Halfhead

by Stuart B. MacBride

  Will swore, risked a bite of his burger, and swore again.

  ‘We’re in way over our heads,’ said Brian, as Will looked around for somewhere to spit. ‘We’ll have to be a right sneaky bunch of bastards to get away with this.’

  George took a mouthful of Irn-Bru, belched. ‘I’ve sent those brain samples off to the labs. Get them back tomorrow. At least then we’ll know what Peitai’s injecting the poor buggers with.’

  Will stuffed the rest of his burger in the bin. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. ‘What about you, Brian?’

  ‘No one’s talkin’. I’ve twisted every arm I can think of; whatever they’re up to, they’re keepin’ it real quiet.’

  ‘Then all we’ve got is one mysteriously fake-shabby apartment, two corpses, and George’s chemical residue.’ Will scowled out at the rain, watching it hammer into the pavement hard enough to jump back to knee level. ‘There’s something else: Dr Westfield.’

  Brian raised an eyebrow, ‘Oh aye?’ George just went on eating.

  Turns out Alastair Middleton wasn’t the only one Westfield was grooming. Colin Mitchell and Allan Brown: she was their therapist too. I found case notes detailing how she screwed up their parents, then did the same to them. Twisted them till they went out and started killing.’

  ‘Shite…’ Brian shivered. ‘If she did three, who’s to say she didn’t do more?’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking. Bit of a coincidence isn’t it? Westfield was manufacturing killers, and now good old Ken Peitai’s doing the same thing. Only a bit more high-tech and—’

  The alarm on Will’s mobile bleeped. He checked his watch: one thirty. Time to go spend the afternoon with Jo.

  ‘Got to run. Keep me up to date, OK?’ He dashed out into the downpour, heading for the nearest shuttle station.

  ‘Afraid we’ve had a couple of problems, sir.’

  The room was dark, lit only by the screens that lined the central table. Ken’s boss didn’t say anything, just twisted the test tube round and round in his fingers, keeping the liquid inside from settling.

  Ken Peitai kept his eyes dead ahead. ‘Mr Moncur and Mr Stevenson had a…lapse of judgement. They’ve been kinda negligent in their monitoring of our brood mother.’

  Ken’s boss stopped fiddling with the tube and placed it down on the table with a delicate clink. ‘Go on.’

  Ken nodded. ‘I passed on your instructions to get Dr W brain-fried for good, but Stevenson came down with the flu and Moncur’s been up to his eyeballs with other projects. I checked their logs: she’s not been in for over three weeks. That means she’s not had her medication. And that means—’

  ‘I’m quite aware what that means. Find her. Find her and bring her in now.’

  ‘That ain’t going to be necessary, sir. She’s in the morgue. Roadhugger she was in went for a flying lesson off the ring road and smacked bang into a bus. Boom!’ He mimed a small explosion. ‘No survivors. Hospital morgue ran a DNA check on Westfield’s remains—idiots got the sample wrong, but Moncur says he gave them a false positive anyway, just in case they decided to dig any further. ID chip matched, so it’s OK: all taken care of.’

  The old man pursed his lips. It made his face look even more aerodynamic than usual. ‘Moncur and Stevenson?’

  ‘This is the first time either of them has screwed up, Mr Kikan. I gave them a first and final warning. One more breach and they’re testin’ the next batch of mixture.’

  ‘Three weeks.’ Kikan frowned. ‘When I give an order to have someone lobotomized, Ken, I expect it to be carried out immediately. If Dr Westfield had gotten “out of hand” without her medication it would have raised some very awkward questions.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But she didn’t and now she’s dead.’ He watched his boss pick the test tube up and set it dancing again.

  ‘And the other thing?’

  ‘Ah…yeah…the other thing. You remember that Network guy we had in the other day: William Hunter? Assistant Director?’

  ‘The one you were supposed to be keeping an eye on?’

  Ken cleared his throat. ‘Yeah…that’s the one. Publicly he’s been making all the right noises about steering clear of the test zone, but we’re monitoring his home line and he’s been poking around in the PsychTech files.’

