Zero Bomb

by M. T Hill

  Next, he climbs into his oldest courier armour, all manual fastenings and degrading elastic tighteners. Heavy boots and old racing leathers. He also pulls his bug from its charging mount – it starts up without issue, apparently recognising the flat, the window from which it likes to hover in the early morning, and also Remi’s features, which it parses briefly before displaying a green smiley on its body. It hovers near his shoulder, rapid wingbeats cooling his neck.

  ‘We’re off-grid today,’ Remi tells it. ‘Personal leave.’

  The bug tilts on its Y-axis, its equivalent of a head-cock. It rotates away then snaps back to him playfully.

  Now Remi re-bags the contents of the waste sack. A quick toilet stop before he descends the lift to the cycle lock-up, where his old bike, his spare, is secured. The air down here is warm and chalky. Remi unracks the old bike and empties its pannier bags – used energy gel sachets, a water bottle, a delivery receipt for a nightmare job that took him from London to Glasgow with what amounted to a far-right separatist’s handbook, and nearly implicated him in a sting. Anyway: he uses two bungee cords and a carabiner to secure the waste sack over the rack. He checks tyre pressure by bouncing over the handlebars – they’re down, but not terminally so. He mounts the saddle, which is softer than his newer racer’s, and settles on it with the reassurance of the familiar. He doesn’t bother with his helmet, and is relieved he doesn’t have to worry about mapping lenses now the bug handles directions.

  He takes a breath. Kicks up the stand and wheels himself to the lock-up exit. When the gate’s open, he whispers into the bug and throws it ahead of him. It responds enthusiastically to the hot sun. It buzzes up and into the glare.

  Remi sets out.

  * * *

  The uncanny fox had left Remi an instruction, and through a blanching yellow haze Remi follows without deviation. He’s certain that the alternative – staring at his flat’s walls and regretting it – would have led to madness.

  And so he’s heading towards Soho. S O H O being the message applied by the fox to the foyer carpet. Soho in the West End, the glittering half-digital realm, the part-virtualised pleasure garden of their accelerating city. The letters of the message feel vivid to Remi in the daylight, where in the night they seemed nebulous, much less certain. Remi cycles steadily through interactive chase sequences and startling adplays; on past bathtub VR cafes whose muscle-wasted patrons compete for loot-farming contracts, and where those with shattered analogue lives plug in semi-permanently to seek better chances online. He pushes through scenic pop culture tunnels and fake theatre facades, lined with underpaid students flogging beautiful nodes; and he weaves around the roaming pornboards streaming sets from other time zones. Soon he’s deep in the heart of the place, neon-blind and tense and sweating. But what the old bike lacks in finesse, it makes up for in agility.

  Remi doesn’t know exactly where he should go, of course. Instead, he holds to a strange faith in the vagueness of the commands and messages he’s received so far. An uncomfortable trust in whoever’s been tracking him. He hopes that by being here, cycling without his breather or helmet, and with the waste sack as cargo, he’s at least demonstrating his willing. What other option does he have?

  But an hour later, during which Remi has traversed the full Soho maze, seen most of its attractions several times over, he begins to reconsider. Begins to doubt – as if it wasn’t already self-evidently ridiculous – that a fox should be able to write a message to him like that. Begins to question his memory, his grasp of things. Like so many people here in Soho, he begins to question reality itself.

  He chokes on these doubts. He chokes on the thick city. He stops riding and secures his bike in a closed council rack; seeks shelter from the smog in the closest cafe, where spark-smoke turns opaquely against the glass. At the bar he orders two beers with a beta-blocking chaser. These he drinks under a glittering awning, his bug asleep on the table. He tries to affect the posture and gaze of a casual people-watcher, even though he can’t focus on anything at all. He doesn’t notice when the street traffic builds and crawls to a stop. A profusion of distant sirens like screams underwater, warbling in and out of earshot.

  He sets down what’s left of the second beer as an old-bodied ambulance turns into the narrow street, scattering mopeds and revellers. The sound and sight is finally enough to distract, draw his focus. When the ambulance pulls up just twenty feet from the terrace, Remi observes with detachment, London being the sort of place where these scenes play out thousands of times a day; London, overpopulated, until recently a quarter flooded, being the sort of place where human life in all of its richness can paradoxically seem less precious.

