by Chris Ward
‘A Huntsman took my baby. I saw it. It picked him up and carried him away.’
‘Perhaps it was hungry,’ Lindon said, making Raine gasp. She glared at him, taking an immediate dislike to the man who looked like he shaved with a hammer.
Tim Cold shook his head. ‘A hungry Huntsman would have killed it without thought. You are a Tube Rider, yes? That is why it was hunting you?’
Raine shook her head. ‘I quit, more than a year ago. I want nothing to do with tube riding.’
‘Yet you carry the board?’
‘For protection.’
‘And status,’ Lindon added. ‘It got you past our guards.’
‘Quiet, Lindon,’ Tim said, and Raine noticed how the younger man tensed. He didn’t take authority well. ‘What do you want from us?’
‘I want my baby back. I didn’t know where else to go.’
‘Not to your Tube Rider friends?’ Raine hesitated, but before she could answer, Tim added, ‘Oh, I forgot. They went on the run from the government. Quite the associates, aren’t they?’
Raine fought to keep the anger out of her voice. ‘I did nothing wrong. I work in a fucking supermarket. All I want to do is bring up my baby. He’s been taken and I don’t know how to get him back.’
‘He’s as good as dead,’ Lindon said. ‘Forget him.’
The bearded man on the couch stirred and sat up. Rusty Pete’s eyes were bloodshot, his beard flecked with bits of dirt. ‘Hand her over to that whore Dreggo,’ he said.
Tim shook his head. ‘This is my call, Pete.’
‘Fuck the bitch. Hand her over to Dreggo and wash your hands of her.’
‘She has information that might help us.’
Rusty Pete stood up. He swaggered over towards Raine, who stood unmoved, staring up into his beady eyes. His gut looked a perfect fit for one of her knives.
‘We could hang for harbouring you,’ he said, accenting his words with a long belch. ‘The best place for you is the cells. If you’re lucky I might come by for a visit later.’ He stumbled over to a desk and picked up a phone, barking an order for guards.
Lindon was watching Rusty Pete with a smile on his face, but Tim Cold’s eyes were like iron. As Rusty Pete turned back towards them, Tim Cold lifted a hand and something blurred across the room, landing in Pete’s neck with a meaty thud. Lindon’s mouth fell open. As calm as any killer Raine could imagine, Tim Cold walked across the room to where Pete had fallen.
‘Your drinking has made you reckless,’ he said, looking down at the big man, his beard soaked crimson with his own blood. ‘You can no longer be trusted, and therefore I have removed you from your post.’
A knock came on the door.
‘Enter,’ Tim Cold said, and a group of men burst into the room. They paused, taking in the scene, looking from Lindon to Tim Cold to Raine standing shocked and motionless in the centre.
Tim looked at Lindon. ‘I’m afraid Rusty Pete is no longer with us,’ he said. ‘He let his power go to his head, and he had to be replaced. Didn’t he, Lindon?’
The younger man gave a sharp nod. A tiny smile creased Tim Cold’s lips. He waved the guards forward and they carried Rusty Pete’s body out of the room, closing the door behind them.
Another knife appeared in Tim Cold’s hands. ‘I rule the Tank, Lindon. I assume you understand, and that you’re happy to step up to become my second in Rusty Pete’s place?’
Lindon nodded.
‘Good. Now, you have work to do. I will deal with this girl.’
He pulled a file out of a drawer and handed it to Lindon. The big man looked down at it and nodded. He went out without a word.
‘And then there were two. Tell me, Miss Tube Rider, why were you being pursued by a Huntsman? Think carefully before you speak. Your words could save your life.’
The man’s eyes gave him his name she now knew, and if they reflected his heart, he could kill her too without a moment’s pause.
‘An old friend … he’s trying to gather former Tube Riders. He thinks we—they’ve—become a symbol for the people.’
‘People from the government have come here, searching for you. Tell me why I shouldn’t hand you over?’
