Abaddonian Dream

by M. K. Woollard

  “Are you in a car?” Asha Ishi asked. “Are you crying?”

  “Where to?” Hammell said again, wiping at his eyes.

  “The Reserves. How far are you from the nearest checkpoint?”

  “Err, fourteen minutes,” Hammell said as the number and map appeared on the windscreen, “if I drive fast.” Reaching over into the glove compartment, he threw a handful more alcohol killer pills into his mouth, crunching them up to speed their progress, wincing at the bitter, chalky taste. “What are we doing out there?”

  “I’m on a dock. What do you think?”

  Hammell grimaced. “Looking for weapons.”

  “It’s time the world found out that the War never ended,” Asha Ishi said and Hammell shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  What am I getting myself into? “Nobody is going to listen to you - to us - to you.”

  “Nobody has to,” Asha Ishi said. “I have a secret weapon.”

  Screeching around a corner, Hammell nodded to himself. He’d made his decision, now he had to live with it. “The Reserves are huge…”

  “I’ll tell you more when you’re past the Reservation Line,” Asha Ishi said. “I won’t be here, but a friend will meet you. You need to speed up - the carriers will be launching any moment. They’ll try to follow you in. You have to get here before they reach you.”

  “I will,” Hammell said as he stepped on the accelerator, hoping it was true.

  Glimpses of the sky through the windscreen revealed no telltale lights among the clouds, but that didn’t mean they weren’t up there, hidden and following. Even if there was a carrier directly above him, he doubted he’d hear it over his car’s rickety old engine. The light, which was always dim beneath the cloud blanket, was getting dimmer still as he sped through the empty streets into thicker and thicker fog. Few people went out at night these days; he barely saw a soul as he sped to the checkpoint.

  Once through, Asha Ishi forwarded him a location about ten minutes away. He parked a short distance out and hurried in on foot, sweating profusely, all the while watching the skies above intently. The dock was huge and Asha Ishi still hadn’t sent him the number of the pier or warehouse. He stopped as he arrived and tried calling her, but she didn’t pick up. As he started to leave her a message, he spotted a trawler weaving its way through the half-sunken hulks - the only moving object in the dock. He set off again, hurrying over to the wharf the boat had departed from, and hid in the shadows of a nearby warehouse, seeing the silhouette of a woman standing on the ramshackle pier in the fog.

  Erring on the side of caution, he called Asha Ishi again, and again she didn’t pick up - but neither did the figure on the dock’s iPalm light up. He waited for a full minute, watching all the while for the carriers, but no-one else appeared and no messages came through. Time not on his side, he edged warily along the pier, keeping half an eye on the dirty, greyed out windows of the surrounding warehouses for signs of movement.

  “Jesus Christ!” the woman jumped as she spotted him stalking behind her. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “You?” Hammell exclaimed as he came close enough to see her face. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh,” Hetty Balhoup said as she recognised him back. “Yes, she said you might be here. Did you have to sneak up on me like that though?”

  “Where is she?”

  Hetty shrugged. “I arrived just before you.”

  “You're the secret weapon?” Hammell asked.

  “What secret weapon? What are you talking about?”

  “Did you at least see the guns?” he asked as he looked all around for any evidence of crates. The dock appeared to have been disused for some time. He was dubious that the rotten boards beneath his feet would even be able to stand the unloading.

  “What guns?” Hetty asked as she wiped at the damp clinging to her plastic coat sleeves.

  “You must be a very secret weapon,” Hammell muttered.

  “Why do you keep going on about weapons?”

  “You didn’t see any crates on that boat?” he asked. “You didn’t get a look inside?”

  “I already told you, I just arrived.”

  His ears caught a familiar, high-pitched whining sound. “We don't have much time,” he said. “There has to be something. She must have left us something.” He frantically searched around, checking the dock and the warehouse behind, before returning to the pier. The boat was a way down the river now, slowly vanishing into the mist, but he thought he could just make out stacks of crates piled up on the deck. Were they collecting instead of delivering? “She really didn’t tell you anything?” he asked.

