by Nina D'Aleo
‘We have to find Silho,’ he whispered. ‘A witch attacked her in Moris-Isles. I have to help her.’
‘Forget it. Silho’s already dead,’ Ev’r said. ‘And we will be too if we don’t find shelter. Those two guardians that you shot were —’
‘Dark magicians. I know,’ Eli said. ‘Another one came after me in my office. I managed to get past her, and then I saw you on the screen —’
‘I was going to say Skreaf,’ Ev’r said.
‘Skreaf?’ Eli’s dark eyes stretched wide in horror. ‘But they’re extinct.’
‘They’ve risen,’ Ev’r said. ‘I saw them in the desert, now they’re in the city. It’s them – I know the difference.’
Eli clamped his mouth shut, but his lips still quivered. He stared straight ahead.
‘Is there anywhere we can hide?’ she asked.
He didn’t react. He was strangling the steering wheel.
‘Snack-size!’ she yelled at him. ‘Keep it together.’
His eyes snapped to hers.
‘Is there anywhere we can go?’ she repeated.
His gaze swivelled left to right in thought until he said, ‘Yeah . . . there’s a place. Hold on.’
Slamming on the decelerator, he swung the craft in the opposite direction with a sharp, gut-wrenching spin. He sped them to a major pipeway and dropped them straight down. Ev’r hit the windscreen and lay there helplessly, unable to prop herself up without the use of her arms. Eli flew in hyper-speed dangerously close to the roof of the tunnel above the flow of traffic. They were flying so fast that Ev’r doubted anyone would be able to see them, only feel their crafts rocked by a phantom storm. Looking up through the rear window to the light at the top of the tunnel and then down to darkness below, Ev’r couldn’t help but feel that they were descending into hell itself.
16
Vagrants squabbling under the great bronze statue of King Miron II, in the centre of Elio D’An Square, quietened at a flare of white light in front of the Galleria Majora. The air shimmered and stretched and a transflyer appeared – a sleek, silverback craft with Ory-4 inscribed on the side. Two figures emerged: a rainbow-skinned Ohini Fen with glowing nightlight bloodline marks and a human-breed dressed in black. The two stepped away from the flyer and the Fen uttered words, vanishing the craft and snatching something shimmering from the air. She placed it in her pocket and the vagrants grumbled to each other of this blasphemy performed on noble ground, where King Miron XI himself made his royal announcements.
‘Hey, you!’ one of the drifters raised his slurred voice to the strangers, remembering a time when he had worn the uniform of a guardian. ‘You can’t do that!’ The Blue-Ten drug in his veins gave his words an electronic tinge. ‘Hey!’
He stumbled towards them and the human-breed turned his way. The vagrant halted under unyielding black eyes, able to acknowledge and dismiss all in one stare – Copernicus Kane.
The drifter bit his lip and cursed his soggy drunken brain. He’d first met Kane back in his days on the force and knew if there was anything darker than the night itself, it was this man, just as unnatural as the father who’d spawned him. No passing of years, degree of inebriation or narcotic trance had ever faded the images scarring his memory of the day he’d seen Doctor Silvan Kane, Illusionist Extraordinaire, performing at the Rocks Amphitheatre. Even as he thought of it, the smells of animal dung, cheap booze and fire-popped corn wafted beneath his nose. He felt the masses of people jostling around him, the chill of the plastic seat on his bare legs as he took his place beside his older brother. Scullion-gypsies and carnival folk milled around, peddling their wares, trying to lure people into their rigged games of skill. He remembered the moment the chattering voices were silenced all at once as the stage curtains spread open.
Doctor Silvan Kane stood beneath a burning spotlight. His unwavering, penetrating stare swept over the crowd, seeing everybody and nobody. Somewhere into the first half of the show a stunning golden-haired girl in a shimmery outfit rolled a black box out onto the stage. The girl was showing more skin than he had ever seen or even dared to dream of, in case his mother guessed his thoughts and gave him a belting for being indecent. The lights played along the girl’s body as Doctor Silvan Kane helped her into the box. It was a trick with knives. It made the crowd gasp in horror then cheer with delight when the girl emerged unscathed after the blanket was raised. But he had seen, young as he was, maybe because he was young and staring so intently, that the emerging girl, though she was the image of the other, had a mark on her ankle that the other did not. Right then, he understood that he had smelt real blood and heard real screams of agony. He knew it to be true. Echoes of those screams had driven him into the military and then, when he couldn’t cope, led him to drunkenness and beyond. He could never forget.
