by Park, J. R.
A broken window signified to him where his attacker had fled.
Norton’s ungraceful attempt at crawling through the window was the exact opposite of the fleeting dive Orchid had succeeded in. Halfway through he questioned why he didn’t just go back out through the main entrance, but he was committed now. He pulled his large frame through and made it outside, just in time to see Orchid duck into an unused factory that neighboured the station.
He ran in after her but stopped his pursuit to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. The building had not been used for at least half a decade. The windows were caked with a brown filth, a collection over the years of all the dirt and fumes the active estates pumped into the air. Light struggled to penetrate the grime leaving the inside bathed in a dim, brownish glow. When his eyes grew accustomed to the low level of light he saw that the place looked deserted; had he not seen Orchid enter with his own eyes he would have given up the search, there was no sign of her anywhere. He moved quietly, not wanting to make a sound and strained his eyes to see through the gloom.
He felt a blow to his shoulder, knocking him forward. Leaving her hiding place in the rafters Orchid’s foot had connected with his back as she landed on the detective. Her thighs gripped his neck and her legs locked around him. The force of her surprise attack knocked Norton to the floor and he landed hard onto his front. Orchid jumped off her human target landing with grace and control behind him. With a heavy boot she spread his legs and kicked hard between them. Using his thighs as a guide she hit directly centre, landing the end of her boot squarely on his groin.
Norton let out a groan of pain and all the air escaped from his lungs.
‘You men are so weak,’ she taunted as she circled him, ‘so easy to hurt.’
He reached out and caught her ankle, pulling her legs from under her; she toppled and landed on her back.
‘You’re not so invincible yourself,’ he quipped back.
Norton got to his feet and made his way to where Orchid lay on the dusty ground. As he approached her she rolled backwards, then using her arms to launch herself, she flipped forward and flew through the air. One foot connected with his face, the other hit his stomach. He fell backwards in pain, but before he had time to hit the floor Orchid gave him a powerful upper cut to the jaw, followed quickly by sweeping his legs from under him with a swift movement from her well-toned thigh.
Battered and disorientated Norton stumbled back to his feet but the blows from Orchid rained down thick and fast. He fell against a wall and held his hands out to steady himself, in doing so his fingers found a piece of loose wood. Grabbing the newly found weapon he swung at Orchid who ducked and avoided the blow. He swung again trying to catch her, but this time she carefully stepped to the side and countered by punching him in the back of the head. He stumbled forward and tripped.
‘You keep coming back for more don’t you?’ Orchid taunted him again.
He turned around to face her and only had time to get to his knees before her boot cracked against the side of his head. Another boot came towards him, but this time he was ready and held up the piece of wood he had in his hand. The wood broke in two with the power of the kick but the unexpected connection caught Orchid off balance. Using the break between the blows Norton took one half of the wood and slugged it hard against the side of her head. The blow connected squarely and its strength knocked Orchid to the floor. She lost consciousness before she hit the ground.
Orchid awoke still in the abandoned factory. She found herself slumped forward, sat on a chair with blood running down her cheek. Her hands were cuffed behind her back and rope tied round her waist, securing her to the chair. Norton did not want to take any chances. She tried to struggle but felt the cuffs tighten as she did, causing pain to shoot up her wrists.
‘You’re awake then?’ the voice was Norton’s.
She looked up to see him stood in front of her, pacing from left to right and back again.
‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ Norton continued without letting her answer, ‘but I’m not going to take you back to the station until I have some answers. MI5 are all over this and as soon as they have you I doubt I will ever see you again. What is your involvement in the deaths at the Areas building? Who has hired you and why?’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ she scoffed, ‘you don’t have a clue.’
‘I found this in your pocket,’ he held up a creased photo with fold marks down the middle. Its condition suggested it had been handled a lot. ‘What do you want with this?’
The photo showed the picture of a flash drive. It was battered and damaged and half its writing had been worn away. What was left seemed to make up a word.
Mel.
George’s fingers had begun to turn puffy and wrinkly like out of date cocktail sausages due to the amount of time he had been in the bath. He checked his fingers over one last time. After the twenty minutes or so he’d spent scrubbing them he was pretty sure he’d got rid of all the blood. This was the fifth bath he had taken since coming home last night. He couldn’t see any more on his hands and was well aware he was probably being a bit obsessive about the whole thing. He chuckled as he pictured himself like a modern day Macbeth, but it was disgusting having to clean all that equipment from the splatters of blood that had been in various different states of solidification.
He thought back to the office in the Areas building as he stepped out of the bath and dried himself. He didn’t know them very well, but still, it was weird to think they were all gone. All dead. All at once.
Once dressed George opened the door from his bathroom to see the steam from the bath water had drifted into the rest of his small flat. His dwelling was small and compact, but it was just right for him. He kept it clean, particularly his cabinet in which sat his favourite models of science fiction characters. It stood tall in his living room, commanding attention, and was his pride and glory in his own little kingdom.
