by SJ Griffin
Chapter Eight
I had three days to persuade Casino that he wasn’t a guinea pig and Enforce weren’t going to put him in a cage and stick pins in his eyes. I reasoned that no one would ever think Haggia could be connected to Enforce so she would be my secret weapon. I rounded the troops up and marched them down the street to the shop. If Casino did think that I was on some kind of power trip, what with getting rid of people and leading a wolf pack, then I had failed to prove him wrong on that count. Everyone followed me up the road as though I had them all on a leash. The huge billboard on the way to Haggia’s had been changed for the first time in about two years. The Ministry didn’t bother updating the adver-ganda in our area, they preferred us to befall hideous diseases and take risks with our personal safety. The new poster was warning of the dangers of Simian Influenza H5M6. We all traipsed into the shop, there was some jostling behind me to see who would get to go in last. Anyone would have thought I was dragging them to a firing squad. They had been dropping hints about meeting Haggia and Marshall and now the hour was upon them they had all had an attack of nerves.
‘All right?’ I said.
‘Morning,’ Haggia said from the top of a ladder.
‘I brought some people to meet you.’
Haggia looked down from the ceiling at everyone and they all shuffled around and looked at the floor. A pale smoke rose from Minos’s hair and I noticed that one of Casino’s hands was translucent.
‘So, we meet at last,’ Haggia said coming down the ladder. ‘I’ve heard lots about you.’
‘Have you?’ Lola said.
‘No, I’ve heard next to nothing about you, though not for want of trying on my part,’ Haggia looked at me. ‘Only as much as I needed to put you in touch with Gru, isn’t he lovely? He’s got his rice, by the way. Tell me everything about yourselves.’
They all stood and looked at her. I’d never seen them so tongue tied, usually we were a mouthy bunch. Not today though.
‘Excuse us a minute,’ I gathered everyone in a huddle while Haggia stepped down an aisle to give us a moment. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ Minos said.
‘Why the shuffling and the silence then?’ I said.
‘It’s weird,’ Lola said.
‘What is?’ I said.
‘She knows,’ Minos said.
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘It’s weird,’ Lola said.
I looked at Roach for a translation.
‘She thinks we’re special,’ he said. ‘It’s weird.’
I turned to Haggia. ‘Have you got any chicken?’
‘Chicken?’ she said from the other side of some shelves.
‘Yes, chicken,’ I said.
‘No, I can’t get chicken,’ Haggia said.
‘Why not?’ Lola said, looking around at the fruit and vegetables in wonder. ‘Don’t you have a licence?’
‘I’ve got a licence for everything,’ Haggia wobbled towards us. ‘I don’t know where to get it from.’
‘The sky people,’ Roach said. ‘They’ve got hens up there.’
‘I don’t know them,’ Haggia said. ‘Are they nice?’
‘We can put you in touch with a very nice lady who’ll sort you out with a regular supply of chicken,’ Minos said. ‘She owes us, doesn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She owes us big time.’
‘She owes me,’ Roach said. ‘I pretended to be married to her. For two whole weeks.’
‘Really?’ Haggia said.
Roach groaned. ‘Don’t ask. They were the longest weeks of my life. Chicken is a good return though. I like chicken.’
Haggia winked at me suggesting that she thought I would tell her all about it later, but that never works on me, I just don’t have the gossip gene. We lapsed into awkward silence again, having proved our usefulness in ordinary situations.
‘How’s Marshall?’ I said.
‘Fine, fine,’ Haggia said. ‘He’s popping in later. He has an idea he wants to talk about.’
‘What idea?’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ Haggia said. ‘He hasn’t popped in yet to talk about it.’
‘I see,’ I said.
I looked at Lola who was always the best of us in uncomfortable social situations which required small talk, but she was concentrating on inspecting the dirt on a potato.
‘Tea?’ Haggia said.
My wristset beeped to alert me to a call and I answered, grateful for the distraction.
‘Blades,’ Yum said. ‘Job for you.’
‘I’m off today,’ I said. Everyone was trying to listen in as Yum’s voice rasped through the tiny speaker.
‘Special request, sorry. I need Casino Flamingo as well,’ Yum always said Casino’s name in full and with a flourish that suggested he was referring to a great cabaret artiste. I put the volume on the call up so Casino could join in. Everyone listened with studied interest.
‘So, special request for Blades,’ Yum said. ‘Pick up the package from here and then deliver.’
‘Why do you need me?’ Casino said.
‘You both have to go,’ Yum said. ‘It’s a code nineteen package’
A code nineteen package was one that contained very sensitive information, too secretive for security involvement and all its troublesome paperwork. It was covered by all manner of complicated laws and regulations and needed more than one courier to deliver it. The second one had to witness the delivery. But that didn’t mean there was always something worth selling or stealing in the delivery. Code nineteen packages were not meant to be carried, they were meant to be cuddled, they were often deliveries of a very personal nature. I once rode a package from the Head of the Academy to the Under Minister of Welfare on a code nineteen. Three weeks later the sender was killed by the person who received the package in an extreme sex session that went very wrong. It was alleged that Packet had been running their bondage gear around the city for months, so I always viewed them with a huge interest.
‘I’m off today too,’ Casino said, sitting on the sack of rice that seemed a popular perch. ‘Get someone else.’
Roach, Minos and Lola looked disgusted. We were supposed to be a team after all.
‘Casino, get over it. It’s a nineteen,’ I said. ‘How much is the fee?’
Yum threw a number in the air. It was a big number and it just kind of hung there for a bit. Casino stood up again.
‘Terms?’ he said.
‘Within an hour and a half, the clock’s been ticking for twenty minutes already,’ Yum said. ‘Sorry about that. I needed to go to the toilet.’
We left the other three to talk chicken with Haggia, I was pretty sure she’d get the full story out of Roach. Casino wasn’t in a very talkative mood as we ran back to the hotel to pick up our bikes. We were soon on the road, racing to get to Packet.
Casino was a little bit faster over the ground than me but more risk adverse. He never went up on the roofs and avoided the underground. He didn’t like to squeeze between things only a breath wider then his bike. That was why I was Packet’s top rider and he only just made the top grade. It was also why I had been ticketed for dangerous riding sixty three times more than him and was on a perpetual warning for discipline but I wasn’t in it for a pat on the head. This time I was blazing ahead though.
