by Frank Tayell
“Well, what about the system. Can you work out who hacked into it and how?” he asked.
“Does it matter, Ely? I mean, does it really matter? When the next shift starts, the voting will begin, and you’ll be elected to the council. It’s a certainty. Cornwall will be Chancellor, then there will be the ballot for the first of the colony ships. So does it really matter?”
“What if the person behind all this ends up on Mars?” Ely asked.
“So you’re determined to keep digging?”
“Voting hasn’t started yet. We need to find the connection between Penrith and the ghost. Then we need to find out who wiped the system.”
“What if that was the ghost herself?” she asked. “Isn’t that the most logical explanation?”
Ely thought of Stirling. “I don’t know,” he said. “Is it?”
“I think you need to sleep. Get some rest, get some food. Look at it again next shift.”
“Not yet,” Ely said. There were still seven hours until voting began, that meant seven more hours in which Stirling could try to disrupt the election. “I need to find that gun.”
He returned to the museum and spent an hour looking for the weapon. He couldn’t find it. There were so many nooks and crannies that any small object, be it gun or knife, could be hidden and never found. Maybe, he thought, when he was Councillor he could have the room completely emptied out. Then he wondered whom he could trust. And then he remembered that once the election was over, it really wouldn’t matter.
He sat down on a stack of stone slabs. A long time ago someone had gone to the trouble of carving the surface into the shape of men on horses chasing one another. Time had worn away most of the features. He picked at the edge of the stone, and asked himself what he was trying to prove, and to whom he was trying to prove it.
The weapon could have been hidden up in the museum. It could have been hidden in one of the access ladders. He rarely used those and knew the other civic servants used them even less than he did. Or it could be down in the tunnels, or the recycling room, or one of the storage rooms. There were, now he thought about it, hundreds of places to hide something that small. He would never find it.
“Control?”
“Ely? Did you find it?”
“No. I don’t think I will.” He was exhausted. It had been a full day since he’d slept, and less than a shift until voting began. For now, all he could do was hope that the dead ghost was the killer, and any other agents of Stirling’s wouldn’t have the stomach for murder. “You were right. I’m tired. I’m going to get some sleep.”
“Good,” she said.
Ely had a small single-occupancy unit down on Level Two. It contained a sleep-pod, a desk, and a chair. He shared a printer, shower and toilet with the other civic servants.
Having a room to himself was considered a luxury and a privilege. It was palatial compared to the units the workers were allocated. Ely hated it. He hadn’t slept properly since he’d become a Constable. The lucid dreams induced by the machine were meant to be more restful than normal sleep, yet he couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken refreshed.
He looked at the blank walls, and thought of the Greenes, and their family photograph with the fake Martian background. Ely had no pictures to display. He had no one with whom he could share his hopes for the future. He slumped down in the chair, and filled his display with the newsfeeds. He was being hailed as a hero. The articles were singing his praises with a near fanatical hysteria. Even the few pieces that criticised him for destroying the elevator, and the universal view was that he had done it on purpose, had hundreds of comments arguing that the sacrifice had been necessary. It was just as Arthur had said. The timing had been perfect. His victory was assured. And he didn’t care.
Perhaps he’d feel differently when he reached Mars. He’d never really thought about what life would be like there. Somehow, it had always been this distant dream, something that was close, but still unattainable. He yawned. Whether he would feel better afterwards or not, he needed to sleep.
He took off his helmet and placed it on the desk. He looked at it for a moment. He did need a new one, but he would never get one now. He looked over at his pod. Just a few hours sleep. They said four hours of L-sleep was all that anyone technically needed. Technically.
He checked the time. He’d go to sleep in a moment. Not yet. There was something someone had said. Something important, something that, he was sure, would cause all the pieces to fit together. It was there, just at the edge of recall.
Still trying to work out what it was, he fell asleep in his chair. For the first time in his life, he didn’t dream.
Two hours later, he was woken by a noise. It was an automated alarm. Blearily he raised his wristboard to his eyes. There had been two more deaths. He grabbed his helmet and pulled it on. He tapped out a command, accessing the cameras. His worst fears were confirmed. It was murder.
Chapter 9 - Ghosts
Four hours before the election
“Out of the way,” Ely yelled. His voice didn’t carry above the chattering terror of the workers gathered along the corridor. He tapped out a command, sending a message telling the citizens to disperse. No one paid any attention to it. As he pushed his way to the front of the crowd, he saw the scene was far worse than it had appeared on the cameras.
Ten feet from the edge of the crowd was the body of Nurse Gower. She lay face down, a red stain spreading from a shallow wound in the small of her back. Judging by the pool of blood that surrounded her, there were other wounds on her front.
Twenty feet further on were the open doors to one of the elevators. Just inside, leaning against the wall, lay the body of Nurse Bradford. Blood had poured out of his slit throat, soaking his clothing, and seeping across the elevator floor.
“Control? Come in Control.”
There was no answer. Ely had tried to contact her as he’d made his way up to the crime scene but, struggling with trying to wake after insufficient sleep, he’d not thought anything of it when he received no answer.
