The Last Mayor Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  "Lights," While said, striding ahead into the darkness. Rubega rushed to stay ahead, bringing up the light array at the front of his suit, revealing a nondescript white hallway with doors leading off to the sides. There was an odd smell in the air which defied classification.

  Clack clack.

  James While's shoes rang sharply off the tiled floor, accompanied by the muffled shush of the rubber-soled assault team deploying around him; each spraying light from their chest arrays. Doors broke open to either side but While kept striding on, forcing his team to work at double-time to keep up.

  Olan Harrison. He ran the man's name around in his head with every step. A great man, such potential, fallen to this like a cheap terrorist. It was a great dismay. It was also beyond unlikely he would still be here. More likely than anything, there would be a colossal explosion waiting on the other side of the laboratory door.

  Rubega reached it seconds before While, gave a signal to his team who raised metal blast shields, then launched himself through.

  No explosion greeted them. The lights beyond were already switched on, revealing a hall that was shallow but long, a T crossbar capping the corridor. It looked like a hospital ward, lined with medical machinery, computer screens and server banks, and at the center there was a bed upon which lay a person who was plainly, painfully dead.

  While took it all in.

  The body was spread-eagled on a mattress soaked red; the ribcage cracked and flexed wide open so the heart and lungs were exposed, the belly flesh peeled back so the internal viscera had spread out in their gossamer white bandage of connective tissues, making a gory butcher's puddle in the dead figure's lap.

  It stank. It explained the strange smell in the air.

  "Sir, we should get you out of here," said Rubega, as his men spread rapidly up and down the hall. "It's-"

  "It's Olan Harrison," said While.

  The realization hit and left him numb. A dozen plates fell and crashed on the floor of his mind.

  He strode over to his side. The old man's face was pulled wide in pain; his eyes bugging, his lips snarled back against perfect white teeth. He looked older than his recent appearances in SEAL meetings.

  "He's been dead for hours," one of Rubega's team said, taking a blood sample. "Less than twelve."

  The world spun and twisted, and While opened himself to it. There were details everywhere. In Olan's skin, in the old divot scars on his scalp, in the apparatus hanging on the walls nearby; intra-cranial electrodes, neural nets like Helkegarde's Arrays, large quantum server banks from the Apotheo Net.

  He touched Olan's face; the skin was papery and cold, not the rubbery synthetic feel of a mock-up. He slipped a penknife from his pocket and slit the blade deep into Olan's cheek, revealing tissue and muscle within. A few drops of blood leaked out.

  It was a real body, not an elaborate fake. Harrison was dead.

  He turned to Rubega. "Get everyone out. Sweep this place at the atomic level. Highest level of containment, right now."

  Rubega gave a signal and his team sped back the way they'd come. James While followed hard on their heels, trying to spin the plate up on this issue and failing. It didn't make sense.

  Olan Harrison had set this up, bringing on the impending end of the world, and now he was dead. It looked like a crime of hatred, reveling in the old man's pain, but if Olan had been ingenious enough to rig the whole world in such a way that even James While couldn't see it, how could he not see an assassin in his closest ranks?

  It didn't make sense.

  The corridor passed in the blink of an eye, then he was outside the facility, walking back to the Jeep in a chill and brisk mountain wind, with messages and missed calls beeping in through the satellite phone at his hip as the signal returned. He didn't check it, but Rubega did.

  "Sir," he said, and the tone of his voice made While look over, and unholster his phone.

  He saw the first few messages and stopped walking, scrolling through dozens more with mounting horror.

  The SEAL was under attack.

  Simultaneous raids had just taken place around the world, each waged with irresistible force. The Logchain had been invaded, with Rachel Heron and key members of her team torn from his custody. The head of Multicameral Array Epsilon had been taken with many of his team from the temporary lab they were housed in. The Apotheo Net had been struck, Free Radical, and specialists taken.