Raine found it hard to look at him. She tried to focus on Jake, but whenever she thought too much about her baby she found it difficult to speak.
‘Because the Tank isn’t like what they say.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘People come here for protection. I’ve come here for protection too.’
Tim Cold gave a slow nod. ‘How about a little exchange of information? Give me your friend’s name. The one who caused Huntsmen to find their way on to your trail.’
Raine opened her mouth, David’s name thick and unpleasant on her tongue, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t turn him over. The Tank had fingers everywhere. Despite the mistakes he had made, she couldn’t condemn him.
‘I can’t.’
Tim Cold nodded. ‘Your loyalty is commendable. You are a person to be trusted … or a foolish one, perhaps. I’m prepared to take that risk. Would you come with me, please?’
Raine had little choice, so she nodded and followed him out into the corridor. She waited while he instructed some guards to clean up the blood in the office, then he led her down several flights of stairs into the bowels of the building.
‘You’ve heard of Guido Fawkes, I presume?’
Raine nodded. ‘I had a picture book. He tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in the sixteenth century.’
‘So, not all of our country’s history has been lost. That indeed he did. He stockpiled many barrels of gunpowder in cellars under the wooden building where this crumbling palace now stands.’ They came to a door at the end of a gloomy, windowless corridor and Tim pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked it, switching on a light to illuminate a dark staircase. ‘No longer the original cellars, of course, but these serve our purpose well enough.’
Raine found herself in another dim corridor with doors on either side. The ceilings were lower and the corridors tighter here, making her think of secure bank vaults. Halfway along, Tim Cold stopped outside a steel door with a computerized combination lock panel in the wall beside it.
‘Only two people know the code,’ he said. ‘Myself, and … well, I guess only one.’ He gave a short chuckle. ‘Turn away, please.’
Raine ducked her head as if he had struck her. She listened to the sound of his fingers tapping out a rhythm on the keypad. A bleep sounded, followed by a hiss. The door began to slide open, and Raine looked up as automatic lights came on to reveal a large cellar room inside.
‘This is an old government intelligence vault,’ Tim Cold said. ‘In the days before the Governor, before Mega Britain, before the perimeter walls … all sorts of stuff would have been kept in here. National secrets, priceless jewels, works of art, chemical weapons … you name it, it was probably kept in here at some point.’ He grinned. ‘These days we just use it for storage.’
Putting a hand on the end of the heavy door, he gave the steel a strong pat. ‘Reinforced. I’m sure you could get through it with a tank if you had one, but good luck getting that down here. It’s as impenetrable as it needs to be.’
‘Wow.’
Raine stared. The room was packed with weaponry. Mostly guns of all sizes, but there were even a handful of swords in a box in one corner, cases of knives stacked on a table in the middle, and even what looked like a bazooka. Everything had a distinct air of age. Guns had rusty barrels and scored handles, knives looked blunted and some blades were taped, but everything was carefully organised into sizes and uses as if being prepared for a museum display.
‘As you can see, we’re not completely defenseless,’ Tim Cold said. ‘Most everything is scavenged, stolen, borrowed, or bought on the black market, but….’ He clapped his hands together. ‘Guns are guns.’
‘Give me one.’
Tim Cold laughed. ‘To hunt the Huntsman who stole your child? I’ll give you mo
re than that, girl. When you join a gang, you adhere to a code, am I right?’
‘Yes. In the Tube Riders we had a code. Tube riding was not a secret, and we were allowed to ask others to join, but we were not allowed to share the identities of other members. And if someone wanted to keep their life outside the stations secret, that was fine. Cooperation and support was paramount. So was trust.’ Her eyes glazed as she remembered. ‘Live together, die together.’
Tim Cold gave a slow nod. ‘I like that. It’s appropriate. I’m willing to help you find your child, if indeed it’s possible.’
She stared at him. This was the leader of the Tank, a man feared by those on the outside. Before coming here he had been nameless to her, but she knew him by reputation and rumour. He was not a man to give freely without taking something in return.
