by Chris Ward
A wire had encircled his foot. He tried to get his fingers under it, but it had pulled tight. He looked up at her, helplessly shaking his head.
‘It’s a snare,’ he said. ‘I ran right into it.’
Behind her, across the wide gardens, came the sound of an engine starting up. Something small emerged from a shed and sped towards them. A small grass cutting tractor with Moose sat at the wheel.
Patrick was trying to twist his body around. He lay flat on the ground and dragged himself a few feet, following the wire back to its source. Brushing leaves aside, he uncovered a stake driven deep into the ground.
‘If I can just get it out—’
The pitch of the tractor’s engine changed as it reached the edge of the gardens and came to a stop. Moose climbed down, his face strangely calm. He carried a rifle across his chest.
‘Wait!’ Suzanne said, lifting her hands. ‘It was a mistake. We weren’t trying to escape.’
Moose lifted the gun and pointed it at her face. ‘Didn’t I tell you not to go into the woods?’ He looked at Patrick. ‘You clown. Do you want to see her die?’
‘No, I—’
Moose sighed then lowered the gun, poking in the dirt with the barrel. ‘Stay out of the woods. Those snares are to keep people out, not in. You triggered an alarm system. Good job I was paying attention or you might still be struggling around in that thing until tonight.’
He pushed past Suzanne, who just stared at him, and walked across the bridge, up the slope until he reached the stump. He dug into the ground and felt around. A click sounded, and the wire went loose. Patrick pulled it off his leg and stood up.
‘Are there others?’
Moose lifted an eyebrow. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know? Your Uncle Tommy asked me to keep you safe. I’m trying to do my best. Tommy Crown isn’t a man you let down, if you haven’t noticed already. I’d really appreciate it if you’d let me do my job.’
‘We’re sorry,’ Suzanne said.
‘Look, just bugger off back to the house while I reset this trap. And in case I wasn’t clear enough last time, stay out of the damn woods.’
Suzanne took Patrick’s hand and led him back across the bridge. They were almost back at the house, out of Moose’s sight behind a stand of trees, when she turned and slapped him across the face as hard as she could.
‘Enough of this,’ she said. ‘If that thing had gone around your neck you’d have been worse off than we were yesterday,’ she said. ‘This isn’t a stupid game. I know you want to rescue your idiot brother, but we’re still in the middle of being rescued ourselves. Just take it easy, would you?’
Patrick glared at her, but she could see in his eyes that his anger was slowly abating. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last, dropping his gaze. ‘I’m just worried about Race. I know you think he’s an arsehole, and there have been plenty of days when I felt the same, but like him or not, he’s still my brother. And I know what I saw. I don’t believe it either, but I know I’m not mistaken. Those were my brother’s eyes.’
‘If you say they were, then I guess I’ll have to believe you.’
‘What do we do now?’
Suzanne smiled. She reached out and squeezed his hand. ‘We wait for your uncle to call.’
14
Urla
None of the news agencies had painted the fiasco in a good light, which was what it deserved. Urla watched the footage over and over, her initial hot flush at the sight of such an utter disaster reduced now to a long, painful frown. Television would be officially outlawed in the coming months if another government by-law was passed, and Urla would be glad. It would be wonderful not to have to watch her attempted statement go so badly wrong.
‘There,’ she said to Justin. ‘Rewind it. I want to see that bit again.’
The footage sped back then began again. It was grainy, a handheld camera shot swinging across the crowd. It caught something long and thin like an arrow cutting through the air and striking a soldier at the back of the stage. Another followed a couple of seconds later, cutting through the noose holding one of the captives, Patrick Devan. The crowd at this point were in pandemonium, running in all directions at once.
Now came the interesting bit. A brown shape blurred across the top of the crowd, leaping up onto the stage. It cut down the girl to Patrick’s left, Suzanne Carmichael-Jones, then cut through Devan’s bonds with a device that wasn’t immediately obvious. Then, it lifted the girl over its shoulder with one hand, before dragging Devan away.
