by Tim Lebbon
He brought up three guns and opened fire on a platform across from him. Tracer rounds directed his aim to a metal shield that had sprung up there, and Tom could make out a few people sheltering behind it, frantically fumbling with a some huge barrelled weapon.
The other two mercenaries paused to watch.
The fighter stopped firing for a second. The recoil had set him swinging, and the whine of chains was audible across the club. Reload springs lunged from his belt and fed magazines into the machineguns.
Two men stood from behind the barrier, aimed and fired.
The mercenary disintegrated, flames slewing outward as his ammunition ignited.
A second later the victorious attackers were torn to pieces by a five-second hail of fire from the two surviving intruders. Bullets, flame and grenades scattered their remains over what was left of their platform.
“We should have just left the city!” Tom shouted at Honey. “This is all for us!” But his anger was misplaced and useless now.
“Don’t talk!” Skin hissed. “They’ll be scanning for your voice patterns. Your one hope is to trust me and maybe I can get you both out of here. But we have to move, you have to follow me, now!” He turned and belly-crawled across the floor, shoving people aside with his big hands.
The gunfire and explosions stopped, but the mercenaries had initiated the panic they desired. Screaming and crying and moaning continued, almost as loud as the sounds of killing. Interspersed amongst them, the clanking impacts of metal-booted feet on ladders, chains and platforms, always coming nearer.
Maybe they’d already been spotted.
Honey was following Skin. Tom watched her go, and then followed her. He had no choice. To stay still was to die, to go after Skin was to submit himself to the man’s mercy. He was helpless, useless … and he realised that he’d been almost totally ineffectual since leaving the Baker’s old laboratory.
Honey had always been the one in charge. The strong one. Their only real hope.
People moved aside to let them pass. The band was cowering on the stage, trying to edge back but tangling themselves in power lines and the expansive drum kit. Skin crawled across the stage, Honey followed, and Tom was about to follow her when he heard a high-pitched shriek from somewhere else in the club.
It was not a human sound. It was a fighting sound, an angry shrill from vocal chords designed to communicate nothing but pain and terror.
He half-stood and hurried to the edge of the stage, from where he could see at least a third of the club’s space. From the corner of his eye he spotted a dark shadow swinging and scampering along one huge wall, aiming at a place half-way to the ground. Another shape swung from rope to chain to ladder, heading the same way. They screeched in unison now, and Tom tried to make out their target.
And stared into his own eyes.
He was standing down there on a platform, surrounded by chopped people whose bodies were already punctured and torn, leaking blood around his feet. He was standing down there and looking up. From this distance Tom could not quite make out the expression in his eyes … but he recognised his own quiet smile.
“Holy shit …” Honey said, appearing at his shoulder.
The two mercenaries landed on the platform either side of the second Tom. Without pause they stretched out their arms, locked their weapons onto him and opened fire.
Tom watched himself come apart. The bullets tore him to shreds, blood and bone splashing into the air, skull splitting and gushing brain out across the platform. The gunfire only lasted for two seconds, but the thing that slumped down at the mercenaries’ feet could never have been visually identified … had Tom not seen its face.
One of the mercenaries snatched a quick sample of blood. Then they used their flame units, and the sad remains bubbled black.
Tom crawled back from the edge of the stage, head down, feeling more cold and alone than he could have believed. Even when Honey came back to him, touched his face and slung one arm across his back, Tom felt abandoned. He’d just seen …
He didn’t know what he’d seen.
“I guess they’re just looking for you now,” he said to Honey. His voice sounded shallow and vague.
“What happened?” Honey said.
“I think I died.” Tom smiled at her. Already, the mysterious threads were coming together. “Let’s go. If we escape, we can talk about it then.”
“You could hide,” she said. “You could leave me, let them come after me and catch me if they can —”
Tom did not even honour this with a response.
