by Robert Wilde
“We have to go free those souls.”
“How do we do that?”
“The old fashioned way, just break things.”
Dee, Joe and Nazir went back through the complex, entered the long corridor, found no opposition, and cracked the door to the holding cell open. Then they pulled panels out, ripped wires, snapped connections, and the lights went off and there was an almost audible gasp as the souls found themselves free.
“A job well done,” Joe smiled.
“I got your machine,” Pohl said entering the room with the bag in her hands.
“Excellent.”
“Not really, they got me,” and everyone turned to find Malveo and armed men standing there with a handful of scientists. “Turned out they were having a meeting about it in the next room.”
Pohl might have been unflustered, but a scientist was, as a blonde haired gentleman ran in, crying ‘you let them out, you let them out, all my work and training!”
“Why didn’t you just run?” Malveo said confused.
“He’s got a soul,” Dee said, gesturing to Joe.
“Cute.”
“The souls are free, the souls are free, we must reacquire them,” the scientist bleated.
“Calm down,” Malveo instructed.
“They might escape now their bonds have been broken!”
“I said calm down.”
“All our work…”
“Either shut up or we’ll sedate you.” The scientist did so. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean?” Dee and the scientist both asked.
“We don’t need those spirits, they were only useful as test subjects.”
“But…I don’t understand. My store of spirits…”
“We shall use this opportunity to move onto the second stage of the plan.”
As Dee raised an eyebrow the white coated members of the facility were confused. “What second stage?”
“We have proved capable of finding and capturing souls. Now we collect souls worth acquiring. You tested the process on normal people, idiots, but we will go after far bigger fish.”
“What do you mean?”
“This project will acquire assets we can use. The souls of great minds, the souls of geniuses, we will build an unrivalled knowledge base for a laboratory covering all realms of key human endeavour.”
The quartet was intrigued to see the reactions of Malveo’s scientists, who all registered shock.
“No one’s ever mentioned that before.”
“Well they have now, what did you think we were developing? No, no, I know, a way for people to keep their father around for advice and mealtimes. Quaint, possibly kind, but it doesn’t save the world. We will start with Einstein, and go on from there.”
“Once again,” Dee pointed out, “you’ve unveiled your plan to us, so I suppose being let out really is off the cards.”
“Don’t think you four aren’t in trouble. You could have seriously damaged our progress, as it is we have to repair our equipment.”
“What shall we do with them?” said a man who’s uniform suggested head of security.
“At the moment I’m thinking you shoot all four and we keep their souls hidden so no one ever finds out.”
“No!” gasped a scientist.
“What now?” Malveo asked, “have they really knackered something?”
“You can’t kill them!”
“Oh, that.”
“We’re scientists, running a research centre, we are not murderers, we are not Mengele.”
“You think you’re not, but how will the world see us? Besides, we can’t let them go, and we can’t keep them in a cell and feed them forever. Something pragmatic has to happen, and that’s silencing them permanently.”
“Doesn’t no one try bribery anymore?” Nazir bemoaned.
“We’d have to dispose of the bodies carefully,” the head of security said like a man with many, long considered ideas on the subject.
“Can we wrap them in some way and put them into a storage room?”
“Something to consider.”
“We are still here,” Dee complained.
“If you kill these people then I’ll quit,” the lead scientist threatened, “and if I quit my whole team will.” He looked defiantly at Malveo, but only for a moment.
“If you quit, we’ll kill you, capture your soul, and you’ll still end up working for us.” It silenced the scientist, who moved his mouth like a fish a few times and then looked at the floor.
Not every soul had taken the opportunity to leave the building. In fact two had moved deeper in, entering the lab where the soul controlled arm was stationed. They looked at it, felt it, and then inveigled themselves into it, making it slowly bend and the fingers flex. There was a laptop nearby, to help monitor the arm, and the fingers now began tapping. It was definitely time for some fun, and for some revenge.
“So you lot can go back to the conference room,” Malveo ordered the scientists, “while security take these four pests…” the light went off, then on again, then off, and one went on at the far end of the corridor and blinked off as the next went on and it continued in a cascade all the way along to the other end. Every turned and looked at it, and Malveo pointed to Nazir’s phone, which was now held by security.
“He’s playing games again, turn that thing off.”
“It’s not me,” Nazir protested. The lights started pulsing like a nightclub.
“Turn them off or I’ll have you shot right here, right now.”
“It really isn’t me.” Nazir insisted.
Malveo snorted and stepped out into the corridor, looking up and down it. Everyone else follow automatically. “Is it a bug or something?” the Chairman asked.
“It must be something in the system” security confirmed, but their faces said ‘we’ve no idea.”
“A virus then?”
“Could be.”
“You don’t know do you.”
“No sir.”
“Right, we better get to the…what’s that tapping noise.” Everyone looked around, and soon realised there was a soul controlled arm by the window tapping. It then waved hello.
