by Lee Isserow
As soon as Mallory was able to get to her feet again, Ana took her home. She waited as she had a shower, then sat by her bedside until the fear, anxiety and horror gave way to exhaustion. Finally, after close to an hour of being by her, and holding her hand, and reassuring her she wasn't alone, Mallory finally passed out.
Ana doored back to Peter's apartment, to find Rafe still covered in blood and mushed organs, surveying the scene, watching a smoky re-enactment of the man's activities from the weeks of his infection.
“Any luck?”
“Not yet,” he muttered, spinning through as Peter slept.
“Do you think it was the disease or the glyph?”
“That made him explode? No way to tell. Glyph might have set off some kind of protective magicks in the thing, sent it into overdrive―”
“Might?”
“Everything about this damn thing is a might or maybe. We know what it does, know how it might end, but have no damn clue where it came from.”
Ana left the room, scuttling around the apartment.
“What are you looking for?” he asked, eyes fixed on the smoky form of Peter, as he rose from the bed and pottered around, his actions still spinning backwards, getting ever closer to the day he was first infected.
Ana returned, casting to spin Rafe around on the spot and pull his attention from the re-enactment. She was holding a blood-stained phone.
“What are you expecting to do with that? I don't know any phone magick. . .”
“Reva probably does.”
“She's six thousand years old. A tea kettle is the most advanced technology she's ever used.”
“Well. . .” Ana sighed, looking down at the phone, staring at her own reflection in the black mirror of its screen. Her attention swayed to the camera at the top of the handset. “I know a guy.”
“A magickian that knows phones?”
“He's not a magickian. . . but he is a technical wizard.”
Chapter 31
A third of nothing
Ana had barely thought about the Factory since she stopped working there, she had certainly not wasted any time thinking about on her old boss ,Dean. But given that he had a way with technology, he seemed like the perfect person to take the phone to, in a bid to track Peter's movements before he was infected.
“Buzzer's new,” she said, as they waited outside the rusting steel door of the building, a few flecks of bright blue paint still clinging for dear life to the surface, but fewer than when she last entered. And there were dents in the door that looked new, boot sized, as if someone had been kicking at it repeatedly. “Guess they've upped security. . . some of the guys were kinda creepy.”
“No doubt,” Rafe muttered. He had decided a while back never to ask Ana about her former career. It had always seemed a little sordid for his tastes. And if he was to be honest with himself, he preferred to know who she was now, rather than who she was back then in the world of sex work.
“Wha'dya want?” screeched a static-laden voice through the intercom.
“It's Ana―Clarice―Just want a quick word with Dean.”
The intercom clicked off, and they waited for a moment, until a loud electronic growl sounded out, as the door unlocked. Rafe pushed it open, holding it for Ana to enter.
“Oh stop it,” she scoffed. “There's no chivalry in a place like this. . .”
As she lead the way up the steps, Ana couldn't help but notice that there seemed to be more dings in the walls and stairs than when she was last there. And what was more disconcerting was that the newer marks looked even more like bullet holes than the older ones. . . She tried not to think about what horrible thing might have happened that would force them to step up the security―and even though she wasn't exactly close with the other women that worked there, she hoped none of them were hurt in the process.
“Really doesn't look like the kind of place run by some tech genius,” Rafe muttered.
“I know, but he's legit. Kept banging on about how proud he was of his handiwork, getting twenty-some HD video feeds compressed to run down a regular single broadband line with close to zero lag.”
Rafe stared at her blankly, having no idea what any of the words meant.
“Yeah, that's the same expression I gave him when he told me. . . But it sounds like it's impressive, right?”
“I'm starting to doubt this guy will be able to help us.”
“Unless you have a better person to suggest, you can shut the hell up.” she instructed, heading through to a corridor lined with thin plasterboard walls, doors heading off to the left and right, soft tinny music and the occasional titter of laughter sounding out from behind each of them.
“Clarice!” barked a thick cockney accent. “Punters've been missing you, come back for the reunion show?” He caught Rafe's eye. “You doing duos now? They're big money, if you got the goods. . .”
Rafe tried not to recoil at the wink Dean shot him. He couldn't think of anything worse than appearing on camera, let alone being naked, while the disgusting little man watched their activities with a lascivious, sweaty stare.
“Yeah, that's not happening,” Ana shot back. ”We wanted to hire you for a thing, easy job.”
“You know I don't like workin', girl. S'why I set this place up.”
“It's barely a job.”
“Sounds like you need a favour. Ain't doing no favours for you, girly. Not since you buggered off, left me in the lurch―”
“Oh please, like the guys didn't just click over to the next available girl. . .”
“You had fans―”
“All the girls have fans, wasn't like I was a big earner, not compared to the ones who actually get naked. . .”
“Boys liked the tease of it all, never getting that gratification―”
“So tell your new girls to keep their clothes on.”
“How about you give 'em a course. Training an' that.”
“Training to not take clothes off?”
