She pulled her duty belt up a little higher on her waist to give her hips more freedom and slipped Akono’s gloves back on. The more grip the better. After taking three long breaths she sprung up off her feet and, momentarily airborne, thrust her four limbs out sideways into the classic dà shape and crammed her toes and hands against the walls to give her a strong four-point hold.
Then she did her first ratchets, hopping her feet up a few centimetres, then the same with her hands. Repeat. Feet, hands. Repeat, each time hoisting her body a little further up the shaft.
When she got to the base of the first door she stopped and held, pausing to catch her breath and prick up her ears. This door, like the one she’d jimmied open, was translucent glass, so she peered through the airgap at the floor. As she expected, since she’d been on this floor only a few minutes earlier, she heard and saw nothing. So she continued upwards. She stopped at each level, listened, looked, then resumed ratcheting up, puffing, sweating, until she got to the fourth floor where, this time, she did hear someone, a man.
He was distant and the sound wasn’t coming from under the door, but from down the shaft. She began to ratchet again, and as she went up the voice became louder, though not clearer. It sounded like he was speaking in Catalan. As she passed the fifth floor, he changed to English and became strident, a vocal bellows stoking a raging furnace.
‘President Oriol Casals, you stand convicted before the People’s Court of Endz of the Earth, a criminal, a traitor to your planet.’
This was crazy. Oriol was no traitor.
And this man, the speaker. Was he upstairs? Or was it a broadcast coming from the church?
‘The People’s Court sentences you to … immediate death. Death by drone. Bring on our birds.’
Isabel pressed Davey’s eyes into her tummy. The buzzing in the vaulted ceilings drew her gaze up to the tops of the columns where she saw the pigeons – one, two, three … seven – diving off their perches, one after the other, beaks first, wings hugging their bodies like a squadron of tiny feathered kamikazes, all plunging down towards Casals.
He was trying to swat them away but they persisted like wasps, pulling up near his ears and manoeuvring themselves into a ring formation where they began to fly in orbit around the top of his head, spinning so fast that for the briefest moment Isabel thought the whirr looked like a halo.
Their orbit trajectory dropped a couple of centimetres, so they circled at his eye level, then lower again at the tip of his nose … down to his mouth … and lower still, and all the while, no matter how much Casals tried to dodge or weave, the hoop of birds moved with him, shifting with his head as if some higher intelligence – artificial intelligence? – was directing them to keep a lock on his cranium.
The birds were spinning faster and faster, shrinking the radius of their ring, now closing in, like a noose tightening around his neck.
The blast happened so quickly that Isabel didn’t have time to look away as Oriol’s head blew into a million pieces, his blood and bone and brains spraying upwards like a geyser, splattering the Jesus sculpture hanging from the canopy.
Desperate not to scream, her whole body numb with shock and terror, Isabel clamped Davey to her while she watched Oriol’s headless body crumple to the floor just metres away.
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Tori felt the explosion through her gloves, heard the screams. With a gaping fifteen-metre void below her, all she could do was grip the walls for dear life … and weep as she heard the voice – The Voice? – continue.
‘Death to Casals. Death to all other traitors! Everyone in the church, sit … down!’
Tori didn’t know precisely what was happening in the church, but she was imagining the worst.
‘Diaz. President of the Benighted States of America. Your boy as well. Take a look at President Tushkin. How quiet he is. How obedient. How seated! Diaz, sit the hell down!’
Tori could feel a cramp coming on. She had to stop speculating. Her immediate challenge was holding her stance.
‘If anyone in the church disobeys us – president, priest, mourner, child – you will suffer the same fate as the traitor Casals. No exceptions.’
Tori seemed to be hearing everything twice, first a whisper then, before the sentence finished, it seemed to repeat but louder. It was as if the fanatic doing the talking was upstairs, his words coming back to him after a lag, perhaps over a TV.
‘Everybody, in one big voice, chant with me. First in Catalan: ‘Mort a tots els traïdors! Visca el planeta!
