He was choking!

     Fluid covered his face, covered his whole body. There was a mask on his face and a tube going down his throat, making him gag, suffocating him! He reached a hand up to it, intending to pull it out, and his hand bumped against a hard surface above him.

     His eyes flew open in alarm. Everything was dark! He felt the hard surface above him, pushed upwards against it. It wouldn't budge. Wild panic threatened to overwhelm him. He'd been buried alive! Left to die at the bottom of a deep, forgotten grave...

     Suddenly there was light. Someone had opened a hatch above his face. Through it he could see fluorescent tubes in a high ceiling and a face looking down at him. A face he recognised.

     The top of the cabinet he was lying in opened like a coffin lid. He threw himself upwards and his head erupted from the fluid he was lying in, sending it spilling over the edge to splash on the tiled floor. He clawed at the mask covering his face.

     "It's okay!" said the other man. "It's okay. Take it easy. Here, let me help you."

     The other man reached around to the side of his head, where a strap held the mask in place. He undid the buckle. Then pulled the mask away, faster and less gently than he should have. The tube down his throat came with it.

     The man in the cabinet retched as he felt how the tube went all the way down to his stomach. Fluid ran down from the top of his head into his eyes and ears. It felt thick and syrupy. Some went into his mouth. It tasted salty.

     The last of the tube came out of his mouth and the other man threw it away. The man in the cabinet tried to sit up, coughing and spluttering, but there was no strength in his limbs. The other man reached down to help him.

     There were noises. Gunshots, by the sound of them, and the occasional loud explosion. It sounded like a battle taking place somewhere nearby. "Hurry, Sir," the other man said. "We have to be quick."

     With the other man's help the man in the cabinet rose to his feet, then stepped carefully out, wiping fluid away from his eyes. The floor was cold under his bare feet. Fluid ran down his bare body to puddle on the ceramic tiles. The cabinet was large and blocky, made of gleaming metal. Tubes went from it to a large, complicated looking machine standing beside it. The hypersleep apparatus, he remembered. Where he was supposed to remain until...

     "They've found a cure," he said, leaning against the cabinet for support.

     "Not yet, Sir. We have to go." The other man placed a dressing gown around his shoulders, then began pulling him towards a door. Somewhere nearby, the sound of gunshots continued. A man shouted. More gunshots and a man screamed.

     "What's going on? It's Wilson, isn't it?"

     "Yes, Mister Randall. They've found you, sir. Please, we have to be quick. There's a car waiting..."

     "Who's... Denby's men?"

     "Probably, or maybe Birrell's. You have many enemies, Sir."

     Randall followed Wilson through the door, still wiping fluid from his face. A man carrying an assault weapon appeared, wearing the uniform of the Consolidated Industries security services. "This way!" he said, gesturing towards a long corridor that led away into darkness. "We'll hold them off as long as we can."

     Randall and Wilson broke into a run while the security man took position behind them, aiming his weapon into the hypersleep chamber. Two more security men appeared ahead of them. They waved the two running men through a side door, then they also remained behind to cover their retreat. The exertion caused Randall's heart to falter and he staggered, bumping a shoulder against the wall. Wilson took his arm and took some of his weight. "Not much further, Sir." Randall nodded silently and made himself continue to run.

     They came to a flight of stairs and Wilson helped Randall to climb them, Randall wheezing with the exertion. At the top was a corridor that crossed from left to right. There were two more security men at the top, firing their weapons to the left, and a third man lying dead at their feet. One of the surviving guards motioned for Randall and Harris to remain where they were. "We'll try to cover you as you go past," he shouted back at them. "There's a corridor branching off to the left five meters further on. If you can get to it, you should be clear all the way to the exit." 

     There was a pause, and then the second security man nodded as he received a wireless communication from his comrade. "When I say run," the first man shouted back at Randall, "run. Understood?"

     Randall was still too breathless to answer. "Understood," said Wilson.

     "Okay." He glanced at the other security man, who nodded back. "Three, two, one, Now!"

     The two men ran out into the corridor together, firing their assault weapons continuously to drive their enemies back into hiding. Wilson took Randall's elbow and pulled him out into the open. The sound of gunfire was deafening! A burst of bullets tore past them as they ran, crouched down low, but their enemies, whoever they were, were only risking a brief, wild shot before ducking back behind cover.

