Abaddonian Dream

by M. K. Woollard

  Part V: The Red Hands

  Chapter 32

  He could detect no trace of light through the cloth blindfold, meaning he was probably in a windowless room – he guessed a cellar, from the damp, musty smell. Seated on a wooden chair, his arms were bound to its arms and his legs were bound to its legs. There were five or maybe six of them, but only one was talking to him, in a language his implant had identified as Armenian. Communication via real-time auto-translation was proving problematic. His implant was insisting that his captor wanted to know where the rabbit was; from tone of voice alone, Hammell was fairly certain that wasn’t what she was asking. Deciding to go with it, he threw back a few curveballs of his own, tossing gerbils and hamsters into the mix and listening to the confusion.

  He could guess the general gist of the questioning, but he wasn’t going to help them out. They would of course want to know who he was, why he had shot at the guards, and why he was so desperate to get into the Reserves. He answered every question with the same two words: “Eva Valentine.” His only hope was that he had somehow stumbled into a group of her so-called victims and not members of Roy Brown’s gang. So far their total lack of reaction to her name had not been reassuring. He considered saying “Roy Brown” in a questioning tone of voice, to at least know, but ultimately decided against it; if he asked, he might just get.

  His captors huddled themselves into a corner of the room and began whispering among themselves. He could only catch the odd word - “boss”, “escape”, “knife” - none of which filled him with much optimism. One of the men appeared to be referring to him as “Eva Valentine”, but Hammell decided not to correct him. It was probably safer letting them think he had a girl’s name rather than risk revealing that he was a former I.A. who the Red Hands were trying to murder.

  He was just beginning to think that the group appeared more confused than dangerous when one of them stabbed him through the hand. Screaming in shock and pain, he felt the nail being wiggled to get it loose from where it had lodged into the arm of the chair. It sprang free and he clenched his fist to make sure his fingers were still working, feeling his hand slick with blood. “What the fuck are you doing?” he asked, but he already knew. At least their method was more targeted than Asha’s.

  He let out a squeak as he was suddenly tipped backwards and dragged across the floor to the other side of the room. Still suspended on the chair’s back legs, hands grabbed at his face and he wondered whether he should bite at them. He was caught in indecision, thinking that they really needed a little more time to establish the dynamics of this particular kidnapper-kidnappee relationship. He hadn’t figured out yet if he was co-operating or resisting. A vice began closing on his head and he panicked, deciding he was resisting. He fought uselessly as the vice tightened, stopping just before his eyes popped from their sockets. Then he heard the drill and changed his mind. “I’m co-operating! I’m co-operating!” he pleaded, telling them that he would talk - and meaning it. He knew absolutely nothing of value, so why hold back?

  But it appeared the time for questioning was over. Feeling the cold, sharp drill bit against his head, it buzzed into life, biting, tearing into his flesh. He couldn’t tell if he was screaming as the drill hit bone and his brain began to vibrate – then suddenly it was through, the spinning end smacking into his temple as the needle-like bit spun inside his head. His left eye twitched and for a second he lost his vision, before it flickered back on like it was rebooting. The drill’s whine died away and Hammell caught his breath. He was still alive and, as far as he could tell, his brain was still functioning. His iEye however was gone.

  The blindfold was removed and he blinked as someone shone a torch in his face. When his eyes adjusted, he saw the leader holding a knife in one hand and a foil-lined jacket in the other. Her words were Armenian, but Hammell understood perfectly: Wear the jacket or have your beacon cut out. He nodded towards the jacket.

  His hands were freed as one of the men began to sterilise his streaming wounds, taping a patch of gauze over his temple and bandaging up his hand. The man proceeded to feel Hammell’s fingers one at a time, telling him in Armenian to try to move them. “Hospital,” the man said in English. “Understand? Hospital.”

