Kymiera

by Steve Turnbull

  Chapter 13

  Mercedes

  The light had faded from the outside world, leaving only the dense black of a cloud-filled sky. White, amber and red lights shone from windows across the city as Mercedes looked down on Manchester from her apartment. She sighed and placed her palm against the cold glass.

  The situation was not improving.

  Was she really so incompetent that she could not handle this?

  She shook her head and pressed her hand harder against the window. The cold leached the warmth from her skin down to the bone. It hurt.

  I’ve worked so hard for this. She raised her other arm and laid the other hand flat on the glass. She dropped her head and pushed. For what? No one cares and no one understands.

  She stood up straight and headed for the door out on to the balcony. With anger she did not even know she had, she flung it open and cold air washed across her skin.

  ‘Mercedes?’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘The temperature is currently five below.’

  ‘I need to think.’

  ‘You can talk to me.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

  Xec went silent. She had probably hurt his feelings. She didn’t care.

  Bloody Paul Banner. Bloody idiot.

  ‘I’m going out.’

  ‘I’ll get the car.’

  ‘I’m going for a walk.’

  ‘A walk?’

  ‘Yes, a fucking walk.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She was certain she had hurt his feelings. Good. She really didn’t care.

  She almost ran to the lift before she realised she ought to get a coat at least. Xec would have reminded her if she hadn’t pissed him off. At least that made him human. Petty.

  The hood on the furry winter coat she had chosen put shadows across her face as she pushed her way out of the main doors. No one challenged her; they stayed out of her way.

  The stone steps down from reception were icy and, where it had not been kicked away, covered in a layer of fresh snow. In the old days cities had been less affected by snow because they were inherently warmer. And the British could never cope when the weather became bad—because it never lasted more than a few days. The constant change was simply tolerated and complained about.

  Now Britain was like Scandinavia: the winter snows came and they stayed. And the cities were equally affected. There were not enough people to grind the snow into the ground, instead they adapted in ways they never had before.

  The air was so cold it tore at her throat. She relished it in the way she savoured the dangerous proximity of the clubbers and the painfully deafening music. It made her feel like she was alive. It just made her feel.

  She stuffed her hands into her pockets and set off across the plaza towards the main street.

  She was not wearing the right shoes and she kept slipping. Reducing the length of her strides helped but did not ease her frustration.

  Bloody Paul Banner.

  The police were not stupid, and certainly not blinkered in the way that the Purity were. The police would simply follow the leads and eventually get to the end. The Purity had already proved they couldn’t deal with the situation without brute force.

  They lacked finesse but that didn’t make them any less dangerous. Was that what was wrong with Paul? Had she overestimated his abilities? Had she failed to take into account that he was trained by the Purity first and foremost?

  The lack of subtlety was familiar. She shook her head as if trying to clear it. Had there been any alternative? She did not think so. Somehow the Purity had been pulling Chloe Dark’s strings.

  Why had the Dark girl revealed herself when she reached the city? She could have just kept her hat on and Banner’s thugs wouldn’t have found her. She had removed it deliberately. Under instruction from the Purity? No, that didn’t make sense; otherwise she would have gone to them. Police? No. She knows what she is and both organisations would incarcerate or kill her.

  She turned left, up Market Street. The ground was clear of snow and ice for a short distance, where the now-empty mall went over the road, but there was no warmth and she was soon back into the snow.

  So Chloe had been doing the same thing as the Purity: she had been deliberately trying to bring out the kidnappers, as the press liked to call them. But when they attacked she had run away.

  Why?

  Mercedes’ logic failed her. She could think of no reason in the world that Chloe Dark would deliberately lure the kidnappers to her.

  Then she had leapt at the helicopter, clung underneath, and then let go.

  Mercedes shook her head. Her actions made no sense and now she was either dead in the river or lost to everyone. The girl was tenacious and Mercedes did not believe she was gone. She could not afford to believe Chloe Dark’s secrets were lost. After all the effort and risk that had been put into capturing her, for her to be dead was unthinkable.

  One of the trams was crossing in front of her so she stopped. She had not really been thinking about where she was walking. Ahead and to the left was Debenhams. She looked right. The police barrier was still there, where the therapist had been killed. The wall still darkened where the vehicle had exploded.

  A man had died at her word. Right here.

  He hadn’t been the first but she had never been this close before.

  She had considered the idea that all this was her fault, but it wasn’t. It was that man, the one who had died here. If he hadn’t seen and reported the girl’s deformity none of this would have happened. They would have picked up on Chloe soon enough without him. He had forced their hand.

  Sometimes you had to play the game through to the end. They had come out badly with this one, but that did not mean they had lost.

  She turned away from the wall and glanced down the street to her left and then up. Chloe Dark had leapt off the building up there. Perhaps she had been surprised by the level of the forces ranged against her. Perhaps that was why she had run. She thought she might face just a few like the ones before, but there had been an army, with guns and a helicopter. And so she had decided to escape instead.

