Chapter 308: The Professor’s Camp.
The boot came up and the noise hit us like weather.
Men shouting in unison somewhere close, the specific rhythm of people being drilled, hundreds of voices going up together with no thought at all for what might be listening. The sound was thick, organised, continuous—boots on concrete, metal striking metal, the raw volume of a place that had stopped caring who heard it.
This was it. This was the sound we’d been hearing roll down the capital all evening, and we’d been driven straight into the middle of it. The air that came in with the open boot carried dust and the sharp edge of something burning somewhere not far enough away.
The tattooed boy stood over us with two others behind him, and the knives in their hands caught the light. Short blades, the kind you keep close. The street light behind them threw their shadows across the four of us still packed into the metal.
Trapper fought to get himself upright the moment he saw the face. The motion was pure fury, no coordination, his bound shoulders slamming against the wheel arch as he tried to rise.
"You absolute piece of shit." His voice came out thick through the broken nose. Blood still ran dark along the side of his mouth. "I caught you three people. Three. And this is how you fucking pay me."
"Target was four." The boy said it without any heat at all. The ink on his neck shifted as he shrugged. "Professor wanted four for the hour and you brought me three. You didn’t leave me a lot of room."
"Fuck you." Trapper’s whole body was straining against the rope. The veins in his neck stood out. "Pray to whatever you believe in that I never get my hands loose."
"Calm down, bro. You’ll understand it when you’ve been here a day."
"Just take us out." Linn’s voice had lost its edge for the first time all night. The words came out thinner, almost pleading. "Please. Just get me out of this fucking boot."
Then the three who’d run off came back around the side of the car, laughing at each other. The sound was loud and unguarded, the laughter of people who had just escaped something and still couldn’t believe it.
"I was fully expecting a kaboom," the tattooed boy called to them. The stake in his belt caught the light as he turned.
"We had time, man. We had time."
"J pissed himself."
"Who wouldn’t?" One of them shoved the other. The motion was easy, almost affectionate. "We were two minutes off going up with these stupid things on our ankles. Two minutes. You’d have pissed yourself in the car."
They all went at that, doubled over, four tied people at their feet forgotten entirely. The laughter rolled across the yard and mixed with the deeper chanting coming from inside the building. For a few seconds the two sounds competed and neither won.
"Was that the last hour?" the tattooed boy asked, wiping his eyes.
"Think so. Professor’s got his numbers. Word is we start preparing tonight."
The boy turned and looked down at us and smiled. The expression was wide and completely without warmth.
"You lucky bastards."
I lay there and couldn’t make the sound of this place fit with anything I knew.
Hundreds of men chanting in the open. Vehicles coming and going—the low growl of engines, the slam of doors. Boys laughing in a yard at full volume with the streets full of infected in every direction. The air should have been thick with the wet, empty sound of them by now. It wasn’t.
Nothing has come here. Not one of them.
Out on the plain that noise would have brought everything within two miles inside twenty minutes.
So either something is keeping them off this place, or they’re not coming because they’re being held somewhere else. And nothing holds them. Nothing has ever held them.
Unless something is thinking for them now.
I didn’t like where that went. The thought sat cold under my ribs and stayed there.
"Pull them out," the boy said.
They started hauling us over the lip of the boot one at a time. Hands under armpits. The scrape of bound wrists against metal. My feet found the ground and the sudden solidness of it sent a dull jolt up through my knees. The yard was packed dirt and old concrete, lit by a scatter of working lights that threw hard shadows in every direction.
"You lot are genuinely lucky," he went on while my feet found the ground. The knife in his hand hung loose at his side. "You don’t have to buy your way out at the Professor’s camp. Imagine running these streets with a bracelet on your ankle that blows your leg off in an hour unless you bring back a body to replace yourself."
"They don’t understand shit," one of the others said, setting Venna down on her feet. Her hair fell across her face. She didn’t shake it away.
"Don’t touch my—" Linn came out swinging her shoulders. The motion was pure residual fury. "Get your hands off me, you creep."
The four of us stood in the yard with our hands tied behind us. The rope bit into my wrists. The night air was cooler out here, carrying the dust of the place and the continuous low roar of the voices inside.
I got my first proper look at the place.
A facility. Big, old, industrial, the kind of building that had made something once and stopped. Brick the colour of dried blood under the working lights. Dead windows three floors up, some of them broken, the glass teeth still catching the light. A loading entrance wide enough to drive through, the roller door raised and left that way. And voices coming out of it. A lot of them.
"Walk," they said.
We walked.
Trapper went first, jaw set, saying nothing at all now, which worried me more than the shouting had. The silence on him was denser than the threats.
Venna came beside me, our shoulders brushing every few steps, on purpose—the small, continuous contact of someone making sure the other was still there.
Linn brought up the rear complaining continuously about everything, and not one part of her seemed interested in hiding it. The words came out in a steady, furious stream that the crew ignored completely.
The crew came behind us. Boots on dirt. The soft metallic shift of knives and whatever else they carried.
We reached the doorway and went through into a hallway, and the noise resolved as we walked. Men talking over each other. Metal being dragged across concrete. Somebody counting something out loud in a flat, continuous rhythm. The air inside was warmer, thicker, carrying the smell of too many bodies in too little space and the sharp edge of machine oil that had never quite left the walls.
And a woman’s voice in the middle of it, going at them, giving as good as she got in the banter. The sound of it cut through the rest with a particular familiarity—cadence, pitch, the way the words landed like she’d already decided the argument was hers.
I knew that voice.
I knew it immediately.