Places in the Darkness

by Chris Brookmyre

  Nikki and Alice share a look, acknowledging two things: that Amber may already be dead, and that even if she’s not, they are up against a clock they cannot see.

  “We’ll do what we can,” Nikki says. Her tone is sincere but not optimistic. “Meantime, you gonna be okay?”

  “I’m fine. Still tender, but it could have been a lot worse.”

  “Oh yeah, your friend Karyl. Did you have to set his arm yourself?”

  Alice wonders why this would be the case, given the standard of medical care available at the ERU. Then she realises that the ghosts of the Catacombs can’t show up to the enfermería because their presence would register on all kinds of systems. Proper medical attention would come at the risk of being sent back to Earth, which is presumably a worse prospect even than living here.

  “I had some help. Lupe came down and treated him. Gave me some painkillers too. I still have some friends in the caring professions.”

  Lupe: Dr. Guadaloupe Hermosillos. Alice recalls the name, as well as the condemnation she rained down upon the surgeon for her complicity in what went on at Klaws. She was a little hasty there, it seems. Lupe went where she was needed, asked no questions, told no tales.

  Suddenly Alice makes the connection.

  “Dr. Hermosillos told us she treated a man with a mangled foot who claimed he had no recollection of how it happened. She believed him because he ‘wasn’t the usual type for a mystery injury.’ She said he was a pilot.”

  Nikki sees it too.

  “According to Trick, Yash’s pet assholes said what they were doing was ‘more fun than with the pilot.’ Trick’s modification let them target people at random. Whatever they did to the pilot preceded that. He wasn’t targeted at random, he was targeted specifically. We need to find this guy.”

  “Way ahead of you,” Alice announces.

  THE KICKER

  Within half an hour they are standing outside an apartment building on Weber. It is a primarily residential area bordering on the Scobee district, which Nikki informs Alice is Julio’s stomping ground.

  “Was Julio’s stomping ground,” she corrects herself.

  Nikki surprises herself with how genuinely regretful she feels about this. It’s not like she had any affection for Julio and his attack-chimps, but she sure didn’t want them dead. It’s more than their loss that she is mourning, however: it feels like the Seedee she knows is dying before her eyes. At best she will unmask the killer after the fact, but she won’t be able to prevent the murder.

  The ground floor of the apartment building is given over to a fitness arena, comprising several banks of running pods, 3D-rotating climbing cubes and other state-of-the-art exertainment machines. It’s a far cry from the boxing gym where Freitas and his buds hung out, and there certainly isn’t much overlap in terms of the clientele. The building is comparatively high-rise for a residential block, so as well as a general fitness facility, the arena is a necessity for people renting in the upper storeys. There are certain conveniences about living in a low-g apartment, not least that the rent is usually cheaper, but you can lose muscle mass if you don’t work out regularly.

  The guy they are looking for lives on the second-highest floor. Alice was frustrated in her intention to search medical records for recent leg injuries, as strict patient confidentiality rules meant even her clearance level didn’t grant override access. However, she was able to access transportation shift rotas, and discovered that a pilot named Aaron DeLonge had been off work for several days.

  They take the stairs, feeling the climb ease with each flight.

  “Remember to be economical with your movement,” Nikki warns. “You can ping around like a pinball if you’re not used to it.”

  “Learned that the hard way,” she replies, referring to her zero-g mishap during the all-stop.

  “You’d think they’d give an android different settings, so it can switch between gravity modes.”

  “No, I only have one,” Alice replies, raising her middle finger.

  “Obscene finger gestures from such a pristine girl.”

  “I’m not that pristine.”

  They reach DeLonge’s apartment, where lens input requests and plain old knocking both fail to elicit a response.

  Nikki puts her ear to the door. She detects only stillness and silence within. Time was when the sight of a murder victim was as much a part of her working routine as coffee and paperwork. She thinks of the many corpses she has encountered in recent days, and realises that after nearly two decades here, she has grown used to the absence of violent death. That is the thing she is truly mourning, not Julio or Omega or any of the others.

