‘Cheers.’ Will pulled the tab and swigged a mouthful of cold, dark-brown beer. ‘Won’t be much longer: Monsoon’s on its way. They’re saying Thursday, Friday at the latest.’ He slumped down onto a box of pod rockets. Loosened his tie. ‘God…that’s better.’
‘Serves you right for wearing that ridiculous suit the whole time.’
‘Privilege of rank: you get to “set an example”.’
‘Get to sweat like a pig in a sauna too: sod that.’ She leaned back against the Dragonfly’s dented hull and stared at him for a bit. ‘You know,’ she said at last, ‘you look like shite.’
‘Good’, I’ve been practising.’
‘Trust me, you can stop practising. You’ve reached perfection in the “looking like shite” stakes. They ever decide to make “looking like shite” an Olympic sport, you can rep resent Scotland. You’re gold medal material.’
Will took another swig and smiled. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’
‘Don’t mention it.’ Emily crossed her arms and examined the scuffed toe of her grey boot. ‘How’s the new girl getting on?’
‘Jo?’ He suppressed a beer-fuelled burp. ‘OK, I suppose. Get the feeling this liaison job is a bit more…difficult than she’d expected.’
‘Yeah, everyone thinks it’s all glamour, heroism, and medals…’ Emily looked away. ‘Want to see why the crash kit wouldn’t work yesterday?’
She marched around to the far side of the ship. Will hauled himself to his feet and followed.
‘Shite.’ There was a tattered hole in the hull, about the size of a small child, just in front of the starboard air intakes. Pipes, wires, and cables blackened and torn.
‘Outer casing slowed it down a bit, but there was still enough oomph left to roast the controller circuits. Whole thing’s completely fucked; it’s a miracle your new girl got it working again.’ Emily’s voice dropped. ‘Two minutes earlier and we might have saved Stien…’
Will peered into the hole. ‘What was it?’
‘Best guess? One of the old P-Seven-Fifties. Probably the same one that took a chunk out of Floyd’s shoulder. Damn thing must be an antique.’
They walked back to the hangar’s entrance together, standing just out of the sun’s reach.
‘Funny the way it works out, isn’t it?’ Emily snapped a pair of shades over her eyes. ‘Team before us were in and out, not even a whiff of trouble.’ She smiled. ‘Mind you, spent two days getting the blood out of their drop bay.’
‘Tell me about it. I remember this one time…’ He stopped as his brain caught up with what she’d just said. ‘Wait a minute, why did they have to clean the drop bay?’
‘Told you: all that blood. Gets gummed up in the mesh flooring and if you don’t get rid of it sharpish, the whole ship smells like fusty black pudding and rotting—’
‘No. I mean why was it covered in blood?’
She shrugged. ‘They tramped it in from the scene. Lieutenant Slater said the flat looked like an abattoir—had to sponge the guy’s wife and kids into their body-bags.’
‘But…’ He frowned. ‘The Kevin McEwen murder? Flat forty-seven one-twenty-two? Two doors down from where we were yesterday?’
She nodded and took another swig of beer. ‘Killed his wife and kids, then topped himself.’
‘But I saw the place. It was clean.’
‘So? Services probably sent in a sanitation team. Stripped the whole thing back to the plasticboard and repainted. Big deal.’
Something in Will’s stomach lurched. ‘Who was the investigating agent?’
‘I think it was Brian. Why are you so—’
But Will had already clicked his throat-mike, ‘Control, this is Hunter, where’s Agent Brian Alexander?’
‘One moment, sir…’ There was a small pause, and then, ‘He’s overseeing SOC at the Martian Pavilion with DS Cameron. I’m not getting any response from his phone—must have the scanners running. You want me to give him a message?’
‘Tell him I want to see him in the reconstruction suites, soon as he gets back.’ Will killed the link and dropped his half-drunk plastic in the nearest bin. ‘Got to run. Thanks for the beer.’
