The Reviver (3 page)

It was not simply the brain being woken – severe head injuries made revival more difficult, yes, but not impossible, and the subjects were lucid, the damage to the brain irrelevant once revival was achieved.

There seemed to be no electrical activity at all, either in the brain or in the muscles that moved the lungs and vocal cords. However, the source of the movement could not be identified.

By the end of its first year Baseline had a stable of twelve revivers, and became focused more on the details of successful revival – how to make success more likely, how to extend its length – and less on what revival itself
was.

What hostility remained gradually coalesced into a protest group called the Afterlifers, well funded from an uneasy collaboration of disparate religious interests who saw revival as desecration, an unacceptable disturbance of the dead. But loud as they were, they found their calls for a moratorium ignored. Direct action from more extreme members brought public disapproval. Their message of outright objection to revival took a backseat, replaced by more successful calls for greater control, rights for the dead, and a system ensuring revivers were licensed.

For many, Baseline was a failure. Even with its count of revivers increasing, with over one hundred revivers out of a worldwide tally of almost three hundred, it would get no closer to the mystery of where revival came from; find no smoking gun for anyone’s preferred God.

Baseline would continue for another five years before being disbanded, public funding drying up as the certainty of discovery faded, transforming into an expectation that the truth would always be elusive. Many lines of research were discarded; some of the companies who had contributed brought teams back to their own facilities to continue, but it was the potential for profit in the burgeoning fields of both private and forensic revival that guided their work now, not the search for meaning.

For Daniel, with financial security beyond anything he’d expected, it was a new beginning. He and Robin bought a perfect home; he began to write fiction again, insisting on a pseudonym for his crime novels to see if they had wings of their own. Later, as forensic revival became accepted, he started the Revival Casebook series under his own name, case histories from real revivals with sensationalism kept to a minimum. He even took an executive producer role on the inevitable TV series until they started to take too many liberties with the truth.

He was busy. He was happy. For a time.

*   *   *

He heard a sound from the hall – a man calling his name from the front door, and another burst of knocking.
For Christ’s sake, leave a card and go,
he thought, sitting back down at the kitchen table. Then he cursed again, annoyed with himself and his annual withdrawal from the world, his difficulty in breaking it.

Hanging on the wall to his left were two framed photographs. The larger of the two showed him and Robin, with a fifteen-year-old Annabel, on Myrtle Beach. He thought back to the camera, balanced precariously on a rock, himself running back to his family before the timer counted down. The image was his favourite of all their family pictures. Informal, a warm, natural smile on all three faces; taken two years after Preston’s discovery, as his second crime novel was released and well reviewed.

Ten years ago, probably the happiest time of his life. Four years before Robin died.

He thought of the first time they met. He thought of her smile, the first thing he’d seen of her; of her accent, a soft English forged from a childhood first in Yorkshire in the north of England, and then Sussex in the south. It was an accent she would never lose.

‘You came to America to do English. What the hell for?’ he asked her. She was taking an English degree, but she’d chosen to come halfway around the world to do it. He hadn’t meant to be cruel, but her face had fallen.

He’d sworn to himself to do what he could to make that smile return.

They married three years later, and it was good. Even with the financial pressures, and Daniel’s frustration at his underwhelming career. Neither of them had close family; both were only children, with no surviving parents. It intensified what they meant to each other. When Annabel was born, despite money becoming even tighter, Daniel felt blessed. He also felt anxious, waiting for the bad luck that he seemed to have evaded since meeting his wife to finally track him down. When at last the money came, he thought his life was perfect.

*   *   *

Then one April, out of nowhere, Robin collapsed at work. She was dead by the time Daniel had reached the hospital. A brain hemorrhage.

His heart had been torn out, and he had not recovered. She had been part of his core, part of what made him who he was, and she was gone. Now six years had passed, and his grief for Robin was as sharp-edged and barbed as it had been on the day of her death.

