In that moment Ross found himself feeling terribly sorry for him. The guy could have been sixteen when he got here. Ross remembered how lost and useless he’d felt at that age, and he’d only had to cope with life in Stirling.
Skullhammer gestured to the screen, like he was giving a lecture.
‘It was just on the news feed that they’re calling for anyone who was there to hand themselves in for interview and testing. They’re putting on a big show of being calm and reasonable at the moment but they’re throwing the word “contamination” around. So pretty soon the phrase “urging people to hand themselves in for their own safety” is gonna become “urging people to rat out their neighbours in case this is contagious”.’
‘Having recently experienced their hospitality, the last people I’d want giving me a physical are those psychos,’ said Ross. ‘I’m in no hurry to deliver myself into their custody again.’
‘Oh yes, I heard,’ said Melita. ‘And you saw Solderburn.’
She said this with an ambiguity Ross couldn’t read: excited, even awestruck, and yet there was an air of depressed resignation in her tone too. Perhaps it was because she also knew Solderburn had been taken. All this time waiting for a fabled wanderer’s return and he gets huckled by the bad guys the second he puts his head back around the door.
‘He says,’ grumbled Skullhammer.
‘I don’t get why you think I would be lying about this,’ Ross protested, starting to get fed up with the provisional status of his own recent history. ‘What am I missing here?’
The other three exchanged glances. Skullhammer looked reluctant to share whatever it was, but he wasn’t going to censor it.
It was Juno who spoke.
‘It’s long been a rumour – or maybe just a hope – that the reason Solderburn disappeared was that he had found a way out.’
Ross understood now why Juno had reacted the way she did the first time he spoke Solderburn’s name. If Solderburn had shown up again, it could mean that this particular hope was dashed – or it could mean that he had come back to share his secret. Either way it was momentous news, rendered somewhat less exciting by him ending up in the hands of the enemy.
‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’ Ross asked.
‘I wanted to find out how much you did or didn’t already know. The Integrity have been trying to infiltrate us from the start.’
‘And what, you think I’m the T1000?’
‘It’s not what I think,’ Juno answered. ‘It’s what I can’t afford to assume. Nothing personal.’
Ross nodded, taking her point.
‘Was there anything more to this rumour than the fact that nobody had seen him for a very long time?’
‘No,’ said Skullhammer. ‘Just desperation. A legend growing to fill a significant absence.’
‘So why even refer to it as a rumour?’
‘People need hope,’ said Juno.
‘What is the other Originals’ position on it?’
‘They don’t buy it. They deny it’s possible,’ said Skullhammer.
‘But there’s a wide suspicion that the Originals are keeping a secret,’ Juno countered. ‘That there’s something they’re not telling us.’
Ross looked to Skullhammer for a rebuttal, but there was unease in his face. It would have been logical enough to dismiss what Juno described as merely the natural paranoia engendered by the existence of a powerful elite. He looked conflicted, and Ross wondered whether the big guy didn’t harbour just a little more hope than he was admitting to himself.
‘It’s all moot now anyway,’ he eventually said, eyeing Ross accusingly. ‘Thanks to you.’
Ross bit back a response, then changed his mind and voiced it after all. If he was fielding all this suspicion anyway, then what was the point of playing nice?
‘Away and take your face for a shite.’
‘What did you say?’ he demanded, bristling.
‘You heard me, Sockwanker. Surely a born-and bred English-man like yourself isn’t having difficulty with some Anglo-Saxon terminology?’
‘Hey fuck you, Bedbug. You wanna dance with me? ’Cause I’m ready.’
Juno shot Ross a look that was far more of a deterrent than any threat he felt Skullhammer posed.
‘Guys,’ warned Melita also. ‘My house. Behave.’
Ross held up his hands as if to say it was over.
Juno looked towards Skullhammer.
‘I know it’s a setback, but it wasn’t Bedlam’s fault. They had massive forces deployed out there. And from what he told me on the trip to Calastria, the Integrity got themselves some nasty new toys too.’