‘You’re welcome…’
Blood. Everywhere. On the floor, up the walls, spattered across the ceiling. Will fumbled with the sizing band on the dusty VR headset one of the technicians had dug out of the stores for him. The old-fashioned gloves weren’t helping, the wires kept getting tangled in the straps…
Flat 47-122 looked nothing like Will remembered it. There were holes in the recording: fuzzy blobs of no data caused by interference, but nearly everything else was stained red. An avatar stood next to him: a muscular, computer-generated man with hair hanging down to the middle of his back—which was either wishful thinking, or a serious case of self-delusion. A dark-blue label floated above its head with ‘AGENT ALEXANDER’ written on it.
Will walked forwards and touched the scarlet-stained wall, the glove giving a small tingle of feedback as he ran his fingertips across the pixel-perfect wallpaper. ‘Are you sure this is the right apartment?’
The avatar that didn’t look anything like Brian nodded. ‘Trust me, it’s no’ the sort of thing you forget. Bits of body all over the shop, blood everywhere. Aye, this is it alright.’
The carpet beneath their computer-generated feet was almost black with blood, the SOC team’s footprints still clearly visible in the matted fabric. Over by the door, something that had once been a father of two was sprawled against the wall.
‘So where’s the rest of him?’
Brian’s avatar pointed downwards. ‘You’re standing in it.’
And that’s when Will realized what the fist-sized lump lying beside his left foot was. ‘Wonderful…’
Kevin McEwen’s lower half coated the middle of the room, what was left of his torso acting as a doorstop. Mrs McEwen was smeared across the tiny kitchen, the two children all over the second bedroom. Will worked his way from room to room, just as he’d done when he’d visited the real apartment yesterday.
How on earth could this be the same place? The flat he’d seen was spotless; this was straight out of a cheap horror film.
The murder weapon was lying behind the sofa, power lights flickering in the reconstruction. Will gave it a cursory once over and then went looking for the VR unit. It was lying on the floor, the casing battered and cracked, as if someone had smashed the thing repeatedly against the wall until it was little more than a large, electronic maraca. Will bent down and picked the computer-generated replica off the carpet, his gloves tingling in a half-hearted attempt to simulate weight and texture. One of the headsets was bent into a perfect figure of eight, the lenses cracked, the cables ripped from their sockets, leaving small tufts of multicoloured spaghetti behind.
They still didn’t know what caused VR syndrome, but they knew the symptoms well enough. Something goes very wrong with Kevin McEwen’s brain chemistry. Then, one day, the only escape he has from his shitty life—the public virtual reality channels—goes on the blink. Maybe his VR unit blows a fuse, or maybe one of his kids tries to stick a slice of buttered toast in the drive, whatever, it doesn’t matter: the results are the same. Kevin McEwen goes out, gets himself an old MZ90 and kills every last member of his family.
Will took another look at the room. The bloodstains. The chunks of meat. The big holes of nothing in the corners of the room, where the walls joined the ceiling, jagged with interference. ‘It’s a bloody awful recording.’
‘What do you expect? Every SOC team kicks seven shades of shite out the machinery. I’m no’ surprised it’s buggered.’
Will closed his eyes and pictured the place he’d visited: a cramped, scrupulously clean rabbit hutch without so much as a stain on the carpet.
‘It didn’t look anything like this yesterday.’
‘We really need some new SOC kit. Any chance you could have a word with the Demon Dwarf? Buy somethin’ that actually bloody works?’
‘The place was
spotless.’
‘Aye, well, this is how it looked Sunday when we picked up the stiffs: freshly decorated in “internal organ red”. James threw a hairy when he saw the state of ma suit.’ Brian’s Avatar shrugged. ‘Maybe Services redecorated? You know, givin’ it the once over for the next lot of poor bastards.’
‘If they did, they used recycled wallpaper. There were shadows on the walls where pictures used to hang.’
‘Nah, look at it: there’s no way you’d ever get that crap off the walls. Them stains is there to stay. Must’ve been a different flat.’
Will took his headset off and the crime scene disappeared, replaced by a bland beige room. ‘Not unless there’s two flat one-twenty-twos on the forty-seventh floor.’
Brian was sitting in the corner, both eyes a milky shade of grey. ‘Even if it was the same place—and I’m no sayin’ it was mind…’ He reached up and unplugged the jack from the socket in the base of his skull. ‘But if it was, why the hell would anyone bother to make it look like it’d been lived in for years?’