  Hammell nodded, feeling a glimmer of hope, but the leader, who by chance happened to be the dirtiest and angriest of the group, had other ideas. She shoved the medic aside, telling him something about only making sure Hammell didn’t die yet. She reapplied the blindfold before cutting Hammell from the chair and binding his hands in front of him with plastic cuffs. The jacket was thrown over his shoulders and zipped up, pinning his hands at his groin, creating an impromptu straightjacket.

  The guerillas were quiet, nervous, as Hammell was bundled up the stairs and out of the building. He had half a mind to call out, but they hadn’t gone far enough yet from the Reservation Line; the only help which might come was from across the border - possibly even the same two hammerheads he’d so recently shot. He kept silent.

  The leader set off eastwards on foot, heading deeper into the Reserves, and her little band of guerillas fell in behind her. Hammell was nudged along too, still none the wiser as to whether this had been a bad idea or a terrible one. The thought that he might be marching towards a blue plastic barrel made him feel queasy.

  He was poked and prodded along on foot for several hours, the noise from the machines of the Reclamation – bulldozers, wreckingballs, multicranes – getting louder with every step. He heard a distant building topple and wondered what it must be like to live in a place which was so transitory, knowing that destruction could come at any moment. It was a hopeless, nihilistic existence.

  Isn’t everyone’s? his brain chipped in cheerfully.

  They stopped for lunch in an abandoned building and Hammell sat down and tentatively pushed up his blindfold. Nobody stopped him, leaving him wondering why he hadn’t tried it hours ago, especially when he’d had to urinate. It might have spared him a couple of hours of walking with wet feet. Looking around, he could see they were in a structure resembling a multi-storey carpark, composed entirely of graffiti-covered concrete pillars and floors without connecting walls. Outside was even more bleak; a concrete wasteland that looked positively post-apocalyptic.

  One of the men offered him bread and water with some dried fruits and nuts and he accepted them gratefully. Someone even managed to brew a black substance they referred to as coffee and he gulped it down, needing that more than the food. Caffeine coursed through his veins, fending off his exhaustion and sharpening his mind, and he set about studying his captors. They were a ragtag lot, looking exactly as he’d expect a guerilla fighting force to look; all dirty skin and patchy combat fatigues. A mix of four men and two women, they were a jovial bunch, play-fighting and joking with one another, wrestling and laughing. They were undoubtedly rough, but weren’t particularly frightening. If it hadn’t been for the blood running down his face and dripping from his chin, he might even have started to relax around them.

  The sounds of machinery started up again – deafeningly loud now. Soon they would come to topple this very building. Hammell assumed someone outside was watching to make sure they wouldn’t all be crushed, and sure enough one of the women came running in, signalling the evacuation. Everyone grabbed their weapons and their bags, packing up as quickly as they could, and Hammell wondered why they would leave it to the last possible moment to get out.

  The guerillas scattered off into the streets, everyone going in different directions, and Hammell realised something was up. They weren’t running away, but were entering the ruined buildings - the few which were still standing – making their way up to the rooftops. It didn’t take him long to figure out why as his ears picked up the unmistakable whine of a carrier above the noise of the bulldozers. Scanning the sky above, he spotted it: Jet black in colour and angular in design, a sleek looking stealth model descending through the cloudbase. Hammell nodded to himself, realising that this had been coming from the moment
snipers had taken out two tactical androids at the checkpoint. Such an act could not go unpunished.

  The carrier moved in slowly above the rubble-covered street - and immediately it had to repel a synchronized barrage of rocket propelled grenades and machinegun fire, coming at it suddenly and from all directions. It failed, two RPGs making it into the open hold where they detonated, hurling out androids and burning people alike. One man impacted the unforgiving ground not too far from Hammell with a sickening crunch.

  The carrier was damaged, but not downed. It was however forced to back off to wait for support, which was already on the way. Two more carriers dropped through the cloud layer, their heavy guns opening up simultaneously as they came thundering in. Bullets smashed through dull grey concrete, followed by rockets fired almost aimlessly into the ruins. Dust and chunks of brick were flying everywhere, but the guerillas were already rushing down from the rooftops and spreading out into the streets. Androids began zipping down wires, sniffers among them, as the guerillas split up, each running off alone in a different direction.

