Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Darren Stapleton

  Cooper looked annoyed, then rummaged for adhesive tape in one of the many drawers, found some and pulled up a small footstool to sit opposite me.

  ‘So you’d do it for more money?’ I asked.

  Cooper blurted a laugh and a wry smile crept across Riley’s face.

  ‘You should be so lucky.’

  I missed the banter of camaraderie that came with being part of a unit. Any unit. The back and forth of jousting jokes and sharp derision, the jibes that honed your wit and diffused the horrors and honours that everyday life could bestow. It is part of being a man, I think, to be able to equip yourself with a quick wit and thick skin, the give and take, the revealing of self through the intelligence and self-deprecation found in the wit and grace of daily conversation.

  It reminded me of who I was.

  It reminded me of my brother.

  It had been a long time since I had laughed but feelings about my brother’s death rose to squash any amusement. I thought of him, of Doc, of the occasions when we were all caught up in the frenetic fire fights and dogged drudgery of battle, when, at the time, misery and reminders of mortality seemed to percolate every action, mundane or heroic. Yet, looking back, they were the best days of my life. Had I ever felt more alive? Been more happy at making it through another night? Celebrated living more?

  I doubted it.

  Why was I thinking about this now?

  I snapped myself back into the room and onto the problem of exiting with what I had come for.

  I wadded up the dirty paper towels, heavy with water, sweat and blood, and dropped them into a lined bin marked ‘Medical Waste’.

  ‘How’d you get this anyway?’ Cooper asked, dragging the antiseptic wipe across the rim of the cut.

  I quietly hissed but said nothing.

  ‘Coyle do it bringing you in?’

  I did not respond.

  ‘Well, it looks swollen but clean and by the way it keeps pissing out blood, relatively new too.’ Cooper bent to examine the cut closer.

  I had started to get on with these men, find an affinity with them that made what I was about to do to them even harder. They found the honour in their duty and let it underscore everything they did. They were good people.

  But even good people get hurt in war.

  ‘Is there something in there?’ Cooper asked.

  Riley came over to look into the cut.

  ‘Get some tweezers.’ Riley did not look up as he spoke.

  Cooper removed some tweezers from a small drawer and tossed them to Riley.

  ‘Now Theron, this is going to smart a bit.’

  I gritted my teeth and nodded. Felt the muscles and tendons in my arms and legs go rigid, my teeth clench until my jaw ached. My hands tightened around my belt. My eyes open.

  ‘Relax, I’ve done my share of this, you know, taking foreign bodies out of foreign bodies. I worked the Deluvian riots.’ He placed the ends of the tweezers into the cut and slowly moved them deeper into the wound. ‘Should have seen some of the things we pulled out of…’

  His voice faded out. I thought I was ready, could handle the sharp pain, use it, but I was wrong. My body, unaware of my intent, had been doing its level best to reject the card since its subcutaneous insertion. My chest was inflamed and there was a hot redness along the gashed edge that was tender and hyper sensitive. Rather than using the pain as a beam of light to focus my thoughts and crystallise my actions, like I had been trained, it became a white-hot sun, scorching at the centre of my subconscious and blinding me to anything else other than to its own obliterating existence. I felt exposed and vulnerable. The excruciation was unbearable.

  ‘Nearly,’ said Riley, whose tongue projected comically from between his front teeth.

  Cooper looked simultaneously sickened and interested, his eyes wide with curiosity as his mouth turned out a grimace of repugnant dismay.

  Riley pushed the tweezers deeper, I could see them moving beneath the taut pink cloth of my skin.

  I balked and nausea washed over me.

  ‘Got it,’ Riley said.

  He slid the card out slowly, as if he were extracting a tooth from a poorly sedated lion.

  I held on to consciousness, knowing that I had to get that card then get out of this room fast. I stayed with the pain, had no choice anyway.

