by Chris Ward
Horses and spider webs
Jorge was leading them through a series of alleys and passageways between ancient townhouses that Jennie would not have known existed without their diminutive guide. The boy wanted to keep them off the major roads, where every gathering of people meant delays at best and trouble at worst. Crossing the street at an intersection she saw a line of military transportation vehicles pushing their way through the disarray of abandoned cars, fidgeting forward and then stopping to reverse, over and over like a group of blind cows stepping through potholes. Within hours the city would be in total lockdown. Already public address systems were calling for a curfew, urging people to return to their homes, but few seemed to be paying attention. Some shopkeepers were nailing boards over their windows while others were setting out stands of postcards and other trinkets as if the world as they knew it wasn’t about to end.
Walking beside her, Jun was lost in his thoughts. Guilt for being part of this weighed on his mind, and his shoulders seemed to sag beneath it. Even now that finding Nozomi was a serious possibility, the spectre of his dead girlfriend had left him like an old worn-out punchbag, his stuffing gone.
After so many curving alleyways that Jennie was sure they’d doubled back on themselves at least twice, they reached a boarded-up warehouse sitting just inside the broken gate of an old industrial estate. Glassless windows stared blankly down at them, the wind causing loosened rafters to creak and moan. Somewhere further up the road, Jennie saw a stooped figure urging a shopping cart across a potholed road towards a stand of weeds with a tumbledown ruin at its centre.
Jorge cocked a thumb back over his shoulder. ‘Home,’ he said.
‘You live in there?’
The boy nodded. ‘Not bad.’ He shrugged and flashed a grin. ‘Big disorganise. Wait. Find Horse.’
‘Horse?’
‘Horse is protection.’
Before Jennie could ask anything else he was gone, running up a set of steps and disappearing through a metal door that hung open on broken hinges. For a few seconds the sound of clanking came from inside, as if someone was descending a metal staircase. Then the silence returned, punctuated only by sudden bursts of gunfire in the distance.
Jennie turned to Jun. ‘Are you all right?’
He shook his head. ‘No. I’ll never be all right. How can I be strong for you and Nozomi if I can’t even be strong for myself?’
She put a hand on his arm. ‘Jun, he’s got a hold on you. We’re going to break it, you’ll see.’
‘What he did to Ken, he’s done to me. Only he’s done it more subtly. He’s in me, Jennie. Somehow he’s in me, and when he flips a switch or whatever the fuck it is that he does … I become his.’
‘Then let’s kill that motherfucker. Let’s push the ugly bastard under a train. Jun, I love you. I … love you.’
He turned towards her, and she saw a gleam in the corner of his eye, a tear that wouldn’t quite let itself show.
‘Don’t say that, Jennie. People who love me die. Akane did. You will.’
‘I’ll take that chance, thanks.’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘Maybe I’ll come back too, like she did.’ Instantly a cloud of regret swept over her. ‘Jun, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’
He shook his head, not looking at her. ‘No, it’s okay.’
‘Was that really her? Or … or…’
‘Part of her?’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think we’ll know for sure unless we find Crow. I watched her die. I held her in my arms as she breathed her last breath, but I couldn’t stop thinking that somehow I’d made a mistake, that it hadn’t been Akane who died, or that it had been a dream, or … or…’ He took a great, heaving breath and Jennie realised he had started to cry. She put an arm around his waist and leaned against his chest.
‘I don’t know if I can do this any longer,’ he said. ‘I convinced myself that I could find Crow and rescue Nozomi, and even bring Akane back, but so much has gone wrong. So many people have died and are dying. He’s beaten me, Jennie. He’s beaten me.’
She pulled away from him and looked up into his face.
‘Do you remember when I said that to you? And do you remember what you said? He’s beaten you when you say you’re beaten. Are you going to let that bastard win? Look at Jorge. That kid has nothing in the world, but he’s still trying. He’s not giving in so how can you?’
‘He’s young, Jennie. He doesn’t know how things work. He doesn’t know that there are no happy endings, that life doesn’t end with the good guys out on top. He only—’
‘Ready?’ Jorge shouted as the metal door banged back against the wall behind him. ‘I find Horse!’
He came scampering down the steps towards them, something black held in his hands. It was shaking around so much that Jennie wasn’t sure what it was, and when she realised she refused to believe it. No. Where did Jorge get a—
‘Horse!’ Jorge shouted, pointing the gun up in the air. ‘Bang!’
As Jorge turned towards them with a triumphant look on his face, Jennie said, ‘Why’s it called “Horse”?’
Jorge held out the gun and pointed at an engraving on the side of a galloping mare. ‘Horse,’ he said.
Jun stared at it, then suddenly he began to laugh. ‘It’s a Colt,’ he said. ‘Goddamn it, it’s a famous gun brand. Where did you get that?’
Jorge shrugged. ‘Found it.’ He added a cheeky grin. ‘Borrow. From orphanage.’
‘They had a gun in your orphanage?’
‘Guns everywhere,’ Jorge said. He waved the Colt back in the direction of the port. ‘Bang! Bang!’
