by Andy Remic
Still Carter felt tense; the Browning dug into his hip as if reminding him of their mutual agreement—a blood-brother agreement written in the splattered souls of innumerable victims.
Carter eased the Range Rover forward, past the intimidating GAUs. They turned right at the earliest opportunity, down a narrow side street which had once been home to some of London’s finest West End restaurants but was now an avenue of dereliction. Carter killed the engine and both he and Ed clambered out, shouldering their packs. Carter checked up and down the gloomy street, looking back at shattered restaurant fronts and the bullet-riddled stonework around gaping doorways. He discreetly checked the ECube given to him by Nicky, then orientated himself. He killed the tiny machine, looked into Ed’s eyes, and said, ‘This way.’
They walked along the buckled pavements for five minutes, passing groups of people huddled in the snow or hurrying with heads down and dark-circled eyes shadowed by their fear. Stopping outside a deserted building Carter and Ed quickly stepped into the cold and draughty interior.
The building’s windows had long ago disintegrated, and the interior sported nothing more than rotting carpets. The walls were pockmarked with the signs of old battle. One wall sported a long jagged crack running from ceiling to floor.
‘Is this place condemned?’ Ed asked.
‘I would hope so,’ said Carter softly, his Browning in his fist as he moved forward past a disused buckled lift and towards a wide sweep of marble stairs. ‘Somebody sure shot the shit out of this place.’
The stairs were incomplete, with sections of marble facing missing to reveal gaps and blocks of supporting stone beneath. Carter trod warily up the snow-slippery steps.
He moved slowly and with care, eyes scanning continually. After four storeys of climbing the two men finally came to a series of narrow galvanised steps rising steeply to the roof.
The wind snapped at their exposed skin like a terrier, and snow settled across them in a diagonal fall. They moved carefully to the large stone blocks at the edge of the building, crouched, and peered over at the spread of the city around them. To their left rose a slick dome of green copper and the large white clock face—bullet-pocked like the victim of some awful skin disease.
Traffic moved in blocks below, held up by various checkpoints. Some people gathered on the streets, but this was lessening with the severity of the weather now that the snowstorm had increased in intensity. Carter’s sharp eyes picked up plenty of Nex—a more heavy concentration of them than he would have liked.
‘There’s a lot of them down there, boy,’ Ed muttered.
‘Yeah. And that’s why you’re going to stay up here. Watch my back.’
‘Which is the target building?’
Carter nodded over the low stone lip to a grey-walled block with small square windows laid out in perfect symmetry. The building was a huge rectangle, with streets on all four sides—an island amidst the chaos of rising and falling rooftops. ‘I think it used to be a bank headquarters at one point—but the old financial institution is long dead, and it’s used as housing now— He checked the ECube. ‘By my calculations, our target is top floor, four along—in that room there.’ Carter pointed, and Ed pulled free the separate components of his Dragunov SVD and slowly, lovingly—despite the snow and the biting chill—fitted the weapon together.
‘You want me to take him out from here?’
Carter shook his head. ‘No—if you miss, we’ll never find him. He’ll disappear like a rabbit into a warren with five ferrets on its arse. I’ll go in on foot.’
Ed grinned.
‘What is it?’
The older man gestured at the snow-filled expanse. ‘You going to slide across?’ Carter gazed out at the numerous swaying cables which linked the two buildings, dropping in curves between the two structures and gleaming with a slick snow peppering.
‘What? No, fuck that, I’m going to use the stairs.’
‘And there was me thinking you were the perfect action hero!’
‘Action hero?’ snorted Carter. ‘In this world, my friend, there is no such thing.’
And then he was gone, swallowed by the darkness.
Carter spent a full hour scouting the building that contained the target. He circled it three times, from different angles, making sure he was unobserved and approaching from different directions every time. He had kept his head low, stuck to the shadows, and used the natural cover of the falling snow to allow him to get closer than he could ever have managed on a clear day.
‘I love it when we’re alone together,’ said Kade happily.
Carter had cursed Kade’s return. Stagnant for many months, his dark brother had resurfaced once more at the promise of a fight.
