by Ian Williams
“Nearly there,” Elliot said calmly, putting to bed her worries of possible reinforcements.
“I can hear them below, they sound pissed. Can we hurry this up a little?”
“Hey, you’re not as light as you think, you know.”
She could hear Elliot laughing at his own rude joke, not through her radio but from close by. It would not be long before she could kick him for that comment.
As soon as she reached the hole she began to claw at the surface, pulling herself up faster. The concrete was cold and gave her little in terms of grip. Still she tried. Once Elliot had gotten her as high as he could, he reached his arm out to help her the rest of the way. With her feet finally flat on the ground, she removed the rope and harnesses, choosing to leave them in place rather than disconnect them.
Thankfully Elliot decided to leave his equipment behind. They had no time to gather all of their things together in any mindful manner, only the bag. Whatever they left behind they could soon replace easily enough. She reminded herself that the guards were all heavily armed and would not hesitate to open fire. They had to get away, and fast.
That also reminded her that the guard had a weapon too. Before leaving she quickly found it lying on the ground and hooked her arm and head through the strap, leaving it to fight for room with the bag around her back. They did not wait around to see exactly how many others had joined in the search. The marching sounds and occasional shouts had given the rest of the guards away well enough, and it sounded like quite a few. They were lucky to have made it passed so many unnoticed.
The long sprint back quickly became a sweaty jog as the adrenaline began to wear off. However cool the night-time breeze was, it could do little to lower Phoenix’s temperature. She could feel the moisture as it dripped from her forehead and across her eyes. The drops flicked from her lashes each time she blinked.
At the gate she did not waste a moment and crawled straight back through. She was mindful of the weapon resting against her back, so swung it around the front as she slid on her belly. It was a welcome reprieve the moment they reached the car, just where they left it and totally untouched. She looked back and saw the beams of the many torches trying their best to hunt them out.
They’ll be searching for a while, she told herself.
Her muddled mind allowed her to open the rear door and attempt to throw her bag inside. She soon remembered she had something else there too. What she actually grabbed and tried to launch across the seat was a fully loaded submachine gun. Upon realising this she carefully raised the strap over her head and then placed it gently in the rear foot-well.
Thankfully Elliot suffered no confusion and had already gotten in the car, ready to leave. She noticed him holding his hands out to check how badly they were shaking. He could not stop them any other way but with them tucked beneath his legs.
Once in the car she switched it on and slapped it in reverse, with a little too much gusto. The wheels spun in the dirt, kicking up an expanding cloud of loose dust and stones that rattled across the path as they sped away. Turning the wheel against the direction of the cars sudden drift to the side, she eventually managed to get it under control again. Her nerves had a tight hold over her body and a constant energy that needed to escape, this time in the form of an uncontrollable urge to pump the accelerator pedal.
In an attempt to allay her visibly distracted state, Elliot leaned forward in his seat and looked her straight in the eyes. The road thundered beneath them, its raging attack on the wheels of the car bouncing them around within and forcing him to hold on tight.
“Take it easy,” he said, although he had yet to take his own advice.
She turned to him and nodded, her breathing slowing bit by bit. It had been far too close for comfort, but Elliot’s calming voice and easy stare put that all behind her. He still had not quite gotten his own nerves under control, and still he was trying to help her. They both had their own battles to fight, Elliot more so than her; he had never killed anyone before. She had.
“I’m OK,” she replied with another release of air from her tightened lungs.
The clock on the dashboard said the time was quickly approaching eleven at night. The drive back would take an hour or so. Just enough time for her mind to clear and her thoughts to become more coherent. For now they were a mess of images, each less than helpful. Seeing a man flattened after landing against the concrete was one she could quite happily forget. She was no trained killer. Working for Anthony had never asked that of her, not until his plan had really taken off.
“So what did you see down there?” Elliot asked, his head now resting against his seat and the window rolled all the way down.
“I think we have a problem,” she began slowly. “The Sentient tower is dead, just like we thought. But there’s something else down there now.”
Elliot sat forward and twisted in his seat to face her. He kept his knees clamped together and up against the glove-box in what had to be an uncomfortable position for someone of his height. “What’s down there?”
“I’m pretty sure Isaac has escaped to the city.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Nope,” she replied with a shake of her head. She focused on the unlit road ahead. They were travelling slowly and only by the light of the moon – at least until much further away.
“So what now?”
She knew exactly what she wanted to do. “I want to question our new friend. He’s involved in this. He’ll know something. At least I hope he will.”
Elliot spoke again, but not directly to her. He asked his question while staring out the windscreen. “What the hell could they be doing in the city?”
There was nothing she could think of to say in return. Instead she let the road take her mind away for a second or two. The conversation then died down again. The journey ahead was one they would continue in silence, as each thought about the possible outcome of Isaac’s escape. Whatever he had been up to since the fall of Sanctuary, it had been done right under the noses of New Chelmsford’s vast population. He was yet to make his plans clear to the world.
