Rat Runners

by Oisin McGann

  “Come on dine, sweetheart,” Death Metal called. “I don’t hurt kids as a rule, but it’ll go bad for your friend if you don’t get yer arse dine here right nye.”

  Scope closed her eyes for a couple of seconds, trying to get control over her breathing. Damn this bloody dust—she was covered in it, and it was causing havoc with her lungs. But she couldn’t slow down now. She crouched down, unzipping the pockets on either side of her jacket. There was an inhaler in each pocket—a blue one in the right, and a brown one in the left. Looking down through the cracks between the stout bare planks, she could see him watching her. She would only be a dark shape against the light, but it was enough for him to follow her.

  “Come on nye,” he said in a softer, more confident voice. “Yer breathin’ don’t sound too good, love. Asthmatic, are we? You need to get out of here, before it gets any worse.”

  Scope coughed, and exaggerated the sound of her wheezing as she shook both inhalers. Taking a blast of the blue one, she held her breath, slipping that one back into her pocket.

  “All right,” she said, coughing again. “Don’t hurt him. I’m coming down, OK? I’m coming down.”

  Checking his position through the cracks between the planks, she jammed her right foot between a board and the ledger. Then she swung the top half of her body down through the gap and sprayed Death Metal in the face with her brown inhaler. This one was highly pressurized—it wasn’t designed to ease one’s breathing.

  Death Metal staggered back from the blast of the aerosol, rubbing his eyes and gagging. He drew in a huge breath and let out an almighty sneeze, and then another. The force of the sneezes caused him to bend forward. Scope pulled herself up, released her foot, grabbed hold of the transom and swung like a gymnast, bringing her whole body feet-first down and under the bar, and slamming the soles of her trainers into the top of Death Metal’s head. He cried out and tumbled backwards.

  FX was already on his feet, rubbing his eyes, but he could only limp towards the ladder that led down to the next floor. Scope let him go ahead of her, then slid down the ladder after him. Above them, they could hear Death Metal sneezing helplessly, cursing and groaning as he struggled to breathe, or even open his eyes. FX let out a grunt as he jumped off the ladder, taking some weight on his bruised leg.

  “What the hell was in that thing you hit him with?” he asked.

  “Pepper, some Indian Unani powder, a little ammonia and a few other things,” she replied. “A little potion I mixed up for this kind of thing. Keeps the lads at bay back in Move-Easy’s.”

  They descended another ladder and strode along the boards to the hole in the plastic where they’d first come in, on the second floor. This was the section of scaffold without any boards; there should have been a ladder here, but it was missing. They dangled off the transom and were about to drop down to the first floor, when they heard a clatter from above. A sneeze turned into a high-pitched shriek, and they both let out yelps as Death Metal fell past them, hitting the ground below.

  “Gaaaaaargh! Jesus Christ, me leg! Aaaargh! Jesus, I’ve broken me leg! Jesus!” he bellowed, and then started sneezing again, letting out roars of pain whenever he could draw breath, each violent blast of breath causing a spasm of agony in his broken leg, which caused more cries, and more sneezing.

  The door in the tall wooden hoarding was locked, and they didn’t want to climb down past Death Metal anyway. As Scope cut a hole in the wall of plastic sheeting at their level, FX found a length of rope, tied one end to a standard and tossed the other end out of the hole.

  “Ladies first,” he said.

  Scope lowered herself out and abseiled carefully down past the greasy anti-climb paint on the hoarding. FX followed her down. His leg was loosening up, but he was still limping a little as they set off down the alley at a fast walk. They were breathing hard, shivering with a mixture of relief and adrenaline.

  “So you hit him with sneezing powder?” FX asked, feeling restless, needing to talk.

  “Yeah, but a pretty high-powered dose of it.” She smirked, cocking her head as she listened to Death Metal letting rip, swearing and screaming behind them. “He’ll calm down a bit in a few minutes, but he’ll be sneezing for days.”

  “Cool!” FX laughed. “I’d have used tear gas myself. Or turned the bloody thing into a flame-thrower.”