The vagrant turned and ran, and his companions stumbled after him. Copernicus’ stare followed them until their footsteps faded into silence. The commander recalled the heat signature of the vagrant, once a guardian called Pricet, a man with the unfortunate combination of a big mouth and small brain. He’d treated Copernicus like a disease and Copernicus had responded in kind. Pricet had eventually dropped away like everyone else who stood against him.
The commander’s gaze lifted to survey the blackened facades of the mansions overlooking the square. These were not the modern and showy buildings of Fortitude Hill and other areas of the newly rich. These were centuries-old, hand-crafted castles, winter homes of the Ar Antarian noble-born. Curtains fluttered in one of the windows and Copernicus focused on the movement. He sensed heat from behind the fabric – someone busy minding everyone else’s business, or something more sinister. There was an unusual smoky tinge to the air, usually purified here in the upper levels.
Copernicus turned back to the Galleria Majora, heart of the cultural precinct of Scorpia. Built on the bones of Scorpia’s old asylum, the gothic monstrosity of archways and soaring spires reached high into the midnight sky, watched over by unblinking eyes of stone gargoyles and winged serpents. Uneasy dislike narrowed Copernicus’ stare. A heavier blackness lingered around the Galleria, but not black enough to hide the marks where bars had been removed from windowsills and replaced with glass – a more civilised sort of prison.
A woman appeared at one of the Galleria’s lower windows, shadows playing unpleasantly over her face, making hollow dark holes of her eyes. She stared a moment at Copernicus then slipped away. Disquiet rippled his back. Had she smiled at him or was it a snarl? He turned to Diega. She was holding the protective amulet she kept around her neck and staring at the building with similar distrust clouding her expression.
Copernicus’ communicator shuddered and began to whistle again, high-pitched and loud. He grabbed it and switched it off. If anyone called him, they could leave a message.
‘I’ve turned mine off as well,’ Diega told him. ‘We’ll have to go back to the old system until Eli fixes them.’ She avoided his eyes.
On the way to the Galleria neither of them had spoken about Jude. Diega’s coping strategy of choice was denial and Copernicus was trying to restrain himself from making any conclusions until he had talked to Jude in more depth and heard the full story. He wasn’t exactly buying that a clash of views was solely responsible for the attempted assassination – if that was what had really happened in the first place. He couldn’t trust what Jude said anymore and that caused him more distress than he had expected. Copernicus forced his mind back to the present. They had a job to do.
He nodded and said, ‘Let’s go.’
They moved up the great stone steps and walked through the entrance hall of the Galleria. They passed beneath the part-wolf, part-dragon sculpture carved into the low roof. The beast appeared to be breaking out of the stone and coming for them. They entered the lobby. Since its asylum days, the interior had been refashioned all in marble with towering columns to a dome ceiling made of stained-glass murals, the images dull with no light to give them life. A strange, tar-like stench
irritated Copernicus’ nose, but he couldn’t place the smell. His sights focused on light shining from a large open doorway at the far end of the lobby. A state guardian stood waiting for them. They headed for the light, slowing as they reached the guardian, a hulking human-breed of gorilla heritage. He didn’t notice them. His expression was grim and his skin tinged the pale grey-green of sickened fear. The man’s giant hands trembled as he crossed himself and murmured a prayer to the ancestors of his bloodline. Copernicus cleared his throat and the officer flinched.
‘Commander Kane.’ He saluted.
‘You were first on scene?’ Copernicus asked him.
‘Yes, sir,’ the guardian replied and his eyes shifted from their faces to the darkness behind them.
‘Who made the emergency call?’ Diega asked.
‘An assistant of Vice-Standard U. He was working late on an upper level and when he came down to leave, he found . . .’ The guardian’s voice faltered. ‘They’re in there. It’s not a pretty picture.’