‘And in exchange?’ she said, her voice defiant. ‘What do you want from me in return?’
Tim Cold gave her a sudden smile that was different from all the others. Raine gasped. A mask had slipped away, revealing a different person beneath. This new man might have been someone’s kindly uncle rather than the ruthless leader of London’s criminal underworld.
‘I would be greatly honoured if you would join my gang,’ he said.
‘Which is?’
Tim Cold’s voice became a whisper, as if even down in the depths of the old palace he feared being overheard.
‘The Underground Movement for Freedom.’
27
Suspicions
7.30 p.m.
Rick had told her to be ready, to gather anything she needed with her because there would be no coming back.
She looked up at the clock. It was still only six but the files hadn’t finished downloading.
She looked back at the door. The outlines of the guards were visible through the frosted glass. They didn’t suspect. No one had questioned her authority.
On either side of her lay the remains of the two Level Threes. Mariel was in the worst state of repair, burns covering most of her body. The human flesh could be regenerated in time, but the fires had shorted her computerised functions. It was unlikely she could be used again, and it only required a signature from Mika to condemn whatever part of her awareness was left to a miserable life behind the fence in the Southwest Exclusion Zone.
Kyaru would probably be repaired. Her transmitted visuals had shown Sorel attacking her, but his assault had been to clear his path, not destroy her. His claws had torn through parts of her organic flesh and severed her receptor systems, but Kyaru, as the old adage went, would live.
Of Sorel, there had been no word. While on a certain level she felt a sense of guilt that he had stolen someone’s baby, of more pressing concern was that he had disobeyed the alteration to his orders.
Technically he was still hunting her sister.
Shadows fell across the door. Raised voices indicated something was amiss. Mika glanced back at the tiny handheld computer onto which she was downloading the data the two Level Threes had collected.
She couldn’t be discovered with it. She had spent the afternoon filling it with classified government files, in case she never had a chance to come back.
A woman’s voice came from outside, followed by a cry of pain. That voice had struck fear into her from the first time Mika had heard it. It was different to the ominous boom of the Governor.
If Dreggo caught her downloading government files she might be dead within the hour.
With the dexterity brought by years of practice, Mika opened up a machine cavity built into Mariel’s abdomen and slid the palm-sized device inside. She then let the opening close, the charred tissue dropping back into place.
The door swung open. Dreggo entered, flanked on one side by Farrell Soars and on the other by Heyna, the tall Huntsman dwarfing both of them.
‘You recalled them,’ Dreggo said.
Mika stood up, wiping blood on her lab coat. ‘I had no choice. Two of them were damaged, and the other—’
‘You called them off.’
Mika gestured around her. ‘Look at them, they’re inoperable!’
Farrell Soars lifted a hand. ‘Dreggo, I told you. This is ridiculous—’
Dreggo ignored him and took a step towards Mika. Farrell Soars started to object but at a sharp growl from Heyna he fell silent.
‘You forget I was there that day,’ Dreggo said, coming so close Mika could smell the artificial lavender on her breath. ‘And you know what I am, because you helped build me.’
‘Look—’
Dreggo leaned forwards. Her hair brushed against Mika’s, and for a moment their cheeks touched. Dreggo’s skin was rough and cold against Mika’s own, and her hair smelled like disinfectant.
A rough tongue lapped at Mika’s ear, and Dreggo took a long, deep breath. Mika held her own breath, her heart pounding, trying to swallow down a sense of revulsion.
‘I’m not as strong as they are,’ Dreggo whispered into Mika’s ear, too quiet for anyone but the pair of them to hear. ‘I can’t track a scent like Heyna can. But I can recognise one. You smell like her, you know. It’s not exact, but it’s close.’
Mika’s voice shook as she said, ‘Please don’t let them hurt her.’
Dreggo smiled. ‘You know what the Governor once told me about how to get the people to follow you? Show them generosity.’ Her smile dropped. Mika didn’t think she had ever heard a voice so full of bitterness and hate. ‘Unfortunately for you it’s not an ideal we share.’