‘Like what?’ asked Melita, concerned.
‘They had a tank that wiped out part of a building,’ Ross said. ‘That’s how they got Solderburn. Just erased the tower he was shooting from.’
‘They had some massive flying beast from one of the myth-worlds too,’ said Juno.
‘Real final-boss stuff,’ Ross added.
Skullhammer continued to fix him with a scrutinising stare that stopped only just short of renewed hostility.
‘All that hardware and manpower on the ground,’ he said. ‘Just what you’d need if you want to capture an Original. It’s almost like they already knew Solderburn was coming for you.’
‘Oh, so does that mean we’ve moved on from my whole story being made up to you now believing that Solderburn came to my rescue?’
‘For the sake of argument,’ Skullhammer replied.
‘Believe what you like, Ballhummer, it’s all the same to me. I had only just got there from Graxis, and I’d never heard of the Integrity until I was in one of their torture chambers. But you’re right: they were going to a lot of trouble. They didn’t ship me out right away because they said someone called Ankou was on his way to speak to me. Didn’t sound like it would be a friendly chat.’
Ross winced at the lameness of this last comment but soon realised that nobody had heard it. The mention of the name Ankou had pretty much derailed everything else.
‘Ankou?’ Melita asked, her voice dropping to an astonished whisper.
‘And you’re sure about the “coming to you” part?’ Juno enquired. ‘Definitely not the other way around?’
‘I wasn’t to be moved. They were very clear about that.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Ankou leaving his shiny black fortress,’ said Melita. ‘I wasn’t sure he was even a person, as opposed to maybe the codename of a command tier within the Integrity.’
‘One of my hosts said “Ankou wants to deal with this one personally”, at which point the other one’s arse started making buttons. I got the impression they were looking forward to the visit only marginally more than I was.’
Juno looked at him like she’d never seen him before.
‘Then all of their machines, their men and their monsters,’ she said. ‘They weren’t there because of Solderburn. They were there because of you.’
‘Maybe they were top-heavy with slavishly authoritarian drones and low on their “lost and bewildered useless fanny” quota,’ Ross suggested, making light of the fact that he couldn’t think of any other reason why they’d be so interested in him.
‘Solderburn too,’ Melita said, ignoring this remark. ‘Why would he emerge from his self-imposed exile and put himself at such risk, just for you?’
‘He was my friend, back in the old world.’
Even as he said this, Ross realised he was no longer convinced it held up. It wasn’t like he and Solderburn were really close; they just got on better with each other than with anyone else in the building, but, given that the building had a superabundance of arseholes, that wasn’t saying much. He had also harboured a theory that Solderburn came to his rescue because he felt responsible for Ross ending up here, but he now understood that to be pure projection. It was Ross who held Solderburn responsible, a perspective with which Solderburn did not concur. Indeed experience had taught Ross that selfless, high-risk altruis
m wasn’t exactly Solderburn’s style.
‘Solderburn had many friends in this world too,’ Juno said. ‘People he had known for a lot longer than he knew you. He left them all behind and didn’t come back. If he finally returned and put himself on the line for your ass, then, no offence, but it had to be for a greater reason than that you and him were buds.’
‘Well he didn’t bloody say anything about it,’ protested Ross.
‘He took massive risks to keep you out of the Integrity’s hands,’ said Melita, ‘and Ankou was coming personally to see you. We have to find out why. You could be a game-changer.’
Her words hung in the air rather uncomfortably in the ensuing silence, one Ross resisted the temptation to fill with the words ‘no pressure’.
Skullhammer broke the suspense in his own inimitable way.
‘And he could just as easily be a Trojan. More easily in fact. Hmm. Saviour of the gameverse or lying Integrity spy. The last thing we want is to be leading this fucker to a gathering of our high command on Silent Hill.’
‘Skullhammer,’ Juno objected, ‘that isn’t your call.’
‘No, so let’s ask the audience. I’m calling it in.’