Annabel had kept him alive. She was in her first year at university in England, and had returned immediately to find her father destroyed, barely able to talk. Robin had always planned for a private revival in the event of her death, but when the time came it proved too difficult for Daniel. He stayed away and left Annabel to attend alone. It was not something he ever expected Annabel to forgive him for, just as he would never forgive himself. Self-hatred swamped him over the following weeks; trapped in his despair, withdrawing from his life, from his own
daughter.

Robin had been stronger than him, always, and Annabel had her mother’s strength. Even though he was angry and uncommunicative, Annabel stayed with him for five months, putting her university studies on hold. When he eventually emerged from his despair, their relationship had changed; but damaged as it was, Annabel had not allowed it to wither, even as the pattern repeated.

For Annabel, April would always be her mother’s death, but it was also the time her father grew dark and distant. He knew his behaviour made it so much worse for her, but every year – every April – Daniel found himself plummeting, whatever he tried to do to distract himself. Unable to work, drinking heavily, alienating his daughter once again. And yet, always coming back.

She would be home soon. It was time, Daniel told himself, to once more call an end to the grieving. It was time to live up to Robin’s memory, rather than collapse under the weight of loss.

It was a realization that came every year, but it was always hard-won. It marked the rebirth of his own life. Annabel – his little Annie – would be here soon enough, and he would smile and laugh with her, and repair what they had, and be happy again.

There was another knock at the door. He glanced at his watch. Whoever it was had been trying for ten minutes now, while he’d been ignoring them. Hiding from them, as he’d hidden from life for the past few months. Enough hiding, he thought, and stood.

Resolved to face the world, Daniel Harker walked to his front door and opened it. His body would be found twenty-five days later.

3

The Central East Coast office of the Forensic Revival Service was in an unremarkable three-storey building in the south of Richmond, Virginia, that was easy to overlook. Passers-by would come and go without glancing at it, or the muted nameplate for ‘FRS (CEC)’ on the wall by the door.

However, those who lived in the area, and those who worked in the other buildings in the same industrial estate, knew well what it was. Deep unease had accompanied its arrival. Protests from Afterlifer groups had focused on the building for the first year, until the Forensic Revival Service grew, and larger, higher profile offices opened across the country. Now, seven years later, it was regarded with a degree of pride.

It was a bright Monday morning, just past eight-fifteen; another hot day looming. Jonah Miller swiped his pass at the main entrance and walked through the empty reception area, up one flight of stairs and into the open-plan office. On a typical day there would be thirty revivers and twenty-two support staff, but this early there were only a handful of people. He headed to his desk, smiling as best he could at those who said hi.

He’d woken at six, restless and disjointed, and had set off for work intending to use the time to make a dent in the paperwork that had been building for weeks. But he was tired. Another bad night of fractured nightmares had left him with a head that felt full of gravel and dust.

He stared out the window beside his desk and his eyes drifted up to the clouds. He watched them and let his thoughts wander. Watching the clouds had always been his respite from the world, losing himself in a gentle, changing sight that had nothing to do with
people.
To look down, and watch those scurrying from place to place, would bring unwelcome thoughts into his head – thoughts of who these people were and what lay ahead of them. And in the end, it was death, sure as anything.

He smiled at his morbidity, but given his line of work it was hard not to think it. Most of the subjects he revived had been in the middle of just another day, when death stole up on them and pounced. The people heading into the bakery on the corner to collect their lunches; the cars nudging along in the heat of morning congestion. For every one of them, the day would come. Who would grieve them? A mother? A father? A wife? A child?

And from
that,
to this: Who would grieve for him? His friends would mourn, but true grief – the complete desolation he had both witnessed and experienced – needed family, and he had no family now. He hadn’t even spoken to his stepfather in eight years.

He shook the thoughts from his head, wanting them gone.

Alice Decker’s revival had left him with this exhaustion. Five days later, and he was still struggling to deal with it.

