The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files)

by Charles Stross

  I’m in the kitchen, brewing up a cafetière of Kenyan on autopilot as Spooky rubs against my ankles in hope of attention, when the landline from HQ rings. It’s Vikram. “You made quite a splash.” His tone is surprisingly mild.

  “I didn’t mean to: the second camera crew arrived while I was already engaged.” I shudder convulsively and bite down on my instinctive urge to start apologizing. It’s undignified for one thing, and for another, if I start I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop. “What happens next?”

  “We’re meeting at three to discuss damage control policy. The Auditors are calling the shots on this one, I’m afraid. Um, we’re using room 4102 in Admiralty House, just off the Spring Gardens entrance; the New Annex is inaccessible today.”

  “The New Annex is what?”

  “Last night’s Code Red left quite a mess.” Vik isn’t normally quite this taciturn; he must be badly rattled. “We’re activating the emergency migration plan while the clean-up proceeds.”

  “I see.” Stiff upper lips appear to be the order of the day. Well, my workplace calendar is clear – I was supposed to be stuck in the middle of the North Sea for the rest of the week – so it’s not as if I’m expected in the office, apart from this new meeting. But the sense of hollow dread and loss gnawing at my guts won’t go away. “How bad is the public exposure?”

  “Bad.” He pauses. “Chin up, and see you in a few hours.”

  Whoops.

  I set the timer on my phone to give me a countdown alarm, sit down at the kitchen table, and allow the tears to flow. It’s not hard, and the therapeutic effect of a good cry shouldn’t be underestimated: you secrete endorphins in your tears, and there’s a good chunk of research showing that it really does relieve stress. Trial and error experimentation has taught me that an eight-minute session followed by seven minutes of deep breathing and meditation is the minimum I can get away with to rebalance myself when I’m in danger of losing my shit completely. (It used to be four minutes, back when I started practicing it a couple of years ago. It’s been creeping up on me for some time now.) If I follow it with a brief session of calming meditation, it sets me right as rain, for a while.

  Fifteen-minute interval over (and feeling a lot better for it) I haul my suitcase upstairs and shower, then wash and blow-dry my hair. Opening the bag, I haul out the black trouser suit I bought for the deep-sea negotiations. Add a cream blouse, heels, and just enough makeup and earrings to soften the look slightly, and it’ll be just about right for what’s coming up this afternoon, which is inevitably going to be suspension followed by a formal enquiry with the authority to recommend disciplinary sanctions. I hadn’t thought things could get any worse after Bob left, but this… this is ridiculous.

  No. Wrong word. Try disastrous on for size instead.

  I do not over-share on Facebook. Unfortunately, I have an idiot sister who thinks Facebook is the internet, and that the internet is the right way to keep in touch with her friends.

  Twelve percent of all the photographs ever taken in human history have been taken in the last twelve months. And 40 percent of them are on Facebook. Many of these photographs are taken at family social gatherings, and the people who upload them tag them with the names of their relatives and friends. Which means that unless you are a paranoid recluse who has been hiding in a cave since the early 1980s, there is almost certainly a photograph of your face tagged with your name and public profile in Facebook’s database.

  An hour ago I took down an angry white guy with occult powers in the middle of Trafalgar Square. I don’t think I had any alternative: he was holding the Mayor of London hostage – the man most likely to be our next Prime Minister – not to mention a dozen innocent bystanders.

  Unfortunately I did so right in front of a TV news crew and about a thousand tourists armed with DSLRs and SD cards that automatically upload everything they see to the internet via wireless.

  Back in the prehistoric era of the 1980s, we could stop this shit dead in its tracks. The TV and newspaper crews could be silenced by means of a quaint instrument called a D-Notice, a formal warning that publication would put them in breach of the Official Secrets Act and result in prosecution. The ordinary witnesses carried cameras full of film that could be confiscated, and which in any case couldn’t be tagged and matched and searched on the internet.

  But today… Let’s just say Sis is in for a real surprise the next time she checks in on Facebook.

