by Paul Crilley
“So you were just going to kill me?” I shout, enraged. “Who the hell do you think you are? You can’t just walk around killing people because they happen to witness—”
I stop when I see Ash’s smirk. Oh. Nice.
“You’re joking,” I say.
“Of course I am, idiot.”
“Graves!”
We turn and see that the Inspectre and his crew are walking away from the body, attaching their masks and heading to a rectangle of blue light that stands in the water a few feet from them.
“It’s all yours,” he shouts. “Have fun cleaning up!”
“Asshole,” mutters Graves, pushing himself to his feet and heading back toward the body.
By the time we get there the Inspectre and his crew have gone, the blue door winking out of existence. We stare down at the corpse.
“So . . . what do we do with him?” I ask.
“What did you used to do?” says Graves.
“Body like this, it would have been taken away by the coroner.” I look around. “Truth is, there wouldn’t be much call for us here. Not much of a crime scene to clean up once he’s gone. We’d move any sand that has his blood on it, but that’s about it.”
“We work a bit differently,” says Graves. He takes out a small contraption that looks like it’s made from bone and metal. It’s covered in runes, similar in style to the masks. He squats down and attaches it to the corpse.
“What’s that?”
“A DTD.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“A Deviance Transference Device,” says Ash. “Ships the corpse back to home base. We have a morgue and recycling plant there.”
I frown. “Recycling plant? Recycle into what?”
“Got to make the office plants grow somehow,” says Graves, straightening up again. “Stand back please.”
I follow them out of range, and about twenty seconds later there’s a bright flash of light and the corpse vanishes.
“Ash,” says Graves. “Site recon.”
Ash nods and gestures for me to follow her.
“What are we doing?”
“Making sure there’s no evidence left behind. Nothing that some random kid is going to find and stash in a locked box only to be unearthed in twenty years’ time and make everyone wonder how the hell such advanced tech ended up locked away for so long.”
“Ah.”
We scour the beach but find nothing. Twenty minutes later Graves calls us back and tells us to mask up. He triggers the Slip, and we venture back through the tunnel and reemerge into the starlit twilight world of Wonderland. Or the Maze. Or the Rabbit Hole, or whatever the hell they call it.
I check my watch. We’ve been away for two hours. I reach up to take off the mask, but Graves holds a hand up.
“Not so fast, flyboy. We’re still on the clock.”
As he finishes talking, an arrow flashes to life in the HUD.
“And off we go for round two.”
We follow the arrows to a door closer to the entrance of the maze. We step through the Slip and emerge into a long, low warehouse. Electric lights illuminate row upon row of cages.
I step forward and peer inside the closest. Empty. I look to the next. Same.
“There’s nothing here!” I call out to Graves. “What’s the crime supposed to be?”
“Category A,” says Ash. “The introduction of magic-based life-forms into a science-based society with the aim of destabilization and illicit gains.”
“Magic-based life-forms?”
Ash nods. “This alternate is a Class One space-faring society. Colonies on the moon and Mars. No mythological species allowed.”
“That’s what I’m not getting,” I say. “What mythological species? All I’m seeing are empty cages.”
“The criminals planned on starting a circus and freak show peopled with fairies and creatures of folklore,” says Graves.
I blink. “Fairies and . . . ?”
“Folklore,” says Graves. “Are you deaf?”
I peer into another cage. Empty—
No. I look closer. There’s a tiny form lying at the back of the cage. I open the door and gently pull it toward me. It weighs nothing. Like a feather.
I take it out of the cage and move to stand beneath a light. It’s a fairy. Like from the story books. Tiny, lying dead in the palm of my hand. The creature’s thin, wood-colored face is gaunt and drawn. Black sightless eyes stare into nothing. The creature is wearing earthen colors, dull and muted. It has four wings attached to its back, wings that have been broken and crushed.
I feel a wave of anger surge through me. “So . . . what? They were just crammed in these cages? How many?”
An image flashes up in my HUD. Crime scene photographs from before the creatures were taken away. The fairies were crammed into the cages like battery hens.
“Those bastards!” I turn to Graves. “Have you caught them?”
“We have them in custody, yes.”
“What will happen to them?” I hold up the tiny creature. “This is murder, yes?”
“Of course it’s murder,” says Graves. “Don’t worry about the criminals. They’ll be taken care of.”
I take a deep breath, filled with fury and anger and . . . helplessness. Wanting to lash out at something. Anything. Another reason I’d probably have been a shitty cop—I can’t stand injustice. It really gets to me. Who knows how long I’d have lasted in the force if I was confronted with a crime scene and had the criminals in hand?
“Check the cages for any bodies,” says Graves. “We need to round them all up. No evidence left behind.”
I lay the tiny fairy down on a piece of sacking in the center of the warehouse. Then Ash and I move slowly from cage to cage while Graves scours the perimeter for any other traces.
When Ash and I finish, we have a pile of thirty-four fairies of various types. Some no larger than my pinkie, some as long as my forearm. All of them crushed or suffocated.
“You know, back in my . . . world. Reality. Whatever. We only clear up what’s left behind after the bodies are taken.”
