by Ubukata, Tow
And so it was that Boiled’s hounds—the Bandersnatch Gang—were released.
A sound over the intercom:
–What do you want?
“This is your transport shuttle from the airline company, sir. Sorry to have kept you waiting.”
–We never ordered any…
But the hand that had been inside Medium’s coat was out now. It held a card-shaped device.
He stuck the card into the electronic lock on the door.
An electromagnetic Hutchinson Knife appeared from his other sleeve, as if by magic.
It all happened in an instant.
The door opened with a click. A thick security chain dangled across the door, but the knife sliced through it like butter, its magnetized blade causing a link in the chain to fuse and shatter.
The door opened and Medium entered. The man who had been speaking into the intercom was standing there in the entrance hall, his face blank with astonishment and terror.
Yo—he started to say, but Medium threw a knife at him, and it plunged into his open mouth. The magnetized blade sliced through the back of his head, causing all the moisture in his mouth to evaporate in an instant.
Medium caught the already-dead man by his lapel and propped him up to stop his fall. He pulled the knife out and carefully laid the man’s body down. Not a drop of blood was spilled, but instead the whole area was filled with the pungent smell of burnt flesh.
There was the tinkle of a bell, and a red light glinted off his eyes behind his sunglasses.
“What is it? What’s that car? And that smell…” A voice.
Medium’s eyes, now vermilion, glanced at the wall and saw another figure emerge.
Left hand still gripping the knife, Medium let his right arm hang loose by his hips.
“I wonder which one of us is the faster draw,” Medium said aloud. He smirked and stood deliberately in the middle of the corridor. The other man appeared from beyond the door and was immediately taken aback by the figure confronting him—and the two red eyes behind the sunglasses.
The man, frenetic, reached for the gun at his side. He was too slow.
Medium unsheathed his gun and fired a shot that left the barrel almost noiselessly. A hole opened in the man’s chest. The electric charge from the bullet fried his wound—and his lungs—and he collapsed in a heap before a sound could pass his lips.
Again, no blood, and again the smell of fried flesh hung in the air.
“That’ll be me, then.” Medium leaned over the corpse and lectured the dead body in jest, waggling his index finger.
Medium put his gun away and lifted up the man’s wrist, staring fixedly at it. “Tough, professional fingers,” he said, taking his sunglasses off with his knife-wielding hand. “Just not really sexy enough. Let’s sell them off, Well.”
He was speaking now to Welldone, who emerged from the opposite end of the corridor.
Well was dragging yet another dead body by the scruff of its neck.
He took his sunglasses off, exposing his computerized red pupils, and spoke. “Three people exactly. We’ve cleaned up over here. How’s it going over there, Rare, Mincemeat?” Welldone spoke out loud, hand to his temple. The reply came:
–All done. Easy peasy! I’m just brewing myself some nice coffee in the kitchen. Rare’s girly voice sounded in Welldone’s and Medium’s ears and continued:
–It was a little boring, actually. The pigs were stationed exactly where we knew they’d be when we hacked their Ham & Egg system.
“Good…standby on alert.”
–All finished over here too. Looks like our tracking system’s working. When should I bring this pig out?
It was Mincemeat’s voice that now arrived on the scene, and Welldone responded. “Wait for darkness. We’re going to scramble all the Ham & Egg circuits in the area, along with all communications to and from the target house.”
–Am I good to soil them a bit, then?
“Why,
what’s happened, little Minty?” Medium asked, amused.
–There was a woman here too. They were trying to pass themselves off as a couple, but they’re both Ham & Eggers. Still, might have been a real-life couple, I suppose.
“Are they still alive, Mincemeat?” asked Welldone. He left the house and moved toward the car.
–Er…should they be?
“Not really. Do as you please. Just be sure you factor in enough time to tidy up afterwards.”
“Twenty minutes till sunset, little Minty. The sun’s almost down. Time for dinner.” Medium spoke now, standing in the hallway. He heard Mincemeat’s laughter echoing deep in his ear.
–More of a snack. I’ll leave the front parts for Well. Can’t imagine they’ll be to your taste, though. I’m going to do the rear parts myself, now, husband and wife in turn.
Mincemeat carried on cheerfully, and Medium burst out laughing. “Rare’s going to be all jealous…”
–Ooh, Medi, no, you know how loud I get! I just can’t keep it in. If I did anything now our target would know we were coming! I don’t like it unless I can scream real loud.
“Just don’t forget we need some time to load the pigs,” Welldone said as he returned with a suitcase in either hand. “Consume the prey without leaving a single drop of blood. That’s the secret of our success, after all.”
“That’s right, business is business, Rare, little Minty. Don’t let the pigs rot.” Medium took a suitcase from Welldone and knelt down by one of the corpses.
Welldone extracted the Lockbuster Card from the door and reset the lock. “Just don’t forget that you’re on the battlefield, Rare and Mincemeat.”
–That’s what makes it feel so good, though! Isn’t that right, little Minty?
–Yeah, it’s good. It’s really good!
