After Life (Power Reads Book 2)

by Dean Crawford

  Kerry.

  ***

  19

  London

  Arianna stood beside a broad window that overlooked the crumbling remains of what had once been the exclusive Shad Thames development, the river itself just visible to her left between the narrowly spaced apartment blocks, and tried to convince herself that everything was fine.

  Alexei’s transmission was interrupted. He’s remotely locked the apartment doors for safety’s sake.

  Once an exclusive place to live, now the block opposite hers was a crumbling, dirt stained mess with broken windows, big black squares beckoning her imagination toward the horrors that might lie within. The city south of the Thames had been evacuated and then shut off by the military during The Falling: those left behind had died here. The road below was littered with fallen masonry and dense with foliage, and amid the debris Arianna could see scattered bones that had long been picked clean by rodents and then insects.

  Many would have belonged to the people who lived here; men, women and children.

  She turned away from the bleak view and looked at the apartment. It had been maintained perfectly for many years. That Alexei Volkov needed a bolt hole, somewhere that he could remain undetected was something that Arianna could understand well enough, given his younger years spent in the ferocious wilds of Siberia and then in the dangerous business world of Russia, but she could not fathom why he would have decided to build his sanctuary here unless he truly did believe that the police were corrupt. Maybe beyond the river in a land haunted by The Falling, was a place that somebody like Volkov could actually call safe.

  But can I?

  Arianna saw a viewing panel folded neatly against a wall nearby. She walked across the living room and picked up a remote control, tapping buttons as she went. The screen, a three by four foot transparent panel lined with tasteful silver trim, automatically extended on a slim aluminium arm to hover before her.

  Arianna perched on the edge of the white leather sofa and activated the panel. Instantly a live news broadcast from Re–Volution’s headquarters in the city appeared in clarity–definition before her, a female reporter standing in front of the still smouldering lower floors and speaking into her personal camera.

  ‘… several dozen people are now confirmed dead after the explosion yesterday that also claimed the lives of over one hundred holosaps in what is being called the biggest case of genocide in recent history. The blast was deliberately designed to sever fibre links with Re–Volution’s data storage facilities as well as inflict maximum human casualties…’

  Arianna flicked across a couple of channels, all of them government owned but still maintaining a free press of sorts. Democracy required as its cornerstone a free press and the people knew it.

  ‘… several individuals injured in the blast remain unaccounted for, including a Hope Reunion Church priest that the police have stated they want to question regarding the attack…’

  ‘Oh God!’

  Arianna leaped to her feet in shock as alongside the reporter’s broadcast an image of her own face appeared. It was taken not from Re–Volution’s data banks, where her records were kept for her freelance work and featured a happy, smiling picture of herself, but from the train station that very morning. They had zoomed in, and she saw her own brooding image staring out across the city. Somehow it made her look like a suspect, somebody who hid in the shadows and was rarely seen. Her psychology training told her why – Suggestion. Arianna paused the live–feed broadcast and stared at herself. The police could have released the Re–Volution stock photo, a normal snapshot of her smiling at the camera with not a care in the world, but no, they used a pixelated and shadowy image instead.

  She heard words from the reporter flicker through her mind like phantoms haunting a bizarre and horrible dream.

  ‘… she was questioned by police officers after the blast… the adoptive daughter of a former Russian magnate who was recently murdered… senior figure in the Hope Reunion Church, an establishment known to have housed terrorists in the past… not seen since this morning after an attack on commuters at train platform…’

  Arianna knew a great deal about how the media could use certain images to create a suggestion in the mind of a viewer that a fact or accusation was true without actually saying so. The ploy had been used many times in history, a form of subtle but extremely persuasive propaganda; images of calving ice sheets, swimming polar bears and smoking power stations when reporting on climate change, even though the ice sheets, polar bears and power stations would perform precisely the same activities without climate change; people dying of gunshot injuries in foreign countries undergoing civil strife, despite the viewer not knowing whether the footage came from the same countries upon which the reports were focused; and images of rival religious groups singing happy songs and praying together when everybody knew that there was no such accord between opposing faiths and that each insisted upon the falsehood of the others.

  There was no mention in the report of her being abducted or shot at. The suggestion, although never voiced, was that she had fled. Somebody, somewhere was trying to build a picture in the public mind of her as a criminal or somebody affiliated with criminals, and not the victim that she was.

  ‘I can’t let this happen,’ she whispered to herself.

  Hiding was no good to her. She had to come out fighting and make herself heard or by the time the sun had set she would never be able to set foot back in the city again. Every single person would know her name and would associate it with terrorism.

  Damn it. How the hell would she get back across the river? Would they let her through the gates? Would there be armed men waiting to shoot her? What if the police were corrupt? And here she was, hiding in a penthouse apartment built illegally by a murdered Russian magnate with a patchy history in a part of the city reserved for the dead, the doomed and the criminal underbelly of one of the last populated cities on the planet.

  Guilty as hell, without a further word being said about it.