‘I wish I was alone for ever. ‘
‘You don’t mean that, Carter. I know that deep down in your soul, you love me. I know that we are brothers; that we are integral, entwined—lovers, if you like?
‘Love? Between us? Don’t make me fucking laugh. I thought you were useful once—but you disproved that when we faced off Jam in Austria. Not much use then, were you?’ Kade remained silent. ‘What’s the matter, Kade? Cat got your tongue, you pile of shit?’
Carter grinned to himself, eyes scanning the building for the fifth time. As far as he could surmise, and judging by the number of people entering and leaving the large housing block of grey stone, the place was pretty much crammed to the rafters. Which made a covert assassination all the more difficult. And to make matters worse, Nex and JT8 patrols passed the building in a regular pattern—sometimes within four minutes of each other.
Slowly, Carter screwed a silencer onto the Browning and checked the magazine one final time. He stowed the weapon in its holster against the small of his back. He had recently stashed his M24 carbine and pack just inside the doorway of a disused building a street away from the target—his escape route if things went well. About his person he carried an array of weapons, from his trusty Browning to a selection of grenades, including HPG silent chemical explosives, a hidden thread of MercG—a liquid-metal thread activated by mind augmentations, a high-tech processor-controlled garrotte so thin that it could be concealed as a thread and so deadly that it could cut through concrete or steel—and a long black dagger concealed in his boot. His last resort.
Carter moved from the narrow, snow-filled alley, gaze scanning swiftly from left to right, slid into the building, and disappeared.
The snow continued its diagonal descent. Shadows slid along the wall of the building in silence, their small boots making no sound. The figures were clad in body-hugging grey uniforms and balaclavas; they carried 9mm TMPs and their copper eyes communicated with one another in silence as they weaved through the heavy snowfall and merged with the building’s silent open doorway ... scant seconds after Carter’s passing.
Within the blink of an eye, the Nex were gone.
Carter paused, turning himself into the building. Noises assaulted his ears from all levels—voices, shouts, music, the blaring rattle of TVs, the stomp of footsteps. Carter held his Browning concealed at his side and moved towards the stairs, eyes narrowed, continually searching for any signs of something out of place.
The ECube had given him a room number, along with a digital representation of the building’s layout; he had memorised these details, along with viable escape routes over the rooftops, through drains and back alleyways, if things happened to turn bad.
He ignored the polished steel of the lift, and padded up the first flight of wide stairs towards the rear of the building. The first landing stank of piss—whether human or animal, Carter could not tell—and the lighting was extremely poor.
On to the second flight, where the smell of piss was stronger and the yellow-flowered velour wallpaper hung in wide strips trailing to the rotting threadbare carpets. Huge stains painted patterns on the plaster beneath, which in turn sported hairline fractures and a pervading stench of damp.
What a place, thought Carter. What a shit-hole.
<
br /> He moved up, past the deserted third floor and to the fourth. He stood on the landing, breathing deeply, feeling himself finally calm. Now he was in an almost robotic state of mind in which all that mattered was his objective, his mission.
The assassination.
Carter moved slowly along the corridor, boots silent on the thick damp carpet. All his senses were screaming at him as he stopped beside the door of Jahlsen’s—the Spiral man’s—room. He listened, head tilted slightly to one side, then removed his ECube and activated its sensors.
The ECube reported nothing.
No trackers, prox sensors, EC alerts—nothing.
And yet, this man was Spiral. An operative. And active in one of the most dangerous cities in the world ... Carter frowned, extended the Browning in front of him and, making sure that his body was well to one side of the doorway, gave a rapid triple knock.
Nothing.
No sounds, no footsteps, nothing.
‘Interesting.’ Carter placed the ECube against the door and stroked in a magnify instruction. The ECube relayed sounds of a TV set burbling—ironically, with an advertisement warning viewers against so-called Spiral terrorists. He initiated an organics scan—which revealed one human.
Carter knocked again.
No reply.
Maybe Jahlsen was asleep? Or drunk?
‘Or dead,’ mused Kade.