“Things are different here,” says Graves. “Unless the body needs to be taken away for inspection as part of an ongoing investigation. Then Department Ten does that. That’s the medical and morgue department, before you ask.”
We gather around the pathetic line of bodies. “What will you do with them?” I ask.
“We know which alternate they’re from,” says Ash gently. “We’ll try and track down their clans and families. That’s Department Twenty’s job. I worked there for a while. Before being promoted. And then demoted,” she adds, with a thoughtful glance in my direction.
I open my mouth to protest, but what’s the point? They think what they think. I can say none of it was my fault till I’m blue in the face, but they all lost their jobs regardless.
“How do we get them back?” I ask, deciding the better path is to just change the subject altogether.
Graves looks around. “Bring that crate over here.”
I look around. There’s a long crate stuck in the corner, filled with old sacking. Ash and I drag it across the floor, and we carefully lift the bodies and lay them gently on the bottom.
Graves activates a Slip. The door flares to life, and we pick up the crate and carry it through. We emerge into the Maze and track it back to the ICD building.
“I can’t help but think this is a bit . . . low tech? Can’t you just magic them into the building?”
“I left magic behind when I was recruited into this job.”
“Okay,” I say, filing that little nugget away for the future. “But what about some kind of portal or something? Like you did before with the retrophile.”
“Too many of them,” says Ash. “We don’t have enough DTDs. I’m afraid it’s low tech or nothing.”
When we exit the maze, Graves hands the crate over to people he seems to know.
“Take them to Twenty. Have them processed and sent ba
ck to their home alternate.” He turns back to us. “Ready?”
“For what?”
“Lunch. Then back to work.”
The afternoon shift takes us through to a modern-looking boardroom. We arrive just as the Inspectre is making his arrest. He has a skinny guy bent over the mirrored boardroom table and is cuffing him while reading him his rights.
“You have the right to legal counsel, blah-blah-blah.”
He hauls the guy up and shoves him at one of his colleagues.
“Nice to see you keeping the standards high,” says Graves.
The Inspectre glares in our direction. “You guys aren’t supposed to turn up till after we give the all clear. Do your job properly, Graves. Otherwise . . . no— Wait. I was going to say you’ll get demoted, but there’s nowhere to demote you to.”
Graves doesn’t react.
“Because you’re already at the bottom,” adds the Inspectre.
“Yeah, I got it, idiot. And we were told you’d have the arrest cleared after lunch. Not my fault if your lunches are taking a bit longer nowadays.” Graves casts a pointed look at the Inspectre’s waistcoat. The buttons are straining slightly around a protruding stomach.
The Inspectre flushes slightly and tries to suck his stomach in. “Asshole,” he mutters, and activates a Slip for his men to take the perp through. He follows, and the Slip slowly sinks downward and vanishes into the floor.
“Right,” says Graves, clapping his hands together. “Our first case this afternoon is an illegal profit-sharing coterie.”
“A what?” I ask.
“The man who was just arrested is from another alternate. Or he’s been contacted by someone from another alternate. But this other alternate is almost identical to this one in every way, except it runs three days in advance. So the perps in the other alternate are passing info to our criminal, getting him to play the markets, make bets for them, that kind of thing. Very stupid, because any odd payouts always triggers the alarms at ICD.”
I look around the office. “So what are we supposed to clear? There’s no body. No blood.”
Graves pats me on the shoulder. “Poor guy. You’re like an abused dog, aren’t you? Not all our crime scene cleanups are like that. We’re looking for any links to the alternate. Anything linking our perp to his coconspirators. I mean, we could just torch the place, but I find that kind of thing a bit extreme. Softly, softly, catchy monkey, I always say.”
“Do you?” I say, nodding wisely. “Do you really?”
“Yes,” says Graves, staring hard at me. “I do. Along with groovy. You got a problem with that?”
I raise my hands in the air. “No problems here, amigo. Whatever floats your boat.”
I take a backseat on this job, watching more than I participate. Ash goes through the computers and smartphones, checking the perp’s accounts, e-mails, etc. She saves anything pertinent to a flash drive, then uses a local EMP device to fry the electronics.
Graves looks through the file cabinets and desk drawers, searching for any hard copies, instructions, or means of contacting the alternate reality.
He soon finds what he’s searching for. A tiny, handheld radio made from the same kind of weird bone and gristle as the gun Crew Cut Dude had dropped.
“Got it,” he says, standing up. “Ash? We good?”
“We good.”
“Splendid. On to the next job then.”
It’s the end of the day, and I’m exhausted. Utterly empty. We’re standing in the huge empty floor at the top of the building, Slips flashing and winking out of existence as the shifts change over.
“So. You survived your first day,” says Graves.
I can’t help noticing he sounds oddly disappointed.
“Still, there’s always tomorrow,” he says. “Off you go. Get a good night’s sleep.”
I hesitate. I wanted to talk to Ash about everything that happened today. I have questions, so many questions. But Graves doesn’t look as if he’s going anywhere, so I shove my hands in my pockets and nod. “’Night then.”
“’Night,” says Ash.
I approach one of the workers sitting behind a desk.
“Uh . . . hi. I need to go home. How do I do that?”