  ‘So?’ There was a hint of boredom in the man’s voice, but Ken knew better than to believe it.

  ‘He’s also been runnin’ searches on you and me. Hasn’t found anything yet, but the guys in statistics say there’s a six point three percent chance he’s going to find something we’d rather he didn’t.’

  ‘How did he get my name, Ken?’ The old man’s eyes were like ice.

  Ken stuttered. ‘I…I don’t know how—’

  ‘This is supposed to be a discreet operation, Ken. First the Westfield woman is allowed to outlive her usefulness and now this. I am not pleased. Not pleased at all.’

  ‘No, sir. I understand, sir.’

  ‘Then you know what to do, don’t you?’ He slipped the test tube back in his pocket and stood.

  ‘Actually…’ Ken shifted from foot to foot. ‘You think I should maybe have a friendly chat with him first?’

  The old man stopped on his way to the exit, his cloat slung over one shoulder. ‘What is this strange aversion you have to killing the man, Ken?’

  ‘He’s a hero, sir. I’ve read through his file and William Hunter’s one of the good guys. I’d kinda prefer not to go rubbing him out unless I absolutely have to.’

  Kikan shook his head and smiled one of his rare smiles. ‘Just make sure he doesn’t cause any more trouble than he already has. The first sign of anything inopportune I want him removed. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Ken snapped off a smart salute. ‘Don’t you worry about Mr Hunter, I’m gonna make sure he stays nice and friendly. And if he don’t I’m gonna make sure he stays nice and dead.’

  20

  Will looked back over his shoulder and watched the city burn. The air was misty with evaporated flesh: soft pink clouds drifting gently to the ground, leaving a faint slick of human cells on anything they touched. He turned his attention away from the funeral pyres and palls of thick, greasy smoke and examined the Whomper in his hands. It was less than half full; whatever Jo was going to do she’d have to do it soon.

  The barricade he was hiding behind rocked under another onslaught. Chips of smoking concrete rained down all around him. The noise was deafening. Over in the distance, through the fog of skin and bone, he could just make out Jo’s outline, hiding behind the wreckage of a school bus. The vehicle looked as if it had been put through a mangle, and Jo didn’t look much better. Her jumpsuit was stained and scorched, the middle section slashed almost in half, exposing swollen, burnt flesh.

  She looked back at him, their eyes meeting over the barrel of her Crackling Gun. For a moment Will just crouched there, not moving, then the man standing next to him exploded.

  The gun in Jo’s hands howled.

  They were running out of time.

  He vaulted the barricade, and sprinted across the war-torn street, trying not to get his head blown off. The pavement buckled beneath his feet as he ran towards the dark-red troop carrier, chunks of concrete shattering all around as the gunners tried to kill him.

  Jo’s Crackling Gun howled again, her siege weapon carving bite-sized chunks of metal out of the carrier’s hull. Will slithered to a halt, skidding on a patch of someone as he drew level with the craft. He snatched up his Whomper and turned the driver’s head into a green-grey stain on the vehicle’s roof.

  The passenger snatched up something shiny and pointed, like an electric squid, lights twinkling along its length. Will didn’t wait to see what it did, just turned the Whomper on him and thumbed the trigger, spreading him all over the inside of the cab. He didn’t even have time to scream.

  Comlab’s computer-generated fantasies always made Will feel vaguely uncomfortable. Here it was OK to kill anything you liked and, as he jumped abou
t the game ring like a lunatic, he couldn’t escape the feeling that it was all just a little bit too real. As if the boundaries between what was, and what wasn’t, didn’t apply here. But that didn’t stop him playing.

  Will leaned back against the dispenser, totally knackered. Sweat ran down his back and pooled in his unders; he never wore the right thing to play in the game rings. Jo was a lot more sensible: she’d ditched her day clothes and slipped into an all-in-one that clung like a second skin. Her hair was plastered to her forehead, a thick red line marking where the headset had sat. But she was smiling.

  He ran a hand over his face, then wiped his damp hands on his trousers. ‘How did we do?’

  Jo gulped her plastic of fizzy down. ‘Not bad,’ she said, suppressing a belch. ‘Not the highest score ever, but we kicked some serious Martian arse.’