  At any rate, he doesn’t think for a moment that the ambulance, which contains two paramedics, a man and a woman, has arrived for him. Not until they’re in the cafe, and by his side, and saying his name flatly.

  * * *

  Remi goes without quibble, and without paying his bill. The cafe owner stands unperturbed; shoos away Remi and his chaperones with a guilty look, perhaps hoping nobody will be put off, or worse, stream the scene for likes. LED arrays on the opposite building disorientate him. The pavement is slippery. He’s starting to regret the alcohol. The walk to the ambulance is short but takes forever, a very exposed walk in the close air, and then he’s at the rear doors.

  ‘Sit and wait,’ the woman says, ‘while we fetch your bicycle.’

  The man helps Remi up the kickstep. The bulk of the ambulance saloon is stripped out, save for a rubber floor and a crude plywood bench. The box frame is lined with wood panelling, scoured and scuffed, more like an old-time trader’s van.

  Remi crouches in one corner, holding his bladder. Sawdust and mildew. He checks his phone, thinking he should message someone, but the battery is dead.

  The man’s head appears through the rear doors, temple veins throbbing. He slides Remi’s waste sack, panniers and saddle across the floor, before lugging Remi’s cycle up as well. As the man climbs into the box, Remi considers his build and tone – similar to the man who’d written messages to Remi on the Tube, and hardly more effusive in his manner. It might even be the same person. The man sits on the bench and wipes his brow and removes the hi-vis and regulation fleece.

  Up front, the woman climbs into the cab. She glances round and starts the engine, the sirens; they accelerate away into Soho’s throngs, blipping the horn every now and then. Remi watches as herds of pedestrians disperse once more in the narrow roads: rift-drunk, most, but safe in numbers.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Remi asks.

  The man shakes his head.

  ‘Only right you tell me,’ Remi says.

  The man blinks at him.

  ‘Come on,’ Remi says. ‘I’ve done my bit.’

  The man stands up. He hovers there, head pushed forward by the saloon ceiling. Stooped this way, swaying, with his feet planted wide, the man appears taller and wider. The unsaid threat being implicit. Then the man clears his throat. ‘I don’t know where,’ he says, tilting his head to the cab. ‘Only she does.’

  ‘Who’s “she”?’ the woman hisses. The woman is down to a vest, shoulder muscles working smoothly as she changes gears. All the dashboard electrics have been removed as well. Like someone came along and cored the ambulance.

  ‘And you’re meant to be some kind of snatch-squad?’ Remi says.

  The woman disengages the siren, slows off and gives the man a dour look. She doesn’t so much as glance at Remi. ‘Tell this prick,’ she instructs the man, ‘to keep his trap shut. Or we use a bag.’

  Remi swallows. The urge to piss grows stronger.

  ‘Best you listen,’ the man says. ‘She’s fair, yeah, but she isn’t patient.’

  Remi drops his gaze and nudges the free-spinning wheel of his bike with his foot. Its slow ratcheting pierces the empty space.

  ‘And tell him to get rid of that bug before she sees him,’ the woman adds.

  Remi straightens. She? He instinctively feels for th
e bug in his pocket. The man, now seated, has his hand outstretched, with some shade of pity on his face.

  ‘I need it,’ Remi tells him. ‘For my insurance.’

  The man curls his fingers and retracts his arm. He shakes his head and reaches behind the bench. He pulls out a sleeve of thick white fabric. A bag.

  Remi’s grip tightens around the bug.

  ‘Give it to him,’ the woman insists.

  Remi hesitates.

  ‘Please,’ the man says. ‘For your sake.’

  Remi huffs and slides the bug across the floor. The man picks it up and rotates it in his hands. The bug’s wingtips flash green. Remi gasps – this means it recognises the man’s fingerprints. Was this how they tracked him?

  Reddening, the man quickly pockets the bug and settles back against the van side, jostled by the ride. He glances mournfully between his boots and the waste sack, still tied to the bike.

  ‘You wanna know how I got that?’ Remi asks, motioning to the sack.

  The man shakes his head fractionally.

  ‘Wouldn’t believe me, anyway,’ Remi says.

  The woman adjusts her rear-view mirror so she can glare at him.

