Sequela

by Cleland Smith

  'Have you seen the headlines?'

  Farrell heard the slap of his Book on her desk. Of course she had seen the headlines. BRITAIN'S TOP SCIENTIST? – a picture of him in the box, being tortured by Pera Pera, vitals blurred out. KESTER HITS NEW LOWE – him being pulled back and forth by her carnivorous labcoated dancers, his naked body smeared in luminous paint. The images were imprinted on her brain. She felt as if it had all been aimed at her, that Pera Pera, staring straight out at the camera was looking at her with a big fuck you in her eyes.

  'Everybody is laughing at me,' Kester said. 'My reputation…'

  The tension in Farrell's throat spread upwards, tightening her soft palate, and down and out across her shoulders as if her arms were making ready to lash out.

  'The rest of the appointments are in private,' she said, trying to batten down her anger, sound confident. 'This will all pass.'

  'Not even you will look at me! I'm a laughing stock! I've got fucking whip lashes on my back – my dick is a disaster area and I've only got two bloody days to recover before the next appointment.'

  'You'll go through with them?'

  'Alexis. If both our careers didn't depend on this I wouldn't be doing it at all.' Kester drew a visible breath. 'If Chen doesn't go for our deal –'

  'We need Yule,' Alexis said. She couldn't talk about Chen now. If they didn't focus and get themselves out of the shit now, there would be no conversation to be had with Chen tomorrow. 'Yule can read the public mood.'

  She braced herself and turned to look at Kester. He was paler than usual, his hair messier than usual. He looked small. What could she do? She wouldn't pity him. Who could love a man they pitied? She tapped her Book.

  'Yule, are you free? Kester and I are coming up.'

  Farrell drew a deep breath and focused on her chest rising and falling, stretched herself out into her extremities. She became aware of the cloth on her skin, the cool breath of the air con, the soft pull of her tied-back hair as she moved her head. Smoothing one hand over the skin of her inner forearm, she felt more like herself.

  'Don't panic,' she said to Kester with a smile, approaching him with measured strides. 'I'll organise for a team to meet us up at the PlayPen this afternoon. Masseuse, physio, doctor, acupuncture, whatever you want. Get some hands on you.' Stretching an arm out as she reached him, she slid her hand to the back of his neck and drew him in for a kiss. When he turned his head away, avoiding her lips, she rubbed her cheek across his like a cat. 'We'll get you back in shape. I'll see to it personally.'

  They walked in silence to Yule's office. Kester followed Alexis three paces behind, but she could feel the weight of his presence, a pressure at her back.

  Yule greeted them with a pitying look. Farrell gave him a tight smile. No pity. She wouldn't have Kester pitied. He was a superstar.

  'Don't worry, Kester, we'll sort this out,' Yule said.

  A news report was running in the background on his wall. Alexis glanced up at it and an adrenalin pulse hit her crown. Kester couldn't see this. If he hadn't seen it already it would tip him over the edge. She signalled to Yule to switch it off.

  'Wait,' Kester said, as Yule reached for his Book, 'that's the Institute – that's the Institute Director – what are they doing there?'

  'Just…probably…' Yule said, fumbling with his Book. He looked to Farrell for help.

  'Kester, let's just focus –'

  'Put the sound on.' Kester pointed at Yule.

  Yule looked apologetically at Farrell and turned the sound on.

  'Coming just a day after the news that Kester Lowe's former place of employment, the world renowned London Institute of Immunology and Viral Medicine is to have all funding and activity suspended indefinitely –'

  'What?' Kester said.

  '– many people are asking, "Just what was he thinking?" Last month, the Institute, one of the Government's largest scientific contractors and world leading research facility, suffered a suspected breach of security leading to a dangerous virus being released into the Pigs' supply chain and infecting hundreds of City residents. While the MoD investigators here at the Institute have turned up nothing so far, they say that this is almost certainly where the breach occurred. All funding to the Institute's work has been suspended until further notice and the Director here says that continued employment for the organisation's 200 staff cannot be guaranteed. We spoke earlier with the Director.'