‘That’s not fair,’ he said. ‘You’re even pedalling backwards.’
‘Do you want a lift?’
‘Can you?’
It wasn’t too hard to move his bike as well as my own. I took us down a back street and over the Markets to the quieter streets where people went to get high in more conventional ways. We looked down on them, huddled around various dealers like bugs round light bulbs. We flew past the third storey windows of stash houses and brothels. I didn’t dare go higher in case I dropped him and besides he was already shrieking and squealing like a child being tickled, with a mixture of horror and delight. And for a while, as we swooped and dived like birds through the quiet of the cit
y’s secret spaces, it was like being a kid again. The night before and Casino’s ultimatum seemed a lifetime away. I didn’t want to think about that, and I didn’t know why it hurt, but it did. I brought us back down a couple of streets behind Packet’s tiny office.
‘Can you make yourself fly?’ he said. ‘Let me take the bike.’
I got of my bike and tried to lift myself into the air. It wouldn’t work.
‘Pity,’ he said.
‘I’m not really sure what I can do, I can make tea, and get dressed and stuff.’ I didn’t mention the bird.
He laughed. ‘I guess it’s tough to work out what you want to do when you can do anything.’
‘Clock’s ticking,’ I was anxious to avoid revisiting last night’s discussion and we rode around the corner old style.
Yum was sitting in his little booth with his headset crammed around his fat head. Yum was so called because it was the word he uttered most often. He had a fat body to go with his fat head. Someone told me his real name was Pinch, but that’s a thin man’s name if ever I heard one.
‘About time,’ Yum said even though we’d been about four times faster that we had any right to be in the real world. He tossed a thin package on the narrow counter in front of him.
I picked it up, squeezed it to test for nipple clamps, which was a negative, and read the address out.
‘That’s the cash on delivery address,’ Casino said.
‘Yeah, it is,’ I looked at Yum with my suspicious face. ‘Who gave you this?’
‘I don’t know, some man,’ Yum said. ‘This is also payment on delivery. It’s off the accounts.’
‘Right,’ Casino said. It wasn’t unusual for a code nineteen to be off the accounts.
‘Do you have the docket?’ I said.
Yum rooted around under the counter, found a battered clipboard and ripped off a slip of paper that had been defecated upon by his illegible writing. I could just about make out the number 442189. ‘He said it was very important and that I had to make sure you delivered it properly with no messing about.’
‘I object to the inference that we mess about,’ I said.
‘Object all you like,’ Yum said. ‘Time’s a-wasting.’
I could usually find redeeming features in people but not in Yum, not even one. I doubted that he could even ride a bike. He would often send people on impossible jobs, like ones where you had to cycle the entire western road in five minutes when it would take an hour in a car on a clear road, with an Enforce escort.
The door was just how I remembered it, hiding away beneath its stone arch. I rang the bell. It was then I realised that I looked a complete state. I was wearing the same clothes that I’d had on the day before. I could feel what my hair was doing and it wasn’t concentrating on looking good, that was for sure. A clean face was the best I could hope for. Casino locked our bikes together and leant them against the wall. A green flashing light warned thieves that they would be electrocuted if they touched them, but that was only helpful if they knew what the green light meant, otherwise it would just provide an important lesson for the future.
‘Last time she opened the door before I knocked. I was just standing here with my hand in the air. I must have looked very silly,’ I was burbling.
Casino grinned. ‘I see.’
‘Shall I knock?’
‘Shall I wait over there so you can have some privacy?’
I pulled a hideous face at him and, with perfect timing, the door opened.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Oh.’
It was a man.
Casino patted me on the back in a comforting fashion that didn’t please me.
‘Yes?’ said the man. He was nondescript. Not interesting or attractive in any way at all, a bit of a waste.
‘Delivery,’ I said in my bored voice.
‘Do you have a reference number?’
‘442189’ I said.
‘Come in.’
Casino was impressed by the hallway. I could tell by the intake of breath. It was still like stepping out of time into somewhere very specific you somehow knew but had never visited. Even though I’d been there before it felt new to me, yet it felt very familiar. It was disorientating. We followed the man down the hallway to the library.
‘Just a moment,’ he said, ushering us inside.
The room was empty, that is to say she wasn’t in it.
‘Look at these books,’ Casino said in wonder. ‘I’m going to come back later when I’m invisible.’
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ said the man from the doorway. ‘I will still be able to see you.’
We had a standoff of gazes then, which the man, who still wasn’t anything exciting to look at, won hands down.
‘Where is...’ I said.
‘Étienne?’ said the man.
‘Yes,’ I said. At least he hadn’t said my something or other. My brain refused to process suggestions for suitable terms.
‘She apologises but she has been taken away on other business. She will see you again, but probably not here. She has moved on from here for the time being,’ he gave me a thin blue card. The fee.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
He opened the package. Most people checked the package then confirmed payment but he had this trustworthy air about him. There. Something nice about him. Another nice thing about him was that if he was staying here and she wasn’t, then they weren’t involved. What a nice man.
A disc fell out of the package into his honest, honourable hands. It was stamped with the Imagination Industries logo, just like the other one.
‘They provide us with information, as you know. Of a delicate nature.’
‘Like what?’ Casino said,
‘About people playing the games. What their subconscious is saying while they aren’t paying attention, what they respond to, what they don’t. We do a lot of research.’
‘On live people?’ Casino said.
‘Is that allowed? The data lifting I mean,’ I said wishing Casino would shut up.
‘It’s not strictly according to the letter of the law, no, hence the special delivery,’ he smiled. ‘And I’m sure Imagination Industries wouldn’t like it if they found out but I think you have enough secrets of your own to know how to keep this one.’
‘Who do you work for?’ Casino said.
‘I’m, how shall we say? Freelance,’ said the man. ‘Like you.’
‘I see,’ Casino said. ‘And your name is?’
‘Not for you to know.’
‘I’d quite like to know it, if you don’t mind,’ Casino said.
‘Why? You’ll never see me again.’
