Kymiera

by Steve Turnbull

  A wave of embarrassment went through her. He was staring after her.

  From this new position she could take in the whole space. She guessed it had originally been a warehouse for goods coming in along the river. She did not know a lot about architecture but the place looked very old.

  Rusted iron girders crossed above her about fifteen feet from the ground. It looked as if there had once been another floor. Here and there were rotting planks but most of it was gone. The upper floor had the empty windows where the wind blew in. At this end the roof was intact, but it had collapsed at the far end. The state of the place was such that she guessed most people wouldn’t give it a second glance.

  A good place to hide.

  She walked back. He was right; getting her circulation moving did help. She was still shivering but not so much, and only occasionally. He watched her walk back.

  ‘You move like a dancer,’ he said as she returned. ‘Poise.’

  This time she did blush, but his words didn’t carry any crude overtones. It was simply an observation.

  ‘Jujitsu,’ she said by way of correction. He made a noise that sounded like assent. She turned round before she got too close to the fire and walked away again, more confidently this time and quicker.

  He was watching her again when she turned round. She accepted it this time.

  On the return from her third trip the cold was crawling back though her skin again. She had gained enough confidence to check her clothes while he watched. They were warm and wet still, although some parts had reached the level of damp that could be worn. Better they were drier though.

  Chapter 4

  Mitchell

  Mitchell had woken up at nine still seething. He managed to burn the toast, and even make himself a bad cup of coffee. He knew he was not helping, but his anger at the events the previous night had been building up inside him. He wanted to tackle Graham immediately after the disastrous battle with the kidnappers, but there was too much to do, too much organising of roadblocks and starting Forensics on their tasks. Not to mention all the interviewing, and making sure nobody disturbed the various parts of the crime scene which now covered several hundred square yards, the tops of buildings, and, as far as he could determine, the river.

  Lament sent a car. And, if Mitchell was not much mistaken, all the traffic lights in his direction were green. He arrived at the police headquarters in a fraction of the usual time. What Lament could not do was make the lift travel any faster, even though there was one empty and waiting for him when he arrived.

  Mitchell stood outside the room assigned to Special Agent Graham. He forced his anger down until it was a tightly-wound spring. He knocked firmly but not aggressively.

  ‘What?’ said Graham’s voice.

  Mitchell went inside. The room was pretty basic: desk, chairs, small table for friendlier meetings, unused. The view from the window was directly onto the car park, although the skyscraper of Utopia Genetics could be seen behind it. Graham was sitting at the desk, staring at his terminal. He was still the perfectly presented Purity officer, but now there was an underlying uncertainty. He didn’t look up.

  Mitchell shut the door and sat without being asked. He had a feeling it would get the agent’s attention, and he was right. Graham turned to look at him. Perhaps he wasn’t the perfectly presented agent anymore; he had shaved this morning, but his eyes told the tale of how little sleep he had managed.

  ‘I’ve just ordered Chloe Dark’s parents into quarantine. And I’m wondering about everybody else she’s been in close contact with. What do you think?’

  ‘Where would you stop? The whole school? Everyone on the trams she’s been on? Me and Yates?’

  ‘We don’t have the facilities for that many.’

  Mitchell leaned back in the chair. It creaked. He laid his hands in a relaxed position across his stomach. ‘I’d be curious to know how often, when family or friends of freaks are put into quarantine, they exhibit symptoms of infection?’

  Graham stared at him blankly. ‘That’s not my department. The Purity protects society.’

  ‘I must admit, Special Agent Graham, I have been wondering where exactly in the hierarchy of the Purity you sit.’

  ‘High enough,’ he said, ‘that it’s no concern of yours, DI Mitchell.’

  Mitchell twisted his body slightly in the chair and crossed his legs. ‘And how do your seniors feel about the debacle last night?’ The death toll had now reached twenty-one, of which three were police officers, one of whom he had known personally.

  ‘Last night was unfortunate,’ said Graham.

  Mitchell uncrossed his legs, slid forward in the chair and leaned toward Graham, who flinched when he raised his hand.

  ‘Unfortunate?’ Mitchell counted off on his fingers: ‘We failed to catch the kidnappers, Chloe Dark is gone, three police officers are dead, a further eight are injured, and eighteen criminals are also now dead. And while the latter may not be seen as a great loss, we can’t interview them.’ He paused for a breath. ‘Let me count the good things that came about last night.’ He paused. ‘Oh yes. None.’

  ‘We can still find Chloe Dark,’ said Graham.

  ‘Your card is still functioning?’ Mitchell got to his feet. ‘Why are we sitting here talking?’

  ‘I told your wirehead to send someone to the area for a scout around.’

  ‘You fucking idiot!’

  Mitchell was out of the chair and across to the door almost before his final word stopped echoing around the room. He flung himself through the doorway and down the corridor. ‘Lament, pull back whatever officer you sent to track the Chloe Dark riffy. Get a squad together, fully armed and ready to move. And I need a car right now.’