Skullhammer frowned, lines of concentration etched so deeply in his brow you could have planted turnips. Like Juno back on the jetty, he was going more than hands free. When was somebody going to tell Ross how to do that?
‘What the fuck?’ Skullhammer grunted. ‘I’ve got no comms. Something’s jamming the—’
‘Him, maybe?’ Ross suggested, pointing towards the lake.
There was an Integrity agent down close to the water, walking across the grass holding one of those parabolic dishes they had seen at the plaza.
All of their heads then turned towards the front of the house. Through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows they could see two black cruiser vehicles like the ones that had been blocking the junction. Two agents were pointing dishes towards the house, while half a dozen more personnel moved to surround the building.
‘Why are they scrambling our comms?’ asked Melita.
‘Because they don’t want us telling anybody what’s going down,’ replied Skullhammer. ‘That’s a snatch squad.’
Wanted Level
‘They followed us here,’ said Juno in self-reproach. ‘We lost that pursuit way too easily.’
‘What was that I was saying about a Trojan horse?’ said Skullhammer.
‘And how do we know it wasn’t you they followed?’ Ross countered. ‘It’s not like you’re easy to fucking miss.’
Skullhammer instantly transformed into a nondescript male figure, wearing precisely the same garments as Ross.
‘Touché,’ Ross admitted. ‘You should probably stick to the non-verbal comebacks.’
‘Enough of this,’ ruled Melita, her voice rising. ‘If we start accusing one another then we’re doing the Integrity’s work for them.’
‘It wasn’t a comeback,’ Skullhammer clarified. ‘We need to disappear.’
Juno regarded the team of agents advancing down the driveway.
‘Yeah, well, we can all dress up like Garret if we want; it’s still not like we’re sneaking past that lot,’ she said.
Melita made a tiny gesture towards her feet, where the wide wooden floorboards began altering themselves into a staircase descending steeply out of sight, tiny LEDs in the newly formed walls guiding the way down.
‘How do you like my house now?’ she asked Juno.
‘I’m guessing my version doesn’t have this,’ said Ross.
She led them about twenty feet down into a parking garage as long and wide as the house above. In it were four of the coolest cars Ross had ever laid eyes on: vehicles that would have had James Bond’s lower lip trembling with emotion; that would have petrol-heads dropping to their knees in tongue-lolling awe; and that nonetheless looked shoddy compared to the two motor-bikes sitting alongside them. Or, as Ross observed upon closer inspection, hover-bikes. They sat there about eighteen inches off the ground, one blue and one green, a glow of pale light the only thing seeming to support bodywork so smooth and sculpted it looked like porcelain.
‘Are these from Sin?’ he asked, utterly failing not to sound like a breathless fanboy.
‘Wages of Sin, to be precise. A client imported them for me from Freeport in exchange for designing her a ski chalet on Skyrim. They’re the fastest things in here, so take them.’
Skullhammer hopped eagerly on to the blue one, but Juno deferred.
‘No, you go girl. Never could get the hang of those things.’
She opted instead for a Ferrari so advanced, Ross guessed, you had to play Gran Turismo or Need for Speed nine hours a day for a year to unlock it. Ross climbed into the passenger seat. Even the interior looked like its development budget would have given the space programme a run for its money.
The thought belatedly struck him that this would have been his chance to go it alone, but even the fact that it was belated told him enough. Juno might not trust him, but clearly, without even thinking about it, he trusted her.
‘Okay,’ Melita announced. ‘When we hit the intersection, everybody take off in different directions. They can’t follow us all and they’ll lose time choosing who to go after. I’m heading for the north-west freeway. The rest of you got five seconds to work it out before I open the door.’
Melita’s hover-bike suddenly came to life: no roar of engine, just a halo of lights and a reassuringly powerful low hum like Juno’s stolen spaceship. Less reassuringly, she appeared to be riding straight for a concrete wall, but just before impact this disappeared, clearing the way to a gently upward-sloping tunnel.
