The Face Stealer

by Robert Scott-Norton

  Forgetting the door for a moment, Max made a quick circuit of the room, keeping as far away from the blanks as he could. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, a ventilation duct they could get through, a maintenance panel. The roof was solid concrete slabs.

  Max spotted a mixture of electrical conduits running along the bottom of the room, and smaller cables. They reminded him of the network cables he was so used to seeing at client sites.

  A thought occurred to him.

  He ran back to the door.

  “Still with me Dennis?”

  “Doing fine.”

  He didn’t sound fine, but he had at least managed to raise himself up onto his elbows. He looked older, and paler than he had done earlier.

  “Have you got a plan?” Dennis asked.

  “Working on it.”

  “No pressure, but I think you need to work on it a bit faster.”

  Max was at the clear plate by the door. He pressed his head to the wall and could see the cables running into the back of it.

  “Yes. I know.”

  “They’re waking up.”

  Max stopped what he was doing and spun round. Dennis was right. The once slumped heads of the blanks were now looking straight ahead. None of them had started to move, but surely that was just a matter of time. What had set them off? Was it normal for them to wake up like this as one? Or had it been their presence that had set them off.

  Max tried to put them from his mind as he struggled with the casing for the security plate. He pressed upwards on the pad and felt it move. Encouraged he jiggled with the casing a bit more. With a final tug, he managed to pry it away from the housing. Inside was a mass of jumbled wiring.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to get us out of here.”

  “You can be exasperating sometimes. I’m not surprised your wife tried to kill you.”

  Max bit his lip.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It sounded funny in my head.”

  “It’s OK, no worries.”

  Max pulled at a couple of wires from inside the box, and encouraged by the slight give in them, he pulled some more.

  “So what are you actually trying to do?” Dennis asked.

  “I’m trying to pick the lock. The keypad mechanism outside is much older than the hand recognition system on the inside. I think it’s been added later.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “It might not. It all depends on what they did with the original keypad system. It might still be in here, connected in some form.”

  “And you think you can pick that lock?”

  “I won’t need to. I remembered the number she typed in.”

  He tugged around inside the box some more and found what he was looking for. A small bunch of older cables that looked like they left the box only to return in a hole further down.

  “Got it,” Max said and stood back from the hand plate switch. “The cables are running through this panel here.” He felt the edge of the panel and tugged it away from the wall. Sure enough, a square keypad was fixed inside the panel. It was the double of the one outside. “I think they left it here as a kind of redundancy.”

  A hundred pairs of shoes tapped the floor. Max turned and saw the blanks were now standing.

  “I don’t think we have much time left.” Dennis said, his voice beginning to crack. He started to push himself to his feet, wincing as he did so.

  “Almost done,” Max said, and he reached inside the panel, remembering the sequence Emma had entered, he tapped the code out on the keypad, and waited for the door to open.

  But it didn’t. The door stayed shut.

  Max tried the number again. Still nothing.

  “What’s happening? Did you remember it wrong?”

  “I don’t remember things wrong. This pad isn’t working.” Max peered inside the access panel and moved a few wires away to get a better look at the problematic keypad.

  Dennis was on his feet now. He walked painfully slowly towards Max and the door. “We need to go.”

  “Shut up. I’m thinking.”

  Dennis grabbed the door handle and yanked it. Nothing moved. Max knew it wouldn’t. The locking servos weren’t activated. Max wished he’d go and sit down again so he would stop being a distraction.

  Max struggled to concentrate on the task in hand. “Don’t tell me they’re getting closer. I haven’t got time for any more distractions. The circuit is powered, else why leave it connected. But maybe there’s no power in the keypad mechanism itself.” Max felt around in the panel for any clue as to the problem with the keypad. His fingers scrambled around the cavity until he found it. A small switch leading to another thicker cable running to the keypad. He pressed the switch and almost yelled when the keypad lit up.

  “Max, I know you don’t want to know what’s happening, but if you don’t have a way out, you’d better get ready to fight.”

  The sounds were closer now, and moving faster.

  Max tapped the code into the keypad and the door slid back into its recess.

  Dennis almost fell through. Max grabbed him, then together they stumbled into the corridor outside.

  It was then that Max finally turned and looked back into the room.

  He wished he hadn’t.

  Three of the blanks from the front row were running towards them, the rest were standing and waiting. They were yards away. He hadn’t even been able to take on one of the blanks in the police station, three was impossible.

  The door slid closed as the nearest one reached it, the same man in the tatty suit that Max had seen earlier.

  Dennis was at the keypad. His thumb pressed against the close button.

  “These things are a damn sight easier to close than to open,” he said, then promptly fainted.

  34

  “I thought you were dead,” Linwood said impassively as a dark figure shuffled in the shadows of the bus shelter.

