Armageddon Heights (a thriller)

by D. M. Mitchell

  He smirked. ‘I thought as much.’

  ‘I’m serious, Wade. I can’t leave you now, not after discovering what I have about you. You were valuable before; now you’re nothing short of precious.’

  ‘You say the nicest things…’ he said, his voice softening somewhat. ‘What about the others? Even if we find a way out of this place I’m not leaving without the others. They have to come, too.’

  As she studied the shadows moving at the base of the door she gave a shrug of acquiescence. ‘I have to agree with you. They’re exhibiting all the characteristics of sentience.’

  ‘To me they’re more than characters in a game, Keegan,’ he said stiffly. ‘Or targets for your beloved CSL. Whatever the real explanation is for all this, I’m going to get them out and we’ll pick up this conversation later.’ He rose to his feet. ‘One thought…’

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘Say I believe you. Say all this is like you say it is…’

  ‘It is. You have to trust me.’

  ‘Then somewhere out there are my wife and child, still very much alive…’

  ‘A version of them, don’t forget, Wade,’ she warned.

  ‘But out there nonetheless. They look and sound exactly like them.’

  ‘Well, yes, that’s true. But their memories won’t be the same as yours. They won’t share your particular memories or past.’

  ‘That’s all I needed to know,’ he said decisively.

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  ‘It means they’re not dead. And I’d rather exist in a world where they’re alive and breathing than go back to one in which they’re a pair of corpses.’ He closed his eyes against the dark. ‘Even if this world is a crazy hellhole dredged from an acne-peppered programming team’s shittiest nightmares,’ he said. ‘I want to find them.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen, Wade. Like I said…’

  ‘I’m going to look for them even if you won’t help me.’

  ‘But they won’t be the same people.’

  ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. So, what’s the plan?’

  The search for his wife and child aside, he’d taken it far better than she expected. His stoicism was reassuring, though she knew that wasn’t the end of it by a long means. ‘There’s no plan, as such…’ she said.

  ‘Great. Some rescuer you turned out to be.’

  ‘That’s not to say I didn’t have one. It was your fault it hit the rocks; your run-in with Cain happened before I managed to get to you.’

  ‘Fine, lay the blame on me,’ he said. ‘Okay, so you know all about Cain and his little settlement here. What else can you tell me? What function does it play in the Heights?’

  The soldier in him was kicking in again. Cold logic for the moment drowning out unreliable and unstable emotion. ‘Cain sits on supplies, lots of them. Food, guns, ammunition, that kind of thing. Gamers looking to replenish diminished stocks will find it here. It’s a challenge getting to it, as you can imagine. Getting inside this underground city is difficult enough, but navigating through the many corridors is like traversing a maze from a very bad dream. It has other minor functions, but its existence as an oasis-like supply dump for gamers is the primary one.’

  He silently digested the information. ‘So where are all the gamers, if this is a game?’

  ‘Lindegaard’s teams would have closed down all zones within a certain distance of a possible incursion to gamers so he can send in the Sentinels,’ she explained. ‘And talking of the Sentinels, I can guarantee they’ll be on their way here as we speak. A double whammy, you might say. But we have one advantage…’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘I know the layout of this place. I know where we are, where the supplies are being housed, and I know where they’ll be holding the others prisoner.’

  ‘How come?’

  She smiled thinly, studying Wade’s figure edged in the feeble light from the doorway. ‘Let’s say I know someone who had a hand in designing it all.’

  There was a sharp tinkling from beyond the door. The sound of a key being inserted into the lock. The door swung open, the hinges complaining as it did so, and both Keegan and Wade, having been immersed in almost total darkness, blinked in the sudden light from the corridor, weak as it was. They backed away as two men approached them with rifles, another – a far older man – entering the room behind them holding up a lantern. This last man was dressed in the same leather and fur garb as his companions, but his sun-bronzed scrawny neck and wrists were covered in gold necklaces and bracelets, every one of his fingers adorned with a large ring set with precious and semi-precious stones that caught the light from the lantern. He hung the cobbled-together lamp on a hook in the wall. His eyes looked like empty slits in a piece of wrinkled leather, and his mouth bore few teeth, those that did show were not the prettiest shade of black. He had a savage-looking dagger shoved into a leather belt that skirted his slender waist, and stick-thin legs encased in dark-brown leather.

  Wade had no doubt that this was the Magwer Keegan had told him about. Cain’s wise man. He sure looked the part, he thought, casting a glance at the two guards as the Magwer waved them away to stand back near the door. They took up their places like two stony-faced pit-bulls.

  ‘Don’t say anything to upset him,’ Keegan whispered to Wade. ‘He’d have you disembowelled in an instant.’

  ‘Nice man,’ he said coldly.

