‘Aryel. What is it?’
‘Home,’ she replied, and he could hear the shock in her voice, the anger and something that sounded like fear. The word seemed to bring her back and she paused, taking in his face and the calls from the crowd beyond. When she spoke again it was in her tone that carried like a shout, although it seemed she spoke quietly.
‘They’ve attacked our home. My home. This was just a diversion. They’ve set fires, they’ve—’ She drew a deep, ragged breath. ‘People have been killed. And taken. It seems they came planning … planning to take some of us …’
A general intake of breath, soft cries of dismay. Eli saw Rob behind her, open-mouthed. Further back, even Zavcka Klist looked stunned.
‘Who?’ he said, and as he asked the question he knew, with a sinking horror, what the answer could not possibly be but was going to be. ‘Aryel, who did they take?’
‘Donal, and Gaela.’ Her eyes squeezed shut, as though if she could just hold it back for another instant it might somehow be less real. The name came out in an exhalation that sounded like despair. ‘And Gabriel.’
*
In the end it had been easier than he expected. Planning, thought Mac. Can’t beat a good plan.
They had avoided the risk of any direct communications being intercepted by simply hacking into the police voicestreams. It told them who was being sent where, and when. The advance teams had done brilliantly. His own, much larger group waited until the closer of the two units on patrol peeled off in the direction of the Conference. They knew where the other was, far away on the opposite edge of the Squats, and about to stay there.
Once the Tyler blaze was under way they had simply to drive in, directing the stolen delivery van loaded now with the Lord’s army up to the front door of the UC centre, while they listened with approval to Sergeant Varsi’s exchange with her colleagues. When she tore off after the brethren who had drawn firebomb duty, the coast was clear.
He himself had stepped inside to deal with the misbeliever who came forward, all smiles, asking what goodies they had brought today. When he stepped back out, knife wiped clean on her jumper and safely stowed, the hijacked UC transport was also purring away. He jumped into it and they moved in convoy over to Maryam House. The street seemed to have cleared before them, and when they got there the Lord favoured them once again. A straggler perhaps, a small, twisted, saffron-haired creature hurrying along and focused only on his earset, not noticing them crowding up behind until he was at the door. And then it was too late, he was held rigid with a palm over his mouth while his hand was slammed against the identipad. The door hissed open. They dragged his body inside.
The community room was just as John had described it in that last, long message, like one of the ancient paintings of a scene from the Pit. These gems were not like the ones they had caught out on the street, not all of them anyway. These stared blankly and sat still, or gibbered and screamed and tried to run. He had counted on being able to force the information they needed out of someone here, and for a moment wondered if any of the abominations would prove sufficiently capable. And then he heard it, like a gift from the Lord, the cry of a child.
There was no need to go hunting. He was sitting at a table, between a large woman with turquoise hair and a younger, smaller one with too many noses and not enough chin. The woman shoved the boy behind her and surged forward, while the girl shrieked and scrambled away on hands and knees. In a doorway at the back a big man with short, bluish hair had appeared at the child’s first call, and now he ran forward too.
But he was checked by the mayhem that was erupting all around them as Mac’s men descended on the abominations with knives and clubs. Mac could see him out of the corner of his eye, battling bare-handed with Rich and Pavel while he shouted at the boy to get back. The turquoise woman loomed in front, catching him a sharp one to the jaw before he slashed out with the knife, ripping a line across her chest.
She and the boy screamed together.
And then it went a bit mad, a bit confusing, the shrieks of the child and the woman and all the others, the shouts of the man and the other men, the red haze of combat finally lifting enough for him to see another red, the hair of a woman who grabbed the boy and ran for the door. He leapt over the body in its pool of blood and matted turquoise and sprinted after her, catching up as she stumbled out of the carnage into the lobby. As he clutched at her she spun away and kicked out, crouching to protect the child in her arms, and he lost the knife. But he had her and the boy, and the others had seen and come after, and together they wrestled her up and out towards the waiting transports.
He shouted for anyone left inside to follow. Three came behind, dragging a fourth, a young man with shaggy brown hair who kicked and cursed and struggled. He nodded approval and left them to it, leaping into the back of the delivery van that now held the woman and child. Most of the men who remained piled in with them. As the doors swung closed he glimpsed, skidding around the corner at the far end of the street, a giant.
Then they were moving and he leaned forward to remind Dirk not to go too fast. The point was to get there as quickly as they could without attracting attention. He dropped back to a steady pace and Mac had a chance to sit back, catch his breath, review events and contemplate the captives. They were huddled into a ball, the woman trying to wrap herself as much around the child as possible. He thought he saw her lips move and he reached forward and slapped her, hard, and then wrenched the earset away.
She gasped at the blow and clutched the boy even closer. He flinched as though it had been he who was struck, and whimpered. She turned a red, tearstained face to Mac. The glow from her hair was demonic.
‘Please, please let him go. You can do whatever you want to me, but he’s just a baby, please …’
‘No.’
‘Please! We can stop, put him out through the back, keep going. He’s a child! Please!’
Mac was pleased to see that the boy was feebly shaking his head. He leaned forward, deliberately, and slapped the woman again.