  “Most people do,” Payne said as he stepped into the light. “I don’t want to be on the streets for long. Where can we go?”

  Linwood gestured across the road at the old job centre on East Bank Street. It was a sorry looking building, with its once impressive brickwork facade left to the vandals who’d gone to town breaking the windows and scribbling graffiti. Blue steel bars had been retrofitted to all of the windows but it hadn’t saved them.

  “I don’t understand. Why did you want to meet me here?”

  “You’re looking at MI18’s headquarters, well one of them.” She strode purposefully across the road. Cars were few and far between at this time of the morning.

  “You’re telling me your headquarters is right in the middle of town?”

  “Is that so hard to believe?”

  “Well, yes. A little.”

  With an exaggerated sigh, she turned to face Payne. “What’s the matter?”

  Payne had slipped back inside the bus shelter, away from the reach of the flame orange glow from the street lamp. “Why would I step inside your headquarters? For all I know, you were behind the attack on my house. It’s not a coincidence that you turned up hours after we found the first body,” said Payne taking a breath. “I asked you a question last night.”

  “Why trust me?” She approached Payne, arms by her sides, then came into the bus shelter and perched on a bench. Payne stood at the far end, watching with anticipation.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad you’re OK. I feared the worst when I heard about Charlie’s boat.”

  “A blank was waiting for me.”

  “Ah. Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “No, the place was trashed.”

  Linwood nodded. “I’m about to do something incredibly stupid.” She turned to face him, searching for his features in the shadows. Her expression had softened. “I need you. Your help I mean.”

  “So, are you going to actually tell me what you do? Who you work for?”

  “We work for ourselves. Mostly.
” Linwood said.

  “Yes, but who do you work for? Who pays your salary?”

  “The funding comes from some department in Whitehall. It’s easier than you’d think flying under the radar. Money flows our way, we spend it. No one asks any questions. They’d prefer not to know what we do.”

  “Plausible deniability.”

  “Exactly. It wasn’t always like this. Back when the department was formed, we were very popular. Our section heads were always invited to the best parties in Whitehall. But as times changed it became more important to protect ourselves.”

  “Protect yourself from who?”

  “Everyone. The press, the government, the general public. We would have been an easy target. We represented something that people didn’t want to acknowledge.”

  “And that was?”

  She sighed. “We look after the country from those that would seek to harm it. Thing is, those that would wish to harm it aren’t always on home soil. Sometimes they’re not even from this planet.”

  Payne laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “That’s your big secret? We are not alone?”

  Linwood wasn’t smiling.

  Payne paused, tilted his head to the side. She wasn’t joking. “You believe that don’t you? You believe that we’re not alone.”

  “I don’t need to believe it any more than I need to believe I’m talking to you in a bus shelter. It’s fact.”

  “Stop it. You’re talking nonsense. There is no such thing as—”

  “People without faces, or exploding people, or people that won’t die without a bullet to the head.”

  “That’s different.”

  “If I’d suggested to you two days ago that it would be possible for a man to exist without a face, what would you have said?”

  “You’re twisting things.”

  “I’m challenging you to look at your beliefs. Did you believe that it was possible for a man to live without a face?” Linwood paused but Payne didn’t rise to the bait. “You adjusted your belief the moment you saw a blank hunting you down.”

  “Are you saying you’ve seen little green men?”

  “Jesus. What decade are you from?”

  “I might be getting on, but I know when I’m having my leg pulled.”

  “I’ll make you a deal. You don’t have to believe in aliens, but accept the fact that we were established to deal with unexplained phenomena. Stuff that the regular services couldn’t handle. How does that sound?”

  Payne shrugged his shoulders. “OK. So that’s your setup. What’s gone so wrong? Where’s your team?”

  “That’s why I need your help. There’s only a handful of us, and after what happened to Carey—”

  “You don’t know who to trust.”

  Linwood nodded. Her face looked tense. Her forehead lined with frowns. How long had she been this stressed?

  “What makes you think you can trust me?”

  “The way you’ve handled the investigation over the last few days. I’ve checked your record. You’re a good honest copper. And that’s what I need right now.”

  She smiled and put down her coffee.

  “Still, you’re putting your trust in someone you don’t really know. Are you sure that’s wise?”

  “Probably not.”

  “So, what do we do?” Payne said.

  35

  Against Payne’s expectations, Linwood didn’t head for the main entrance, choosing to lead Payne around the back of the building to an innocuous, plain looking door. She gripped its handle and it glowed with an orange light, almost like the metal was becoming molten. After a series of clicks and beeps, Linwood pulled the door open.

  Lights came on as they entered the hallway. Payne put a hand out against the wall and paused. It felt like he’d been winded, like someone had just punched him in the gut.

