by Adam Steel
Him
He dived for the drawer again, ‘whimpering’ but it was far too late. Warden Clarke leapt across the room leaving a trail of burning uniform as she pounced. Taskin got a single, strangled yelp out, before she pinned him up against the wall. The neat line of glass-framed, rehabilitation awards were smashed as she forced his head into them. Clarke leaned in close on him. He could see the madness in her eyes. He was petrified. He could also smell the gore that coated her and it reminded him of an abattoir he once had the disgusting misfortune to visit as a boy. He would have vomited with fear, if she hadn’t been crushing his throat.
‘You’ll take my fucking block?’ Clarke burbled through a stream of blood. ‘This is MY job,’ she hissed.
Taskin felt his own warm urine, stream down the insides of his legs. His terrified eyes, stared right into the devil’s red eyes. Clarke plucked Taskin’s nameplate from his desk and opening his mouth with two fingers, she rammed the plate full force between his lips. Any resistance from Taskin’s body was crushed by the overwhelming force of the blow. The wooden plate erupted from the back of Taskin’s neck and imbedded itself in the plaster on wall. It took a solid disc of bone with it ripping it clear out of his spine. His eyes dimmed, and a ghastly ‘gurgling’ noise, burbled up as blood welled in his throat drenching the “Governor” word, that was sticking out of his mouth.
Clarke released her grip, allowing the draining corpse to slide down the wall. It took two of the award frames with it.
‘Beta is MY block,’ she snarled at the twitching corpse.
Clarke reached over and deactivated the prison alarm from Taskin’s console.
It reverted back to the earlier read-out from the Beta prisoner’s files.
[ACCESS DENIED]
Appeared across the screen.
Clarke snarled and punched the screen through: shattering the words.
‘It’s time to go and check on the prisoners,’ she growled.
The Clarke-Thing turned and left the office.
Chapter 26: The Unicorn Hotel
Unicorn Hotel: Sector Six
Tuesday 24th July
Outside the Unicorn Hotel, the streets of Sector Six were quiet. The sun hung lazily in the sky, shining down across the rooftops of gleaming electric cars as they hummed efficiently along the slick roads. They formed neat lines as they glided along like lines of soldier ant drones, weaving a pattern back to the nest. Each with its own destination and cargo – each following the same, perfectly charted, mindless course; chosen by their owners.
All except one!
One car refused to drive smoothly along the roads. Instead, it wove left and right shakily, as if the perfect synchronicity of how it should move, had been broken, or the instinctive scent trail from its nest, interrupted somehow. It did not seem to care. The petrol driven vehicle bounced along snorting black smoke from its aging exhaust. If the cars had been living entities, they would have shunned their unusual, badly behaved cousin. If it had been alive, it would have been a surly teenager: dis-interested in all but its own strange ideas; as deliberately divorced from its fellows as it could possibly be. A zebra-pattern of black and white fur had been stretched across its roof and its darkened windows hid the passengers inside. Who would want to be seen riding in the rebellious car that did not look, sound, drive, or act, like its fellows? It was an outcast car, for outcast people. It ground to a halt outside the Unicorn Hotel. Its squealing tyres, one more insult to the calm it had shattered with its rude arrival. One of its rear doors sprang open, to release a great cloud of thick, white smoke.
The dust devils in the street recoiled from the sudden intrusion of the strong smelling cloud. A man got out of the car, stood on the pavement encircled by wisps of smoke. It was as if he had appeared by magic: materialising like a genie on demand. He stood amongst the dissipating cloud. He was well built, rugged and battered. The thump of music, emanated from the car’s open door. Dark figures within were obscured from view by a thick, veil of smoke. The man leant down and exchanged a few words with the shadows within. A dark hand emerged and clasped the man’s in a brief handshake. Then, the door was pulled shut and the obnoxious car accelerated away, taking its strange passengers to embarrass another street with its presence.