  As he read fresh messages kept flashing in; in every corner of the SEAL key personnel were being kidnapped by black-clad soldiers, in many cases broken out of armed guard with substantial bloodshed and material damage. Every raid was successful. So far there was no record of who was doing it, where they had come from or where they were going.

  Rubega raced the Jeep at unsafe speeds down to the runway. En route James While ordered up a stream of repeated mid-air refuels and a rolling escort of F1 jets, then turned his gaze to emergency response.

  Whoever had killed Olan had been waiting. They were watching. Now the danger was everywhere, and the world could turn on a dime in a moment.

  His plane took off and didn't land again for two weeks.

  13. MONTCLIFFE

  Anna woke angry.

  She'd been in and out of consciousness for hours, drifting while voices talked over her, glimpsing brief sightings of poor Jake sitting there, swaddled in white foam bandaging like the man in the Alps who'd put a dead baby in her belly, and Lucas hovering close, unable to help but longing to, and…

  She rocked in again, opening her eyes to see Peters standing above her, gazing down from two black eyes with one hand on her shoulder.

  Jake was sitting in his wheelchair with only a blotchy part of his face showing. Lucas stood beside him with one eye deeply bloodshot and a sling on his left arm.

  "Anna," Peters said urgently, "wake up, something is happening."

  She sat up. Her body was in a lot of pain, her muscles felt dry and drained, but she could feel the anger inside like a jet engine, waiting to burn. There was no shortage of fuel in the air; she could feel it in her friends, in herself, in the people moving cautiously outside their room, like the air before a storm.

  She blinked, taking things in swiftly. A white room, small and clinical, which meant-

  "We're in the bunker," she croaked. "How long has it been?"

  "She needs to rest," Lucas said to Peters, plainly continuing an argument. "They won't do anything now, Inchcombe promised." He turned to her. "You almost burned your heart out, Anna, you have to-"

  She kicked her legs out of the sheets.

  "What's happening?"

  "Movements outside," said Peters. "The bunker is changing hands, I think."

  "I really think-" Lucas said, but then Anna was standing. Some things couldn't wait. She looked down at Jake, into his rimless and veiny eyes, taking in his pain and marking it as another factor in this long and brutal war, and nodded once. It was good he was alive, and there would be time for reunions later, but now she had business to do.

  She strode to the door, holding Peters' arm. "Take me to her."

  "You can barely walk," Lucas protested. "Stay and rest, help me with-"

  She reached the door and swung it open.

  Outside a young man was jogging with a rifle held at his side, in a plain white corridor with over half the ceiling lights dark. The air was humid and there was no hum of air conditioners.

  He stopped when Anna opened the door, looking surprised to see her. He didn't know what to do. He took a step back and said, "I'm supposed to-" then Peters darted over and hit him. One punch to his nose, one into his solar plexus, and he went down.

  "Get the gun," Anna said, already stumbling away down the corridor. "Seal that door, Lucas. He was looking for us."

  Each step she tottered forward, she felt more of the flows of bodies ahead. There was coordinated movement, Peters was right. Something was happening.

  The door slammed in back, then Peters was there at her side, taking some of her weight
and propelling them on together.

  "Inchcombe," Peters said as they hobbled forward. "She didn't lie, but she is losing control. I feel it."

  "Tell me," said Anna, so he did.

  A day and night had passed, and it had been touch and go with Anna for a time. Inchcombe had rallied, and the world above ground had continued with its mission of helping their own people injured in Amo's assault. Hundreds were dead, hundreds injured, hundreds more gone mad from whatever Amo did to them on the line, and there was no shortage of work required.

  "Inchcombe moved us here in secret, in the night," Peters said. "For safety."

  Anna gritted her teeth. "Was that her man in the corridor?"

  "I think not."

  They turned a corner and made for the bunker stairs. The layout was similar to Maine. At the stairwell they passed a blank-eyed man, still smeared with soot in a slash across his face, staring at a featureless point of a wall. As they went past, Anna heard him muttering nonsense syllables underneath his breath.

  "Many are like this," Peters said darkly.

