by Chris Ward
‘Let go of me….’
The hand relaxed just enough for him to gasp down a breath. ‘Address?’ the girl repeated.
‘Fuck, I don’t even know mine.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I can show you. I can take you there.’
‘Show.’
The girl stepped aside to let Taku pass, and he ran. Only when he reached the broken elevator doors did he realise he had forgotten his shoes. He glanced back at the woman crowding the hallway behind him and knew it was too late to go back.
Past the broken elevator doors and several other apartments that were either abandoned or unused, a back stairway led down. Taku reached the doors and burst through them, slamming them back behind him, hoping to catch the woman unawares.
He didn’t look back as he hurtled down the stairs, pushing off the walls at each turn, his feet stinging with the rap of the hard concrete. He didn’t dare look back, but he hit the bottom doors at a full run, heard them snap back against the wall, then he was racing through the gloomy lobby and out on to the street.
Only when he reached the steps of the fire-gutted apartment building across the street did he finally risk a glance over his shoulder. The lobby of his building was dark, only the door pushed outwards, lodged in the trash piled behind it, a sign that anyone had just left.
He climbed up to the doorless entrance and went inside, ducking into the first gutted apartment on the bottom floor and crouching down by the glassless window. A few seconds later the woman appeared, the hood pulled up over her face. In the entrance she paused, staying close to the wall as if trying to hide. Then in one fluid movement that made Taku shiver, she slumped to the ground, her legs and arms spreading wide like she was some sort of spider, her hidden face pressed close to the cracked paving stones.
‘David man, what the fuck have you gone and got us into?’ Taku whispered. The woman’s head snapped up, shadowed face angling in his direction. Shit, she can’t have heard me.
He scrambled up, turning around as a glint of silver appeared in the woman’s hand. He had taken a couple of steps when a sudden whizz sounded from the street outside, and something ice cold struck him in the shoulder, knocking him forwards into the wall.
As he tried to get to his hands and knees, his left arm fell out from under him, its strength gone. He tried to flex his fingers, but they felt numb, unresponsive. His shoulder too, where something had struck him, was leaden and dull. With his right hand he twisted himself over, pushing back against the wall as a shadow fell over him.
The woman stood there, her face hidden in the darkness. In one pale hand she held what looked like a silver crossbow.
‘Your name too Tube Rider,’ she said.
‘No, no … it was my mate. He’s a fucking idiot … he doesn’t know what he’s doing … I just went along … just went….’
She knelt down beside him, her hood falling back. Taku stared in horror at what should have been a human face but looked synthetic, lab-created. Her human eyes were just too bright, too round, and the wires snaking out of a scarred, hairless scalp behind her ears left no argument that she was something unnatural.
A cold hand lifted and cupped the side of his face, drawing him forward. A rough tongue like a cat’s probed his ear, and in his terror it was almost seductive.
‘Leave message for friends,’ the girl whispered. ‘Your name Tube Rider is messenger.’
Taku just nodded dumbly as the tingling sensation spread across his chest, almost masking the stab of fingernails sharp like claws digging into the skin of his back.
Kyaru stared up at her handiwork and nodded with something like satisfaction. Her orders were to ensure the capture or disabling of the owners of the Tube Rider scents, but those scents had a high priority rating. This man was low priority, meaning he was probably no Tube Rider at all, only a friend or accomplice. The highest priority scent had established matches at both investigated Underground stations, but was strongest in her prisoner’s apartment. His scent trails led off in a multitude of directions that would take some days to track, but it was more likely he would return.
Therefore, Kyaru had left him a little welcome present.
The man hung from a light-fitting on the second landing, the only place she had found one strong enough. Both legs were broken, and she had cut him just enough to leave him too weak to try to break free. As long as he was found before he dehydrated—by her estimation three days—he had a chance at survival.
She had searched the building, killing the handful of drunks and drug addicts she had found. With the elimination of all other discovered inhabitants of the building, her statistical analysis suggested that there was an eighty-four percent chance that the man’s discovery would be made by the Tube Rider whose scent was the highest priority.
And what true friend wouldn’t try to help?
Kyaru’s programming allowed her to enjoy the chase, but there was a certain level of competition between herself and her sister, Mariel, even if they weren’t true sisters. Whoever captured the highest priority Tube Rider first would win great favour with Dreggo.
Kyaru didn’t have the capacity to smile, but as she followed the strongest of the renegade Tube Rider’s scent trails, she tilted her head to the side in a gesture that suggested mirth.
20
Likeness
Rick had a huge grin on his face. ‘I knew you loved me. Can’t stay away, can you?’
Mika held out the portable drive, forcing herself not to smile. ‘Just run these scents through the profiler. If I had time to do it myself, I would. Sorry to put this on you, but I’m smoked right now.’
Rick lifted a hand and gave Mika a sharp salute. ‘I’ll do it right away, heart to end all hearts.’
Mika smiled. ‘Thanks. Be sure to forward me the results as soon as you have them. I know most people don’t register anymore, but if we can get just a couple of names, we can apprehend them as quick as possible, or at least….’
