by Oisin McGann
Something big and heavy piled into Ivor from behind, knocking the wind from him as he slammed into the damp, uneven ground. His face scraped across gravel. His right arm was pinned behind his back and the stun-gun was wrenched from his grip. He kicked out, catching somebody's shin and knocking them off-balance enough to weaken their hold on his right arm so he could twist his left hand into his pocket and seize the steel bar hidden there.
Two hard blows hit him on the side of the head. A memory exploded in his mind: a white tiled wall and floor. A few drops of blood close to his face. There was shouting, the smell of rubber, vomit as well as antiseptic, bleach and other chemicals. The door – he had to make it to the door.
Then he was back in the alley again. He swung the steel bar behind him with all his might and connected with something that felt like an elbow. There was a cry of pain and he kicked and lashed with all four limbs until he was able to struggle onto his feet. There were two of them – the one he'd caught and another taller, leaner one with darker skin. He could not see their faces. In the dim light of the alley, he took in as much as he could: their size, their colour, their hair, their clothes. It was vital he remembered every detail of this encounter. This was his enemy. As his hand gripped the bar, feeling the reassuring solidity of its weight, Ivor was struck with an overwhelming need to hang on to at least one of them. He would kill one if he had to. Anything to hold on to them – to prove they were real.
They were only a few paces away. The taller one reached into his jacket and Ivor screamed, charging towards him. He saw the gun with its silencer in the instant before he brought the bar down on the man's outstretched arm. The man let out a squeal as his forearm broke, but Ivor hit him again, knocking aside the other arm as it came up to fend him off. The third and fourth blows hit the man on his shoulder and head. He fell back heavily, hitting the ground with a meaty thud. He didn't move again. Ivor was tripping over him in his haste to reach the other one. This one already had his gun out. He looked in pain, but he was still lifting the weapon to aim.
The first hurried shot went wide, the crack of the bullet off the wall behind Ivor louder than the shot itself. The second shot took him in the side, but by then he was within reach, swinging the dumb-bell bar over the man's arm and into the side of his face. He shrieked in triumph as he watched the man fall, everything in slow motion, slowing . . . slowing . . . slowing . . .
He woke up to the sound of sirens. There was movement around him, under him, through him. His eyes opened, looking up at the roof of a small room. No. A van, or bus. No. An ambulance. Of course – the sirens. A face blocked out some of the harsh light as it leaned over him. The expression gave him some comfort, the professional concern of a paramedic. The man's hand gripped his.
'Yuh gowna be awight, mate,' the man said. 'Stay still, yeah? Yuh got a wound in yo' side. What was it mate? Gunshot, was it?'
'The other two,' Ivor gasped. 'Where are they? The other two who were there.'
'It was just you, mate,' the paramedic said. 'Was someone wiv you? Two of 'em yuh say? We'll have the bill check the area. You was alone when we found yaw.'
Ivor's head sank back and he closed his eyes. He could feel a wobble in his teeth where his ceramic implant had been knocked loose. The tooth he had lost in Sinnostan. His tongue prodded at it. Shouldn't really do that, he thought, I'll have to get that fixed. He pushed at it again – he couldn't help himself. The man was asking him questions. Did he have any medical condition? Could he squeeze his hand? Could he feel that? Could he . . .
It was a relief give in to the nothingness.
Chi switched on the twenty-four-hour news channel in a window on his desktop, in time to see a clip of Nexus being led out of the door of his warehouse by two uniformed police, and into the back of a waiting police car. One of the officers put his hand protectively over Nex's head as he got into the car. Chi snorted miserably; they had to be sure he didn't pick up any bruises on the way to the station. In the band along the bottom of the screen, other headlines scrolled across, telling of more bombings in Sinnostan. The female newsreader was already narrating the story of Nex's arrest:
'. . . David Fogarty, who calls himself "Nexus", is thought to have stolen hundreds of thousands of pounds, possibly millions, from several high-street banks over the past four years. Detectives are still piecing together the full extent of his activities. Using a program that removed only a few pounds from each of hundreds of accounts each week, Fogarty quietly gathered a small fortune that police say was intended to fund terrorist operations. Fogarty was an active member of Live Action, the banned animal rights group . . .'