  I get dressed, put my hair up, apply foundation, eyeliner, and lipstick, then go downstairs. With a growing sense of dread, I fire up the laptop and start poking at dusty news sites. I’ve got about half an hour before it’ll be time to set off – time to see if I need to keep my head down.

  It’s not looking good:

  •

  I am squarely in the frame of the photograph that accompanies the lead news item on the BBC News website. Recognizably me, even in casual mufti with a rat’s nest under my beret.

  •

  The same video clip is on YouTube. It has been viewed 223,195 times already. (Make that 223,196.)

  •

  There are links to six more videos of the incident, from different angles. One of them was taken by a Korean tourist whose funky high-def camera had some sort of bizarre polarizing filter that is sensitive to thaum fields; bolts of psychedelic lightning zig and zag across the concourse, roughly connecting Lecter to Laughing Boy, who shows up in luminous green.

  •

  There’s an interview with the Mayor, from his hospital bed, breathlessly expressing his gratitude and admiration to “the redhead with the violin” who took down Strip Jack Spratt, as the supervillain manqué apparently calls himself. (Alias Dougal Slaithwaite, age 52, unemployed, of no fixed abode: now facing charges of kidnapping, indecent assault, and threatening behavior.)

  •

  There are linked news items – human interest color, I gather – about other superhero outbreaks. Who ordered that? Apparently my media habit is sufficiently out of the mainstream that I’ve been missing out on the summer’s big story.

  •

  There are more than seventy messages waiting for me in my Facebook inbox. I delete them all. Another one appears almost immediately. (I log out.)

  I don’t bother checking the newspapers. Instead, I repack my suitcase, adding my second-best suit in place of the one I’m wearing. It may be some time before I can come home without running a gauntlet of journalists. The first of them may already be on their way, depending on how good they are at image manipulation and social engineering. As I said, Sis is in for a real surprise next time she checks in…

  But for me, it’s time to face the music.

  I phone for a cab, and they pick me up at my front door. My skin’s crawling as I do the perp walk out to the curb, but there are no tabloid reporters or paparazzi waiting in the bushes yet: it’s a lucky escape that I can’t count on repeating. I feel nauseous as I contemplate what’s coming up next. An auto-da-fé if I’m lucky; utter shame otherwise.

  Of course the cabbie turns out to be the talkative kind. “Did you ’ear about the mess in Trafalgar Square?” he asks. “I’m going to ’ave to loop around to drop you on Pall Mall, that end’s all blocked off. One of those supervillains went off ’is trolley and kidnapped the Mayor! Then some girl with a magic guitar took ’im down, right in front of Nelson’s Column! The news is saying she works for a secret government agency,” he confides with a knowing look.

  “I’m sure she does.” I cross my arms and peer out of the window, feigning boredom. I’m certain he can hear my pulse pounding over the noise of the lorry we’re nose-to-tail with.

  “Stands to reason, the government must have some kind of plan for dealing with them, right?” He sounds worried.

  “Them?”

  “Yeah, the crazies with superpowers.”

  “Crazies with —” I catch his eye in the mirror, looking at me as if he’s wondering what planet I’m from.

  “Yeah, crazies. Like
the bloke wot tore up that community center in Tooting last week, with ’is bare ’ands. It’s anarchy, that’s wot it is, even with all these crime-fighters in pervert suits coming out of the woodwork.”

  “Pervert suits?” I ask, caught by his phrasing.

  “Yeah, it’s like there’s some kind of law or something: ordinary bloke acquires the power to turn his ’ead into a teapot, he has to start poncing around in Lycra and fishnets. Like something from the Rocky Horror, innit? You know what? That sort of thing turns my stomach. There ought to be a law against it.”

  “What, turning your head into a teapot?”

  “No, the pervy suits. I mean, no offense, if a fit bird with superpowers wants to wear a skimpy dress and thigh-high boots I’ve got no problem, knowworramean? But some of these blokes, they’re a bit past their sell-by. There oughta be a law about it, right? They should make all the fat supervillains wear burkas. But they ain’t doing anything about any of it right now, looks like. It’s a crime! The police should do something.”

  And so on and on and on, for approximately twenty-five minutes. By the time we arrive at the Admiralty my cheek is twitching and, if I had my choice of superpowers, I would cheerfully sell my soul for the ability to turn my driver’s head into a cafetière.