‘We’ll be going now,’ I said. Casino was looking thoughtful in a bad way, in a way that suggested he was connecting up the dots in his head so that they drew a short, straight line between him being invisible and it being this man’s fault. At least there was a chance that he’d stop going on about Enforce experimenting on us, so some good would come of the trip. I frogmarched Casino down the hallway. I wanted to know more about what the man, and therefore Étienne, was doing with the data from Imagination Industries but that would have to wait.
‘That man has something to do with all this,’ he said as I freed our bikes.
‘Maybe,’ I said.
‘You know he does, and Doodle knows something I bet you.’
‘Leave Doodle alone,’ I said. ‘He’s got enough problems of his own without you blaming him for yours.’
‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ he said. ‘No one put you in charge.’
‘No one put me in charge of what?’
‘Of anything.’
‘I don’t think I’m in charge, don’t start that again.’
‘Enforce,’ Casino said under his breath getting on his bike. ‘Behind you. Three in a car.’ This was more important than arguing.
‘How far?’
‘A hundred metres. Get on and ride,’ he said.
We rode off all business-like down a s
ide street.
‘They’re following us,’ Casino said.
‘They can’t be,’ I said.
‘They can hardly fit the car down here, they must be after us the effort they’re making,’ Casino said. ‘Take that left.’
He rode ahead a little and turned in front of me, as I came around the corner I saw his bike pedalling itself down the street ahead of me. It stopped and locked itself to a drainpipe.
‘Thanks a lot,’ I said. I heard the car pull into the street right behind me. They sounded the siren once.
‘I’m not leaving you,’ Casino said.
It was Vermina and she had bought Tixylix. The alley was so narrow they had to squeeze out of the car.
‘Hello, Sorcha,’ Vermina said. ‘We’ve been looking for you.’
Vermina was tall, a kindred spirit in that sense. She had dark curls that were always falling into her bright blue eyes. It made her look like she was plotting mischief of the most delicious kind. The smile helped too, it was a smile that promised things. She must have been at least ten years older than me but you wouldn’t have known it by looking at us, in the underclass we took a little more wear and tear.
‘Really? Whatever for?’ I said.
‘We want to ask you some questions,’ the beige sidekick said.
‘I’m not feeling very talkative,’ I said.
‘That doesn’t matter, that comes later,’ Tixylix said.
‘Later?’
‘Later,’ Vermina said. ‘We’re here to arrest you first.’
‘Arrest me? What for?’
‘A citizen work placement violation, I’m afraid, not sure exactly what but then I don’t need to be,’ Vermina said. She showed me a set of cuffs. ‘Just your colour I thought.’
I knew for an absolute fact that my work placement records were squeaky clean. I knew that my citizen record was squeaky clean too because I updated it once a week, the day before the system checked it. I was being pulled for something else, something which necessitated a search by senior officials.
‘What about my bike?’ I said.
‘I’ll just get that for you,’ Tixylix said. ‘Wouldn’t want anyone to steal it.’
‘That’s a lot of paper work,’ Vermina said.
I couldn’t watch as Tixylix put my bike behind the wheels of the car and made the driver reverse over it, then drive forward and then reverse until it was beyond repair. Even Vermina had the grace to look away.
‘Assume the position,’ Tixylix said.
‘You can’t search me. You’re a man,’ I said. ‘Just.’
‘Oh, all right then,’ Vermina said, sounding as bored as she could.
She frisked me in her usual thorough fashion, and once more than was necessary, passing all my technical knick-knacks to Tixylix as she travelled around the inside of my clothes. Tixylix crushed everything beneath his heavy boots and kicked the debris around the street. I hoped Casino was still hovering around somewhere.
‘Finished?’ I said to Vermina.
‘Yes, thank you. You won’t need any of that at the Grosvenor,’ she said.
I thought I would be going to a local station but at the Grosvenor Casino would have to leave me, along with all hope. The Grosvenor was just an Enforce station, but it was next to the Detention Centre. It meant one thing if they took you there. Casino was my only chance. The man who’d just given me three days before he was going to bail on me. Maybe he was right. I sat in the back of the car in between Tixylix and Vermina as some bicycle-hating grunt drove us at breakneck speed through the city with the sirens screaming. Nobody spoke and I was too busy wondering if I was about to be subjected to an unpleasant medical intervention to make any bright remarks.
The interview room was lit by a single, bare light bulb in the middle of the ceiling and the table was spotted with something that looked like old, brown blood. The walls were solid, not a two way mirror in sight, and there was no recording equipment anywhere. I had been waiting, alone, for an indeterminate amount of time and they had not deigned to take my cuffs off. The door opened and Vermina popped her head round it as though she was attending a visiting relative at home.
‘Fancy a tea, coffee, cigarette?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Tea, milk, two sugars.’
‘Sorry honey, we’re out of tea.’
‘Coffee is fine,’ I said.
‘None of that either.’
‘I bet you don’t even smoke anymore,’ I said.
‘Of course I do,’ she said, closing the door behind her. ‘This job is very stressful.’
I didn’t smoke as a rule but right then I would have done anything to pass the time. She sat opposite me and handed me the pack of cigarettes.
‘Do you mind,’ I said, holding up my cuffed hands.
The saucy smirk would have been amusing under different circumstances, thrilling even. She handed me a cigarette and lit it.
‘I can take it from here,’ I said, she was far too close.
She sat back, exhaled a long, smoky breath across the table and pushed a dark curl back to where it belonged. ‘May I be honest with you?’ she said.
‘Do you know how?’
‘Funny,’ she said. ‘Not a time for jokes. Not for you.’
‘You think?’
‘Yes. I don’t know what you’ve done but you are in a lot of trouble.’
‘I am?’ I didn’t even try to look like I wasn’t bothered, she could see straight through me.
‘Look, you’re a bit cocky, a bit too smart for your own good but you’re not fundamentally bad. You seem to have got yourself involved in something that is way out of your league. Way out of it.’
‘Like what?’ I said.
‘If you really don’t know, which somehow I doubt, you’re about to find out,’ she finished her cigarette and ground it under her shoe. ‘They’ll be here in a minute. Listen carefully and try and buy yourself some time.’
‘Why? What’s happening?’