He’d been told it was all in his mind, but however much he tried, he couldn’t dismiss it as such. It had struck deep, leaving behind an irrational fear and a feeling of being watched.

This paranoia was feeding into his dreams. The nightmares had been overwhelming. Alice Decker had stood in his living room, her face without skin, talking to him. The words had been gibberish, and
God,
he’d been scared. He’d woken to the dawn, certain he’d been in that dream for days.

Since then, every night but one had been disturbed by Decker’s cackling face. The one night she didn’t make an appearance he had dreamed of his mother’s death. He had woken to darkness and tears, unable to go back to sleep.

*   *   *

The Decker revival had been made worse by the fact that nobody had been around – nobody he wanted to confide in, at least.

He had fled the scene without a word to the supervising officers, or even to J. J. Metah, the attending FRS technician. Only the cop on guard by the entrance to the floor of Alice Decker’s office saw him leave, pale and hurried.

The next day had been Thursday. Jonah had spoken to J. J., expecting that some physical sign of the event must have been recorded.

‘Did you see anything after the recording stopped, J. J.?’ he asked, keeping it as casual as he could while his heart pounded loudly in his ear.

‘No,’ J. J. told him. ‘The live feed was off. I was busy getting the footage ready for handover. What happened? You’d already gone when I came out.’

‘I … just got a little dizzy,’ he said, forcing a smile. ‘Needed some air.’

He had really wanted to talk to Never Geary first, but Never had been at a conference in Vancouver, and was due back at work on Tuesday.

Jonah had called him by afternoon, even though he’d tried hard to resist, not wanting his friend to worry. But Never’s familiar Northern Irish accent had been good to hear.

Jonah filled him in.

‘They’ll tell you it’s overwork,’ Never replied. There was a buzz in the background that Jonah assumed was conference-hall murmurs, until he heard the clink of glass nearby.

‘Are you in a bar, Never?’ Silence for a moment, but Jonah could swear he
heard
Never’s grin.

‘Might be. All finished for the day, I’m catching up with a few people. And don’t change the subject. It
was
overwork. You know it was.’

Jonah hesitated, wanting to agree, to try to forget it, but he had too many doubts not to share them. ‘That’s the thing. I
don’t
know.’

‘What the hell else
could
it have been?’

Jonah knew the question had been meant rhetorically, but it still made him pause. ‘I talk to the
dead
for a living, Never. There’s plenty we don’t know.’

‘Talk it over with Jennifer.’ Jennifer Early was the FRS counsellor. She was a busy woman.

‘I don’t want to make a big deal about it.’

‘Talk it over with her, Jonah. Promise me.’

Jonah had promised.

*   *   *

By nine o’clock the office was busy, readying for the day ahead. As it was Monday, those who had worked over the weekend were passing on the details of the revivals that had taken place. Jonah listened with half an ear, but Sam Deering’s morning meeting at nine-thirty would bring him up to speed if there was anything worth hearing. In the meantime, he was managing to concentrate enough on paperwork to make actual progress. Gossip could wait.

‘Morning, Jonah.’ Jonah looked up to see Sam smiling at him. When they had first met, almost twelve years before, Jonah had been a frightened boy of fourteen. Eleanor Preston had still been a novelty at the time, known to the world for less than six months. Sam had been fifty-two, looking much younger and with the energy to match. The energy was still there, but the years had finally caught up with his hairline.

Jonah smiled back. ‘Hey, Sam.’

‘How are you?’ Sam’s eyes were serious and concerned. It was a pointed question, not a nicety. After speaking to Never by phone, Jonah had finally gone to Sam and told him what had happened. Sam had sent him to the counsellor at once, but Jonah could see the disappointment, and he knew why it was there. They’d known each other a long time, ever since Jonah’s mother had died and he’d stumbled into his revival ability in appalling circumstances. Sam and Jonah were close, yet it had taken twenty-four hours and a push from Never before Jonah had gone to him.