by Frank Tayell
“I’ve tried. Don’t you think I’ve tried? None of them will shut. I don’t think… I don’t know. The door’s closed, but if he tries to come in here, I don’t think I can stop him.”
And Ely didn’t think he could reach the Control Room in time. He reached the top of the ramp that led down to Level Three.
“Where is he now, Vox?”
“I’m not sure. Wait…” And when she spoke again, there was relief in her voice. “He’s heading down to Level Two…” Vauxhall kept up the directions, and Ely kept up the chase. “He’s on Level One, heading to the recycling tanks. No, he’s not. He’s going down to The Foundations.”
“Which part?” Ely hissed.
“The server room.”
That made no sense. Ely had thought, as he followed the man down to the Tower’s lower most level, that since the killer hadn’t tried to get into the Control Room, he would be heading for the tunnels. But the access point for those was in the Power Plant. The server room had one way in, one way out, and nothing inside but the computers that kept the Tower’s systems running. Surely he couldn’t simply want to sabotage them.
Ely reached a short stair, pushed open the door at the bottom, and stumbled to a halt in the dark.
“Vox,” he hissed, “turn on the lights.”
Forbidding darkness turned to a world of menacing shadows as the overhead panels began to glow. Here, where only the civic servants came, and they only seldomly, there was little illumination. Ely turned around, and around again. The killer could be hidden in any of a hundred shadows.
“Vox?” he whispered. “Are there any cameras down here?”
“No.”
That was what he’d thought. The Foundations were split into four quadrants. Each dealt with one of the vital aspects of the City; the Power Plant, the water purification system, air-filtration, and the servers.
“And there’s no other way out?” he asked.
“No.”
“Can you seal us in here?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I can’t guarantee he won’t be able to override the lock.”
“Do it anyway. And…” he hesitated for a moment, but it had to be done. “Send a message to Cornwall. Tell him we’ll need assistance over here. Nurses and Constables. We may need engineers, too.”
“What? Cornwall. Right.”
Ely clicked off, irritated. The Controller seemed more distracted than ever.
The Foundations got their name from the columns, each two metres thick and spaced three metres apart, that supported the rest of the Tower. Placed equidistantly between each pillar, turning the cavernous space into a forbiddingly uniform labyrinth, were the servers. From some, red, orange, and green blinking lights added ominous colour to the shadows, whilst most sat dark, unlit and unpowered. Great coils of cable snaked out from the servers, along the floor, up the pillars, to disappear into the ceiling.
In the distance Ely could make out the wall that partitioned this quadrant from the next. In the other direction he could make out the far thicker, and more imposing, wall of the Tower itself.
The air was warm, and humming with electricity. Ely shook his head, consigning that noise to the background as he tried to pick out the sounds that shouldn’t be there. He couldn’t hear any. He turned around. The hum seemed to grow, and as it did, his heart began to beat faster and louder.
“Come out,” he yelled. “Surrender. You can’t…” he trailed off, unable to think of an adequate way to finish that threat.
There was nowhere to retreat to, nor any way for the killer to escape. He’d followed the man down to The Foundations, and here it would end. Ely had been in a few brawls. He could handle himself in a fight, but he’d always had the weight of authority behind his blows. He’d never needed to do more than remind a felon of the fate that awaited those who resisted arrest. His truncheon seemed a wholly inadequate weapon when compared to the knives the killer had, but he was the Tower’s Constable. The two nurses had been murdered. He had to bring them justice.
He thought he heard a noise. It was close. He moved forwards quickly, bringing his truncheon up, holding it diagonally across his chest. He darted past the edge of the pillar and, pivoting and turning, brought the truncheon down with all the force he could bear.
It hit a mess of wires with a dull thud. There was no one there. He spun around, expecting to see the killer behind him, but no, he was still alone.
Walking on the balls of his feet, ready to dive sideways or back, he moved slowly past the bank of computers to the edge of the next pillar. Then he dashed forward, turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees, and stopped when he found he was still alone.