‘Show me the other angle,’ Urla said.
Justin ran the tape. This next shot came from official DCA footage, from a camera on a tripod trained on the stage. It had been jostled during the chaos, but the shot was still clear enough to confirm what the other footage suggested.
The unidentified rescuer had ran across the top of the crowd.
What man had the skill to do that?
And he had done it dressed in a brown cloak and hood, while hiding a crude longbow under his robes.
‘Is that footage slowed down?’
‘No, natural speed.’
‘He’s moving at a normal running pace, across the tops of people’s head.’ Urla shrugged. ‘Who could do that?’
Justin pressed a receiver to his ear, frowning. ‘More footage has come in,’ he said. ‘From a CCTV camera at an insurance company at the head of the square. It appears to show the attacker climbing down a wall of a building before running off across the crowd. It suggests it was the same man who shot the arrows.’
‘How did he get across to the stage so fast?’ Urla shivered. ‘That’s unnatural.’
Justin went to a computer set up on a table nearby and leaned over. After a moment he turned to Urla and said, ‘Okay, got it. Let’s take a look.’
The new shot didn’t show the gallows or the stage, but looked out across the crowd. Something brown and blurry dropped down the side of the bank’s wall, broke into a sprint and leapt up on top of the crowd before running across like it had in the first two views.
‘Did it jump down?’
Justin pointed a pencil at the screen, rewinding it and pausing. ‘No, look here. It seems to twist on the way. I think it’s climbing.’
Two guards had been placed in the tower, armed, watching over the crowd. Both were dead, their throats ripped out as though by some animal.
‘What are we dealing with?’ she asked, turning to Justin.
‘I don’t know, but it’s ignited the people like nothing else. They’re two parts scared, two parts elated, one part in disbelief.’
‘I can understand how they feel. What does this look like for us?’
‘Bad. Whatever that was rescued two captives. Word on the street is that there’s a revolution coming, led by this thing. And who survived is important. That it rescued Suzanne Carmichael-Jones, daughter of a prominent robotics magnate thought to have fled the country, suggests it’s on their side.’
Urla thought for a moment. ‘Get some undercover agents out on the street. Start spreading the word that it worked for us but had a malfunction. That it was supposed to kill them all, that it likely took them away to … I don’t know, eat them or something.’ She shrugged. ‘Be creative. It couldn’t get any worse.’
Justin nodded. ‘As you request. What should we do about the two escapees?’
‘Much as I couldn’t care less what happens to them, it would be good for public relations if they were recaptured and punished appropriately. Double your efforts to find them. Assign teams to interrogate their remaining family members. Use whatever force is necessary to ensure no information is hidden. Who do you have?’
Devan has only a mother, a woman by all accounts in poor mental and physical health. His brother is missing, and has been for several weeks now. He has no known father.’
‘And the girl?’
‘She lived with her father, who is currently considered in exile. It was recently discovered that he sold his factory, Carmichael Industries, at short notice to a Mr. Crow. The n
ew owner has closed the factory, making almost the entire workforce redundant. It’s the kind of deal that suggests Carmichael-Jones already had one foot on the boat.’
‘So no love there?’
Justin shook his head. ‘Her parents were divorced, however. Her mother lives in Glastonbury with her new husband. They have a young daughter.’
Urla nodded. ‘Do as you need to do. Get whatever information you can, then do with them as you will.’
‘I’ll ensure the teams are properly briefed,’ Justin said.
Katherine Devan was brought in for questioning late in the afternoon. Justin had reported back that they had no luck finding Suzanne’s mother or her family, with neighbours informing them that the family had taken a planned trip to Bristol. The new husband was a financier, a regular recipient of travel permits. Disappointed but at least confident the family had not skipped the country, Urla requested a watch be placed on the house.
In the meantime, she had to make do with what she had.
