by Andy Graham
Prothero looked frantically for her to release him from his promise, to save him. She must come. Someone would. All he saw was the bigger thug using his knife to drape the tree with tinsel. It was red with white spirals, offsetting the blue baubles. The man rearranged one strand again and again, not happy with the way it lay. The finickity attention to detail amongst the looming horror was both mesmerising and horrific. The VP, however, was focused solely on Prothero.
“So, David— You don’t mind if I call you David, do you? Or Dave? How about Dai? That’s the Mennai version, isn’t it? Dai. Sounds good. A bit like ‘die.’ Appropriate really.”
“Please. Anything. Just don’t hurt me anymore. I’ll say anything.”
“I know you will. That’s what torture is for. It’s why it’s both so effective and utterly useless at the same time.”
“No more, please.”
“Torture? OK. For now, Dai.” The way the VP said the name left the imperative hidden in the word as clear as the sweat-fear drenching Prothero’s clothes. “How about more information then? We found Shaw, what was left of him. It seems that his precious gwenium has an unfortunate effect on people.”
“The element?” He had to be calm. He still had time. On the screen to his left, a list of figures and names appeared, phone numbers, time and date stamps, bank details.
“How do you know it’s an element? Is the name that obvious?”
Prothero’s heart sank through his stomach. A clip of him and a young man was now playing on the screens. He watched himself joking with Sci-Captain James, talking over a drink in the Kickshaw.
“How will you explain this to your precious public?” the VP asked. “That you, David Prothero, the Spokesperson for the Unions, bribed a legionnaire to bring you samples of this new, toxic fuel source.”
“Toxic?”
“Highly. It turns people into monsters.” The VP leered at him. “I guess you need better spies. Or is the Spokesperson too honourable to play that game?”
“You don’t understand—“
“And when the public find out you carried out a terrorist attack on Substation Two? What are they to do? Embrace the coal from Mennai? Rely on fuel from a people we have been feuding with for centuries?”
“No! It’s not like that. I wanted to rebuild the mining communities, to give the land back to the people. I thought gwenium would be a way of achieving this. We can build mines in the Donian mountains, create jobs, reopen the pits in the Free Towns.”
“And by destroying the energy supply we rely on at the moment, you would conveniently destroy the government’s power base at the same time.” The VP’s laugh was borderline maniacal. “Which people do you support, by the way? The people from the land of your birth: the Mennai that are demonstrating regularly for greater independence? The people that are taking it out on the ethnic Ailan people in Mennai? We may have to send in the legions officially soon. There have been some credible threats to our communities there. The Gates will open again to reclaim our own.”
“That would mean open war. You can’t do that.”
“Why not?” The VP’s cackle died. “I’m just telling the truth. Wasn’t that the Resistance’s counter-aim: ‘maximising information, developing self-determination and social mobility’?”
“I’m not one of them. I’m innocent.”
“You were part of the Window Riots. I know that for a fact. And the party you represent might as well be the legal face of the Resistance, whether you are in contact with the rebels or not.”
The thug by the tree took time out of his redecorating to leer at Prothero. He pretended to hang himself, finishing by rolling his eyes back in his head and poking out his tongue — a child’s expression of death. “Pack it in, Seth,” the other heavy muttered.
Prothero was sobbing, the salty tears mixing with the sweat on his face. “Why do you hate my politics so much? You have no idea what I’ve been through for this country or who you are. Why are you doing this?”
The VP placed both hands on the sculpted arms of the chair and leant over Prothero. His odd-coloured eyes gleamed in the crimson sun-light bleeding over the horizon.
“You are a hypocrite. You rebel against a system that enables you to rebel. Without the system you’d be nothing. The system works for you just as much as for us. It gives us both identity. You can rail about it being unfair. You can claim we are all slaves to it. You can say we should all rise up against it. But deep down we both know you don’t want that. Without the system you’d lose your identity. You’d have nothing to rebel against. You’d be the same as all the intellectually myopic people you claim to guide. You’d have to deal with your own issues instead of pissing them against those that made you.