  Hetty shook her head. “No. Nothing.”

  “What the hell are you doing here, then?” he growled as he looked up, seeing the double rows of a carrier’s lights glowing through the murk. This isn't right. Something's gone wrong. “What use are you?”

  “Well, what did she tell you, then?”

  “I’m not the secret weapon.”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  He scanned the wooden pier again, looking for something, anything, even reaching down into the rank, slimy water to see if there were any suspicious ropes which might be tied to submerged bags or boxes. As he clambered back to his feet and shook off the water, he spotted the body. Floating face down about twenty metres away, it almost looked like an old coat spread out, but for the hair.

  Hammell didn’t even kick off his shoes before diving in, calling in an ambulance as his head broke the surface. The water stank but it was warm, like swimming in a giant, filthy bath. Reaching the body, he turned it over and Asha Ishi’s head flopped back, her throat hanging open. He put an arm across her chest and began fighting his way back towards the dock, struggling to keep her nose and mouth above water. When he reached the pier, Hetty made no move to help; instead she watched, her head and eyes still in the distinctive manner of someone shooting footage on an iEye.

  “Help me!” Hammell pleaded.

  Hetty grudgingly rolled up her coat sleeve and leaned down, looking as if she was mainly concerned with keeping her clothes from getting dirty - until she saw who it was. “Asha?” she said and she froze, her face suddenly turning pale.

  “Yes, it’s Asha,” Hammell said. “Help her!”

  Finally Hetty snapped into action and together they dragged the body from the dock. Hammell collapsed onto the rotten wooden boards just as the first carrier came gliding in over the river. He looked up sharply as a rocket shot up from the boat, hitting the carrier square on the nose. It dipped and then dived, impacting the water in an enormous splash, sending waves racing towards the pier.

  “Are you filming this?” Hammell asked, but Hetty was too shocked to move as she stared dumbly down at Asha. “I’ll help her,” he said. “You’re a journalist - film it!” And he gave her a shove to encourage her.

  Hetty began to do so, unenthusiastically, as Hammell dragged himself over to Asha’s gaping neck, feeling for a pulse. It was weak, but he was fairly sure it was there.

  “Is she alive?” Hetty asked.

  “Yes,” he said as he reached out with uncertain hands to push Asha’s chin down, trying to keep her neck together and stop her bleeding out, hoping he wouldn’t accidentally drown her in her own blood. The slice was clean and deep, cutting through the main arteries and severing her windpipe. “Come on…” he said, looking up to the sky for the ambulance. “Come on…”

  Androids were in the water now - survivors from the downed carrier - but they were too busy rescuing I.T.F. Agents to concern themselves with the trawler, which was moving away as fast as it could go, throwing out a small bow wave and chugging out thick, black smoke. It was almost out of sight when the second carrier arrived. Not making the mistake of getting too close this time, the carrier released a cluster of missiles from afar and the little old boat vanished in a series of fireballs. The second carrier dropped more androids into the water and then turned and began to move towards the pi
er, towards them.

  “Run,” Hammell said to Hetty as. “Take whatever you have and publish it, but run!”

  Hetty didn’t so much as flinch. “Is she going to die?”

  “I don’t know,” Hammell said. The blood was still pumping out of her neck as he tried to hold it together, so her heart had to still be going, for now. “There’s nothing you can do for her. Go!”

  Hoverbots began to appear over the river, collecting up the burning debris, and Hammell wondered how it could be that garbage collectors always seemed to have quicker response times than paramedics. The carrier arrived at the wharf and I.T.F. Agents and tactical kicka model androids began sliding down their wires, quickly fanning out to search the dock.

  “Last chance,” Hammell said, but Hetty stayed put, filming the small group of androids and agents that came striding towards them.