Katherine Devan appeared drunk. Urla watched through a one-way mirror as two DCA agents interviewed her. On more than one occasion Katherine got angry, shouting that both her sons were worthless losers and that she was better off without them. In between outbursts, she told them she had been entirely unaware that Patrick had faced execution, not even knowing of his imprisonment.
After more than two hours of fruitless interrogation, it was clear Katherine knew nothing. Even if she did, she appeared such a wretched specimen of society that it was likely she would remember nothing she had heard. Urla gave a disappointed shake of her head.
‘Send her home,’ she told Justin. ‘This is a waste of time.’
‘Just let her go?’
Urla considered it then shook her head. ‘No. I find it unlikely he would bother to contact her if he came back. It seems she has no value to him.’
‘The house was searched. An illegal mobile phone was found in Patrick’s room. It had one number—to a similar phone found in Suzanne Carmichael-Jones’s room during the search after her father disappeared.’
‘How sweet. It’s like a storybook, isn’t it?’
‘You’re a little hardhearted,’ Justin said, flashing a grin, his professionalism briefly dropping.
‘I’m waiting for a man to come and melt it,’ she quipped back. Then, shrugging off a feeling she hoped might escalate next time they were alone, she said, ‘Send them both a warning. I’ll let you be creative.’
‘As you wish.’
Justin left. Urla made a couple of phone calls to other local DCA branches, and found the situation the same. The people were angered, protests in most of the nearby towns turning to violent riots at the first sign of resistance. It was a critical period for the country, she realised. The people were still strong. They resented the loss of their public voice, but they weren’t going to go down without a fight. It would take decisive action to quell them, an action she had tried to take but failed.
She made another phone call, this time to the regional head office in Bristol. The helicopter she had requested had still not been scrambled. She silently cursed the country for its cessation of international trade, leaving it unable to cope with even a limited fossil fuel demand. They would have the helicopter fueled and in the air by tonight, she was promised, but she heard the lie in the other person’s voice.
All the major roads were blocked in a twenty-mile perimeter, and none had reported anyone meeting the descriptions of Patrick Devan or Suzanne Carmichael-Jones. It was quite possible they had gone off-road, but where would they go? Neither, that she could establish, had any links outside of the immediate area. Devan had an uncle, a prominent local civil lawyer, but when questioned he claimed to know nothing. He was estranged from his sister, barely even in contact with her family.
He had, however, offered to let them search his offices, but they had found nothing of suspicion. It was tempting to pull him in for further questioning, but the arrest of such a well-known figure might cause a stir in the community that she didn’t have the resources to quell. She felt, sometimes, that she was living on a social knife edge.
It made sense that they were hiding out in the local area. She had dog teams out, following their scent, but no recent trails had been found at any of the addresses of friends in the town.
Witnesses had seen them getting into an old Ford electric car. One guard had even memorised the number plate, but it had come up unregistered, likely fake. Still, the car, a rusty brown with—according to the witness—a crack on its back windscreen, was a good lead. She had men out combing the town. No such model was currently registered in the local area, although three had been unregistered, meaning it was likely salvaged and restored.
She pulled up a map on her computer, zooming out to view the surrounding area. Electric cars required charging, and charging points were few and far between. They also had a limited range between charges. Unless, of course, it was still nearby, parked somewhere close to a charging point which would also work as a hideout.
Justin was sitting at his desk, a phone held between his shoulder and neck as he wrote something down on a piece of paper. As Urla approached, he ended the call and smiled.
‘Get me a list of electric car charging points registered to private users within a fifty-mile radius,’ she said.
‘Already did,’ Justin said, pulling a sheet of paper off a printer.
Urla smiled. ‘Good, good. The net is closing. We’ll have them soon, I’m sure.’
15
Kurou
The Huntsman that had once been both Race Devan and a stray Alsatian Kurou had bought from a local animal shelter lay naked on a stretcher in front of him, its chest cavity held open by clamps as he worked at repairing the damage inside. Two bullets had pierced it, luckily narrowly missing its functioning human organs but damaging some of the implanted wires which kept it under his control.