#
La Sagrada Familia could never be completely dark during daylight hours with the multitude of stained glass windows that peered out at the ornate towers and the sun somewhere beyond, but without the inside lights switched on the roof space above the windows was a grey gloom of nooks and crannies hidden among the vaults.
Kurou clicked his fingers and the main doors closed behind him, hundreds of hidden pulley systems going to work. He walked into the centre of the nave and closed his eyes, his hawk-ears picking up sounds too quiet for most humans to hear. God had given him the face of His nemesis, but the brain and eyes and ears of an angel. Kurou’s senses had saved his life many times, and now made the world around him a cacophony of tumultuous music.
Beyond the walls of La Sagrada Familia, the sounds of upheaval were coming closer. The city was in turmoil, hundreds of years of resentment boiling over into violence and rage. He had no doubt that eventually the government would subdue one side or the other, but by then the city would be a scarred, smoky mess, yet another sign of humanity gone wrong, of a DNA strand inbred to mutation. The world was watching via television and internet, but like all good media stories, what it really needed was its hook, its centrepiece.
Kurou spread his arms. He opened his eyes and took in a deep breath. ‘Awaken!’ he screamed, snapping out the talons where his fingers should have been.
The ceiling exploded into light, a shimmering mass of spotlights and strobes that lit up the floor like a postmodern discotheque. Among the spotlights black shadows scuttled and twisted, his spiders, his ants, his eclectic construction crew, working day and night behind a veil of secrecy and deception that Kurou had created with his wonderfully manipulative fingers. La Sagrada Familia’s grand opening had needed a sponsor—whether it liked it or not—and the sponsor had wanted time alone in the finished building to prepare its own welcome party for the world.
He had planned his great ceremony for the grand church’s official opening day on Christmas Eve, but unforeseen circumstances meant his plans needed a little adjustment. Still, enough was in place to perform a matinee, a little festival to celebrate the autumn harvest. It would have to suffice.
Kurou let out a high pitched whistle, like a shepherd calling in a dog, and one of the spiders descended from the ceiling on a thin wire cord.
‘Take a crew to
collect the players,’ he said. ‘Be swift. This begins tonight.’
As the spider ascended its wire, hissing and clicking to the others in a language only they could understand, Kurou retreated to a corner and sat down to use his computer.
First of all he logged on to a number of local forum sites, spreading rumours that La Sagrada Familia would soon be opening its doors to the displaced, and anyone whose home had been destroyed should head there immediately. He cross-pollinated his lies on numerous other social sites, posting as strangers he’d made up for this very occasion.
Within a few minutes his shares counter had begun to go crazy. Kurou smiled. What a delight, the power of words on a screen.
He started to close down the tablet, but a red warning triangle flashed up in a corner. He clicked it, opening a control page for his servants. The spiders, seventeen in total, had green bars beside their numerical codes, their orders up to date and logged. They were semi-autonomous, their human brains able to deal with basic decisions within a wider framework of instruction. He usually had to update them every couple of days. Further down a couple of his other active experiments were yellow, requiring instruction. He quickly updated their orders, giving them basic roles of defence or surveillance.
At the bottom a red bar was flashing next to Akane Yamaguchi. Kurou drew up a status page to find the words “MISSION FAILED” flashing. He typed a command, establishing visual contact. Through a camera embedded into her eyes he watched Jun Matsumoto, a girl, and a small boy attack Akane and drive her away. Unlike some of the others, she was fragile; her instructions were to avoid physical conflict where necessary. Damaged, she had hidden herself away until she could receive further instructions.
‘Come back to me,’ he said, opening an audio link even as he typed commands into the screen. ‘Come back, my dear. It’s nearly time for you to be united with your sweet lover forever.’
With the new instructions inputted, Kurou switched off the tablet and slipped it back into his pocket. So, Jun Matsumoto was rebelling against his commands. It was not unexpected, after all the technology had been basic, little more than a prototype. Still, without Jun’s assistance things might not have escalated so soon.
He would be pining for his lover. Not to worry, they would be together forever before the day was out.
Part Three
Thy Maiden Shall Fall Beneath the Seas
31
Professor Crow spins his webs
There was nothing Kurou liked more than walking through a forest only to become enmeshed in a layer of near-invisible spider webs strung across the path. He would smile his crooked smile as he pulled them away from his face, feeling the stretch of the thread on his hands like strands of silk, warm from the sun, feeling alive. Here he was, captured, a victim caught unawares, while the mother of the net was nowhere to be seen.
Kurou liked spiders almost as much as he liked birds. They reminded him of himself.
Money and intelligence were human spider webs, and he had both in abundance. There was nothing he liked more than placing a secretive strand which could then be pulled when required to alter the path of some little pocket of humanity.
Everyone with power was a spider, every politician, every businessman, every military general. The hard part was to know when and where to spin your webs, what paths to cross, what trees to connect.
#
It had made him laugh when he heard that Jun Matsumoto had been placed into a mental hospital. Sure, the boy hadn’t been solely responsible for the deaths of all those tourists, but he had done the decent thing and suffered for it anyway.
Of course, when you went insane, there were only two things that could ever happen: you either died or you recovered.