“Your guilt over being born into one of the few rich families from the Buckets does not give you surrogate sympathy rights for the poor everywhere. You are not from this country. You make a mockery of your much-touted family values. Divorced middle-aged men don’t do well in politics, especially with a string of lovers and a bastard to their name.”
“But you, no, stop, you don’t understand.” His ears rang as the VP backhanded him across the face. Both thugs now busied themselves with their decorations. The ugly one made suggestive comments as he placed the Midwinter Maiden, clad in green to summon spring, on the top branches.
“And now you’re destroying public enterprise for private gain,” the VP said. “Your whole life has been built on smoke and mirrors. Even your official standing was a sop to keep the public happy. You were never meant to have any real power. Your politics don’t revulse me, you do.”
The pocket watch slipped from Prothero’s hands. The glass cracked on the floor. The words he wanted to say were washed away by his tears. A life of lies and deception in defence of the truth had come to this.
“Brennan,” the VP said. The man with the furrow in his forehead slid the window open. The wind had died down and the first rays of the sun reached into the room, casting long shadows across the floor. Prothero barely felt the warmth caressing his face as the men reached for him. “Wait. What are you doing? I told you what you wanted.”
It felt as if it were another man’s body being pulled towards the window, someone else being lifted off the floor. The wind had picked up, ripping the murky clouds to shreds. In the corner, the lights on the tree winked at him and the Midwinter Maiden smiled her vacuous smile.
“Stop. I beg you. Stop. I have money. Wine. I can get you drugs. I—” Brennan slapped Prothero hard enough to make him dizzy.
“You’ll be remembered as a martyr,” said the VP as he picked up the pocket watch. “But I intend to drag your reputation through every murky corner of history I can find, both online and off-grid, until I’m happy there’ll be no triumphant phoenix-like resurrection. Your fairy tale is dead.”
“People will talk. Gossip is dangerous, you know that.” Prothero struggled against the bruising fingers and screamed, “Murder is illegal!”
“Suicide, however, is legal.” The VP’s smile was feverish and leering. “Think of it as an early gift to the Lords of Misrule. Your kind still leave them a tribute on Midwinter’s night, I believe?”
“You have to listen to me. You don’t know who you are. I’m—”
Brennan hit him again. Warm blood streamed out of Prothero’s nostrils. The VP ripped Prothero’s shirt open. Tattooed on his left breast was a small pair of wings. The VP traced the lines with a fingernail.
“An ironic choice of tattoo given how you so-called Freedom Fighters in the Window Riots punished your enemies.” He whispered into Prothero’s ear. “Let’s see how you like being thrown from a window. For your sake, I hope your belief that ‘nothing is fixed’ also applies to the pavement.”
The thugs perched him on the windowsill where the raucous caw of the fisher gulls hunting in the distance sounded an alarm clock to a waking city.
“No, please, no. I beg you. My daughter. My children. You—”
A gust of wind tor
e at his clothes. He screamed. His fingernails slid off the glass pane. He grasped at metal. Brick. Anything. Effrea glittered in the early morning sun. Flecks of light danced on the river, from the uplit towers of the Brick Cathedral to the shadows of the giant walls on the outskirts. Far below, Prothero could just about make out a dot that was the orange-clad figure of a street cleaner. Despite its flawed heart, Effrea was beautiful, more so at this time of day. It was a marriage of stone, steel and light that, even now, took his breath away. It had been his home for so long that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d dreamed in his mother tongue.
The hands turned him round. Prothero clutched at a thug’s arm, his fingers numb with the pressure. The winter sun soaked through his waistcoat. There was so much he wanted to say but he had no words left.
The VP smiled. “By the way, this energy crisis you’re so worried about? It’s a myth. I made it up. There is plenty of oil and coal. I thought you’d like to know that.” His face filled Prothero’s vision, the sharp smell of his breath stung his eyes. “And I fucked your precious daughter, Joanna.”