  ‘Untie them both,’ said the old man to one of the guards, and Wade was relieved when the wire was cut from his wrists, the pain seeming to rise in intensity as the bloodied wire fell away. Keegan massaged her freed wrists. ‘Sit down,’ he ordered, and the two prisoners did as they were told. The old man took a small bottle from a leather pouch at his waist and began to sprinkle the foul-smelling contents in a large circle around Wade and Keegan, while they watched on silently. He appeared to be mouthing some kind of ritualistic prayer, moving slowly behind them and out of sight. Unexpectedly Wade felt a sharp pain as his neck was slashed with a knife. He cried out, turning. The old man slapped him in the face, but Wade did not rise to it. The Magwer aimed the knife at a point between Wade’s startled eyes, and reached out to smear his free hand in the fresh blood, putting it to his lips. His tongue darted out to taste the blood and Wade watched with both revulsion and fascination.

  ‘Tastes better with bread,’ said Wade, and expected another blow, but the old man just studied him intently, his tongue licking all the blood from his fingers till his hand was clean of it.

  The leathery slits for eyes watched Wade with an intensity that burned. ‘You have bad blood,’ the old man hissed. ‘Bad blood!’ He faced the guards. ‘He cannot live. He will bring ruin and devastation to us all. Kill him,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  With mounting horror, Wade looked on helplessly as the two guards raised their rifles and the old man dragged Keegan away from Wade’s side. He heard the metallic ringing of the rifles being cocked.

  31

  Pain and Joy

  Robert Napier left Lindegaard’s Power Tower and stepped out into the cool, damp air. A steady stream of people, mostly suited and young, dressed in dark, efficient-looking suits, passed by him in both directions. Heads bent down with purpose, connected to various pieces of technology, listening, talking, texting, reading, lost in digital worlds and taking scant notice of the one they inhabited. Hardly noticing the environment around them.

  When had that happened, he wondered? When had it changed? When was that moment in time when people shrugged off reality and exchanged it for a form of digital representation? When had the drug that was cyberspace finally taken complete hold and, like addicts, we could no longer say no and welcomed its warm embrace filled with the promise of the new and exciting? When did its benign watchwords of communication, knowledge and accessibility first seduce and then hypnotise us to freely allow ourselves to be locked, unquestioning, into its virtual shackles for life, forever and ever, amen?

  Technolog
y in itself wasn’t evil, Napier thought, chastising and blaming his black mood. But it was an incubator for evil. It involved money and power, for one, lots of it, and the lure of great wealth and power were age-old sores on mankind’s skin. Armageddon Heights was technology incarnate. It had begun life as one thing and had quickly morphed into another, and at the centre of its diseased heart was money and power. He was saddened to see how fast the company had descended like an eager submarine looking to rape the deep of its riches, down into the icy, black depths of despotism and avarice, steered by Dale Lindegaard on the way to his own personal glory and gratification.

  And that descent had begun with the shooting of Jeremy Lindegaard and his daughter Melissa.

  The memory of that tragic day, the sight of Melissa’s blood on his hands as he desperately waited for the ambulance, galvanised him into action.

  He wasn’t sure whether he was being followed or not, so he thought it best to play safe. He’d phoned the desk to have his car ready, and he’d no sooner stepped onto the pavement than a large black company Bentley pulled up, the driver exiting and opening the door for him as he ploughed his way through the slipstream of urgent business people. As he got in he glanced up at the Power Tower, unable to see the top of it from there, but the tumbling grey clouds reflected in the walls of glass seemed to give it a brooding aspect, as if it looked down on him with suspicion or disdain.

  He told the driver to make for his hotel on Kings Cross Road, sitting back and waiting patiently in his warm, quiet, insulated cocoon of luxury as the car made its way through the traffic across London. Once at his destination, he asked the driver to pull through an open gateway and into the hotel car park, attached to the huge, ornate Victorian building that was Kings Cross Road railway station, where a man in a smart black suit stepped up at once and opened the door for him to let him out. Napier told the driver he didn’t need him and waited until the car sped away and joined the long unbroken thread of cars beyond the walls.

  ‘If anyone asks, I went inside to my room,’ said Napier to the man, and clandestinely handed him a significant wad of notes, which the man pocketed. ‘And you never saw me come out again.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Napier,’ he said, turning away and walking back to the hotel steps.

  Napier joined the throng of people on Kings Cross Road, a man handing out free copies of the Metro flagging one out in front of him. Napier hardly noticed the man. He wandered down the street to where the crowds thinned and the shops and stores took on an altogether grittier aspect. A sex shop; a tattoo parlour; a corner shop with Vespa scooters for sale outside, men busy in the workshop restoring others; a shop selling kebabs; a dirty-windowed Travelodge hotel; an off-licence; a betting shop. Taking a tissue from his jacket pocket he wrapped his company mobile in it and dumped it into a plastic litter bin.

  He went at a pace down the road, finally pausing by one of the side streets that fanned off from the still-busy arterial road. Its narrow length still bore traces of old cobblestones and one or two rundown Victorian properties, and had a faintly quaint aspect, as if it had no truck with the modern world and instead pointed like a gnarled old finger into the City’s recent past. It headed nowhere, a dead-end according to the sign at the end of the street, but Napier, with a glance over his shoulder, took it and near the metal bollards and brick wall that marked its climax he came to a two-door dilapidated wooden gate, chained and padlocked.

