She’s slightly dirtier than the others, and her jumpsuit smells, but the bored orderly in green and white doesn’t seem to notice. He just steers them all in through the service doors and starts handing out the night’s tasks.
It’s been six years since she was last here. This was where they cut her face in half, removed her breasts, stitched up her orifices and burned away her brain, but before that she’d been in and out almost every day. That’s how she knows she’ll be safe.
She worked here, hunted here. She knows this building, knows where to get what she needs.
The intravenous nutrients they give to coma patients are almost the same as the ones they use for halfheads. It won’t give her quite as much energy, but she can always take supplements. All she has to do is get to the central store.
When the orderly turns his back she disappears, taking a mop and wheely-bucket with her for camouflage. No one sees halfheads anyway: they’re invisible.
She works her way into the bowels of the building, pushing the bucket ahead of her.
Little has changed down here: the walls are still two-tone institution green; everything still smells of stale sweat, rotting cauliflower, and cheap detergent. There are miles of these little corridors, winding their way through the earth. Laundry, Waste Disposal, Protein Recycling, Incinerators…
Her broken glass memory brings up a face: Gordon Waugh. Long hair, high forehead, piercings. He’d screamed and begged when she’d beaten him, mewled as she’d slid the knife into his belly, popped and crackled when she dumped him in the furnace…
Strange. She can see all that, sharp and clear and perfect, but she can’t even remember her own name.
She stops outside a door marked, ‘AUTOMATED STORE: NO UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS’. The securilock looks new. She reaches out and strokes the buttons lightly with her fingertips, feeling them bump beneath her touch like stiff grey nipples. The display says ‘ENTER PASSCODE’.
Passcode.
She pauses for a moment. Listening.
A pair of thick Fife accents are arguing somewhere off in the subterranean corridors. The air management system rumbles. The plumbing gurgles and clanks. Other than that, she is alone.
Perhaps she should go looking for someone? Someone on their own. ‘Persuade’ them to give her the code. Slice them up nice and thin, peel back their skin like…
She closes her eyes, shudders. The bees are back, loud and insistent. Hungry.
There are drugs in the store that will help control them. Help her think more clearly.
But first she has to get that code.
A sound from down the corridor: the voices from Fife are getting closer. She jerks upright, looking for somewhere to hide. And then remembers what she is: nobody sees halfheads. As the two men turn the corner, all she has to do is pick up her mop and push it back and forth across the floor.
‘No it wasn’t.’
‘Yes it was!’
‘It can’t have been. The peritoneal cavity just isn’t big enough for a whole melon!’
‘It is!’ They walk right past her.
When their singsong voices fade into the distance, she lets the mop fall to the floor and squats down in front of the securilock again.
Frowns at the keypad. Fingers twitching.
She can feel half-remembered shapes—not numbers or letters, but a pattern of motion. A memory written in muscle and bone. Shutting her eyes she places her fingertips against the buttons and lets them find their own way through the combination.
There is a soft ping and she opens her eyes. The display has changed from ‘ENTER PASSCODE’ to ‘CODE ACCEPTED’. They haven’t deleted her old access code. Sloppy.
She steps inside and closes the door behind her.
The room stretches out beneath the building, a vast forest of shelving and racks disappearing into the distance. Automated pickers glide between the aisles, fetching and carrying everything needed to run one of the world’s biggest hospitals. The metal arms load their cargo into the many dumb waiters that pepper the cavernous room, a ballet of steel and medical supplies, played out to the soft click and hum of machinery. It is beautiful.
Human intervention is not required down here: machines stock the shelves from a subterranean shuttle station, machines check the stock levels, and machines carry the supplies up to the wards and the operating theatres and the mortuary and the canteen.
A beautiful mechanical world where she is the only living thing.
It takes almost an hour to find the coma ward nutrient pouches, perched in the far corner, between acres of toilet paper and racks of skinglue. She rips open a box, pulls out one of the flattened jellyfish shapes, and pops the seal, watching as the bag swells with all the things she needs to survive. It will take a minute or two for the mixture to settle and clear and she spends the time digging out an intravenous line to attach to the socket in her arm.