‘Now in English: Death to all traitors! Long live the planet!
‘Louder! Repeat after me: Mort a tots els traïdors! Visca la planeta!
‘Louder in English! Make the church ring out with your voices … Death to all traitors! Long live the planet! And long live Endz of the Earth!
‘And again …’
Tori’s muscles were burning up. The strain from keeping her four-point hold, constantly trying not to cramp or to slip and fall was becoming excruciating. Her eyes stung from sweat and tears, and blinking was useless. She tried craning her head sideways to a shoulder to wipe her eyes but couldn’t stretch far enough.
She squeezed them shut for a few seconds, then started ratcheting up again, ignoring the pain, working her limbs again and again until she reached the lip of the sixth floor where, as before, she went to peek through the airgap under the elevator door.
What the …?
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Isabel didn’t sit down or join the chanting, nor did any of the other leaders. Like her, they knew defiance was a risk, that it might bring wrath down on their heads, like Casals, but as proxies for their countries none of them was willing to humiliate their national pride by cowering before these fanatics. It was not heroism. It was duty.
When the Endz maniac stopped speaking, a stunned quiet fell over the church, as if the place had entered a kind of limbo, a no-man’s-land between hell and a hell yet to come.
At the massive bronze doors to Isabel’s right sat three police, guarding the body of the man bleeding out on the floor. A civilian – presumably a doctor – was kneeling beside them, looking grim, shaking his head.
The monitors were panning over the hundreds of terrified faces, husbands and wives, friends and strangers, people comforting each other, parents hugging children like she was, strangers holding hands, handkerchiefs dabbing eyes.
No one was speaking. For some it was the stoicism needed to calm a loved one who was even more frightened – and that was partly so for Isabel – for others it was shock, or fear. Or respect for the dead.
A humming started above her. Five drones. Her eyes followed as they swooped back and forth along the centre aisle, staying at eye level so they couldn’t be missed. Airborne ushers intimidating the congregation, keeping control, until … Until what?
Isabel drew Davey even closer.
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An opaque strip of white electrical tape blocked the view space under the elevator door. Tori, her limbs on fire, was only just managing to keep herself braced above an eighteen-metre drop. She couldn’t see into the sixth floor.
The release mechanism for the door – as for the floors below – was a simple latch that a cam affixed to the elevator cab would trip and unlock when it moved into position. With the little energy she had left, she ratcheted herself up to the latch and tried tripping it with her nose, except her sweat meant her nose kept slipping off.
There was a way to do this, there had to be. The only way she could think of meant trusting her legs alone, already weak, to support her, but she had no other choice. With her left hand on the side wall for balance, she lifted her right, first to wipe her eyes then to unclip the multi-tool pouch on her belt. She pulled out one of its blades with her teeth and slid its point under the latch.
She was about to lever it open when a kind of clacking started up behind the door, fast, no rhythm, like someone typing. A voice, the one she’d heard before, came through, though this time it was so soft she could o
nly make out some of the words:
‘President Diaz. If … want your boy to reach … next birthday, tell … to stop signing.’
A fraction later, the same words came back in a shout, and more followed:
‘Diaz! Are you as deaf as your stepson?’
This racket was the cover Tori needed, the click of the latch unlocking the door one of the most beautiful sounds she’d ever heard. She re-pouched the multi-tool, pressed both hands firmly into the side walls and pivoted her weight on them, swinging her legs backwards to connect against the rear wall so she was almost horizontal. After positioning her forehead against the glass, she bent her knees and kicked, propelling herself forwards like a suddenly decompressed spring, forcing the door to fly open and oof-ing herself into the room. She landed face down on the floor and, without missing a beat, she rolled onto her side, drew the pistol and thrust it out ahead of her to point at …
The room went black. She couldn’t see a thing, couldn’t hear a thing, apart from her heart pounding into the floor.
She lay flat, silent, her finger poised on her trigger, Akono’s utility belt pressing uncomfortably into her stomach.