  ‘What the fuck?’ said Riley, turning it over with the tweezers. Thick gelled clots and a small lump of fibrous tissue clung to it. Cooper came closer.

  ‘Theron, you OK? Riley, I think he’s greying out.’

  Riley looked up from his newly found, exhumed treasure and gave my face a short sharp slap.

  ‘You’re looking like a wax dummy of yourself. Cooper, help me lay him down, get his legs in the air; he’s going into shock.’

  ‘I’m fine. Leave me.’ I released the clamping pressure in my jaw. My teeth ached and my heart sounded cacophonous inside the echoing drum of my head, my chest thumping out fresh blood on each throbbing beat.

  Riley’s concern was palpable but he listened and turned his attention back to the extricated item.

  ‘Looks like a credit card. Some kind of blank swiper.’ He stood and walked to the sink to wash it clean.

  Cooper handed me more paper towels, I quickly wiped myself down again and he stuck thick swathes of bandages and gauze across the cut. He was continuing to rip and stick thick lengths of adhesive over the dressing when Riley came back to where I sat.

  ‘That will do, Cooper.’

  Cooper stopped and stepped back to admire his handiwork.

  Riley held the card aloft in front of my face. ‘It looks like a swipe card of sorts. Mind telling me what this is for and how the flying fuck it crawled into your chest without you knowing about it?’

  ‘I’m not feeling too good,’ I said.

  Riley looked at the card again.

  ‘Come on,’ said Cooper. ‘This does not end up inside a man without him having some kind of inkling as to how it got there.’

  I let my left arm drop slowly to my side, the belt buckle held firmly in my palm, the leather strap trailed down the side of my chair to the floor. They did not notice.

  Riley’s stance became more confrontational, he held the card closer to my nose. I tensed my grip on the buckle.

  ‘He put it there himself,’ Riley said.

  ‘But why…?’ Cooper’s question trailed off as he realised what the card was and why I had brought it here.

  He went for his baton.

  Years are but fading moments, like youth, lost to old reflection.

  And days become but cavalcades of grief and recollection.

  On Aging: The Big Here and Small Now (Collected Poems)

  R. Halifax

  CHAPTER 62

  Vedett smiled at the two security guards leading him through the copious main hall and into the inner chambers of Rose’s tenure. They did not smile back. Despite having been invited to this meeting, unofficially of course, Vedett still felt less of a guest and more of a detainee. The lateness of the hour added to the inconvenience and anonymity.

  ‘Here,’ said the first guard, pointing at a low-rise chair in a well-lit corner of the room.

  Vedett took a seat and looked around at the dark wooden furniture and ornate antiquities that jostled for positions of importance in the reception room. A painting depicting the ascension of an unnamed god to his throne in the distant burgeoning clouds, dominated the wall above the fireplace. Rugs woven from materials both rare and hardy, added plushness underfoot and softened the light and sound of the room to a hush. A pair of Old Earth bone-based lamps stood proud on the ends of two empty, low bookcases. Despite the flamboyant opulence of the furnishings, the absence of books added a severe austerity that no piece of furniture, however magnificent, could circumvent.

  It was a small mirror that dominated Vedett’s attention, though. Its thick aureate frame surrounded florid glass that reflected an image of him seemingly suspended in rosewater, or blood hanging on the mists of time.r />
  ‘It’s called a Death Mirror,’ said Leonora, who had entered the room silently. Vedett had not been aware of her until she had spoken. He had no idea of which door or discrete passageway she had emerged from, and did not care.

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Vedett.

  Leonora gave the two guards a nod for them to leave and they looked at each other, slightly perturbed about exiting, leaving their current guest at large. A further penetrating glower from Leonora left them in no doubt, though, and they hurried from the room exchanging no more glances and closing the door behind them.

  ‘Fascinating,’ Vedett said again as he dabbed a manicured finger at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘It is meant to show you a vision of yourself and how you will die if you stare into it long enough.’

  ‘The clarity and calibre of the glass is unparalleled. It really is intense and beautiful, like death itself I suppose.’