     The side corridor was right where the security man had said it would be. Randall staggered towards it, Wilson still taking most of his weight with an arm around his shoulders. Then one of the guards shouted "Grenade!" Wilson threw himself at Randall, knocking him into the side corridor, and then there was an explosion. Randall was deafened by the blast and showered with debris.

     Randall looked back, but could see nothing but white, billowing smoke. He struggled back to his feet, expecting to be helped by Wilson, but the other man was also finding it hard to stand. Randall saw that his lab coat now had a ragged hole just under the side pocket. Wilson put his hand inside his clothes, pulled it out to find blood on his fingertips. The two men shared a shocked look, and then Randall staggered off along the corridor, leaving the other man behind.

     There was a brief lull in the sound of gunfire and Randall imagined his enemies chasing after him. Healthy, young men who would close the distance quickly. He felt a moment of fury that his life should end this way, but then there was another burst of gunfire and shouts of pain. Randall didn't pause, kept on running, but then Wilson was there, beside him again, pressing a hand to his side. The other man didn't seem to be too handicapped by his injury, though, and took Randall's arm again to take some of his weight.

     More shouts and gunshots came from behind them, but then they reached another door, which opened to admit cold, night air. Wilson guided Randall to a car waiting in the street with its door open. Randall collapsed into the back seat and Wilson got in beside him. The door closed and the car sped off. Behind them, a man emerged from the door. He was carrying an assault weapon but was wearing the wrong uniform. He aimed his weapon after the departing car and Randall threw himself down, just in time as bullets made the rear window explode inwards. Wilson gave a shriek of fear, but then the car turned a corner and the gunfire ceased.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

     "Are you alright, Sir?" asked Wilson when he'd regained his composure.

     "Yes. What about you?"

     "Just a scratch. Bit of shrapnel from the grenade got me." He lifted his lab coat and looked down at himself. His clothes underneath were stained with blood, but when he lifted them as well the ragged gash in his skin was barely bleeding. "It'll keep," he said. "Let's get you to safety first, then I'll get myself sewn up."

     Randall nodded. "Car, take us to Sharnbrook. Quickly as possible."

     "Roger," the car replied. "Estimated time of arrival, one hour ten minutes."

     "How did they find me?" demanded Randall.

     "I would imagine they bribed someone, sir. Or blackmailed someone."

     "Find out who. I want them dead."

     "Consider it done, Sir."

     "How long was I under?"

     "Just under six months, Sir."

     "And no cure? I'm still dying?"

     "I'm afraid so, Sir. We'll build another hibernaculum. A secure one."

     "That one was supposed to be secure! I was supposed to be safe there!"

     "You're still alive, Sir. The precautions we put in place worked."

     "But I'm still dying! All they've got to do is keep finding me and my own bloody body will kill me!"

     "That won't happen, Sir. The next one will be secure. You'll sleep until they find a cure."

     Randall glared at him, but any further conversation would be pointless so he settled down in his seat and looked out through the window as the car sped through the streets of London. The air coming in through the shattered rear window had the comforting, familiar smell of sulphur and ozone. Randall opened the drawer in the door beside him, pulled out a glass and a bottle and poured himself a shot of whisky with a trembling hand.

☆☆☆

     The car arrived at George Randall's Sharnbrook estate an hour later. The entire two hundred acres of the estate was covered by a dome of transparent persteel, so huge that the edge of it looked like an endless, vertical wall as they approached. An airtight door opened in it, the car sped through and the polluted air blowing in through the broken window was replaced by sweet, fresh air smelling of flowers and recent rainfall. Randall breathed in deeply, enjoying the sensation, as lights came on along the road, lighting their way.

     The car pulled up in front of the mansion's magnificent facade and the door opened. Randall climbed out to find Clive Dawson, his estate manager, walking out to greet him. "Are you alright, Mister Randall?"

     "Still dying." The door closed behind him and the car sped off, no doubt taking Wilson to a hospital. More lights came on to light Randall's way to the door, where two armed security men stood aside for them. "I want a bath and a suit of clothes. Then I want a meeting with Samson and Deeks."

     "I'll set it up, Sir. I've already had a report from the Hibernaculum. The attackers have been driven off and the place is secure. You can go back under as soon as the damage has been repaired. Probably less than a week."

     "No, scrub the place. Bulldoze it. It's useless now that my enemies know about it. I need security, and that means secrecy. I'll build another one."

     "The cost, sir..."

     "You let me worry about the cost."