Something metallic clinked high up, and a circle of intense white light, a spotlight, burst onto the wall to her right. A man with his back to her – maybe two metres tall – and garbed in a long black coat, stepped sideways into the beam. He slowly turned, the hem of his coat bizarrely billowing out as if he was standing at the edge of an Irish cliff in a squall, not the feeble breath of wind Tori detected brushing against her cheeks. A dark hood cast a shadow over his face. When she saw his arms were bent, his hands gripping a pistol, the muzzle aimed at her – what was it, a semi-automatic Glock 19? – she swivelled to the right, pointing her weapon back at him.
Once again, she heard clicking and clacking. It definitely sounded like typing this time. It was coming from her left, to his right.
‘Do you want to call the cops?’ he said, his voice deep, face still hidden. ‘Oh – you are the cops.’ He laughed.
Tori wiped the sweat from her eyes – where were her lashes when she needed them? – and bit down on her lip, not only to stop her saying something she’d regret but to steel herself for taking a shot. Despite the stress, she forced herself to breathe, slowly, deeply, as she tightened her grip. Squinting her right eye, since she was left-eye dominant, she focused her vision on her gun’s three-dot sights and aimed at the man’s centre mass.
‘You look kind of sweaty in that uniform, Tori Swyft. Can I help you slip into something more comfortable? How about a coffin?’
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Tori got her shot in first yet when he slumped to the floor she heard no cry, no thud of his body hitting the boards, no clatter of his gun.
The light snuffed out. Apart from the spot’s afterimage burning into her retina, she was again in total darkness.
She unclipped Akono’s torch and got to her feet but, before she could switch it on, the spotlight flashed back on, this time lighting up a space a couple of metres ahead of the elevator shaft, in front of what looked like a black curtain.
The same man, apparently unhurt – was it him? – stepped into the circle, though front-on this time. He wore the same long, weirdly billowing coat, the same hood, had the same gun held high. ‘Like I was saying …’ he began, but when a second spot snapped on, he stopped. This one illuminated a wall to Tori’s left, where what looked like the identical man, in the identical coat, the identical hood, with the identical gun, stepped into that circle.
Then two more lights, two more men.
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Tori’s legs were shaky, her arms more so. Four men with weapons aimed at her and a fifth, a bullet in him, lying unseen on the floor to her right, not making a sound. None of them were. The four-man firing squad were glowering at her from beneath their hoods, she could feel it. She again wiped her eyes on her sleeve, unsure what to do now, where to shoot, who to shoot. Her only possible exit was the way she had arrived, via the elevator shaft. But what was the point? These men were probably itching to kill her after what she’d done to their partner.
Then the spotlights went out. She stiffened and fired four shots into the blackness where the men had been standing.
All she heard were the thuds of her bullets and a swish. Was it one of their coats? Or someone moving towards her through a slit in the curtain? She fired again. The room lights snapped on and a breeze filled the black drape ahead of her, but there were no men. None standing, none on the floor.
This time she did take a step back towards the lift well. Coming here had been a bad idea, a crazy idea, possibly the worst she’d ever had.
She was about to turn and drop herself into the shaft to ratchet back down when she heard some more typing and one word, ‘Stop!’
She stopped.
Typing. ‘Tori, you know that song “YMCA”?’
‘What?’ she said, baffled, then snapped her mouth closed. Saying even that one word was a mistake.
The Voice – she assumed it was him – laughed. A real laugh, then more typing. ‘Your police uniform,’ he said. ‘Did you think you were auditioning for the Village People or something? Hey, let me give you a little-known factoid. Did you know that the Falling Man, that guy photographed from the Twin Towers on 9/11, might have been the brother of one of the original Village People?’
Tori recalled the image of one of the many desperate heroes who chose to freefall to the ground when they were forced to make an unthinkable choice.
‘So, Dr Swyft,’ The Voice continued from behind the curtain before Tori could answer, ‘I guess you found my tracker. Not such a big deal really, but back-hacking it to find me … that is impressive.’