  Arianna shut off the display and turned for the elevator door. She reached down for the access panel, and immediately saw that it was still locked. Questions flashed through her mind faster than she could process them as she searched for a key. Why hide me here at all? Why had the door locked automatically? Why was Alexei murdered and by whom? Why was I attacked and by whom?

  Where is Alexei?

  What if this isn’t Alexei’s apartment?

  Arianna walked back across the apartment and reached up for the contact panel near the holographic projector. Her hand froze without touching the panel, as though by some unheard yet powerful instinct. She stood, immobile as a statue as the morning’s events ran through her mind.

  Men on the train platform. Another man, a police officer, rescues her from an imminent attack and is shot in the process. Why was he not on the news? It would have been the perfect final blow, that she had fled and a police officer had been shot in the process, confirming in the minds of viewers her likely guilt of something. The answer popped into her mind of its own accord. The injured man was not a police officer.

  Arianna felt her breath catch as a new and unexpected explanation dawned in her mind. What if her abductors were the enemy? What if Alexei himself was the enemy?

  Arianna turned to seek a means of escape from the apartment.

  To her surprise the elevator door opened. She turned toward it, only to see half a dozen masked men lunged into the building with a man she had only ever seen on the television before now following them. Kieran Beck. As the men grabbed her, she heard Beck’s voice from behind his face mask.

  ‘Hello, Arianna. I’ve been dying to meet you.’

  ***

  20

  Arianna opened her mouth to scream, but her cry was cut short by a gloved hand that smelled of leather as she was forcibly dragged through the apartment by the six men. They hauled her writhing body into the bedroom and hurled her onto the huge bed.

  Arianna struggl
ed against them, but they pinned her ankles and wrists into place with overwhelming force as one of the men pressed both of his gloved hands either side of her face to keep her from moving her head.

  ‘What do you want?!’ she managed to yell.

  Kieran Beck strode into the bedroom, a black cylinder in his hand from which projected two metallic probes twice as long as matchsticks.

  ‘What do I want?’ Beck asked as he moved to stand at the foot of the bed. He smiled at her and shrugged. ‘I want you dead, Arianna, right now.’

  Beck tossed the black cylinder to the man who was pinning Arianna’s head to the mattress. The man caught the cylinder easily as it spun past over her head, and then flipped it over in his palm and lowered it over her mouth, the two metal probes pointing toward her nose.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she screamed.

  ‘It’s for insurance purposes,’ Kieran Beck replied, ‘ours obviously. My apologies in advance, Arianna, for the unbearable pain this procedure will inflict.’

  Arianna squirmed against her captors but she was utterly unable to break free from their grasp. The man holding her head touched the two metallic probes to her nose and inserted them into her nostrils.

  Tears spilled from Arianna’s eyes as she felt the cold metal probes push up into her sinuses, heading toward her brain.

  ‘Please, no,’ she gasped.

  Pain bolted between her eyes as though needles were being driven into her eyeballs.

  ‘Do it,’ Beck snapped. ‘Now!’

  The man holding the cylinder lifted a thumb over a button on its surface to activate the device as Arianna screamed.

  ‘No!’

  The windows to the apartment suddenly shattered in a cascade of glass as bullets scythed into the bedroom. Arianna saw the man above her hurled sideways as a bullet smashed through his skull and tore his face clean off in a spray of thick blood and bone that splattered across the bed sheets.

  The cylinder was torn from Arianna’s nose and spun sideways onto the bed, a bright blue beam of fiery energy singing the sheets in black patches as the laser cutter was activated.

  Bullets slammed through Kieran Beck’s men as they hurled themselves away from the hail of gunfire. Arianna rolled sideways off the bed and grabbed the spitting, clicking cylinder as she went.

  ‘Kill her!’ Kieran Beck bellowed from where he lay on the floor, one hand covering his head.

  Arianna dashed toward the bedroom door. A gloved hand flashed out and grabbed her calf, strong fingers closing like a vice on her. Arianna whirled and jabbed the laser cutter into the hand, heard a scream of pain and smelled burned flesh. The hand shot away from her again and she fled the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. She grabbed an ornate chair, all flowing chrome tubes and plastic, and wedged it under the door handle.

  She whirled for the elevator door once again, and instantly saw that it was locked, the keypad glowing bright red.

  ‘Shit.’

  A deep thud hammered into the bedroom door as Kieran Beck’s men struggled to escape. She ran a hand through her hair in frustration and on reflex glanced up at the ceiling as though to heaven above to implore God for an answer.

  He answered.

  A square panel in the ceiling, fitted flush. A loft space. Arianna dashed across to the apartment’s control panel and hit the access button for the loft. The hatch clicked and then hissed softly as it folded down and a metal ladder slowly extended to the floor. Arianna clambered up the ladder and instantly lights flickered into life inside the loft as motion sensors detected her presence.

  Arianna turned around and hauled the ladder up. She yanked the hatch shut behind her, then rammed the laser cutter through the latch to prevent anybody from pursuing her.

  The loft was about half as large as the apartment below, the penthouse suite’s roof coming in from all four corners to a point above her head where heavy beams were supported that ran the length of the roof. Windows had been blocked off, probably after The Falling, to prevent weather damage and subsequent access by infected vermin. However, the covers were merely screwed into mounts and braces, not glued or attached via the outside.

