by Chris Lofts
‘And, if you didn’t comply after that?’
‘If that didn’t work there were always the pigs,’ Lytkin said, pressing her fingers lightly to her lips. ‘As we grew up, Dmitri would watch. Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn. Yes, Dmitri learned. The keen-eyed apprentice, learning the trade from his master.’ She ran her fingers over her mouth. ‘And I made sure that I was Dmitri’s favourite.’
‘Sounds like a right shit sandwich.’ It was the best he could do. He didn’t want to sound impressed. How many kids or girls of her age would be able to make those kind of sacrifices in order to survive? ‘And you were how old?’
‘I’m not embarrassed, Major. Where else was I going to get a first class education?’
‘And what happened at the end of that first-class education, when you were all grown up, past your sell by date?’
‘We were set free,’ she said, fluttering her fingers. ‘Off to the best universities and then on to train as financiers, lawyers, politicians, scientists, doctors, classical musicians, anything. The older girls would write in the months after they left. We used to look forward to their letters and cards. Access to the internet wasn’t allowed, apart from research. Social media was off limits.’ She sighed. ‘But eventually they forgot about us, the correspondence dried up. Too busy in their ongoing studies or their careers.’
‘More likely too busy being digested in the stomach of a pig. And where did you go?’
‘I didn’t. Not immediately.’ She glanced over at the writhing sack. ‘I stayed to help with the teaching, to mentor the younger ones. Dmitri and I grew closer and then the pandemic struck.’
‘Let me guess. You dropped the portcullis and pulled up the drawbridge.’
‘Exactly. As I said. You and I are not so different. You’d have done the same.’
If Helix could have shaken his head, he would have done. ‘Chance would have been a fine thing. My experience was a little less romantic.’
‘We allowed a few last-minute refugees with appropriate skills to join us from surrounding towns and villages to ensure our self-sufficiency,’ the hologram continued, perching on a stool. ‘But otherwise, we sealed the gates and manned the towers to repel anyone attempting to scale the walls. It was during one such skirmish that our uncle was killed.’
‘Shame. And good old Dmitri ascended to the throne to carry on his father’s good work, no doubt.’
‘Hmm.’ She nodded. ‘And to celebrate, he asked me to marry him. I agreed, but I wasn’t going to be sharing him with anyone. He had to stop what his father had started.’
‘Oh Jesus. How romantic. Pass the tissues, I’m welling up. I bet he was chuffed at having his supply of adolescent entertainment cut off.’
‘I was more than enough for him,’ she snapped. ‘He told me he loved me. He promised me. Said he would never lie to me about anything.’
‘And you all lived out the pandemic happily ever after.’
She pressed her hand to her stomach. ‘I was pregnant. It was perfect,’ she sighed, ‘until his father arrived outside the gates.’
‘Hang on,’ Helix said, wrinkling his nose. ‘His father? You said the old man died heroically wielding his broadsword in battle, defending the castle.’
Lytkin glanced at the sack again and folded her arms. ‘His real father,’ she spat. The sack ceased its fidgeting. ‘Until then, we’d allowed no one in. People pleaded, begged, offered money, gold. They were so desperate, they would’ve given up everything on the promise that we’d open the gates. We never did. We just took their things and left them out there. Dmitri welcomed him in with open arms. He welcomed that monster into our home.’
‘And who exactly was this monster?’
‘The man that betrayed my father and brother, murdered my mother and sold me.’
‘Sounds like a regular soap opera,’ Helix scoffed. ‘Did Dmitri know what his father had done?’
‘No.’ She toyed with her necklace. ‘Keen to impress his father, he arranged an extravagant dinner, something we could ill afford. He invited some of the school tutors and doctors. His father brought along his lieutenants and, keen not to be outdone, Dmitri invited some of his. A kind of “my gang is better that your gang” thing. Boys will be boys. I invited Archer.’
‘For his riveting conversation? I hope he was a bit more chatty than he is today.’