  ‘Glad you came?’

  She rubbed at her forehead. ‘Been years since I had to wear a headset. Forgot how much it throws you off. Full immersion is a hell of a lot easier. Less sweaty too.’ Jo looked at him for a moment. ‘You really don’t have a jack point? On an Assistant Director’s salary?’

  ‘Yeah…Sorry about that.’

  ‘Nah, it was fun. Kinda nostalgic.’ She reached up and touched his cheek, then grimaced. ‘Urgh…You’re sopping!’ She backed off towards the female locker rooms. ‘I’m going to shower and change. If you weren’t such a mincehead, Mr “Outside Clothes Will Be Fine”, you could do the same.’

  ‘Blah, blah, blah. I’ll see you in the cafeteria, OK?’

  ‘Try not to stink the place out.’ She stepped closer and for a moment Will though she was going to kiss him. Then something happened and she changed the movement into a smile instead, turned, and disappeared through the locker-room door.

  They’d been like that all afternoon; as if last night had never happened and they were back to acting like nervous teenagers. It was driving him mad.

  Slinging his new jacket over his damp shoulder Will went for a stroll through the gaming hall to cool down a bit. The place was mobbed, as usual: the last shift of gamers milling around, talking over their latest adventure, even though they’d only finished playing it five minutes ago; the next shift plugged in and ready to go. As he walked around he watched them logging on. It was one of the funniest bits for him, over a thousand people, standing in wide, elevated rings eight feet across, doing the hand jive: hitting buttons only they could see. Loading up pre-saved characters and scenarios so they could get on with the violence and the sex.

  Slowly the noise level began to rise as the games got underway; the players staggering around the game rings waving invisible swords/rocket launchers/Whompers/dildos. Each ring had a little viewing screen hooked up next to the command ports and Will paused from time to time, looking in to see what was going on. You could tell when people were playing ‘pink disks’ because the screens were blank while the people in the middle of the ring got on with whatever filth took their fancy.

  ‘You like to watch?’

  The fake mid-Atlantic accent made Will freeze. He took a second to plaster a smile on his face, then turned to see Ken Peitai standing behind him, leaning back against a game ring. He was dressed in one of those lounging robes they wore in the deep-immersion suites, where you didn’t need a headset to experience the best in Virtual Reality, you just stuck a wire in the back of your head.

  ‘Ken, good to see you.’ That was a lie.

  How did the sinister little turd know he was…The homing beacons, that’s how—buried under Will’s skin. Out of sight and out of mind.

  Ken smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling as if he actually meant it. He swept a hand around, indicating the room full of gamers. ‘One of my few vices: I like to save the world every now and then. What about you?’

  ‘Just finished: Red Conquest.’

  ‘Great stuff. How did you do?’ The smile got bigger. Look at me, I’m so friendly and approachable…For a murdering bastard.

  ‘Not bad. We saved Aberdeen, but Dundee’s a write-off.’

  Ken sighed. ‘Too bad, I kinda like all the casinos. All that razzmatazz, yeah?’

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘You know, Will…I can call you Will can’t I?’ He didn’t wait for an answer, just took Will by the arm and began to walk. ‘Great. I know you were interested in what we were doing at Sherman House—’

  ‘Excellent project.’ Will laid it on thick. ‘I can’t think of anything more important than preventing another round of Virtual Riots.’

  ‘Thanks. We’ve gotta keep it all so hush-hush, no one ever gets any good feedback. I’ll tell the team you said that, though.’ He flashed the same smile again. ‘They’re gonna be thrilled. Anyway, Will, I told you all about the project, but you never told us anything about yourself.’

  ‘No. I was a bit tied up at the time.’

  Ken laughed a lot harder than was strictly necessary. ‘“Tied up at the time.” I like it! “Tied up.” Ha!…But seriously, what are you guys in the Network up to these days?’

  The greasy little bastard was actually trying to weasel information out of him. ‘Well, you know what it’s like at Network HQ: there’s always so much going on.’

  ‘Yeah, all those guys and gals, running round, keeping us all safe. What about you, though? You working on anything juicy?’