The timing of their mystery man’s arrival suggested that was going to change soon enough. Something very bad was coming and anyone caught in the middle would find out far too late to stop it. Their guest had a lot of questions coming his way, whether he was well enough to answer them or not. Top of the list was to find out exactly what he knew about Graham and his possible location. Her trip out had hardly even begun to answer that.
Chapter 3
Conrad Robinson
2am, Thursday: 46 hours until Switchover
A collection of blue tarpaulins littered about the warehouse floor made a grim account of the horror that had occurred there sometime in the previous few days. Each body lay unmarked on the ground, the last resting place of an assortment of John and Jane Does. Not one of the victims had any form of identification on them; no wallets or wrist computers. They had been stripped of anything that told of who they once were.
The temporary lights setup inside the building shined down upon the stained red floor. They had been placed specifically to highlight the scene and all of its terrible cruelty. A large halo of bright light circled the bodies where they had been dumped carelessly in the centre. It was still better to rely on this harsh illumination than to open the large metal shutters at the end of the room. Doing that would be an open invitation to the prying eyes and ears of the city’s media. The investigation needed the upmost care and discretion if it was to turn up any kind of evidence.
Kneeling down beside one of the bodies was Conrad Robinson, a Detective Chief Inspector from the Criminal Investigation Department. Conrad was a portly figured man of Jamaican descent, with brown rimmed glasses and a light peppering of black and grey hair that barely covered his head. He held one of the tarpaulin covers in his left hand as he studied the injuries to the body beneath. After doing this to each of the deceased in turn he had confirmed what he and his partner, Detectiv
e Sergeant Joe Willis, had suspected when they got the call. These were the latest victims in an ever growing list. So far this was all they had too, a list.
“So,” Joe said beside him. He had his wrist computer expanded out into a handheld tablet screen as he checked over his evidence catalogue. “I just spoke to the two guys who found the victims.”
“And?” Conrad asked, his eyes hanging on the same strange markings he had seen on far too many bodies of late. Joe was speaking to him in his peripheral vision as he always did.
The two had a good understanding of how the other liked to work; Conrad knew his partner was the one to talk to witnesses and victims, as well as the one to do most of the physical work – considering Joe’s flat stomach and youthful appearance. While Conrad was the deep and contemplative type. They were the perfect fit for the job and covered all bases the best they could. They respected each other, despite not always seeing eye to eye.
Between them they had the reputation of being detectives in the true, and slightly old fashioned, sense. Rather than rely on the automated Crime Detection System – formally the Security Detection System as it was known under Simova’s control – they thoroughly investigated the cases they were given, which was more relevant now that the detection system was either unreliable or just not working. The same was true in many parts of the city after the mass damage to the relay network. But where others in their department had struggled to adjust to this lack of technological assistance, he and Joe had thrived.
Joe slid his finger up the screen to bring his recorded interview into view. “Both men are squatters – and clearly addicts. They say they were planning on sleeping here for the night. They broke in around midnight and reported what they found soon after to a nearby resident.”
“You’re kidding? Why didn’t we hear about it sooner?” Conrad said, checking the time on his own wrist computer. “It’s 2:15am. Are you telling me it took almost two hours to reach us?”
“I guess we’re lucky it got to us at all. You know how it’s been since the relays were destroyed last year. The Crime Detection System just can’t cope with the workload anymore, what with the increase in disturbances we’ve seen since then.”
“I swear, the sooner we return to people calling in to a real person, the sooner we’ll be back to anything like as efficient as we were before.” Conrad dropped the cover and let it gently settle over the body. He had finished looking that particular one over, there were more he still wanted to check, although he expected an exact replication of the injuries he had seen so far. It was still a necessary part of the job. He would not consider himself very thorough otherwise. “We need to photograph the entire scene, like last time,” he said. “Please tell me you brought the Crime Scene Scanning equipment.”
“It’s in my bag,” Joe replied, pointing to his rucksack resting against the wall at the edge of the room. “I’ll set it up in the centre.”
“Sure. Oh, and we need to have a chat with the resident these two men spoke to. We’ve got to keep a lid on this. I don’t fancy another telling off from the Mayor.”
“Yeah, he was pissed last time.” Joe snorted a short laugh as he retrieved his bag. “It sucks that we can’t even tell the families of the victims. Ever feel like the Mayor is a little too involved in our job lately?”
“A little? Christ, I’d kill to be able to fart without worrying it would get back to that silver haired muppet! His obsession with keeping it quiet until after his special day is an insult to the force. But who are we to argue?” Conrad replied, before continuing on with his investigation.
The next body he wanted to check was a woman in her early thirties – by his guess at least. He was terrible at judging ages, and could barely remember his own at times – fifty-eight years young. She had to be twenty years younger than him, he was fairly sure of that. Her hair was probably a bright blonde before her own blood had soaked through. It now lay in a sticky puddle surrounding her head, in much the same way as with the others.