She trailed off, not sure quite how to say what she meant.
‘Stop them getting slaughtered like kittens thrown into a cage of fighting dogs?’ Rick offered.
Mika gave a grim smile. ‘Something like that. Off the record, Dreggo wants everyone associated with the Tube Riders dead, but most of those scents probably belong to homeless. We can’t just let them die, not if we can help it.’
Rick sighed. ‘Those morals will get you killed one day,’ he said. ‘Just do as I do and press the buttons you’re told to.’ He lifted his hands into the air and made a few bleeping noises while wearing a dopey grin. ‘Like a good little brain-zero.’
‘I’ll try. As soon as you can with these, Rick.’
‘Sure, beauty from highest heaven.’
Mika gave him a complimentary pat on the shoulder and went out, feeling an uneasy weight around her shoulders. Those morals will get you killed. Better scientists than her had disappeared without warning, never to be seen again.
‘Do your job, Mika,’ she whispered under her breath. The elevator had broken down again, and she had no choice but to hurry up the stairs to get back to her office five floors above.
Data was already coming in from the Huntsmen, with one of the Level Threes—Kyaru—reporting a capture.
End this quick and we can move on, she thought. There’s been too much bloodshed already.
Rick loaded up the scent profiler and downloaded the information on Mika’s drive. He had little hope for it, but it was worth a try. The government had given up trying to force people to register decades ago. Now, only those diligent families which felt that a government keychain might win them an easy ride were stupid enough to do it. His own profile, of course, was fake, a luxury afforded by being in the pay of the government and brilliant enough—by his own not so humble admission—to know all the secret ways around the encryption software. The truth was that the Governor was technologically inept, and only a total prohibition of unregistered electrical devices with Internet capability kept the
government’s deepest, darkest archives from being a hacked mess.
The profiler would take a few minutes to find any matches. Scent traces were hard to match because of the ease with which they could be contaminated, but if the princess wanted the profiler run, then it would be. Anything that might help Rick get laid.
While he was waiting for the inevitable zero results, he went to the back of his workshop to continue working on his latest creation. The lightweight metal board was about fifty centimetres long, with handles on one side that could be used to point it. He hadn’t quite decided how it would be carried, either strapped to the back or the chest, or slung over its owner’s shoulder like a kind of futuristic satchel.
He pressed a button on one side to activate it, feeling a sense of pride as a command screen about the size of his palm lit up, displaying a list of options. Among a couple of dozen different functions it had a grapnel, an LED flashlight, and a GPS mapping system that connected to a European satellite he had hacked into that orbited above Mega Britain’s airspace.
The coup de grace though, was a tiny inbuilt incendiary cannon fitted with tiny grenades that could be fired up to three hundred metres.
Rick had four prototypes, although none were quite finished. He hadn’t yet soldered the casing closed on any of them, partly because he hadn’t decided if he wanted to add any more features, and partly because if the utility boards were in pieces it was easy for anyone coming into his untidy workshop to overlook them. When fully connected and operational they were deadly weapons, the possession of which could get him killed.
He had just connected the utility board’s computer up to a terminal to begin editing some preset controls when the profiler beeped to say it was done. Rick went over to the other desk and sat down, scrolling through the results.
As expected, most of the scent samples had come up as a blank, including that of the highest priority one which had been found at several locations. A couple of names had shown up, however. They belonged to low priority scents, which meant they were probably useless, but when the princess made a request Rick did his best to comply. He printed out the information and faxed it up to Mika’s office, bemoaning for the thousandth time the government’s complete blanket ban on email. It made everything such a pain in the ass.
His task completed, he pulled his scheduler out of a drawer and ran a finger down the list, sighing when it reached a line that said Huntsman Re-testing.
‘All they ever do is test the damn things,’ he muttered, reaching for his ID chain and looping it around his neck. As he headed for the door he turned it over, and not for the first time laughed at the old picture of himself looking like an utter goofball, with a mop of unruly hair and spectacles that covered most of his face, above the words that identified him as Richard Spacewell, Advanced Systems Engineer.
The report had come in from the Level Three Huntsman known as Kyaru. One of the low priority scents had been apprehended at a location that had yielded two scents consistent with others found at St. Cannerwells. Mika wrinkled her nose in distaste as she viewed the video imaging of how Kyaru had interpreted her orders, disabling the suspect but leaving his body as bait. Part of Mika died as she read the detailed and utterly emotionless report of the extent of the man’s injuries.
Her fax machine beeped and paper began to feed out. When she saw the first photograph of a young man who matched the face of the captured man on her monitor, she realised it was the results from Rick downstairs. She tore off the feed sheets and turned them over in her hands.
Nine scents had come up with three registered London GUA residents. The first belonged to a seventeen-year-old boy named Terrance Ansari. A report from Dreggo yesterday had informed her that two supposed Tube Riders answering to the names of Tee and Lewis were in government custody. A picture of Ansari as a twelve-year-old, the last time the registration had been updated, matched that of the former. The second was for a Taku Kondo, and while there was no picture, the description of Kondo as a fifth generation Singaporean was close enough to the Asian features described in Kyaru’s report for Mika to safely assume it was the same man.