He took a breath, then ran to the next pillar, and the next, and the next. Again and again, from pillar to pillar, sometimes turning to the left, sometimes to the right, picking a direction when some half imagined sound, magnified by fear, became that of the ghost.
And then he heard it, a scraping of metal. It was so loud it seemed to fill the cavernous space. He stalked towards the noise. It came from the wall. Not from one of the partitions that separated this quadrant from the next, but the twenty-foot thick barrier that protected the Tower from the flooded wasteland beyond.
He moved faster, ready to dive out of the way of the blow he expected at any second. He reached the wall. The blow didn’t come.
A section of metal panel had been removed. It revealed a ladder leading down into the dark. He stared down into the hole. There wasn’t meant to be an entrance to the tunnels here. Yet clearly there was one. He bent down to examine the panel. The bolts that should have secured it to the wall were smooth. On the tunnel side, someone had affixed a small handle. It could be removed and replaced at any time, but unless you knew where it was, someone could wander down here for days and not find it. It was the perfect hiding place. And Ely had no reason to follow the killer down there. He could call for tools, and seal the man in. Tower-One would be safe. The other Towers could be alerted, and told to check their own access points. The entire City could be secured. But that wouldn’t be enough. Not for the workers, nor for Ely. Justice, seen or not, had to be done.
He climbed down, into the dark
Chapter 10 - Underground
Three hours before the election
He descended down the dark tube, glancing up at the ever-shrinking circle of light above him. The ladder was pitted with rust, and some rungs were bent. The further he descended, the thicker he found them coated in slime. He counted forty rungs before his foot touched something solid, rough and uneven. He’d reached the bottom of the ladder. All was darkness. He took out his truncheon.
“Control? Control? Vox, can you hear me?”
There was no answer. He switched on the visor’s emergency light. The beam was weak, stretching out a mere dozen yards. Slowly, he stepped away from the ladder.
There was a crunch behind him. Before he could turn, something hit him from behind. He fell, hard, dropping the truncheon as he reached out to break the fall. His face hit the ground. His helmet took the brunt of the impact, but he was still dazed.
He rolled onto his side, then onto his back, turning his head this way and that. The helmet’s feeble beams of light stabbed out into the darkness as he sought his assailant. He could see no one. He crabbed backwards a few paces, then staggered to his feet.
“Why did you kill them?” he called out.
“You come down here and that’s the first question you ask?” the killer replied. Ely spun around. There was sarcasm in the man’s voice, but Ely thought he could tell the direction it had come from. Slowly, tensed, expecting another blow, he moved forwards.
“Who are you?” he asked, after he’d taken two paces.
“That’s a good question, but I think you can do better.”
The killer was taunting him, Ely thought, but it didn’t matter. There was a patch of deeper shadow against a wall three yards away. That, Ely thought, was where the killer stood.
“Surrende
r,” Ely said.
“Oh, no. I don’t think so. Not yet.” The voice came from behind.
Ely managed to half turn before another blow knocked him sideways. As he fell he saw the killer. In his hands was a long metal pole. And then the pain began.
His arm had taken the brunt of the swing. He flexed his fingers. No, his arm wasn’t broken. He hoped. But he was in more pain than he’d ever felt before.
“Why?” he screamed.
“Why? Why do you think?” the killer asked blithely. He stood ten yards away, at the edge of the beam of light cast by Ely’s helmet.
“Do you deny,” Ely hissed, “that you killed Nurses Gower and Bradford?”
“Deny? Of course not,” he replied. “But isn’t there something else you want to ask?”
“No,” Ely replied. “I know you’ve been working for Stirling. You want to undermine Cornwall to win the election. I know about the colony ships, how there’s only space for a thousand people out of all the citizens in all the Towers. I know all about you.”
The man laughed. The tunnel filled with its mocking echoes.