Medium shook his head, laughing, and cut off his transmission from Mincemeat. “Looks like being on the battlefield just increases the thrill factor for them. Give us a hand, will you, Well? Let’s slice this pig up with our two-hundred-thousand-dollar butter knives.”
Welldone kneeled beside the corpse and took his Hutchinson Knife out, applying it to the corpse’s wrists. Flesh, skin, and bone were all sliced off together, but not a single drop of blood escaped.
“Easy does it. You know that red convertible we just passed—do you think he’s one of the PIs too?” Medium spoke cheerfully, and Well grinned back.
“He is. I had Flesh confirm it. So all we’ve got to do now is give the other PI a little scratch with our butter knives and then put the girl to sleep and bring her back with us.”
“My chest is pounding. It’s been a while. I’m almost as excited as that first time we ever set out as a gang.”
Welldone laughed. The two men cheerfully dissected the body and packed it away in the suitcases.
≡
“Looks like the operation will commence in twenty minutes.” Inside the container on the trailer, Flesh wobbled his gelatinous body around toward Boiled as he spoke to him.
“Perfect timing.”
Boiled nodded his approval.
The container was full of machinery. Mincemeat was the trailer’s driver, and it was currently parked some distance away from the residential district.
“I’ll finish my work on the Ham & Egg circuits in a couple of minutes. Each of the three residences are set up so that if they don’t successfully send and receive a transmission from each of the others every forty-five minutes, the emergency alarm is sounded automatically. So I’ve had to fix it so that each one relays a message on to the next one every fifteen minutes.”
Boiled nodded again. His eyes were fixed on a monitor that showed a detailed image of the neighborhood. A number of flashing lights showed where Welldone and the rest of the gang were at that precise moment.
The next monitor along showed a building in 3-D. With perfect marking—radar devices set in three places around the building—they were able to triangulate and get a precise scan of its contents.
“It’s built just as it says on the blueprints. Have you ever been inside the building yourself?”
Boiled glanced at Flesh, unspeaking.
“We ran some background checks on you ourselves, you know. You’re amazing. All those cases you solved with that other PI called Oeufcoque, and every single one of them designated an Official License. You’re a real celebrity within the industry, aren’t you? And I hear you’ve got a lot of clout with the DA’s office too.”
“That’s all stuff that my former partner engineered after he dissolved our partnership.”
“Hmm…I would have thought you were the sort of person who didn’t worry too much about history, what someone might or might not have done. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind discussing the past?” Flesh asked.
Boiled continued staring at the monitor, but nodded slightly.
“We were all in the Forces. Well, Medi and I were all in the Experimental Mechanized Division of the Marine Corps—the Guinea Pigs, we were known as—and we met Rare and Mincemeat at the front when we were all thrown together in the same company of the Southern Division on the Continent. I was up for military discharge after getting shell-shocked and developing paranoia, but then loads of enemies came and surrounded us. We had to hole up in the forest for over ninety days before the helicopters were finally dispatched to evacuate us. Even today, whenever I see an oak tree it takes me back, brings back vivid memories.”
Boiled ignored Flesh, but he carried on speaking. “Everyone looked after me, a mere comm specialist. A lot of soldiers ended up regressing to a childlike state, though. Some grew paranoid, or started developing abnormally aggressive tendencies. Some units had a lot of these sorts of soldiers concentrated in one place, and I somehow found myself in one of them. At first we were the exception, but before we knew it our sort of unit became quite common, especially on the front lines. Then, as the battle intensified, it became completely normal. These are the only sorts of people who can really adapt to the front lines, after all. We fought hard and received plenty of medals. We killed a lot of people. A lot of enemies, a lot of allies. Guns, gas, bombs, electricity—we used all sorts of weapons. All day long I survived on tranquilizers washed down with scotch, firing away from inside my armored vehicle. Eating and shitting where I sat firing my guns. In a vehicle not unlike this one, actually, for three months, with no sunlight, in a place like a subway toilet. As a result of that I started suffering from white wax disease in my legs…”
Flesh stopped talking at this point and smiled at Boiled. “And what about you, sir? Have you been involved in experimental warfare?”
“I was in the P7 Experimental Corps.”
“P7…oh, so an Airborne Division? I know about all of them up to P6, in charge of the twenty- to sixty-thousand-meter altitude zones, right? I didn’t realize there was anything higher than that.”
“Strategic Space Corps. There were three of us, including me, who enlisted—volunteers from the Airborne Division.”
Flesh clapped his pudgy hands together. “Amazing! Just like a sci-fi movie!”
Boiled’s eyes caught Flesh’s again. After a second he nodded silently, facial expression immutable as ever. A movement like the cylinder of a revolver spinning in place.
Then a murmur. “The whole unit was a sham, a concoction. Objectives and results, all fabricated. It was only there as a smokescreen to develop pointless technology.”
And with that, he turned his eyes—devoid of sentiment as ever—back to the monitor.
Chapter 4
SPARK
01
It was four in the afternoon.
Balot was stirring stew in a saucepan, but she suddenly stopped. Oeufcoque was standing on the counter sniffing the air coming in through the ventilation system. Balot poked Oeufcoque with her free hand.