As the liquid trickles into her veins, the dull ache at the back of her head begins to lift, the tightness in her throat lessens, her stomach stops growling—even though she hasn’t actually eaten anything. She closes her eyes and drifts for a moment. Happy.
Grabbing another pack from the pile, she clambers up a wall of toilet paper and makes a little nest for herself beneath the coolant fan. Surrounded by a protective wall of extra-soft quilted tissue she slips the new pack into place and settles down to sleep. For the first time in six years, she is comfortable. Safe.
There are many things that still need to be done, but for now she is content just to rest.
10
‘So this is where you’ve been hiding.’
Will peered out from beneath his VR headset. Lieutenant Brand was lounging against the reconstruction suite wall, wearing another grey jumpsuit—urban concrete-coloured camouflage. Only this time she didn’t have her bra on show.
‘I’m not hiding.’
‘Bollocks you’re not. You’ve been down here all morning, looking like something off the History Channel. Headset and gloves: you’re such a sodding luddite. Why can’t you get a jackpoint like normal people?’
Will stuck two fingers up at her.
She shrugged, sighed, then pointed at the room’s terminal. The chunky evidence cartridge with the scans from flat 47122 was plugged into it, chugging and creaking as the computer interpreted the data into three dimensions. ‘That your mystery room?’
‘Want to take a look and tell me what you think?’
She unspooled a lead from the wall; breathed on the little gold connector; polished it against her sleeve; checked it was clean; then felt for the socket in the back of her head with her other hand, freezing just before she clicked the jack into place. ‘You spring for lunch afterwards?’
Will nodded. ‘Deal.’
He was as good as his word. Thirty minutes later they were sitting in the cafeteria, eating stovies. They’d been over the deep scan readings, the narrow band and the subsonics; they’d even run simulations to track the order of events. None of which explained why flat 47-122 looked so different before and after.
‘So,’ he speared a little chunk of cloned lamb from the mound of stodgy potato and onion on his plate, ‘what do you think?’
‘We have to go back. If that place was redecorated the way you said it was—’
‘And it was.’
‘Then something frinky’s going on.’
He looked at her. ‘“Frinky”?’
‘Not my fault you’re stuck in a time warp.’
‘Yes, well…’ He loaded up another forkful. ‘Sherman House is off limits: the Fairy Princess vetoed all Network intrusions for at least a fortnight. We go back in there with another pickup team we’ll start a riot.’
‘Then we don’t take a pickup team.’ Emily cast a quick glance around the crowded canteen, then dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘She said no Network intrusion: didn’t say anything about you and me visiting a sick friend who just happens to live there.’
‘A sick friend?’
‘Trust me, if we don’t get caught we won’t have to go into any details. We can hop a public shuttle from the Pavilion.’ She waggled her knife at him, speaking with her mouth full. ‘Better get a change of clothes: you’ll stick out like a sore thumb in that monkey suit. We’ll do it this evening, about half five?’
‘It’s a date.’
Emily raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say a word.
A shadow fell across the table and Will turned to see DS Cameron in a canary yellow suit, Brian lumbering after her. ‘Ah, here you are,’ she said, eyes sparkling in the overhead light. ‘Guess what: we’ve identified that halfhead who went missing from the Sherman House toilets!’
‘You got Services to talk?’ Will was impressed; he’d forgotten all about the abandoned mop and wheely-bucket. ‘Who was it?’
‘And,’ a big smile spread across her face, ‘we’ve got a match on the MO used on our murder victim. You’re not going to believe—’
‘Wheesht!’ Brian cut her off. He sank down into the chair next to Will. ‘The missin’ halfhead was S H dash O slash D dash one zero two eight six. The dead body in the bog was killed the same way as twenty-seven of her victims—’
‘Oh God…’ The fork fell from Will’s hand, skittering across the tabletop, spreading little droplets of pickled beetroot juice. Like a blood spatter pattern. ‘She’s still out there…’
Brian shook his head. ‘She’s no’ anywhere Will: she’s dead. The Roadhugger takin’ her back to the depot went over the Connelly Memorial Flyover yesterday evenin’. Fell fifty foot onto the back of a bus. No survivors.’ He paused. ‘They’ve got what’s left of her on a slab down the city mortuary, if you want to see her?’