It was strange to think he was straight back to work after the deaths. He had been called in to the office again tomorrow. He didn’t want to go but he had no choice. To the company it was about getting back to business as usual. All hands were on deck to help out with the recruitment of new staff. Overtime was offered to get it moving quicker, flat rate you understand. It always was!
George thought it a little distasteful and perhaps a few days should have been left to mourn and acknowledge the dead. But everyone else had voted to press on, the overtime was offered and they all could do with the money. It’s amazing what people will do for money, he mused.
He picked up a sandwich that was half eaten by his computer and began to munch on it. What would be tonight’s entertainment he thought as he turned his computer on and sat down in front of it. What was on tonight’s porn stream? Last night he’d watched two girls fuck each other with a cucumber. That had certainly taken the edge off the day; a dirty smile grew from the corner of his mouth as he thought back to it. Now that was worth the money.
He noticed the flash drive he had found in the office during the tidy. That was a nice bit of equipment; a bit battered on the outside but if it worked then that’s all that mattered. He inserted it into his computer to check his find was functional.
Norton had gotten little information from Orchid. She remained tied to the chair but Norton had decided violence would not be the way to get her to talk. It was only when he mentioned knowing the whereabouts of the sought after piece of hardware that she became forthcoming. Perhaps she thought if she gave him information she might get some in return. It didn’t matter what he told her, she was incapacitated and would be going straight to a holding cell shortly.
‘Contained on that flash drive,’ she began, ‘is an extremely sophisticated and extremely dangerous weapon. It’s nicknamed the Death’s Head program. It’s a computer program created by the UK government; they’ve been using it for years. You can think of it as an electronic assassin if you will, and it’s been the envy of all other governments and weapons develope
rs. It was spoken about in hushed voices like a myth, something akin to a boogeyman, except it got the rich and powerful scared. Really scared. My employer was doing a deal to get a copy; someone had managed to download a copy on the flash drive in that photo. But something went wrong. It was lost.’
George was pleased to see the flash drive was working and held even more storage space than he had hoped. The connections were top of the range too which meant he had a fast and neat piece of kit. There had been a file on the memory stick so George had run a virus checker to make sure it was safe. The results came back fine. The file was huge in size and simply titled Execute. Intrigued at what the program might be George double clicked the icon with his mouse.
Norton sat down in front of Orchid, absorbing the information she was giving but finding it hard to believe.
‘It’s a weapon,’ she continued, ‘it’s used to infiltrate enemy computer systems and use those systems against them. I don’t know why the office got hit yesterday but I’m assuming that someone had the flash drive and ran the program. The fact you’ve seen the stick confirms that for me. You have to tell me where it is. If for no other reason than to get it off the streets.’
‘So what happened in the Areas building?’ asked Norton, still not connecting everything together.
‘Obviously the office that got hit yesterday didn’t have any weapons so it must have improvised.’
‘Improvised? How do you mean?’ Norton rubbed his stubble, a pleasing feeling to comfort him whilst he heard the disturbing tale Orchid told.
‘I’ve seen this before,’ she said, her focus leaving the room for a moment whilst her thoughts turned inward to a memory, ‘my employer was hit by it. That’s how they found out about its existence. It can use the computer itself as a weapon.’
Setting target flashed up on George’s screen. He couldn’t work out what the program was doing and so far had been unimpressed by the user interface. The screen flickered; the computer’s camera turned on and filled the display with George looking back at himself from the monitor. Startled at first, but then realising what had happened, he intently looked at his own image wondering what would happen next. The image began to change slightly, almost decay, and he noticed that bits of the graphic display began to fall away as if his face was melting. Piece after piece seemed to dissolve from the picture and roll down the screen, revealing the white of a skull underneath. Momentarily fearing the image was real he rubbed his hands across his face and was relieved to feel it all there. His heart pounded against his chest as he remained transfixed with this computer trick. As the image of his face continued to melt away George noticed the rest of the screen started to flash brightly and intensely, picking up speed until it flashed with the rhythmic pace of a strobe.
‘I’ve heard reports of many tricks,’ Orchid divulged. ‘It will display something strange on the screen to get the targets interest and keep them fixed on it. Using strobes and images it can get people into a trance like state, almost hypnotized to the screen. It can continue with these strobe flashes to do a lot of damage. They can cause seizures, making people fit, foam at the mouth, bite off their own tongue.’
George felt rooted to his chair as his gaze remained firmly on the screen. He began to shake, his jaw locking at an angle and saliva building in his mouth to produce a foam that begin to spurt out between gritted teeth. He could hardly think straight but had to get away. He leaned back and tried to fall off his chair to break the gaze of the screen but he found it an impossible task.
The image on the screen continued to melt, chunks of cheek and nose seemed to liquefy into a putrid mess and roll down the desktop until all that was left was a white, bloodied skull. The picture began to lose clarity when suddenly the skull changed from solid white to black and white static. Its edges shook and blurred, changing the shape of the skull and denying it any definition. The hideous graphic opened its skeletal jaw and roared through the speakers, as it did so an even more intense flash flared across the screen so bright that it would be the last thing George ever saw.
