by Adam Steel
‘Please! You have to help me! They’re all looking for me. You don’t understand. It’s the Masons.’
An icy chill shot down Ellie’s spine.
The Masons!
The pieces finally clicked into place for her. It suddenly dawned on her, that the man, who had impersonated Kristoff, was not some psychopath: not some cracked conspiracy theorist or some deranged reformer with a grudge. He had known. He had known what this girl knew. He had known what she herself knew. That there was something profoundly wrong with the masons, something inexplicably wrong with Utopia and woe befalls those who find out.
Ellie swallowed hard and edged a little closer to the distraught girl. Aya looked up pitifully. Ellie took in her features properly for the first time. She thought that she would have been beautiful, if not for the dark circles under her eyes and the ugly bruise on her face. She noticed that a large piece of her long, black hair, was missing. It looked to Ellie, as if it had been snipped off with scissors. Ellie’s hand flew to her face as she realised where she had seen her before. The girl’s face had been on the Daily Utopic’s news for the last few days. The young girl cowering in front of her was the witness that they wanted to speak to. They were looking for her.
No wonder she’s terrified, Ellie thought.
Ellie had already reached the conclusion that, the ‘so called’ Slash-Knife killer, did not exist and that it was a story that had been concocted as a shield, to mask their evil deeds. Ellie wracked her brain, trying to recall the girl’s name from the news-casts.
‘Aya?’ she asked. ‘Is that your name?’
Aya looked at her in horror. She made a dive for Jack’s gun amongst the packages, but it skidded out of her reach and slid under a counter.
‘Please don’t turn me in!’ Aya wailed in desperation. ‘It’s all lies! They’re trying to kill me!’ she cried, and curled up, so that she was sitting with her arms, squeezing tightly around her knees.
Aya was rocking back and forth and crying hard. Ellie gripped her by the shoulders and tried to shake her out of her hysteria.
‘Calm down. I’m not going to turn you in. Do you understand? But you have to be quiet right now,’ she said, as calmly as she could manage.
Aya stopped crying, and stared back at her.
‘You’re not? I’m sorry…I’m so sorry. I wasn’t going to hurt you…I Just…We just….We need your help desperately!’ Aya babbled.
Ellie held her firmly, until her sobs subsided.
‘Who is we?’ Ellie asked gently, holding her at arms-length and looking into her tinted eyes.
Aya stared at Ellie for a moment. She read the name badge on Ellie’s laboratory coat as being: “SANDRA: PHARMACY”, and thought that the woman was not a Doctor, but a laboratory technician. She believed that her attempt to get a doctor to help Max, had failed, but that anyone with some medical experience was better than no one at all. It dawned on her, just how bad Max’s predicament was and she blurted out, ‘Max! You have to come with me right now. He’s been shot. I think he’s dying!’
Ellie recoiled.
‘Shot! - Where? How? Who’s Max?’ Ellie said, helping Aya to her feet.
‘I can’t tell you everything here. There’s no time left. Please help. You must be able to do something for him, even though you aren’t a doctor,’ Aya coaxed.
Ellie hesitated for a few seconds. Her instincts told her to help the man, if he was indeed, bleeding to death. She made a split-second decision to go with the girl and see for herself if it was true.
‘I am a Doctor. I’ll do what I can. Where is he?’ Ellie said.
Aya looked confused. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She’s a doctor. There may still be time. Please let there be enough time. Max, she thought.
‘Outside. He’s outside. I put him in an ambulance. Hurry!’ Aya declared, tugging on her arm.
Aya started out of the laboratory and stopped at the door.
‘What are you doing? Hurry up!’ Aya pleaded.
Ellie had dropped down on all fours. She was searching for something under the bench. She pulled Jack’s gun out and holding it by the handle with a finger and thumb, she got up. Aya frowned at her, but seemed totally disinterested in Jack’s gun. Ellie quickly followed Aya out of the laboratory and down the passage, past the laundry room and outside. She dropped Jack’s gun in the outside waste-disposal chute. It made a horrid ‘screeching’ noise, as it slid down the metal chute. Ellie was glad to be rid of the gun and its threat of death, but she was still extremely cautious as to where the young girl was taking her and what she would see when she got there. She rationalised that the girl had to be telling her the truth because she hadn’t shot her when she had the chance and she seemed hell-bent on helping the man that she called ‘Max.’
Aya got to the back of the ambulance first. She stopped and looked back at Ellie, who was running up behind her.
‘He’s in here. Quick!’ Aya panted, and bent over double trying to get her breath.
Ellie put her hands on the door handles of the ambulance and wondered if she was doing the ‘right thing.’
The doctor in her said: “help him”.
The woman in her said: “run”.
The friend of Irene in her said: “find out the truth.”
She pulled the door open and tried to suppress a gasp of shock as the lights in the ambulance came on. What she saw inside was a man sitting in a silver wheelchair off to one side. He was dressed in a full TALOS uniform. His eyes were closed. His large muscular chest sagged. He was covered in cuts and bruises and one eye was badly swollen. His skin was a deathly pallor. He was not moving.