  “That is former Interpol Agent Asha Ishi,” one of the kickas said to Hammell. “She is now under arrest.”

  “I don’t think she much cares,” Hammell said. “Can’t you do something useful? Aren’t you trained to save lives as well as take them?”

  The android knelt down to look at Asha, but by now the ambulance was being waved in anyway, landing on the concrete slab just behind the pier. The kicka and its colleagues stepped away again as two medical androids came hurrying over; one easing Hammell aside too as the other set to work on Asha’s throat.

  “What happened?” the medic which had taken Hammell’s arm asked as it crouched down and began injecting Asha with painkillers and artificial blood while its colleague sealed up Asha’s windpipe and simultaneously reconnected her arteries using miniature hands protruding from its chest. The pair worked quickly and professionally - it was almost enough to instill hope.

  “I don’t know,” Hammell said as he stood up and pulled off his wet socks, wringing them out. His boots and coat had been lost to the river. “I found her in the water like that, face down.”

  “How long had she been in the water?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Finished with the glueing, the medics moved Asha onto a stretcher and slid her into the back of the ambulance, where one strapped her down as the other began connecting her up to various machines. The ambulance had already raced through its pre-flight checks; it quickly signalled that it was ready to go. Hammell jumped in and Hetty too tried to follow, but an I.T.F. Agent took hold of her arm.

  “Which hospital?” Hetty asked as the ambulance’s engines started up.

  “St Mary’s,” one of the medics said before the doors closed and the ambulance rose up into the air. Hammell looked out of the back windows, seeing that a crane was already arriving to lift out the fallen carrier. The fire was out and the river was nearly free from debris; the burned, sunken boat was on its way to becoming just another of the many wrecks that littered the old dock.

  Hammell perched on Asha’s stretcher to avoid falling over as the ambulance lurched its way into the sky. He located a towel and dried off as much of the foul-smelling water as he could, then looked down at Asha Ishi. We really do have to stop meeting like this. She was ghostly white, but the most frightening thing about her was her lips; they were exactly the same colour as her face. The medics assured him she was still breathing, but she looked like a corpse.

  The hospital had missed a trick in not having a bar, but that hadn’t stopped Hammell. He had a certain ingenuity when it came to these things. When the alcohol delivery service balked at delivering to an emergency ward, he called his local off-licence to make him up a package and had it couriered to the waiting room. He spent the night on a plastic chair getting slowly drunk while Asha was in surgery. The nurses tried to stop him at first, but he growled and showed his badge and they relented. His former partner was having her head stitched back on so he thought he deserved some leeway - and for once, the androids appeared to agree.

  In contrast to the compassion of the nurses, if that was the right word for the robotic equivalent, the doctor was brutally honest. Hammell wasn’t complaining; he didn’t want to hear platitudes. The android gave him the straight-up facts: Asha’s lungs were full of blood, with just a little water - there was apparently some reflex action that prevented breathing while submerged unconscious. Her brain had been starved of oxygen for an estimated twenty minutes, meaning probable brain damage even if she did survive. She had lost so much blood that her heart barely had anything left to pump. They shot her full of synthetic blood, cleared her lungs and glued her up, but the doctor estimated her chances of surviving the night at around thirty percent. Even if she came through, the likelihood of her making a full recovery was less than five percent. The Asha Ishi he had known was probably gone.

  Hammell managed a short doze on the waiting room chairs, though it was still long enough for a cleaning robot to spirit away his open bottle of whisky. He didn’t get angry, partly because he had a box containing another five bottles by his feet, but also because time had moved on and he was feeling coffee cravings now. Dragging himself up, he shivered. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt genuinely cold, but the hospital’s aircon was turned up so high that he still hadn’t dried out. He pulled his cold, wet shirt away from where it was stuck to his skin and checked the time. His shift started in less than an hour.

  Collaring a nurse for an update - Asha had survived the night and was now in an ICU - he staggered off towards the pick-up point, throwing down alcohol killers as he went. He climbed inside a public nat and ordered it to take him to his car and a coffee, not necessarily in that order.