Max stood on the pavement taking in a few deep lungful's of air. He leaned over and coughed hard. He was glad of the lift that the gang had offered him to the hotel. It was a final parting gift from Marko. He stunk of Reefer. He was thinking that if he had had to stay in the car much longer, he was sure that he was going to be too stoned to do much of anything. He hated cannabis. It slowed his thinking, dulled his senses, and ruined his reactions. It was like his old job, he decided. It had the same effect. Its slow, creeping influence could turn a man into a drooling moron.
He shook his head quickly trying to clear the fuzziness from his mind. He needed to be sharp and focused. He blinked and took in the street for the first time as a wanted man. It almost felt to him as though he was back in action. Time to move soldier.
The hotel was less than two-hundred metres away. Max calculated the distance over speed, giving him his estimated time of arrival. It helped his mind to focus. Old habits die hard, he thought. He broke into a run down the street. Once in, the soldier mentality could never truly be bred out.
He knew that Info-Com announcements would be on every terminal in the city and that (if what Jack had told him was true) he would need to get to Aya fast, or someone else would. Of that he had no doubt. He pictured his lover Aya: naïve and young. He knew that she wouldn’t understand the authorities like he did. He knew what to expect now that they were on the wrong side of them and it scared the hell out of him.
Max shoved the door of the hotel open and marched towards the reception desk. Sitting behind the desk was a fat woman, with the bad hair-do. She was just hanging up the phone on the desk. A ghost-of-a-smile, flickered across her features, and he could see her mentally rubbing her hands. Max didn’t immediately make the connection. He tried to sound as casual as possible when he addressed her.
‘Hey. I’m looking for someone. A girl. She’ll have checked in earlier this morning, she’s…’
His words faltered on his lips when he saw the woman’s expression change. It went from one of general boredom and distaste, to an expression of dawning horror, as a bolt of realisation crossed the woman’s chubby features. Time slowed down as Max looked over her shoulder to see the Info-Com mounted on the wall behind her.
It was re-running the mornings news.
“Woman sought for information in serial killer case,” the background stated.
Aya’s image was on it, alongside a news reporter. A telephone number was displayed along the bottom for people to call in with information. Max stared dumbly at Aya’s rotating face on the monitor for a few precious seconds. It lacked all her charms and human features. Her smile was missing from the passport image. It almost looked unreal.
The fat woman’s hand was barely off the receiver. It hung there in shock. Her moronic mind, pieced together the horrible truth that this man was in all likelihood in cahoots with the woman on the run upstairs. The woman reacted faster than Max would have given her credit for. She opened her mouth to scream ‘blue-murder.’ He shot across the desk and clamped a firm hand over the woman’s mouth before she could give voice to the high-pitched ‘shriek’ that she was preparing. His brain struggled to catch up with events. He held on tightly to the struggling woman. Fuck! She’s called them. We don’t have long. Think. THINK! The intoxicating fumes he had inhaled during his ride in the car had dulled his mind. He tried to shut out the hazy fog by sheer force of will.
His head cleared a little.
Two, thick, lines of snot, drooled over his hand, as he held the thrashing woman’s mouth tightly. It disgusted him.
Max glanced rapidly around the lobby before bodily hauling the struggling load into the backroom. In less than two minutes, he had her neatly tied up to an old chair, with a re
am of sticky-tape over her mouth.
Two minutes, thought Max. How long did they have? If the woman had turned them in - it wasn’t long - of that he was sure. He quickly turned to the register and thumbed down the names.
His finger stopped at: Susan March.
Checked in this morning. That must be it, he thought. Had to be. Room 11. Max bolted up the stairs and hammered on the door of room 11. Nothing happened for a few moments. He considered smashing the door in, when the sound of a sliding-bolt, being withdrawn, came from inside.
‘Aya? he called through the door. ‘Aya…Its Max. Open the door!’ he shouted.
