Coldbrook(21)

Though treatment of her condition had varied with everyone she had consulted, at least three doctors had agreed upon a name: churu. One of them told her he had never seen a case, and that when he researched it he found only sixteen recorded cases. He said he was surprised it even had a name. It was a condition of the brain and nervous system. No one knew where it originated, or why it happened. Of the previous sixteen cases, the oldest to die had been a man in Argentina – at the ripe old age of twenty-six.

‘I’m going to rip your f*cking head off!’ she growled as Tommy ground his thumbs around the tops of her knees. She had never loved him so much.

Tommy, grim-faced as ever at the pain he caused, worked on while Jayne lived through it. It usually took half an hour before she could sit up on her own, but this morning she felt stiffer than usual, and even flexing her arms and turning her head sent bolts of pain through her body. The sun would be up and the streets outside buzzing before she felt even half-human.

After her knees, he moved on to her hips, grinning as he pulled up her nightshirt.

‘Helpless before me,’ he cackled, running his hands up her inner thighs.

Jayne kneed him in the side, grimacing at the flaring pain but finding his gasp worth it. ‘Later, slave,’ she said, ‘if you perform your duties well.’ She settled again, hips on fire, legs now merely simmering after Tommy’s ministrations, but she could never feel angry at him. Not after what he had done. He was a young guy devoted to a young woman in an old woman’s body, a woman who could sometimes barely walk, who could well be dead in the next few years. Every morning she woke up and wished for death, and Tommy was there to save her life.

‘Thought we could go down to the park later,’ he said, working his thumbs across her hip bones as his fingers pressed beneath. ‘Picnic, couple of books, bottle of wine.’

‘Feeling all horny now you’ve spent half an hour touching me up?’

‘Always horny,’ Tommy said.

Jayne frowned as he worked harder around her hips, but as his hands moved on the pain was lessening to a background glow, and movement returned. It was as if he brought her back to the world every morning, and sometimes she laughed at people’s perception of their relationship. Everyone saw Jayne as the strong one – the sufferer, the fighter – but Tommy was the rock to which she clung.

‘Park sounds good,’ she said.

He sat back on his haunches and she saw the beads of sweat on his brow. He swept his long hair back from his face, blinking faster, and she knew he wanted to get finished.

‘I’ll do my shoulders,’ she said.

‘Sure?’ He pretended to be hurt, but she could read him so well. He never complained, but that didn’t mean that he enjoyed this morning ritual. She could hardly blame him. And she saw, and understood the need. He was her addiction.

‘Sure.’ She reached up with her left hand and started massaging her right shoulder, biting back a gasp at the pain it caused her. No one could tell her why the churu affected muscles around joints more than anywhere else. One of the more honest consultants had said that it was such a rare disease. Certainly no one really knew much about it, and no one was willing to spend the money to research it. He’d finished with, If what you’re doing works for you, keep doing it.

Well, f*ck them.

‘Okay,’ Tommy said, standing beside the bed, stretching, watching her, when all he really wanted right then was to go out into the small kitchen. ‘Well, I’ll have a smoke, then.’

‘Okay. Thanks, babe.’

‘Don’t call me babe.’ He delivered the familiar line with the usual sternness, then breezed through to their kitchen. Moments later Jayne heard the scratch of a match and Tommy’s satisfied sigh, and soon after that the first whiff of pot hit her. He’s started rolling them ready the night before and he’ll have two before we leave the apartment, she thought. But she couldn’t judge him. It was only pot.

She worked at her shoulders, left and right, and soon she would be able to rise, shower and dress. Sunday was her favourite day.





2


It was vital that Jonah should alert the surface about what was happening. He was berating himself for not having done so sooner. Those afflicted – or infected, which was how he was viewing them now – were secure down here with Coldbrook closed down, but the news must be broken.

The project’s influence spread across the globe. Two thick tentacles reached out to the US and UK governments, their funding for Coldbrook hidden away through complex paths of finance and banking, two-decade-old signatures on yellowing sheets of paper in files in locked storerooms, and his call would reach those countries’ security agencies in a matter of minutes. And then there were links that were less substantial finance-wise though perhaps stronger in their commitment. These led to private individuals and organisations, ranging from billionaire entrepreneurs who gifted their money to fund their appetite for amazing things to oil barons and shareholding companies with high-risk portfolios, their real object hidden from bond holders by an almost insanely intricate web of investments.

Jonah’s call would cause a huge splash, and that splash would make waves. By the time he hung up, people across the world would be woken, called out of meetings or interrupted on their yachting holidays to be told that Coldbrook’s recent astounding success had been followed by catastrophic failure. Jonah knew of the safeguards in place down here because he had insisted on many of them himself. But he had no idea what measures had been set up beyond these walls and a thousand miles away. His call might piss off investors or start an avalanche of military intervention, and he would have influence over neither outcome.