  Apart from Giselle, that is. She has barely had the opportunity to truly process that. She keeps shunting it to the back, something she can’t afford to deal with yet.

  “The lock isn’t responding to my emergency override,” Alice reports. “It’s been jammed or hacked or something.”

  Nikki thinks of the Seguridad listings Alice saw, regarding Yash. Found hanged, suspected suicide. Something tightens inside her, bracing for the impact of what she is about to see.

  Nikki busts the door open with her heel, sending it flying to the wall.

  There is rapid movement inside, where Aaron DeLonge is very much alive. Startled by the explosive intrusion, he has got up from his chair and is catapulting himself towards the kitchen area to the rear of his living room. His right leg is dragging behind him, encumbered by an aluminium frame around a protective plastic cast, blinking sensors on the outside.

  Despite this, DeLonge is fast, used to the low gravity environment. He reaches the back wall in a couple of seconds. Nikki’s cop instincts anticipate why he’s headed there and she begins closing the distance.

  Above the worktop next to the sink there are four stainless steel one-piece blades glinting on an electro-magnetic rack. DeLonge seizes the nearest of them, gripping it in his right hand and turning to face his intruders. He looks scared and desperate. Despite Nikki being the nearer of the two and the one who has made a move, she notices that he only has eyes for Alice.

  “Everybody take it easy,” Alice implores, holding up her hands. “Nobody needs to—”

  But Alice isn’t seeing what Nikki is. She lunges towards him, deflecting his knife hand upwards with her left forearm and sending a blow to his gut with her right. Encumbered by the leg brace, he is easy to take down and pin, having relieved him of the knife in a disarming manoeuvre. This last she hadn’t used in twenty years, which suggests her muscle memory is more durable than its mental equivalent. Though to be fair, it isn’t her muscle memory that she has been trying to erase with Speyside malt for two decades.

  “What did you do that for?” Alice asks, appalled.

  “Because he was going for his own throat: that’s what the knife was for. This dude took one look at you and decided to kill himself. I’m not saying I don’t know how he feels, but it’s my duty to intervene.”

  DeLonge keeps struggling. He’s trying to push sharply against the floor in order to bounce both of them into the air, but Nikki keeps him tightly pinned until she is sure the fight has gone out of him. Still his gaze is fixed on Alice, though the look of anguish gradually dissipates into one of timidity.

  “We don’t mean you any harm, Mr. DeLonge,” Nikki assures him.

  “Allowing that intention and practice can sometimes diverge,” Alice adds pointedly.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to prevent you killing yourself in a less painful manner, but the point is we’re the good guys, okay?”

  DeLonge doesn’t look convinced, but Nikki allows him to get up and vigilantly escorts him back to his chair while Alice pushes the door to.

  “So you wanna tell us why you were trying to take a shortcut? What’s so scary about Dr. Blake here?”

  He shakes his head, staring mostly at the floor, occasionally stealing a glance at Alice. He looks like a beaten dog scared of when the next blow will fall. Nikki feels kinda bad about t
he punch to the gut, but in her defence, he had worse planned for himself.

  “Let’s start off with an easier one. What happened to your leg?”

  Still he says nothing.

  “Okay, I’m gonna try fill in some of the blanks for you. Would it be possible that your current anxiety derives from a fear of reprisals by one Yashmin Sardana, known associate of one Julio Martinez?”

  DeLonge’s eyes react, drawn to Nikki in reflexive response to these names.

  “Or should I say, the late Yashmin Sardana, known associate of the late Julio Martinez. In fact, I could save myself some time by telling you that the words ‘late’ and ‘associate of Julio Martinez’ are now so synonymous as to constitute a tautology. They’re not coming for you. But somebody is, and I’m guessing you know she looks a lot like my colleague right here.”

  DeLonge glances back and forth between the two of them in confusion.

  “It’s kind of an evil-twin deal,” Nikki says. “Alice here is the wholesome one. You should make nice with her.”

  “We’re the only ones who can protect you,” Alice tells him. “But we can’t help you if you won’t help us.”

