CATCH YOUR DEATH.

MARK EDWARDS & LOUISE VOSS.

PROLOGUE.

1990.

The world was on fire.

Or maybe she wasn't in the world any more. Maybe this was h.e.l.l. The heat, the taste of sulphur on her tongue, the sickness, the torment. Screams rang through the air, relentless, monotonous, a one-pitch yell of despair. She opened her eyes and saw a figure stooping over her; a hovering devil, with flaming red hair. She tried to shout but all that came out was a rasping noise, and the devil's face was close, the brimstone smell of his breath in her nostrils.

'Kate. Kate, get up. Come on.'

She stared, blinked. Slowly, a face came into focus. Not a devil, but Sarah, her red-headed room-mate.

Sarah pushed aside the thin sheet that covered Kate's body and took her by the hands, pulling her up. Kate's pyjamas were damp and cold, but her skin was desert-hot. Her fever was nearing 105 degrees. Sarah was in a similar state, but she'd been lying on top of her sheets, too ill to sleep.

Kate's bare feet touched the floor. It hurt. Everything hurt. Her body was a bruise, tender to the touch.

'Come on.'

Kate could still hear the screaming, and put her hands to her ears to block it out. Her eyes fixed on the curtains. At sometime during the night, as she drifted in and out of feverish dreams, she had seen little men with malevolent eyes swinging on those curtains. Sarah opened the door and, holding each other up, they stepped into the corridor. Kate had a vague idea that she was supposed to be angry with Sarah but she couldn't remember why.

At the same time that Kate and Sarah left their room, another couple of young women emerged from the next room. Denise and Fiona, the Glaswegian girls they weren't allowed to be in contact with, but had communicated with, talking and giggling like boarding school girls through the walls, figuring out ingenious ways to pa.s.s notes out of the windows, attached to the end of a cane Sarah had found in the Centre's gardens.

'Is it real?' Fiona asked. Her voice was thick, her nose bunged up. Kate thought she was speaking a foreign language. Or maybe the language of Satan. What if these were all devils, taking her to be tortured, dragging her into h.e.l.l? She panicked and tried to pull away.

Denise caught her and she nearly fell, but the Scottish girl managed to stop her from crashing to the floor.

'It can't be a drill,' Fiona said, answering her own question.

'Let's just get out of here,' said Denise, leading the way.

She gripped Sarah by one hand and Kate, who kept pulling back, looking around her with wild eyes, by the other. Where was everyone else? Were they the last people left in the building?

'We're going to die,' Kate said. 'We're going to die.'

Denise shushed her. 'No. We're not. The exit's just around this corner. Come on, Kate. We're nearly there.'

They turned the corner and came face to face with a wall of thick smoke.

'Oh G.o.d!'

Kate emitted a small yelp of fear and struggled, but Denise held tight. 'Calm down.'

They were all sweating now, as the corridors filled with heat, and the smoke p.r.i.c.ked their eyes, bringing forth the tears. Four young women in their pyjamas, holding on to one another, paralysed by the most primitive fear of all.

'We'll have to go back,' Denise said.

They turned round and ran even the sickly Kate and Sarah, with Denise and Fiona holding their hands. They heard a crack and a crash in the distance and suddenly the smoke was filling the whole corridor, rushing up behind them, chasing and overtaking them. It caught them and like drowning swimmers they panicked and gulped in lungfuls of the stuff, acrid and bitter and lethal. Coughs racked their bodies.

Sarah fell to her knees. Fiona stopped and tried to pull her back up. Denise let go of Kate so she could help, and as they struggled to get Sarah to her feet, Kate peered ahead. They were engulfed now, the smoke filling the whole corridor, and her eyes streamed as she tried to make sense of what she could see.

There were figures coming at them through the smoke. The devils. Come to claim her. The screaming continued.

One of the devils grabbed hold of her. She tried to fight but the devil was too strong. It lifted her and carried her deeper into the smoke. She kicked weakly. Each of her friends had been taken hold of too. She decided not to fight any more. She just wished she'd had a chance to say goodbye to Stephen.

Stephen's face was the last thing she pictured as she slipped into the welcoming darkness.

When she came to she was lying on the gra.s.s outside. She lifted her head and saw that Sarah was lying nearby. Kate tried to speak to her, but a moment later she pa.s.sed out again.

The next time she awoke, she found herself in the eye of a storm of chaos. Doctors and researchers ran around with their white coats flapping. A man in a red uniform, a fireman, stood nearby, drinking from a white cup. She could hear the seesawing wail of a police siren mixed with the piercing, steady scream of an alarm.

She rolled onto her side and coughed hard, spitting out black phlegm.