  “The guys who were bullying me in Easy’s?” Scope said, as she took a little zip-lock plastic bag from her pocket. “Most of ’em were too thick to be afraid of being hurt. I had to come up with a way of humiliating them—making the others laugh.”

  FX watched as she tore a toothpick out of a packet and used it to clean the blood from under the nails of her left hand—the blood and skin she’d scraped from Death Metal’s arm.

  “Move-Easy keeps files on every criminal his people ever come across,” she explained to him. “He’s got his own automated system for analyzing DNA, and a huge DNA database. For him, it’s all ammunition he can use against them. I can even get Tanker to pipe me into the police database if I need to. This guy’s DNA has to be on record somewhere. Give me a day or two, and I’ll find out who he is.”

  “I’ll race you,” FX challenged her. “We’ve already got his voice recorded. Even that should be enough.”

  “Right,” she said. “But what we really need now is his employer. Who is Vapor?”

  After walking a few blocks, they both put their batteries back in their phones and turned them on. Scope’s beeped immediately with a message. It was from Tanker. It wasn’t good news.

  CHAPTER 19

  FOLLOWING

  TANKER HAD SENT an encrypted piece of video to Scope’s phone, with a message. As well as cracking online security for various dodgy purposes, one of Tanker’s jobs was to download all the video files recorded by the miniature cameras carried by Move-Easy’s people. Part of that task involved editing Coda out of any of these files. It was one of the conditions under which Coda worked for Easy—he was never to be recorded on film. Whenever he was caught on any of Easy’s cameras, those images were to be deleted. It was a deal that Easy honored. Even someone like Move-Easy was wary of crossing Coda.

  Tanker relished this part of the job, and Scope would often slag him about the man-crush he seemed to have on the enigmatic assassin. But she couldn’t help a certain morbid fascination with the pieces of footage he showed her from time to time—the momentary glimpses the cameras picked up of the murderer at work. Tanker had just sent her one of those clips. It was a big risk to take; Scope winced at the thought of Easy or Coda finding out about her friend’s indiscretion.

  The piece of video had obviously been cut from a longer recording. On it, she could see three figures in balaclavas. The tiny camera was carried in a piercing on the face of a fourth villain. They were in the last throes of a raid, in what looked like a back- street implant clinic. In the gloomy swinging light cast by their torches, she could make out the features of the operating theater. She spotted two bodies lying still on the floor, as well as a woman tied up in the operating chair, her wide eyes watching the proceedings in terror.

  A stack of boxes and packages stood next to a bundle of cash, all of these spoils waiting to be scooped into the last of three bulky black sports bags. An implant clinic … Scope was reminded of the job Punkin and Bunny had brought to Move-Easy. Sure enough, one of the figures lifted his mask to wipe sweat off his face, revealing Punkin’s face long enough for any functional security camera to get a good clear look at him. He pulled the balaclava back down, shoved the remaining takings into the last bag and waved the others towards the door.

  They found their path blocked by three Asian men—one large, one larger, and one gigantic. It seemed Punkin and his new posse had knocked over the wrong outfit. This place was protected. The first guy was a wide-boy in a glossy suit, armed with an automatic. The second was a muscular troll with a crew cut dressed in camo gear, the image completed by a thick cigar and a MAC-10 machine pistol. The third was an ogre in a
tracksuit wielding a TEC-9 machine pistol. Each man had the cold, hard eyes of a killer.

  “You stupid wazzocks,” Crew Cut snorted. “Don’t you know who owns this place?”

  In the first few seconds that they appeared on camera, gun barrels raised, there seemed to be no doubt about the grim fate of the raiders. But then, in the shadows behind the door, to the far left of Scope’s screen, there was a smear of movement. The raiders had brought protection of their own.