  Others were moving up and down the stairs, people from the bunker walking with supplies, walking with injured people. Many of them stopped to stare at Anna.

  Of course they knew her. For months she'd held the threat of death over their heads, forcing passage of her treaty. Now there was this uneasy truce, but something was breaking. These people didn't know it, but they felt it too. A shifting mood that let them stare at her unafraid. Perhaps to them she looked like a devil. To Anna these were more casualties waiting to happen.

  They climbed the stairs, Peters helping a lot. Sweat beaded on her brow and her body trembled. He spoke in a low voice as they climbed, explaining what had happened to Lucas, to Jake, how some of the others had been left in a ward above ground as a decoy, about the general recovery of order and Inchcombe's fading grasp on control.

  "I saw them," Peters said softly, reaching floor minus 1. "Recruiting. I heard one of them talk about what you did. Anna, that is a power they fear. Every day more die, more in comas, more sick, and they blame you."

  Anna hissed as her left leg seized in pain. Peters dragged her forward and she used the railing to stay upright. "What about Inchcombe?"

  "She will not see me. She advises to stay here, below, through intermediaries. She is washing her hands of us, I feel."

  Anna looked at his face. His skin was pale and worn too. "What have you been doing?"

  "Working with Jake. Lucas tries to do his science, but he cries. He is guilty. Jake is angry. Then Jake is guilty, and Lucas is angry. I go between."

  "And the others? Sulman, Macy?"

  "Sick, broken. The people in that hangar, it was awful, Anna. They were too angry. At Amo. At you."

  They reached the top of the flight of stairs. Here there were more people, gathering in a crowd that pushed steadily in the direction of the elevator. The air hummed with rising panic. Anna glimpsed a pair of soldiers with rifles, watching the crowd from the wall, and ducked her head down against Peters' chest, steering him deeper into the crowd.

  People here were afraid and they didn't know why. They were being herded.

  "Get us through," Anna whispered, and pulled her shirt up high at the back to cover her distinctive, frizzy black hair. Peters' grip was like iron around her shoulders, holding her firmly as he pushed into the crowd like the prow of a ship, splitting people smoothly to either side.

  Anna heard whispers and felt signals shifting around her as she was seen, like the sun steadily sinking behind the horizon. The moment was coming, there would be no stopping it.

  "Hey!" called a sharp male voice.

  "Keep going," Anna whispered.

  "He sees me," Peters said. "He knows me. I recognize him."

  "Stop there! You, stop him, he's one of them."

  The crowd around them, previously shuffling and sad and consumed with their own miseries, abruptly opened wide. Faces showed shock and scrabbled further away.

  "Run," hissed Peters, and gave Anna a shove into the gap, then whirled and raised his rifle.

  RATATATATAT

  The sound of bullets filled the air with a cacophony, echoed by screams. Anna staggered forward and nearly fell. Her legs were too weak.

  RATATATATAT rang out again, and people nearby dropped, and all hell broke loose as everyone tried to flee at once, forgetting that she was the enemy and just trying to get away from the gunfire.

  Anna tumbled on the flow of bodies like a child in the arms of the ocean; too weak to control her direction. Together they flowed like a wave down the corridor and burst into a large yellow hall, which Anna recognized by degrees, as she struggled to keep her feet beneath her; the video screens on the walls, the scent of flowers on the air. It was a double of the entrance hall of the Maine bunker, and took her back to years ago, listening in the front row while Amo was on trial and Witzgenstein declaimed against him. Now it was filled with terrified faces, clamoring to get away. On a swell in their movements Anna saw the elevator at the end, with two more soldiers guarding it, their rifles up.

  She closed her eyes and reached down into the loam of the line, trying to remember what she'd done before in the mad night run, after seeing Jake screaming in the dark. It felt like plumbing a deep dark well, reaching through herself and twisting something inside out, even as heavy bodies collided with hers and the undertow dragged her down.