Lytkin’s eyes flared as she turned on him. ‘Your sarcasm is becoming tiresome, Major.’
‘Like your life story, Miss Lytkin. Perhaps, you could skip forward about twenty-five years and tell me what the fuck—’
Lytkin snapped her fingers at Archer.
Helix spasmed. Electricity surged through his body like a stinging swarm of killer hornets. The surgical instruments around the chair rattled and shook with the tremors. Agony screamed and arced between his temples. His eyes and veins bulged. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t shout. Starbursts of light danced across his eyes. Amidst the pain, the metallic tang of blood seeped into his mouth as he bit his own tongue. The end was as explosive as the beginning. His body fell limp. Gasping grateful breaths, a string of blood and saliva ran down his chin. He regulated his breathing in between bouts of coughing, his eyes fixed on Lytkin.
‘The collection of scars across your body suggest a certain familiarity with pain, Major,’ she hissed. ‘No doubt the surgical procedures were carried out under general anaesthetic. But you have no idea about the actual pain you missed while you slept. Drawn out unbearable pain. Endless suffering. If you’d experienced genuine pain you would have begged to be sent to hell for a holiday.’
Helix ran his tongue over his lips as she turned away. Maybe if he kept quiet she’d just get on with it.
‘Dmitri’s father had placed him in the castle to protect him against reprisals from other people he’d betrayed,’ she continued. ‘Years had passed. I had grown up. He didn’t recognise me. When I enquired after my family, he said he didn’t recall the name, denied knowing them. He dismissed us with a flick of his hand. We were nothing to him.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘So, I let it go for then. The evening proceeded convivially enough with his father and his father’s men completely unaware of the cocktail of slow-acting anaesthesia Archer had laced their food with. Dmitri had always maintained that the man we’d called uncle was his father. He had lied to me, which was bad enough, but to discover who his real father was…’ She glanced at Helix.
He’d seen profiles of psychopaths. How they hid behind a well-cultivated mask of normalcy. Lytkin might have thought they were the same. His most recent brush with psychological evaluation had revealed something different. It wouldn’t even have put them close.
She sighed. ‘Dmitri, his father and his father’s men were taken from their beds during the early hours. Dmitri’s men were actually my men. They were weak, easily turned in a hot bed on a cold night. Here they are the next morning.’
Contorted faces, twisted with hate stared back from the screen. Mouths were frozen in rage as they fought against the chains tethering them to racks in the castle’s dungeon.
‘This is Dmitri.’ Lytkin pointed to a tattooed captive scowling at the camera. ‘He was a fine figure of a man, in spite of the food shortages.’ She ran her fingers across the image. ‘I know you’re keen to skip forward, as you put it, so we’ll simply go with the before and after and leave out the stages of reverse metamorphosis. You could hardly describe them as butterflies.’
Helix snatched his eyes from the image. The dormant surgical armoury surrounding his chair clicked into life, hissing and flexing. Blades and drills spun, salivating liquids. Lasers painted lines across his body at the joints of each minor and major limb and appendage. A crystal bead from a syringe coalesced at its tip and dripped onto his arm as they fell still.
‘Far easier to relate to them as creeping crawling caterpillars. It takes time to recover from the surgery, manage the infections and allow the wounds to heal.’ Lytkin gritted her teeth. ‘And si
x months later, this is what we had.’
Lytkin stood admiring an image of the same men, minus their arms, legs, genitalia and one of their eyes. Gone were the restraints, rendered redundant, leaving them writhing in the mud and filth of the dungeon floor. His body weighed heavily on the chair as if he and hope were being sucked below the black surface of an icy sea.
Archer untied the drawstring at the head of the writhing canvas bag and tipped a tattooed limbless living cadaver onto the floor.
‘Major, I’d like you to meet my husband,’ Lytkin said, crouching down. ‘Dmitri, say hello to the Major.’
The tormented creature’s single eye widened. A laboured gurgling hiss issued from behind two rows of shark-like titanium teeth.
‘To return to your earlier questions, Major,’ Lytkin said. ‘What do I want?’