  ‘That can depend on a number of things, can it not?’ said Leonora, who was not glad when Vedett finally averted his gaze from the mirror and back to her.

  ‘Anyway. Governor Rose will see you now,’ she said.

  Vedett ignored her. ‘Ever looked into it Leonora? Tell me, what did you see?’

  She tried not to shudder at the voice that had asked the question.

  ‘I saw a reflection of the room behind me, and me. Now shall we?’ She pointed towards the heavyset door at the opposite end of the room.

  ‘Beautiful and fascinating,’ he said.

  And as Leonora led Vedett into the Governor’s inner chamber, no two words were further from her mind.

  Often the huge gulf between winning and losing can be found in the very small distance between our ears.

  The Psychology of Ologies

  Sindra Badhart

  CHAPTER 63

  As Cooper went for his baton I felt a paradigm shift in my train of thought and demeanour.

  Business.

  My left arm snaked out and with a backhand swipe I cracked him a sharp blow high on his cheek with my belt. He yelped almost comically and reeled backwards in surprise, tumbling over a low medical trolley and sending a multitude of cardboard sick bowls and wooden splints to the floor.

  Riley swung a left hook. I leaned away to my left in the chair, following the arc of the belt, and his fist glanced my right cheek. I tumbled out of the chair, upending it and landing on my side, near Cooper’s feet. Riley lost his balance, not connecting properly with his big swinging punch, and struggled to keep his feet. As I tried to stand he kicked out at the chair and it hit me forcefully in the solar plexus. I expelled air and went down again, tangled in the chair’s legs.

  Cooper swung his baton into the side of my right knee. A shockwave of hurt exploded out and up my leg and I curled up instinctively.

  Then everyone stopped, like a ball at the top of its parabola. For a split second, all motion ceased. Riley looked confused and hurt, like I had betrayed him. I suppose in some way I had. He had presented me with my liberty and patched me up on my way and I had not graciously accepted those gifts; far from it.

  He came at me again, his handcuffs in one hand, his baton now in the other. I flailed at his legs as he advanced. He slipped in my blood and toppled down on top of me. I leaned up and into him as he fell and he caught the jutting angle of his jaw on the top of my head. Gravity, motion and my densely thick skull conspired to knock him out. His weight went dead instantly and he forced me back to the floor, partly beneath him and partly entangled in the chair. My head hurt. I felt another wave of nausea rising.

  Cooper looked skittish and wired, angled a wild blow from his baton that just missed my ear and careened off the floor with a dull but heavy thud. It had been close and the narrow miss rang out in my ears. He aimed a second blow and I arched my back and shoved sideways, this time the baton connected just behind Riley’s right ear and his forehead butted down onto the floor with a smack.

  Riley did not even groan. Cooper, repulsed by his own actions, recoiled.

  As I tried to roll out from under Riley, Cooper came at me again and I aimed a huge left uppercut into his testicles. He stopped in his tracks and fell into a foetal ball, shrieking in a pitch too high or sustained for any normal male register.

  I stood, ignoring my screaming knee, dropped my belt, found my swipe card, Riley’s keys and Cooper’s discarded baton. I yanked the internal telephone’s wire free from its moorings and Cooper stuttered a low-pitched but contained groan. I left the medical room quickly, at least they were captive in the best place they could be, present conditions considered.

  I tried the card from my chest in the medical door and the lock engaged, securing Cooper inside.

  Bleecker’s card had worked. Now I just had to hope that the address was right for what I needed.

  Stiff-legged, I limped further into the station, leaving the bullpen and lockers and cells behind. My knee hurt but I was still mobile. I checked but could see no other Mudheads. A telephone rang unanswered somewhere near.

