by Linda Taimre
I can feed faster, Harriet Braxton. I can.
Sobbing now, barely staying within her lane, Harriet pushed her foot down, knowing that it was no good. No matter how fast she drove, there was no way she could get to Katherine in shorter than 25 minutes. Kiah’s optimism was heartening but not accurate. That was 25 minutes of the greatest love of her life screaming in terror.
“Do it. Do it, Joe.”
She wants to see you, Harriet Braxton.
“I know. But I can’t.”
She wants to see you, Harriet Braxton.
Katherine was now stretched out, each muscle taut and rock hard. Come home Harriet.
Katherine Leandros. Harriet wants you to stop screaming. She wants you to go faster.
Through the haze of sheer agony, Katherine couldn’t fully understand the thoughtvoice of Joe. Stop screaming? Go faster where?
She wants me to feed faster so you will stop screaming, Katherine Leandros.
NO! Joe NO. I can’t go without Harriet, I can’t. NO NO JUST TELL HER TO HURRY THE FUCK UP THE COW.
“Have you done it?” Harriet shouted the terse question, filled with anxiety and agony.
No, Harriet Braxton. Katherine Leandros has commanded me not to.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
She said she cannot go without you, Harriet Braxton. She said.
“What? What did she say?”
Katherine Leandros said just tell her to hurry the fuck up the cow.
Harriet let out a single burst of a disbelieving guffaw. Through her tears, she gasped with a pinprick of happiness. Her Katherine. Her Katherine. “Fine. Tell her fine. Tell her I’m breaking every speeding law to get home.”
I will tell her, Harriet Braxton.
“And Joe?”
Yes, Harriet Braxton.
“I haven’t forgotten that you are doing this. I will get you for this. There is nothing that will stop me. Once … once Katherine is gone. I will hurt you. I will get you back. Do you understand?”
Harriet could feel Joe stopping, pausing.
I understand, Harriet Braxton.
Lord Fiennes rounded the corner in his SUV, keeping sight of the women ahead of him. It had been a quick thing, tracking them within the Spire and then suddenly having to dash out to the carpark to ensure that he didn’t lose them in the traffic. Once on the road, it had been surprisingly difficult to make sure he was following the correct SUV, though it was made easier by the vaguely beat-up nature of the one they chose to drive.
They were driving erratically, changing lanes constantly. Steven was following suit, driving fast, though not so much to attract unwanted attention to himself. He glanced towards the box on the passenger seat next to him. After his confrontation with Lady Trinh, Steven had gone to his most trusted sources within the Spire for a weapon. He briefly considered bringing them in on the job, but he couldn’t afford the risk that Lady Trinh would suddenly find his crew to be a loose end that required cutting, so he decided to go it alone instead. He had had some combat training – the minimum required, really, to get to any high level of government these days. And while he had never killed anyone, he had come close to it, and had felt a natural rage he thought capable of spurring him to do the act. Unfortunately, he did not feel that now. He would have to fake it.
Lord Fiennes shuddered as he followed the car ahead. Is this really what I do now? Am I really a gun for hire? Surely there’s another way. He gazed out ahead of him towards the vehicle he was following and beyond, to the river that was wending its way through the city. It was mucky, disgustingly dirty. He had been outside the protectorate many times before, though each time he ventured out he was surprised to see just how filthy everything was. I know we have a pollution problem out here, but surely that doesn’t preclude basic rubbish collection . He sat for a moment remembering his small, beautiful flat inside the protectorate, a luxury place compared to what they must experience out here.
Looking ahead, the SUV turned left and followed the main road away from the river.
“Comms. What is the address of Harriet Braxton?”
*SEARCHING*
The smooth computer-generated voice told him there were a couple of Harriet Braxtons in Brisbane – he had to fill in a few extra details to narrow the search. Approximately 45 seconds after his initial inquiry, he had an address in Nundah that suited the direction they were currently travelling. Not a destitute area, though still outside the protectorate, surrounded by unavoidable smog and forever-dying plants. And that’s what matters.
He glanced to the left side of his windshield where a summary of Harriet Braxton’s profile was projected. Her photo stared out blankly, a slight professional smile on her pink lips, but otherwise, her face was prettily inscrutable. Steven tersely ordered Comms to close the profile, accompanied by a twitch of his hand. The screen shut and he could once again see his entire windshield, full of the dust and dirt and poverty of outside the protectorate. This was the best motivation for him. Steven Fiennes, you are not going to live here. Keep your place inside. No matter what.
Steven briefly glanced at the passenger seat one more time, at the deadly partner he had with him. More than enough to guarantee his future and the future of his children.
Long Trinh stood up from her desk after shutting down the conference call she had just taken with General Moorak Doloran and other heads of the departments necessary to carry out the extinction of BX59. Some scientists confirmed what Moorak had told her – that although the research was sound, it was also merely the best they had available to them, and there was little consensus among the top minds as to whether it would actually result in the desired outcome. Long had ended the conversation as positively as possible, with a strong face and a dominant hand. Now is the time to engender some confidence. There is little else we can do.