I watched her get up and walk out, an answer not forthcoming. One thing was clear to me, this situation was out of control. I was just putting my cigarette out when the door opened and Vermina strode back in. This time she was all business and she was followed by Tixylix and a woman I’d never seen before.
‘My name is Rowling,’ the woman said. ‘You have met these two already.’
The three of them sat opposite me. Rowling had a tablet with her, she scrolled through it.
‘Your file,’ she said. ‘Is very long.’
She spoke in statements. Most Enforce used leading questions to get you to say what they wanted. She was too well dressed to be Enforce. She wasn’t government or administration either. They were all like skittish show ponies, this one was tougher than that. Tixylix was gazing at her with huge admiration.
‘You are smart enough to know that we haven’t got you in here on a work placement code violation,’ she said.
Another statement. Vermina was watching me. If I didn’t know any better I would have said that she was trying to help me.
‘You met this man,’ Rowling showed me a picture of Prophet.
I was trying to work out how to handle this so I stayed quiet, waiting for a brainwave.
‘And so a time will come to pass when the dark five will emerge from the underground to wage war against the light for the first of the final times. One to speak in tongues, one to cleanse in flame, one to stand beyond sight, one to read beyond the veil and one to move the earth,’ she said.
I looked at Vermina. She was the only thing in the room that wasn’t spinning just for the briefest moment.
‘Have you heard that before?’
A question, not a statement.
Vermina’s eyes widened a fraction of a millimetre, it was only just noticeable but I noticed it. What was she trying to say to me? Buy some time. That was it.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. It was different.
‘You’re not sure.’
Statements did n
ot require an answer, that was the game, so I sat tight. Rowling looked old. We just didn’t see old people like that anymore. The poor died young and the rich had work done. Her short hair was just the blonde side of white and curled away from her face as though she was facing a strong wind. Her eyes were sunken in a face dominated by sharp, high cheekbones. Her skin was paper thin. She looked near death. At the very least she should have retired like the rest of them. They retired and we worked until we dropped dead, often at work. It was the final insult. Her index finger scrolled back through the tablet again, fingernail tapping like a blind man’s cane.
‘You are a courier. I imagine it is hard to make ends meet in your, how shall we say, citizen bracket,’ Rowling put the tablet down on the table. ‘But I think you understand perfectly well the value of information.’
Tixylix smiled to himself. The punch line was on the way.
‘This, this prophecy I think they call it, is just another piece of information. Don’t you think? Not really a prophecy in the classical sense.’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. There was a question there.
‘You’re not sure of much,’ she made eye contact with me at last. It was like a face full of hail. ‘Where did you hear this information? Who told you it?’
‘You did,’ I said.
‘I did?’
‘Yes, just then, you told me it.’
‘That is not true,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you try again?’
‘I have heard it before, you’re right. I’ve heard it three times. Is that a significant number?’
Her gaze dropped a few degrees in temperature. Vermina held her breath. Tixylix wasn’t smiling anymore.
‘Three?’ said Rowling.
Vermina glared at me as though I’d made a mistake.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said to her. ‘You look tense. You need a holiday. Maybe a trip to a nice island somewhere.’
Vermina turned to Rowling. ‘May I?
‘Be my guest,’ said Rowling, standing up.
Vermina came round to my side of the table and stood me up.
‘Can I do it?’ said Tixylix.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Rowling. ‘You lack subtly, you’ll kill her. Vermina will do it.’
Vermina punched me in the left kidney. I doubled over and her knee met my temple. The other side of my head almost bounced off the edge of the table as soon as it hit it. The last thing I saw in that room was her shoe, its shiny black toe dirtied by a thin string of vomit.
I came round in a white tiled cell in the Detention Centre. I knew I was in the Centre because a helpful sign over the door said ‘Welcome to the Detention Centre’ in cheerful red letters. They had chosen a font that looked like embroidery. The only sound was someone groaning. That turned out to be me. The cell was empty expect for me and another bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. I was lying on the floor.
After a while I got to my feet. I had a broad cut across my temple that would need stitches and my back felt like someone had parked car on it. I guessed I would have plenty of time to work out what was going on, the rest of my life perhaps. The Detention Centre was a vast, dark hole that couldn’t be crawled out of. The cuffs had gone at least.
After another while I sat down again. I was hungry. I worked out it could be any time between eight hours and a day and a half since I was taken in, maybe two days. I’d heard that at the Detention Centre they sometimes let people starve to death just to free up cell space. My stomach rumbled.
Another while passed. I wonder how many minutes there might be in a while. It was hard to say. I sighed, I had only been conscious for a while and I was already driving myself mad. I lay on the floor again and pretended to be asleep in the hope that after a while I would fool myself and nod off. At least Vermina was kind of on my side, when she wasn’t hitting me, as much as Vermina was ever on anyone’s side, which wasn’t much. I knew it was a bad idea to think about her because they too were the kind of thoughts that could drive you mad but it was those thoughts or ones about my predicament so I went with the distraction of Vermina.
It was years ago, when it was just Minos and me. I was just starting out as a courier, pulling bad dockets for worse money, Minos was working at the Happy Chicken Valley Take Away for real and for minimum wage, but after hours we were making a name for ourselves as hackers, fencers and general fixers. Things were taking off but not fast enough for me, I was in a bar near Loho nursing a single shot of cheap rum and a bad mood.
‘Are you drinking that or have you become attached to it?’
There was a woman sitting opposite me in the booth I was hogging all for myself, I sulked better in private. ‘What?’
‘Don’t say what, say pardon, darling,’ she said.
‘No.’
‘Don’t be like that, what are you drinking?’
‘Rum.’
I watched her walk to the bar with a swagger that just about evaporated my bad mood in an instant, by the time I watched her walk back towards me I was all cheered up. I figured she was some rich number on the pull, looking for a bit of rough and I could play the bit of rough like a professional. But she wasn’t like that at all.
‘My name’s Vermina,’ she said. ‘What’s yours?’
She was indeed upper class, you didn’t get vowels or names like that in the NW Sector, but she wasn’t looking for anything.
‘I’m glad I happened upon you,’ she said a month or so later, pulling the duvet around her shoulders in her cold flat. ‘You’re fun.’