‘He’s the one we came for. You and the other one, you’re just a bonus.’
She screamed at that, a despairing wail that bounced around the inside of the van. The boy whimpered again, tugging at her shirt, and then a small hand fumbled up to try and cover her mouth.
‘Another sound from either of you and I’ll cut out your tongues.’ They went as silent as they could. He thought about doing it anyway. But it was different here, crammed into the locked van in the dark, five men staring through the racing gloom at a woman who shook with muffled sobs and a strangely limp and quiescent child. He decided it was better to deliver them whole unto the judgement of the Lord.
It occurred to him that the same view might not prevail in the other transport, and he thought for a moment about calling over. Best not, though. The alarm must have been raised by now, no telling what kind of surveillance the agents of the Beast might be using to try to find them. It didn’t really matter if the other one got damaged. The Lord would understand.
They had done so well. Not just the one deceiver, the dangerous infant, but three. And almost the best three. The ones whose powers were sacrilege, who could sense things that should not be sensed and know things that should not be known, and tell lies that the world would believe. Almost the best.
There was only one who would have been an even greater triumph than these, and he had prayed hard and thought long to find a path to her. But it was impossible. She was too well guarded, too perpetually surrounded by press and police and politicians for them to get close. He had finally had to concede defeat, turn the assault on the Conference into the ruse that would give them a broader, though not a deeper, victory.
Still, it was a shame they had not been able to get her. Such a shame.
*
Aryel bent over her tablet, as though she were trying to physically reach through it and into the grief and terror and chaos of Maryam House. She sat crouched on a low stool and had kept tig
ht hold of Eli’s hand, drawing him down so that he knelt beside her. He peered at the screen, over the mass that was her right shoulder. Horace crouched to her left, face slack with horror. Rob and Masoud hovered, listening and looking, muttering into earsets.
Mikal was covered in blood, none of which, he assured them, was his. In the background they could see that the front steps leading into the building were spattered with pools of red. Police and paramedics raced through it. Bal had finally been pressed down onto a stretcher, although he kept pushing the medics away, shouting at them to go and help the people inside, and at the police to find the others. His desperate pleas echoed through their earsets, in time with the blood-stained face that kept jerking up into view. It was all Mikal could do to hold him in place.
‘He doesn’t know how many there were, maybe ten or twelve,’ Mikal managed. ‘Three are still here …’
‘Alive?’
‘Not sure, at least one of them is, I think, but …’
‘Make him tell you!’ Bal again, the shout a little weaker now. Mikal shifted in their view, holding the big man down as gently as he could. ‘They can’t, mate. He’s unconscious. And even if he weren’t …’
He looked back out of the screen at them, his shoulders moving in a bleak shrug. A hand fell onto one of them and Sharon Varsi’s face crowded into view beside his. ‘Is Masoud there? I’m queued up on channels.’
Aryel pulled back and Masoud took Horace’s place. ‘You have something?’
‘Another body in the UC centre, sir. Norm female. We’re trying to get tracker codes for the vehicles but it’s going to take a few more minutes and I think we’ll find they’ve been disabled anyway. They wouldn’t have put together an operation this thorough and not thought of that.’
A sound like a sob from Bal, faint and desperate. Her lips pursed in sympathy and her hand shifted from Mikal’s shoulder to rest, it seemed, on his stretcher. ‘I tried to question one of the assailants, sir. He regained consciousness briefly, but all he would say was “judgement”. He said that over and over. I pressed him and he tried to say something else but I couldn’t make it out. Something like “home”? Or “hole”?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what it was. The medics say he’s not going to be waking up again any time soon.’
Masoud nodded. ‘We’ve got all available units looking for them, and more heading to you.’ His fingers were already moving over his own tablet. ‘I’ll run those words through the profile apps, see if they give us any probables.’ He looked back at her. ‘Anything else?’
‘Just that everyone we’ve been able to speak to agrees their leader went straight for the child, sir. One of the victims, a turquoise-haired lady, I don’t know her name …’
‘Wenda,’ said Mikal. They could hear Bal crying now.
‘She was killed trying to protect him. Along with three others, plus the UC victim. Six more seriously injured, including Bal here. One of the assailants was dead when we arrived, another has died since, and the one I was questioning is in a serious condition.’
She glanced down at Bal, and sighed. ‘It seems Gaela was in a back room, an office of some sort, when it started. She grabbed her son and tried to get the hell out of there and they followed her. The ones that were left in the room swamped the young man and took off after them straight away. He was close to the door, as far as I can tell that’s the only reason they chose him.’
‘What about the fire? You went after that group, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, sir, that’s where I was when this happened. I spotted them but they kept dodging into alleys where my unit couldn’t fit. I was coordinating with the other unit and I figured we’d get them cornered in a dead-end eventually, but all the while they were just leading me further away.’ Under the professional crispness she sounded desolate. ‘When we got this call I realised what they were doing so I abandoned the chase and came here. I should have stayed, caught the bastards, found out where they were going.’