“Vox? This is Ely. Are you there?”
This time there was a reply. “Ely? Yes. Yes, I’m here.” Her voice was stilted. She sounded scared.
“Can you pull up the footage from when it happened?”
“It… it’s been wiped.” She spoke so quietly Ely almost couldn’t hear her.
“We should have expected they would have done that,” he said.
“What? Oh, yes… I suppose…” Her voice trailed off.
Ely looked around the crowd checking that, as he focused on each worker, names appeared on his display. There was more than one killer, but hadn’t he already known that? But this time the victims weren’t just workers on the Assembly. As productive as they’d been, the loss of the Greenes was nothing compared to the deaths of these two civic servants. Thoughts like that wouldn’t help, Ely told himself. He needed to find out who had done this, and then he needed to find them, because he now knew that the killer wouldn’t stop until he, or she, or they were all dead.
Most of the crowd wore visors. Most of those were now looking directly at him, the little blinking red lights indicating that they were uploading his every move.
“Did anyone see this happen?” he asked.
No one spoke. There was a little shuffling of feet, but otherwise barely any movement. Even now, gripped by shock, or perhaps because of it, no one wanted to ruin their recording.
“Vox, someone in this crowd must have seen something. Go back through the footage and find me something. Vox?”
“Yes, yes. I’m doing it now.”
“Find me an image of the killer, and find out which way they went.”
He turned his attention to the bodies. Moving carefully, so as not to step in the blood, he approached Nurse Gower. He knelt down and looked at her injuries. An inch of thin metal protruded from the wound in the small of her back. It wasn’t a bullet. Nor was it the broken blade of a knife. It was too narrow, and the end appear
ed smooth, not sheared off. He wasn’t sure how the metal had ended up in her back, but he guessed that had been the first wound she had received. From its position, it looked like it had severed her spinal cord.
Carefully, he rolled the body onto its side. He immediately wished he hadn’t. With a blow similar to that which had killed the Greenes, Nurse Gower’s head had been nearly completely severed, and as Ely moved the corpse, the wound opened, exposing sinew, muscle, and bone. He wondered what could propel anyone to that kind of savagery.
Gently, he lowered the body back to the ground. He stood up, and stepped carefully away from the corpse. There was blood on the corridor floor, some small drops, some large, all leading from Nurse Gower to the body of Nurse Bradford.
The small ones, he thought, were the woman’s blood, dripping from the blade. Could the larger ones belong to the killer? No, both trails ended at the body of the man.
He walked over to the elevator and looked down at the body of Nurse Bradford. There was a similar stub of metal, this one protruding from the man’s leg. His hands were covered in shallow slashes, as if they had been raised in defence. He’d been killed with a slashing cut to the throat, though his wound was not as deep as the one that had killed Nurse Gower.
There was so much blood. So much more blood than had been in the Greenes’ pods. Those two had almost looked like they had died in their sleep. Here, the blood had poured out of Nurse Bradford, drenching his clothing. But it had also sprayed up over the walls of the elevator. It must, Ely thought, have covered the killer too.
He tried to picture what had happened. The two nurses had been walking, presumably to the elevator. The killer had then… what? Shot them? The metal protruding from Gower’s back and Bradford’s leg could be the end of a dart of some kind. Yes, that fit. The killer had shot the two nurses. Gower’s spine had been damaged. She’d fallen. Bradford had been hit in the leg, but he’d managed to crawl to the elevator, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.
“Vox? Did you get any calls from either of the two nurses? Vox?”
“What? Yes. I mean, no. I mean…” There was a pause. Ely had never heard her sound so discomposed before. “If you’re asking me,” Vox continued, “whether they called after they’d been attacked, then no, I didn’t receive a call. I think, maybe, and I’m not sure, but maybe the communication system might have been hacked. Maybe they tried to call, but it was blocked.”
“Can you confirm that?”
“No, I don’t know… I mean… I’ll try.”
“Okay. Thank you, and Vox,” he tried to think of something comforting to say, but he couldn’t. “Thank you,” he repeated instead.
The killer shot them both. As Bradford was crawling away, the killer had walked along the corridor, reached down to the wounded Nurse Gower, grabbed the woman by the hair, lifted her head up and then cut her throat. Ely looked at the corridor by the woman’s body. There was a spray of blood on the wall, about three feet up. Having murdered Nurse Gower, the killer went after Bradford. The nurse had raised his hands in a futile defence. The killer had slashed at them until reflex or pain had cause the man to drop his guard. Then he had been stabbed, the blade twisted, and torn across his neck. But the nurse had made it into the elevator. Which meant he’d been able to open the doors. So, whilst the communication system might have been blocked, and the cameras wiped, the killer had no more control over the elevators than any of the civic servants. That was interesting, though Ely wasn’t sure how it helped him.
Ely had never liked Nurse Bradford. He’d never liked either of the nurses and that feeling had been mutual, yet he could think of no act either could have committed that warranted such a punishment. There was a savagery to this attack, one that hadn’t been present in the murder of the Greenes. That first wound, the one caused by the dart, would probably have killed Nurse Gower, and possibly Nurse Bradford, long before help could have arrived from one of the other Towers. There was something very wrong about the two deaths. The violence seemed unnecessary.
