In the Shadow of London

by Chris Ward

  It was time to go home.

  Sorel crept through the streets like a thief in the night, a shadow between streetlights, a dark face beneath a hood that no passers-by would dare to face. She found the way instinctively, even after all these years, more than she could count, though less than would make her give up hope.

  A quiet street, a pretty street, old stone walls that London seemed to knit out of the earth, lined with railing fences and pretty daffodils in spring, roses in summer, hydrangeas in the autumn, and a light dusting of snow sometimes in the winter. The houses each stood alone on their own patch of land like cats in a bed, encircled by their flowery warmth, squat and quaint like pottery figurines.

  She remembered a single Victorian street lamp had stood at the end of Bell Close, the sign announcing her street and the little red writing underneath, London Borough of Hemel Hampsted, illuminated in a glow that was more orange than yellow, like something out of a John Mansfield novel, forever foreshadowing the onset of a mysterious Christmas.

  It was around Christmas time, perhaps, when Sorel had failed to return home. The memory became stronger with each forward step she took, as if jigsaw pieces were jumping out of the road and making their way up into her old brain.

  And finally there, in front of her, was the house.

  It was like the rest, squat and grey, the entrance beneath the little porch resembling a mouth, the four square windows, two on each floor, out of a childhood drawing. She remembered now how there was an extension around the back, a new dining room, hidden out of sight due to planning requirements. It had eaten up a lot of the neat rectangle of garden, but not so much that there wasn’t still room for a small pond and a couple of flowerbeds encircling a polite oval of lawn that John had lovingly tended each evening when he returned from work.

  John.

  Pieces, fixing together.

  It looked a little different now. The lower windows were empty holes, and the door hung loose on its hinges, creaking in the breeze. Soot triangles stained the walls above the upper windows, and dark shadows on the roof suggested places where the tiles had fallen in.

  Inside, she was surprised by how much was left. The suite in the living room was shredded and scattered with the remnants of a dozen parties, but most of the furniture was still there. A few tables and chairs were missing, and the metal barstools that had once stood along the bar of their modern fitted kitchen were long gone. The cupboards had been ransacked, but some personal ornaments—worthless to anyone but them—still lay among the rubble on the floor.

  Still holding the baby clutched to her chest with one hand, Sorel leaned down and picked a bent and faded photograph out of the shards of glass and china that had once been the beautiful crockery that filled her cupboards.

  The man looked retro with his checked shirt and flowing hair. If she remembered rightly they had been saving money for the baby, and John promised not to cut his hair until the birth. A soft growl like a purr hummed in her chest as she looked on the easy smile she remembered, and at the slight paunch that had been soft like an extra pillow in bed at night.

  Beside him, the woman’s smile was more strained, but while no one would describe her as a beauty, she had kind eyes and a welcoming look in her eyes. No one looking at the photograph could ever doubt she would be a good mother for the baby growing inside the swelling tummy she was cupping with one hand.

  Pieces. Taking shape. The picture had been taken by a friend on an old Polaroid camera, in the days before the outright ban on all Internet-ready electronics devices. If her memory served her right it had been the last photograph taken before they had voluntarily handed the device to the authorities along with their phones and computers. She had wanted to smile, but knowing she might never get a chance to photograph her baby had made it difficult to force enthusiasm onto her face.

  Sally and John Winter. She remembered now. She had never been overly fond of her husband’s surname, but how she would give anything now to place it after the hateful name they had given her.

  The baby wriggled against her stomach and she lifted it up, wrapping her cloak beneath it to keep it warm. She would have to find food for it soon, she knew. Finding food for a Huntsman, though, was easy. Food for a baby was a little more difficult.

  What happened to you? Where did you go?

  John’s memory lay in the ruins around her, and she could no longer stand it. She headed for the stairs leading to the bedrooms on the second floor.

  The front two—the bedroom she had shared with John and a spare room for guests—had been gutted by fire. As she headed across the landing, past the bathroom filled with pieces of smashed porcelain, she almost prayed the back room had suffered the same fate as those at the front.

  It had been ransacked, but in the middle of the house, farthest from where rain had found a way down through the roof, the flowery pink wallpaper was almost intact, as was a pretty dresser and a low table that doubled as a chest of drawers. Even the bed was still there, though they had planned to place a crib in their own bedroom for the first couple of years.

  The duvet was gone, but the mattress underneath was still intact. Sorel lay the baby down and wrapped her blanket around it. It was in fact a little boy, she now realised. They had been expecting a boy, the doctor had told her. It had been due just a month after the photograph was taken, but sometime before that she had become London-gone, and the life she remembered had faded away.

  What had happened to John and her baby? How many years had it been?

  The baby was cooing again. If he wasn’t fed soon he would begin to cry and that would attract attention. Sorel ran one finger down his cheek, pulled the blanket up over his chest, then went out, closing the door behind her.

  It had taken her the best part of a day to find her way home, and dusk was falling again.

  It was the perfect time to hunt.