  DeLonge lets loose a long, slow exhale. Nikki has seen it a thousand times before, enough to know when a wit is going to cooperate.

  “Okay, but you have to let me get something from the kitchen first.”

  Nikki steps back and allows him to stand up. DeLonge makes his way to the rear of the apartment in two gliding bounces, then leans awkwardly to reach down into a cupboard. He casts an eye back towards Alice as he does so, which Nikki is pleased to see provokes the same response in both women.

  “Easy,” Alice says, taking the resin gun from her belt.

  Android or not, she’s got some cop instincts to her.

  “What do you have there?”

  Very slowly he pulls out a green bottle Nikki instantly recognises as Glenfiddich. He pours himself three fingers and necks most of it, then shoves the bottle back into the cupboard jealously.

  Nikki feels a dryness of want in her throat. Selfish bastard.

  “I don’t fly freight,” he says, sucking his cheeks together in response to the burn of the liquor. “Sure, I’m licensed to fly ion shuttles, but there’s no fun to it. That’s why I fly limpet-bugs.”

  This is his way of saying he knows some fancy flying, over and above the mindless back-and-forth between Heinlein and Seedee. Limpet-bugs are used for carrying out exterior maintenance work on the wheels and canopies. They are small and highly manoeuvrable compared to the ion shuttles. Their nickname refers to their insect-like appearance and their requirement to stick to the outside surfaces while their crews carry out EVA work.

  “Do a little moonlighting?” Nikki asks.

  “Moving bulk quantities between locations. Most contraband comes in on the ion shuttles and gets offloaded at one of the docks, but if you actually need half of your shipment to reach the other wheel, I’m your guy.”

  “You did this for Julio?”

  “I did it for whoever. You can always use a little extra cash, right? But then I took a job that I wish I’d never touched. I guess it was for Julio ultimately, but that’s not who I agreed it with or how it was packaged. In fact, nothing about this package turned out to be what anybody agreed.”

  “Who did you deal with?”

  “Omega. I take it there’s nothing I need to tell you about him.”

  “Nope,” Nikki replies.

  “It was a subcontract gig. Omega had an arrangement with this scientist, Slovitz. Slovitz wanted to smuggle something out of the Neurosophy compound, some new tech.”

  DeLonge drinks the rest of the whisky. Nikki can almost taste it on her lips. Fucker still ain’t sharing.

  “Slovitz agreed a deal with Omega to organise the transport. Hired me to do the flying. Omega and Yashmin tagged along—they said as security, to make sure it all ran smoothly, but I smelt bullshit. Yash deals in stolen tech and Julio’s people would rob the sugar from your coffee, so the prospect of getting to poke around inside Neurosophy was always gonna be a huge temptation. I guess Slovitz smelt it too, but he was going underground to get this done so maybe he didn’t have a lot of choice.

  “Slovitz supplied clearance codes to get the limpet-bug into the shuttle elevator under the Neurosophy compound. We stopped part-way up the shaft and the other three got out. You know what it’s like on Seedee: all controlled doorways above, but when you get underneath into the guts, there’s always ways in and out of places you shouldn’t be.”

  “I’m starting to grasp that, yes,” Alice says.

  “They were edgy though. Caught trespassing around that place and you’re Earthbound, you know? They all put on masks so the security cameras couldn’t ID them. Omega made sure that big old tatt of his was covered up. Good as a barcode, that thing.”

  “But you stayed with the limpet-bug?”

  “Ready for a fast getaway, yeah. They were gone a long time, though. Seemed like a long time anyway. And when they came back, everything felt wrong. They had this machine, I’m guessing the one they were there to get, but they also show up with this girl, who looked totally spaced out: just babbling, scared and crazy. Omega was real pissed because the girl wasn’t part of the deal. Slovitz had insisted they take her, and I’m guessing this put us all in deeper shit than Omega bargained for.”

  “Did they say anything about where this girl came from?” Nikki asks.

  “No. But Yash seemed real spooked. She kept asking Slovitz about something called Project Sentinel, but he was taking the fifth.”

  “What did she say about it?” asks Alice.