‘What the hell are you? Assassin? Terrorist? Endz of the Earth? Dirtbag of the Universe?’
‘Didn’t your daddy teach you to respect your elders?’
‘What’s with all that typing? Cat got your tongue? Have you even got a tongue?’
More typing. ‘In good time.’
‘What happened to your goons? Are they skulking back there with you, hiding behind that curtain?’
‘There are no goons, Tori. No spotlights either.’
Tori looked up and immediately understood. Instead of spotlights, there were video projectors. The five men didn’t exist. Neither did the wind that filled up their coats. No wonder she heard nothing after she shot them. It was another of The Voice’s many misdirections.
‘Playing me like that. You think you’re pretty smart.’
Typing. ‘Not think, Tori. I know it. Now listen carefully. I’m unarmed so when I come out to introduce myself, please … I’d really be grateful if you didn’t shoot me. Deal?’
Tori said nothing.
The curtain rustled and a hand pushed through a split in the middle. It lingered for a moment, as if waiting to see if Tori would shoot or not, then withdrew. More typing. ‘Tori, would you mind closing your eyes? I do love to make a dramatic entrance.’
As if, thought Tori.
More typing. ‘I assume that’s a no?’
Tori gripped the pistol with both hands and spread her legs wider for better balance.
The Voice pushed his hands through the centre slit of the fabric, holding them high, both hands empty, then a leg, then his whole body.
Except … he was a she.
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The Voice, the depraved killer who doubled as Endz of the Earth and had murdered Oriol Casals, he was a woman. A blonde, at least for now, in a skin-tight black jumpsuit that made Tori think of Catwoman, except for her mask, which was a glossy royal purple and missing the pointy ears.
The woman – Caucasian, judging from the scanty amount of skin she was showing – started swaying. She opened up in song and, for the first time, Tori heard her natural voice, not one of the multiple versions she’d synthesised via her typing into some kind of software. ‘I fake … just like a woman. Yes, I do / But you, Tori … you break … just like a little girl. In case you mis
sed it,’ she said, ‘that’s a Bob Dylan parody.’
‘So you can speak.’
‘I’d prefer you called that magnificent performance singing.’ Her accent, finally unfiltered, was American, Midwestern. ‘I remind you, Tori, I’m unarmed. Here, please check me out,’ and she bent both knees, crouched into a deep plié, then sprung up, her legs in a classic four-shape, and pirouetted en pointe three times.
It seemed she was telling the truth. Tori couldn’t see any weapons, nothing shoved down the back of her pants, or strapped to her back, or slipped into the side of a boot. Even so, Tori kept her gun up and stayed alert. This, after all, was an adversary who’d proved herself capable of the most gruesome murders, fake videos and all kinds of tech whizzbangery, including fooling Tori into believing she’d shot five thugs who only existed digitally. To cap it off, she’d also been tricking Tori all day into thinking she was a man.
The woman might well be unarmed but, for all Tori knew, the wall of curtain draped behind her was hiding a firing squad of real hoods.
Tori kept her aim straight. Her finger was itching on the trigger, primed in case the slide of a gun told her to get off a fast two-to-the-body-and-one-to-the-head.
‘Listen lady, how about you cut the crap? Who and what are you?’
A wry smile came over the woman’s face.
‘And take off that mask,’ Tori added.
‘I will, but only when I see you fluttering those big, beautiful eyelashes of yours. Oh, gosh. Apparently, you don’t have any. I guess the mask stays.’
The woman sniffed at the air. ‘Phew! Tori, that uniform of yours is pretty rank. You really should’ve taken the stairs,’ she said and, without warning, dropped onto one knee and, out of nowhere, a huge bunch of long-stemmed roses materialised at her fingertips. She tossed them to Tori, who looked on in disbelief but still had the presence of mind to step back, leaving the flowers to complete their arc and scatter across the floor in front of her.
Double Deal Page 25