Carter took a step back, lifted a boot, and hammered a front kick against the door which splintered it from its lock and smashed it back against the wall. Carter leapt to one side and waited, then slid into the room and closed the door behind him.
Rubbish was strewn everywhere, a mass of pizza boxes, bottles, cartons, tissues, the waste of human deterioration scattered across the stained floor and torn settee. Carter scanned quickly, then moved on through, checking each room in turn until he reached the bedroom.
Jahlsen was kneeling, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts, on a filthy bed. The room was dark, illuminated just by the TV set which sent strobes of imagery across Jahlsen’s seemingly blank eyes. Carter glanced to one side, where a tinfoil tube revealed its grey powder contents. Several spent matches lay beside it.
Carter moved slowly in front of the man, blocking out the TV and sending his own silhouette stretching across the far wall. The stink of GodSmack still filled the room, twitching at Carter’s nostrils and making him want to gag.
Carter shook his head. Shit.
This is wrong, he thought.
The whole situation is wrong.
He lifted the Browning and sighted on Jahlsen’s forehead.
Why is he here?
Carter allowed his breath to escape.
Jahlsen’s eyes snapped open. He blinked rapidly.
‘No,’ he croaked.
Carter froze. Jahlsen was in the grasp of a GodSmack high. He shouldn’t be able to speak. Jesus, to have been able to vomit in such a condition would have been a miracle ...
‘You picked the wrong side,’ said Carter softly, eyes fixed on the grey-haired man, on his strong face, his well-toned body: the body of an athlete, a soldier. Not an addict.
‘Kill him,’ hissed Kade.
‘Carter, no!’
Jahlsen seemed to be struggling to break free of the grip of the drug. He swayed precariously on the bed, its springs creaking, and his hands flexed into claws. Veins stood out across his neck, chest and forearms; he swallowed rapidly, gulping the precious stinking air around him like a drowning man.
‘You... have ... got... it... wrong...’ he gasped, claws grasping at the stained bed sheets and head dropping.
Nicky’s words beat a tattoo in Carter’s brain: he is one of Durell’s; he will condemn Spiral, condemn us all to death; he carries the plans for the SpiralGRID ...
Carter’s expression hardened.
He took a deep breath ...
And pulled the Browning’s trigger.
A single bullet leapt from the barrel. It slammed into Jahlsen’s forehead, lifting his chin up into the air and exiting from the back of his skull, in a spray of blood and brains to bury itself in the plaster of the wall. He crumpled backwards and rolled slowly from the bed.
There came a moment of total stillness. Carter felt something, some part of his soul, die a little; as he did with every death.
A tiny blip sounded.
Carter’s head turned to the right, his eyes focusing on the small black ECube standing on a bedside cabinet amid glasses of water and liquor, tissues and bottles of pills. A tiny red light flashed on and off.
‘Not good,’ hissed Kade, the voice a dark rattle of bones in the back of Carter’s spinning mind.
The TV suddenly hummed. The images died, leaving the room momentarily in darkness—and then the screen sparkled back into life. Images spun and leapt, dissolving and then reanimating into the mercury logo of HIVE Media Productions.
‘What the…’ Carter muttered, confused.
The logo spun into nothingness, to be replaced by a hooded figure. Slowly, the figure threw back his hood and Carter looked into a slightly pale and deformed face; looked into the narrowed and slitted copper eyes of Durell. The ex-Spiral traitor who had brought the world to its knees with his control of earthquakes, his Nex soldiers and his New World Order.
‘Mr Carter,’ came the soft, melodious voice. Carter took a hurried step back. He hefted his Browning, his eyes scanning the room as Durell smiled from the TV screen.
‘You want something, fucker, or is this just a social call?’
‘Well done. You have performed a great service for us. You have delivered to us the SpiralGRID.’
‘No.’ Carter shook his head. ‘I have killed the man who would have betrayed the SpiralGRID to you. I assume that’s why you’ve got this fucking room bugged?’