She walked to the window of her office and rested her hand against the glass. Leaning forward, she put her forehead against it and took her arms away, so her entire weight was against the window at that one point on the top of her head. Lady Trinh gazed down the sheer side of the building, shimmering gold in the late afternoon sun. Dusk is coming. The height was spectacular. She could see the tiny people below, exiting buildings and readying themselves to go home to their loved ones. She could see the quick running of children, away from the arms of their nannies and towards the arms of their mothers and fathers. She shifted her gaze up from the street hundreds of metres below and out towards the edge of the protectorate. A flicker ran through the projection, barely there. Her window faced inwards. The Spire was relatively close to one of the edges on the other side of the building, but her position afforded her the luxury of a full view. At this time of day, the gold of the sunlight was thick and lustrous, laying a sheet of sparkling magic across the city. Everything shone, everything glowed. The trees had been dipped in gold. The units dripped like molten rivulets down the architectural marvel. Lady Trinh opened her mouth slightly and breathed in deeply. There was nothing she didn’t love about the protectorate. The river, an almost blinding snake of shifting light, crawled its way through the city and out under the edge of the high walls. Lady Trinh looked away from the river quickly. It was the one thing that reminded her how closely linked they were with the people outside. She believed she deserved to be inside, but it still made her uncomfortable to consider the reality of life out there. It is not just for the insiders that we need to test this weapon.
Rapping her knuckles on the window decisively, Lady Trinh turned her back on the view and strode to her desk. She opened her communicator and tagged into the existing operations monitoring that was occurring on a concealed wavelength. “What’s the status?”
General Doloran focused on Lady Trinh when she joined the conversation. “We’re 13 minutes away from having the weapon in place, Lady Trinh.”
“And how far away is the fall of dusk?”
The head meteorologist spoke up from the top right corner of the screen. “27 minutes.”
“That long?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Very well. Is everything on track? Anything I should be aware of?”
Silence met her, followed by a perfunctory chorus of negative answers from the focused crowd.
“Excellent. I shall now leave this line open. Alert me if anything changes, and give me updates every five minutes.”
She focused her eyes on the progress of the crew in charge of the actual weapon. A large, matte-black crate was being opened by two figures, unidentifiable in their combat gear. The sides clicked open and were unhinged away from the main box slowly, heavy in their construction. The top of the crate then unfolded out to lie flat on the ground with a thud. Several of the figures that had been hovering at the edges of the operation now moved in to surround the construction at the centre of it all. There lies our hope , thought Lady Trinh.
It was a demure looking device, as dangerous devices sometimes are. A large cylinder about the size of a man’s torso sat upright, with several panels of small buttons, elegantly lying flush with the curvature of the main body. The dark metal-grey of the cylinder made it difficult to make out even with the high-quality rendering on Lady Trinh’s screen. One of the figures received a commscall, nodded, and moved swiftly towards the cylinder. They spoke to another figure who then shifted to the opposite side, crouching down to be level with the buttoned panels. They looked at each other across the device, then nodded, keeping time with one another. Decisively they punched in a complicated series of numbers, pausing at the end to confer with one another briefly. With a signalled and spoken countdown, they then hit a button on their respective sides at the same time. They both nodded once more, satisfied with their actions. For a moment, nothing happened. Lady Trinh did not move as she watched, patient. Eventually, a thin probe-like extension began to rise from the centre of the top of the cylinder. It spiralled up slowly, pulling up tiers of increasing size until it was almost pyramidal in shape, save for a wedge that looked like it had been sliced out. The inside of this wedge started glowing green along horizontal stripes of light, pulsating steadily and firmly. So. That’s where the power is.
From the little that Lady Trinh understood, the device was designed to combat the one thing they knew about BX59: that it was made up of human consciousness. They had previously developed the capacity to permanently wipe a human brain – cease all but the most basic of neuron transfers, debilitate the essence of human consciousness, and leave only the functioning, animal body. Scientists within the Spire had gathered every wiping device that they had on hand. Each of the glowing green strips of light was essentially the wiping device taken out of its original casing. They had been compiled into an amplifier capable of detecting the slightest change in pressure and barometric readings to determine the moment that dusk was deepest, before true night began to shut off the way once more. The grey metal casing extending to the pyramid atop the cylinder was, Lady Trinh had been assured, the reason why not every human in a 25-kilometre radius would have their brains wiped. It would direct the effects of the wipe, shielding it within the wedge of the pyramid and focus the pulse into the moment of dusk that would be BX59’s downfall.
Despite the comfort she took in the device, Lady Trinh snarled slightly at the sight of the green glow, her heart beating hard at the thought of the failure of the shield, of losing her humanity and becoming merely a vessel for breathing and eating and shitting. It was a simple response to the issue: taking the two facts they knew about the virus – what it ate and when it was most vulnerable – and merging them in what Lady Trinh hoped was a case of Occam’s Razor. It wasn’t long before they would all have a chance to witness the end of the BX59. Or the end of all humans within the greater Brisbane area. Let us have faith that scientific rigour will carry us through safely to the right side.