“Vox, how are you doing with the footage?” he asked.
“I’m working on it.” She still sounded agitated.
“Hurry. I don’t think these two will be the last.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, fear clear in her voice. Ely understood why. She, or he, would be the next logical target.
“It’s only a hunch, but I can’t see any reason for the killer to stop. Where’s Penrith?”
“Who?”
“The woman I questioned a few hours ago.”
“She’s asleep,” Vauxhall said.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Positive.”
“What about the…” he began.
“Your other suspects? The same.”
Ely looked up at the crowd. They were still there, still recording. “You,” he pointed at a woman near the front of the crowd, “how did you know to come here?”
Half the heads turned to record the woman and her response.
“How did you know?” Ely asked again.
“I heard. We all did,” she said.
“Heard what? A gun shot?”
“No,” she said. “The screaming.”
That was no use.
“Vox, have you any footage yet?”
“Some. Not much. It looks like the killer knows how to wipe the recordings in the fixed cameras, but not the images recorded by the visors. If we knew how that happened—”
“That’s not important, not yet,” Ely interrupted. “Where did the killer come from, where did they go?”
“It’s a man. I’ve got footage of him disappearing into an access hatch two corridors along.”
“Which way?” Ely asked.
“Right,” she said.
Ely started to move.
“Follow the elevators,” Vauxhall said, “Now take that hallway to the right. That one.”
Ely started to run.
“There’s a hatch twenty feet in front of you.”
“I see it.” It was still open. If the killer could erase the recordings of the murder, then why leave footage that showed where he had escaped to? He reached the hatch, and peered inside. A man stood at the bottom of the ladder, looking up at him. The killer nodded at Ely, opened the hatch at the bottom, and disappeared out into the corridor beyond.
“Vox!” Ely yelled, as he dived through the hatch and began to climb down the ladder. “He’s just gone out onto the level below!”
“I see him. He’s out in the corridor. He’s gone into another hatch.”
Ely scrambled down the ladder. “Can’t you seal these hatches?” he asked.
“I’m trying. The locks won’t respond. The commands don’t work.” She sounded on the brink of hysteria.
Ely reached the bottom of the ladder and fell out of the hatch into the corridor.
“Where now?” he barked, as he pulled himself to his feet.
“Straight on, there’s a hatch about—”
“I see it.” It was hanging open. He reached it, and had his feet on the rung of the ladder before he looked down. He saw the killer, again waiting for him, two levels below.
“He’s waiting for me,” Ely hissed, as much to himself as to the Controller.
“What? Why?” Vauxhall asked.
But the killer had already gone through the hatch.
“Where’s he going, Vox? Where’s he going?” Ely barked as he dropped from rung to rung.
“Into the… No, he’s stopped at the door.”
“The door to what?”
“The Recreation Room,” she said, the edge of hysteria in her voice changing to bewilderment. “He’s just looking up at the camera. He’s… he’s smiling. Now he’s gone inside.”
Ely continued down the ladder, out the hatch, and along the corridor to the Recreation Room. The doors should have opened automatically. They didn’t. He swiped his hand down the panel to the side. Nothing happened.
“Vox! Open the door.”
�
��It is open. The system says it’s open!”
“Well, it’s not,” Ely grunted, as he levered the doors open with his hands.
Inside was chaos. Ely didn’t need to ask which way the killer had run. Ordinarily the machines were placed end to end, with a narrow corridor running between them. They had been toppled over. Whether by the killer, or by the panicked citizenry, Ely didn’t know. Some workers had been injured, and some of those were trapped underneath the broken machines. With the nurses dead, there would be no one to tend their wounds.
“Vox. Call Tower-Thirteen, we’re going to need medical personnel over here,” Ely snapped. There was no response. “Vox?”
“I heard you,” she said.
There was no time for Ely to help anyone, even if he knew how. He ran to the room’s other door, through it, and out into the corridor on the far side.
“Vox, where did he go?”
“Down the commuter ramp to the lounges.”
“Then where?” Ely barked as he ran. He was starting to feel breathless. He was starting to feel tired.
“He’s… he’s stopped. He’s just stopped.”
“Where?”
“On the ramp, halfway down to Level Six.”
Ely wondered whether, if he stopped to catch his breath, the killer would wait for him. No, he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t rest. He couldn’t risk the chance that the killer would attack someone else. A small voice at the back of his head said that that didn’t matter, that almost everyone in the Tower was going to die anyway. He ignored that voice. It did matter. He was the Constable. It was his Tower and they were his people. He had to keep them safe.
He kept running. He vaguely registered passing Unit 6-4-17. Was there method in the killer’s route then, or a message? Ely didn’t have the spare breath to work out which. His daily Recreation kept him fit, but it was a long time since he’d properly slept.
“Oh, no,” Vox said quietly.
“What?”
“I think he’s coming here,” she said. “To the Control Room.”
“Can’t you shut the fire doors?”