Chi shook his head in amazement. Nexus had been to a few animal rights protests at a guinea pig farm, but he'd never done anything more than shake a banner and shout slogans. And as for robbing banks, he held himself above such materialistic hacks. Nexus was a truth-hound; he got his thrills from cracking secrets, not bank accounts. And banks did not publicize the fact that they'd been hacked into – it happened all the time, after all – they'd lose too many customers. Who'd want to keep their money in a place where it could be stolen over the phone lines?
For a moment, he wondered if Gierek had informed on him, but it was unlikely. The Pole had nothing but contempt for law enforcers; they were corrupt beneficiaries of the tax he refused to pay. No, Nexus had been brought down by someone on high. The last project he'd been working on had something to do with a bunch he called the Triumvirate – three mysterious figures he suspected of smuggling weapons into Sinnostan. Chi wondered if they were the ones who had set him up. Not that it really mattered now.
'Jesus, prison. The poor sod.'
Nexus would not be able to cope with prison. A small weed like him with no hard friends would be a plaything for the kind of predators that ruled behind bars. Nex had been bullied at school; he said it had been like living in hell. That would be nothing compared to the treatment he could look forward to inside. And, of course, he wouldn't be allowed within a mile of any computers. Chi wondered how long he would last and shuddered at the thought. He'd need money. The network would see that he had enough cash to get by.
And they would work to clear his name; for it could have been any one of them getting the knock at the door.
Chi checked his emails. There was one from Nexus. Like all their communications, it was encrypted with a key that only he and Nex shared. Chi hesitated for a moment, then opened it up and read it:
'Chi. They've rumbled me . . . Haven't time to get out. Watch the skies, my friend.
Nexus.'
Chi studied the line of text. It had seven full stops, one comma, two apostrophes and the letter 'n' appeared twice in lower case. 7 – 1– 2 – 2. Both he and Nex kept back-ups of certain files in safety deposit boxes. They each had a key to the other's box, but only part of the number needed to access them. They had arranged this simple code as a means of sending the missing numbers in case something happened to either one of them. It was vital that their work be carried on after their . . . retirement.
Undoing the screws holding on the round, hollow steel drawer handle, he pulled it off the front of the drawer and tipped a key out into his hand.
Chi sat back in his chair, running his hands through his hair. Roswell, his cat, jumped up into his lap and he stroked her back absent-mindedly.
'Hey, Ros.'
Nexus would get years for this. God help him, they'd make mincemeat of him in there.
'Stay safe, brother,' he said softly, gazing down at the key in his hand. 'We'll be thinking of you.'
0
Amina meant to talk to her parents as soon as she got home, but she was intercepted by Tariq when she walked in the door. He had been thinking over her mind-control conspiracy and had come up with a theory of his own.
'School!' he exclaimed. 'They're trying to brainwash us at school!'
Amina arched her eyebrow at him, focusing the full glare of her intolerant-big-sister expression at him. But its effects on her little
brother had been waning for some time. Tariq glared right back at her.
'No, I'm serious,' he insisted. 'You know the MindFeed software they've got us using? I'm sure there's . . . y'know, like, subliminal stuff in there that's soaking into our brains. I'm telling you, they're up to something.'
Sweeping past him, she walked into the kitchen, where their father was cleaning his stripped-down automatic pistol. This Browning Hi-Power 9mm was his own weapon – press officers did not need to be issued with side arms, but Martin Mir believed in keeping his skills honed.
'Hi, Dad. Tariq thinks they're brainwashing him at school.'
'That's what school is for, love.'
When he had finished cleaning out the barrel with the long thin brush, he laid the components out on the cloth, pressed a button on his stopwatch and began assembling the weapon with practised ease. Slapping the thirteen-round magazine into place to finish the drill, he put the gun down and checked his time. He looked mildly pleased. He stripped it down to its parts and started again.
Tariq came into the kitchen looking sullen. His eyes were on his father, watching as the gun clicked together.
'Are you going to tell him, or not?' he asked Amina in a petulant tone.
