Twenty minutes had elapsed since Ella attached the first of the drip bags to Martins. She noticed the heart monitor now beeped at a regular, more determined and slightly increased pace, and his breathing wasn’t as shallow as before.
She stood from her chair and began manipulating the blood-bag between her fingers when a sudden, tremulous boom, sounded, followed by a decreasing rumbling noise, causing the whole of the chamber to shake. Anything loose in the room started to rattle, and a half dozen glass beakers resting on a shelf above the table, tinkled against one another for two or three seconds before all was still.
Enraged by the strange occurrence, the surgical gloves were ripped from her hands and hit the carpeted floor with an audible slap. She crossed the room to investigate the source of the noise, pressing the open button en route. When she climbed up to the basement, she noticed a faint haze of dust floating just above the wooden hatch. She opened it for further inspection, allowing even more dust into the room, and with it, the instantly recognizable bouquet of spent gunpowder.
Something dire was taking place; she had a strong feeling the investigator was back, and no doubt behind it. He obviously hadn’t taken up her offer. The hatch was dropped and the bolts once more driven home.
Ella needed to fathom things out: There’d been some kind of large explosion in one of the buildings. That much was obvious, but the question was why? What was he up to? Was he after destroying the whole town? Was he going to methodically weed them out? Was he going to blow up every building until he’d achieved that?
She went up to the ground floor to check on the others, pleased to find none of them had actually been disturbed by the noise. Each of them, standing in silence, watching, staring out at the rain; statuesque in essence in the midst of their own private oblivion.
Gazing upon them as she was, she began to wonder if it was all worth the effort. Was that investigator a bad omen? A sign perhaps, telling her enough was enough? Should she fight on? Or just roll over and lay down? Again, she looked from one of the windows, this time seeing much further than she had earlier. The rain had eased, almost stopped in fact. Perhaps the opposite of that omen?
Ella returned to the chamber to see how her patient and his donor were faring. Martins stirred, raising his head a little from the pillow. In passing, Ella picked up the gloves she’d thrown to the floor and tossed them into the waste bin under his bed. She donned another pair and went to stand by him. His eyes were open now, and almost clear, almost red again.
‘I know you have her,’ he said, his voice frail, broken. ‘I feel her coursing through me. She burns, but it feels good!’ Again he coughed, producing another trail of blood from his nose.
Ella reached into her pocket taking out a handkerchief to wipe it away. But as she reached out to him, he took it from her.
‘You’re stronger already,’ she said.
After wiping himself clean, he discarded the handkerchief to the floor. ‘How much have I taken so far?’
Ella looked at the almost empty bag. ‘I was just about to put the second bag up.’
‘Only had half a litre?’
‘Yes, are you surprised?’
‘Where did you find her, Ella? She’s from the Collective. I feel that in her.’
Ella took a deep breath then sat in the chair by the bed, lying wasn’t something she was any good at, nor was she comfortable with it. And it was something she’d never done since complaining of a sore elbow when they’d first met. But if her secret was going to remain a secret, she would have to lie now, and sound very convincing.
‘Do you recall Alexander McCauley, and his wife Susan?’ she asked, but didn’t wait for a response before continuing. ‘If you remember, they were amongst the first to be struck down.’
Martins blinked a number of times before answering her. ‘Yes, I remember them.’
Ella continued. ‘In 1928, Susan gave birth to a daughter, she named her Anna. When Anna turned fifteen-’
Martins shook his head. ‘No, no, no,’ he said, thumping a clenched fist onto his bed. ‘Enough of this nonsense. What do you take me for, Ella, some kind of fool? Now tell me the truth. Who the hell is she?’ although still broken, his voice resounded with the air of authority.
That was the first time Martins had ever raised his voice to Ella, and she didn’t much care for it. Frowning, she began to tell him, in a stern voice of her own, the whole truth. ‘Her name is Marianna, Marianna Brontrose. Her mother is Celia Brontrose, or to give her her birthname … Alice Robertson.’
Martins lay silent, she could see him recollecting the past, piecing it together. ‘That’s impossible; Alice Robertson was killed in a fire along with two others, over seventy years ago.’
‘No she wasn’t, I helped her escape. The remains you found in her bed the following day were those of a taken one,’ Ella said, as she stood to change the drip bag.
‘Why would you even consider such an idiotic act? You know once they’ve been turned there can be no life for them outside Martinsville.’
Ella retrieved a bag from the refrigerator attaching it to the tube entering Martins’ arm. ‘Alice was not turned. I told you I’d done it so you wouldn’t. But it made no difference; she had always been one of us.’
‘Nonsense, how can that be?’
‘You really have no idea do you?’
‘You’re speaking in riddles, Ella. How can you possibly expect me to understand what it is you’re saying?’
‘Okay, Thomas … you want the hard truth! Well here it is. Alice was our daughter. The name Robertson I plucked from the air when you said you didn’t want to know of the twins placement within the Collective, so I made sure you never found out. She already had our genes, our unfortunate genes. So, like I said, she was doomed from the day of conception, as was her brother Harold. But because of your ways, Harold was injected long before I could save him from it.
‘I knew it would eventually turn him evil, just like the other children who were born here and turned all those years ago. I wasn’t going to let that happen to Alice, and then you raped her. Another thing I was unable stop from happening. The eventual product of that rape is lying behind this curtain.’ Ella dragged the curtain from its rail leaving only a little still hanging there. ‘Giving you life. She’s our … no; she’s my granddaughter, your daughter.’
‘Do I hear hatred in your voice, Ella? Is that hatred because I harmed someone I knew nothing about? Do you think I would have done those things to them had you told me who they were?’
‘I doubt that would have made a difference, Thomas, do you not remember what you did to their unborn brothers and sisters.’
Martins’ heart monitor increased. ‘That was their purpose, their one and only purpose.’ Again blood oozed from his nose, this time entering his mouth and staining his tongue a shade of purple-black.
Ella didn’t bother to assist him this time. ‘You’re correct, Thomas, there’s hatred in my voice all right, deep hatred, but not for you, nor is it for your Collective. This hatred is for me alone, because I was blind enough to stand by and watch, blind enough to allow it all to happen.’ Ella stood, taking off the gloves she tossed them on the bed. ‘By the time this second bag has drained, you should be strong enough to change it yourself!’
‘What? Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to release Marianna, you have what you need.’
The heart monitor increased again as he attempted to get up. ‘Don’t do this, Ella. I need her; she’s my only chance.’
‘No, Thomas, it’s over. Take what you have, and be thankful. Be thankful I don’t rip it from your arm.’
Throwing aside what was left of the misted plastic curtain, Ella began to unbuckle the restraints holding Marianna to the gurney. She picked up the clothes she’d removed and cradled her like a child as she carried her from the chamber.
She listened to Martins continually protesting as she opened the steel door to the basement, and once it closed behind her, his pleas were finally silenced. Ella stopped just outside after hearing the door lock itself, she looked down at his only means of escape; she then lifted a hefty boot, stamping on the electronic key-pad half a dozen times until it produced sparks. Along the seam of the hatch, trails of blue smoke rose into the air, indicating the inner controls had also fused.
Ella carried Marianna up to her private room and placed her on the bed. She put her clothes on a nearby wooden chair before covering her with the sheets. On the opposite side of the bed was a well worn armchair, breathing a weighted sigh, Ella sat in.
There she would wait for Marianna to wake up, and then release her.