‘Thanks for the assessment,’ Diega snapped and pushed past him into the chamber named, by the plaque above the door, The Hanging Room.
The Fen took one glance around the chamber and snarled, ‘Great – a psycho with a sense of humour. Just what we need.’
Copernicus looked over the deceased – twelve figures hanging from ropes tied to supporting beams in the centre of the gallery. Painted portraits lining the chamber walls looked upon the scene with what Copernicus thought was an edge of horror in their fixed stares, but he conceded he might be seeing a reflection of his own unease. It was, as the guardian had suggested, not a pretty picture, though he might have used stronger words himself – hell on earth.
Copernicus walked among the dead, not touching, just observing, seeing what would be clearly obvious to anyone who had spent as much time with corpses as he had – that hanging was not the cause of death. Each of the bodies was burned at the extremities and orifices, with limbs curled up and inwards, almost foetal. Each had severe head injuries, tongues chewed off, eyeballs exploded and feet broken. The air hung foul with burnt hair and flesh, pungent urine and another scent that made Copernicus shiver – something that reminded him of his childhood. Studying the corpses, his mind turned to Christy Shawe and he shook his head. The other crime scenes might have passed, at a push, as gang attacks but this . . . he knew Shawe well and the gangster definitely wasn’t into torture; he was too ill-tempered and impatient for that. All the kills Shawe had committed were the same – shootings with a high-voltage electrifier, over in moments and always in the context of the gang wars. Copernicus’ thoughts returned to what Eli had said about Shawe not being involved and doubts clouded his confidence. Maybe he had allowed his personal grievance against Shawe to colour his judgement – yet Shawe, while not educated, was highly cunning and street smart. It wouldn’t be beyond the Gangland king to change his patterns to throw them off his track. The question was, why would he attack the Galleria?
Copernicus leaned closer to one of the corpses and saw the burnt husk of a security badge pinned to his chest. He looked around. All the dead were wearing them. He studied the pattern of blood and matter on the floor. They had definitely died on the ground and then been strung up, which would have taken the killer some time. So it must have a purpose. Copernicus stepped back for a wider view of the scene, then turned to the wall and walked up the surface to the ceiling. He surveyed the scene from above and, forcing his eyes to focus and see the scene as a whole, he saw a definite hanging pattern – like two triangles within a square. His eyes snapped to an irregularity in the shapes. One rope had broken high up – someone had fallen. A survivor, perhaps?
Leaping down, Copernicus almost collided with a man hurrying through the chamber doors: the lead forensic investigator, B.L. Jenkins. He was a human-breed from a hound bloodline, with heavy, fleshy bags under his eyes and a permanent scowl on his face. Jenkins puffed, out of breath. He saw Copernicus and growled a curse.
‘You always have to be the first on scene, don’t you, Kane?’ He held up a yellow-nailed finger. ‘Keep your hands off my evidence. I’m sick of telling you.’
Copernicus sidestepped him and, following a drag line of white Androt blood, ran from the Hanging Room into an adjacent chamber. Jenkins’ footsteps sounded closely behind him.
In a pool of weak light, a figure lay face down, grasping the feet of a sculpture as though begging for mercy. Copernicus dropped down beside the person and carefully turned him over. The victim was an Androt man. The black barcode, bold on his neck, read 939963. His injuries were gruesome and his torn security uniform saturated with white blood, but he was still breathing and his skin was re-knitting into grey scars.
Jenkins spoke from beside Copernicus. ‘I’ll call the medics.’
‘Diega!’ Copernicus yelled. He ripped off his jacket and held it against the man’s badly haemorrhaging leg. Boot steps echoed around the chamber as Diega ran in.
‘Give me something to stop this,’ Copernicus ordered.
The Fen pulled a coagulating syringe from her weapon belt and pressed it into Copernicus’ outstretched hand. The commander applied it to the man’s worst wounds and the flow of blood quickly stemmed. As he readjusted his coat under the Androt’s head, he noticed a set of white bloody footprints leading from beside the victim to the chamber door. They were spaced widely as though in a run. It looked to him as though someone had found the man, run to him, seen he was an Androt and fled, leaving him to die. He guessed it was the Vice-Standard’s assistant who had discovered the scene. He met Diega’s eyes and saw that she was surmising the same thing. The Fen’s rainbow skin flashed vibrant with anger. She squeezed the dying Androt’s hand and said, ‘We’re here. Hold on.’