“We’ve been compromised by the ghosts,” security concluded, unable to believe they just spoke that.
“Well get in there and turn it off!”
“Err, the door’s locked sir.”
“Then go and turn the power off!”
Dee had noticed that everyone was staring at Malveo and the hand, so she turned to Nazir and mouthed ‘fuck em deep’. Then she dived forward and drove her knee straight into the head of security’s testicles. His uniform was nice, but there wasn’t an armoured codpiece, and as he screamed and collapsed his gun literally fell into Dee’s hand. Nazir went forward to, but stuck to the unspoken man code and avoided the balls; he just hammered a fist into a solar plexus and disarmed the man. Pohl and Joe now dived at the last one, who was too confused by the commotion, and soon got the weapon off him.
Dee and Nazir had their guns aimed at the employees and the lab, but Pohl’s was facing the floor.
Dee had something to say about that. “I’m sure your therapist will let you off considering this is life or death.”
“I don’t want to start all that again.”
“You won’t, self-defence is fine.”
“Why don’t you put the guns down and we’ll talk?” Malveo suggested.
“Why don’t you go suck a cunt,” Dee shot back.
“I think if we slowly back off we can make a swift exit,” Joe suggested, looking at the corridor behind them.
“Good idea,” and the quartet moved ever further away, guns up, their machine on Joe’s back. When they reached a door they tried it, found it unlocked itself, and they went through. The door locked behind them and they broke into a run as they wove through the building, following Joe who seemed to have remembered the route. They knew there were armed people between them and an exit, and they were ready to s
hoot, but the doors seemed to be locking people away from them, which they put down to the hand.
Finally they broke out into the open air and into the car park, where they found a large number of police vehicles, the attendant officers, and some armed policemen who weren’t very happy.
“Drop your weapons!” came a sharp cry from the police.
The group, which had come to a swift halt, looked at their pistols and dropped them immediately. “We’re escaping!” Joe shouted. “There’s armed nutters behind us!”
“The report said four were being held captive sir,” an officer noted.
“Stay where you are,” and the police advanced to check them and enter the building.
“Your message said you’d been abducted at gunpoint and held in this lab where unethical and illegal experiments take place?” This came from a tall man with no hair.
“Our message?” Pohl asked.
“The arm sent it,” Joe explained, guessing correctly, and he gave the police a quick summary of recent events.
“You expect me to believe that?” the detective asked. “It sounds like an episode of Ghostbusters.”
“Three things,” Dee said ticking off her fingers, “One, we have a contact at MI5 who we can ring and who’ll clue you in on science bullshit. Two, if we were making it up where would we have got guns from? And Three, you just revealed your age.”
The police penetrated the laboratory complex and arrested everyone they found, which included a security detail who were embarrassed, whose commanders were limping, and who were illegally tooled up to go hunting for escaped amateurs. They also found scientists trying to hide what they’d been doing, lots of odd machines, and Chairman Malveo standing in his office with a hard drive trying to work out how to destroy it. He knew a suicide switch would have come in handy.
Peters arrived within the hour with a full team, and they went straight to work. Firstly Peters interviewed the quartet while his people examined what was inside, and once it was established what the tech did it was confiscated, from both Malveo and the police, and the Chairman, his scientists and the devices were driven away in vans to an undisclosed location.
Finally he went over to the quartet and leant on a police car’s bonnet. “We ought to pay you to find this stuff, you’re better than a bloodhound.”
“You can certainly pay us,” Nazir grinned.
“You need to sort your intelligence gathering out,” Dee reprimanded him, “this lot were sat right in Britain.”
“Most of our efforts are on terrorism, you know how it is. Asking to monitor communications about souls would be right down the list.”
“You really do need to pay us. We could add this to our list of jobs.” Joe envisaged a working income.
“Actually Joe, you sure you haven’t changed your mind about working for us full time?”
“Don’t poach our staff while we’re standing in front of you,” but Dee’s grin showed she was joking.
“I’ve made a decision,” Joe replied to Peters, “but I won’t be joining you.”
“I understand, and to be honest you’re more useful finding all these people.”
Dee nearly said ‘well they found us’, but decided not to dwell on that.
There were other people who wanted to dwell on that. Maquire had come round soon after the quartet had been returned to Dee’s house, and he’d done so because he had news: he’d been promoted, would Dee like to come for a celebratory meal. Then the group had narrated recent events, and Maquire didn’t look happy at all.
“Can we speak on our own?” he asked, and Pohl had raised an eyebrow as he and Dee walked into the garden, each with their bottle of lager.
“What is it?”
“When I rang you, to tell you I was a D.I., you were in this van, a prisoner?”
“Yes, but…”
“You have to stop this Dee, you really have to stop this.”
“What?”
“This investigating. I can’t cope. I can’t do my job worrying about you all day, and you get in such danger.”
“You want me to quit?”
“Yes, please.”