“You know what I mean, engagement an' that. Your blokes loved the way you talked to them, made 'em feel special. Most girls just put on a show, few repeat customers here and there, but you held their attention, got 'em coming back.”
“I'll do it.”
“You will?” Rafe and Dean said, simultaneously. Both were truly shocked that she'd agree.
“First you help us out, let us get our job done, then I'll come back and teach your girls the art of being dressed and remaining so. . .”
Dean sucked at his teeth, eyeing her up and down. “And two hundred quid.”
“That you'll pay me for training. . .?”
“For me, you dozy mare.” Dean regretted the insult instantly, as he caught Ana's glare.
“A hundred, and it's still up in the air as to whether I rip your balls off and put them in a jar on my mantelpiece. . .”
“The mantle is getting pretty crowded,” Rafe added, as a grave expression fell on Dean's face.
“Fine. Whad'ya need me to do?”
Ana produced the phone from her pocket, screen sticky with dried viscera. “Need this tracked.”
“Tracked? It's right bloody there,” Dean scoffed.
“GPS data, from the last two to three weeks.”
“What do you think I am, bloody GCHQ?”
“You know signals and what have you,” Ana said, trying to hold back the desperation that she was all too aware was creeping into her tone. “Said you set this place up yourself, and―”
“That's basic internet stuff, don't know nothing about phones. . .” His eyes skirted the floor, and he sucked at his teeth again as he ruminated.
“But you know someone who does,” Rafe observed.
“Maybe.”
“Where can we find him.”
“Can't just turn up willy nilly. Need an appointment. . . Can set you up for a finder's fee. . .”
“You're getting your hundred and a tutorial for your naked ladies, what else do you want?” Ana huffed.
“You'
re workin' an angle, ain'tcha. A job or something. I want a cut.”
“You really don't want a cut of this. . .” Rafe muttered.
“Thirty percent of whatever you're making.”
Rafe considered explaining the situation, but Ana shot ahead of him, agreeing that if his contact worked out and was able to help them, she'd guarantee him a third of what they made.
She kept the smile to herself until they had left the Factory. Dean more than deserved a third of nothing.
Chapter 32
More important than anything
All too aware that they were working against the clock, Ana was annoyed that they had to wait until the following day to meet Dean's contact―and annoyed even more when he called to let her know the meeting was set for the afternoon.
She spent the day with Mallory, telling her tales of their previous cases, being sure to state and re-state that they had never failed, not once, and they sure as hell weren't going to let her down.
As the time drew close for their appointment, she sent a door for Rafe and excused herself, promising Mallory that she'd give her an update as soon as they had any news to share.
The address Dean gave them was a small electronics shop on the King's Road. It looked derelict, with ancient desktops and CRT monitors in the windows. Ana thought it the most curious place to still be in business in the twenty first century, and found herself wondering how the tax man or police hadn't thought the same. Even though she had no experience of these things, it felt like the whole shop was set up like some kind of lazy money laundering operation.
A bell above the door tring-a-linged as Rafe pushed it open, and they walked up to the counter. The walls were covered in boxes of ancient looking PC games, icons of floppy discs in the corners of half of them.
“Just a minute,” shouted a voice from the back. The tone seemed to indicate that he was in no hurry, and Ana tapped her foot impatiently as they waited for the man to appear from the back of the shop. A figure at the end of a long hallway moving from one side of the room to the other, but seemed as though he was intent on taking his damn time. . .
When he finally walked along the thin corridor towards them, he looked nothing like she expected. Ana was thinking the man, who they were told went by the moniker 'Pi' was going to be some sweaty fat white guy, cut from the same cloth as Dean. She didn't expect him to be young―looking younger than her―let alone be a skinny bespectacled black guy.
“What you after?” he asked, with a smile on his lips that appeared genuine and enthusiastic. “386? 486?”
“Dean sent us,” Ana explained.
The smile instantly vanished from his lips, his eyes narrowed. He seemed to get older in that moment, paranoia ageing him. “Feds, is it?”
“What?”
“Coppers? Old Dean fingering me as some kind of mastermind―everything I did for him was legal, ain't no two ways about it. All above board and―” He cut himself off, bursting into laughter, slamming his palms against his sides.
Ana and Rafe exchanged glances, no idea what the joke was, and both wishing there was a monster they could be beating on, rather than having to converse with this mundane moron.
“Kidding guys!”
Ana stared at him incredulously. “You know about phones? GPS?”
“Yeah, come on back,” he led the way through the hallway to the room behind the shopfront.
Ana wondered how the hell Dean and Pi ended up as colleagues―then cut her thoughts off. She didn't actually care, not about them, not about anything other than getting her friend cured.
“Lemme see that handset,” Pi said, taking it from Ana. He ran his fingers over the screen, grimacing at the sticky texture that came away as he touched it. “Do I want to know how it got like this?”
“You really don't,” Rafe insisted.