  Taking out a key and removing the padlock and rusted chain, Napier swung open the large doors. The smell of damp concrete and the fusty tang of decaying old carpets and cotton sheeting rose to greet him. Moving with purpose to the back of the garage, he lifted a canvas tarpaulin to uncover a large old safe, the old-fashioned kind with a knurled knob and brass door handle. The combination quickly entered, he swung open the heavy door. Sitting on shelves inside the safe were a variety of mobile phones, one of which he grabbed and pulled out a number. He waited for it to be answered.

  ‘Come on,’ he said aloud. ‘Pick up the Goddamn phone.’ There was no reply. The phone went to voicemail. ‘It’s me. Get her out of there. Get her out now. Her life’s in danger.’ He paused, sucking in a breath. ‘The game’s finished. I’m headed straight over.’ He made another call. This time there was a voice at the other end. ‘It’s me,’ Napier said. ‘Have you got the room covered? Good. Make sure you get it all.’ He hung up.

  On a lower shelf was a black overnight bag; it contained a change of clothes. Beside it sat a small briefcase in polished brown leather. Unfastening the briefcase he checked its contents: an envelope stuffed with money, a wallet with more money and a variety of bank cards, and a passport for one Jonathan Harvey, bearing his photo. Sitting at the bottom of all this, through which his eager fingers rummaged, his hand landed on a scarf inside of which had been concealed a weighty object.

  A handgun fell out of the scarf into his hand. He stared at it. He shouldn’t have it – it was bought illegally, the serial number filed off, and God only knew what it had been used for, before he became its new owner. But he needed it that way, completely untraceable, no matter the risks he was taking by simply owning such a weapon.

  He sourced it as soon as he found out… Bought it to have his revenge. But it had never been used. Not yet. And just by holding it in his hand again he felt the reasons for its existence, that revenge, rise hot and volcanic from the scorching bowels of his anger.

  He placed the gun on the top of the safe while he changed his clothes, and having finished dressing put the weapon into the briefcase. He left the garage and locked it back up again, hailing a taxi once back on Kings Cross Road.

  ‘Liverpool Street Station,’ he said to the driver.

  The train journey into Essex passed by in a blur, each stop at the small stations along the way causing his insides to contract, his entire being willing the train to move on again, the sweat beading at his temples, the briefcase heavy and accusing on his lap. Two young Essex boys, early teens, were chatting loudly about a girl they both knew; droned on about clothes, drink, cars, their accents grating on his nerves the more they gossiped. They were so full of energy, he thought, so full of life. He remembered being like that once. Everything stretched out in front of him like a magnificent red carpet waiting to be trod, leading to the grand entrance of his fulfilled life; the facile and trivial granted sublime importance along the way.

  And now all he could think about was death.

  Death had been stinking in his nostrils ever since the shooting. His death. He’d died that day, when his world, Melissa Lindegaard, was taken from him. Revenge was an insidious acid that spilled onto his red carpet and reduced it to smoky threads, disintegrating it over the years till he had nothing left to tread.

  He watched disinterestedly the many people coming and going as the train left the City behind and sped out across flat, open countryside, winter painting the view beyond the carriage window in shades of brown and bleached green. Soon he was sitting all alone in the carriage, with only the bright yellow scrolling of the stations the train would stop at on the electronic display above him, and having only the passionless woman’s voice announcing the same stops for cold company.

  He departed the train at Chelmsford and took a taxi to a small-time car hire firm, where he called to collect an aged and inconspicuous-looking Ford reserved yesterday under the name Jonathan Harvey. He showed both paper and card copies of his forged license, and after signing for the car he was handed the keys and shown round the vehicle. A vehicle he had no intentions of returning. He made a call again before setting off, but the line went to voicemail again. He drove away, the leather briefcase now sitting on the passenger seat, careful not to break any speed limits or draw unnecessary attention to himself.

  He checked his watch. This was taking far too long. He hoped he wouldn’t be too late.

  The cottage had been just one of the many properties owned by Jeremy Lindegaard, sometimes bought on a whim and often forgotten by all but his accountants. Some
of them were bought purely as investments, other properties he’d put at the disposal of his friends and acquaintances, many more he’d rent out, or hire out as holiday lets – or one of his many subsidiary businesses did. This particular cottage was your idealised chocolate box thatched cottage, built around the 1700s, Napier guessed, tucked away in the middle of nowhere, roses round the door in summer, sitting in acres of land that had stables, paddocks, a small wood, rolling pasture land and a bevy of crystal-clear streams cutting through it. It was worth a small fortune, but to a man like Jeremy Lindegaard, massively wealthy as he had been in life, a small fortune was loose change. It probably meant nothing to him. But to his daughter Melissa it meant everything, for, out of the many properties she’d inherited, this is where she chose to live.

  But that was Melissa all over. She was, Napier admitted, like her father in many ways, but an altogether different creature in others. Strange, he thought as he drove up to the high red-brick walls that ringed the cottage, over one hundred years of weathering and ivy melting them into the rural surroundings; strange how he still thought of her as whole, the woman he knew and loved before the shooting. Not the one in the chair. Not the crippled, broken Melissa.