I was fun, lots of fun, but Minos was getting mad at me because I kept disappearing in the middle of jobs. I’d leave patches unfinished, I hacked into a Ministry of Work and Labour contacts list and left the back door open as I snuck out again so they knew how we got in and fixed it. But worst of all, I screwed up the payment for a load of old digital cameras and the seller had come looking for me but found Minos and took all his frustrations out on him instead.
‘Can I introduce you to Minos?’ I said. ‘He’s harmless.’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’d like a best friend. It must be nice.’
‘I’ll be your best friend.’
‘You know that would be a demotion, don’t you,’ she said, starting all over again.
Minos had tidied up for her arrival. We were living in a small three bedroomed place on an estate near an old suburban railway station. We had planned to use it for storage and live somewhere else but somewhere else was proving difficult to find. We couldn’t agree on what we wanted, I wanted a view and Minos wanted a garden. I loitered on the main road waiting for her taxi and we walked back to the house together. I opened the door to find Minos leaning against a door frame with a bottle of wine in one hand and a twirling corkscrew in the other. He was a study of nonchalance and I realised he was nervous.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘This is Minos Fry,’ I said. ‘Excuse the mess.’
‘Come through,’ Minos said. ‘I’ve attempted to tidy up but we’ve got too much stuff and not enough house.’
We walked through the living room to the kitchen where three glasses were standing ready on the table. Vermina looked at all the computer equipment piled up behind the sofa and seemed to take a great interest in the rolls of film stock in the corner. We’d got them from a man in a market who, it turned out, had stolen them from some archive in the Cathedral Quarter. They were worth a fortune and we were waiting to confirm the size of the finder’s fee before the authorities would be allowed to have them back.
‘Can I have a word?’ Vermina said as Minos poured the drinks. ‘In private.’
I walked her back through the booty room and she opened the front door and we stood on the doorstep whispering.
‘I thought you were a courier,’ she said.
‘I am, you don’t get legs like this driving a tro-tro.’
‘Then what’s all that? What’s Minos into?’
‘That’s a side line.’
‘It is
just his sideline, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘How much do you think a courier makes?’
‘Please don’t,’ she ran her hands through her hair and groaned. ‘Please don’t.’
‘Please don’t what?’
She just shook her head, she had tears in her eyes.
‘What?’ I said.
She slipped her hand into a pocket inside her jacket and pulled out a small black wallet, the kind that folded in half and held a card or two inside. She showed me the cards inside hers. One said she was an Enforce officer of the third rank with four commendations and the other said she had a licence to carry firearms and to use them to kill. We looked at each other, then I pushed the door open, stepped into the house and shut the door again, me on the inside, her on the outside. I’d assumed she didn’t have to work, not with that accent and that address. It could have been beautiful but I hated Enforce, they represented everything wrong with the city, with the world. And Enforce hated me. And Minos. And everyone else I knew. But time passed and I realised I still felt no different to how I’d felt under that duvet, I couldn’t hate her, I couldn’t even pretend. I guessed you couldn’t hate the one, that wasn’t how these things worked.
I was woken by the sound of the door unlocking. It was a while later.
‘Stand in the corner,’ said a man in a blue uniform and dark glasses. ‘Put your hands on your head. Whenever this door opens, do it.’
‘Facing the corner or facing the room?’ I said.
There was a pause. ‘Facing the room.’
I did as I was told. Another man in an identical uniform appeared, holding a gun. It was pointed at me. ‘Meal time,’ the man said, gesturing with his shiny, shiny friend that I should leave the cell.
There was a line of people outside on a metal gantry like a long balcony. I guessed that prisoners would be the word for them, but I wasn’t quite ready to accept my incarceration yet. It was a line of people. There were more uniformed people with guns and sunglasses. As far as I could see to my left and right there were cell doors stretching out. Above and below were more floors of corridors. The Centre was enormous.
‘Move it,’ said the guard who’d opened my door.
We shuffled along the hallway for about ten minutes and then went down some stairs. No one spoke. The bottom of the stairs opened out into a vast room filled with tables and chairs. The line broke up and people surged forward to find a place at a table. Each place was set with a plastic box and each box had the word lunch stencilled on it. So, it was lunchtime, but on what day? I sat down at a table that was a long way from any walls, any walkway and any uniforms. I didn’t look at anyone. I kept my head down and looked at my lunch box until a man made an odd snorting noise, like he had something stuck in his nostril. It was a noise I recognised. It was Doodle.
‘Sorcha Blades,’ he said. ‘What are you here for?’
‘No idea,’ I said.
‘Swap with Doodle,’ he said to the woman sitting next to me. Her eyes were swollen and red from crying. She just got up and swapped with him. You could see she wasn’t with us, she given in and closed up. She cried tears of habit.
‘Seriously, what for?’ Doodle said.
‘For a work place violation.’
‘Sorcha should not be in Detention Centre for that.’
‘Tell me about it. Why are you here?’
‘I stabbed an Enforce officer with a chopstick.’
‘What?’
‘I am safer in here, trust me,’ he said. ‘Out there, Doodle dead. What have you done to your head? You get the rough treatment?’
An alarm sounded and almost everyone in the room ripped open their boxes in unison. The noise was chilling. The man opposite Doodle was covered in scratches. He ate the plastic wrapping on his sandwich first.
‘Yes, very rough. I have to get out of here,’ I said.
‘Impossible to get out,’ Doodle smiled. ‘More importantly, impossible to get in.’
He started his lunch. Everything was bright and cheerful and wrapped in crinkly plastic. There was a sandwich, crisps, a non-dairy yoghurt and a carton of generic flavoured juice.
‘Sorcha, fare thee well?’
A man on the other side of me who seemed to be a quiet, unassuming gentleman was swept aside and a new, far more assuming gentleman took his place. He was pale from lack of sunlight and his eyes were red and bloodshot. He held his swollen thumbs away from his hands as though they were painful, they twitched every so often.
‘Hello, Ginger,’ I said.
‘Verily,’ Ginger said. ‘Tis strange indeed to see one as fair as thee here, in this foul establishment.’
Doodle was staring at Ginger with a look of utter incomprehension on his face.
‘Doodle, this is Ginger Yates,’ I said. ‘He’s a gamer.’