  Farrell glanced at Kester. He sat down abruptly on the closest chair and stared at the display, unblinking. The report cut to a clip of the longer interview Farrell had seen earlier.

  'This is a gross public humiliation. Doctor Lowe's actions are crude and callous. The fact that he would go through with such a stunt when we may have just had the biggest blow to scientific progress this century just goes to show how out of touch with reality Doctor Lowe really is. His actions degrade the whole scientific community.' The Director's face was grim. The whole scene was grey: his suit, his skin, the building, the sky. The report cut back to studio.

  'The Director went on to talk about the danger of removing a centre of scientific excellence from the country's capital and the possibility that the Institute would revoke Kester Lowe's doctorate as a punishment for the insult he has caused.'

  'Off!' Farrell said. She snatched Yule's Book from his hand and the wall fell blank.

  She looked round at Kester. His head was in his hands. He didn't speak for a long time. Farrell could feel the anger emanating from him. It was extreme, the kind of rage that shatters your bones, renders you unable to stand, to function; dream rage that leaves you punching through syrup-thick air, unable to defend yourself, all your blows misaimed or useless.

  'When did they announce the freeze?' Kester asked, barely audible.

  'Friday afternoon, just after four.' Farrell braced herself for the next question.

  'Did you know?'

  'Kester,' Yule stepped in to defend her, 'you had more important things to think about. We couldn't risk any distractions. We knew how hard it was going to be for you.'

  'More important things?' Kester raised his eyes, his head still low, threatening, like a cornered dog. 'More important than my friends losing their jobs? More important than embarrassing the Institute? More important than losing my doctorate?' He sprung to his feet. 'Oh, that's right, I had more important things to do – performing as a royal rent boy, getting my arse ruined by a twisted egomaniac rapper.'

  Farrell stepped back to give him room. She had never seen him properly angry before. This was not his face. She didn't like it.

  'Chen –' she started to explain, holding her hands out in front of her in a protective gesture.

  'I know, I know,' Kester spoke over her, his voice rising. 'Chen wouldn't let me – Chen Chen Chen. You swagger around like Mrs Billy Big Bollocks the whole time – Alexis Farrell, she's nobody's bitch – but the minute Chen calls your name you go yapping to her like a horrible little bitey dog and sit in her fucking lap.'

  He was panting, looked fevered. Farrell closed her lips tight and tried to hold it down. He was angry. She wasn't the one under attack here. She stared at the wall for a few seconds, breathing through her nose, before replying.

  'The MoD are bluffing. They're still investigating internally. I have it on good authority that they're tearing themselves apart behind closed doors. When they find the culprit this will all blow over.'

  'It's fine, it's fine, it'll all blow over,' Kester parroted her in an unhinged high-pitched voice. 'It'll be fine after you do the VIP pit – it'll be fine when we book the appointments – it'll be fine, just get in the box and let her fuck you.' He paced around wildly for a moment. 'No! Enough!'

  Farrell stepped back again, giving Kester a clear path to the doors. He stopped just before he reached them.

  'It's – not – fine.' He pinned each word to the air with a jabbing finger. Turning to leave, he caught the doors by surprise. He slapped his hands against them as they started to slide open.

&nbs
p; 'Kester, I'm sorry,' Farrell said. It was worth a try. He didn't look back.

  'Goodbye…Doctor Lowe.'

  Kester swung a wild punch at one of the doors as it retreated into the wall, catching it a glancing blow on the edge, then tore towards the lifts, gripping his injured fist tightly in his other hand.

  'That didn't go as well as I'd hoped,' Yule said. 'I have to tell you the public mood is surprisingly positive – his fans just don't care.'

  Farrell shot a glare at Yule, said nothing, folded her anger in on itself. She watched the doors as they slid shut, a small splatter of Kester's blood sealing them like a ruby clasp.

  Chapter 21

  This was no Sunday. Sunday had no right to be this way.