  I’m so tense by the time we arrive that I forget to ask for a receipt when I pay. But swearing won’t help and I don’t feel like running after the taxi, so I make my way stiffly to the front desk, where a splendidly uniformed doorman waits behind a desk carved from the timbers of an eighteenth-century man-o-war. I present my warrant card: “Dr. O’Brien. I’m here for a meeting in room 4102.”

  It sounds so much better than disciplinary hearing.

  “If you’d care to sign here, ma’am… now stare into the camera, just for a second.” It’s one of the ubiquitous eyeball-on-a-stalk webcams, disquietingly like something I once met in a hotel hallway in Amsterdam. I try to will the lens to crack, but I’m not quite ugly enough. “Jolly good, now I’m just going to print you out a badge. Remember to wear it at all times and return it when you leave. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave those bags here. You can check them into the cloak room, but I’m afraid we’ll have to scan them —”

  “You can take the suitcase, but the violin has to stay with me.” I put it on the desk. “You’re welcome to inspect it right here, but I can’t let it out of my possession. It’s rather valuable.” I tense up, anticipating a fight.

  “Really?” He smiles over gilt-framed half-moon glasses. “Well, if you insist, I can hand search it.” Bless the Corps of Commissionaires: they’re ex-military enough to know when to bend the rules.

  We deposit my suitcase, I show him Lecter and let him hand-check the sides and back of the case, then I take my badge and go in search of the borrowed conference room.

  It’s funny how the mere anticipation of a verbal confrontation can be worse than life-and-death combat: my stomach is hollow and chest a little fluttery. The floors in this building are paved in Italian marble, uncarpeted, utterly lethal if you slip, and liable to cause permanent hearing damage if you walk on them for too long in heels. It’s enough to make me long for the beige institutional carpet of the New Annex —

  And then I’m standing in front of a pair of imposing black double doors framed by Corinthian columns, surmounted by an arch with painted putti blowing on the sails of ships of the line. I take a deep breath and knock, twice.

  Vikram opens the door; he looks nearly as nervous as I feel. “Oh good, we were getting worried,” he says. Worried?

  “Is there a problem?” I ask cautiously.

  “Yes, we’ve been running interference from upstairs, but…” He steps backwards. “Come on in. We have coffee and refreshments.”

  I follow him into the room. It’s about the size of an aircraft carrier’s hangar deck, with baroque gilt-encrusted benches and side-tables drawn up against wood-paneled walls that have fossilized under the weight of their decorative plasterwork. The floor-to-ceiling windows admit a waterfall of golden afternoon light that floods the room and washes across a hand-woven Persian carpet that must have cost a prince’s ransom.

  “Ah, Dr. O’Brien.” I nearly jump out of my skin: It’s Dr. Michael (never a Mike) Armstrong, the Senior Auditor. He smiles like a tired crocodile. “What a relief. Are you well?”

  I manage not to stagger under the weight of his regard: he actually looks concerned. “Have you spoken to Bob this morning?” I ask.

  “Yes – wait, not since the early hours.” His left eyebrow wrinkles. “Is something the matter?”

  “Um.” I glance round. He’s brought a couple of admin bodies I don’t know, but some faces I expected to see are absent. “Yes, but I’m not sure it’s relevant to the matter in hand. Where’s Judith?”

  “Dead.”

  “What?”

  Armstrong clasps his hands behind his back, as sober as a funeral director. “Last night, during the Code Red. We were attacked at the New Annex.”

  “I knew that, but – Judith?” Dr. Carroll was the second ranking Auditor who dealt with our department. I was expecting her to chair this session. She wasn’t exactly a friend, but I was certain I’d get a fair hearing from her, and to learn that she’s dead so recently comes like a punch in the guts.

  He looks at me, his expression deceptively mild. “We lost others.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Andrew Newstrom. Doris Goodman. James Angleton.”