‘Was, my dear child, was,’ Ginger said. ‘It gives me great sorrow to report that the dark side have captured poor Ginger and plan to put him to the sword.’
‘Ginger plays dungeons and dragons games,’ I said to Doodle who still looked baffled by Ginger. ‘As you can see he’s also a blonde so I’m not sure why he’s called Ginger.’
‘But no longer play I,’ Ginger said. ‘Reason the first, I ran up a mighty bill which I could not satisfy at the House o’ Games and reason the second, I hacked into the mainframe of said House o’ Games so I could quench my mighty thirst for the Bane Army.’
‘They put you in here for hacking into a game?’ I said.
‘Verily, ‘twas an Administration cipher,’ Ginger said. ‘And I bargained with some information I had found for my own gains.’
‘An Administration what?’ Doodle said.
‘A diversion where thy evil overlords seek noble questors who will fight the good fight against the nefarious plans they concoct against those in the real world.’ When he said real world he made quotation marks with four fingers. Ginger was another one of those gamers.
‘Oh dear,’ said Doodle, no nearer to getting it. Even if Ginger spoke English, you either got games or you didn’t. I got it but didn’t play because I knew I’d end up like Ginger, hopefully without the intonation but I’d be in the game all the time. At least in the games things changed, there were events that happened, you could do things to affect the outcome. If someone offered me a game right then I would have played it until I’d beaten it.
‘Oh dear indeed, my fine companion,’ he leant forward. ‘But, mayhap it has not been all unwanted news. I did have an opportunity to play the new game that is on the lips of the wise and noble.’
‘What new game?’ I said, thinking of Agent Tourniquet.
‘The Vanguard, it is named. You must form a bond with other gamers and save the world from certain doom.’
‘Oh, that one,’ I said. ‘Massey’s got that one.’
‘Do not speak of him,’ Ginger said. ‘He hath barred me from his establishment for no reason.’
‘You do not pay the bill,’ I said. ‘That mayhap is the reason.’
Ginger laughed, it sounded strange in that room. He raised a juice box in his huge fist, ‘I salute you maiden, you are a bright star indeed. Massey has a great game, the best of all games perhaps.’
‘Yates,’ a man in uniform strode up behind Ginger. ‘Rehab.’
Ginger looked up at the man with an expression of great stoicism on his pallid face. ‘Very well, dark one. It is the hour.’
The guard rolled his eyes so hard they almost fell out of his head. Ginger followed him through the tables. He walked like he was exhausted.
‘How do you know him?’ Doodle said. ‘You know everybody.’
‘I know a certain circle. Our paths cross a lot that’s all. Ginger used to work at an office I delivered to on account,’ I said. ‘He was quite important, or what they think is important. Then he played a game at someone’s birthday party and that was it.’
‘Well, game over now,’ Doodle said. ‘I can’t believe he dared to call you a maide
n. You must be feeling sorry for him to let him get away with that.’
I tried to watch where Ginger was going so I could find him later and ask him about the Vanguard. But Rowling was coming toward me and she had Vermina in tow.
‘Doodle, I have to get out of here,’ I said.
Doodle looked up to see what I was looking at, then he started screaming. It took four men in uniform to hold him down. Everyone else just stared. Rowling and Vermina waited next to the table while they subdued him, Rowling watching with great interest. Then Vermina put her hand on my shoulder.
‘If we could have a word,’ she said.
The whole room, which must have held a few thousand people, watched in absolute silence as I left, Rowling on one side, Vermina on the other. It was OK, I had lost my appetite.
Different room, same questions. Same violent end. That Vermina had a wicked left hook.
I worked out from the stencils on the sides of the boxes in the canteen that this went on for four days. After the first two days I got the hang of it and ate as fast as possible so I’d have something to throw up that didn’t burn my throat like the bile did. There was no sign of Ginger. I found out that Doodle was in cell 34555 and I was in 34561. They couldn’t have known that we knew each other and to keep it that way we stopped talking. I saw him once or twice looking all blank and hollowed out. I didn’t get a chance to find out what had freaked him out so much but I assumed it was Rowling. She was starting to freak me out as well. On the fifth day I was back in my cell after lunch. The laborious chorus of the complex lock system started up and then Vermina stood in the doorway holding a large bag.
‘Do you need me to stand in the corner?’ I said. I still wasn’t complying with that one.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Sit down.’
I sat down.
‘This room is totally secure,’ she said. ‘No surveillance equipment, no eyes or ears anywhere.’
‘That’s a very comforting thought,’ I said. ‘Please don’t hit me.’
‘Most people are less cocky after a few days of questioning,’ she sat next to me. ‘You would make a great officer, you know.’
I didn’t dignify that with a response. She smiled and pulled a first aid kit from the bag. I could see a small padded envelope in it, just like the ones I used to deliver in a life that seems miles away. I felt close to tears.
‘Let me sort your head out, it looks gruesome,’ her deft fingers ran through the box searching for what she needed.
‘I am sorry if it’s upsetting you.’
‘Some things are necessary, Sorcha, but not pleasant. Imagine what someone else would do to you given the opportunity. I’m trying to do you a favour.’
‘I know,’ I did know too.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Yes.’
‘I hope you haven’t got an infection or something. How would you describe the pain?’
‘Excessive.’
She poured some ointment onto a gauze pad. ‘This is going to hurt more,’ she said.
Something brought the tears to my eyes but I couldn’t promise it was that. I watched through them as she caught her lower lip between her teeth in concentration.
‘I’m going to tell you something. If you tell anyone that I’ve told you this I will kill you. You can tell people what I say, but not that I said it. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘I imagine you’ll have to tell people anyway. Minos, perhaps, will need to know. Casino, you were with him earlier?’
‘I’m not sure he’ll care.’
She looked at me, eyebrows raised.
‘Casino has probably gone by now,’ I could feel the tears running down to my chin.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘They should have patched this up straight away. It might scar.’
‘Then I’ll look tough,’ I said.
‘You?’ she smiled, her fingers brushing my cheek. ‘Not you, darling, sorry.’
I didn’t dare breathe in case she moved her hand away but in the end my lungs betrayed me. She went back to peeling butterfly stitches off a small piece of plastic.
