The Middle East wasn’t any more accommodating. As refugees reached Egypt, a pre-emptive exodus struck up tensions on the Israeli border, resulting in civilian casualties on both sides. Israel’s response was almost unprecedented; their superior military annexed the part of Egypt on their side of the Suez Canal in less than a week of brutal Blitzkrieg and began construction of the monolithic Suez Barrier.
Nobody in, nobody out.
The world had simply abandoned Africa, and Africa wasn’t too happy about it. Attacks on coast patrols became part of the daily routine, and special forces medics starting coming in accompanied by full complements of troops. Surrounded by Egypt-sympathetic countries, Israel was forced to defend its new territory from all sides.
In short, a lot of negative energy brewed in 2012. By the start of 2014, the estimated death toll due to Red Masque alone was two billion, with more statistics leaking in each day.
Overall, three billion people have died since June 1, 2012. Not including African ones, twelve countries had been wiped out, with thousands of cities becoming ghost towns world-wide.
A sea of statistics. A sea of angry, venomous statistics, which no one was really reading because they had more concerns closer to home. And the one thing angrier than a statistic is an ignored statistic.
Goddammit, Valerie.
I woke. Extreme nausea throbbed in my stomach; movement at this moment was unwise. Deep breaths, mediated, in through the mouth, out through the nose. I wasn’t alone in the ward, though the other patient seemed to be comatose.
Valeriereally loved her morphine. A look at the clock on the wall told me that I’d been out for eight hours. I gave it five minutes then stood uneasily. The queasiness struck again and I spent a few minutes dry-retching over the sink. Breathe in, breathe out. I made a mental note to hurt Valerie for using such a high dose, even though I knew it wouldn’t teach her a lesson.
I extracted my cell phone from the folds of my coat and peeled dried blood off the screen. Like a destitute amputee, my battery was on its last leg, but I took the time to read the blinking message.
“Problems with the relationship? With our help, those days are over! Body and mind spirituality courses. Meet up with professionals. At affordable prices, you can’t miss this! Train to be a better you.”
An annoyed smile seized my face, briefly. While the message brought bad news, it also brought the promise of an eventful day. Vincent had a knack for making weekends entertaining.
#0903
“People are like onions. There’s always someone crying when you start peeling off the layers.”
6: The Principles of Pain
I loved the empty train station. There was something hallowed and mournful about the dust and the murk and the quiet, something that spoke in disresonant tones about the fall. Many thought it haunted, and it wasn’t hard to understand why.
“...rain from... city central...”
After 2012, an incompetently decommissioned power grid had left an intermittent trickle of electricity seeping into the station. Turnstiles would occasionally flick on and off, or snap unlocked while suddenly registering tickets from ages past. The ticket counters occasionally flickered to life, bleeding yellow light through the bars. Above all, the dark was permeated by a crackled, ancient voice, blithely announcing a schedule years out of date.
“... has been ...layed for nine-nine-ni...”
I vaulted the turnstiles and moved deeper into the must, keeping an eye on the ground for signs of thoroughfare. There were other reasons for the legend around this place, though. Typical ‘never-seen-agains’ blended with talk of ghostly footsteps and of doors locking of their own accord. It was even said that, if you put your ear to the pipes, you could sometimes hear the screams of those trapped deep underground long ago.
“...nine-nine-nine-nine hours and n...”
It was nonsense, of course. I mean, if he wasn’t at his home or his office, Vincent had to lurk somewhere. Right?
I turned down a final passage and was met with a locked door. There was a male bathroom symbol on the front, but a closer inspection showed that it had been stuck there recently. Feeling around in the gloom, I located the exposed piping and listened closely.
Sure enough, I picked up faint sounds of pain. I smiled, and struck the pipe with the handle of my knife.
Tap. Tap-tap-tap.
“nine-nine-nine...”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“...ine-ni...”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“...ne minutes... City rail apolo...”
I stood in the door’s blind spot, and waited.
“for the inconve...”
Three minutes passed before a thin beam of light oozed through the keyhole. The lock clicked, but the door didn’t open. A silence followed.
Inconvenient.
I coughed before speaking. “I was really hoping to surprise you. This is just awkward.”
The door pushed open, and Vincent regarded me coolly from the entrance. He was standing in a small room, in front of a flight of descending stairs.
“K. Been well?”
“As if you don’t know. I’m sure I’ve been keeping you busy. Also, in case no one told you, you have a fingernail in your hair.”
He patted around for it and flicked the red speck into the dark. “Carried away. Don’t know how I missed that.”
“Are you busy? You know I’d hate to spoil the mood.”
“He can wait. Not going anywhere.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“The usual. National security. I’ve spent the last six months finding the leak in the company; now I need to find who he’s leaking to. Some of those numbers tie back to our players in the field; lots of sensitive stuff that the world isn’t ready for... Please, come in. Make yourself at home.”
“How gentlemanly. Need any help?”