“Agh, that tickles.” Oeufcoque covered his sides.
But his nose was still to the ventilator.
He spoke with just a trace of nerves. “There’s an unusual smell.”
Balot poked at the stew. She lifted up the wine, bringing the neck of the bottle toward her.
“I’m not talking about the seasoning.”
Balot placed the bottle down and leaned her head toward him.
“There’s a smell of carnival. A group of people rejoicing, about to go to a party, or a festival…or maybe to war.” Oeufcoque spoke and sniffed the air again. “There’s also the faint, bitter smell of fear. As if someone has been killed.”
Oeufcoque looked at Balot, apprehensive. But Balot was no longer afraid of this sort of thing. She turned the heat down and entwined Oeufcoque around her fingers.
–Enemies?
“Probably. Check communication lines with the outside world, will you?”
Balot put Oeufcoque on top of her right hand and touched the intercom on the wall with her left hand as he’d requested.
She snarced the receiver without lifting it, putting a call out to the police escort that was staked out in the neighborhood.
–The lines are all ringing, but nobody’s answering.
“What, all three of the bases? What about headquarters? And try the Doctor too.”
–I’m not getting anything.
Balot tapped the receiver with her fingers.
–Something doesn’t feel right. It’s coming up that the lines are engaged, but it’s weird. It feels like I’m contacting somewhere entirely different.
A claustrophobic, urgent atmosphere pressed in on them from all sides.
Balot took her hand off the intercom and turned the stove off completely, and then she took her apron off and threw it over a chair. She headed toward her room, Oeufcoque still on her hand.
–They’re coming, aren’t they? The people who rubbed out our police guard. Coming here to assassinate us too.
“Highly probable.”
–I want to get ready. Will you give me five minutes? “What are you planning to do?”
–Take a shower.
She spoke as if she were talking about tending to her firearms.
Oeufcoque nodded. “But be quick.”
Dish, wash, brush…she felt the ditty spinning around the back of her mind as she savored the hot water. Dash, crush, rush, flush…
She knew that having dirt and grime on her skin weakened her natural abilities. So, whenever she was due to wear Oeufcoque she needed to make doubly sure she was clean. To scrub herself up spick and span, polish herself up like a stainless steel knife.
As she washed she started to feel that she might be able to grasp each individual droplet of hot water as it fell from above, down to the finest of movements. She probably could have. Even the destination of the water. She could almost imagine the whole world flowing through her skin.
Under her control.
My body is my own.
The seed of resolve was planted firmly in the back of her mind.
She wasn’t going to hand it over to anyone else ever again.
She would protect it—and fight.
Why me? The eternal question was about to deliver up an answer that she had never even dreamed of. Or not an answer, to be precise, but a reversal, turning the question inside out, just like Oeufcoque.
Whoever it is who’s targeting me—I’ll make sure they get their just rewards.
That was the answer she had to the question of why everything had to happen to her; she would take the question—Why me?—and shove it right back in her enemies’ faces.
Dish, wash, crush, mash…
She turned the shower off. She snarced the TowelJet without touching it, and strong warm gusts of air blew from all directions, drying her body.
She rubbed oil on herself, luxuriating under the warm breeze.
She was now the perfect blade, or so she felt. A blade so sharp it would even cut through its own sheath. She was a sharp sword who had the right to choose what she would have wrapped around her.
And, of course, she had already chosen. Her one and only scabbard—and weap
on.
Goodish, fresh, wish…
Balot left the bathroom. She stood in front of the desk, not a stitch on her body.
She reached out her hand toward the mouse that was standing on the desk and sniffing his surroundings with a pointy nose.
Oeufcoque jumped onto her hand. “Good to go?”
Balot nodded, wrapped Oeufcoque around her fingers.
–All set.
She imagined a dress, an impregnable iron fortress that would wrap her up completely.
Working with this vague image, she snarced Oeufcoque, running through his various programs and adapting them one by one.
–Hug my body. Tight.
Oeufcoque turned with a squish.
Into the dress chosen—singled out—by his one and only.
The night melted like chocolate and seeped into the town.
The Bandersnatch Gang moved as one. Rapidly, silently, they closed in on the former morgue from three different directions.
Welldone led the way, and Medium followed swiftly behind.
Welldone checked the surroundings while Medium stuck his Lockbuster Card into the rear door.
“It’s open. It was a triple lock—we only just made it.” Medium spoke and quickly slipped inside. Welldone followed immediately after, almost back-to-back with Medium, and closed the door carefully behind them.
The corridors were dark and narrow. Medium proceeded down them with caution, and Welldone indicated to him to speak through their transplanted communication devices.
–We’ll leave the Lockbuster in and use it to carry our hack of the circuits. How long till we can take over the building’s security systems, Fleshie?
–Two minutes should be plenty, Well.
–Rare, you enter from the south the moment we’ve overridden their security. Medium, you enter from the main entrance, carrying the Boston bag full of firearms. No transmissions from more than three meters away until we’re sure their security system is completely down.
–There are your orders, guys. I’ve pinned down the location of everything in the building. Heat sources detected in the kitchen on the first floor and the north-facing bathroom.