The door edged open slightly and Aya peeked around it to see him. Max’s hard-edged expression, dropped like a stone, when he saw her face. Her eyes were a different colour. They were now green. What the hell? he thought. Jack. It explained to him how she had managed to get past the scanners and the woman downstairs. She looked ghastly. She had gone as white as a sheet. Her newly-acquired, green eyes were red-rimmed eyes, stained by tears, and sore through rubbing. Her bottom lip trembled uncontrollably.
He pushed past her and slammed the door shut behind them. She tried to speak, but the words came out blubbered and shakily. Instead, she held him tightly, shaking like a leaf. Without thinking, he put his arms around her and held her bird-like frame, against his muscular chest. He could feel her shivers going through his body. He was shocked by his own reaction to her. She felt to him, heart-breaking vulnerable, and he wanted nothing more than to protect her. He had expected that she would have been on edge, but not a trembling wreck. He pushed her back into the room and sat her on the bed.
Four minutes.
He knew that time was running out and that they would have to get out fast. He was thinking that he had to pull her together quickly, but in her current condition, the news that they had been discovered might unhinge her. He considered his next move while he tried to comfort her into a state of usefulness.
‘Aya it’s me, Max,’ he repeated, hoping it would soothe her. ‘I’m here. It’s going to be alright now.’
Five minutes.
Aya finally looked up at him with her green eyes and he flinched at the sight of them.
‘Max you don’t understand!’ she cried, with a suddenness that surprised him. ‘They’re going to KILL us!’ she blurted out in desperation.
Max shrank back, confused. The sudden statement sounded so sincere.
‘What do you mean?’ he said sternly.
‘That’s what they do,’ Aya blubbered, becoming incoherent again. ‘I’ve seen it,’ she pointed with a shaking hand.
What she had seen and heard scarred her forever.
Room 11: The Unicorn Hotel: Sector Six
Earlier that day
Aya hadn’t moved from the bed since she had arrived at the hotel and after the mysterious call, she had summoned up the courage to explore the contents of the device. For the first hour, her fear had given way to confusion. The device had been full of computer files, but she had been unable to see what the common link between them was. Some of them had been incomplete, technical schematics of some complex device. She had been unable to follow them at all. There had been patient lists from hospitals; new drug proposals for kidney treatments, prisoner transfer manifests, reams of data from Fin-Sen about share prices in some kind of resource. None of it had made any sense to her. It was if someone had stolen small random snippets of information from every system in Utopia, and put them together on the device as a snapshot, scrapbook of the society. She had skipped over the written documents and schematics and had gone to the video files.
There had been a lot.
She had selected one at random.
The image had been dark, fuzzy and grainy. She had been able to make out the shape of a monorail train and a tunnel. Men were shown loading something onto it, in large crates. She guessed that the video must have been shot at night, from a distance, because all she could make out were shadows. The next video spun around crazily. She realised that the camera must have been hidden in a bag, or a pocket, because all she had been able to see was a white, metal, floor with a strange, blue glow, reflected in it. When she had strained to look at some shots, she had been able to see the bottoms of walls. Some were white like the floor: others were covered in wires and pipes. She had been able to hear distant voices and whirring noises. Somewhere off camera, there had been the sound of a huge crack of electricity, which had rumbled like bottled lightning.
A frantic voice had faded in. It had been distant, but legible.
“Hive loader arms failed again! Shut it down! I said Shu…”
The video had ended. Pointless, she had thought.
What had the woman on the train been talking about? There was nothing there.
She had begun to feel foolish. Then she had started to listen to the sound files. Most of them had made no sense to her either. Until, she had come across the sound diary of Jim Baker.
“I am Jim baker. It’s 14th June,” it had said.
The voice had sounded scared, terrified even. She had sat on the bed and played back Jim’s story.
“I...pray someone finds this and if you are listening to this recording then you must do something! Oh God. God help us. People must be told. People have to know! I’m sorry. I’m Jim Baker. I am...I was an engineer. Two weeks ago I got drafted in to the plant. There was a problem with the cooling system. They needed extra staff and…oh God Jesus...”