     The hypersleep gel had dried onto his body and it took some time to scrub it off with the help of one of his hetairai, a red head with a well rounded body. Randall couldn't remember her name and he didn't bother to ask. As she scraped his back with a flat blade of polished bone, he thought the wake up word to activate his head phone, the sophisticated communication system that most people in the civilised world had implanted in their heads.

     *Jupiter.*

     *Ready,* the head phone responded.

     *Give me a run down on all my business interests.*

     There was a brief delay as the head phone connected with the house computer, which in turn connected with the Consolidated Industries mainframe in the centre of London. Then words and numbers apeared, projected onto his visual field, visible only to him. A list of all his ownings and investments along with summaries of how they stood after six months of stewardship by his trustees.

     The list was still scrolling upwards when he judged himself to be clean and climbed out of the bath, the girl taking his arm to help and steady him. Then she helped dry him off, shaved him and accompanied him into the walk in closet where she stood watching as he got dressed in a business suit.

     He looked at himself in the wall mirror as she rubbed some oil into what was left of his hair and combed it. The information still scrolling upwards across his visual field paused momentarily and faded to transparency so as not to block his view.

     He looked like himself again, he was pleased to see. The very image of the CEO of one of the world's largest and most powerful business empires. A little too gaunt for his fifty years of age, a sign of how his disease was progressing. He waved the girl away and she left, wrapping a towel around herself as she went. The upward scrolling of information in his visual field resumed.

     He was relieved to see that his fortune and position of influence in the world remained secure and he told the flow of information to stop, knowing that it would take a seeming eternity to run through all his minor investments. The company's mainframe wasn't CRES capable, didn't have the intelligence to judge for itself what was essential information and what wasn't, even though it was easily large and powerful enough that it could have been. Randall had long since bought out the tech firm that had invented CRES technology and had made a fortune selling it to other people, but he had no intention of installing it in his own machines. He wasn't going to put his company's fortunes in the hands of something capable of true, independent sapience. CRES machines were legally people, with the same rights as humans, and he wasn't going to take the chance that the machine upon which his company's fortunes depended might decide to go off and join a rock and roll band.

     *Jupiter,* he then thought. *Use the geology archives to find a site suitable for a subterranean installation. A hibernaculum. Away from any centre of population but with some form of automatic industry nearby that can mask a power source.*

     *It will take two years to build a hibernaculum from scratch,* replied the computer.

     *Understood. Get started. Find a place.*

     *Confirmed.*

     *And this project is classified level one. Only people from my trusted list are to know about it, and as few of them as possible.*

     *Understood.*

     "You're not wasting any time," said Dawson, falling in beside him as Randall left his suite of private rooms and made his way to the stairs leading back down to the business suite. Randall hadn't used any privacy settings and the estate manager had been listening in on his computer queries by means of his own head phone.

     "I haven't got time to waste," Randall replied. "I don't dare use a public hibernaculum, not with so many people out to get me."

     "We'll put a rush on it. Get it up and operational as fast as possible."

     "But without making it too obvious what we're up to. We need a cover story. A data archive. A place to back up all the Company's data."

     "And we'll get the hibernaculum equipment itself from one of our competitors," said Dawson. "Bowancorp, perhaps. They're not scared to spend money to get quality stuff."

     "Make sure there are no killings," said Randall. "We don't want the police getting too interested. Some hypersleep cubicles get stolen, they'll just make a token report to the police and claim the insurance, but if anyone dies..."

     "No-one will die," promised Dawson. "I guarantee it. But just in case, we'll use deniable assets. People who will have no idea who they're really working for. Just like always."

     Randall nodded and the manager turned to return to his office, already using his head phone to make calls and arrange meetings. Randall glanced after him for a moment before continuing on towards the conference room. He had no intention of using the new hibernaculum. For all he knew, the leak was within his own company. One of his own people might have sold the knowledge of where he was in hypersleep. The building of the new hibernaculum would serve as a good distraction, though. If his enemies thought he was sleeping there, they wouldn't be looking for him elsewhere.

     He entered the conference room to find Samson and Deeks already there waiting for him, looking slightly dishevelled as if they'd been unexpectedly roused from their beds. He wasted no time on preliminaries. *Full privacy,* he told the house computer, and an icon popped up in the corner of his visual field to tell him that a full array of anti-eavesdropping measures had come into operation. The two other men sat up straight, giving him their full attention.

     "Gentlemen," said Randall, standing on the other side of the table from them. "I have need of your underworld contacts."