“If that was supposed to be emasculating, it wasn’t. It wouldn’t matter if you spent your days braiding hair and wearing pink lace; you’ve got an edge I’ll never have.”
“My talent?”
“No. You’re completely insane.”
I pouted as we walked down a flight of grimy stairs.
“That’s not an advantage. It’s a lifestyle choice.”
“You didn’t choose insanity, K. You only chose to embrace it.”
I sulked until we reached the lower levels. He wasn’t right, but he had a smarmy, superior way of being wrong. The smell of must was residual here; a large area had been swept clean under the glow of a yellow bulb. Propped up next to a door was a bloody set of bolt cutters. I squinted through the dusty pane.
“He’s definitely not going anywhere... I think he needs some time to adjust to having no toes.”
Vincent didn’t speak; instead, he began to rinse his hands in the chipped basement sink.
“Nothing? Tough crowd. Well, I got your message... You had a problem getting to the body?”
“Getting there wasn’t an issue. I’ll tell you everything in a moment; right now I need you to repay the favour.”
I nodded at the room behind me. “He won’t talk?”
“No. Whoever he works for, they scare him more than I do. The only person I know who fits that bill is you.”
“Hard to tell through the blood, but I don’t think I know him.”
“You don’t. We started investigating this one in 2010. You were busy stirring up rebellion in North Africa that year, if I recall.”
“Just during the winter. You know how my skin loves the sun.”
“Regardless. I need you to break him.”
I stared through the window for a long stretch of time. The huddled mass on the floor was barely moving, save for the occasional shudder of breath. I mentally patted down my pockets for an appropriate monologue.
“Vince... Vincent? Torture—be it physical, mental, social—is not about what you do to a person. It’s all about making it clear that what you’ll do next will be worse. It’s not the pain that
makes people break, since pain is just the body suffering for the past. Expectation... Expectation is what really destroys a man. Take his family, and he has nothing left. The pain he feels is only for the past. But take his least favourite child, and the pain serves as a signpost for the future. And because he knows that the pain is only a herald for things far worse, a Herald of Future Agonies, he will break. It’s inevitable.
“You’ve botched this one; sent him too far over the edge. You can’t re-amputate his toes.... But I might be able to help... I’ll need some paper, and a pen.”
Vincent stopped the tap. “You have a plan?”
“A theory. Time for some proof of concept.”
***
I opened the door five minutes later. He froze mid-shudder as the latch turned. I spent a full minute looming over him before he opened his one intact eye. It shut rapidly, before tentatively peeling open again.
The fact that I clearly wasn’t Vincent took him by surprise. The hope had already run its course; he knew I wasn’t an officer or a military official on a rescue mission. His face returned to a battered-yet-resigned expression.
I dropped to my haunches, triggering an instinctive flinch. Another full minute of silence followed, while I wrote something on the pad. Eventually, the scratching of the pen levered his eyelid open again.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
I didn’t respond. Instead, I touched his hand—another barely-suppressed twitch—and started counting fingers.
“Five... Nine.”
His eye tracked me as I leaned in, tracing a finger over his face while continuing my write-and-tally.
“Two. Two. One.”
Confusion slowly paved the way for apprehension. A noticeable stiffness grew in his body. Now was the time to escalate.
Rolling him onto his back, I levered open his mouth and started tapping on his teeth, one by one. I kept counting under my breath.
The tears began at seven. He was no longer trembling exclusively with each breath; deep spasms radiated out from his core as he screwed up his remaining eye and began to cry silently. I kept counting, louder now, with more emphasis to my taps.
The first audible sound arrived just after I moved onto his top jaw; a wet, pitiful wheeze dredged itself out of his throat. He stared at me through leaking slits, one oozing red, and coughed out a plea. The count went on.
He grabbed my wrist as I touched the final tooth, fingers limp and barely holding on.
“Please.”
I feigned concern for a calculated instant, clasped his wrist with my pen hand, and looked into his eyes for three seconds, before lightly stroking his tendons. I smiled.
“One.”
***
The sound of sobbing cut off as I closed the door behind me. Vincent was rinsing his hands off again.
“He’s been fixed. Wait an hour, then go talk. I’m sure you’ll find him to be more cooperative.”
“Much obliged.”
I spent a minute cleaning my own hands. The water wasn’t much cleaner than the blood and saliva, but it was arguably more hygienic.
“So. The boy?”
“You were right about the morgue. Some big police commissioner was found dead. Overdosed on heroin. Of course the first thought is homicide, no one uses the old narcotics anymore. Hell, people can barely get their hands on them... Hence the protection. Big-name pathologists were flown in and everything. I’m surprised you didn’t know.”
I’d known about the incident, but I simply hadn’t put the two together. I slapped myself inwardly.
“Was it a problem?” I asked.
“Not at all. I have levels of authorisation most of them couldn’t count to as a team. I don’t think they made eye contact with me once after my ID was verified.”
“And the body?”