Helix held her gaze.
‘I want you to bring Gabrielle Stepper to me.’
‘And?’
Archer responded to her nod by tossing one of the dog’s tongues onto the floor. Dmitri squirmed and rolled onto his stomach devouring the offal in a single choking gulp.
‘Was that a yes, Major Helix?’
‘If I can find her.’
‘I hope so,’ she added, turning to the wall. ‘Because if not, Dmitri will be getting a new playmate.’ She pointed back at the screen.
Helix couldn’t recall ever seeing Ethan so helpless and terrified. No sign of the cocky bravado that characterised his younger brother. The medieval dungeon in the virtual window bore a sinister resemblance to the one in Ukraine that Lytkin had shown earlier. Like Dmitri, his father and his cohorts, Ethan yelled soundlessly, thrashing against the manacles and chains that secured him to the metal rack suspended from the dank stone walls.
‘I need proof he’s still alive,’ Helix said. ‘That could be a recording or another holo’. Let me speak to him.’
The clattering and clanking of chains ceased as their eyes met across the void. ‘Nate? What the fuck!’ Ethan said, breathlessly.
Helix clenched his jaw. His tightening muscles screamed against the restraints. ‘It’s OK, Bruv. I need to do an identity verification, input—’
‘Of course it’s me!’ Ethan yanked against the chains deepening the raw welts on his wrists. ‘You dumb fucking cyclops.’
Cyclops was one of several epithets his brother used when frustrated, but it wasn’t enough. ‘Ethan, you know better than anyone what’s possible. Come on. Electric.’ He swallowed. ‘Say the word, Bruv.’
‘Sheep.’ Ethan gave the paired word, eyes darting at Archer and Lytkin. ‘She’s going to kill us, Nate. Kill us all. You me, Gab—’
Helix’s body mirrored Ethan’s except this time it was his brother in the burning grip of the electrical charge coursing through his body. His chair rotated to face Lytkin.
She assumed the holographic persona and voice of Gabrielle Stepper once more, straddling him, face inches from his. ‘You’ve got approximately forty-eight hours, Helix. 11AM on the 11th of November. After that Archer gets to work without anaesthetic. For every hour late, Ethan loses something.’
10
47 Hours
Overnight temperatures had dipped to two degrees. London was shivering under a cloak of falling snow. Heavy flakes, whipped by the wind, danced their descent between buildings. Surplus solar power warmed the roads and pavements, the melt water harvested to irrigate sky gardens that clung in clumps to the glassy walls and façades of the high-rise architecture.
London, like the other cities, was sustained by Gaia. According to Greek mythology, Gaia was the ancestral mother of all life. Gaia in her modern manifestation was a quantum artificial intelligence that, amongst other things, monitored and managed the health and education of all city dwellers, eugenically selected which couples were granted permission to have a single child and when. She orchestrated the production and delivery of all nutrition, managed the production of electricity, regulated the city environment and disposed of all waste. Financial institutions and functions fell under Gaia’s auspices and before long so would justice and what remained of the military.
Civil servants, 98 percent of the population, gossiped over coffee, nestled in warm cafes and bars along the edges of St Swithin’s Lane. Office attendance was optional not compulsory. For those not participating in the ritual of preening and parading, work could be attended to by logging in from home. Lunch was an opportunity to meet and greet the middle shift who in turn would meet with the late shift and so the merry-go-round would continue. In exchange for three hours of screen staring, each received the adequate Government living allowance. Psychological evaluations, secreted in assignments, served up by Gaia, provided a wellness feedback loop. Allocations were adjusted and augmented to optimise the balance of purpose, meaning and cognitive stimulation.
