadn’t.

Queen M smiled and I still didn’t know, her expression as unyielding as an investment banker. “Come and walk with me,” she said, nodding at Kelis and Soren in a way that let them know that they weren’t included in the invitation.

A little trickle of ice-water seeped down my spine.

“We haven’t really spoken properly since you arrived,” she said when we were out of the lab, heading up the stairs which would take us to the sun deck and the empty pool.

“I’m sure you’ve been very busy.” I injected a note of irony into the words. She knew I didn’t like her and she’d get suspicious if I started pretending that I did.

“I used to be an academic, did you know that? Reader in evolutionary psychology at the LSE.”

My head snapped round to look at her: cornrows, beaded braids, wide, thoughtful eyes. It wasn’t that difficult to believe. “You’ve come up in the world.”

“Down is what you mean,” she said, then held up her hand, stopping my protest almost as soon as it had formed on my lips. “No, it’s okay. I know exactly what you think of me. You hold me responsible for those deaths you witnessed, you’re imagining many more and you’re completely right. I am responsible, and there were more. You think I’m a monster.”

I looked away from her again because I didn’t want her to see exactly how true that was.

“But you’re in a unique position,” she said softly. “You’re the only person in the world who didn’t see what happened after the Cull. You can still go on thinking all those cuddly things about human nature that four thousand years of civilisation allowed us to believe.

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