‘That’s what I intend to find out.’
The décor in Director SmithHamilton’s office was probably meant to be ‘restrained executive chic’, but to Will it just looked like a Martian theme pub. The walls were clad in burnished bronze, hand-crafted rivets picked out in delicate verdigris. Genetically engineered pot plants sat on the deep ochre carpet, their manmade fronds an oasis of green and red in the shining dessert. The director sat in leather splendour behind a sandstone desk big enough to sleep six, toying with a two-foot holo of Mars.
‘I’m sorry, William, but it’s out of the question,’ she said, flipping the planet on its axis. ‘We’ve had too many incursions into Sherman House already. Look what happened yesterday!’
He shifted in his chair, and tried to explain the situation for the third time. ‘But—’
‘Give it a couple of weeks to cool down. Let them get back to their little routines. Then we can look at a small expedition, one that doesn’t involve anyone getting shot.’
‘There’s definitely something going on at Sherman House. We’ve got two confirmed cases of VR syndrome and a disappearing crime scene. Flat forty-seven one-twenty-two was a bloodbath when Agent Alexander’s team collected the first set of bodies, but three days later—’
‘It was clean. I know, you said.’ She pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment. ‘Look, William, whether you go back to Sherman House today or next week, the room will still be there. There’s no point risking lives for the sake of a couple of days.’
‘But—’
‘I understand your need to get to the bottom of this, and I admire your determination, but my decision is final.’ She pushed the holo away and stood, frowning down at him. ‘Until the situation at Sherman House has stabilized, there will be no more Network intrusions. Is that understood?’
Will sighed. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Good.’ The frown vanished, replaced by a beaming smile. ‘I’m glad we had this talk, William, it’s so seldom we get to discuss ongoing cases. Tell me…’ She teetered around the desk, took his elbow, and escorted him to the door. ‘How is Detective Inspector Cameroon getting on?’
‘Detective Sergeant Cameron is doing fine.’
‘Excellent. Well, don’t let me keep you.’ And with that she closed the door.
Will counted all the way to ten before he started swearing.
‘Bastarding shitebags!’ The pig-faced man glowers up at the sky, as if it’s God himself who’s just crapped down the back of his overalls. A onesided Rorschach inkblot in stinky grey and white.
His partner grins. ‘Don’t know what yer whingin’ about. On you it looks good.’
‘Fuckin’ birds…’ Pig-Face shoves another halfhead into its bay in the back of the Roadhugger. The halfhead stumbles—falls like a bag of potatoes onto the dirty metal floor.
‘Get up you stupid fuck!’ Pig-Face kicks the prone figure. Putting the boot in. Venting his anger on something that can’t even cry out in pain. Just because a seagull did what seagulls do…
And that’s when she decides to kill him.
Medication be damned. She likes the sound of bees and breaking glass.
She steps quietly out of her little compartment and taps him on the shoulder.
Pig-Face turns, his flabby face swollen and flushed. Eyes glittering like beautiful black opals. ‘The fuck you want? Eh? GET BACK IN YOUR FUCKIN’ BAY!’ He draws his fist back. It’s big, and rough, and ugly. Just like he is.
Her first blow catches him between the legs: a strong knee that ruptures his left testicle. He folds in the middle, gasping for air, a streamer of spittle twisting free from his slack mouth. She grabs the back of his head and shoves hard, bouncing his face off the metal corner of an empty bay. He gurgles, bright red splashing from the remains of his nose like streamers from a party popper. Little jewels of torn skin stay behind on the metal surface. Three teeth lying on the floor.
Pretty.
She wraps her fingers into his hair and smashes his head forward again. And again. And again.
Now his whole body is limp, but she doesn’t stop. Smash, smash, smash—until his features disappear into a bloody pulp. Nothing left.
Someone says, ‘Oh Jesus God…’ and she looks up.
It’s Pig-Face’s partner: the ugly bald one who drives the truck. He stands at the Roadhugger’s tailgate, his stupid, wet mouth working up and down. ‘But…What…Steve?’ Then he does something very, very silly: he steps up into the truck.