'Kate!' Denise appeared. 'Are you alright?' Her blonde hair was grey with soot, her cheeks and forehead smeared with it.

Kate sat up. Her chest hurt. Her head hurt. But she was alive. 'What happened?'

'Don't you remember?'

She concentrated. 'I remember...devils. A scene from h.e.l.l. I thought I was dead.'

'I thought we were going to die too. The Centre was on fire. It sounds like the whole building we were in has been burned out.'

For the first time, Kate looked properly at the scene before her. In the darkness, clouds of smoke still rose from the long thin building that she'd called home for the last week. Fire engines stood close by, the uniformed men lined up with hoses, sending ribbons of water into the fire to fight its rival element.

'We were lucky,' Denise said.

'Was anyone killed?'

'I don't know.'

'What about Fiona?'

'Fiona's just over there. I don't know where Sarah is though. They brought her out with us but I haven't seen her since.'

'She was here a minute ago. I came to and saw her. She waved at me. Then I pa.s.sed out again.'

'Maybe they've already taken her to hospital...' She trailed off. 'There were other girls in there, though. I haven't seen them bring anyone else out, but it's too chaotic to know what's going on.'

Kate pushed herself to her feet, her head spinning, her eyes blurring. She was so sick. What the h.e.l.l had they given her yesterday? This was no common cold.

'I'm going to check on Fiona and see if I can find Sarah,' Denise said, touching Kate's hand then disappearing into the chaos.

As Kate tried to steady herself, to stop the world rotating around her, a man in a white jacket came up to her. Kate squinted at him. He was tall and thin; kind of creepy. He reached up, uninvited, and laid a hand on her brow, making her cringe away. She knew she had a reason to be afraid of him, but in her delirium couldn't remember what it was.

'Kate. You shouldn't still be out here... you're too unwell.'

She ignored him. 'Do you know Stephen? Stephen Wilson? Have you seen him?'

He shook his head. 'Come on you really should rest. You've inhaled a lot of smoke. And you have a fever.' He looked around as if searching for someone to help. He muttered something under his breath. Something about somebody interfering?

She didn't hear any more because his words were drowned by her own coughing fit. Her throat felt like a raw wound.

The creepy man helped her sit down. He looked around again then said, 'Stay here, okay? Just stay here.'

Another coughing jag filled her eyes with tears, and when it pa.s.sed, he'd gone.

She needed to find Stephen. He'd told her he was staying late tonight. She'd been planning to meet him. He said he might have something to tell her. She stood up again, concentrating all of what was left of her energy into staying upright, and headed towards the building and the fire fighters. 'Stephen,' she tried to call, but her voice was too weak. She was dizzy and nauseous. She wanted to lie down, to sleep. But she desperately needed to find him just see him and make sure he was okay before she could rest. There was no reason, really, to think he could have come to harm. His office was in a separate wing of the Centre. But still, she wanted to be sure. She loved him. Of course she wanted to be sure.

In the distance, she could see figures close to the building, the darkness and smoke reducing them to silhouettes. It looked like a fireman helping another man out of the building, holding his arm around his shoulders to keep him upright. But then he let go, and the other man slumped to the ground.

It was Stephen. She'd have known his shape anywhere, the outline of hair sticking up at the front, the broad shoulders and long legs which had buckled and staggered like a baby giraffe's.

She tried to run, but her own legs were too weak, her lungs too clogged. Her bare feet slipped on the gra.s.s and she lurched forward. When she got to her feet, the scientist the same man who'd touched her forehead blocked her way.

'You have to rest,' he insisted.

'But Stephen,' she said, reaching out towards the building, and suddenly there was movement all around her, an ambulance speeding past, fire fighters running towards the Centre, and the scientist grabbing her arm and producing a needle which he stuck into her. A quick jab, and an even shorter struggle before haziness enveloped her. Once again, she pa.s.sed out.

The last thing she saw was the scientist frowning down at her, while behind him paramedics crouched on the gra.s.s beside Stephen, and one of them shook his head.

She never knew if she actually screamed, or just imagined herself screaming.

CHAPTER 1.

2006.

The woman lying on the bunk appeared to be dead, until she sneezed, the violent motion making her skinny body spasm. She opened bloodshot eyes and lifted an arm, trying to pull a tissue from the box on the bedside cabinet. But as she reached out, her body spasmed again and she knocked the box to the floor. Too weak to pick it up, she lay still, until a further series of sneezes rocked her body like gunshots.