  He considered taking a shower at the station, but was too exhausted to bother. Stumbling through the reception security checks, he practically fell into the lift, trying to ignore the looks from the civilian contractor who got in with him. “What?” he asked finally. True, he was falling over from tiredness, soaking wet, smelling like a dock, carrying a box of whisky bottles and wearing no shoes, but was that a reason to stare so rudely at someone? The woman turned away, embarrassed.

  He didn’t even make it to the cupboard before the order popped up in his omni account for him to report to Yun’s office. Today? Hammell asked himself. Please, not today. He considered ignoring the order and just going to sleep, but knew it would be worse in the long run. Instead he dragged himself back to the lift and headed on up, knocking politely on the Commissioner’s door. The big man sat stony faced behind his desk with two android shadows in tow. At least he had the good grace to ask how Asha was first.

  “Alive,” Hammell replied. “Or she was when I left.”

  “Thank-you,” Yun said, “for saving her.” He shifted awkwardly in his chair. “But now you know what’s coming, don’t you?”

  Hammell nodded.

  “You didn’t report it,” Yun said, shaking his head sadly. “She contacted you and you didn’t report it.”

  Hammell barely heard the words. He’d been trying to prepare for this day for months, years, and some of the time he even almost felt like he might be ready. But today he’d let his guard down. He knew it was coming, but he really hadn’t expected Yun to do it today, not after last night.

  “Hammell?” Yun said, not unkindly. “Are you ok?”

  Unable to find any words, he managed a nod.

  “You’re the last,” Yun said. “So, there’s that. I kept you on as long as I could.”

  “Just get it over with,” Hammell whispered.

  Yun nodded. “Interpol Agent Hammell,” the Commissioner said in his most formal voice. “For failing to report the location of a wanted fugitive, your contract has been terminated. Your badge and your access to polnet have been revoked. You have ten minutes to collect your belongings, return anything in your possession which belongs to Interpol or the state, and leave the premises. You will be escorted out.”

  Hammell fought to keep his lip from quivering.

  “Chin up,” Yun said quietly. “And don’t do anything stupid.”

  With watery eyes and slumped shoulders, Ha
mmell trudged off in his bare feet, going out in a mildly absurd manner that was somehow apt. One of the androids followed him back to his desk, watching over him as he packed up his things. There wasn’t much to take; just a coffee cup, a glass containing his personal data, a thriving fern and a photo of his cat. It all fit inside the whisky box, like it was meant to be. The android stopped him at the cupboard door, opened his box and took out the pack of elastic bands he’d swiped as a keepsake.

  With his pitifully small box of possessions in his hands, he made his way down to the near-empty garage, putting the box down to search his pockets for his keys. He checked and re-checked before informing his hammerhead escort that he must have dropped them in the office somewhere and would have to go back.

  “You cannot return to the offices,” one of the androids said and Hammell readied for an argument he was not in the mood for.

  “Without my keys, how can I-”

  “Your keys have been confiscated,” the hammerhead said as it dangled them in front of him.

  Hammell sighed. “And you couldn’t have told me that before I spent the last two minutes looking for them?”

  “You did not ask,” the android replied. “And it was eleven seconds.”

  “Ok, let’s play this out,” Hammell said. “Why have my keys been confiscated?”

  “Because you were probably driving intoxicated.”

  “Probably?” Hammell asked. It wasn’t like an android to make such an imprecise statement.

  “You departed the Hoola Bar last night having consumed nine measures of whisky, though you spilled an unquantified amount of one,” the android said. “Then you ingested alcohol killer spray and tablets, but you did not wait the requisite time before operating your vehicle. Providence however was unable to ascertain with sufficient certainty how much alcohol was present in your system when you began driving, or else you would have a prison sentence. There is however more than enough evidence to justify revoking your licence permanently.”