Skin led them to the rear of the stage and across a narrow metal walkway, connecting the stage platform with the blank outside wall. There was a flimsy handrail, the only thing between them and the floor a hundred feet below, but it had been distorted at several points by bullet or shrapnel impacts. None of them trusted it.
Tom felt naked and exposed, expected the intrusive kiss of a bullet at any moment. The way Honey moved ahead of him — shoulders hunched, arms pulled in, legs slightly bent — he thought she did too.
The Slaughterhouse had gone amazingly quiet since the mercenaries killed Tom’s doppelganger. Tom could still hear the clambering, clanking footsteps of the hunters as they searched for Honey, but the clubbers had all fallen silent, either dead or shocked dumb. Perhaps they feared that now the killers had found and killed their target, any slight sound would merely set them on the rampage again.
Tom, Honey and Skin reached the wall. Skin led them through a door, cleverly concealed in the shadows of a concrete overhang. It emerged onto the head of a staircase. Tom stood on the landing and looked down, down, until the flights disappeared in a grey haze. It seemed far deeper than the club.
“It’s the only way I can think of to get you out,” Skin said. “It goes straight down to the basements. The theatres. From there you can get out onto the streets or down into the sewers and tunnels … just about anywhere.”
“They’re only looking for me now,” Honey said. “Tom, who was that?”
“The Baker.”
“I thought he was dead?”
Tom nodded, waved his hands to clear his confusion. “He is, he is! But … remember at the lab, that cabinet? Me. My clone. The Baker not only gave me love, but ensured it was protected as well. He knew that if I ever had cause to return to the lab it would be because I was in trouble. How he could have known … how he could have imagined …”
“You really meant the world to him, didn’t you?” Honey asked. It was a strange thing to say. Tom didn’t know how to respond.
“Don’t mind me,” Skin said, “but can we talk as we walk? It’s very quiet in there…”
They stood silently for a few seconds, listening for sounds of pursuit, listening for anything. Maybe the two mercenaries were motionless now … standing somewhere in the club … listening … listening for the sounds of escape …
“Quietly,” Skin whispered, slipping down the first flight of stairs. They’d descended eight flights before Tom spoke again.
“They think I’m dead.”
“They’ll probe the corpse,” Skin said from in front. “Genetic tests.”
“The did. The Baker would have thought of that. It’s a clone of me, it’s … me.”
“He really was a crazy old bastard, wasn’t he?” Skin laughed, before turning and starting down another flight.
“What? What makes you say that?”
Skin stopped and looked back up past Honey at Tom. He didn’t look any more welcoming than he had when they’d first arrived a few minutes before, but now there was a hint of humour in his eyes. Cruel humour.
“He’s a bit of a legend, in some parts,” Skin said. “Places like this. To people like us. And you, too. The artificial looking for love. Almost a fairy tale!”
“Skin!” Honey said quietly.
“Honey? What’s he on about?”
She looked at Tom and shook her head, looking so sad.
“Honey?”
&nb
sp; “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Honey said, not looking at either man. “Tom, the basements may interest you. It’s where some of the chopping takes place.”
Skin started on down again, followed by Honey, Tom bringing up the rear. Tom thought of making love with Honey, hugging her, being with her … and it all felt one way. He looked at her bloodied back and blood-caked head as they hurried down the stairs, trying to see inside. He wasn’t sure he’d like what he saw. She hadn’t changed, she’d expanded. She’d been right. He didn’t know her at all, and any sense that he did was misplaced, a falsehood brought on by love and his need to love.
After a few more flights, when it looked as if they’d evaded the mercenaries, Tom asked: “You don’t love me, do you?”
Skin snorted, but Honey turned and looked at him with wide eyes.
“How could I not love the man who risked everything to get me away from that bastard?”
“But you don’t. Not really. Not truly.”
Honey averted her eyes, looking down at her feet. It was answer enough for Tom, but she had to go and spell it out, had to destroy whatever illusion he could rescue from what had happened here. “Tom … I can’t. I’m artificial. Artificials don’t love. You know that.”