“You haven’t a clue, have you? I thought you’d be different. Or are you just the same as the rest? Look about you, and try to understand what you see.”
Ely needed a weapon. There was a lump of rubble on the ground two feet away. He edged sideways, hoping he wasn’t telegraphing his intentions.
“Okay. I’m listening. You wanted me to follow you down here, so you clearly have something to say. Tell me, then.”
“You don’t understand,” the killer said. But then Ely realised that, no, he hadn’t said it. He’d asked it. It had been a question.
“Understand what?” Ely asked, and at the same time, lashed out with his foot, kicking the rubble towards the man. The killer had been expecting it and skipped sideways. Before Ely could move out of the way, the metal pole arced through the air, and hit him in the side of his head. Ely fell. His vision blurred. He tried to stand, but couldn’t. He expected another blow at any moment. It didn’t come.
Ely pulled himself up. One of the helmet’s two lights had been shattered. With the light of the remaining one, he searched the gloom for the killer. He couldn’t see him.
He listened. He could hear movement, but it was getting further away. His light flickered. He slapped the side of his helmet and wished immediately he hadn’t. His head swam, but when his vision cleared he saw the beam of light shining down steadily on the floor.
He took a moment to look about, and this time he did it properly. It was a tunnel. He’d expected that. The ladder was situated about halfway along. Behind him, away from the direction the killer had run, was nothing but darkness.
He looked down. What he’d taken to be rubble was actually broken fragments of the tiles that had once covered the floor. Why, during the hectic panic when the Tower was built, had they tiled the floor? That made no sense. Some tiles were ridged, others smooth. There might have been a pattern to them. There was too much debris and mould to be sure.
That there was mould begged another question, but it was forgotten as his light played up the walls. There was a pipe. What had it carried? Presumably it was something from, or to, Tower-One, but what? Above it on the ceiling were opaque plastic panels that he guessed were lights, but at regular intervals between them were small metal grills. Was that for air-filtration? That question was, in turn, drowned out by his confusion at the large plastic panels pinned to the wall. Were they displays? No, he realised as he took a step towards one, they weren’t screens. A few ragged edges of the paper that had once, long ago, hung inside, still clung to the edges of the frame.
There was another, a few feet along. The contents, there too, had decayed. He moved his helmet to play the light up and down the corridor. He spotted some paper inside a frame, and on it a few words, ‘your choice, your future.’ They had been at the end of a sentence, though how that sentence began, he couldn’t tell. The only other part of the poster that had survived was an image of a domed roof, topped with a spire. Why would anyone, during those last desperate years, have put posters up in the tunnels between the Towers? The only logical answer was that it had been done by the ghosts, yet that seemed an unsatisfactory explanation.
There was a noise off in the distance. Ely remembered why he was down there. He put the mystery to one side and began walking down the tunnel in pursuit of the killer. He walked briskly. Stealth served no purpose when the helmet’s light gave away his position. He couldn’t turn it off, not simply because the footing was unsound, but because he feared the dark more than the ghost.
The tunnel curved. He saw a small beam of light up ahead. That had to be the killer. Ely picked up his pace, darting his head up and down between the floor and his prey. The light got brighter. He began to jog. The light suddenly spun and fell. The killer had dropped it. Ely broke into a run.
He made twenty feet before he saw the killer. The man was on his knees, his hands scrabbling for the dropped light.
Ely kept running, turning a stride into a skip, and brought his foot up in a roundhouse kick. His boot smashed into the man’s face. The killer flew backwards. Ely was unbalanced, and toppled onto the man, knocking the killer down as he tried to rise. Ely punched. The killer kicked. Ely bit. The killer pushed and head-butted and managed to get free. Ely pulled himself back to his feet. The killer was, standing, fists raised, just a few yards away. Blood was pouring from his mouth. Ely thought he might have been about to speak. He didn’t give the man the chance. Ely charged. His shoulder hit the killer squarely in the chest. The man punched and thrashed. Ely screamed and pushed and pushed and kept pushing.