Matsumoto’s hatred had burned like a glass of bleach, a rotting, churning thing that needed to be snuffed out. Killing him would have been the best thing perhaps, but death was so final and provided so little entertainment. As an art form, death was so 20th Century. Life and its manipulations were far more interesting, but were Matsumoto to live, a web would need to be spun in order to ensure that his eventual recovery posed no problems.
In the absence of any family and in the aftermath of a covert government investigation charged with answering the question as to why there were the remains of six cybernetic bears lying in the snow among a sea of human corpses at a remote English study camp in Japan, Akane Yamaguchi’s body had been taken for examination by the Japanese military. Fourteen years later her ashes were resting in an unmarked grave in a military cemetery on the outskirts of Tokyo.
A few well-placed bribes had provided Kurou with a computer file containing 3D imagery of Akane’s skull, bone structure, detailed descriptions of her hair and eye colour. Searches through social media had come up with a couple of old video clips from her school days, enough to establish the correct tones for her voice.
Compiling her profile had been the hard part. Building her had been easy.
He had used three unsuspecting Japanese backpackers, solo travellers he collected from various sites across Europe, to build her, constructing the human part over a robotic skeleton. She had been one of his more difficult projects, because of the need to get her so perfect. Matsumoto wouldn’t have been fooled by some doll who looked like his old girlfriend, she had to be exact.
Of course, keeping dead flesh alive after it had been removed from its owner’s body was never easy, but it was a fine effort. The eyes, especially, looked wonderful.
The next part had been to make sure that when the time came for them to be reunited, Matsumoto would believe.
#
Mr. Matsumoto’s cough had been getting worse. The doctors were concerned, but tests were showing nothing wrong. It was suggested that a specialist was flown in for a more thorough analysis. No one could be quite sure afterwards who had suggested the specialist, how an American doctor named Robert Sparrow had become first choice, or what the man actually looked like. Doctor Sparrow had flown in, arrived at the facility the same night and performed a private diagnosis on an anesthetised Mr. Matsumoto with no other doctors present.
The diagnosis: Mr. Matsumoto had a clean bill of health. Perhaps it was an allergy.
It had taken only a few minutes to make a keyhole incision in Jun’s forehead and embed a tiny computer chip into Jun’s skull.
The following day, an orderly received an email from his superior requesting that a recently prescribed drug be removed from Mr. Matsumoto’s medication. With thirty other patients to look after, it had been done with the briefest of shrugs. Later, on a quiet moment during a night shift, the same orderly was going through his emails and the one requesting the change seemed to have disappeared, almost as if it had deleted itself.
Mr. Matsumoto’s cough recovered. From time to time he suffered from severe headaches, but they usually passed in a few hours.
Afterwards, he always told doctors he had dreamed of someone called Akane. As there was no record of a next of kin of that name, the doctors just assumed it was an old girlfriend. Since she never came to visit, they assumed it had gone the way of so many relationships, and fizzled out, as such things tended to do.
As required, a doctor had reported all supposed dreams to his own superior, a man whom he had never met but for whom he had an email address. Once, during an attempt to check online security at the facility, the doctor had been unable to find the sent messages in his outbox. He had dismissed it with a shrug. Such things happened.
Kurou had been delighted to hear about Mr. Matsumoto’s progress. It had cheered him up no end, and while Jun’s wellbeing (or not) had slipped to the back of his mind as the months and years ticked past, he made sure to check in from time to time, as he did to ensure his beautiful Akane regularly had her borrowed skin treated to keep it looking fresh.
He had known they would one day get to see each other again. Like most things in life, it was only a matter of time.
32
Scuttling things in the darkness
Merlin was the first to arrive. He waited beneath the overhanging eaves of La Teatro Nuevo Rialto, a little worried that the ancient building might come folding forwards like a collapsing stack of books, but more concerned about being spotted by the groups of revolution-fuelled thugs that came stamping past. While the riots were taking place in the streets sandwiched between the port and Avenida Diagonal, pockets of fighting were breaking out all over the city as more and more residents were drawn into the fray.
Soon the others began to gather. Slav the Russian came lumbering up, grunting a single-syllabled greeting then stepping back into the shadows to wait. Then came the Sleeping Beauty (a rather androgynous Belgian called Richard, awakened for just ten Euros), Hans, the Soccer Ball Juggler (a disillusioned German who had once had trials with Bayern Munich before breaking his ankle falling down a flight of stairs), and the Human Ivy, an older Spanish man called Luis who got up at five a.m. every day to paint himself green and stick flower petals all over his body.
The five of them stood at awkward distances away from each other, not meeting each other’s glances, as if sensing their collective shame. Just five. Where were the others? And where was Peter?
Merlin became more and more antsy the lower the sun fell in the sky and the louder the distant riots became. Unlike some of the others, Merlin had come in full costume, afraid of being considered an imposter.
Slowly the others trickled in. With each new arrival Merlin felt a lessening of his guilt, the shame of wanting a murderer’s money gradually dissipated amongst them all until it could be trivialised, forgotten. There was still no sign of Peter, but by the time the sun dropped behind the buildings to the east, fifteen of the twenty members of the union were waiting in the shadows beneath the theatre’s wide entranceway.