  31

  Hunters

  Lindon’s rage was a like a racing car revving at a starting light as he stared at the back of the girl walking down the dank corridor in front of him. All it would take was one wrong word and the destruction would begin. A gun was holstered under his shirt, but he wouldn’t need it. If she was to be believed, then Spacewell was dead. That couldn’t be forgiven. Someone, sometime, had to pay.

  ‘The open door,’ he said, shining the light ahead of her so that she could see. ‘That’s yours.’

  ‘What is this place? It’s like a prison.’

  ‘Spacewell requested a safe house. It’s as safe as the Tank can provide.’

  ‘Where are we?’

  Her confusion was understandable. He had blindfolded her for the drive across London on Tim Cold’s orders, not that there was much point. Either she would work for them and be trusted or she would die.

  ‘This used to be a correctional facility for people with brain disorders. A nuthouse. Now it’s Tank property.’

  The girl reached the door and stopped. Lindon came up behind her and shone a light inside. The cold stone walls were uninviting, but a pile of blankets provided a bed. There was a barred window that gave a view out only onto a wall of other barred windows in an inner courtyard, but it would provide her with natural light.

  ‘There are three rooms. You’ve got a bed and blankets, and a bucket for a toilet you should empty out of the window. There’s a gas powered heater and a few packets of dried food and bottled water. You’ll be locked in for your own good. Someone will return for you tomorrow.’

  The girl looked up at him. ‘My name’s Mika,’ she said. ‘Do you have a name?’

  Lindon stared at her. ‘If you’re of no use to us, I’ll personally put you out of your misery.’

  She matched his gaze. ‘You don’t scare me,’ she said.

  His hand snaked up around her neck and pinned her back against the wall. ‘Spacewell was my friend,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘If he died for you it had better be worth it.’

  ‘Put me in my cage,’ she whispered. ‘You think you’
re a tough guy. You don’t know what tough is.’

  Lindon held her a moment longer, then let go. Mika glared at him, then went into the room. As Lindon closed the heavy steel door and locked it, a metal grill slid open and her face appeared in the gloom just inches from his.

  ‘I’m sorry about Rick,’ she said. ‘He was a good friend.’

  ‘Fuck yourself.’

  Lindon stalked off before she could reply. The long corridors of the old containment centre seemed endless around him, forever shifting. Spacewell, that crackpot goon. Lindon had never expected to miss him.

  He left the key with the two guards the Tank kept on duty in a dusty room on the ground floor. The girl wasn’t alone in the apartments in the old mental hospital; there were others that had been hiding out for years. Kept under the Tank’s lock and key was better than being a prisoner to the government, and out here on the far south-eastern side of the city, at the end of an abandoned industrial estate, they were as out of view of the government’s eyes as anywhere in London.

  The car had just enough bio-fuel to get Lindon back to the Tank, as Tim Cold had requested, but he was tired of the place, and missing Cah. Instead he took the car across London to his own apartment. He found a dirty takeout restaurant still open and picked up a couple of bags of processed chips and something the owner claimed was fish. He climbed each stair to his apartment with trepidation, terrible thoughts running through his mind. How long had it been since he had been back?

  Spacewell had been around more than Lindon. Seeing Cah had become too painful; watching her waste away beneath his gaze like a dying flower was a knife twisting in his soul. By the time he reached the door to their apartment he felt as close to tears as he ever had.

  ‘Cah?’

  The door was ajar. When Lindon gave it a light shove it twisted, the top hinge broken off. He stepped inside to find the apartment ransacked. Every drawer had been pulled open and its contents upturned on to the floor. Lindon, his panic rising, stumbled from one room to another, trying to keep control.

  The bed had been overturned, its lining ripped open. The mattress too had been slashed apart, stuffing and springs littering the floor. It was the same in the living room, and even the small bathroom had received its share, the sink pulled off the wall.

  There was no sign of Cah, nor evidence of a struggle. Someone had been searching for something, but what? Lindon had nothing of value, and there were apartments closer to the ground that could be ransacked for food.

  He went back to the door, automatically thinking to check Spacewell’s apartment upstairs, and found Cah standing on the landing, leaning against the wall. Her head cocked, her vacant eyes stared at him, seeing him yet seeing past him at the same time.

  The little metal tin was clutched in her hands like the most precious thing in the world.

  ‘I heard them coming,’ she said. ‘They were after Spacewell. They went to his apartment first.’

  He took a step towards her, but even now he couldn’t bring himself to go near that box.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Department of Civil Affairs. And they had a thing, too.’ She pushed of the wall and took a couple of faltering steps towards him. For the first time her eyes seemed to focus. ‘Like a human with a dog’s face. Squatting on the ground. It was tiny like a little boy. I caught a glimpse of it from the upstairs landing as they left. What was it, Lindon?’

  ‘A Huntsman.’ He took a deep breath. ‘They must have tracked him here.’

  ‘What’s going on, Lindon?’

  He took a deep breath. ‘Spacewell’s dead. He got killed helping some government scientist escape. I don’t know why.’

  Cah sighed. ‘And so it begins.’

  Turning her little box over in her hands, she walked past him into the wrecked apartment. He followed her into the living room, where she pushed a chair that had been turned over back upright and slumped down into its shredded interior.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Cah looked up at him. ‘What? They’ve gone. They won’t be back. If they were after you or me they’d still be here, wouldn’t they?’ She leaned her face against the back of the chair and gave a long sigh.