  Linwood noticed and put a gentle hand on his arm. “The defence net just scanned you. If you’re not used to it, it can feel a little—”

  “Bloody uncomfortable is what it feels like,” Payne finished for her. But, the discomfort passed quickly.

  The hallway opened into a much wider space, an open-planned foyer with the walls finished in a smooth white material. It didn’t feel like plasterboard and the curved shapes, especially where the ceiling met the walls, could have been some special composite material. It had the expensive look that you’d expect in a top grade apartment.

  They hurried past an unmanned reception desk and down one of the corridors leading from the foyer. Strange light projections flowed across the surface of the walls, making patterns that sometimes coalesced into recognisable shapes, but most often seemed random. Payne kept close behind Linwood, but impulsively checked behind him as they went.

  “What is that?” he eventually asked. “I keep thinking someone’s following us.”

  “The defence net again. The building likes to keep track of us.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  “No. Why should it.”

  “You talk like it’s alive.”

  She led him down a few more corridors. There was a strange sense of going down, deeper into the ground. Payne noticed with alarm that the lights were going out as they exited each section of the building. It felt like he was being herded by the darkness.

  “The building doesn’t look this big on the outside.”

  “Oh I don’t know. I always thought it was a bit cozy. I guess after a few years working here, you get used to it.”

  They stopped suddenly. Payne almost walked into the back of his guide.

  “The operations room,” she explained. As she moved her hand closer to the doorway, Payne saw the same light patterns that he’d seen earlier flow down from the ceiling and form shapes by the door. She placed her hand onto the shapes which changed colour. The door opened, and they stepped inside.

  The room followed the design paradigm of the rest of the complex. Sleek white curved surfaces blending together to give a sense that this place was more grown than built. A central desk area took up the middle of the room. A wall of video screens flickered to life as they approached. Chairs rose from the floor, one for each of them. Payne sat down beside the table. He lent his elbow on the surface and rested his head on his hand, stroking his stubble absently. The light patterns zipped over to his elbow but didn’t form any shapes, and went scuttling back to the centre of the table.

  “You’re hiding in here. The building outside is a cover, some kind of camouflage for what this place really is. Was it ever really a job centre?”

  “No.”

  “But that’s not possible. How could you ever keep something like that hidden from the public?”

  “No one came here. The real job centre is on Tulketh Street. Always has been. The outside of this building has always looked like it has today, more or less.”

  “And no one noticed.”

  “The building didn’t want them to notice.”

  She walked over to the wall of videos and scanned them quickly. It was like watching a composer in front of her orchestra. With a wave of her hand, the pictures changed. Pictures turned into words. Reams of text spilled down the screens.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I need to see inside the Tombs. See what he’s doing.”

  “The Tombs?”

  “Our old base. It got damaged. Thadeus is a kind of caretaker. He looks after some of our property in there.”

  “So what’s stopping you? Let’s go and see him.”

  “It’s not going to be that straightforward. He won’t want us down there.”

  “If you think he’s going to be trouble, I could get some uniform to come with us. We could go and see him with a bit of muscle.” Payne wondered when it had stopped being just Linwood’s problem.

  “He’d be ready for that. We’d only get people killed. I was planning on a subtler approach.”

  She straightened and tugged the end of her shirt. Payne tried not t
o stare at her chest and failed. Luckily, her mind was racing ahead and she didn’t notice.

  “We need to see what Thadeus is up to.”

  “How are you going to do that?” Payne asked.

  Linwood tapped at her keyboard and the screens slid to one side shrinking to a row of small dots. A new screen appeared. Linwood grabbed it with her fingers and stretched it so it filled most of the desk. It was the images from a CCTV camera. Payne leaned over the desk. It was the inside of an office, and not an especially interesting one at that. One desk in the corner of the room, filing cabinets, white-board with a calendar and post it notes.

  “Is this his office then?” Payne asked.

  “No. It’s the main entrance,” said Linwood tapping away on the keyboard. “But it’s the only image I can pull up. There are dozens of cameras down there but this is the only one active. The rest have been disabled.”

  “Disabled? By Thadeus you mean?” Payne said.

  “Yes, or maybe he’s found a way to lock us out.”

  Linwood looked serious. She folded her arms and started to pace the room. She combed her fingers through her hair. “I had access two days ago. If he’s done it, he’s only just done it. He knows we’re watching him. But why has he chosen to disable them now?”

  Linwood tapped away on the desk. Red signs appeared overlaid on the screens she was watching. Payne didn’t need to know what they said. “He knows you’re onto him. I’ve told you, let’s get some of my men together, some of your men, and we’ll go and pay him a visit.”

  The thought of having the man responsible for the deaths of his colleagues locked in a cell gave him a happy feeling inside. There were a few of the boys who might like to pay him a visit. Although he’d never allow it, the idea made him smile.