  ‘There was a fox,’ Remi says. ‘I went to—’

  At this the man lurches from the bench and cuts Remi off with a sharp back-handed slap, more shocking than painful. A moment later the man’s fist piles into Remi’s solar plexus, and Remi is driven back into the ply lining of the saloon wall. The man’s other hand, balled around the bag, pulls Remi’s face forward and down into the rubber matting.

  ‘She told you.’

  Remi fights for his breath. The man’s weight is pushing it all out. A sense that if he exhales, the spaces inside him will be flattened. Then a tightness begins to stretch at Remi’s crown, tugging on the hair. The smell is mint. The smell is fox. The smell is something to crawl into, curl up inside. Remi finally inhales, and the world turns creamy white. He laughs – he can’t help it. His ears go from stinging red to crushed and numb, and he tastes a sweetness. He’s somewhere like that nebulous stage between consciousness and sleep: he’s with Martha on a train, the two of them at a table with window seats in what must be early spring, when the rapeseed has thickened and turned whole swathes of countryside to sun. He’s back with Martha as she counts sheeps in the fields, and he notices how each of them takes turns to close their eyes and bask briefly in the warm white light, exaggeratedly whispering mmm to each other, giggling like they’re the first to know, the first to try it. And Remi thinks more about that, the light and the rich colour of the land, and how it was the exact opposite of this. It’s nearly enough.

  10

  When the bag comes off, it’s East London brick, at a guess. Nearby, a wet concrete overpass stilted above rows of large industrial units. A drained canal full of rotting chairs and hospital bed frames and gas canisters. High-water marks where the surge protection failed last year. Hints of the concrete barriers that might or might not cope the next time – because there will be a next time.

  Remi doesn’t know why the imposter paramedics removed the bag. Timing is about far as he can stretch to. He’d been out for most of the journey, and had kept quiet and did as he was told when he came to. Perhaps they want him, in some limited sense, to see. To understand the power dynamic. In any case, he’s more bemused than afraid. When you cycle across London every day, an exercise in control, losing that control can be relieving, even satisfying. If nothing else, being here has stirred him awake. There’s a reason to be here. Which means he has a reason to be.

  ‘On through here,’ the woman says. She’s walking in front of them, surplus fatigues and trail-running shoes. She’s removed her wig to reveal a sharp undercut, a large monochrome tattoo of a pigeon whose wings stretch out both ways from nape to shoulder bone.

  They pass beneath a steel roller-shutter with NO PARKING splashed across it. Another poured concrete floor, the smell of old fat on foil.

  The doors roll closed behind them. Someone exhales slowly – Remi or one of the others. And now the space is pitch dark except for the band of light beneath the shutter. Remi has a hand over his chest and swears he can feel his fingers vibrating.

  ‘Is the bag full?’

  A low, hoarse voice. Not the woman’s, nor the man’s.

  Remi searches the darkness. Faint outlines, oblique shapes. Nothing soft. The others have left him.

  ‘Is the bag full?’ the voice repeats.

  ‘Me?’ Remi whispers.

  ‘Is the bag full?’

  Remi steps forward and nearly trips – the sack is directly in front of his feet. And now the room has taken on the heat and stink of the fox: scat and vinegar. A carnal smell.

  ‘Yes,’ Remi offers. ‘It’s… full.’

  ‘Obeyance,’ comes the voice.

  A small door before Remi squeals open.

  ‘Collect it,’ the voice says, stilted. ‘And deliver.’

  Remi picks up the sack. Winces as it swings against his thigh.

  ‘Come through,’ the voice says.

  * * *

  It’s a warehouse. The interior, a cavernous space, is lit entirely by candle. Hundreds and hundreds of them line the walls, producing a terrific, visible heat that distorts the steel struts above him, and makes the far wall seem like a mirage. The floor is polished concrete covered in sawdust and woodchip; the walls a mix of brick, rendering and exposed steel joist. Centred in the space stands a large mesh cube, each face perhaps twenty metres across. It’s tethered to the ceiling by a braid of heavy cables. Bathed in wavering shadow, a stooped figure occupies a plastic chair in the far corner of the cube.

  Remi steps forward, struggling to focus. His nose is running. The wax smell is overpowering. The sack in his hand is growing heavier and heavier. The candle glow is uncanny. The walls are swimming.