“I’m artificial!” he said. “I love. The Baker made sure of it, he gave me a virus, and I’ve given it to you and–”
“You really are priceless,” Skin said. He was standing on a landing looking back up the stairwell, a grin splitting his face. Tom couldn’t tell whether he’d been chopped or not. If he had, it was internal.
“Why did you come to him?” Tom asked, nodding at Skin.
“I told you, to say goodbye.”
“I don’t believe you.” Tom was flushed now, jealous, embarrassed at the rejection, angry at Honey’s use of him.
“It’s true!” Honey said again. “ To say goodbye and … ask for his release. Skin and I are connected. Psychically. He likes to watch me sometimes when I’m working, it’s his vice and he paid me well and that’s it, I swear!”
“Swear all you want. You used me to escape, you lead me on, you told me everything I wanted to know. Fuck off. Fuck off with your human lover and –”
“Tom,” she said quietly, softly. His heart sank. The Baker’s virus had worked on him for sure, because he felt such an emptiness when he saw the lack of love in her, such a sense of abandonment. “Tom, I’m so sorry. I had to get away from Hot Chocolate Bob. You came along and offered me that, how could I not take it? But I feel like …. I could love. You. Maybe it’ll take longer to have an effect on me. Maybe it’s more than a virus. It’ll grow, not like something fake or artificial.”
“We could have been killed!”
“You already have,” she said. “Thanks to the Baker, everyone thinks you’re dead. So you’re free.”
Tom thought about this. And he thought about how the Baker’s virus had had years to affect him. “The Baker told me it would be perfect,” he said.
“Mad old fuck,” Skin said, shaking his head. Honey spun on him.
“He may have been mad, but at least he sought the right thing. He found it in Tom. Let me go, Doug.”
She turned back to Tom, and she was crying artificial tears from artificial eyes.
“So what do we do now?” Tom said. “Are you leaving?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going with you.”
“Tom, you’re free, Hot Chocolate Bob thinks you’re dead, you can—“
“I’m going with you. I still believe in the Baker. That is, if …”
Honey smiled and to Tom she was beautiful, even after everything. Even her tears.
“How about planting a seed first?” she said. “I need a charge and … well, it’s the least we can do.”
“What do you mean?”
Honey turned back to Skin, who stood leaning against the wall like a petulant child. Tom could see now how he’d been chopped: dazzling blue eyes; perfect designer stubble; a squared jaw which did not suit his face. Vanity personified.
“Doug, does this place still have the buzz units?”
“‘Course it does,” he said. “Did you see the state of some of those artificials out there? Buzzed to fuck and couldn’t care less.”
“We need them.”
“Honey, I can access the net anywhere, we don’t need—“
Honey smiled up at Tom even though she was still leaking tears. She could stop, he knew that, she could control their shedding. But as she’d said before, she so wanted to be human.
“Love’s the answer,” she said, “whatever the question may be. I heard that once. A stupid idea, especially for the likes of me, but it made me jealous.” She stared up the stairwell, seeing nothing there and apparently liking that. “I’ve been a whore for as long as I can remember, Tom. The start of my memory is my creation. Imagine if love stopped the need for plastic bitches like me.”
“The world would be a nicer place.”
She nodded. “And that shithead pimp would be out of business.”
“What the hell are you two robots talking about?” Skin asked. Effectively dismissed by Honey, his anger was rising now, a red-faced attitude burning its way through his altered good-looks. Robots was as derogatory as he could have been.
“We need a buzz unit to bleed Tom’s virus onto the net. And Doug, I need you to let me go. You’ve had your fun. Your time’s up. Let me go.”
Skin looked at Honey, at Tom, back to Honey. There was so much potential in his eyes — for violence, hate and betrayal — but in the end he simply sighed, pulled a small egg-shaped thing from his ear and crunched it under the heel of his boot.