At a gesture from Dreggo, guards rushed into the room and pinned Mika’s hands behind her back. Dreggo marched out of the room with Heyna at her back, Farrell Soars trailing along behind offering loud protestations.
‘Take her to the holding cells on Level One,’ Dreggo called back. ‘I’ll decide what to do with her later.’
‘She’s the government’s best scientist!’ Farrell Soars shouted. ‘This is insane.’
Dreggo dismissed him with a wave of her hand. ‘Next time you find yourself in the Governor’s presence, ask him about the fate of her predecessor,’ she said. ‘That’s if you’re not shitting yourself too much to speak.’
As Mika was dragged along, she wondered what Rick was thinking right now. Was he waiting for her? If only she had gone earlier … she might be out of the research facility, safe from Dreggo, on the way to meet her sister. And what of Airie? She had known her sister was still alive for less than a day. Would she now never get a chance to meet her?
Mika never cried anymore. It was hard for her to feel sorry for herself when she spent her days surrounded by the best misery the government could offer. She didn’t feel sadness, but she did feel fear, for both herself and her sister.
The greater the distance from Parliament Tower, the less guarded the government facilities were. Once he was inside the building, Spacewell had pretty free access around the multiple levels of hell more commonly known as Research Facility Number One. The lowest levels and their sinister contents were well guarded, but even someone of Spacewell’s lowly status could gain admittance with a confidently flashed ID card.
He wondered if there was a distinct date on which the Governor’s grand ambitions for Mega Britain had gone to shit. If there was, it would be a date around when guards had begun failing to stay awake at their posts, had given up watching the security cameras for cheeky staff making lewd gestures just to see if anyone was paying attention, felt it no longer necessary to lock doors, or even replace the locks after they had broken.
On a grander scale it would have been a date when the recognised number of military and policing personnel were too few to deal with the rising level of crime, a period when any clumsy fool could apply and be accepted into the Department of Civil Affairs just to give the appearance of a burgeoning secret police.
There had to be a line. If not a day or a month, then a couple of years. At Spacewell’s estimation, it had been some time around fifteen years ago, when the Huntsmen had first been pressed back into service to quell a fe
w minor uprisings. The oil had begun to run out. Food became scarce, and too many people were going London-gone in order to fill the Governor’s biotechnological research programs.
Fifteen years.
That was a long time for a spiral to be winding down. It had to reach the bottom soon.
Perhaps, he reflected, as he moved through the corridors towards Mika’s office at a pace that was just short of suspicious, all the people needed was a leader. A talisman.
Someone like the Queen Tube Rider herself, Marta Banks.
Marta Banks, for whatever reason, was unavailable. But perhaps a Little Marta would do.
Spacewell was a simple technician, and simple technicians had to perform simple tasks. One of the most tedious had been tending to Dreggo’s early rehabilitation sessions, when they had focused on her facial reconstruction and the repairing of her computer systems.
He hadn’t done anything particularly high-tech, just inserted a tiny transmitter into her wiring to transcribe anything she said out loud and send it digitally to a program on his computer.
The results had been quite interesting.
Mika’s office door was ajar. Spacewell quickened his pace, barreling inside to find the room had been trashed, Mika’s desk overturned and her chair thrown against a shelf of thick document files, some of which had fallen to the floor, disgorging wads of dog-eared paper covered with faded print and type.
Her computer was lying in pieces on the floor, its screen torn from the keyboard, the casing broken open.
Spacewell frowned. He liked Mika, and would be quite happy to take her on pleasant dates to zoos that no longer existed and theatres that had long ago shut down, but faced with the signs of her imminent arrest, it was easy to separate his clinical thinking from the emotional.
Was saving her worth the risk of revealing himself?
He hurried downstairs to his own workroom and logged on to his computer. He quickly set up a non-traceable firewall and hacked into the research facility’s security mainframe through a user pathway he had been milking for information for the last couple of years.