“Wasn’t there, but hold your horses. Noticed something strange.”
Lies.
I held up a finger.
“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing. I checked all records. The only new inhabitants for the last week were the commissioner and two old people who got shot during a botched robbery.”
“Can’t be. I saw the record, Vincent. I saw it. New body, young adult male. Cold chamber three-zero-two. It had his picture and everything, Vince. I saw it.”
“I’ve been sceptical. I still am. But I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt. Did some snooping. Turned up something distinctly interesting, if you’d let me finish.”
My spirits lifted somewhat. Vincent didn’t find many things distinctly interesting; last time he had used that phrase, the subsequent investigation had pitched Tunisia into total chaos.
“There was something in the records... A lack of something, to be precise. The commissioner is filed with the ID thirty-three-eleven, but the old couple is under thirty-three-thirteen and fourteen respectively. There was a record at thirty-three-twelve, and it was removed.”
Vincent handed me a sheet of paper, with a chunk of what looked like a hospital record database printed in a table.
“That’s him.” I grinned.
“I don’t know. I checked further back, and missing IDs aren’t uncommon. People spell names wrong, or enter in duplicates; it happens. Don’t read too much into it.”
“It’s him. No way we can recover the record?”
“I tried. No go. Database doesn’t keep deleted records. You could always give the medical staff a grilling. The head coroner was on call for the commissioner and the couple. He’s good at his job, though, so try not to kill him.”
He gave me a name—Alex Sturrock. I thanked Vincent—not out loud, of course—and turned to leave. He placed a hand on my shoulder for a second and spoke.
“One last thing, K. Be careful what you dredge up. Make sure you can put it down again.”
#0895
“I was right. It is one of those days. Someone spiked my breakfast with angel-rage, and before I know it I’m knee deep in flaming hospital, laughing my eyes out and reeking of petrol. Thank god I came down before the charges detonated. I’m not even in the right bloody city. Not today, not ever. “Everything looks strange here... Everything that isn’t charred rubble, that is. I’m used to that.
“Speaking of things I’m used to, a military helicopter seems to be on its way here. I’m guessing that’s my exit cue. Over and out.”
7: Screwloose
A week passed. Vincent disappeared as he always did, with Clive Jackson and his apartment getting consumed entirely by a vicious gas explosion. There was a funeral, with family. His sister even cried. Later that day, I sent him a message congratulating him on his convincing demise.
“No more undercover for a while,” was the curt response. I didn’t know whether to trust it, but I had more important things to do than crack his disguise again. From my nest in the Helix I started marking down the life of Alexander Sturrock, while concurrently sending out feelers to track down leads on the murder-suicide.
Ideally, they’d turn up with something. Practically? I wasn’t hopeful. This city had seen very little German violence, even during its 2012 heyday, and the modus operandi of this case just seemed totally out of sync with the sleeper cells. They were all about explosions and fiery displays of aggression, but this didn’t even make a newspaper.
RailTech involvement seemed more likely, but they were good. They were really good. Looking into RailTech was like looking for a black spider in a dark box, in a cellar, at midnight. Except instead of a dark box, you’re actually holding an irate crocodile with high-tech night vision goggles and an appetite for faces. I had decided to keep my investigative distance from RailTech unless absolutely necessary after one of my contacts was found in several garbage bins.
The most likely source of information was from the friends and family of the two deceased. I’d already scheduled time with some of them—nothing threatening—and I hoped to get something valuable from my recalcitrant human contact.
The murder-suicide, no ma
tter how puzzling, was not at the front of my mind. I finally had something tangible to attach to my object of interest—the mythical, mysterious boy who only I ever seemed to notice.
I first saw the boy in 2007. I had just returned home from one of my more exotic cases, having successfully led the Russian ФСБ on a merry chase through Damascus. It was on a train where I saw him: cold eyes set in a tanned face, with a slash of white hair curling out from under his hood. He must have been eighteen at the time, and despite his age I’ve only ever known or referred to him as ‘the boy’.
There was something about him that didn’t quite fit in, as if he had been photoshopped onto the train scene. As I looked at him, the sullen eyes rose and met mine. We had silently stared at each other until the train ground to a halt, and he stood and left just as quietly. Two days later, he was dead. Car crash; gone on impact.
Despite the interest he had sparked, I thought little of it. People make eye contact with me. People die. There had to be some intersection. It’s also not an unnatural occurrence; that is, people seem more likely to die after coming into contact with me. I’m just the Typhoid Mary of Bad Karma.
I had completely put it out of my mind when I met his gaze again, one month later, across a crowded airport terminal.
My first reaction was disbelief. But it was definitely him: the same ice-blue eyes, the same tanned face and the same peroxide hair. He maintained eye contact unblinkingly as my mind went through the next stages: suspicion, self-doubt and finally confusion, and he was gone again before my mind finished whirring.
Twelve sightings and twelve deaths later, but I finally had a lead to follow up. Alexander Sturrock.
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