Honey winced slightly, then smiled. “Thank you, Doug.”
“Fucking robots,” Skin muttered as he walked back up the stairs.
Tom watched him go.
“Come on,” Honey said, grabbing his hand. She pushed open a door and they entered a long, dimly lit corridor. “I’ve seen them used a couple of times … I’m sure I can find them.”
Tom was lost. He felt abandoned and loved, led and in charge, alive and dead … artificial and human. He wished the Baker could explain, but he guessed that even the old man would have made little sense of all this. Honey was leading and he was following, and this wasn’t how he had imagined it at all.
“What if the mercenaries find their way down here?” Tom asked. “If they catch Skin they’ll make him talk in seconds.”
“Don’t know,” Honey said. “I suppose that’ll be it.” And that’s all she offered. She was, Tom realised, as out of control as he.
Honey’s mention of needing a charge had started to make him feel weak, as if his muscles and byways and synapses had responded to her words, his bones thinning, his lungs withering. He could hook straight to the net and give them both a clean charge, but Honey’s idea to spread whatever he had — virus, madness, disease — onto the net … well, it was what the Baker had always wanted. Spreading a fire of love. The old man could never have imagined that the smouldering stage would have taken fifteen years.
The corridor twisted and turned, opened up into wider areas, narrowed again, sloped up ramps and down steps dripping with condensation and slime. The basement was the guts of The Slaughterhouse, Tom thought, a maze of rooms which all had closed doors. He was glad for that. This was where the chopping took place, Honey had said. From the extremes he had seen in the club, Tom did not want to know.
“Can you find your way out again?” he asked. Honey paused and glanced back at him. She looked stunned.
“You mean you haven’t been remembering our route?”
“Oh Jesus …”
“Come on,” she said, “I think we’re almost there.”
They must have been way down now, staggering through the depths of the club’s basement. And this far down the club must have felt safe … because some of its doors were still open.
Most of the rooms were empty, full of dank air and dark potential.
S
ome had rudimentary furnishings, beds in the centre or equipment burnt into a congealed mass in the corners.
A few were occupied.
Tom wondered how they survived, these victims of chops gone wrong. He saw heads and feet and pricks and stomachs, insides outside, pieces enlarged or shrunk or missing altogether. He saw other things too: appendages he could not identify; globes of flesh with eyes and vaginas; spider-limbs stretched around a webbed parcel; eyes on stalks, ribcage exposed. One person had limp pricks sprouting from his nether regions like a porcupine’s spines, dozens of them dribbling in profusion. A woman, startlingly beautiful where she lay uncovered in her bed, seemed to be fused to the bed itself, flesh and bone arms merging somewhere with the metal frame, legs overhanging and disappearing into the ivory tiled floor.
Honey seemed not to notice, or was unconcerned if she did.
They emerged into a well-lit room, larger than any they had seen before, and she paused.
“This is where it happens,” she said, her voice neutral.
“I don’t know why they do it,” Tom said, staring at the three operating tables arrayed with all manner of arcane equipment. It reminded him of the Baker’s lab. He tried to shake that impression but it stuck fast, and the more he looked the more he found similarities. He hated that that. He didn’t consider himself chopped.
“Most of them choose what they become,” Honey said. “Mistakes are very rare.”
“Those things back there …?”
Honey nodded. “Even mistakes have a right to life. And maybe even some of those chose.”
Tom shook his head, exhausted and amazed.
“So where’s the buzz unit?”
“Through here, in a little room in the corner. If that’s where they still keep them. If they’re still working. If we’ve really escaped the mercenaries and have an hour to do it. If, if, if ….”
They crossed the operating theatre and opened the door in the far corner. The buzz units were in there, vast conglomerations of wire and capacitors and chip-hoods, other pieces of equipment tagged on seemingly at random. They were the machine equivalent of the people hidden away in basement rooms, except that these had purpose.