She ignored Aya’s ‘yelp’ of fear at the sight of Max and climbed quickly into the ambulance, pulled his head back, and lifted his eyelids in turn, looking intently at each of his eyes. His irises were dilated. Apexir overdose, she thought. She shook her head from side to side and then checked his pulse and paused for a few seconds, before she thumbed several switches on the ambulances interior.
Small panels of medical equipment folded down from the walls.
‘Is he...dead?’ Aya whimpered, in a meek voice.
Ellie rapidly slapped on a pair of surgical gloves and began preparing a needle. She did not look at Aya.
‘No. But he’s close. Get in and shut the door. Help me get his uniform off,’ she demanded.
Aya pulled at the straps of the TALOS garb, while Ellie clattered around in the storage compartments. Ellie pulled out an array of drugs, chemicals and other more exotic equipment. She hastily arranged them in a line on one of the sides.
Aya pulled Max’s jacket off and he slumped forward. When she sat him back up, she stared in morbid horror at the dark, purple stain that covered his shoulder. A white, twisted scar of fused flesh covered the area where the bullet hole had been. Ellie had seen scars like his before. She knew that they had been caused by an auto-cauterising agent, which TALOS carried as part of their standard-issue kit. She had seen the scars that it had caused plenty of times in the past when she had treated the soldiers in Arethusa. It was all coming back to her in a wave of memories that she had fought so hard to forget.
Aya retreated to the back of the ambulance and slumped down in the corner.
‘Save him! Please save him,’ she pleaded in a whisper.
Ellie ignored her, while she fed a medical drip into one of the veins on Max’s good arm and he stirred briefly when the needle pierced him. He looked at Ellie through half-closed eyes. They focused for a few seconds on the nameplate on her coat before spinning wildly and closing again.
‘Sandra,’ he rasped faintly. ‘Sandy…you’ve come back to me.’
Max could feel his life draining away. Coldness began to cover him and his vision faded into a haze. He could hear sounds coming from a long way-away. They were hollow sounds that seemed to be outside his head, but he couldn’t be sure. His limbs refused to do what he wanted. Everything went pitch-black and he slipped into unconsciousness.
“Max was lying on his back in the sand. A short wall was all that stood between him and the bullets that were flying over-head. Every time one zipped past, he ducked further down into the dirt. He knew it was a pointless action, because his Sergeant had told him if that if he had heard it, then he wasn’t dead and it was only the ones ‘he did not hear’ that he had to worry about. He figured the Sergeant was right about that.
He recalled when he had taken a bullet in the arm years before. He hadn’t heard ‘that one’ coming. At the time it happened he had been so high on Apexir that he hadn’t even felt it.
Max and his division had been lying in the ditch for over an hour. There were four of them and they were pinned down by enemy fire. The rebel army were a ragged bunch, determined to fight until the last one was dead. They had little in the way of modern weapons, but they made up for it in their lack of fear of death. Max did not want to die. Not like Geordie, the man who was lying next to him with a bullet through his head.
Geordie (or Private Fisher to give him his proper title) had been in Max’s unit for only a month, but in that time he had grown to like him. Geordie made them all laugh and they liked to mock his Newcastle accent whenever they had the opportunity. Geordie left a wife and three kids back home. Max remembered the picture Geordie had shown him.
Geordie’s wife looked very young. Geordie joked that he got her up the poke just past her sixteenth birthday - which was just as well as he did not want to go to the nick. The kids all looked like Geordie. There was only one year between each of them. They were little Geordie’s: all lined up and waiting for a dad that wasn’t coming home because he had a bullet where his brain used to be.
Private Cooper was a big guy in every sense of the word. He joined Max’s division later in life. He was in his forties and sported a head of white hair. They all called him ‘Old Snowy,’ which he did not mind. What he minded was being called ‘OLD’.
Old Snowy had a dry sense of humour and a sarcasm which was often mistaken for rudeness. Max knew him pretty well. He figured him to be an honest guy and he trusted him.
Old Snowy had been married, but his ex-wife, who he referred to as “an evil money grabbing cow”, had fleeced him whilst he was away. She had gone off with his best mate, Jimmy, who was a lorry driver. Snowy had told Max that he was only mad about her taking his dosh and that Jimmy was welcome to the old bag ‘cause she was crap at cooking – and fucking – so what was the point in having her as a wife anyhow?’.
Old Snowy was edging towards Max and trying to reach the radio (which was squashed underneath the body of Geordie).
Geordie had been their radio man. Luckily for them, he had got a call out for reinforcements before he was shot.
Private Scott Wills was the last of the surviving trio in Max’s division.
Willy (as he was known and hated) was like the runt from a litter of pigs. His manners weren’t a whole lot better either. He was as crazy as a rat on speed. Max ignored him most of the time. Max thought of him as more of an irritating rash that no amount of cream was going to cure.
Willy had his uses in the unit. He was a crack-shot with a rifle. His dad had owned a farm back home and back then Willy had spent most of his time back then shooting everything that had fur or feathers. He was an excellent shot. Willy was single. The other guys in the unit teased him a lot. They mostly taunted that he couldn’t get a woman in bed, because he was a dirty little bastard who wouldn’t know what to do with it if he did get one.