She lets go of Pig-Face’s hair and the body hits the deck with a wet splatching sound. A puddle of dark cherry red expands across the scuffed yellow floor.
The ugly man stops moving when his friend starts pooling around his feet. ‘Oh God…’ His face pales, eyes bugging like a startled goldfish, one hand clamped over his mouth. Then he lurches, once, twice, and vomits all over himself.
She waits for him to finish retching before she bashes his brains in.
Nothing fancy. Nothing personal. Just straightforward, mechanical death.
His body is still twitching as she selects a female halfhead of roughly the same size and build as herself from the collection in the back of the Roadhugger. Undressing it is easy enough—though the orange-and-black jumpsuit stinks of stale sweat—then she dresses it in her own clothes, taking care not to get too much blood on her new outfit.
She stares into its eyes, looking for some sign of life. For some spark to tell her there’s still a human being in there somewhere…But all she sees is the familiar, indifferent gaze of someone who has gone away, never to return. So she is merciful.
She pats it on the cheek, then caves the left side of its face in with a heavy metal wrench. Turning the barcode into a ruined mess of torn flesh and fractured bone.
And then she works her way around the rest of the bays, checking on her fellow halfheads. Putting them out of their misery, one by one. They don’t even blink.
Fifteen minutes later the Roadhugger crashes through the retaining wall of the Connelly Memorial Flyover. It plummets fifty-two feet to the carriageway below, killing everyone onboard the municipal transport that breaks its fall. A beautiful fireball of amber and gold. The smell of crackling skin and greasy tallow. Bees and broken glass.
By the time the emergency crews arrive she is long gone.
9
Tuesday evening was muggy and unpleasant—the promised rains were tantalizingly close, but for now Glasgow sweltered. Sitting alone in his sixth-floor office, staring out of the window at the heat-hazed streets, Will brooded. The rest of the day shift had knocked off hours ago, but here he was, still obsessing about flat 47-122, Sherman House.
He’d checked the scanner logs a dozen times. Gone through the recording with Sergeant Slater. Twice. It was definitely the same place. Kevin McEwen had gone home on Sunday night and blown his wife and children into bite-sized chunks. Drenched the flat in blood.
So how come two days later it looked as
if nothing had happened there? Services hadn’t been near the forty-seventh floor of Sherman House for months—he’d checked.
But someone had…
There was a flash of light against the gathering clouds—one of the massive Scrubbers catching a ray of sunshine. Tons of rusting machinery, hanging above the streets and houses, glinting like a big, dirty balloon.
Will closed the blinds.
Director SmithHamilton was right: they couldn’t send another team in there. The natives were volatile at the best of times, but three visits in as many days had left them ready to explode. And he really didn’t want to be the one who lit the fuse.
But he wanted to know.
So he went back down to the reconstruction suite and ran the recording again. There had to be something he’d missed.
The first evening is rough: huddling in doorways, doing her best not to be seen. Avoiding the Bean-Heads and the Mincers. Just because they’re little children, it doesn’t make them any less dangerous—all wired and jittering with combat pharmaceuticals. Hunting in packs for fresh meat.
She finds somewhere safe to wait, near the service entrance, behind a pair of industrial wheely bins that smell dark and meaty. The ‘WARNING—BIOHAZARD’ label all scuffed and peeling. For once the bees are quiet, their wings still sticky with Pig-Face and his partner’s blood. Fat and contented. She dozes, trying to ignore her own hunger and thirst…
By the time the bright-yellow council Roadhugger appears the sky has faded from pale blue to dark orange, the city’s sodiums coating everything in sickly light.
The Roadhugger’s warning lights flash as it reverses up to the main entrance, then a man gets out of the cab and goes around to the back. He struggles with the tailgate for a moment then leads his cargo out onto the grubby forecourt and lines them up, ready for work. The previous shift of halfheads wanders out through the hospital doors and the man loads them into the empty bays. Then drives away.
She steps out from behind the bins and joins the line-up. She doesn’t look up at the sign that says ‘GLASGOW ROYAL INFIRMARY’—that would be suspicious. Halfheads don’t take any interest in their surroundings.
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