One by one, the thugs prised Prothero’s fingers open. Then they let him go.
52
You Know Me?
Through the screech of alarms, Avery and Ray sprinted to the main electrical hub for camp X517. The chill of the fan-cooled room was welcome after the dash along the corridors and the altercation with the guards outside. The main control panel itself was similar to the one in Substation Two: a clash of sizes, colours and styles that twisted the eye the longer Ray looked at it.
“How strong is this safety glass?” Ray pressed his hand into a window that filled one wall. Behind it, the air above massive generator coils was distorted into thick, twisting lines. “It’s hot.”
“It’s not safety glass,” Avery replied. Ray took a step backwards. The scientist was wandering up and down the banks of dials and switches, flicking and pressing things apparently at random. “The generator wasn’t designed to be used like this. The creeping sabotage of Ailan’s power network over the years has meant we’ve had to adapt the camp’s power sources. The generator’s increasingly used as a primary energy source rather than an emergency one. The upside is that when the Ailan grid doesn’t work, having our own generator means we can sell some of our power. We decant some of it into mobile power cells, too.”
“Decant?”
“The Chief Energy Officer came up with the term. He has a thing for electricity, claims it’s the true soul of the universe, and even Lind and his precious genes are slaves to it. He likes his wine, too. Except whatever’s going on in Ailan this time means the generator’s running at capacity.”
Ray explained what had happened to Grid Substation Two. Avery’s checking of the control panel stopped. “Will the Towns be OK?”
“On the whole. They’re used to living off much less than the Gates. It’s the soldiers, farmers and tradespeople who’ll survive the apocalypse, not the bankers, lawyers and writers.”
“Or scientists,” Avery said.
Ray grinned. “I’ll put in a word for you.”
A wave of electricity crackled across the generators, lighting up the control panel in smudges of blue and green and yellow. Avery whipped his hand back, his fingers were covered with black smudges. “You really want to blow this place up?”
“No, I told you, I want you to open every door in this complex. You said this is where it can be done. Remember?”
“You said you wanted to blow this place up.”
“First we get everyone out,” Ray said, “then we blow this place up. And I appreciate your help. You don’t need to do this.”
Avery waved the thanks away. “I should be thanking you for saving me from a nasty future.”
Ray pulled a grey cube from his pouch, the same type as Hamid had used in Mennai.
“What’s that?” Avery asked.
“A Midwinter present. Legionnaire style.”
“Unwrap that and you may blow everyone up in their cells.” Avery took a seat at the old computer bank.
“You have access codes?”
“Some of them. I was Lind’s left-hand man for a long time.” He chuckled. “It’s a private joke,” he said in answer to Ray’s frown. “I’ll tell you if we get out.”
“After I blow this place up.”
“What is it with you and explosions?”
“I’m a legionnaire. It’s what we do. The codes?”
“Lind can’t be expected to hold all this information in his head. It helps if someone close to him does. Sometimes what you know is still important.” Avery swiped the screen. Nothing happened. “Old-school steampunk,” he muttered, pulling the keyboard towards him. “Should have brought my pith helmet and welding goggles.”
Ray pulled open a door next to the computer bank. It led to a room with rows of fans. Each was linked to one of the computers Avery was now sitting at. He opened the tool box Miescher had given him, sifting through the contents.
“What are you doing?” Avery asked.
“Thinking. What did Joanna have against you to want to abduct you like that, anyway?”
“Joanna Miescher? Beyond the usual Gates vs. Buckets prejudice, I’m not sure. Jealousy? Or maybe she had a chip on her shoulder about not having made it on her own merit. She’s ambitious, bright, got a fair memory, but isn’t so good at joining the dots; better at reproduction than production.” His mouth twisted into a sour smile. “The rumour is her dad’s some big dog and pulled strings to get her here. She’s been trying to outrun those whispers ever since.”