  Coda’s face was visible for an instant as he moved out of the shadows. In a liquid flow of motion, he seemed to move faster than the video’s frames could capture. Gliding from left to right, his body pivoted, his arms swirled and jabbed. A gunshot was heard, the muzzle flash overly bright, the camera struggling to adjust. The resolution came back, the picture cleared. Just over three seconds had passed, and now Coda was on the right-hand side of the screen. He had Crew Cut’s cigar between his lips. He plucked it from his mouth and blew out some smoke.

  The first man was collapsing, screaming, a bullet wound in his leg. The other two were sprawling to the floor after him, disarmed, and either unconscious or already dead—it was impossible to tell. Scope stared at the screen. For the third time, she rewound it and watched it in slow motion…and Coda still looked fast.

  Starting from the left: Wide-Boy became aware of Coda as the assassin stepped into the light. He swung his weapon, but Coda caught the man’s gun hand in a move that looked almost gentle, sweeping it down as Wide-Boy’s finger tightened on the trigger. By the time the shot was fired, the gun was pointing down at the man’s thigh. In the burned-out flash of the shot, Coda stepped past, even as Wide-Boy’s leg jolted under the impact of the bullet.

  The camera’s resolution was only starting to recover from the flash as Crew Cut reacted to this new threat. His arm swung around, but this time Coda ducked underneath. The heel of his right hand drove into Crew Cut’s sternum, knocking him backwards, the cigar propelled from his mouth. Coda caught the cigar in mid-air, moving past towards the Ogre. He jabbed the burning tip of the cigar into the Ogre’s hand, causing the man to flinch, letting go of his machine pistol. Coda caught the gun with his other hand and swung the butt back with a crack against Crew Cut’s temple, dispatching the man as he tried to bring his gun up to aim at Coda’s head.

  The Ogre was quick for such a big guy, pivoting to face his opponent even before his friend fell … but he seemed to be moving through treacle compared to Coda. Coda yanked Crew Cut into the path of the Ogre’s pile-driver punch. Instead of hitting Coda, the blow snapped Crew Cut’s head to the side. Then Coda was sweeping past the giant man, the cigar jabbing up under the Ogre’s chin. On reflex, the Ogre’s head lifted away from the burning pain, leaving his neck and jaw wide open. Coda slammed the butt of the gun up under the man’s jaw hard enough to break his neck, jolt him off his feet and drop him like a rag doll onto the floor.

  The final image on the video clip was the look of arrogant disdain on Coda’s face as he glanced back towards the camera, exhaling cigar smoke. Then he disappeared through the door. Scope let out a long breath. Once again, she read the message Tanker had sent with the clip:

  Easy’s getting impatient. I think he’s got Coda watching you. Mind yourself.

  Scope was watching it again, carefully, and was so engrossed in what she was seeing that it took a few moments to hear Manikin’s voice intruding on her thoughts:

  “Incoming! Oi! Eyes on the road, girl!”

  Scope gave a start, lifted her head, then jumped aside just in time to avoid the man in the clown costume who ran past, screaming, with his feet on fire. It was a magic trick that had gone wrong. The man could no doubt take comfort from the fact that he’d finally got the attention he’d been seeking from the cameras. Though he might be too busy trying to put his feet out to savor the moment.

  She was walking through town with Nimmo and Manikin, and their route had taken them up Vauxhall Bridge Road, towards Victoria Station. There was a high concentration of WatchWorld cameras in this area, and it had become a popular area for people trying to get ‘brasted.’ A term drawn from ‘casted for broadcasting,’ it was used to refer to the people who desperately tried to draw attention to themselves in order to appear on the WatchWorld screens installed all over the city.

  Anyone whose behavior succeeded in getting them brasted for more than fifteen minutes earned themselves a boon—a small payment—and the chance to be followed about their daily lives by the cameras. Online viewers could vote on who to follow, and the longer the braster could keep the audience’s attention, the more money they could earn. Successful brasters could go on to become celebrities, and earn fortunes, but for most, it was just a chance to be famous, if only for a few minutes.