  She fell and feet trampled over her, and she focused on channeling that well, in twisting the line, in sucking up the fuel and pouring it into her legs. A woman fell over her and landed on her back, driving the wind out of her lungs, but that didn't matter any more.

  She didn't need air. She poured anger into her arms and shoved upwards, tossing the woman off and getting her feet under her. It took a second only to reorient herself, not in the pell-mell chaos of stampeding people, but in the flash and spray of signals. The ones with the guns were different, resolving like hot blemishes on her skin.

  She charged.

  Bodies peeled away before her, split by the arrowhead of will she poured three feet ahead, letting her stamp into the gap.

  "Halt right there!" one of the soldiers shouted, seeing her coming through the mulch of bodies, and leveled his weapon at her. Not for the first time she stared down the whorled barrel at a bullet.

  And stopped it.

  Now the well was pumping smoothly into her, filling her with strength, and it wasn't hard to mold that force into something familiar. With the right kind of control and a simple twist she turned the shape of her rage into an icy, stifling wall, just like she'd felt the very first time she saw a demon in the depths of Mongolia, and flung it at the soldiers ahead.

  They froze. Their eyes showed fear but they didn't move. Their trigger fingers strained but didn't pull.

  Anna sped up. Shouts and gunfire rang from behind, but there was no stopping now. She pumped the cold out like a shield, even as she cleared the last few feet and pushed past the two frozen soldiers, into the elevator.

  Wild excitement flooded her. This was real and she was doing it now. She hit the call button and the doors chimed closed. Every eye in the frozen hall stared back at her, every eye terrified.

  As they should be.

  The doors closed and the carriage rose.

  In the pocket vestibule, hung halfway between the Habitat below and the real world above, she poured more anger into her weary limbs and took to the ladder. Last night this had burnt her out, and it would so again, but she could tell she was getting better at it; sucking the anger out of others and using it as fuel as she passed.

  With every rung up she felt the sense of what was coming from above more clearly, and drained it faster.

  Then she was there, and there were two more soldiers at the top, skulking in the hot, stinking hangar, but the drain had already left them vacant, watching her with their weapons hanging slack.

  Anna ran on.

  Bodies still lay in the hangar's shadowy, wet heat, nestled in with
little mounds of trash; plastic bottles, meal trays, rumpled towels and bedding. The smell of old sweat and urine filled the air, mixing with the stench of putrefying death.

  She strode through the ranks of the sick, scanning the shadows and the opening beyond for more soldiers, but there weren't any yet.

  "Anna," came a call from behind, and she saw Peters loping after her, limping but otherwise unharmed. "Where are we going to?"

  "Montcliffe," she answered, and emerged from beneath the hood of the hangar, out onto the melting airport blacktop. The sun was high in a cloudless cobalt sky, beating heat down. Bodies still lay scattered on the runway; the dead in clusters as if gathering for warmth. Clouds of flies roamed and buzzed. Off to the right, past the curve of the terminal building, lay a large harvested heap.

  Anna ran on and listened to the nearby signals, while Peters struggled to catch up. There were people in one of the nearby hangars equipping themselves with weaponry. There were people slowly dying in the makeshift above ground hospitals, suffering the failure of the line. There were others standing around a table, studying a map. The level of detail she was getting now was more than ever before, as if in its absence the hydrogen line had somehow opened up to her.

  She looked for Inchcombe and found her in a baking cell; one of the prison huts they'd used for Lucas and the others, resurrected in the sun. She'd been beaten. Anna tasted blood in her mouth, and wondered that she was lucky not to already have been over-ridden. Montcliffe must be exercising an abundance of caution, with the earlier soldiers sent just to scout out where she was hiding.

  "Anna?" said Peters. "Where?"

  They were drawing stares again. Two men and one woman were standing guard by the entrance to the weaponry hangar, and they leveled their rifles toward her. Yes, there. She sent a probe ahead and felt Montcliffe in the thick of them. Angry. Working hurriedly. This was it.

  It added up.

  "We're in the middle of a coup," Anna said. "Montcliffe's coming for us now."