The man’s eyelids flickered.
A commotion of raised voices and the echo-boom of many stomping boots sounded from the Hanging Room. Copernicus turned. Vice-Standard U, brother of King Miron U, and Jude’s alleged attacker, stormed into the chamber with an entourage of servants, guards and red-cloaked enforcers. Copernicus regarded the silver-skinned Ar Antarian noble with instant loathing. Since he wasn’t directly in line for the throne, the Vice-Standard didn’t wear the concealing veils that the royal family did. Copernicus could see him clearly for everything he was. The noble’s clothing was spotless, hair trimmed neatly, fingernails manicured and eyes red-rimmed and hollow as a corpse’s stare.
The Vice-Standard, governor of the cultural proceedings of Scorpia, crossed his metal arms over his chest in the exact manner that Jude did and spoke with cold precision. ‘The priceless Mazurus Machine has been stolen from the gallery. You are to investigate this immediately.’
‘Why didn’t your assistant alert the paramedics when he found this victim still alive?’ Copernicus asked the noble.
‘I gave you an order,’ the Vice-Standard said.
‘And I asked you a question,’ Copernicus replied.
‘Insolence,’ the noble snarled.
‘In court they call it grievous indifference,’ Diega said. ‘Your lackey found this man and left him to die. That’s punishable by law.’
‘This man,’ the Vice-Standard laughed. ‘This man – that isn’t a man. That is a machine.’
‘You’re the trutting machine!’ Diega cursed him.
The noble’s face flushed. He ordered his people, ‘Eject this thing.’ He pointed to Diega.
Three of his guards moved forward. Copernicus stood and they halted, none of them willing to meet his eyes.
The commander spoke to Diega. ‘Go. Search the perimeter.’ She was no use to him while she was so emotional. She opened her mouth, then decided against speaking and left the chamber. The medics rushed in past her. They gathered around the Androt and started treating him.
‘He’s the sole survivor in a multiple homicide,’ Copernicus told them. ‘Make sure he lives.’
He left the man with them and walked towards the Vice-Standard, stopping just in front of him. ‘Now I’m ready
to investigate your machine,’ he said. ‘Show me where it was.’
The noble blinked. Showing him was what he had wanted to do, but having been ordered to do so, he didn’t know how to act. Copernicus smiled inwardly. The Vice-Standard flicked his robes and turned. ‘You’ll attend to the Mazurus now,’ he said, but it sounded weak and he knew it. The noble and his entourage marched out of the chamber and Copernicus followed.
As he reached the doorway, Jenkins stepped into his path and asked, ‘How is he – the witness?’
Copernicus eyed him, noticing something abnormal about the way his lips had moved. Almost as though the words had been forced out. He also noted the strange use of the word witness instead of survivor. On instinct he said, ‘He won’t make it.’
Jenkins gave no reaction, instead he mumbled, ‘Listen, I just wanted to let you know I’m grateful for the work you put into the investigations. I don’t see any reason why our teams can’t work in cooperation with each other.’ His lips twitched strangely into a grimace-like smile. Copernicus’ suspicions flared. Seven year-cycles working in close proximity and the man had never even given a hint of a smile.
‘What do you want?’ the commander said bluntly.
Jenkins’ eyes swivelled and he lowered his voice. ‘Well, I was wondering if you or any of your team found anything at the Moris-Isles crime scene.’
‘Anything?’ Copernicus questioned, conscious of the ring in his pocket.
‘Any, let’s say, items,’ Jenkins said.
Copernicus felt a tugging pressure of someone trying to enter his thoughts and tightened his control over his mind. A cold sweat broke out on his back. He faked a smile and said, ‘I think you’re overworked, Jenkins. Why don’t you take some time off and find yourself a woman. Preferably one that’s still alive.’
He stepped around the investigator and Copernicus’ smile was immediately gone. He felt an unnatural stare following him out of the hanging room.