“And you have nothing to do with those rumours?”
“No. Not initially.” The clatter of Avery’s fingers on the keys stopped. “What?” he asked. “Was I supposed to roll over and play dead?”
“I thought all you scientists were working together for the benefit of humanity?”
“Seen much of the world, have you, Franklin?”
“Just don’t call me naive,” Ray muttered before telling Avery who Joanna’s father was.
“David Prothero? Dirty bastard was married.” Avery tapped in a final few numbers. “Let’s go. I’ve done as many as possible. Some doors work on a delayed unlocking system, it’s a security feature. They won’t open for a few hours. Others may not open at all. I’ve done all I can.” Avery stripped his lab coat off and stuffed it in a bin. “Once these doors pop, this camp is going to get ugly for anyone in a white coat.” He eyed the large spanner Ray was hefting in his hands. “Where are you going with that?”
Ray rested his fingers on the door handle to the fan room. “To see if the idiom is true.”
“What idiom?”
“Oh, c’mon. Thought you scientists were clever? Spanner. Works. Throw.”
“The computers will overheat.”
“And the generator will blow, but not straight away. I told you I was going to blow this place up.” Ray grinned at the hungry look on Avery’s face. He held up a second spanner. “Wanna help with some research?”
A series of booms from the depths of the building knocked Ray to his knees as the computers he and Avery had sabotaged finally overheated. Ray scrabbled to his feet and ducked behind a corner. He had spent the best part of the day hiding from the guards and staff of camp X517, waiting for Lind to appear. Hunger gnawed at his stomach. Fatigue threatened to trip him. After twelve years in the military, it was a familiar feeling, something he had been trained to endure. He wasn’t sure his superiors would appreciate the irony of him using that training against them.
A radio Avery had stolen hissed into life. Lind had returned. A dull rumble sent cracks chasing themselves across the ceiling. Ray sped along the corridors, following the directions Avery had given him. Alarms mixed with the sound of clanging and hollering. He stumbled down a flight of stairs and slipped through the door to Lind’s office, smoke curling around his feet.
“I told you, I’m ruling nothing out,” crackled a voice from Lind’s desk-screen.
/> “Ditch the doublespeak. How about you rule something in for a change?” Lind yelled. “We’ve got the mother of all meltdowns going on here. Stop dodging the question.”
An explosion rocked the corridor outside. A burst of white noise flooded the room. The screen fizzed and snapped back into focus to show the VP’s unmistakable face. “It’s classified.”
“Damn you!” Lind slammed his fist into the desk. “That’s what Chester said. Tell me what you’ve done with my son.”
“Nothing. You’ll be able to see him once the military have finished processing him. Officers are peculiar like that. They like their authority being questioned even less than you medics.”
“That’s it? I gave you Shaw and gwenium, I did all the things you asked of me, even that unholy project of yours, and you give me this?”
“Your son has made a valuable contribution to the energy security of the nation,” the VP said. “You can be proud of him.”
“Not good enough. You tell me—“
A flash of light from a glass wall lit up the room. It threw Ray’s and Lind’s shadows into a flickering chase around the walls. Lind stiffened. “I have to go. The files have just been transferred. I’ve added a few words to the title, just in case, but the results speak for themselves.”
The last few words from the screen were lost in a hiss. The picture froze. The odd-coloured eyes on the static screen stared straight at Ray. His rubber-soled boots were soundless on the floor as he crept forwards.
“I suspected it may be you,” Lind said as he turned.
Ray drew up abruptly. “You know me?”
“I know more about you than you do.”
A distant rumble shook plaster off the walls. Lind sighed and dusted white powder out of his hair. “Who helped you do this?”
“Avery. He wanted you to know this is his resignation letter.”
“Avery’s a good man,” Lind said, a tired smile on his face. “But he’s too honest to get anywhere in life. Where is he?”