  ‘Hello?’ Remi tries.

  The figure in the cube stirs. A shudder of matt grey fabric. The figure is breathing strangely, as if curled into itself, or – and the idea strikes him – eating something forbidden. Remi edges closer.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Wait.’

  The voice is quiet enough to be confident of itself. A shiver, then, to realise he’s heard it before – and long before here, too. He can’t place it, or necessarily explain it.

  Remi comes to the cube. Between the fine mesh squares, a deliberate solitude. A short, slight woman in a sack-like tunic, thinning white hair, and a headpiece that appears to be decorated with small bones. Nothing else with her but the chair.

  ‘Open your gifts for me,’ she says. A half-turn of the head, still focused away, neck muscles stepped, so that only a slice of her face is hinted at. She has a dark skin tone, scored in texture. A distinctive jutting lower jaw, a little like a piranha’s.

  Remi kneels and steadies himself against the mesh. He unties the waste sack. His eyes are watering in the heat, and he blinks tears into the sawdust. One splash is so perfectly formed it shocks him.

  Remi takes out the small bags and places them next to the cube. At last the woman turns to him. Smiling deeply in warm candle glow, her face a cut of old oak, a woman at ease with herself and fully in control. She says, ‘Hello Remi,’ and then, ‘at last. It does truly feel as though I know you.’

  Remi doesn’t respond.

  ‘Experimental Faraday cage,’ she tells him, chuckling. ‘Before you ask – since your type, standing that side all agog, always do. And no, you may not come in.’

  ‘What’s it for?’

  ‘My sanity!’ the woman spits. ‘A snail needs a shell. Now, shush. What you have in here, see, are the ingredients for a spell that you yourself will cast.’

  Remi shakes his head.

  ‘We’re not long for this world,’ the woman says, insistent. ‘I don’t even expect you to listen overlong – only to act accordingly and promptly when appropriate. Thus far you’ve proven yourself capable of that, at least. A quality I admire. And indeed seek.’

  ‘Wha
t’s this got to do with my daughter?’ Remi asks.

  The question goes unanswered. The woman focuses beyond him, flashes a chilly smirk. ‘Here, girl,’ she says, hardly raising her voice. And now from behind comes a shuffling. Remi turns. A fox – no, the fox – is crossing the sawdust, and then it’s with him. It nuzzles against Remi’s leg. It curls around his feet. It wags its tail and gazes up at him, pupils narrowed to sharp little almonds. Remi swallows. The fur on the fox’s legs is missing, revealing light alloy and fine gearing. Machine parts.

  ‘This is Rupal,’ the woman announces. ‘Rupal, this is Remi. She’s keen on you, actually.’

  The grime on Remi’s skin itches madly, yet he’s strangely flattered by the fox’s affection. He can’t deny the instinct to kneel and stroke the fox, a notion at once repulsive and exciting. That it’s the same fox is unquestionable: the litheness, the colour of its coat, the snowy bob and quicksilver eyes – it’s all the same. The smell, too.

  But… these legs.

  ‘Ru,’ the woman in grey says quietly. ‘Let the poor man be. He’s having a moment.’

  The fox stands up and trots around the cube towards the woman. It places its muzzle against the mesh and wiggles its tail. The woman inside comes to, extends her long fingers and begins to scratch the fox’s throat.

  ‘She was originally meant for MI6,’ the old woman tells Remi. ‘Intelligence gathering – a scout. Made in one of those little robotics firms in Cambridge. I’ve always cherished foxes, so the opportunity to procure her seemed somewhat fatalistic. I suppose they might have called her a semi-autonomous drone, or a field asset, or some other euphemism. We inherited her when she failed her trials. This second generation are known for being acutely sensitive: it’s very possible she could sense too well, which may have foretold distraction during operations. For our purposes, however, her sensitivity is a boon. It was really a case of taking some liberties with the firmware and power pack – giving her more time to range, for instance, and a proper means to synthesise energy out in the field. The sale report said she procrastinated, was easily overstimulated. I call that fastidiousness. Rupal can roam for a days at a time without a kill or collection. She is the finest collector we know, in fact, and we have a few. Try not to be alarmed by her appearance: she prefers the fur to be off indoors – it can get a little warm in here, and she’s getting to be an old girl.’