  I stopped at a large mesh storage cage under an embossed sign that read ‘Evidence.’ I knew standard Mudhead’s keys would not fit this reader. Evidence was always kept under separate lock and key and was usually booked out through an elaborate internal system to avoid misappropriation of items. I slid Bleecker’s key card into the slot, a light blinked green and I heard the thick deadbolts of the storage room click then disengage. I subdued a smile.

  The old boy had come through.

  I swung the heavy security door open and made my way inside.

  Stay low, keep moving.

  Urgency hurried my steps and focused my gaze. I scanned hastily, desperate to get out before the alarm was raised, to get to Doc. I coursed up and down the thin aisles of miscellaneous items as fast as my knee would allow. Things were stacked high and deep, various paraphernalia spilled out of overstuffed trays, collecting dust. I found the newer exhibits to the rear. They had to be here. Had to.

  Then there, on a shelf near the floor, next to a box of spent crossbow bolts and a uniform bedecked with large evidence paper tags, I found them.

  Suspended in a cold plasmic tank calcifying in the dark.

  How quickly something can disappear

  The moment we most need it there.

  Lost Property

  P. Sterling

  CHAPTER 64

  By the time Coyle had got to Theron’s cell he was convinced that Riley would have intervened somehow to spoil his fun. It wouldn’t be the first time officer Do Right had gotten in his way. He had been halfway through eating his midnight protein quota before he had pieced together the way he had been manipulated out of the bullpen to the dining room. On realising, he had rushed straight back to the holding cells, still chewing. He opened the door to Cell 3.

  ‘Gone,’ he said to the empty cell.

  There was no sign of struggle, so he had to assume Theron was elsewhere in the station or bullpen, being questioned by Riley perhaps. He pictured Riley smiling. Riley citing the rulebook. Riley steaming in to take all the plaudits and glory, the self-righteous, self-appointed King of the Station cunt.

  He turned and stomped his way down the corridor back toward the bullpen when he heard a banging on a door. At first he thought it had come from the cells. It was not uncommon for guests of this particular hotel, to bang, scream or shout abuse at any hour, but the sound was coming from further up the corridor.

  He stopped outside the medical room and listened.

  ‘Someone there?’ came a small voice from inside. It sounded like there was more than a door between them, it sounded miles away.

  ‘Cooper?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It's me, Coyle. What’s going on? Who’s that?’

  ‘Cooper. Riley’s down. Out cold. But still breathing. Theron’s gone.’

  ‘What do you mean, gone?’

  ‘We were discharging him and he just flipped. Keys are gone and Riley’s knocked out, pretty bad. Get help. He isn’t breathing
too well.’

  ‘Did he say where he was going?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Theron. Did he mention where he was fucking going?’

  ‘No, I…’

  ‘Next time, leave the proper policing to the big boys, and keep your nose out of my fucking business.’ Coyle turned to head for the bullpen then stopped. Listened. He heard noises coming from deeper within the station. Cooper said something else about help and testicles. He ignored it. He started to walk quietly and slowly towards the opposite end of the corridor.

  By the time he recognised the mechanical clank and whir of the shutters going up at the vehicle pound on the lower level, he was running.

  Whoever said time is a healer, lied. It heals nothing. It takes a cast iron wrecking ball, swings it and heals you to smithereens.

  After the light has gone

  J. T. Wrasse

  CHAPTER 65

  I found the taxi I had used to escape Pan’s near the pound entrance, it must have been one of the last vehicles brought in. The rightful owner had not made it back to collect it yet. I could have taken any one of the impounded cars, but I knew this worked, knew how it handled and that it would allow me to blend back into the Lowlands throng seamlessly. The keys were in the ignition, security protocol not a concern beyond the thick reinforced walls and fences of the Station and surrounding grounds. I had a feeling their protocol would be changing soon.

  I climbed into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine, felt my teeth rattle as it grumbled into life. My knee complained on every press of the accelerator. I pushed the stick into first and rolled up to the electric barriers and empty security booth. I wound the window down, swiped my card and smiled as once again, Bleecker’s key turned the light green.