  The screen at the lift door lit up. ‘Orders received and understood, DI Mitchell. However, I cannot recall the officer sent to investigate. Special Agent Graham has seniority.’ The lift doors slid open as Mitchell arrived. He spun on the spot to see Graham almost running down the corridor after him.

  ‘Hold the doors, Lament.’ As Graham came through they slid shut and the lift began to descend instantly.

  Graham was panting. ‘Your insubordination aside, Mitchell, why was that wrong?’

  ‘Because whoever these kidnappers are, they are ruthless, organised and well-armed. And you’re sending one officer into the area. Given what you managed to achieve last night, I would have thought you might have been more circumspect in your orders.’

  ‘I only sent one man.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have sent any. We need data before we do anything.’

  They arrived on the ground floor. Mitchell did not run, but he covered ground fast. People dodged out of his way. The car was pulling up as he exited the doors with Graham in tow.

  ‘Lament,’ said Mitchell as he jumped into the car. ‘Special Agent Graham here is going to rescind his order.’ Graham landed on the bench seat in the back of the car and slammed the door. ‘Aren’t you?’

  Graham looked daggers at him. ‘Yes, call him back if he can do that without it being obvious.’

  Mitchell half-turned in his seat to face Graham as the car sped away. ‘The police officers of the Manchester division are not soldiers, Special Agent Graham. It is their job to protect the populace from criminals. We are not your private army.’

  He turned back to face the front and watched the cold streets of Manchester flowing past. He wasn’t sure what Lament was doing with the traffic, but there wasn’t any. As far as he knew Lament was not in charge of traffic control. One of the council wireheads did that.

  ‘Special Agent,’ said Mitchell, ‘if you would be so kind as to inform Lament of the riffy code you have been following, that would probably be useful.’

  Graham put his hand into an inside pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. He unfolded it and held it up for Lament’s camera. There were no letters or numbers written on the sheet, but Mitchell saw a circular pattern of blobs which represented a visually encoded version of a riffy numbe
r.

  ‘It will take me a few minutes to coordinate this with the riffy grid,’ said Lament.

  ‘In London, the Purity are in charge of the riffy grid,’ said Graham.

  ‘In Manchester,’ said Mitchell, ‘we keep the riffy grid under separate control. It avoids putting too much power into the hands of one organisation.’

  The car zipped through the centre of Manchester and out the other side to where the river Irwell split Manchester from Salford.

  ‘Giving up things like radar and video in favour of the riffy grid was a mistake,’ said Mitchell. ‘It’s far too easy to bypass it. If we still had proper radar coverage we’d know where that helicopter went.’

  ‘The price of progress,’ said Graham.

  ‘You call this progress?’

  The car came to a halt at the side of the road. ‘I’ve cordoned off the area,’ said Lament. ‘The armed squad will be here in five minutes.’

  Mitchell climbed out of the car. He hadn’t picked up his coat on the way out, and the wind leached all the heat from his body in moments. Graham got out the other side; he was also inappropriately dressed. He shoved his hands in his pockets.

  The front window wound down automatically on Mitchell’s side.

  ‘DI Mitchell?’

  He leaned down and put his head inside the car. Lament’s image looked out expressionlessly from the screen. ‘There’s nothing here, sir.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The signal is here, but there’s nothing else. It’s underneath the bridge. It’s not coming from inside anywhere.’

  ‘Dead and drowned?’

  ‘I couldn’t say.’

  Mitchell straightened up and looked in the direction of the bridge for a few moments. He looked at the buildings around it, they were all modern, relatively speaking, and for the most part they were in use. It was highly unlikely some powerful criminal organisation was based here.

  He started to walk in the direction of the bridge.

  Graham called after him. ‘Where are you going?’

  Mitchell took no notice. He lengthened his pace and sped up. This had two desirable effects: it helped to keep him warm, and put distance between him and the Special Agent. Unfortunately not for very long. He heard the panting breath and the slapping footsteps of Graham once again running to catch up.

  ‘What are you doing? I thought we were waiting for the squad.’

  ‘Just look around you,’ said Mitchell, still striding ahead, ‘there’s nobody to fight here. Lament says the signal is coming from under the bridge.’

  There was a rusted iron stairway heading down. Mitchell took it slowly and ended up at the edge of the water, frozen around the banks but still flowing in the middle. He could see something dark lying on the ice. He took out his flashlight and shone it.

  A backpack, and no Chloe Dark.

  Chapter 5

  Chloe

  ‘Let me see your back,’ he said. A wave of fear went through her.

  ‘No.’ She stepped away from the fire and faced him. ‘If you try anything, well, I know how to kill you.’

  She thought she saw a smile hiding in the facial hair. ‘I don’t doubt it. I can see your muscle, and your control, though you look a bit thin.’ There was definitely a hint of humour in his voice; he was laughing at her.

  ‘I don’t need you to look.’

  ‘Have you seen it?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not properly.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter; I’m not having a complete stranger examining me when I’m naked.’