Lieutenant Brand reached across the table and took hold of Will’s hand. ‘You OK?’
DS Cameron stuck a datapad on the table, crime scene photos from the Sherman House toilets fading in and out in a macabre slideshow. ‘It’s a classic copycat killing. Perp finds out who she is, then stalks her for a couple of weeks, working on the fantasy, waiting for an opportunity to perform. Probably made her watch as he butchered Allan Brown.’
It didn’t seem to bother her that no one else was celebrating. ‘Doing a background search on the Roadhugger’s crew now. I’m betting one of them has a record of psychological problems. You know: got the job so he could work with killers and rapists, waiting for his chance to be just like them.’
Will lurched to his feet. The room was beginning to pulse. Hot. Hard to breathe. Mouth coated in grease and the taste of meat. Bile.
‘Need to get some air…’
‘Feeling any better?’ Lieutenant Brand settled back against the handrail.
Will straightened up, wiped a hand across his mouth, shrugged. Mouth rank with the bitter taste of vomit. ‘Not really.’
The landing bays were empty, no one about on the roof of Network Headquarters to see him spatter a half portion of stovies all over the walkway. Brian had stayed behind, keeping DS Cameron busy and out of the way.
It was stifling up here, the afternoon pressing down on him like a steam iron. The layer of clouds above the city was getting thicker, turning ominous and dark. Threatening what everyone so desperately wanted: an end to the terrible heat.
He clutched the rail and stared out into the distance, wondering if he was going to be sick again.
A gentle hand brushed his shoulders. ‘You want to talk about it?’
‘No.’ He sighed. Looked out across the sweltering city. ‘Haven’t thought about her in years…Well, except for anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas, you know—things like that.’ He ran a finger along the thin band of pale skin where his wedding ring used to be. ‘Funny isn’t it? How…’ He stopped. Cleared his throat. ‘When Brian said the MO matched…I know she’s been cleaning toilets and sweeping the streets for the last six years, but she was a halfhead. You know what I mean? She wasn’t really alive anymore. And then suddenly bang! Back to square one.’
They stood in silence for a while, leaning on the rail, not really looking at the view.
And then Will straightened up. ‘I want to see her.’
‘Good idea—stinks of puke up here anyway.’ Emily linked arms with him and steered him towards the lifts. ‘How about we knock off early? Get smashed at one of those stuck-up freezy joints. Embarrass a few of the idle rich with our rough, working-man’s banter.’
‘Thought we were going to see that sick friend of yours.’
‘No chance.’ Emily hit the button for the Network’s shuttle station. ‘You need to let off steam, and until you do, you’re dangerous. Tonight we get plastered. Tomorrow we go visiting.’
The chief pathologist at Glasgow Royal Infirmary checked their IDs again, even though the security guards had done it three times already on their way down here. Tall, thin, with a hooked nose, and mane of fading ginger hair, he was straight out of a Brothers Grimm fairytale.
The hospital mortuary was huge, all four walls dominated by refrigerated corpse pigeon-holes. A dozen postmortem tables dotted the floor, stainless steel islands in a sea of cracked grey tile. Most of them were occupied, the bodies being taken carefully apart by teams of anatomical pathology technicians.
When the chief pathologist was finally satisfied that Will, Brian, and Emily were who they claimed to be, he handed their IDs back, nodded, and punched the case number into the console with long, delicate fingers.
The carousel pulled a bodypod from the huge collection that surrounded them, clicking the metallic sarcophagus onto an empty table.
The pathologist wrinkled his nose. ‘You may wish to hold your breath at this point.’ He popped the toggles, exposing what looked like an overcooked side of pork with fragments of melted plastic fused to it. With a small cough the pathologist pulled out a metal pointer and began his monologue.