There were two men watching the girl. One was in his early forties but appeared younger because of the lack of lines on his face. His skin was tanned from a recent holiday in Bangkok, and at first glance he was unusually handsome, like a model in a commercial for razors or fast cars. But anyone gazing at his face for more than a few seconds would notice something strange. He still looked like a model, but a model in a magazine or on a billboard, frozen in time, unanimated. Worst of all were his eyes, which were small and lifeless like a shark's. Secretly because no-one dared criticise him to his face he had been described as a robot and a mannequin.

His name was John Sampson.

The other man, whose name was Gaunt n.o.body ever heard him use his first name was taller and paler, with skin that spoke of months and years spent in artificially-lit places like this. He was so thin he appeared to be wasting away. When he was locked in the laboratory, he often forgot to eat. Food wasn't important. Nor was sleep. There was too much to do; too many exciting things to be discovered and tested. Nodding towards the woman on the bunk, he said, 'She arrived last night. We picked her up at Heathrow and brought her straight here.'

Sampson said, 'What is she? Chinese? Thai?'

She reminded him of a girl he'd met in Bangkok. He wondered idly if that girl's family were still looking for her or if they'd given up by now. If they even cared.

'Vietnamese, actually. Her name's Lien. Twenty-three years old, resident of Hanoi. Doesn't speak a single word of English oh, except "please". "Please, please, please." She said that quite a few times, before she lost the ability to speak. I wonder what promises they made to her at the other end? A new life in England: a good job, a flat, a washing machine and a colour TV...?'

Sampson peered at Lien through the one-way gla.s.s.

'What is it? Bird flu?' he asked.

Gaunt, who wore a doctor's white coat and spoke with an upper-middle cla.s.s English accent, took off his gla.s.ses and sucked on them. Finally, he said, 'No. This is something new.' He smiled. 'It's very impressive, actually. I have to hand it to our friends in Asia these days. Sars. Avian flu. Both very impressive. But this one's even better.'

'It's fatal?'

The doctor laughed. 'Oh yes. Infinitely more so than Avian flu.'

John Sampson looked at Lien again. She had tried, while they were talking, to pick up the gla.s.s of water that sat beside the tissue box, but she had knocked that over too. Water dribbled down the side of the cabinet and pooled on the floor.

'I'd like to talk to her.'

'I'm afraid that's not possible. She's extremely contagious. She'd just have to breathe in your direction and you'd catch it.'

'Shame.' Sampson would have liked to find out how the girl was feeling.

'Want to see exactly how contagious this is?'

Gaunt gestured for Sampson to follow him. They walked a little way down the harsh, bright corridor, beneath fluorescent strip lights that flickered occasionally, and stopped in front of another small room with one-way gla.s.s. A second woman, this one Caucasian, with bleached hair and dirty roots, sat on the edge of the bed. She looked miserable and confused. Not as far gone as Lien, but she had a red nose, pink eyes, and she held a box of tissues in her lap.

Sampson waited for the doctor to explain.

'She's a prost.i.tute. Serbian, picked up in Kings Cross and brought here last night. She was clean no viruses, no problems, remarkably healthy for a woman of her profession. Probably hasn't been on the streets long. How old do you think she is? About sixteen?'

Sampson nodded slowly. The girl was beautiful. He pictured himself holding her, sitting with her as she died. She would explain what her pain and suffering and fear felt like. He would stroke her dirty hair as she breathed her last breath.

Gaunt said, 'We put her in a room with Lien for twenty seconds. They didn't touch or even speak to one another. She started showing symptoms eight hours later. But she herself isn't contagious yet. You can talk to her if you want.'

Sampson raised his eyebrows.

The doctor drummed his fingers on the gla.s.s and the girl looked up. A gold chain, bearing a locket, hung around her neck. Beneath the sickness, she looked angry and defiant. Her mouth moved but they couldn't hear what she was saying. Maybe she was pleading. Or spitting words of fury. Whatever, her words were as futile as her hopes.

'This is the most remarkable thing about this virus,' the doctor said, ignoring the girl. 'It has a safe period. For fifteen hours, the carrier isn't contagious, even though they start to exhibit symptoms. My Asian contact told me they wanted to develop a virus that would be safe to work with for short periods. With this strain, the carrier can be safely transported to a far off place, just like Lien here. Could be useful in war. Like a time bomb. And it suits our aims perfectly.'

Sampson nodded, not taking his eyes off the young prost.i.tute. 'So the people who were on the plane with Lien will be fine.'

Gaunt continued talking. Something about how close they were to completing their plans. Sampson tuned him out and continued to watch the girl sniffling on the bunk. He was waiting for the doctor to shut up and open the door, so he could talk to her and find out the answers to his questions. After that, when she became contagious and he had to leave her, he would find out what job the doctor had for him.

Who would he want killed this time?