“No. I love this, it’s a really good thing to do. I’m not stopping.”
“Dee, I said I can’t cope. I can’t worry like this. If you don’t stop I don’t want us to carry on being together.”
“You’re giving me an ultimatum?” she said stunned.
“Yes.”
“But you’re in the police, you’re out all hours, threatened all the time. I’m supposed to be alright with that?”
“I have the law Dee, I’m never in the danger you have been.”
“You’re making that up. You can’t expect me to stop and sit waiting while you carry on. That’s fucking hypocrisy.”
“Is that a no?”
“Damn right.”
“Then I’m sorry,” and Maquire just stood, walked back through the house and left. He looked deeply saddened, but that wasn’t any comfort. Dee stood there, stunned, mouth open, and Nazir came out, stood by her and put an arm round her.
“Ignore him, he can’t make demands like that.”
“I really thought this would work,” Dee said, “I really did. We have this weird shit in common, I thought…” she stopped, determined not to break down.
“It’s alright, we’re your friends, let go.”
She did. For the first time in years in front of other people she did.
Twelve: The Duck
“I am standing here, outside the High Court in London, where Ralph Spall has had his latest appeal turned down. The general public have been protesting all day, many waving placards calling this expensive process a waste of taxpayers money, and others demanding that Spall receive the punishment coming to him. Both will be disappointed.
As you know, Ralph Spall killed twenty three men and women between the years of 1984 and 2003, making him one of the UK's most prolific serial killers, until he was finally caught by police and confessed to all his crimes. His guilt is not in any doubt, and he says he is the last person to deny what he did. Indeed, Spall has been mounting a challenge to the British Justice System to see what, and many others, say would be justice finally done: he demands to be executed for his crimes.
Although the UK is prohibited from using capital punishment by its own laws and those of the European Union, Spall has demanded to be executed. The courts have said no, many members of the British public have said yes, and a large proportion of those found themselves in the unusual position of agreeing with Spall and wanting what he wants. A great deal of soul searching has taken place. Spall has even downgraded his demand to be hanged to lethal injection, although this method is no less controversial in the United States of America.
Spall has no higher court to access in Britain, and is believed to be considering an attempt to force the European Court of Human Rights to allow his execution. At the same time, the British appears to be attempting to have Spall deemed insane and moved into psychiatric care and away from legal battles they are having to pay for.”
Ralph Spall pissed into a bucket, as he had done many times over the last few years. Okay, it technically wasn’t a bucket, but a waste disposal container, but it was basically a bucket and he had to piss and shit in it. There certainly wasn’t a bathroom attached to his cell, that tiny room that he could move around perfectly in with his eyes closed. He did have a television, which he supposed someone would want to take away, and he had a bed, a chair and a table, but that was it. None of the luxuries of the outside world beyond the old cathode ray tube or whatever the fuck they were made from these days.
Not that Spall minded. He also didn’t have a cellmate, because he was kept in strict solitary confinement. The closest he got to other prisoners was through several layers of wire or secure doorways, and they always shouted what they were going to do to him. The prison officials were duty bound to stop Spall being killed by a prisoner in this facility, and the only way to do that was solitary. And
Spall didn’t want to die in here either, because he had something far grander than being shived to death by a thug.
Spall had killed a lot of people, and he was already infamous, a serial killer than would live long in infamy and all that jazz. People would write books about him, he’d be a Bathory figure. But there was one final piece of the puzzle, and that was his death. Not for him old age or a stabbing, he was determined to be the man who brings executions back, to be the man who demands his own death, a state murder to match his own. He’d be a legend then.
He just had to stay alive long enough to persuade the courts.
“I love all night garages,” Dee said as the car pulled up in one. Joe parked up and began to fill with petrol, while Dee ran over to see what she could buy.
“Have you been to many?” Pohl asked bemused.
“Oh yes, I used to use them loads as a student, you never know when you need to dash out on a hunt for supplies.”
“Toot toot,” Nazir went.
“Indeed,” Dee commented.
“Of course they’ve changed since my heyday,” Dee said, making her sound like she was Pohl’s age.
“Ey?” Nazir asked.
“The staff are in little bullet proof cocoons now, although I see they’re still doing their homework in the small hours.”
“What, oh, sorry,” the woman inside said as she realised she was being talked about.
“Hi, I’d like some chocolate please,” Nazir said.
“What type sir?”
“Anything, just give me five quid’s worth of chocolate and I’ll do the rest.” He grinned, she grinned back, and he realised if he was straight he would have been exchanging numbers by the time they left. Maybe he should get Joe up h… no, this was a woman not a stick to be passed around.
“What are you studying?” Pohl asked.
“Latin,” the woman said, her black face lined with worry.
“Oh here we go,” Dee said laughing with tiredness.
“What do you mean?”
“My name is Professor Pohl of Cambridge University, classics department. And I can give you a few pointers if you’ve got a minute.”