  “Oh my —” My knees nearly give way. Everything’s a blur. The next thing I know, the Senior Auditor has my arm – he’s almost holding me up – and is leading me towards a chair. “— God.” It’s not that it’s entirely news to me: I knew we’d lost Angleton. But the scale of it hits me hard. And Andy was a friend: not a close one, but a friend nonetheless.

  “God won’t help you, I’m afraid,” the SA murmurs sympathetically. More loudly: “I’m sorry, you should have been kept informed.”

  “But – Andy?”

  “Yes.” I feel the hard edge of a chair butt up against my legs: I allow myself to collapse onto it. “Your husband is picking up the pieces.”

  “But he’s —” My lips don’t seem to want to work properly: I take a few seconds to get them back under control. “This is a catastrophe.”

  “Yes,” he agrees.

  It puts everything that’s happened to me in the past twenty-four hours in a new perspective. Tilt-shift mode on a shiny new digital camera: all of a sudden, your larger-than-life problems look like a miniature diorama. “Oh God. Bob and I had a huge row. If I’d known —”

  “Not to worry,” Dr. Armstrong murmurs gently. He sits down beside me. “I’m sure allowances will be made, accommodations can be reached. But that’s not what we’re here for, is it?”

  Oh, that. “No,” I agree.

  “You know what’s coming next.” It’s a statement, not a question.

  “Give me a couple of seconds, please? This is all a bit of a shock.” I reach for the empty chair on my other side, and lay Lecter’s case there. I try to relax, even though every instinct tells me to tense up. What’s coming next is one of the scariest nonviolent experiences you can undergo – and if you work for the Laundry, you will undergo it, sooner or later. “I’m ready now.” I turn my head and stare into his eyes, which are deep and brown and have unusually long lashes.

  “All right. Sabbath. Claymore. Diamond. Rocket. Execute Sitrep One.”

  My tongue feels like a lump of wood: my eyes do not belong to me. Something inside my head uses my larynx to make its report: “Subjective integrity is maintained. Subjective continuity of experience is maintained. Subject observes no tampering.”

  “Good.” The Senior Auditor smiles warmly. “Execute Sitrep Two.”

  “Subjective operational readiness state: green. Subjective background state: amber, trending to red.”

  “Hmm.” His smile slips. “Exit supervision.” A brief pause: “Mo, before we get to the main business of this mee
ting, in your own words – how was your trip going, before you were recalled? Was there a message for us?”

  The unseen narrator using my vocal cords goes back to sleep. I clear my throat as I regain control of my own mind. “Ramona invited me to come visit some time. We had a lengthy gossip sesh. But that’s all. Nothing substantial.”

  “Nice to know the neighbors are steady.” The set of his shoulders relaxes slightly. “So. Tell me what happened in Trafalgar Square…”

  My shoulders tense. “Total screw-up, I’m afraid. I went in under-informed and under-equipped and didn’t even notice the news crew until it was way too late. Also, um, I’d like to report that I had some self-control issues. Nearly took out my personal frustration on the idiot who caused the scene. Utterly unconscionable, and I was able to stop myself, but. But. You need to know —”

  He raises a hand and I manage to stop myself before I begin to babble. Then he speaks, his voice low and soothing: “You dealt with a crisis while sleep-deprived and in the wake of a major domestic argument, and you dealt with it effectively. Did you rough him up? If not, I see no problem here except that perhaps the DO should have looked a little further before assigning assets to deal with what appeared at first to be a trivial distraction. That you feel the need to confess that you were tempted is creditable but, under the circumstances, unnecessary: we do not punish people for thoughtcrime, Dr. O’Brien.” He pauses. “And in any event, we would have encountered this particular crisis sooner or later, regardless of who had to deal with the feckless Mr. Spratt. It was just bad luck that it happened to you rather than to someone else.”

  “What crisis?” I pause long enough to lick my lips. “The Code Red?”

  “Dealt with,” he says, with a dismissive wave of the hand. “The PHANGs are locked down tight, the external and internal threats have been neutralized” – for a moment there’s a flicker of fire in his eyes – “and damage control is in hand. No, this isn’t the disciplinary hearing you were expecting: we have another crisis to deal with.” He gestures at the boardroom table at the far end of the room. “So, whenever you’re ready…”