Pi shrugged, and plugged the phone into one of a hundred stray USB cables that were hanging from the wall. He moved a mouse, one of several that were all lined up next to a bank of monitors, and began clicking around, opening up a piece of software that hummed a whiny electronic tune through the speakers as a series of ones and zeros appeared in its display.
The phone's screen came to life, the device unlocked, and he began to prod around the interface.
“How much GPS data d'ya need?”
“Two weeks would be good, three would be better.”
“Can do three, yeah. Want this printed out? It's gonna be a lot. . .” He indicated to a series of dot matrix printers piled on top of one another in the corner of the room.
“Can you stick it on a map in the phone or something?” Ana asked, “A list of addresses he was in for more than a half hour, in date order.”
“Specific, but yeah, can do that. . . It'll cost ya'.”
“Do it.”
“Five grand.”
“What?”
Pi burst into laughter all over again. “Kidding!”
“Things have to be jokes if you're kidding. . .” Rafe muttered.
“Two fifty for a list and map. Shouldn't take more than twenty minutes to collate.”
“Two fifty is fine,” Rafe said, already digging around in his pocket for the cash. He was usually more frugal, especially when it came to cases that weren't going to pay out. But with the life of Ana's friend on the line, he was well aware that it was only money.
Life, he reminded himself, let alone friends, mattered way more than money.
He didn't really have friends, not any more. And he didn't have much of a life either. But seeing friendship through Ana's eyes made him realise that it was more important than anything.
Chapter 33
The first stop
The first stop on their list took them to a tattoo parlour. They sat on a wooden bench as they waited for the artist to finish up with a client, and didn't say a word until the guy paid up and left, neither wanting to broach the subject of breaking what little privilege there was between tattooist and tattooee.
“Yeah, sounds familiar,” she said, when they described Peter. “Weird guy.”
“Weird how?” Rafe asked,
“Dunno, just kept coming back in every day, covering over the ink he got the night before when he was out drinking or whatever. . . Weird, y'know?”
Ana's gaze glided across the tattoo artist's arms, becoming all too aware that they were covered in not only drawings, but writing.
“Did you sleep with him?” she inquired.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“What right do you have to come in and―”
Ana's fingers circled through the air, balling into a fist. Before Rafe could intervene, her other hand skirted across the knuckles and she threw the fingers wide, right into the woman's face. The tattooist's pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks as her mind went black, mesmerised in an instant.
“That wasn't necessary. . . “
“It's faster,” Ana insisted. “Being polite takes time, and we need answers.” She leaned in to the tattoo artist. “Did you sleep with him?”
“. . . No. . . “ she said.
“Did he sleep with anyone you know?”
“How is that going to help?” Rafe asked.
“. . . No. . .”
“It might narrow it down. . . but this is useless.”
“Are those tattoos all yours?” Rafe asked the mesmerised woman. “Or have some of the words appeared by themselves?”
“. . . All mine. . .”
“So he didn't pick it up here,” Rafe asserted.
“Fine. Next on the list.” She turned to conjure a door.
“What about her?”
Ana rolled her eyes and threw a casting straight past Rafe at the woman.
“―accuse me of sleeping with clients?!” the tattoo artist shrieked. But she was only shrieking to herself, Rafe and Ana had moved on to the next destination on the map.
Chapter 34
Buzzing
Ana slammed her fist against the do
or, and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Open up! We can hear you in there!”
There was no response.
“I'm gonna get a bloody door straight in there and―”
“Just hush a second,” Rafe said putting an ear to the door, trying to ignore the glare he could feel burning into the back of his head.
“Well?”
“I don't think it's a person moving around. . . sounds more like. . . buzzing.” He turned to catch her eye.
“Buzzing?”
Ana blew the door off its hinges. It whipped across the hallway and batted through a cloud of flies that funnelled out into the street, rocketing past them as their feast was disturbed.
“Well, that's not good. . .” Rafe muttered.
“State the bloody obvious, why don't you,” Ana huffed, as she stormed into the house.
There was a foul stench in the air of rotting meat and excretions. Something had died there, and it didn't smell like a quick or pleasant death.
The two of them followed the sound of the buzzing to where it was loudest, the kitchen, where they discovered the walls, floor and ceiling caked with thick, dried blood, and grey goop that at one point might have organs.
“Well, at least we know it wasn't the glyph that blew our guy up. . .”
“At least? This doesn't help us in the bloody slightest!” Ana shouted, barging past Rafe to get back out to the street, huffing lungfuls of fresh air as soon as she got out the door. “We're nowhere!” she screamed back at him. “No closer to a cure, no closer to knowing what the hell this thing is.”
“You're emotional, you can't see the wood―”
“Of course I'm bloody emotional, and you using damn cliches isn't going to stop me being invested in this. Do you understand what I'm going through―do you even have friends? Can you imagine them dying?”
He stared at her, saying nothing, knowing that she was right. As far as Ana knew, he didn't know what she was going through. There was so much about his life before her that he hadn't told her, and so she had no reason to believe he had any idea what the loss of a loved one was like.