The file had ended but Aya had found a few more recordings.
“I’m Jim Baker. It’s 17th June. I’m in fear for my life because of what I know. I’m going to try and get in further. We must know how bad it is, but I know it’s fucking bad. I’m sure they’re onto me. They’re all in on it. We have to warn people. I’m going to try and get into The Hive. It won’t be easy. Everyone there knows!”
The voice had become more erratic and shaky with every recording, until she had found it hard to follow the words.
The man’s terror had been evident, even through the bad recording.
“I’m Jim Baker. It’s 14th July. Oh-God I’ve seen it. The evil! They know I know. I’m sure of it. I think I’m being followed. Oh Jesus. I can’t be alone in this. I just can’t! I have to get out of here.”
Aya’s hands had shaken as she played back the final recording.
The voice had sounded tired and strained.
“I’m Jim Baker. It’s 19th July. I’ve been on the run for three days. They are after me. I’ve gotten away for now. If anyone hears this you must get away. The Masons will kill you. I’ve seen the proof! I’ve given these files away and if you’re hearing them you’re in danger too now. I’m tired of running. No sleep or food for three days.”
The voice had begun to break up: interspersed with his tears.
“I’m Jim Baker…” it had said, in a wavering voice “and the Masons are going to kill me.”
Aya hadn’t attempted to find anymore of Jim’s recordings. She had known that there wouldn’t be anymore, because on the 21st of July, his name had appeared on the victim’s board in her station as the latest victim of the Slash-Knife killer. The final horror had come for her, when she had searched the latest videos added to the device.
The last one had been only a few days old. It had been security-camera footage of a hotel room: an expensive hotel room. The camera had been ceiling mounted and clearly discreet, because in full view of the camera, a man and woman were shown having sex on a large, four poster bed. The camera quality had been much better than the others. She had been able to see the beads of sweat running down the man’s back. She had been thankful that the video hadn’t had any sound. She had been about to shut the video off as a wave of embarrassment had washed over her. Then she had noticed the man’s outfit that had been lying on a chair. It had been gleaming white and strangely familiar. It had taken her almost a minute to realise that the man shown on the bed was Aarif. She had presumed that it had been taken in his suite, at The Jewel h
otel, in Sector One.
The video had shown the man’s face coiled around to look behind him. She had been able to see the smug smile that had been set into his features as he had moved on the woman. His eyes had been closed. Aya had screwed her face in shock and disgust. Strangely she had felt cheated and betrayed. The woman shown underneath of the man was blonde. She had looked familiar. The woman was tied to the bed with four silken ropes. It had taken Aya only a few moments to realise that she had seen the woman earlier on the Info-Com news right before the announcement about herself. It had been the woman who had been murdered.
Aya had sat – numbed finger hovering over the off button. She had been too scared to even close the awful images. She had looked on in horror. Aarif was shown to be punching the woman. The woman’s thrashes of ecstasy, and over exaggerated lust, had turned to ‘shrieks’ of terror and pain. Aya had been unable to see it from her angle on the video, but Aarif had been smiling. He had withdrawn from the woman and had been savagely beating her. He had smashed her once beautiful face beyond recognition. Blood had soaked the sheets and splattered across Aarif’s naked chest. The woman had stopped struggling under the relentless, sudden onslaught. Aarif had calmly dismounted from the twitching woman’s body and had helped himself to a small glass of dark wine that had been placed next to the bed. The woman’s blood had pooled across the sheets – dying them crimson. He had pulled a silken towel around himself and left his bloody fingerprints across it. He had then rung a small, jewelled bell, next to the wine glass. The camera had caught the back of Ajit’s head as he had entered the room. Aarif had gestured to the woman’s body in a dismissive manner and Ajit had merely nodded. Two more men had come into focus. They had begun untying the lifeless corpse from the bed. They had been dressed in the unmistakable black and red uniform of TALOS.