She scowled at him. She'd prefer to do it in her own time, but maybe it was better to just get it all out in the open now. Martin put down the weapon and looked up from the table.
'Tell me what?'
'I need to talk to you and Mum,' Amina said reluctantly. 'It's about what I've been working on. I think I'm in over my head.'
Helena was called down and they all sat down in the living room. Amina got off to a faltering start, glancing constantly at her mother as she explained about meeting Ivor for the first time and how she had got more involved in the story from there. By the time she reached the point where she was describing the warning Ivor had found written on the ground, Martin had his head in his hands and Helena was staring at her far too intently for her liking.
Then she told them about the funeral card. When she took it out of her bag, Martin drew in a sharp breath. Helena did not say anything, she just took the card by its edge, so as not to smudge any fingerprints, and examined it closely.
'What in God's name were you thinking?' Martin asked, exasperated.
He always said 'God' – hardly ever 'Allah'. He had entered the military when it wasn't a good time to be a Muslim.
'I was doing my job!' Amina retorted. 'What would you expect me to do?'
'You're an office temp on a summer job!' her father barked at her. 'You're supposed to be making coffee and learning how to write! Who the hell are these people who've got you involved in this? I want to meet them . . . By God, I'll . . . I'll skin them alive! And what about your bosses at the paper? How much do they know about this? Do they know you've been threatened?'
'Well, that's the end of it,' Helena told her. 'You're not up to this, Amina – at least, not yet. You're too young, too inexperienced and you should have known better than to get mixed up with a bunch of cranks. Do you realize how you sound? You've let yourself be drawn into the delusions of some mentally disturbed veteran—'
'There not delusions and . . . and he's not disturbed!' Amina protested. 'I mean, he's a decent guy and if he is . . . if he's mixed up about anything it's because of what bloody Sinnostan has done to him!'
'You've taken these delusions,' her mother continued, 'and tangled all that up with some fruitcake's wild conspiracy theory for good measure. You need to step back and start seeing things clearly.
'If this threat is real – which I seriously doubt – you should have told us immediately. But I can't honestly believe somebody came into our house last night to leave a funeral card by your bed, honey. I just can't. The more time you spend with these kinds of schizos – and believe you me, I know their type well enough – the more you get infected with their mentality.'
She stood up.
'You should have filled Goldbloom in on this "investigation" before it went this far. I'm going to call him now, to ask him how he's let my daughter get duped like this while she's supposed to be in his care—'
'I'm not in anybody's bloody care!' Amina shouted back at her, lunging to her feet. 'And this is not a delusion! Goldbloom gave up his right to take over this story when he cut my article to shreds. But at least he still trusts my judgement enough to let me keep digging. This stuff is real, and I don't know where it's taking me, but I'm not going to let you get in the way, you domineering cow!'
'Amina!' Martin shouted. 'Amina, don't you dare speak to your mother that way!'
But she was already gone, storming from the room before she said something she'd really regret. Because at that moment, she felt nothing but burning hatred for her mother. The woman had put her career before her marriage and children all their lives; always travelling, missing birthdays and proud moments, staying too long in her study in the evenings and never remembering the names of their friends. She had been Amina's idol, but so rarely her mum. And now, when Amina had started to show the same qualities she admired in her mother, Helena had recoiled at her own reflection.
Now that she was in danger of having this story taken off her, Amina realized she couldn't bear to give it up. She had to see it through to the end . . . whatever that end might be.
Ivor couldn't tell if it was a real tooth or a ceramic implant. It depended on when this was happening. It shifted in the left side of his mouth whenever his tongue brushed against it. Once he had become aware of it, it was impossible not to probe at it, wiggle it. It was a real tooth, he decided. He wouldn't have the implant until later, when he was back in London. And it was clear he was still in Sinnostan.
He could see flashes of the future. In that future, he was lying in a hospital bed with a drip in his arm. He was dimly aware of a slight lump on his side, which he knew was the dressing covering the gunshot wound. That had been one of the Scalps men, before Ivor had hit the gunman with the bar from his dumb-bell. The ambulance had brought him here – he remembered part of that. But all of that was in the future; it would not happen for some time.