‘On the contrary.’ Durell smiled. ‘Jahlsen was a Spiral man through and through. He was top-dog, T-level; had the SpiralGRID hard-tattooed on his brain. When you killed him, the ECube blipped the SpiralGRID back to the sub-system mainframes—and it was en route that my clever little QIV processor plucked the GRID from the global digital map before it could reach its safe haven. You have delivered me the greatest weapon I could ever use against Spiral... and you killed one of Spiral’s finest at the same time. Congratulations, Carter. You have finally joined our side.’
‘Fuck you, Durell, this isn’t true ...’
‘Carter.’ Durell smiled a broad smile. ‘You have betrayed Spiral.’
The TV screen died. Ed’s voice suddenly hissed on a wave of static in Carter’s ear.
‘We got company.’
‘Nex?’
‘Aye, lad. Lots of them ... get on the roof before they pin you down in there; the snow stopped me taking potshots at them on the ground—bastards slid through like ghosts—but if you can lead them up onto the roof I’ve got a much clearer view ...’
‘Roger that.’
Carter turned, catching sight of Jahlsen’s slumped body on the floor. His blood had stained his old clothing and soaked into the scattered, soiled bed sheets. His eyes had rolled up into his head showing nothing more than the whites, criss-crossed with tiny blood vessels.
Carter shook his head. ‘I don’t believe it. Son of a bitch.’
He turned, sprinted for the door and darted out into the corridor—where a Steyr TMP opened up, bullets eating a line from the wall behind Carter and chewing wood in long splinters from the frame of the door. Carter threw himself flat, his Browning thumping in his fist as 9mm bullets caught the Nex in the arm and shoulder, punching it backwards from the landing doorway ...
Carter rolled with a thump against the wall, and came around on one knee with the Browning raised. The Nex reappeared, blood slick against its tight grey uniform, copper eyes moving to fix on Carter’s position as it aimed the Steyr TMP—
Carter steadied his own aim.
Two bullets took the Nex in the forehead, exploding the top of its skull up and out in a gruesome shower of bone shards and brain tissue. Carte
r was already moving, pulling the pin from an HPG and launching it behind him, towards the dark mouth of the stairwell...
He ran, heard the hiss and concussive whoosh of HighJ explosive; purple fire raced along the corridor singeing Carter’s trousers as he threw himself to the right through a doorway, toppling over an upturned chair and sprawling as a whirlwind of flames rushed past behind him ...
The muted roar suddenly died away, and the conflagration was sucked back.
Leaving silence.
Carter stumbled across the room in darkness, and sensed rather than saw another human in the room.
‘Paddy?’ came a young lad’s whining voice. ‘Is that you? Did you get the photos of the bridge?’
Carter ignored the voice, reaching the window and delivering a front-kick which shattered the glass. The alloy frame swung outwards, lock broken and dangling free.
‘Hey,’ came the sleepy voice again, ‘who are you? You’re not Paddy. Where’s Paddy? What have you done with Paddy? Have you got Paddy’s photographs?’
Carter leapt up onto the rim, feeling glass shards bite into his gloves, and peered out into the snow. It was a long drop to a hard distant ground.
There was a small stone window ledge in front of him, and Carter stepped onto its slippery surface—then glanced up to where several steel hooks supported cables strung between this block and other buildings. Suddenly, skinny arms appeared and hands grasped his leg.
‘Where is Patrick?’ persisted the voice.
‘Get the fuck off me!’ Carter kicked the young man in the face, placed his Browning back in its holster, then leapt up, grasping one of the steel hooks and hauling himself up into the falling snow. He reached out, boots scrabbling against the snow-slick stone, and with a Herculean effort managed to stretch to a stone carving, his gloved hands finally reaching the lip of the roof of the building. Grunting, Carter hung for a moment, sweat stinging his eyes as he swayed high above the ground ...
‘Hey, hello there, do you know where Paddy is? He’s gone to get the photos. The rude ones! The ones about the new bridge.’ A Steyr TMP clattered, silencing the young man’s questioning whine. Carter cursed, and hauled himself up onto the stone-rimmed roof of the building as a Nex’s head appeared from the window, along with the barrel of the TMP.