‘Rowling knows the prophecy because she is working with what you understand as the three,’ she said as she laid the stitches over the wound. ‘It was unfortunate that you mentioned anything about that but I guess you thought you knew what you were doing. They’ve known about the prophecy for many years, they’ve been waiting for it to get out.’
‘Who have?’
‘I don’t know. The three, I imagine. Rowling talks about they and them but that’s all.’
‘Why is there a prophecy? I don’t understand any of this,’ I said.
She thought about this, dark curls falling over her eyes again. ‘That’s just a word that people use to talk about it, I think. They should be calling it propaganda. Or policy.’ She began to put everything back in her first aid kit.
‘Do they think I’m one of the five?’
‘They are starting to. At first they thought you’d accidentally happened upon the information, as you are wont to do,’ she smiled at that, but the smile disappeared almost as soon as it had come. ‘I don’t want to know if you are or not. They are going to try and make you show them what you can do. I’m not sure how they’ll do that but you need to get out of here before that happens.’
‘I thought no one gets out of here?’
‘No one has got out, as yet,’ she said standing. ‘As yet.’
‘Why are you helping me?’ I stood too.
‘Am I?’ she picked up her bag, pushing the package down inside, right to the bottom.
‘I wish you would,’ I said.
Her heels clicked on the tiles, I never understood how she could walk in those shoes. She rested her hand on the door handle and without turning back to me she said, ‘Rowling works for Imagination Industries. She’s the Executive Director of Internal Affairs. Corporate Security.’ Then she shouted to be let out.
The next two days were quiet. No Vermina, no Rowling. I didn’t say a single word to anyone. I was moved from my cell to the canteen to the shower rooms and studied everything with great care. I was determined to get out of there. I watched to see where the guards went, I noted how often they changed. I made every detail seem random and trivial and, true to form, they all lodged in my head, immovable. There was nothing in my cell, Vermina was right about that. I wondered if she would help me get out, but she seemed to have disappeared. They were no doubt off plotting how to get me to reveal my telekinesis. More times than I could remember the long line of prisoners snaked its way back up the stairs and I was locked back in my cell. I lay on the floor and closed my eyes remembering the floor plan I had laid out in my head. They were right. There wasn’t even a way out of the area I was in, never mind any of the places that lay between where I was and the world outside. On the third or fourth day I was waiting for the lunch bell to tell me I could open my lunch box when the woman next to me tapped me on the arm with two bandaged fingers. Blood was seeping through the material at the tips.
‘Did you hear?’ she said. Her breath smelt medicinal.
‘No,’ I said with an air of finality she didn’t pick up on.
‘He’s back.’
‘Who is?’
‘The Reaver.’
The bell went and I ripped the top of my lunch box off and tore into my sandwich. ‘No, he isn’t,’ I said through a mouthful of synthetic bread and unidentified sandwich filler. ‘He can’t be back.’
The Reaver was a serial killer. He was at the height of his powers when me and Minos were seven or eight. We’d spend dark nights huddled around torches with the rest of the flood babies sharing the stories we’d heard about him. They called him the Reaver because he left sympathy messages for the relatives of his victims. He wasn’t interested in murder, he was interested in bereavement. They said they he was seeking revenge because all his family were killed in the flood. He killed forty seven people in the Riverside Sector over a
two year period. Always using a different method. He was very inventive. They never caught him so we figured he was one of them and they had to let him be.
‘He is,’ she said. ‘He’s back and he’s killing again. But this time he’s killing us.’
‘How do you know, did you get a card?’
‘No. He’s not doing that anymore. He’s cutting out tongues.’
‘That’s not him,’ I said. ‘He didn’t do the same thing twice.’
‘He’s working for Tulan Haq they say, cleaning up.’
‘Maybe it is Haq,’ I peeled my orange. It wouldn’t taste of anything but plastic so I might as well have eaten the skin. I could see an interrogator striding through the tables and chairs with some uniformed guard in tow. There was no sign of Vermina. I crammed the orange in my mouth.
‘They say he wears a golden wig, paid for by the money he steals from his corpses.’
‘It’s not the Reaver,’ I said. ‘It’s gangsters.’
The woman made a rusty, rattling sound that seemed to be her way of laughing. ‘Gangsters, gangsters,’ she said. ‘They’re not gangsters.’
‘No?’ I watched the guards getting closer.
‘They’re angels. The Reaver is one of the angels now.’
‘I do hope we’re not interrupting,’ the guard dragged me up by my elbow. The woman pounced on my half eaten lunch. I wanted to ask her how she knew about the tongues and why she was here. But there was no time for that.
Later my door unlocked, I sat up listening to the familiar clunks and rattles. This was different, nothing ever happened after dinner. The door opened and no one came in.
‘Hello,’ Casino said as he materialised.
I was confused for a moment. ‘Has it been less than three days?’
‘What can I say? I’m a soft touch,’ he smiled.
‘Hey,’ Roach said. He was wearing a blue uniform, with sunglasses, and holding a bundle in his arms. He pushed the door to, slipping a piece of material into the crack so it wouldn’t lock us in. ‘Put these on.’ The bundle unravelled into a uniform. He put some sunglasses on my face. Casino got dressed as well.
We stood in the corridor, like three guards with not much to do, my civilian clothes locked in my cell. Casino had arranged them so it looked as though I had melted in them. Or been vaporised.
‘Doodle’s here,’ I said.
‘We don’t have a uniform for him,’ Roach said.
‘He could have mine,’ Casino said. ‘But it won’t fit him.’
‘Or we can just march him out the front door,’ I said.
‘What cell is he in?’ Casino said, leaning over the railing and taking in the thousands of doors.
‘34555.’
‘Let’s go get him,’ Roach said.
They opened the door with a thin length of metal shaped into a little hook at the end.
‘Minos said the doors are very primitive and it’s mostly for show, all that clanking and banging,’ Casino said. ‘Very evocative. Otherwise they’ve got some nice kit that he’d love to get his hands on.’
Doodle was standing in the corner of the room, his hands on his head.
‘Come on, Doodle,’ I said. ‘Time to go.’