‘Using the screen,’ Orchid warned, ‘it can create a flash bright enough to blind you. But it doesn’t just rely on visual stimulus to make the computer a weapon. It can make the machine produce high-pitched sounds. The sonics can be at such a level that they can cause dizziness, disorientation and induce vomiting. They showed me footage of people that vomited until they couldn’t breathe. Others went way beyond that, rupturing eardrums and bursting blood vessels in their brains. Slow, agonizing, messy deaths.’
George staggered around the flat in darkness. The flash had blinded him completely. He needed to find a phone, to find the way out and get help. A high-pitched noise began to come from the speakers of his computer. He held one hand over an ear and screamed with pain, the other hand he forced to keep out in front of him, searching for a wall. He fell into something tall and large. It came crashing down, hitting George and taking him with it. As the glass door smashed into shards he realised he’d knocked over his beloved model cabinet. Getting to his knees the sound began to buzz in his head and a tightening gripped his stomach. Vomit was expelled violently up his throat and out through both his mouth and nose; the stinging taste of bile clung to his taste buds and he was sick again. He felt himself become light headed. Desperate for air he tried to breathe but the vomiting fits were relentless and he was unable to catch his breath in between his innard expulsions. It was only when his stomach had expelled its entire contents and half its lining that George could breathe again but by now it was too late. The high-pitched sounds had done their damage and caused blood vessels to rupture in his brain. He slumped forward, his hand just catching the door handle as his twitching, lifeless body hit the deck. Blood trickled from his ear and formed a crimson pool on the floor.
The high-pitched noises stopped, the screen reverted back to its normal desktop setting and everything was calm and still.
Norton was still quizzing Orchid about the Death’s Head program and her story.
‘The reason you have no evidence,’ said Orchid, becoming somewhat impatient, ‘is that it can get into the main frame of any system. It can wipe the cameras.’
She saw a hint of understanding in Norton’s face; he had started to believe her.
‘As I said,’ she carried on, ‘the Death’s Head program was thought to be a myth, but one that people were still afraid of. No one knew exactly what it was and how it was doing what it was doing. My employer tried a number of tricks with isolated camera circuits, going back a bit in technology. They succeeded and managed to get some footage. The poor bastards,’ her thoughts drifted sympathetically to those she had seen killed by its destructive power. ‘Once it has completed its job it wipes itself from the computer, as if it never existed. Slick, sleek and deadly.’
‘And who wants it?’ Norton asked.
‘I don’t know who my employer is, rarely ever do,’ answered Orchid. ‘Just a guy with some interesting film footage, a photo of a flash drive and a whole lot of money.’
Norton pulled up on the side of the street in his car and checked the numbers on the doors of the houses. He matched the number 18 with the address he’d taken from George. Number 18 flat 4. The street was made of large townhouses that had been bought up by landlords and divided into flats, then rented out to professional couples or students with wealthy parents. It attracted a bohemian element, apparent in the tasteful graffiti of spaceships and unicorns that adorned some of the houses. He rang on the buzzer and waited for an answer.
Looking down the quiet street he thought back to the stories Orchid had told him about the Death’s Head computer program. Was it for real? It was certainly an explanation that made all the pieces fit together.
Once she’d spilled the story to him he’d taken her back to the police station and put her in a cell. She could be dealt with later. But what a criminal to have caught!
Whilst taking her back to the station he noted that MI5 had still not arrived, but was told
they were on their way. This lead needed to be checked before they got their hands on it.
He pressed the buzzer again but still no answer. Thankfully a neighbour living in the same block came out of the front door to leave and let him in as they did so.
Norton made his way up the staircase to flat 4. He knocked on the door but as he expected no answer came. Using his large mass he smashed the door open by crashing his thick, heavy shoulder against the panel until it buckled under the force, knocking the weak screws from their hinges. These houses were poorly maintained by greedy landlords, they wanted the money but didn’t want to spend anything on the upkeep and repair. Anything replaced in these places were of questionable craftsmanship. The doors included.
The smell of bile and urine hit him the instant he crashed through the door, his nose being immediately assaulted. The smell reminded him of the Areas building a few days ago and he feared the worst. Those fears were confirmed when he found the body of George lying face down on the floor surrounded in pools of his own vomit and blood. Not the most dignified way to go, Norton thought. Furniture had seemingly been thrown around the flat; the sitting room was trashed, but no sign of anyone else. Norton looked at the idle computer and saw the flash drive still inserted into the USB port, the scuffed markings on the battered casing read Mel. His heart quickened as he caught sight of the name. Reaching over he pulled it out and put it in his coat pocket for safekeeping. His timing couldn’t have been better, for as soon as he had safely stowed the flash drive away he heard a voice he recognised from behind him.