There was a wet crunching sound, and it was the killer’s turn to scream. His thrashing stopped, and Ely found that he couldn’t push the man any further. He let go, took a step back, and found himself frozen in shock. He’d impaled the man on a four-feet long piece of bent metal that jutted out into the room.
“No,” he murmured.
The man’s eyes met his.
“Who do you work for? Where did you come from?” Ely whispered.
“An eye for an…” The man coughed. “Beat them… their own game.”
“Who sent you?” Ely asked again, his voice rising.
The bubbling cough turned into a rasping laugh. Then it stopped.
“Who…” Ely began, but he didn’t finish the question. The man was dead, that smile still on his lips.
Ely took a step backwards, then another, then he collapsed onto the floor. He watched the pool of blood slowly grow around the dead man.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean for… I’m sorry.”
Minutes passed.
This is a crime scene, Ely thought.
“This is a crime scene,” he repeated it out loud, hoping to find some comfort in the sound of a voice amidst the dark. He felt no better.
“I should preserve the scene,” he said. “Shouldn’t I? But, what for? No one is coming down here. All they want to know is that the killer is dead.”
And this man was the killer, and he was certainly dead.
“Why did you do it? What were you trying to tell me?” he asked.
There was no answer, not even from inside Ely’s own head.
The adrenaline began to wear off and Ely started to notice his surroundings once more. He got up, painfully. His head ached. His arm ached worse, but he was certain it was just bruised. He looked down, playing the feeble light over his body. His jumpsuit was torn. He had a few scratches, but was otherwise unhurt. He raised his head to look at the corpse once more.
The spike on which the man had been impaled had been part of a support for an open sided metal box. It had been a little larger than the height of a man, and perhaps four feet square. It looked a little, Ely thought, like a sentry post from one of those old movies. A chunk of masonry had fallen from the ceiling, crushing it, causing one of the supports to fracture and twist so it was pointing out into the room
.
And was this a room? He looked around. There was something about the space, something almost familiar. He’d never seen the like before, but he thought he’d seen echoes of it somewhere. In a picture, or perhaps a movie? He shook his head, there would be time enough to look around. There was something he had to do first.
He approached the body. Gingerly, he reached out a hand and peeled the cloth away from the wound. The material was wet, warm, and sticky with blood. Ely swallowed.
Underneath was not skin, but another layer of material. It was made of something thick and unfamiliar. If it resembled anything he’d ever seen, it was the material covering some of the seats up in the museum.
He peeled away more of the jumpsuit. It was a harness. Strapped to the leather were slots. In each was a small cylinder of metal. He pulled one out. It wasn’t a cylinder. It was a metal bolt, about six inches long, with a pointed tip. That, he guessed, was what had been in the nurses’ wounds. Under the man’s left arm was a sheath. In it was a flat metal handle. He pulled it out. The handle was attached to a blade. The edge was still covered in blood. He dropped the knife.
Holstered under the man’s right arm was an L-shaped piece of metal. There was a trigger, but it bore very little resemblance to the pistols he had seen in those old movies. He took it out, and examined it. There were two tubes, one on top of the other. In each, there was already a bolt. He guessed that if he pulled the trigger, a spring inside would propel the bolts out.
It was incontrovertible evidence that this man had killed the two nurses. For want of anywhere else to store it, and after he checked it wasn’t liable to go off accidentally, he tucked it into his boot. Would it be sufficient evidence? Would the workers want to see the body as well?
“People need to know they are safe,” Ely said. “They need to know they can work and live in… they won’t, though, will they? Almost all of them will die. Was that what you were trying to tell me?”
He turned away from the corpse in frustration, and looked around to see if his surroundings could give him any answers. He was in a hall, the walls about fifty feet apart. To his left, the way that he’d come, and to the right, the space disappeared into darkness.