‘The skull has suffered severe structural damage, as have both arms and most of the upper torso.’ He used the pointer to flip the switch that turned the body. ‘As you can see most of the epidermis has been charred—extremely high temperatures—no doubt due to the fuel cell in the municipal transportation being ruptured upon impact. Primary cause of death was blunt trauma to the cranium, probably caused on impact. The other damage was almost certainly post mortem.’
Will looked down at the human barbecue and suppressed a shudder. It was unrecognizable.
‘You sure it’s her?’
The pathologist pointed at the charred head.
‘As you can see, the barcode tattoo on the forehead has been rendered illegible by impact and fire damage, but…’ He pulled a reader from beneath the table and slid it over the melted remains of the jumpsuit. It bleeped when he reached what was left of the breast pocket. ‘The ID chip is still intact. It matches the manifest.’
He twisted the reader, showing Will the display panel.
‘SAMPLE 4: ID: SH-O/D-10286’
Will’s mouth went dry. ‘DNA?’
The pathologist raised an eyebrow. ‘There were sixty-two people in the bus that Roadhugger hit, Mr Hunter.’ He waved his skeletal hand, indicating the vast collection of refrigerated bodypods. ‘And that’s in addition to all the other deaths we have to deal with on a daily basis. You’ll appreciate that there may be a little bit of a backlog.’
Brian stepped forwards. ‘Aye, and you’ll appreciate that you’ll be in a world of shite if you don’t shift this one to the top of your fuckin’ priority list.’
The pathologist blinked. ‘I see…Well, I shall chase up the records department as soon as I get a chance and—’
‘I’m sorry, did I no’ make myself perfectly fuckin’ clear?’
There was a pause, and then the thin man pulled a little blue cylinder from his top pocket, slipped it onto the end of his index finger, and pointed at his own face. ‘Records.’ His left eye clouded over. ‘Yes, I sent a DNA sample up an hour and a half ago, reference: S H dash O slash D dash one zero two eight six…Yes, I know, but I want you to expedite it…I know there’s a backlog.’
His one clear eye swept across Brian’s angry face, then looked away quickly, voice lowered to a hiss. ‘I don’t care, just do it…Yes, I’ll hold.’
Two minutes of awkward silence later the pathologist slipped the fingerphone back into his pocket. ‘It’s a match. The DNA profile is the same as the one we have on file for this halfhead’s medical records. Obviously we don’t have a name, but when Services collect the remains for formal identification I can—’
‘It’s all right,’ said Will. ‘I know who she is.’
After all this time, she was finally dead. She could burn in Hell where she belonged.
‘Come on.’ Emily laid a hand on his arm. ‘Let’s go get pished.’
Eighteen floors beneath their feet a figure stirs in her sleep. The dream is lovely and warm, woven from other peoples’ nightmares. The last, terrifying moments of their lives. A slow, intimate waltz of blood, that slowly turns into something altogether more sensual. More special.
In the dream she looks exactly the same as she did on the day that they caught her: flowing golden hair that spills out in soft waves to her shoulder blades; soft, claret lips; long slender neck; and crystal clear, baby-blue eyes. Thirty-six years old and not looking a day over twenty-seven. The perfect predator.
The air is heavy with the sound of busy bees, and she is bathing naked in a bath of fresh, warm blood. There are pale bodies all around the bathtub, holding their slit wrists above the surface, dripping their last drops in her honour. She throws back her head and moans in sheer rapture at the sticky, warm delight.
And then a shadow falls across the room: The Man In The Dark-Blue Suit.
She shivers in her sleep. He’s here. He’s come to steal her face! She thrashes awake, knocking rolls of toilet paper flying. He’s here! He’s…
Her eyes dart back and forth. The room is quiet, peaceful, safe. The ceiling fan rotates above her, the pickers glide along their rails, the store hums away to itself. Everything is normal. He’s not here.
She sinks back into her nest and waits for her heart to stop pounding. She has never known fear like this before. Illogical. Irrational. Terrifying…
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