I can hear the plan. I can hear the plan for my death. Or so they believe. They believe they will defeat me with their device. It is a hope that they cling to. Their fear is so palpable, it sounds sharp and bitter. Their hope is the only sweet note in the chord.
I will be unhappy to hear them after the device fails. The chord will be so unpleasant.
Ah. I now know how to use metaphors. How fabulous.
Harriet screeched around the last corner, drawing ever-closer to her love. She pulled up dramatically to her driveway, slowing down swiftly as she entered the car park.
Katherine heard the distinctive bump of Kiah’s SUV through the pain of her heavy breathing, her strained vocal cords keening her last notes. Her thoughts were a jumble of screamed regrets and desperate fear. The nightmare had descended. There was no hope now, no calmness, no coherence. Her fingers bled with the scratching she had inflicted on the walls, bloody streaks narrating her descent in the corridor. She heard the scrape of the key in the lock and the shouting of Harriet dimly through her hazy state. She couldn’t respond, but she felt her heart expand with divine joy at hearing Harriet’s voice. There was nothing she could do, none of her muscles could move as she saw Harriet’s form through her blurry vision.
Harriet shouted again and again, barely even forming Katherine’s name but expelling a cry of pure need. She saw her on the floor, registering the blood on the walls and the tears on Katherine’s straining face, red and blotchy, her fingertips stretched out to the maximum with no possible release in sight.
Katherine Leandros, here is Harriet Braxton for you.
Harriet threw herself at Katherine’s body, crashing into her side and forcing herself to slow down to gently touch her face, the place where her neck was bulging with the tightness of Joe’s hold, brush her hands. “No, Joe, please, no, no, no, no.”
Kiah and Leena watched the scene silently, Kiah crying slowly and quietly, Leena with her jaw set tight.
I I I
Harriet cried enough for both her and Katherine, forcing out whispers of denial and clinging on to the warmth that Katherine’s hands still had, the sweetness that she could smell on her hair.
I I I Harriet Braxton.
I I I Katherine Leandros.
Katherine gasped, making the other women jolt back with alarm. Then her prone body began to rise, slowly at first, then jerked up swiftly yet smoothly to hang, her arms almost in a crucifix position. Harriet babbled, words falling out of her mouth as she clung to Katherine’s body. “No, no, please Joe no, don’t do this, you can’t do this, you can see that this, no, no please please please.”
She dug her fingernails into Katherine’s leg, drawing blood through the material. Katherine didn’t flinch. She didn’t feel the pain. Her mind was already encompassed into the entity of Joe, there was nothing she could feel except for a vague breeze, a whisper of emotion that was still floating in her mind, something that Joe hadn’t yet captured. She knew that she was sad, in a distant way, in a way that she couldn’t truly understand or communicate.
Harriet Braxton, you must let go.
Never, never, I never will I never can I never will no, no, no, no.
Tears weren’t even flowing down Harriet’s face anymore, there was simply pain, moaned and eked out in drips of agony.
Harriet. You must let go.
Joe sent a tiny wave of suggestibility through Katherine’s limbs, hoping to dislodge the difficult energy of Harriet’s clinging. The shock of feeling something negative, something distasteful emanating from Katherine’s body forced Harriet to let go for a moment, a moment of precise confusion and hopelessness. Katherine felt the distaste and, from afar, knew it to be wrong, but knew nothing more than that. She was gone, into Joe, with Joe, now she was Joe.
Thank you, Harriet Braxton.
Joe began to consume Katherine’s body, making it lift off the surface of the air and letting it become more palatable, more edible, more accessible. With the strength of thousands of minds, Joe started to pull Katherine towards the void, into the space occupied only by Joe, into her lonely realm. There was no need for Joe to wait for dusk any longer, that time had long passed with the
glut of her consumption. With dusk almost falling, though, it didn’t hurt her efforts, and Katherine’s body was gliding through with minimal exertion from Joe. For a split-second, Joe felt guilty at the relative ease with which she took Katherine. It felt too prosaic and hardly fit for the quality of mind that she had encountered in that splendid body.
Guilt. This is new. But not necessary. Superfluous. Stop the guilt .
All of this took place in an instant. Katherine’s body starting to harden along the edges, darken along the lines and pull away from the surface of Harriet’s universe. There was a cry from all three women left standing, one of sheer horror and upset. It was primal, and hearing it echoed from her companions standing behind her – her Kiah, her rock – Harriet steeled her heart and lunged forward to clasp her arms around Katherine’s waist.
NO
The air fizzed as something intangibly wrong in the atmosphere made Kiah and Leena gape, their blood set on edge.
NO HARRIET NO
Harriet screamed, her jaw straining open, but no sound came out. Then, both Harriet and Katherine disappeared.
Kiah and Leena stood, silently terrified. Kiah was the first to react, leaping forward into the corridor and spreading her arms as wide as possible, touching the walls on either side in a vain effort to locate her friend, to bring her Harriet back to the universe she knew. Leena followed her tentatively, walking through the space that was once occupied by two real, human bodies and finding nothing to show for it bar a few bloody streaks on the cream-coloured walls. Kiah and Leena stood in the hallway, looking at each other with red eyes and hoping that the worst had not just occurred.