  He moved a little, resettling himself in the chair. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ He waved his hand at the place she had been sitting in before, across the fire from him. ‘I’m not going to throw myself through the fire at you.’

  To be honest, she was grateful. The cold was getting to her now that she had warmed up. At least her extremities had ceased hurting.

  ‘You asked me who I am,’ he said. ‘I am Julian Delacroix.’

  He said his name with a flourish, as if he expected her to recognise it. She didn’t.

  ‘The Delacroix Ballet?’

  His voice was so hopeful she laughed and then slammed her mouth shut because she sounded hysterical.

  ‘Sorry.’

  This time she knew she saw a smile under the beard. ‘Not to worry, it would be too much to think that a second rank ballet company would be remembered after all these years. It’s not as if they put us on the television. Not like Rambert.’ The jealousy was evident in his tone.

  ‘I haven’t heard of him either,’ she said in an effort to make him feel better.

  ‘I was the choreographer of the Delacroix, and I got some very good notices for my productions.’ He must have seen the confusion in her face. ‘Reviews.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Never mind, that’s not the point, Chloe.’ He took a breath. ‘The point is that in a ballet company, especially one further down the rankings, one loses all embarrassment. I worked with a hundred dancers, and saw many of them déshabillé.’ He glanced up and recognised the non-comprehension. ‘Naked, darling. In fact some productions required nudity on stage.’

  Chloe wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about this. She did not doubt he was telling the truth. It explained the way he spoke, for a start.

  ‘So you’re saying you’re not interested in my body?’

  ‘I am curious to see what S.I.D is doing to you.’

  ‘Why aren’t you scared?’

  His words seemed to dry up. It was almost as if a black curtain had dropped over him. ‘I watched half my girls and boys die.’ He lifted his arm and moved it in a graceful arc, as if taking in the room they were in. ‘And this is my punishment.’

  ‘Punishment for what?’

  ‘Not being able to stop their suffering. Not dying with them.’

  Chloe Dark and Julian Delacroix stared at one another across the fire that was turning to hot embers, glowing red, while the grey sky’s light filled the space.

  Chloe stood up and turned her back to the heat. She loosened the blanket around her shoulders but it caught on her lumps. She heard him move. The ghost image of him standing and making his way around to her filled her mind’s eye. Not as complete as it sometimes was, but if she had wanted to she could have floored him with a single blow without even having to look.

  ‘The blanket’s caught,’ she said.

  ‘Shall I move it?’

  She could not bring herself to say anything and just nodded. Something in the fire snapped noisily. She got the instant picture of him raising both hands to take hold of the blanket.

  It pulled against her grip at the front as he lifted the coarse fabric away from her back and brought it down.

  He stepped to the side so his shadow no longer hid her back. He let go of the blanket and it dropped until it hung in a loop to her waist. She pulled it tighter.

  Something touched her in a place she had never felt before. A muscle she did not know she had twitched, and something in her back moved.

  She jerked away. ‘Don’t!’

  He backed off.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ She was breathing heavily, and shivered again but this time it was not from the cold. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she repeated more quietly.

  ‘I needed to know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘What is growing in your back.’

  Chloe struggled. Did she want to know? ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well, in the first instance it is perfectly symmetrical. They are growing together and they are the same thing.’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I’m not an expert.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Either you know or you don’t!’

  ‘You’re getting upset.’

  ‘I’m not!’ She stopped and forced her voice to some semblance of normality. ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘
Touch you.’

  ‘What exactly?’

  ‘Feel them. I may press a little hard, as if I was squeezing your hand to count the bones.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to count the bones.’

  ‘You’re a complete bastard, did you know that?’

  She got the very strong impression he was grinning. ‘It has been a very long time since I’ve had that opportunity, Chloe, and believe me when I say I am relishing every damn moment of it.’

  Chloe laughed. She could hardly believe any of it. It was like some nightmare that she would no doubt wake up from—hopefully soon.

  She stepped back closer to the fire and he moved up to her. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t washed my hands.’

  ‘Just get on with it,’ she growled but not very seriously. And then she held her breath, anticipating his touch.

  She could feel his individual fingers as they came into contact with her skin, and his thumb on the other side. The pressure between them increased. She felt tender, as if she were bruised, but put up with the pain. He moved around, squeezed more and then transferred to the other side, going through the same actions.

  ‘Well?’ she said when he finally released her. She stepped away and turned to face him. He wasn’t that much taller than her.

  ‘Hands.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Feels like hands.’

  A wave of revulsion went through her as she imagined someone with hands sticking out of her back.

  ‘Just hands?’

  ‘Arms too, seems like there’s an elbow joint and a wrist.’

  ‘Oh, god.’ She turned away and stared into the embers. ‘Oh, god.’

  ‘It could be worse.’

  She looked up at him. ‘Worse?’

  She was getting used to the excessive facial hair and saw the look of pain on his face.

  ‘Much worse,’ he said in haunted and distant way.

  He went and sat back down. The two of them stared into the fire. He put more wood on it and the flames leapt up again.

  ‘I could kill myself.’

  ‘You won’t.’