As he expected, she had suffered the same fate as the rest of the victims there. On the left side of her head were four holes, each drilled directly into the skull. At some point something had been fixed to the victims head, and with screws too, before being removed again. Whatever it had been, it had required access to the brain for some reason, as proven by two fingertip sized holes that went much deeper than the smaller four did. With the area completely shaven, he could see the same red lines left behind by the unknown attachment.
He had become fixated by this small rectangular shape as the case had progressed. It was the one thing that told him this was a whole new kind of screwed-up. The likes he had never seen in all of his thirty-nine years as a police officer. It had never been just a murder case to him. This was worse, much worse. Those responsible had already gained the label of killer-cult. The markings on each victim’s head were almost ritualistic in nature.
But as with all the others, the end had really come from a bullet to the centre of the head, execution style. The victims had apparently served their purpose already and were no longer required. They were disposed of without mercy or compassion – like a sacrifice. Their deaths had been quick at least. What had come before that, however, he believed had lasted much longer.
Another collection of pointless deaths and still nothing to go on; the case was beginning to look hopeless to Conrad. He and Joe had been to three such locations now, all with an equally random selection of people from every part of society. Once everybody was scanned and catalogued, they would find out who had been caught out this time. If any kind of link was found between them at all, he would be ecstatic. It would be the most substantial break in the case so far.
“You ready to do this?” Joe asked.
Conrad turned around while crouching beside the woman’s body and saw that his partner had already setup the Crime Scene Scanner in the middle of the room. He forced himself up from his knee, then walked over to the 360 degree camera, which sat a few feet above their heads atop a telescopic pole. With this they were about to capture a full 3D image of the scene, which they could revisit back at his station’s evidence room. Of course, to get everything, the bodies needed to be uncovered first.
“I’ll start getting our subjects ready,” Conrad said, as though each were a model about to be snapped. It was no joke either, as this had become their way of referring to the deceased in their scans. Calling them victims all day long only made the job that little bit harder to do.
He began to carefully pull the tarpaulin away from each ‘subject’ and throw it to the side. Only now could the true devastation be seen. Eight bodies in this instance, all bloodied and not long from turning bad. Their picture was to be yet another portrait of murder.
Once at the seventh body, he was almost ready, but something was wrong about this one. Removing the cover revealed a man possibly just out of his teens and with the scruffy look of a layabout, dumped in the same way as the rest. His clothing was torn in places and worn in others, like he had worn the same outfit for a couple of years. This alone amounted to little more than a noteworthy observation. What had made his mind skip ahead were the injuries, or more importantly, the ones that were not there.
He had finally found something new.
“Joe, over here,” he said, before gathering up the tarpaulin and throwing it away.
“Hang on, I’m not done setting this up yet.”
“Forget that for a second. Come and take a look at this.”
As soon as Joe had left his equipment alone, he walked over and saw it too. This victim was different.
“WTF,” Joe said. It was always either this or “OMG”, or even the occasional “LMFAO”. Regardless of how odd it always sounded to Conrad, in this case “WTF” was pretty much all he managed in his own head too.
“No square marking, no drill holes or cut-outs in the skull, just one single shot to the head. This guy didn’t go through the same ordeal as the other subjects we’ve seen,” Conrad said.<
br />
Both of them leaned in closer. This was something important.
“What’s your story, buddy?” Joe asked rhetorically.
They instantly fell back into their pre-set roles, as was always the case when something new came up. Joe, with his emphasis on what he could find through physical means, began to search the pockets of the dead man. Whereas, being the thinker of the team, Conrad needed silence for a few minutes while he tried to make sense of this new find. He bent down, clamped his hands just above his knees, and looked straight into the victims hazel coloured eyes. He pushed his glasses back into place once they slid to the tip of his nose.
When he had seen enough, he pushed himself up again and set out his plan. “OK, here’s what we need to do. Let’s first get the scan out the way, I don’t want to miss anything. Then we need to call in the coroner. Once we’ve gone through the proper procedures, I want this guy’s prints and facial scan taken and sent ahead. We can get the others back at the station later. This guy is the priority.”
“Agreed,” Joe said. He had come up empty after one final pat-down of the body. Regardless of the fact that this victim had been dealt with differently, it unfortunately did not mean he had any personal information left on him.
“You OK to get started with all that?” Conrad asked. “I need to let the DCS know.”
“Rather you than me. She’s probably sound asleep in a nice warm bed right now.”
“Hey, if I’m expected to drag myself out of bed at two in the morning to deal with this shit, then she can miss out on a little sleep too.”
Joe shook his head. “LOL.”
Outside, the warehouse looked no different to any other in the area. Apart from the build-up of nosey residents beyond the uniformed police presence a few metres away, it had nothing to reveal the tragic story hidden inside. The two squatters who discovered it first had already been cautioned about their trespassing and told to keep their mouths shut. They stood with an officer opposite the entrance. Both had been visibly shaken by the incident.