  The paths of Vauxhall Bridge Road were teeming with hundreds of people, individually and in groups, struggling to get noticed. Some were professional street entertainers, some small-time entrepreneurs, but most were just attention-seekers, desperate to be famous for nothing in particular. The three rat-runners passed people dressed in all sorts of outlandish costumes, from Star Wars droids to orcs from The Lord of the Rings; a theater group performing Shakespeare’s Othello in animal costumes; a man dressed in a deep-sea diver’s suit, playing bagpipes; an English woman in an ethnic African dress, trying to convert people to some new- age religion; an inventor trying to sell virtual reality goggles for pets.

  Manikin was approached by a young white man with quiffed brown hair, dressed in a suit whose trouser legs did not quite reach his socks.

  “I bet you I can predict your thoughts,” he said in a loud voice, hoping to be heard by the people around him. “Pick a number between one and ten, and I’ll have that number written here on my left arm.”

  “Six,” Manikin said in an uninterested voice.

  “You say six!” he announced. “Let’s see now … here it is!”

  With a flourish, he pulled up his left sleeve to reveal the number six, which appeared to be written in marker on his arm.

  “Brilliant!” Manikin said, smiling, reaching for his wrist as if to take a closer look.

  Her hand closed around his fancy wristwatch, and with a shift of her thumb, she turned the dial that encircled the face of the watch. The six on his arm turned to a five, and then a four; then she twisted the dial the other way, and the number changed to a nine and a ten.

  “A tattoo implant?” Manikin snorted at him. “I saw you flick the dial as you pulled up your sleeve. So that’s it? That’s your big feat of magic? What else can it do? A bunch of pictures, right? Or maybe you can type out words on your skin too? Bit of a one-trick pony, aren’t you? Go learn some card tricks, ya loser.”

  The man scowled at her and hurried away through the crowd.

  “Thought we were trying to keep a low profile?” Nimmo muttered.

  “Are you kidding?” she retorted. “The only way to get noticed around here is to act normal.”

  Scope wasn’t so sure. She was always nervous being outside during the day, between nine and four. Conscious of how young she looked, she always expected to have a copper or a peeper clap a hand on her shoulder and ask her why she wasn’t in school. Maybe that was why the older two had chosen this route—there was so much going on, the city’s watchers were unlikely to notice three kids minding their own business. But Nimmo wasn’t about to make her feel very secure.

  “Have you noticed the guy following us?” he asked her.

  “What? No!” she exclaimed, but she was careful not to look around her. Could it be Coda? she wondered. Had Move-Easy lost patience with them?

  “It’s the guy who was in the van with Krieger,” Manikin said in a low voice, though that didn’t make Scope feel much better. “About ten meters back, black guy with close-cut hair and a goatee. Wearing a dark gray suede jacket and tan jeans.”

  “Let’s get a closer look at him,” Nimmo said to them. “Quick, in here.”

  He ducked into a café, stopping just inside the door. Steppin
g to the side, he watched through the window, with the others behind him, as the guy passed along the path. Their tail must have seen them step inside, but he ignored them, making no attempt to follow them into the café.

  “They’ll have at least one other person shadowing us too,” Manikin said. “Probably up ahead of us, waiting to switch with him. Let’s stay here for a few minutes, see if we can make anyone who comes in.”

  Manikin and Scope got some coffees up at the counter, Nimmo treated himself to a sparkling water, and they went and sat down at a table against the wall near the door; a position that gave them a view out of the window. The noise in the café would make it difficult for anyone to hear, and they kept their voices low, and their heads close to each other across the table.

  “We didn’t have to come out here, y’know,” Scope told Nimmo. “Why don’t you just let me go back to Easy’s? It’s my base. I can do my tests there, and his people will help me give these guys the slip.”

  “I don’t want you going back if we can avoid it,” he replied. “Move-Easy didn’t want to let you out in the first place, and if he finds out we’re attracting this kind of attention, he’s liable to keep you in if you go back. Whatever gear you need, Tubby Reach either has it, or he can get it. The less contact we have with Easy, the better.”

  Right, Scope thought. And the less likely I am to tell Easy that you already have the box. She wondered if Nimmo trusted anyone at all.