With both Ansari and Kondo apprehended or disabled, their registrations did nothing other than confirm to Mika what she already knew. They were effectively worthless. Frustrated, she turned over the paper to the last.
‘No….’
Her hands began to shake. The image vibrated and her fingers crumpled the edges of the paper. The picture showed a young girl with slightly Asian features, a thin nose and lips, a rounded jaw, and a slightly pointed chin.
It was a childhood version of herself.
It had to be a mistake. She fumbled for the proceeding sheet, looking for a name and date of birth.
Airie Walker. Current age: 14 years and 277 days. Current residence: unknown.
Mika lifted the ID tag that always hung around her neck and stared at her own photograph. Despite the age gap, the similarities in the photographs were striking.
Stuffing the sheets from the fax feed into her pocket, she turned and ran for the door.
Hearing his name called over the intercom brought Rick both relief and trepidation. Huntsman re-testing was both a mind-numbing and heart-sapping experience, but the fear that his ties to the Tank and its criminal underworld would be discovered was a daily concern. That the voice belonged to Mika—the unrequited love of his life despite her being a government-loyal whorebitch—brought only limited respite.
When he reached his office he found her already inside—even though he had locked the door—practically bouncing up and down, tears streaming down her cheeks as she clutched a crumple of fax printouts in her hands.
‘Rick, you have to help me.’
‘Look, calm down. What’s escaped?’
‘Nothing, I—’
She dropped the fax papers. With a gasp that was all frustration she bent down and started scrabbling for them, one hand holding the hair back from her face. She did well at playing the cold-blooded monster in public, always maintaining that government-approved hardness to her eyes that Rick assumed kept her from being turned into one of the abominations she was charged with creating. Seeing her like this though, with her guard down, flustered and upset, his initial reaction was that someone was setting him up.
‘Jesus Christ, let me pick those up for you,’ he said, bending down and snatching up the faxes, handing them back to her as she sat down on an office chair at his desk. ‘I just sent you these. I still have them on the hard disk.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What for?’
‘For this. For showing up here blathering like an idiot.’
Rick shrugged. ‘It’s all good. Tell me what’s going on.’
Mika opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again, some of the old hardness returning. ‘I have a problem,’ she said. ‘It’s serious.’
He wanted to make some flirtatious quip, aware he had an act to maintain, but the look in her eyes stilled his tongue. Instead he just nodded.
‘These scent records, you have to erase them. No one else can see them.’
Rick shrugged. ‘Sure, no problem. Easy.’
Mika took a deep breath. ‘I did pretty well in school. Okay, I aced everything. Like you say, easy. Got accepted at a government university when no one was getting accepted for anything. Mum and Dad weren’t too happy but they went with it since it was a full scholarship. But when I got shunted straight from graduation into a research and development job, they cut all ties. Dad followed the rules but behind closed doors he was always staunchly anti-government. He was also an asshole, something my brother inherited really well. I moved into government housing and they cut me off. Wouldn’t answer the phone or the door, wouldn’t let me see my little sister.’
She sniffed, wiping away a tear. ‘One day I showed up and they’d gone. The house was locked up, their stuff missing. I don’t know what happened. I tried to find them, but nothing. No one knew anything. I couldn’t find any record of th
em being arrested or moved on. They were just gone. London-gone. That was six years ago.’
Rick, standing behind her, patted her on the shoulder. ‘Not a person I know who doesn’t understand about London-gone,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about your family.’
Mika smoothed out a sheet of fax paper and held it up. ‘My dad was third generation Japanese, a robotics professor. Hiroshi Ando. You probably don’t know him. He wrote some books, back when they were allowed. My mum was from Harrow. She was a research assistant on one of his projects, which is how they met. When I started working for the government I took his name. It seemed appropriate.’
‘So?’
‘My mother’s name was Liana Walker. This girl, Airie. She’s my little sister.’
21
Fire
Something hard and bony slammed into the side of his face. David groaned and rolled over, but it came again, striking the other side. He rolled on to his back, only to get struck on both sides at once.
He opened his eyes to find Airie straddling him, her face wild with anger, one hand poised to strike.
‘Get the fuck off me.’
‘Get the fuck up then.’
The hand came down, cracking against his cheek. With a shout of frustration David shoved her off him and sat up. Airie swung a closed fist at him this time, but he was alert enough to dodge out of range.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘Useless bastard. If you’re gonna just drink yourself better, do me a favour and throw yourself out of that window and get it over with.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Stupid prick. You trashed the place, then you got hammered. Think I haven’t seen that a thousand times? You know what it feels like seeing someone getting all leathered up like that, knowing what they’re gonna do when they’re ready? You fucking bastard.’ Her fists came up, her cheeks crimson with rage. ‘You ever do that to me again, I’ll put a knife in your gut.’