‘Doodle not leaving, no way,’ Doodle said. ‘Doodle is very happy here.’ He didn’t look very happy. He looked bruised and battered.
‘You killed an Enforce officer, Doodle. You’re going to the death chamber,’ Casino said. ‘It’s been on the news.’
‘They have not told me that,’ he said.
‘They don’t tell you,’ Roach said. ‘It’s supposed to be a deterrent. There’s no point telling you, you’ve already committed the crime. You can no longer be deterred, you can only be an example.’
‘And you are quite the example,’ Casino said.
‘Come on, Doodle,’ I said. ‘We can sort this out, I promise.’ Once we got him back to the NW sector he could disappear.
‘Sorcha Blades promises,’ said Doodle as though it were hopeless.
‘We all do,’ Casino said. ‘Now we need to move.’
Casino had the plans of the Centre on a huge piece of paper.
‘How quaint,’ I said.
‘None of our equipment works here,’ Roach said. ‘We’re strictly lo-tech today.’
‘Except for these,’ Casino pulled three Enforce security passes out of his pocket.
‘Where did you get those?’ I said.
‘Here’s a funny story,’ Casino said. ‘I delivered them to Minos. Yum called me with a job, I picked it up and it was addressed to Minos, care of Greasy Clive’s.
‘Who sent it?’ I said.
‘Yum said it was a woman,’ Casino said. ‘You know how helpful Yum is.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘He just said she was tall with dark hair,’ Casino said.
‘Maybe it was the witch,’ Roach said.
‘I think the witch has red hair,’ I said.
Roach put Doodle in handcuffs and we marched him down the long hallway that led down to the ground floor.
‘If we see an old woman with fair hair, we’re screwed,’ I said. ‘She’ll be wearing a suit. She’s very thin, average height.’
‘Enforce?’ Roach said.
‘No,’ Doodle said. ‘Worse. Much worse.’
There was a security check point up ahead. I kicked Doodle in the shin. He yelled and started to struggle. We picked up our pace. Roach shouted at the guard to let us through, babbling about crimes against the state, Prime Ministerial orders and Tulan Haq’s office. We were through. I glanced at the security monitors as we passed, everything was quiet and peaceful. There was no sign of Rowling, Vermina or Tixylix. We marched Doodle down miles of corridors and through seventeen different security points. They were all different, some manned and some automated terminals, but our passes got us through all of them. I was starting to feel tired and the cap Casino had pulled over my bandage was irritating me. Roach led us to a car park full of official cars.
‘Now what,’ I said.
Roach pulled a key fob from his pocket.
‘This came in the magical package as well,’ he said.
He activated the keylock and about a hundred metres away a car alerted us to its presence with its horn and its lights. We tried not to run, keeping it nice and tight for the cameras. Doodle went in the back with me, Roach driving with Casino beside him. It was an unmarked car, the type Vermina used, not one of the squad cars. We rolled out of the car park and up the ramp. There were two guards in a booth beside a barrier. We brought the car to a halt on a metal plate in front of them.
‘They’re scanning it,’ Roach said.
We waited.
‘OK, clear,’ said one of the guards. ‘Have a good night.’
As we pulled out into the street, a car that was the same make and model as the one that had been following me, the one that we’d seen at the OP, turned into the car park.
‘So, all you need to break out is a pass,’ Casino said, turning to me in the back seat.
‘That was a lucky break,’ I said.
‘Very lucky,’ he laughed. ‘Where can we take you Doodle?’
‘Home, please,’ Doodle said. ‘If it’s still there.’
Minos was our eye in the sky, watching the traffic systems to find us an Enforce free route as we drove to see if Doodle’s place was indeed still there. It wasn’t. It had been squatted by another stall holder at the Jubilee Market. Doodle was not impressed but as the guy said, while he lay on the floor with his hands behind his head, no one gets out of the Detention Centre.
‘Now they do,’ said Doodle. ‘Doodle and his friends break out.’
We had to explain at some length that we weren’t real Enforce before he’d get up, but we got there in the end. Doodle would have his digs back in a week and in the meantime we invited him to stay with us.
Minos and Lola were sitting on the reception counter when we got in. They were bickering but o
nly because they were worried, it was sweet. Minos’s hair was flickering in bright flames as though he had a head full of matches. They cheered as we came through the door, Lola gave me a hug and Minos shook everyone’s hand and then punched me in the shoulder.
‘Look, what we’ve done,’ Minos said, dragging me away.
‘Calm down, Minos,’ Lola said. ‘Let her get in.’
‘No, show her, show her,’ Casino said.
We all tumbled through to the smoking room at the far end of the restaurant, Doodle trailing behind. It was all done out in dark wood and large paintings of historical country scenes.
‘It’s an incident room,’ Minos said. ‘Do you love it?’
They had set up a series of monitors and display boards showing pictures and news clippings. Some film footage was rolling on a screen in the corner and a live feed from the local news channel was showing Marshall Dailly. Pictures of the five of us were on the wall. Lola had written the word Vanguard in big letters on a piece of paper and stuck it above our pictures. Prophet was on another wall with Haggia and Dailly. There was a blank square outlined in thick green pen where the witch should have been. They’d included everything. Even things that didn’t seem to be relevant.
‘You lot are crazy,’ Doodle said.
‘Do you love it?’ Minos said.
‘I love it,’ I said.
‘So, a quick summary,’ Lola said. ‘This is control central. You are not in any code violation so we figured that no matter how much we might not like it, two and two do in fact equal four.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Casino said. ‘I have been a little bit irritating.’
‘So, you need to tell us everything you’ve found out inside, and you Doodle,’ Minos said.
Lola frowned. ‘I think first they will be having baths, dinners and rests, Minos. This can wait.’
‘Tixylix broke my bike,’ I said as Roach escorted me up the stairs.
‘Oh,’ Roach stopped on the top step. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Vermina just stood there,’ I said. ‘I may never forgive her.’ I touched the bandage on my head.
He peeled back the bandage and inspected my wound. ‘At least whoever patched you up did a good job,’
‘Did they?’
‘Yes, great care and attention taken,’ he smiled. ‘Forgiveness is divine, you know.’
And then, after escaping all that pretty much unscathed, I almost drowned myself by falling asleep in the bath.