“The mask will be linked to your home address. Just approach the doors and a Slip will take you back.”
I nod and head toward one of the hundreds of door pedestals. Some are empty, just three short stairs leading up to nothing. Others have blue-white rectangles waiting for the workers to use. I put my mask on and climb the steps of the closest pedestal. The door flares to life, and I step inside, finding myself in the long tunnel. I don’t hesitate this time, but walk quickly through the darkness, not looking left or right, not listening to the slithering from the shadows, trying not to acknowledge the half-glimpsed creatures, the writhing tentacles, the cosmic emptiness of it all.
I reach the end of the tunnel and enter my bedroom.
I pause and look around. The Slip makes the room look like something out of an alien abduction movie. Harsh, brilliant light cuts into the corners and reveals the mess of my life.
Then the Slip closes and grungy orange light filters through the window. I stand where I am, looking around at the utter mundanity of my apartment. After everything I’ve seen today this, the real world, seems somehow out of place. Unreal.
I take a deep breath, going over the day in my head. But I can’t. I shy away from everything. It’s like it doesn’t compute. My brain can’t handle everything in one go.
I take a shower, then grab a beer from the fridge and check the time. Seven. Not too late.
I slump into the couch and dial home. Ex-home.
Susan answers, and it’s like the whole day didn’t happen. I feel a smile tugging at my lips as I hear her voice. “Hey, kiddo. You ready?”
“Yeah!”
“Cool. It’s your turn to read to me, right?”
“D-a-a-d!”
I smile and start to read. And everything else just falls away.
Chapter Seven
A new day and a new crime scene.
We step out of a Slip into a devastated city speared with early-morning sunlight. Smoke billows into the winter blue sky, wavering stalks reaching high and spreading out to form a haze. Every building in sight has been destroyed. It looks like a war has been fought here.
“Shit, Graves,” says Ash, her voice small and quiet.
That makes me feel better. Because I’m freaking out a bit looking at this shell of a city, and I was really worried that this might be considered normal.
“What’s the crime scene here?” I ask. “The whole city?”
Graves has his back to us. He doesn’t answer at first.
“Graves?”
“Not the whole city,” he says softly. “The whole world.”
I blink, not understanding. “The whole world?” I look around again. “The whole world is like this?”
“Some psycho from an alternate with real Superiors came through here and . . .” He gestures around us. “. . . did this.”
“Superiors?”
“What you’d call a superhero,” says Ash. “Or a super villain.”
“You’re saying Superman did this?”
“No. This is what would have happened if Superman wasn’t there to stop General Zod.”
I look around again. And that’s when I realize the whole city—the whole planet—by the sounds of it is utterly silent. No birds, no people, no life.
“Is . . . is everything dead?”
“Everything,” says Graves.
“But aren’t you guys supposed to stop this kind of thing? The ICD? Isn’t that your job?”
“We must have missed this. Somehow . . .”
“You missed it?” I say incredulously. “Well, that’s just dandy! I bet that makes the billions of people who lived here feel a whole lot better! That you somehow missed it! I mean, fuck it, yeah? You’re only human. Not your fault, right?”
“Harry
. . .” Ash throws me a warning look.
“What? Oh, am I hurting Mr. Graves’s feelings? I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’re so shit at your job! Seriously, what’s the point of you people if you can’t stop . . .” I wave at the horror around me. “. . . this kind of thing from happening? Who are you accountable to?”
Graves turns and runs at me. I stare in shock, then stumble back, tripping over a fallen column. Graves is on me before I hit the ground, pulling me back up by my shirt.
“Who are we accountable to?” he shouts. “We’re accountable to ourselves! You think I’m happy with this? You ever think maybe we missed this because I got demoted? Because of the shit you caused? Ever think of that?”
I yank free of him. “You’re blaming me for this?”
“Are you blaming me?” he snaps back.
I hesitate, then look away. I don’t want to do this. Not here. Not now.
“Come on, Graves,” says Ash gently. “We have a job to do.”
“Yeah.” Graves carries on staring at me for a few seconds longer. “Another time, then.”
“Sure,” I say. “I’ll be waiting.”
Graves turns and walks away through the rubble-strewn streets. Ash and I follow, moving past hollowed-out buildings, scarred and pitted, stained black with smoke.
I really don’t like it here. There’s a feeling . . . a heaviness . . . that weighs me down.
Then I see the bodies.
I blink, look away. Scrunch my eyes shut. Because I can’t look at the hundreds—no, thousands—of dead bodies piled neatly on the broken tarmac.
I hear Ash’s indrawn breath, force myself to open my eyes.
It’s like some kind of twisted, interlocking jigsaw puzzle, each body laid head to toe, one on top of the other, to form neat rows. The bodies themselves are mangled and torn, ripped apart, limbs and torsos used to fill gaps in the lines.
We stare at the bodies for a long moment.
“Tell me we’re not responsible for cleaning this up,” I say, and immediately regret it. “Sorry. Bad joke.”
We move past the bodies, heading deeper into the broken city.
“Where’s the team at?” asks Ash.
“The town square,” says Graves. “Should be just up ahead.”