  Mercedes nodded to herself. She felt better, but very cold.

  ‘Xec.’

  Moments later her car drew up in front of her and the door opened. She climbed into the warmth and shivered.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Not a problem.’

  ‘Arrange for the removal of Paul Banner and his criminal connections.’

  ‘Yes, Mercedes.’

  ‘If your contact can make it look like suicide that would be useful.’

  ‘Yes, Mercedes,’ said Xec. ‘Any particular reason? There will need to be a suicide note.’

  Mercedes hesitated. ‘Failure to do his job after the attack on the restaurant. He blames himself for the escape of yet another freak.’

  ‘That’s not very convincing.’

  ‘He’s Purity, the police can’t investigate unless they are given permission. If they want to, and if they are allowed to, they’ll find out what we know about his private life. That should be enough. Everybody lies, even in their suicide notes.’

  ‘Yes, Mercedes.’

  She hugged herself, wrapping the coat even tighter about herself.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I packed your clubbing gear.’

  Is that what she wanted?

  To lose herself among strangers?

  ‘Yes.’

  Chapter 14

  Melinda

  She lay there in the dark. The wires buzzed in the walls. It was a new trick they did. She had become aware of it after the lights had gone out this evening. She knew it was still her ability to sense electricity that was doing it because putting her hands over her ears, or even shoving her fingers into her ears, made no difference.

  The wires hummed steadily. And they still glowed.

  She had been trying to think ho
w she could get a message out. Lucy had seemed convinced she could, but Melinda was not so sure.

  What could she do?

  And even if she could make something happen in the wires, how could she know that someone was listening? Why would anybody be listening to the wires?

  It seemed hopeless. But, on the other hand, there was nothing to lose. Anything that improved her skill might be useful if they were ever going to get out of here. At least, get out of here before they went crazy and died.

  Her promise to the scientist not to escape meant nothing. It had been under duress, she just had to make sure they couldn’t hurt Vanessa.

  She wondered if there was anyone watching the video. The camera was active and pointed in her direction. She turned over and buried her face in the pillow.

  If she was going to do something to affect the wiring—to send some sort of signal the other way—she needed an aerial. The iron frame of the bed was perfect for that. She stretched out her arms and let her hands dangle over the edges. The mattress was thin so her fingers easily made contact with the metal.

  She focused and allowed a low current to flow through the bed.

  Her senses showed her the shape of the metal frame but did little else. The wires in the wall shone with their constant glow. She increased the power. Her fingertips tingled but did not have the same burning she’d experienced before. Was she becoming used to it?

  It didn’t seem to make any difference how much energy she allowed to flow, the wires in the wall were unchanging.

  She let the power go and the wires flickered before returning to their previous level.

  Something made her think. What was it about electrical fields and movement? She couldn’t remember, but there was something significant.

  If she could push a pulse of electricity through the bedstead it would create a field and then drop it again.

  She took a few moments to focus on what she was doing. Up to now it had all been a constant flow, or a catastrophic explosion of energy. This time it needed to flow and then stop.

  She switched it on. And off.

  This time the effect on the wires was clear both visually and audibly. In both cases the energy in the wires wavered at the exact moment she applied her own power.

  She waited.

  No alarms had gone off and no one came to investigate.

  She could always claim she was dreaming and had no idea what she was doing. For all their technology they couldn’t know if someone was lying. She hoped.

  She tried it again and it worked again. From what she remembered, a signal usually went positive to negative and back. She could make it flow one way but she was sure she couldn’t do it in the other direction. Her organic batteries had only one orientation, and that was part of her structure. It couldn’t be changed. That meant that whatever she did now, it had to be one way only.

  Taking a deep breath she began to pulse the bedstead. For a minute she sent a burst of energy through the bedstead, saw the wires bend and momentarily change their volume. Then back to normal. Pulse. Pulse. Pulse. Over and over.

  She watched as her own power levels sagged until finally she just couldn’t do it anymore. And she let it go.

  She fell asleep immediately.

  Chapter 15

  Chloe

  Chloe had digested the food and was feeling better. There was an unoccupied house close to the hospital facility. Everything was solidly boarded up on the ground floor, but it hadn’t taken a moment to clamber up to a skylight in the roof and force a way in. She landed in the attic space which had been converted to a bedroom. The bed was still here and it still had bedclothes on it, but they stank of damp and rot.

  She glanced round. A wardrobe door was open but it was empty save for a couple of bits of clothing lying on floor, too far gone to be identifiable. As far as she knew most places had been looted during the bad times. Or maybe these people had just taken everything when they left.

  The landing and stairs between both sets of floors were covered with mouldering carpet. Each step creaked ominously. But she wasn’t too bothered, she didn’t think her weight would be enough to break through. And every time the steps groaned, she could see more clearly. This was the first time she’d really noticed what was happening with her ability to see with sound. She had been aware of it before, seen the rats and the buildings without actually looking at them. She had put it down to imagination for the most part, because it was easier to pretend it wasn’t happening.