  Kester walked fast away from the V building, across the square. It was like any other morning in the City: swarms of people in logoed work clothes, branded lunatics going to and coming from pointless meetings. He put his head down and ignored the heyhey!s and whohoo!s that rang out every few minutes. Were they jeering him? Congratulating him? Autumn was playing around the edges of the September breeze, making the hairs on his arms rise despite the mellow sunshine. He should have brought a jacket.

  He would go down to the Institute, see who he could find, apologise, do something. Kester headed down towards the Underground. As he looked up to navigate through the crowds, the scene before him became a spyhole. People were drawing in towards him, looming as they passed, grinning and leering like guests at a nightmare masked ball. Once, the stream of scabs, sores and rashes was interrupted by a clean face sporting a small stencilled letter like a beauty spot: L for Luminescence. The owner winked at him and pushed her face in front of him as she passed to make sure he reacted. Further on, the unmistakeable butterfly patterning of Persona bobbed past above a smug smile. His viruses were out there, starting to make it through the ranks. All those desperate fuckers fucking. He sneered.

  Rounding the corner he was faced with a billboard of himself standing on the V shelf, looking like a tool. Cringing, he crossed the road. A large wall display was running the news, a group of angry Institute workers spitting words at an interviewer. Dee was there in the background, ignoring it all, staring right through the camera as if she knew he would be watching: emotionless, accusing, a psychotic shop dummy. At the next corner, he turned again. He would go back to V, confront Alexis properly. This was V's mess; they had to sort it out.

  'Hoho!' a voice came at Kester and stuck with him at his shoulder, a thick European accent. 'That Pera Pera! What a crazy woman! You OK man? What a beast she is, but I'd take your place any day.'

  Kester sped up as the man patted him on the back in congratulations.

  'Hey, I come to your next show, get some myself!' the voice said, then became lost in the crowd behind him.

  So, this side of the checkpoints he was some kind of sex-hero; the other side he was a deviant betrayer. Between them they would pull him apart. Kester looked up to see where he was. He was nearly back at the square. Changing his plan, he turned off again. Back at V they would be busy telling each other that it was all alright and they would try to tell him that too. Alexis would be planning his next degradation instead of speaking to Chen like she had promised.

  It wasn't long until Kester found a bar. Brass was a popular City haunt, but was unusually quiet. The main bar was mostly standing room with a sweep of shelved pillars looping out from one end of the bar and ending at the other. Further back, small round tables with padded banquette seating were set back into the scalloped semi-circular wall. Everything was money. The Perspex pillars were inset with old paper notes, arrested in gentle floating motion. Kester smoothed one hand over the bar as if to spread out and count the thousands of brown one and two pence coins that sat below the surface. The place was a monument to traditional City values. The owners hadn't caved and rebranded in the face of wearing culture. They had understood that whatever the fad, money would still underpin everything.

  'Will it stay like this?' Kester asked the barwoman.

  'Doctor Lowe! What brings you to our humble establishment on a Sunday morning?'

  Kester didn't reply.

  'What can I get you?'

  'Vodka.'

  The barwoman took a glass from the rack above her head.

  'A bottle, please. I'd rather not have to come back to the bar. It'll get busy right?'

  'We'll be busy by lunchtime.'

  'I'll pay double if you promise not to let anyone know I'm here.'

  'Right.'

  The barwoman's movements turned slow, like a bank clerk considering pressing the alarm button. She sensed something was wrong, but her disease-addled City brain couldn't make sense of it, even though there was footage of the Institute running on the news, even though she would have watched last night's debacle with the rest of the world. She produced a bottle and an ice bucket. She held out her pad and Kester swiped his Book for the amount, then went to swipe it again. The barwoman withdrew the pad quickly.

  'Don't worry about it, hon,' she said with a wink, 'your secret's safe with me.' She handed him a card. 'Scan this and you can make your orders from the table. Had breakfast? You look a bit pale. You might want a bacon roll with that.'

  Kester forced a smile, clutched the bottle and the glass and found the table furthest from the bar. The tabletop was the same design as the bar, a scree of loose change, this time copper and silver. He filled his glass.