  A kicka came charging towards Hammell and the leader grabbed him by his shoulder and pulled him back. Hammell tripped and fell, throwing out his arms to save himself, recalling the makeshift straitjacket too late. He hit the ground hard, but was quickly dragged back to his feet. The leader waited for the android to round the corner and then gunned it down. She grabbed Hammell by his collar and dragged him away again before the kicka had even hit the floor.

  Dazed and disoriented, Hammell found himself being propelled away eastwards, deeper and deeper into the Reserves.

  Running became jogging; jogging became walking. The leader - as Hammell still thought of her, even without anyone to lead - forced them deeper and deeper without stopping for a moment to rest, even as the sun set and the sky began to grow dark. The houses became more widely spaced, the towns became villages, and eventually they were walking along country lanes, crossing through overgrown fields and woodlands. His captor remained silent as she brushed over their tracks in the dirt, made them tread back over their footprints in wet mud, and forced Hammell to wade through streams in the pitch black - anything to throw off their pursuers. Several times there were movements in the bushes which set Hammell’s heart racing, but they were only the sounds of creatures. One was big enough to have been a boar or maybe something even more dangerous – he knew that wolves had been reintroduced a few years back. The wild is becoming wild again, he thought approvingly.

  He knew he could try to run, that he would never get a better chance than this - he had only one captor and the surrounding woodland was dense and vast - but he kept telling himself that this was why he’d come, that he would follow through with it no matter what, that he owed it to Toskan and Asha Ishi and Yun and all the others. In any case, he was practically out on his feet, whereas his captor looked like she could do this all night. To escape, he would probably have to kill her, and he wasn’t sure that he could, in any sense.

  Sometime during the middle of the night they came to a creaking black iron gate. The leader took out a short range radio, whispering something into it in Armenian that Hammell didn’t catch. Walking along a tree-lined gravel drive and up a gently sloping hill, he caught sight of a building hidden within a copse of trees; a former manor house perched on the hilltop. When they reached it, Hammell stared back out across the Reserves as he took a moment to catch his breath, surprised to find they’d climbed so high and come so far. The city was just a distant, hazy blur of dark towers and tiny lights from here.

  The leader banged on the heavy iron knocker three times. The door buzzed open and she gestured for Hammell to go in first, and suddenly he was wary. Roy Brown could be waiting inside, readying an acid bath, thinking it must be his birthday for a former I.A. to have so thoughtfully delivered himself as a present. Looking up at the house, it was just the sort of place he could imagine the Red King occupying: A gangster’s mansion. He briefly considered shoving his captor down the steps and running. His chances of survival would be slim, but they would surely only decrease if he went inside. The woman was becoming impatient as Hammell lingered. Unslinging her machinegun, she gave Hammell a prod with the butt, nudging him in.

  The hallway was stately and in surprisingly good order, and was also cool for such a large, unused space. A giant staircase spread out before him, a statue of a naked man wrestling some kind of mythical serpent marking the point where it divided off into two different wings. Heavy curtains and enormous oil paintings adorned the walls and Hammell wondered how a mansion like this could have avoided being stripped when the Reserves were cleared. In spite of his anxiousness, he found himself marvelling; grand old buildings like this just didn’t exist anymore.

  An android butler appeared, its livery sprayed on tastefully. It nodded to the guerilla leader, who disappeared back outside, and then gestured to its right. Following its arm, Hammell saw a group of people gathering in a room at the far end of the hall. His heart leapt into his mouth as he recognised one of them from the pictures Asha Ishi had sent him from the dock.

  “This way, please,” the android said, before setting off down the hall, its hands clasped neatly behind its back.

  Holding his nerve, Hammell followed, his footsteps clipping on the black and white tiled floor. The room he was taken to had once been a library, though the bookshelves lining the walls were now bare and dusty. Stepping inside onto an immaculate red carpet, he felt absurdly guilty for not having taken his shoes off. There were ten of them waiting for him inside, seven male and three female, all dressed in leather jackets and sunglasses even though they were indoors on a sunless day. They were better dressed, cleaner and distinctly less aromatic than the guerillas who had captured him. Small mercies, Hammell thought.