  Arianna did not have a screwdriver, but it took her only moments to spot a tool box among various other items stored in the loft space. Moments later she was unscrewing the window covers as from below she heard more gunfire and shouts of alarm. She lifted the cover down as soon as it was free to reveal a triple glazed window with a simple twist–lock handle.

  Below her in the apartment, she heard the bedroom door smash open and Beck’s men tumble out to the sound of enraged shouting.

  Arianna grabbed the handle, twisted it and threw the window open.

  Cold air breezed in, stained by the odour of the nearby Thames and battered by the sound of helicopter blades. On an impulse Arianna grabbed the discarded cover and guided it out of the window before taking hold of the edges of the window and carefully hauling herself up and out of the loft.

  Heights had never been a strong point for Arianna and her guts lurched as she realised just how precarious her perch was. The roof slanted down toward a precipitous drop of maybe eighty feet to the narrow, weed infested street below her. She looked to her right and saw a large chimney, probably a century or two old, still standing alongside the apartments that had once been dock warehouses. A ladder was attached to the side of the chimney.

  The helicopter sounded as though it was hovering on the other side of the roof, occasional bursts of gunfire shattering the air.

  Arianna took the window cover from inside the loft and set it back in place. There was no way that she could properly secure it, so instead she drove two screws into the sides of the cover and then lowered the window over it. It would not escape close inspection but it might just be enough to disguise her means of escape.

  Arianna closed the window and managed to force the handle shut over the cover below by leaning her weight into it. Then, lying flat on the rooftop, she edged her way along the tiles toward the chimney.

  She was half way there when she heard the running footfalls echoing through the street below and the sound of more helicopter blades thumping distant air, getting ever louder.

  ***

  21

  The helicopter’s rotors beat the air and the rooftop and Arianna’s chest seemed to shudder with the blows.

  She struggled toward the chimney, the damp tiles scratching against her fingernails as she slipped toward the dizzying drop just below her. The wind blew her hair into her face as she nudged herself along a few inches at a time.

  Questions fluttered like dark butterflies through her mind: where was Alexei? Why would Kieran Beck want her dead? Why were helicopters shooting up the apartment? Only the government were allowed to operate aerial vehicles.

  Arianna reached the edge of the rooftop and fear wrenched at her insides as she realised that the chimney was not directly attached to the apartment building. A yawning abyss of some twelve feet stood between her and the metal ladder bolted to the chimney’s brickwork. Pressing her body flat against the damp tiles she inched her head over the edge.

  Her belly contracted and her breath caught in her throat as she saw the sheer drop to the debris strewn alley below.

  ‘Jesus, help me,’ she whispered as she closed her eyes.

  Nobody answered.

  Below, two black vehicles screeched from the parking lot beneath the apartments and raced beneath the helicopter to vanish through the abandoned streets. Beck’s vehicles, she guessed. They’d fled the scene. The helicopter made no attempt to pursue the vehicles, remaining in position just out of view on the far side of the roof.

  Arianna’s sense of balance wavered even though she was lying flat on the roof. There was no other option, no other means of escape. Her legs trembling, Arianna pressed her palms and her knees into the tiles and came up onto all fours, careful to stay just clear of the edge of the roof.

  The helicopter’s rotors thundered and she glanced to her ri
ght to see the speck of a second helicopter moving rapidly toward her across the city against turbulent clouds. She guessed she had maybe a minute, perhaps even less. She looked back at the drop.

  ‘Oh God, oh God,’ she whispered.

  Maybe this was all just crazy. Alexei was not the enemy and she had got it all wrong. She could just go back, drop into the loft space and forget the whole damned thing.

  The voice of her sanity barged its way to the front to be heard.

  You shut the window, genius, and even if you’re right somebody’s trying to kill you. There is no room for mistakes. You can only trust yourself.

  She tried to stand but her legs would not obey her. Every gust of wind seemed destined to blow her over the edge to an agonising death on the unforgiving alley below. Crunching bones. Bursting eyes. Seeping blood.

  She took a deep breath, sucking in cold air. Her legs steadied. She stood up, the damp tiles cold on her feet as she backed up a few paces, balancing with her arms out to either side of her. Tears trickled from her eyes but she swiped them away as she focused on the metal ladder twelve feet away from the edge of the roof.

  Twelve feet. Maybe fifteen feet because gravity will pull me down a bit.

  Not far. Not too far. Just don’t land badly and break a leg, or an arm, or bash your face in because you won’t be able to hang on. Don’t look down, just focus on the ladder and nothing else. You can do this.

  Just do it.

  Arianna sucked in a last deep breath of air and then ran at the edge of the roof.

  Every step seemed to drain the strength from her legs. Tiles slipped as she ran but she powered forward with suicidal gusto. Her right foot touched down on the edge of the roof and she knew she could no longer stop herself from flying out into thin air and with a rush and a pinched scream she hurled herself as hard as she could at the ladder in front of her.