Utopia: A Dark Thriller: Complete Edition

by Adam Steel

  “DO NOT MOVE”. It had warned.

  Her heart quailed at the consequences of ignoring the device’s warning.

  My God. I’ll go blind.

  KEEP EYES OPEN

  It hurts!

  KEEP EYES OPEN

  I’ll go blind, I’ll go blind!

  KEEP EYES OPEN

  I can’t! I can’t!

  KEEP EYES OPEN

  Then it was over.

  REALIGNMENT COMPLETE

  The final words burned through her tightly squeezed eyelids. Dazzles, and sparks of colour, were left blurred all over her vision.

  Jack took the goggles off. They were hot to the touch.

  Aya looked at him through a haze of water. Crazy lights danced above his head and flashes of colour surrounded him.

  ‘What…the hell...was that?’ she gasped, as she rubbed at her eyes.

  They stung as if salt had been thrown in them.

  Jack stuffed the goggles back in the suitcase.

  ‘You have new irises. For a few days at least. The device alters the structure - causes the eye to contort slightly. It’s enough to fool the scanners. Your eyes will look a little strange, but it’ll wear off as they adjust to normal,’ he explained.

  He took hold of her chin with one hand and swung her delicate face from side to side, looking into her streaming, blinking eyes. The battered pupils were bigger than normal, and the irises had changed. They were now green.

  ‘It will fool the scanners on the Info-Coms if you have to approach one,’ he said, letting go.

  Aya blinked. The lights in her eyes danced crazily. She staggered backwards, trying to stand straight.

  ‘Your fingerprints are a different matter,’ Jack said, ruffling in the case again. ‘We don’t have time to correct those, so trying to get cash from a machine is a waste of time. You might as well ring them, and tell them to come and get you.’

  He threw her a small wad of grubby notes and in her dazed state, she could barely catch them.

  ‘Two-hundred credits. Call it your change from expenses,’ Jack said.

  He was bending over and zipping up the case.

  Aya’s hand moved to her forehead. She had a splitting headache, and her vision seemed different. Everything had taken on a concave appearance, as if she was looking out at the world through the bottom of a glass jar. It made Jack look even fatter. The lights were slowly clearing.

  ‘There’s one more thing,’ Jack said.

  Aya looked at what he was holding in his hand, and her face went as white as a sheet. Her mouth dropped, and she thought of the first time that she had seen it all those weeks ago in Jack’s office.

  ‘If they do catch up with you lady, you might need this,’ he said, handing her the gun.

  Her tiny hand, gave way under the weight of it. She stared down at the ‘killing-thing’ in her pale hand. Her mind raced. Her mother would be traumatised by the military men. She was responsible for dead CURE officers. Her job at the station was history. Mr Betts had been arrested and she was next. Max was on the run. Aarif would be enraged, and God knows what he would do, and now, to top it all, she was holding an illegal weapon. Could things get any worse?

  ‘I can’t take this. I don’t even know how to use one,’ she said.

  Jack snatched the gun back from her hand.

  ‘The choice is yours lady – but if I were you I’d take it.’

  Jack demonstrated to her, how to take the safety catch off the gun. He showed her how to check that the weapon was loaded. It held six, stubby rounds. Aya didn’t want to look at it. She didn’t even want to touch it. The whole idea of having a gun made her sick with fear.

  ‘Push it back like that see. Make sure safety is off. It’s fully loaded. Point – and shoot. Easy. Got it,’ he said, slapping the heavy gun back into her shaking hand. ‘Now put it away, and get the hell out of here before someone sees you,’ he finished.

  ‘That’s it? Jack…where are you going?’ she said.

  He turned to leave.

  ‘Same place you should,’ he said. ‘Away.’

  He slipped behind the statue, and walked off down the pathway and was out of sight before she realised it. He left her standing in the dawn light, holding the gun. He was gone for good. That was the last time she would ever see him. Jack could have been the devil. Her deal with him had cost her dearly. She had got what she wanted, but now she felt that she still had to count the cost, and when she did, it was too high for her to pay. Good-fucking-bye, she thought.

  She placed the gun gently in her handbag. She treated it as though it had a life of its own, and was likely to do something all by itself. It made her bag weigh heavy and sag. Blinking the last of the lights from her eyes, she walked away from the statue of Albert and headed for the monorail station.

  Her shadow shrank behind her.

  Morning had come.

  Chapter 24: Wanted

  Monorail Station: Sector Five

  Tuesday 24th July

  It was 8:00 a.m. by the time Aya reached the monorail station. She didn’t dare to check her Info-Pad, relying instead on the station’s clock. She figured that Ajit would be at her house by now, expecting to collect her.

  The search for her had begun.

  Her journey to the station had been slow and steady. She had waited for hours in the park, until her vision had been good enough to see where she was going. Her ‘new’ eyes blinked in the light. She had passed by the first early morning commuters when she crossed the park. Beyond the park, Coney City looked the same as always: bright sparkling towers, ascending skywards. Gleaming structures, gave way to the ordered pavements below.