  Kester drank steadily as the noise in the bar behind him rose. Every ten minutes or so his Book beeped. He ignored it. What a fool. If he'd gone with his instincts and had the balls to say no to Chen and Alexis, none of this would be happening. Well, except for the Institute part, but he could be down there, supporting them instead of being strung up as a target for their anger. It wasn't his fault they had been shut down. He tried to figure out how it had all become about him.

  The screens, he had decided by the time he was a quarter of the way down the bottle. The screens were the thing. But nobody wanted to see them developed besides him and Dee. He toyed with the idea of messaging her, telling her what he had achieved, then remembered the terrifying expression she had had on the news report. She would strangle him with his own innards. No: he was alone.

  V wouldn't touch the screens despite what Alexis had said. If she really thought they would, she would already have taken it to Chen. She had been playing her pretty pipe and he had been dancing merrily along behind her towards the gaping mountain of her ambition. And why should she want to see the screens made? He was her creation – Kester Lowe the superstar viral designer – why would she be happy to have her Kester upstaged by Kester the serious scientist? But then the scientific community, despite their high and mighty act, were no better. For how many years had they been in thrall to the whims of the funding bodies? How could they have a clear conscience having blocked his proposals so many times in the past? He couldn't believe that still being with them would be any better.

  Halfway down the bottle, Kester got up. He stood, wobbling, for a bit.

  'Ha ha!' he shouted, as if he had just discovered something.

  The people at the tables either side looked round at him.

  'Hey,' said a pretty young woman with curly ginger hair. 'Doctor Lowe! The one and only!'

  'Hey, it is him,' her male companion said. 'It is you. You still wearing your virus from the weekend? Any chance of a sneaky exchange?'

  'You mistake me, sir!' Kester announced, lifting a heavy arm. 'I am not Kester Lowe, V's little shag-puppet; I am Doctor Kester Lowe, the scientist. Sci-en-tist – you know what that is?' Their faces went all indecipherable. They were impressed, he decided. 'The Kester Lowe you are looking for died suddenly in a bizarre sex accident involving taking the wrong job and a young lady who calls herself Dog Dog.' Watching their faces, Kester recognised laughter creeping into their eyes. He had their approval. It spurred him on. He stepped out from his booth and steadied himself. The room was full and he now had a captive audience. 'Dead, I tell yo
u!' He became aware that he was talking in an outrageous English accent of the sort that normally came with a shooting stick and pack of hounds. This wasn't the way to go. He needed to be serious – look serious, look sober. He picked up the half-empty bottle and shouldered his way through the surprised drinkers to the bar.

  'Oh,' the barwoman said, surprised to see him.

  'Oi,' said the angry voice of the large man he had pushed aside.

  As Kester turned, he felt the steam-iron impact of a fist against his face. The room toppled over. He curled up on the floor, his whole body a cradle for his throbbing, flattened nose. Large hands were pawing at him, trying to prise open his protective hedgehog curl. Voices were shouting at him, loud and muddled.

  'Sorry sorry sorry,' eventually the voice came through, 'I didn't know it was you.'

  Kester looked out from himself tentatively. A ceiling of saucer mouths stretched and swooned above him.

  'Sorry, Doctor Lowe,' the man said again, 'I didn't know it was you. That was totally out of order.'

  'Lance!' The barwoman appeared at the edge of Kester's vision, leaning over the bar top. 'That's two strikes. And that should count for two – it's not even four o'clock. One more and you're barred.'

  As Lance and the barwoman withdrew into their own conversation, Kester pushed himself onto his hands and knees. Helped into a sitting position by the hands around him, he inspected his blood-splattered shirt front and put a hand back to his nose. The bleeding had been furious but had stopped as suddenly as it had started. He could already feel the blood drying into a crusty red snout, felt it crack as he flared his nostrils. They had him on his feet.

  'Lance,' he said, tapping the man on the arm. 'I'm sorry. I pushed in. I shouldn't have. I had a bad morning.'

  'Bad morning,' Lance said, 'but a badass weekend! Man you are crazed.'

  Kester swayed. The bar was made of eyes, all tumbled in together like the coins in the tabletop. Things were still a bit twinkly round the edges.