  ‘Just having a couple of days off.’

  ‘Right, right. I heard on the grapevine that you’d caught someone for that hole in the head thing. Good work. Fast. You gotta be proud of your people for getting the guy that quick.’

  ‘Yes.’ Will was finding it more and more difficult to smile back. Colin Mitchell had been caught less than twenty-four hours ago, and Ken Peitai already knew about it.

  ‘Can I be frank, Will? Can I? Good.’ Ken stopped. They were by the west exit. Outside the double glass doors the rain hammered against the concrete forecourt, sparkling in the spotlights as it leapt back into the air.

  ‘You know, Will…’ Ken sounded as if he were picking his words very carefully. ‘The funny thing about national secur ity is how some of the weirdest things turn out to be sensitive information.’ He paused as if waiting to see if Will got it. ‘Sometimes it’s the silliest little things, things that don’t seem at all connected, that can cause real big problems further down the road. But you know that, right? You deal with sensitive stuff all the time.’

  He punched Will on the arm and winked: all mates together.

  Jumped-up little shite.

  ‘So what I’m saying is I know, and you know there’s nothing wrong with you pokin’ about in the PsychTech files or searching for a bit of info on me and my boss. Don’t blame you at all: after what happened you’re bound to be interested, right? But there’s a couple of guys upstairs who know a lot more about the big picture than I ever will and they’re worried something’s gonna get out that’ll jeopardize what we’re trying to do over at Sherman House.’ He shrugged. ‘Seems daft to me, but what do I know?’

  He obviously knew Will had been going through the PsychTech database. Just like he knew they’d caught Mitchell…Will wondered if he went back to Network HQ right now and played the SOC recording of Mitchell’s flat, would he see little grey blobs of no data in the corners?

  ‘If you work for the Ministry for Change, Ken, why are you worried about national security?’

  Ken’s smile faltered a little, but he rode it out like a pro: ‘Hey, ain’t we all concerned about the security of our nation in these troubled times?’

  Will stared at him and said nothing.

  ‘Look, Will, I know you got your suspicions. Hell, be surprised if you didn’t. But we’re on the same side here. We…’ Ken’s eyes did a quick sweep of the gaming hall. ‘Your mate the pathologist, he found chemical residue in Allan Brown and Kevin McEwan’s brains, right?’

  So he’d been right—they were monitoring his phone. No point lying about it then. ‘He thinks they’ve been injected with something that gives them VR
syndrome.’

  Ken sagged back against the double doors. ‘I know how it looks, but…’ He stopped and took a deep breath. ‘Will, what I’m gonna tell you can’t go any further. I mean it, man: this stuff is like code-black, OK?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘OK.’ Ken lowered his voice. ‘Look, you’re right, we are infecting controlled groups with something that makes them act like they’ve got VR syndrome.’ He held up his hands. ‘I know, I know, it’s a crappy thing to have to do, but we got no choice. We don’t know what started the last set of Virtual Riots. We can’t study it in the wild. And we can’t afford to sit about with our thumbs up our asses waiting for the next outbreak to come along.’

  He looked away. ‘I gotta tell you, I hate this. I hate pumpin’ our own guys full of shit and watchin’ them go off their heads, but it’s the only way we’re gonna find a cure before it comes back again. You know how many people died last time?’

  Will did, but he kept his mouth shut.

  ‘Three million. Three million Scottish citizens died. Worldwide the total was like, what: fifty, sixty million?’

  ‘So you’re giving our own people VR.’

  ‘Will, we infect controlled groups and keep them under real close observation. We work on what’s goin’ to keep them alive and sane. We work on ways to diffuse the triggers before they occur. We tried using simulations and computer models but it wasn’t working, there’s something about the way the diseased population interacts, a kinda feedback loop you can only see in the wild. Makes the condition a hell of a lot worse.’ He shook his head. ‘All that stuff I told you when I showed you around was the God’s honest truth: we’re doin’ our best and we’re gettin’ there. Next time it happens we’re gonna be ready. We’re not gonna sit back and watch another three million poor bastards die.’