Willy had taken out a dozen of the rebels since they had been holed up under the wall. Max had seen Willy take out a rebel at one hundred yards.
It was a clean shot with no hesitation.
Max was glad that Willy was on their side, but even with Willy they were outnumbered and out manoeuvred. Max worried that if support did not appear soon, it was game-over-soldier-boys.
Max looked over to where Willy was lying face down. He could see Willy looking for the next best shot. It would be another one to add to his score of 56. Willy had told Max that he was counting on getting to 100 before he left that place. Max never doubted him.
Max was thinking that he wanted to be home with Sandy and his little girl, Sophie. He was planning to marry Sandy when he got back.
“Make an honest woman of me,” her sweet voice echoed in his tired brain.
He was tired of all the killing: tired of the blood: tired of the heat and sand.
He thought of his adorable little baby, Sophie. Sophie was just over a year old and he hadn’t seen her for months. Sandy had called him and said that she was walking. He regretted missing her first steps. Sandy had made him so proud and he wanted to give her the whole world when he got back – if he ever got back. He could see their faces in his mind so clearly in the minutes that he was facing death.
The sounds of shells exploding around him were deafening. His ears were ringing and the ground shook every time one went off. The armoured support vehicles were getting closer to break the stalemate. He could hear the grinding noise of the gears as they approached. Metal grinding on metal and creaking like some great hulking metal robot as it lurched down one of the side streets. The three of them were trapped. They all knew that they were going to have to make a run for it as soon as the armoured tank came alongside. The cracking noise of sporadic rapid fire went sky rocketing through Max’s head like a bad lightning storm. It was Willy’s gun going off above his head. Willy was shooting wildly at the rebels. The gun had taken over Willy and was firing on its own. Willy was just hanging on for good luck. Max watched in disbelief.
‘The lift don’t go all the way up to the top floor for you Willy. Does it?’ he thought.
A deafening roar followed by a huge explosion in the rebel position marked the arrival of the armoured vehicles.
Max glanced up through the smoke to see the splintered remains of the rebel's cover being blown apart. He could hear the distant screams mingle in with the racket.
Everything went eerily quiet for a few seconds.
The three of them sat with their backs to the wall.
‘It’s coming!’ Willy shouted.
‘There they are!…We’re outta here,’ he shouted again.
The armoured tank rumbled up the street towards them. It fired again towards the direction from where all the shots had come from, minutes earlier. Two soldiers jumped from the back of it and ran towards them to take up positions.
Max and Old Snowy sat with their backs to the wall and looked at each other and exchanged a look of relief. Willy jumped up in front of Max. He waved frantically at the approaching rescuing soldiers and shouted something about his score being 57.
A single shot rang out from the building opposite. Willy froze. His eyes turned to Max. Willy did not comprehend the bullet that had just driven a tunnel through his neck and severed his carotid artery. His brain worked, but his body was draining rapidly of blood. Willy made a horrible ‘gurgling’ noise and his mouth started to fill with blood. He spat the words out in blood. The spray hit Max in the face. Max could taste and smell the blood. Willy fell forward and landed with a tremendous thump on Max’s chest.
Max couldn’t breathe for the weight on his chest. It was crushing. Willy’s face was so close to his, that he could feel his lips on his face. Blood oozed out between them.
From a distance he thought he heard a voice,
“Private Benson. What are you doing down there? I don’t have time for wasters in my unit!”
Chapter 34: Revelations
Royale’s Suite: Fin-Sen: Sector Zero
Evening: Thursday 26th July
Jon Li was lying naked on an enormous bed. The pillows were scattered all around him and across the floor. He was asleep and lying on the top of the silken sheets. He was alone and the pla
ce was deathly quiet. He woke up slowly and opened his eyes: blinking a few times, until his vision cleared. He was staring at a white ceiling. He smacked his lips together. His mouth tasted as though something nasty had died inside it. Yuck.
He had lost track of all time.
What time is it? What day is it? he thought, and sat up, in the middle of the enormous bed, too quickly. His head spun from the drink. He clamped both hands to his aching head.
‘Jeezus,’ he mumbled.
What the hell happened? he thought. He looked at the clock on the wall panel beside the bed. It was blinking. 22:21.
What?
Then he looked at the date below it.
Thursday.
‘Oh no,’ he said, sounding alarmed.
His eyes widened as he took in his surroundings. He wasn’t at home, but in her bedroom. He couldn’t remember how he had got from the sunken bath to her bedroom. The place that he was in looked nothing like it had the night before. Gone were the columns of the Byzantine Palace and the fantastic murals. In their place was a very large, but elegant, bedroom. Then he remembered the night before and fell back on the bed again, with his hands over his eyes. Oh! no! What have you done? Idiot! Ellie’s going to kill you if she finds out, he thought, imagining what Ellie would do to him if she found out what he had done the night before. He couldn’t even begin to work out how he was going to explain where he had been to Ellie.