  There was no barrel in the room, he was relieved to see, but two of the men were busy laying out a large clear plastic sheet, which was far from encouraging. Maybe they’re going to do some decorating, he thought hopefully.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, trying to sound confident. “Ladies.”

  Scalpel Hector eyed him a moment, then nodded, and Hammell was manhandled over to the middle of the plastic sheet, where he was thrown down onto his knees. Asha Ishi’s murderer stepped up before him, a host of his people around him, all armed, and with goodness knew how many other loyal people and androids spread throughout the mansion. Asha Ishi had a thousand times better odds and she had her throat cut.

  Ettore del Bisturi was a slender man, well-dressed in a sharp grey suit beneath his heavy leather coat. With his slicked back hair, he looked almost dapper. He slipped a straight razor out of his pocket, cementing the impression of a last-century gangster.

  “Is Roy Brown not coming?” Hammell asked, trying not to gulp as his eyes lingered on the blade.

  “No,” Ettore said.

  Hammell nodded, feeling strangely disappointed. Does it matter who murders you? his mind asked. He supposed it didn’t – not afterwards, anyway. He decided to make a grab for the blade. Futile though it would ultimately be, he didn’t want to go out meekly. Ettore was standing just beyond his reach, so he shuffled forwards a couple of inches.

  “Hold him,” Ettore said and two of his people rushed to obey.

  Hammell grimaced as his arms were pinned behind his back. There goes that idea. “Well, I suppose it’s better than drowning in a barrel of acid,” he said.

  “We don’t do that,” Ettore said in a heavy accent, Italian rather than Armenian.

  “I beg to differ,” Hammell replied. “I nearly ended up in one myself.”

  “That was Roy Brown. Not us.”

  “There’s not much difference from where I’m kneeling.”

  That made Ettore angry. “There is all the difference in the world. We are not torturers. We are not murderers.”

  Hammell raised his eyebrows and glanced deliberately at the blade and then down at the plastic sheeting.

  “No,” Ettore said. “You have been sentenced to die fo
r what you have done, not for sport or for fun. Even when Roy Brown kills because he has to, he takes pleasure in it. He drags it out to amuse himself. That is the difference.”

  “What I’ve done?” Hammell asked, hoping to keep him talking. “What could I possibly have done to deserve this?”

  “You know what you have done,” Ettore said, “even if you do not understand it. Enough talk. Are you ready?”

  “And if I say no…?”

  “No-one is ever truly ready,” Ettore said and he held up the razor and stepped forwards.

  Hammell threw himself around, fighting desperately to get free, but the hands behind him were strong. Kills because he has to… The words were important somehow. His mind raced - all the way back to Arthur. The poor man had been dumped into the acid barrel without his implanted tech. Why? he asked himself. So Roy Brown could steel his identity…

  Suddenly he saw the lifeline.

  “Wait! I have something you want!” he blurted out, hoping it was true.

  Ettore paused, the blade an inch from his neck. “What do you have?”

  “Roy Brown,” Hammell said and a tiny smile almost crossed his lips as he realised he was bargaining with the same chips as Eva. Only I really do have something… I think. “I know who he is,” he said quickly. “I know the identity he’s hiding behind.”

  “Explain,” Ettore said, easing back.

  Hammell quickly divulged what he knew, withholding only the names of Jeremiah Gok and Arthur Beecroft and their beacon ID numbers. When he was done, Ettore’s face was unreadable.

  “Even if we believe this cock and bull story,” a woman behind Ettore said, “he’d have changed again by now. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to use an ID which could have been compromised.”

  Ettore was thoughtful. “I don’t know. He is desperate. This is a new city. IDs are hard to come by, especially now, and his resources are dwindling.” He nodded to himself. “He might risk it. Not for himself, sure, but maybe for one of his inner circle.”