Skullhammer was right on her tail, the Ferrari just a couple of seconds behind. The hidden passage emerged, Thunderbirds-style, from what had previously been a perfectly solid patch of lawn on the outer borders of Melita’s property, the Integrity snatch squad scrambling to respond.
The three vehicles hit the big junction at roughly the same time, then peeled away like they’d agreed: Juno and Skullhammer taking on-ramps to the right and left respectively while Melita barrelled straight on through.
As the Ferrari climbed, to his left Ross had a view of Melita’s bike burning forward, straight as a laser and faster all the time, while to his right he could see the Integrity cruisers gaining speed. He lost sight of both sides temporarily as the motorway obscured his view; then, as the Ferrari gained the top of the ramp, he glanced back along the opposite lane to see Skullhammer already accelerating away. He watched anxiously to discover which targets the two Integrity vehicles chose to pursue.
He turned to his left and saw Melita’s green hover-bike again. There was a black cruiser following it about a hundred and fifty metres back, both of them flat-out.
Juno had noticed it too.
‘Just hope the other one is dumb enough to follow Skullhammer. Stupid assholes are never catching those bikes.’
As she spoke Ross saw something streak from the cruiser in pursuit of Melita. It was a missile, covering the distance between the vehicles in less than a second. Ross barely had time to call out in shock, so Melita would have had no time to react, if she even saw it in her rear-view.
Melita was tossed into the air amidst a furiously expanding fireball, the hover-bike bouncing, spinning and skidding along the road as the cruiser maintained its relentless pace to close the distance. The last thing Ross saw before a curve in the motorway took them out of sight was the cruiser stopping and an Integrity agent sprinting from it, weapon drawn.
‘Fuckers,’ Juno said. ‘They’ve got her.’
‘Unless she was killed in the crash,’ Ross suggested. ‘Where would she respawn?’
‘One of the hospitals.’
‘Can we …?’
‘They’ll have a snatch team in place: standard procedure. Trust me, they got her: she just sent me something.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. We got our own problems to worry about.’
&nb
sp; Ross leaned around to look out of the rear windscreen. Sure enough, the other cruiser had just shot out from the ramp and onto the carriageway behind them.
Juno slalomed in and out of the lanes, keeping other cars between the Ferrari and any possible missiles, but it was at the cost of losing ground while the cruiser held its course as straight as possible. Eventually the Integrity decided to try their luck, but Juno managed to react quickly enough, swerving in front of a lorry and letting it take the blast. The lorry went up in another fireball, jack-knifing across three of the lanes and precipitating a pile-up behind them.
‘Sorry,’ Juno winced through gritted teeth.
Ross was about to say don’t mention it when he sussed that she was apologising to all of the people who’d just totalled their cars, not to mention the truck driver who was probably respawning at the hospital right then into the disturbing sight of a roomful of Integrity.
‘At least that should buy us a little time,’ Ross suggested, instantly provoking whichever gods whose eternal task it was to punish those who spoke too soon.
Police cars began appearing from literally nowhere: two swung into view in pursuit of the Ferrari despite there being no ramps or junctions from which they could have entered; and, more problematically, there were three of them slewed across the motorway directly ahead, forming a roadblock. Ross could see more of them approaching from the opposite lane, blue lights flashing and sirens awail.
‘They just spawned from somewhere out of sight,’ he said. ‘Can the Integrity do that now? In vehicles?’
‘They’re not Integrity,’ Juno replied, gripping the steering wheel tighter and keeping her eyes set dead ahead. ‘They’re NPCs.’
‘They have cops in this city?’ he asked incredulously. ‘They have NPC cops in this city?’
‘Not for a very long time. They got rid of them, same as they got rid of the crime lords and gang-bangers. Hold on tight.’
She aimed the Ferrari between where two police cars didn’t quite meet nose to nose, her foot to the floor. Ross had pulled just such a manoeuvre a hundred times in driving games, but had never seen it from this perspective. Moments before impact he decided that he couldn’t actually handle seeing it from this perspective, and closed his eyes.
Bedlam Page 27