His tongue wiggled the tooth. The gum around it was sore, with a sharp pain sometimes when the pointed prong of the root brushed against a nerve in its socket. This was in a different hospital now. He couldn't remember how he had been brought here. In this hospital, he could not feel anything. Not his fingers or toes, nor anywhere on his limbs. There was no sensation of any kind throughout his body. Nor could he see or hear anything. That was worrying him. Despite all this, he knew he was in a hospital.
The order of things was mixed up in his head, confusing him. One thing he was sure of was the impact that had loosened his tooth – his real tooth, in the here and now, not the implant the watchers would knock loose in the future – so he went back to that moment. His real tooth had been loosened when his face hit a tiled floor. His arms were held behind his back so he couldn't catch himself as he fell; he couldn't protect his face. There was a soldier pinning his arms. The soldier's weight fell with him, on him, making the impact against the cold hard floor even worse. His ribs hurt and the breath was forced from his lungs.
The soldier was holding him down because he was out of his bed. Ivor had waited with his eyes closed until they came to undo the straps that held him. It was coming back to him now, but the order of things was mixed up. He saw the roulette wheel . . . No. That didn't happen yet, he told himself. He was confused. He had to remember things in the right order.
Go back to the start, before his tooth was knocked loose – in the first hospital. In Sinnostan.
He woke up in a bed in a room with seven other beds in it. There was a drip in his arm and a sensor on his forefinger. His arms and legs were bound, attached by straps to the bars on the side of the bed. Why had he been restrained? His thoughts were fuzzy, unclear even though he was waking up, and he recognized the feeling. Some kind of sedative – he had been drugged. The room had concrete walls painted hospital green. There were no windo
ws. Each bed had a full intensive care setup: a trolley with machines monitoring life-signs, oxygen tanks and masks, those vacuum tubes for sucking vomit out of the airway . . .
All the beds were occupied, but the men in them were unconscious – or at least they appeared to be. Ivor's head slowly cleared. Moving very slowly, he looked to one side and then the other. To his right was a door. It was closed. What was he doing here? Had he been hurt? His last memory was of that little village . . . Tarpan; a depressing little patch of life in the arsehole of nowhere. They'd gone there to report on a unit of paratroopers who were helping the locals rebuild an orphanage. He and Ben had gone out to find the orphanage, driven by a local guide. On the way, they had been stopped at an army checkpoint. Ivor had pulled out their identification and their orders . . . That was the last thing he remembered.
He didn't feel any pain, lying there in the hospital bed. Flexing his fingers and toes, he tensed and shifted his torso slightly from side to side. If he had been hurt, he couldn't detect it now. His breath quickened. Something was wrong here. Why had he been restrained? He raised his eyes to the ceiling. Big square air-conditioning vents breathed over the inert patients. The door opened suddenly and he closed his eyes, feigning unconsciousness. Whoever it was strode over to the bed opposite his. Two sets of footsteps.
'What's happening to this one?' a man's voice asked.
'Burns to the neck and torso,' another man replied. 'Supposed to look like an IED, I suppose.'
'Another messy one,' the first voice said wearily. 'All right, get him into the blast room. Have the OR ready. I'll do the touching up after lunch. And check the dosages on the others, I don't want any more wakers. Half these goddamned grunts are so pumped up on steroids or some other fix they're damn near impossible to keep under.'
'Yes, sir.'
Ivor listened to them, trying to make sense of what he was hearing. It was almost as if the man they were talking about wasn't wounded yet, but was about to be. What was going on? They said it was supposed to look like an IED – an improvised explosive device, the insurgents' favourite weapon. It was what caused most of the injuries to Western troops in Sinnostan. His heart thudded against his ribs. He understood one thing: he wasn't supposed to be conscious. That wasn't a huge surprise; he'd been hooked on sleeping pills for a few months now – he'd knock back six or seven a night, sometimes more. Anything to sleep. His nerves had been on edge ever since he'd arrived in this goddamned country. The more pills he took, the higher his tolerance, and with a higher tolerance, a normal dose of sedative wouldn't keep him under. The pills were black market, of course, so they wouldn't know about his resistance to the sedative without tests.