A taxi pulled to a halt at the side of Canon Street, its door sliding open. A spectral fog drifted from inside, evaporating amongst the falling snow. Still groggy from whatever Archer had pumped into him, Helix steadied himself on the side of the door as he climbed out, dragging his right foot behind him. The vehicle moved off leaving him reeling in the cold while his smart-fabric clothing regulated his temperature. Pulling up his collar, he fixed his eye on one of the lane’s coffee shops and stumbled forward. Archer had returned his clothes and boots but not his PCM, Gabrielle’s letter or, unsurprisingly, his weapons. Movement was possible without his augmented prosthetics but he needed help to combat the drugs coursing through his veins and scrambling his thoughts. He needed coffee, something to eat and a plan. The realisation that the latter was something that he would have brainstormed with Ethan rattled inside him. Ethan remained in his thoughts but no longer reading them, no longer in his ear, and no longer behind his eye.
Concentrating on his feet, his hands waved an apology as he collided with a passing pedestrian. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. With his eye on his target, he pushed on only to find himself jerked back.
‘Look where you’re going, you twat,’ a hoarse voice said.
He cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me?’ he said. It was a question not a statement.
A blow to his shoulder knocked him off balance. As he regained his footing, a second shove flung him into the path of another thug. The shoves and pushes kept coming as he rebounded between his assailants like a pinball bouncing between flippers and bumpers. Already dizzy from the drugs, he fought to focus.
‘Wanker,’ one voice laughed. ‘Too much sauce last night, dickhead?’
The shoving subsided. Helix swayed to a halt.
‘What are you looking at?’ the hoarse voice grunted. ‘Pisshead.’
Tripping over the low kerb, Helix braced himself for impact with the wet pavement. He didn’t feel the damp, but the explosion in his ribs got his attention. A second kick knocked his arm away. The pavement felt warm against his cheek as he braced himself for the next blow, but it didn’t come.
‘Hey!’ a woman’s voice called. ‘Leave him alone, mamahuevo!’
The shoes and boots turned away, their owners focussing elsewhere. Pressing his hands to the pavement, Helix caught his breath. High heels, pumps and polished brogues tiptoed past, wary of becoming embroiled.
‘Mama what?’ Hoarse Voice said.
‘It’s Spanish for cocksucker.’
About to push up from the pavement, Helix was bundled aside by a falling grey-coated body. The slick sliding of boots across the ground heralded a winded grunt followed by a second upended man. On his hands and knees, Helix assessed the two fallen. They weren’t moving. He flinched at the tap on the shoulder, braced then relaxed. Turning towards the small offered hand, he took it and climbed to his feet.
‘Where’s the other one,’ he said, rubbing his hands together.
‘He legged it.’ The diminutive black-haired woman nodded up the street. ‘You’re welcome.’
‘I had it under control.’
She shook her hair loose and retied it into a ponytail. ‘It looked like it.’ She
laughed, following him towards the coffee shop.
The chimes of the 08:45 news, playing in a perpetual loop across the screens in the coffee shops, had the office fodder reaching for their coats, scarves and takeaway cups as they fell into orderly ranks and headed for another busy morning staring into space. Helix swayed against the door as he pushed against the flow.
‘Can’t you wait, you moron?’ a pompous suit demanded. ‘You’ve spilt my wife’s latte all down her.’
‘Sorry,’ Helix mumbled. ‘She looks a bit tense, maybe you should try licking it off her. Might loosen her up a bit.’
He winced at the jab to his kidney as his rescuer elbowed him aside. ‘Leave it,’ she snapped.
The suit backed down, standing aside with his coffee-stained wife. Helix weaved to a table facing the door, back to the wall.
‘You’re welcome. Again.’
‘What for?’ he said, glancing at the menu, which was hovering next to the table. ‘I didn’t need rescuing. Again.’
‘Maybe you don’t.’
His finger froze over the menu as he canted his head towards her. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? The voids at the sides of his chest where his P226s normally hung yawned. What he really wanted was to eat and get his head straight. The suspicion-fuelled adrenaline spike ate away at the fog filling his head. If she was anything to do with Lytkin, he needed to know. Fast. He estimated her height at 5’ 2”, weight insignificant. Her matching trousers and jacket suggested practical versus posing, with a nod towards masculine. It was going to be like swatting a fly.