  She was partly right, Lindon knew. Lindon had always been careful to never leave any Tank business in the apartment, but if the DCA thought Spacewell was a revolutionary they might come back again for Lindon and Cah. In London you were always guilty by association.

  ‘Get up, we’re leaving.’

  Cah started to laugh, a weak, sinister chuckle. ‘What do you mean, Lindon? This is my home.’

  He shook his head. ‘This is a shithole squat that’s been ransacked. We can’t stay here any longer.’

  She looked up at him out of the tops of her eyes like she often did before they had sex, in the way that made his insides churn. For an instant he loved her more than anything in the world. If it meant saving her, he would tear London down around them.

  ‘Then whisk me off into the sunset, my sweet prince.’

  She could barely walk, so Lindon lifted her up in his arms. She giggled like a newlywed, but Lindon stared straight ahead, refusing to look at the box clutched tightly against her stomach. If ever there had been a moment to destroy it, that moment had passed. All he could think to do was get her somewhere safe and maybe they had a chance.

  The car was juddering as they drew up at the end of a long terraced street lined by tall, stately houses that had once been elegant. Lindon pulled in to the curb and lifted Cah out of the passenger side, carrying her up to the door of the house he had grown up in.

  ‘I need a favour,’ he said, before the door was even fully open.

  Frank looked up at him, bleary eyed. ‘Do you know what goddamn time it is?’ Then the old man’s eyes turned to the girl now sleeping in Lindon’s arms. He sighed. ‘Bring her inside. Let me see what I can do.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Damn, boy, it’s about time you brought your girl round for a meet and greet. I’d just about given up hope.’

  32

  Revelations

  At the thought of how much archived data had been lost in the fire that had gutted the basement level of the research facility, Dreggo gave a nonchalant shrug. It was unimportant garbage that should have been flushed years ago.

  Heyna had escaped unscathed. That was all that mattered. The escaped scientist would be caught.

  She tried to feign interest as a DCA aide rattled off a list of the damage. Both released Redmen had been killed, but not before killing fifteen DCA agents and nine guards, as well as destroying three laboratories filled with test subjects at varying stages of development.

  It was difficult not to feel sad for the in-development stage Huntsmen that had been lost. She had gained an affinity for the creatures since reuniting with them in France. The main holding pens though were on Level Six and had remained unaffected.

  What concerned her was the recent data that had been lost. Both Kyaru and Mariel had died during the fire, their systems shut down by smoke fumes, but the data that they should have retained had been wiped. The Tube Rider trails they had been following would need to be retread.

  Heyna’s voice entered the computerized part of her mind: The trail for the dead lab assistant has come up cold. A moment later she saw him enter the room through the door behind the DCA aide’s shoulder. The theory that he worked for the Tank remains inconclusive.

  What do you think?

  I think it’s possible, but to order a systematic slaughter based on this would be … unwise.

  It is all Soars wants.

  London would rise up around them. Do not underestimate the anger that boils beneath the surface.

  Dreggo nodded. The aide, noticing her lack of attention, had slipped away to the side of the room, where he stood eyeing Heyna with a mixture of fear and awe. But the Tank is united. To let them remain united too long makes them dangerous.

  Not if we protect them. There are worse things to fear than the Tank
. They will have insiders, people who want rebellion. It is inevitable.

  They will die.

  Death is worthless. Have the Governor’s methods taught you nothing?

  Dreggo stared at the tall Huntsman standing across the room. She wondered what kind of man he might have once been. His files described a normal family man with a normal unassuming job, yet he was wise behind what she could comprehend. In comparison she was still headstrong and a slave to her anger.

  What do you suggest?

  A trap.

  How?

  Sorel.

  Sorel?

  Sorel has taken something valuable. They will want to get it back. It would be wise to find Sorel first.

  Dreggo stared at the Huntsman for a long time, then gave a slow nod. I will try to contact him.

  Beneath his hood, Heyna gave a slight shake of his head.

  Not him. Her.

  The hours ticked by. Mika was exhausted, but every attempt to sleep resulted in nightmares of fire and screams and cold, dark tunnels barely wide enough for her to roll over. Rick’s face lingered in the darkness whenever she woke sweating, his kind eyes and his defiance making her heart ache.

  Dawn brought with it a rattling wind that shook her old window in its fittings. There was no way to get attention or escape, so she entertained herself by eating what little food was available and trying to concentrate on anything other than the events of the day before. She assumed that if her captors had gone to the trouble of leaving her food and bedding that at some point they would come back, although she had seen something in the eyes of the muscular man that reminded her of Dreggo.

  Ruthlessness.

  He didn’t like her, didn’t want her here. What had happened to Rick had been beyond her control, but in that man’s eyes she was responsible.

  He wanted payback.

  The room had a small gas stove but no electricity. Out of boredom she opened Rick’s bag and rifled through the contents. There were a number of small electronics components inside, including one that looked like a radio. Of greatest interest were the three utility boards, flat, silvery rectangles about forty centimeters long.