Free Furnace 5 - Execution by Alexander Gordon Smith Page B

There’s enough of a paper trail to link the Furnace estate with funds deposited in Kazán family accounts around the world. But apparently the actual company records are so messed up and complicated that they don’t think they’ll ever know for sure. In short, they’ve no idea who they’re looking for; the only thing they’re sure of is that it’s not Alfred Furnace – I mean Kazán – the original one. Ironic, don’t you think?’
    There was a moment of quiet while I tried to digest what I’d heard.
    ‘They managed to find all that out in a few hours?’ I asked. ‘That’s pretty good going.’
    Zee glanced up at the window again, then over his shoulder at the camera, all the time chewing on something.
    ‘What?’ I asked.
    ‘It’s not been a few hours, Alex,’ he said. ‘You’ve been drifting in and out for four days now.’
    ‘Four days?’ I said. ‘How’s that possible?’
    ‘They’ve drained you of almost all the nectar. It’s part of their plan to try and find out what this stuff is, and how your body copes without it. You’ve only got a trickle left in you.’ He pointed to the side of a room, to an IV bag filled with crimson liquid. ‘Plus plenty of that.’
    ‘Blood?’
    ‘Yeah. They’re seeing what happens when you replace the nectar with normal blood.’
    ‘It’ll kill me,’ I said. I didn’t know that for sure but Ifelt it. My body was used to the nectar, putting blood in my veins would be like putting water in a car’s petrol tank. Eventually the engine would just splutter and die.
    ‘I know,’ Zee said, nodding slowly. His voice lowered to a whisper again. ‘They’ve already killed off dozens of rats, berserkers too, by doing the same thing. They’re butchers in here, and that Panettierre is the worst of them. They’ve dissected them, boiled them, burned them alive, shot them full of acid, hacked off their limbs. I’ve seen it, Alex. They made me watch because I was in the prison, because I saw for myself what the warden was doing.’
    He shot a look back at the camera, then turned his sad, tired eyes to me.
    ‘But it won’t be long before they try and cut me to pieces too. I made the mistake of telling them I was immune to the nectar.’ I remembered, back in the tunnels beneath the prison, the warden had been about to throw Zee in the incinerator because his system didn’t respond to the nectar. ‘You should have seen their eyes light up, like it was Christmas. They told me I was safe, because I was human, but I know bull when I hear it.’
    He swore, crashing back on his chair, staring at the wall.
    ‘They’ve got Simon, too,’ he said softly. ‘He’s in the same ward as me, in a cell. They don’t call it a cell, they call it our quarters, but they keep the doors locked. Panettierre’s keeping him alive for the same reason she’s keeping you alive, because he can talk and everything,because he’s still, y’ know, human. But he’s on her list, I’ve seen it.’
    ‘List?’ I asked, trying to put a face to the name Simon, pulling vague strands of memory loose from the confusion in my head – a boy with silver eyes and one overgrown arm, a boy who saved my life back in the tower, when I was fighting the warden. Zee nodded.
    ‘Yeah, they’ve got this list of test subjects, mainly rats and berserkers, but you’re on it too, and Simon. You’re both marked as expendable. They don’t care if they kill you.’
    ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ I muttered.
    ‘Okay,’ Zee said, leaning forward again. ‘I bet you don’t know why they’re trying to harness the power of the nectar.’
    ‘So they can stop Furnace,’ I replied. ‘So they can find a cure, save the world.’
    ‘After everything we’ve been through, everything we’ve seen, you honestly think that’s why?’
    I frowned, shrugging imperceptibly beneath my restraints. The ache in my head was growing. There was a clatter from outside, the door squeaking as it opened to admit two