‘You couldn’t have known,’ Aryel said. Beside her Masoud grunted agreement, and reared up to his feet. ‘Varsi, I’m prioritising your comcode. Anybody remembers anything else, or the one you’ve got does wake up, you get back to me. I’m on my way, and I don’t mind if he’s still there when I arrive. He gets no priority for transport, is that clear?’
‘No danger, sir.’
Varsi slipped out of view. Aryel said, ‘Mik, take care of Bal. I’ll be back in a minute.’ She broke the connection and just sat, staring at the blank screen.
Masoud reached down and gently touched her shoulder. She looked up.
‘Aryel, I’m heading over there. I don’t think you should come, not yet.’ Eli was surprised to see her bow her head in agreement. Masoud seemed to be too, but he only nodded briskly, and left.
Aryel said quietly, ‘Horace, would you go and find the others, please? Tell them what’s happened, and make sure they stay together and stay here.’ The request seemed to bring the green-haired gem back to himself and he slipped away, wiping at his face as he went. Eli heard an increased murmur from behind them as the press, kept back by a grim-faced security guard, parted to let him through.
She went back to staring, chin on hands, at a point somewhere in the space between her nose and the empty screen. Rob said tentatively, ‘I think I should go and find the Secretary. He needs to know what’s going on.’ She nodded.
‘And the press …’
‘Yes, please. I can’t just yet.’
‘Eli?’
‘I’ll stay with her.’
Rob departed, most of the press in tow. Eli pushed himself off his aching knees and onto a neighbouring seat. He looked around. They were in a strange bubble of quiet, a damper field that shrouded this little seating area just outside the lounge from which they had entered the main hall. In there he could hear a distant hubbub of voices, diminishing every time a new bit of news came online, and then rising again as faces poked out to stare across the floor at them.
He had no doubt that everything Varsi and Mikal had just told them would be streamed live within minutes, either from witnesses at the scene or some impromptu press conference Rob would hold once he had briefed the Secretary. Only the Newsbeat vidcam operator remained, a lad who kept his equipment pointed resolutely in their direction. Eli wondered why he bothered. There was nothing to see besides Aryel’s bowed back as she sat and stared into empty space.
‘Hope,’ she said finally, so quietly he could barely hear her.
‘What?’
‘Hope. That’s it. How ironic.’
She reached for her tablet and he thought she was going to get back to Mikal, but she activated a different interface and leaned forward for a retinal scan. Her fingers slipped over the surface as she spoke. There was a harsh note to her voice he had never heard before. ‘Masoud’s gone, isn’t he? Just as well, he’d try to stop— But we need transport. Now.’
‘You want to go home after all? We can find a car, I’ll borrow Rob’s.’
She was on her feet, moving fast as the tablet slid back inside her cloak, turning to survey the room. The sense of purpose and swift action was back, leavened now by some grim and ruthless decision.
‘No. Much closer. But we need to get there quickly: they’ve had what, fifteen, twenty minutes … they’ll almost be there … we need to make it in five.’
Her gaze swept past the guard and found James Mudd, hurrying back from the direction of the restrooms, already starting to berate his young colleague with the vidcam for having waited instead of following the others. Aryel strode forward.
‘Mr Mudd. You have a press vehicle with global uplink capability out front, yes?’
‘What? Why?’
‘Yes or no?’
‘Yes.’
‘Excellent. I need to get somewhere, and I need to get there fast.’
She headed towards the main entrance, not waiting for a response. Mudd stared at her in bewilderment and then trotted to catch up, jerking his head at the vidc
am operator to keep up and keep shooting.
‘You expect me to help you?’ he said, as he fell into step beside her. ‘Why?’
‘You’re going to want to help me. You get me … us …’ She glanced at Eli, who nodded. ‘Get us there and in exchange I will tell you exactly what has happened. You’ll be able to broadcast details of the Maryam House Massacre ahead of everyone else.’ Her voice had gone from harsh to bitter, acrid. ‘Not to mention the rest of it.’
‘The rest of what?’
‘What happens next. Mr Mudd, yesterday you tried to question me and I avoided you. Bel’Natur promised you an exclusive and failed to deliver. Your reporter tried to do an exposé on us and almost got killed. I will give you a scoop that makes up for all of that, but we need to get there now.’
‘Get where?’ They were almost at the doors.
‘Newhope Tower.’
27
She called Masoud as soon as they were under way. He swore and spun his car around to rendezvous with them there. She kept the link open as she explained, and they could faintly hear him barking orders to the search units over the background wail of his siren. Still, it was clear they were going to arrive first.
‘They’d need more than a few people to pull off what you’re suggesting. Why would they take such a risk? In broad daylight? Even if they made it up there they’d never be able to get away again.’ James Mudd was voicing ready-for-streaming objections, all of which were being recorded.
Aryel’s hurried review of what had happened at the Squats, delivered while they piled into the transport, had already been released. Masoud had then screamed at them to hold any further live streaming until they knew for sure where the godgang was.
‘My guess is, whoever still can will meet them there. They may already be waiting. This will be a last stand. People forget,’ she shook her head in frustration, ‘they forget what today means. I hinted at it after Nelson was killed, but I couldn’t be explicit …’
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