  But here, in the quiet of this deserted and derelict house, where there was no light and no other sound, she couldn’t ignore it any longer. She reached the ground floor. The house was quite large, certainly bigger than her parents’. It had two rooms at the front, with a dining room and a separate kitchen in back. She stood in the middle of the hall with the front door to her left, the door to the kitchen to her right, and her back to the stairs. She closed her eyes, and clicked her fingers. The sound echoed and reverberated. Everything around her came into sharp focus. There was no colour, but she could see shapes and edges: the walls, the banister and stairs behind her, the extent of the kitchen, and the distance to the front door. She knew the size of the rooms, front and back, and she even got a sense of the shapes from upstairs.

  The immediacy of the image faded. She clicked her fingers once more and the image renewed. New impressions overlaid the old and there was more detail.

  It was odd being a freak, she thought, and if it weren’t for the fact that she was going to die, being able to do this might even be useful.

  The digesting food and the stresses of the last twenty-four hours took their toll. A wave of tiredness rolled over her and she swayed where she stood. She needed rest.

  She was going to have to sleep on the floor in the kitchen. At least it was relatively dry and, not being carpeted, lacked the mould that infested the rest of the building. With her newfound ability she walked through the house, regularly clicking her fingers. It was as good as seeing—better, since the sense of perception allowed her to see all round her, through and under things, although the carpets tended to block what was above and below.

  The dining room contained chairs and a table. They had been covered in plastic sheets and were in decent condition. Sleeping on the table was preferable to the floor. She went upstairs and searched again. Under one bed she found containers of some sort of flexible plastic fabric. Inside she could perceive only a solid mass. It took a while but she managed to get one open. As she broke the seal, the air sucked inward and the whole thing sagged. Inside she found sheets and blankets as fresh as if they had been washed yesterday.

  She sat back on her heels. This must have been some sort of storage method they had before, she thought to herself, with everything sealed up and the air taken out so it would be preserved perfectly.

  We like to think we’re just like the people before the plague, she thought. That we’re civilised, living in our houses. But who even builds houses anymore? What else have we forgotten?

  When Chloe finally woke, she was hungry again. But she did feel considerably less tired, and despite the hard surface she had slept soundly. She didn’t know what time it was, but it had to be at least nine in the morning, because light was coming in through the gaps in the boards that covered the windows and doors. She made sure her hat was still firmly in place, although she was going have to take it off at some point because both it and her hair were getting very dirty. She would have to figure out some way of blocking the riffy when she did so.

  All the rooms were now illuminated by the eerie white light that seeped in from outside. None of the gaps were big enough to see out of, so she made her way back up to the attic room, put a chair under the skylight and carefully looked out.

  The world had gone white. There must have been a serious amount of snowfall during the night.

  Unfortunately she had the feeling that meant that she would have to postpone any further plans until after it got dark. Climbing out of here in daylight agains
t the snow, she would be very hard to miss. Well, she wasn’t as hungry as she had been yesterday. So perhaps it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. With that she set about searching the house to see what she might be able to take with her.

  Chapter 16

  Mitchell

  Another day without Special Agent Graham. Mitchell rolled into the office in reasonably good humour. At least he found himself able to say good morning to the people he knew, though he was still furious at the events of that night. Furious, yes, but remembering the discomfort on Graham’s face brought a smile to his own.

  He imagined that was the kind of emotion the kidnappers were also feeling. He had no direct proof that Chloe had escaped their clutches a third time, but he felt it in his bones. They knew from the news footage she been hanging from the bottom of the helicopter. From finding her bag, it wasn’t a stretch to conclude she had dropped at some point in the journey. Dangerous, certainly, but so is jumping off a building—and she wasn’t suicidal.

  No, he was certain she had survived, and that was the reason he’d got what few men they could spare combing the banks of the river south of the city. Chances were they wouldn’t come up with anything, but then that was true of most police work: lots of investigating with few results.

  He sat down at his desk and brought up the list of suspects they had acquired after the gun-battle. He ran his finger down the names; some of them he recognised, general lowlifes, some he didn’t. But there was one.

  ‘Lament?’ The face of the wirehead appeared on the screen overlaying the list. ‘Have Jeremiah Blackett brought up to an interview room, will you?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘Right away, sir.’

  The interview rooms were on the second floor. Mitchell took the stairs down to avoid meeting anybody he didn’t want to talk to, namely the chief superintendent, or Special Agent Graham. Apparently Yates was out following his own lines of enquiry, so Mitchell got a regular uniform to sit in on the interview.

  He opened the door, and nearly choked at the stench given off by Blackett and his unclean clothes. ‘Couldn’t we have had him hosed down first, officer?’

  ‘Sorry, sir, but you did ask for him to be brought up straight away.’