  “All I remember is the name. She was asking him about the machine too, but he wasn’t playing ball. I remember Yash and Omega talking quietly on the flight back, cooking something up while Slovitz was busy making sure the girl was okay. I think he slugged her with some kind of sedative, because she fell asleep.

  “When we got back to base, Omega told Slovitz the terms of the deal had changed. Said he was taking the machine as part of the payment. Slovitz objected, and you can imagine how it went from there.”

  “Vividly,” says Nikki.

  “Anyway, a little while after that, as you know, Omega gets himself butchered, and then Yash shows up here with two more of Julio’s people: Bollo and Krug. I thought they were here to pay me my end, but then I see they got the goddamn machine with them.

  “They connected it to my mesh, right there on the floor. Knocked me around a bit first, to let me know it was useless to struggle. I’m shitting myself, thinking they’re gonna fry my brain. Instead I’m lying there a few minutes, then they unplug me and leave. I’m thinking what the fuck. I’m a mess and I’m sweaty and shook up, so I take a shower. That’s the last thing I remember before waking up on the floor with my leg all chewed up.”

  “So you don’t know what happened to it?” Alice asks.

  “Oh, I know fine. While I’m lying in the infirmary, I get a message from Yash telling me to check my grabs. Turns out I recorded one without knowing. Turns out I did a lot without knowing. Best you see for yourselves.”

  DeLonge sends the grab to both of them. Nikki runs it semi-transparent so that she can make sure he isn’t trying to pull anything while they’re distracted. Even at that opacity, she has to stop watching after about twenty seconds. She lasts longer than Alice, however.

  The grab shows the view as DeLonge comes out of the shower, walking towards his bed upon which a fresh change of clothes is laid out. It’s like he misjudges his stride and kicks the sharp edge of the sturdy metal bedpost with his bare foot. The contact is shudderingly solid. There is an audible crunch that Nikki can almost feel. He looks down, revealing one of his toes to be bent and cracked and bleeding.

  He lifts his foot tenderly off the floor a few centimetres, like he is about to cradle it, protect it. Instead, he drives it full-force into the bedpost again like he’s kicking a field goal.

  The scream sounds in Ni
kki’s ears, shaking her.

  DeLonge kicks it again, harder still. More crunching, more breaking of bones, more tearing of soft, bloody flesh.

  This time he falls over. A hand reaches to grab the foot, not daring to touch the damaged toes. Then inexplicably he lets it go and draws himself awkwardly upright again. He takes his weight unsteadily on his left foot and kicks once more with his right.

  It goes on and on, kicking and falling and crunching and tearing and bleeding. And when he can no longer get back up, he starts kicking where he lies on the ground, smashing his shin against the bedpost until it is gashed open and the bone visible, at which point Nikki can’t take any more.

  SAFEGUARDS

  Alice is trembling. In a way, this is worse than seeing any of the corpses she has witnessed of late, because bodies only show the aftermath. It is almost as bad as watching Omega’s grab, but for its sick-joke killer twist.

  Alice and Nikki look to each other and then to the protective frame around DeLonge’s shattered limb.

  “They got a machine that can make me do that to myself,” DeLonge says. “Imagine what else it could make someone do.”

  “We don’t have to,” Alice tells him. “We’ve already seen.”

  DeLonge opens the cupboard again and pours himself another shot of whisky, knocking it back in a gulp. Alice notices Nikki’s eyes on the bottle, like a dog spotting a hare.

  “A little later, I got another message from Yash,” he says. “You should take a look at that too.”

  He forwards the data. Alice sees an image of her doppelganger: a shot lifted from Yash’s own recording of a picture on a screen. No blonde hair this time, so the face looks even more like Alice upon a cursory viewing. It shows her in military fatigues, water twinkling in the background. There is accompanying text.

  This is who butchered Omega. You’ve probably heard otherwise but that’s because Julio is too dumb to understand the real threat. He’s convinced himself it’s all about Yoram, but I was inside Neurosophy. I saw what she is. She is coming for what we took. She is coming for all of us because we need to be silenced.