‘Oh, grandiosity, oh severity, oh disheartened eyes of mine,’ Kurou hummed as he worked, his fingers a blur as they soldered, cut and tightened, adjusted, and mended, slowly putting the biotechnological marvel back together.
Divan was lucky. He had taken nine bullets, but six had been stopped by the armour-plating. One had penetrated the left shoulder, rendering that arm useless, the others the chest cavity. All the damage could be repaired, but it was disheartening how close his prized creation had come to failing on its first mission. Sure, it had faced odds of a hundred to one, but he was aiming at a thousand. It wasn’t so outlandish to consider the creature a nearly immortal warrior. He had made good attempts in the past, but now, in the twilight of his long life, he was reaching his zenith. His masterpiece was close to completion.
‘More plating,’ he muttered, adjusting with pliers a sheet metal insert which had bent beneath a bullet’s impact. Additional armour was the answer, but was it worth the loss of speed and agility? He wanted to get his hands on carbon fibre or even titanium, as regular steel was too heavy to be used excessively. He was still working on reinforced metal inserts to strengthen the arms, legs, and torso, but building a system to connect the robotics with the human tissue was proving tough. Once, more years ago than he cared to remember, he’d had unlimited resources at his disposal: as much money as he needed, suppliers from anywhere in the world.
Now he was left picking through scrap.
‘There.’ He pulled the cavity closed and clipped it shut. He watched, wondering if he could see the tissue regeneration with his naked eye. The incision knitting together, the wound turning pink, perhaps?
It was still too slow to see, but he hoped further experiments would accelerate it, eventually leading to the regeneration of organs and bones. He was close to a breakthrough which would stun the scientific community … if there still was one.
He chuckled. Fighting a lone fight, he was still putting up a hell of a front against a rising tide of enemies. He left Divan alone in the research room and went into his office, where Laurette had left him his lunch.
Scones, jam and cream, and a tuna sandwich cut into neat triangles with the crusts removed.
How very quaint. Kurou did love his regional delicacies, and Laurette had failed to disappoint, Carmichael-Jones’s staff kitchen providing adequate provisions which would last them a few weeks yet. Long enough, he hoped, to complete his final project.
Laurette had also left tea in a chipped but still elegant Cath Kidston teapot, alongside a copy of today’s newspaper, a subscription of Carmichael-Jones’s which Kurou had seen no need to cancel.
Today, though, he felt his blood boiling as he read the headline.
N.F.P. WIN 87 BY-ELECTION SEATS. CALE REMAINS UNSTOPPABLE.
Cale. Maxim Cale.
A man whom Kurou had left for dead more than twenty years ago, whom he had wanted to die in slow, painful agony, but whom he now regretted leaving alone.
A man who had risen from the dead.
Calling himself the Grey Man, Cale had terrorised parts of Eastern Europe after setting loose a deadly army of machines that Kurou himself had fought to repel. Eventually, sheer weight of numbers on the other side had broken the army’s back, but after leaving catastrophic damage to Europe’s infrastructure and information highways, the person calling himself the Grey Man had disappeared….
Reemerging two decades later as a man slated to become Britain’s next prime minister.
With a furious shriek Kurou shredded the paper with his birdlike hands, then swept the lunch Laurette had prepared to the floor. This in turn only incensed him more, for he had encountered the Grey Man at a time when his own deprivation had been at its lowest, when he had resorted to human flesh for sustenance. Leaning over, he scooped up what he could of the scones’ remains and shoveled them into his mouth.
He called Laurette to clean up the mess, then returned to his workshop. Divan’s repairs were progressing well, so he left the Huntsman where he lay and went through into another room where three works-in-progress lay on different stretchers in various states of repair. He checked their heart monitors, scowling as he saw the blip on one had weakened since his last check. The man was unlikely to survive the surgery and genetic tampering procedures Kurou had undertaken to bind the dog’s snout to the man’s face.