  She thought about Jack’s warning concerning the eye scanners. How many pairs of eyes did the city have? How many secret ways of watching people that nobody knew about? She tried to push the thoughts from her mind and focus on the arriving train. It glided in and slowed to a stop. The group of passengers she was standing near, surged forward, ready to board. The doors opened and a group of commuters streamed off the train and onto the platform. She boarded the train and quickly stepped aside from the doors to escape the flow of people. She tried to hide her face.

  Positioned next to her was an Info-Com which was mounted on the wall. It waited for its instructions. She avoided looking at it and jabbed a random destination on the panel. She prayed the screen did not record fingerprints. She couldn’t remember if Jack had told her that was possible, but it didn’t seem impossible. She had never given the eye scans on the device much thought either. It could not synch the destination with her phone because she had shut it off prior to entry. Her paranoia had seeped into her Info-Pad and now she kept it hidden from sight as if it were some alien device. It did not matter which destination she had hit, eventually the train would stop at the Sector Six platform. Some of the patrons looked like that would be their ultimate destination.

  The speaker system announced the departure of the train, and it started to move, jolting her slightly. The other passengers settled into their seats, but she held back, walking down the passageways until she could find the quietest spot. She stood in the doorway between the carriages wondering where to sit. The train was already heating up in the early morning sunshine. The Info-Com displayed a weather forecast. It was going to be an unusually hot day. The long, thin tube of glass headed out of Sector Six full of sweaty commuters. The bust air conditioning system made thing uncomfortable. Aya searched for an empty seat. Section three had a space near the door, and there was no one sitting nearby. She wouldn’t have to walk past many passengers to get to the seat. The seats were arranged in pairs, facing each other, but with a table between each set of six seats. Aya quickly sat down in the window seat, holding her bag on her lap. The tension of the previous hours had made her feel incredibly thirsty and she had a thumping headache from the eye changing device. Small, coloured spirals, still danced across her eyes. She blinked again, and a few more of them vanished. She felt hunted, like a common criminal (which
she was not) she reminded herself. Criminal seemed a strong word. She struggled to think of a better alternative to describe herself and it frustrated her. She blanked the thought.

  The seat on her right was empty, but the two seats opposite were occupied. A man was sitting in the window seat opposite her. He had black, greasy hair and looked like he was a student. He had his head buried in a book. It was a horror book. The picture on the front cover was grisly. It was a gravestone with blood dripping off it. The words: “Dearly Departed Aya”, came to her mind, and she tried not to look at the cover. The book reader was wearing a black leather coat and he had a bracelet on his hairy wrist. It had a cross dangling from it. She could smell the oily leather of the coat, mixed with his body odour, and it repulsed her.

  Sitting next to horror book reader was a young boy. He was about eight years old and he was playing with a hand-held, gaming device.

  ‘Kill. Kill,’ he kept chanting whilst pressing the keys in a frantic motion. ‘Gotcha…Kill…Die,’ he repeated, over and over again, moving backwards and forwards, controlling the device.

  The neon lights from his gaming screen reflected the dying corpses in his eyes. It unnerved Aya and she tried not to listen or look at it.

  She leaned against the warm glass of the window, staring out over the scenery of Utopia, which changed with each passing mile. Far away, she could see the spires and towers of the buildings in Sector One: the centre of Utopia. Phoenix Palace stood out above the rest with its glinting spires. Towering blocks of apartments, with shimmering black glass, reflected the bright morning sunshine. She wondered about all the people living in the apartments going about their lives (just like she had) enjoying everything that Utopia had to offer. Sector Four, where she and her mother lived (or rather, where her mother lived, for she dared not go back) was an affluent area. It was full of elegant apartments, beautiful parks, open spaces and private schools.

  Utopia had been a far cry from the suffocating regime of her home country. Back there, she would have been expected to marry a ‘decent’ man – a man arranged for her by her father and the elders - and then, when she was married it would be nothing more than a life of slavery. Her only purpose would have been to satisfy her husband and produce endless children in the hope of providing a male heir. She thought that she had left that far behind in her home country by coming to Utopia, she would be free. She was wrong. Everything she dreaded, had simply followed her on Utopiana, in the form of Aarif. Mada had brought the suffocating regime to Utopia with her and she had used it to choke the life from Aya’s happiness.

  Her tears were running away as fast as she was.

  Left unattended, the Info-Com mounted to her left, reverted to the default adverts and newsreels. The familiar face of mason Marlene Henson was portrayed on the screen. Henson was standing outside of a large hospital in Sector Two, alongside a team of doctors and nurses. Aya recognised it as being Plastic Paradise. We went there once, when mother twisted her ankle. It was a huge place. The staff were so nice, she thought.

  She caught a few words from the mason.

  “Very successful six months – costs down – better care for all patients of Utopia – exemplary doctors and nurses – we should all be proud of all our achievements.”

  Aya had heard it all before. Adverts like the one on the screen, looped over and over. She paid it no more attention, neglecting to realise that the feed had changed to the breakfast news. The news reporter began her oration from the screen.

  “Good morning Utopians. Welcome to the Utopic news. Our top story today...”

  Aya got up quickly from her seat and stood in front of the Info-Com: blocking as much of the view as possible. She waited with bated breath, to see if what Jack told her, was really true. She had no doubt that for once. It was.

