SFSD X

Tabula Rasa (5.6)

Bill Cartwright made his way silently down to the ground floor without meeting anyone and slipped outside and over the wall without raising an alarm. Locating his pack with the help of his Q-designed watch, Cartwright took out the tiny short wave radio and set it to broadcast his information in short bursts, guaranteed to be undetectable to those who didn't have the appropriate receiver.

He looked around while the radio did its work. He knew there were no trees or indeed any substantial cover for hundreds of kilometres. The nights were long at this time of the year, but even so, he would stand out like a crow on a blanket if he was still here when the sun came up. The original plan had been to signal for pickup immediately after completing the mission but that had changed when he found Bond, still alive. He hoped.

He would be better off returning to the building and concealing himself in one of the cellars until he was ready to rescue Bond. Cartwright thought he was far less likely to be found there, than here outside in the open snow even if he covered himself with the parachute. Always providing he could find where he'd stashed it.

Broadcast completed, he returned the radio to the pack and buried it in the snow once more. Then he went back to the building.

~~~

Rosa stretched luxuriously. She'd been right. She'd learnt a hell of a lot from Richard. He was in the shower now, but she checked the time, they still had thirty minutes before their scheduled departure. Maybe she could learn a bit more.

Rosa slipped into the shower behind him. She took the soap in one hand and began to slide it over his wet body, tracing the strong muscles of his back. "I like my men naked," she whispered. "No concealed weapons."

He twisted round to face her, their bodies touching as the hot water streamed over both of them. "I don't know about that. Perhaps you'd better search me again." He grinned.

~~~

Cartwright slipped back inside the Clinic and unlocked the door to the basement. The light from his watch showed concrete steps leading down to an open room which was being used as a workshop. Tools and spare parts lined the shelved walls and a snowmobile lay partially dismantled near a workbench. A corridor extended from the rear of the room. Quickly, he made his way through the workshop, there was nowhere to hide there. Several doors lined the corridor, and he opened each one to scan the contents. None of the doors was locked, merely closed. Dry goods filled one room, canned food, flour, rice—staples for the long haul. He thought that room gave him the best chance of remaining hidden until nightfall. As a matter of course, he looked into the remaining rooms. Cleaning products and stacks of toilet paper half filled the next room and the adjoining refrigeration unit contained perishables as expected.

The last room was padlocked.

He never knew what prompted him to pick the padlock and open the last room. Thoroughness or simple curiosity, but whatever it was, he was instantly sorry.

The room was a morgue. Carved up corpses in the corner, odd shaped arms and legs stacked against the wall. But worst of all were the torsos, with neither head nor limbs, nor sexual organs. What the fuck was going on here? Was this the laboratory of some sort of psychotic coroner?

It took him several gagging minutes to understand that these must be the failures from the experiments upstairs. Unsuccessful clones. Bits of bodies. He wondered whether any of them had been alive.

He only just stopped himself from throwing up, right where he stood.

He felt cold to the bone. It wasn't just him though, he realised. The whole room was being kept chilled to prevent decomposition. At this time of the year, the ground would be frozen solid, so they couldn't bury the pieces until summer.

He backed out slowly and relocked the padlock with shaking fingers. Still dazed with horror, he found a spot at the back of the dry goods room behind the shelves and sat down. With those ghastly images in his head, he didn't think he'd have any trouble staying awake.

(To be continued - one more chapter to come!)