  “The so called Slash-Knife-Killer appears to have infiltrated the heart of Coney City,” the digital reporter said gravely. “In this latest shocking development, a renowned Artist, Ms Cherry Hammond was found dead in her penthouse apartment in Sector One. This marks the first murder in Sector One in seven years.”

  A photograph of Ms Cherry Hammond appeared on-screen. She was blonde with pale blue eyes. She smiled back from the photograph. Aya’s heart sank. She pitied the woman, but there was no news of a mass jailbreak. No news of a slaughter of prison guards. Nothing. She felt a little foolish. She was about to return to her seat, when the report took a new turn.

  “In another surprising development to ensure the safety of the peoples of Utopia, the serial murder case has now been moved into TALOS jurisdiction.”

  Aya’s listened and watched with mounting horror. The report continued, with a spinning TALOS logo, behind the reporter.

  “We understand TALOS is working in co-operation alongside CURE officers to apprehend the culprit behind these shocking murders. We now bring you a statement from station commander ‘Alvin Betts’ who will be joining us live from Arethusa.”

  The video link changed to a split-screen image of the report, and Commander Betts. He was dressed in his usual CURE uniform and looked immaculate.

  “Thank you,” the digital Commander Betts said.

  “I will now read from a prepared statement.”

  The on-screen Betts went on to explain that he had chosen to work from within Arethusa with a selection of his top colleagues in conjunction with TALOS. And that together, they were exploring some very promising leads that would lead to the apprehension of the killer. Aya thought that he looked strained, and nothing like he had done at work. When Jack had described TALOS taking him in the middle of the night, it had sounded anything but voluntary on his part. In fact, it had sounded to her, more like a kidnapping. Aya wondered if his statement was coerced. She had never heard of TALOS interfering in any criminal investigation before.

  The video link ended, and returned to the on-screen, reporter.

  “Finally on this story, we have received a photo fit of a potential witness. We ask them to come forward immediately. We believe they have crucial information, and should report immediately to the nearest CURE station. We are eager to trace the whereabouts of one ‘Aya Kaleem.’ It is vital…”

  Aya saw her photo fit in the corner of the screen. It was beginning to enlarge and fill the screen. Her mouth dropped open in shock and she jammed a finger on the screen, halting the broadcast.

  “Please select destination,” the Info-Com prompted.

  Aya fed in random queries to the screen: anything to stop the news-feed form coming back on. Her heart pounded. It’s true. All of it. They are looking for me. Potential witness? Rubbish! She knew nothing about a spate of killings. They wanted her, because they knew she had stolen Betts’ file. What Jack had said was all true. They had carefully distorted the news. Betts was in Arethusa because it had been his machine they had used and they now knew it was her, not him, who had aided in committing the most heinous crime against CURE in its history.

  She chanced a look behind her at the passengers. The man was still reading his horror book and the child carried on playing the game. None of them seemed to have recognised her. The news would be broadcasted across Info-Pads, headsets, and devices everywhere. Soon everyone would know her face. Aya had the horrid feeling that everyone was looking at her. She let the Info-Com rest for a few minutes. When it reverted back to its default, the news broadcast had ended. It would be some time before it came back on and she would be off the train by then. She hoped. Shakily, she returned to her seat and tried to look invisible. Aya leaned back on the window. Perspiration trickled down her forehead.

  She ached for Max. She had never felt so utterly alone. She needed Max desperately. Max will make things better.

  Outside the window the city rolled past. The monorail swept through Sector Five and a woman entered Aya’s carriage. The stranger looked around for a few seconds before spotting Aya, and then she paced towards her. Her red, high heels clicked across the floor of the carriage as she approached. Aya stared at the floor, trying to
hide her face. Go away, she thought, Go away!

  The clicking got closer. The woman was no longer looking at her and in fact, she seemed to be making an effort not to look at her.

  The woman had blonde, spiky hair, and she was wearing a red mini-skirt. Aya thought that she must have been perhaps twenty years old, at the most. She was pretty, but her red lipstick held a grim, unflinching expression.

  Aya shifted uncomfortably and turned away towards the door. The young woman took the seat next to her. She crossed her legs and appeared to ignore Aya. Instead, she examined her nails. Aya felt herself relax a little. Only half a sector to go. Then I can get somewhere indoors. Somewhere less conspicuous.

  ‘I know who you are,’ the woman’s voice whispered in her ear.

  Aya felt a shockwave go through her. She felt the woman’s hand rest comfortably on her leg. She was about to stammer protests, when the woman spoke again, without looking at her.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m not here to hurt you or turn you in. Just keep quiet and listen.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that killer! Aya spluttered back in a hushed voice.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with that!’ the woman cut her off. Her voice was a harsh whisper. ‘It doesn’t matter what they want you for,’ she said in hushed tones, ‘Only that they do. ‘When they find you they’re going to kill you,’ the woman said coldly.

  Aya struggled to keep calm. She focused on a point on the floor and tried to carry on the hushed conversation.

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘TALOS. There is no serial killer. It’s all them. It’s the Masons. They are using that story to remove people,’ the blonde woman said.