The Atrocity Archives

by Charles Stross

  Detective Inspector Sullivan marches out of the site office like a blank-faced automaton and crisply orders her pet driver to take us to Site Able then to bugger off on some obscure make-work errand. She sits stiffly in the front passenger seat while Andy and I slide into the back and we proceed in silence–nobody seems to want to make small talk.

  Fifteen minutes of bumbling around red routes and through trackless wastes of identical red brick houses embellished with satellite dishes and raw pine fences brings us into an older part of town, where the buildings actually look different and the cycle paths are painted strips at the side of the road rather than separately planned routes. I glance around curiously, trying to spot landmarks. "Aren't we near Bletchley Park?" I ask.

  "It's a couple of miles that way," says our driver without taking his hands off the wheel to point. "You thinking of visiting?"

  "Not just yet." Bletchley Park was the wartime headquarters of the Ultra operation, the department that later became GCHQ–the people who built the Colossus computers, originally used for breaking Nazi codes and subsequently diverted by the Laundry for more occult purposes. Hallowed ground to us spooks; I've met more than one NSA liaison who wanted to visit in order to smuggle a boot heel full of gravel home. "Not until we've visited the UK offices of Dillinger Associates, at any rate."

  Dillinger Associates is the cover name for a satellite office of Q Division. The premises turns out to be a neoclassical brick-and-glass edifice with twee fake columns and wilted-looking ivy that's been trained to climb the facade by dint of ruthless application of plant hormones. We pile out of the car in the courtyard between the dry fountain and the glass doors, and I surreptitiously check my PDA's locator module for any sign of a match. Nothing. I blink and put it away in time to catch up with Andy and Josephine as they head for the bleached blonde receptionist who sits behind a high wooden counter and types constantly, as unapproachably artificial-looking as a shop window dummy.

  "HelloDillingerAssociatesHowCanIHelpEwe?" She flutters her eyelashes at Andy in a bored, professional way, hands never moving away from the keyboard of the PC in front of her. There's something odd about her, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

  Andy flips open his warrant card. "We're here to see Dr. Voss."

  The receptionist's long, red-nailed fingers stop moving and hover over the keyboard. "Really?" she asks, tonelessly, reaching under the desk.

  "Hold it–" I begin to say, as Josephine takes a brisk step forward and drops a handkerchief over the webcam on top of the woman's monitor. There's a quiet pop and the sudden absence of noise from her PC tips me off. I sidestep the desk and make a grab for her just as Andy produces a pistol with a ridiculously fat barrel and shoots out the camera located over the door at the rear of the reception area. There's a horrible ripping sound like a joint of meat tearing apart as the receptionist twists aside and I realise that she isn't sitting on a chair at all–she's joined seamlessly at the hips to a plinth that emerges from some kind of fat swivel base of age-blackened wood, bolted to the floor with heavy brass pins in the middle of a silvery metallic pentacle with wires trailing from one corner back up to the PC on the desk. She opens her mouth and I can see that her tongue is bright blue and bifurcated as she hisses.

  I hit the floor shoulder first, jarringly hard, and grab for the nearest cable. Those red nails are reaching down for me as her eyes narrow to slits and she works her jaw muscles as if she's trying to get together a wad of phlegm to spit. I grab the fattest cable and give it a pull and she screams, high-pitched and frighteningly inhuman.

  What the fuck? I think, looking up as the red-painted claws stretch and expand, shedding layers of varnish as their edges grow long and sharp. Then I yank the cable again, and it comes away from the pentacle. The wooden box drools a thick, blue-tinted liquid across the carpet tiles, and the screaming stops.

  "Lamia," Andy says tersely. He strides over to the fire door that opens onto the corridor beyond, raises the curiously fat gun, and fires straight up. A purple rain drizzles back down.

  "What's going on?" says Josephine, bewildered, staring at the twitching, slowly dying receptionist.

  I point my PDA at the lamia and ding it for a reading. Cool, but nonzero. "Got a partial fix," I call to Andy. "Where's everyone else? Isn't this place supposed to be manned?"

  "No idea." He looks worried. "If this is what they've got up front the shit's already hit the fan–Angleton wasn't predicting overt resistance."

  The other door bangs open of a sudden and a tubby middle-aged guy in a cheap grey suit and about three day's worth of designer stubble barges out shouting, "Who are you and what do you think you're doing here? This is private property, not a paintball shooting gallery! It's a disgrace–I'll call the police!"

  Josephine snaps out of her trance and steps forward. "As a matter of fact, I am the police," she says. "What's your name? Do you have a complaint, and if so, what is it?"

  "I'm, I'm–" He focusses on the no-longer-twitching demon receptionist, lolling on top of her box like a murderous shop mannequin. He looks aghast. "Vandals! If you've damaged her–"

  "Not as badly as she planned to damage us," says Andy. "I think you'd better tell us who you are." Andy presents his card, ordering it to reveal its true shape: "By the authority vested in me–"

  He moves fast with the geas and ten seconds later we've got mister fat guy–actually Dr. Martin Voss–seated on one of the uncomfortable chrome-and-leather designer sofas at one side of reception while Andy asks questions and records them on a dictaphone. Voss talks in a monotone, obviously under duress, drooling slightly from one side of his mouth, and the stench of brimstone mingles with a mouth-watering undertone of roast pork. There's purple dye from Andy's paintball gun spattered over anything that might conceal a camera, and he had me seal all the doorways with a roll of something like duct tape or police incident tape, except that the symbols embossed on it glow black and make your eyes water if you try to focus on them.

  "Tell me your name and position at this installation."

  "Voss. John Voss. Res-research team manager."

  "How many members are there on your team? Who are they?"

  "Twelve. Gary. Ted. Elinor. John. Jonathan. Abdul. Mark–"

  "Stop right there. Who's here today? And is anyone away from the office right now?" I plug away at my palmtop, going cross-eyed as I fiddle with the detector controls. But there's no sign of any metaspectral resonance; grepping for a match to the person who stole the Range Rover draws a blank in this building. Which is frustrating because we've got his (I'm pretty sure it's a he) boss right here, and there ought to be a sympathetic entanglement at work.

  "Everyone's here but Mark." He laughs a bit, mildly hysterical. "They're all here but Mark. Mark!"

  I glance over at Detective Inspector Sullivan, who is detective inspecting the lamia. I think she's finally beginning to grasp at a visceral level that we aren't just some bureaucratic Whitehall paper circus trying to make her life harder. She looks frankly nauseated. The silence here is eerie, and worrying. Why haven't the other team members come to find out what's going on? I wonder, looking at the taped-over doors. Maybe they've gone out the back and are waiting for us outside. Or maybe they simply can't come out in daylight. The smell of burning meat is getting stronger: Voss seems to be shaking, as if he's trying not to answer Andy's questions.

  I walk over to the lamia. "It's not human," I explain quietly. "It never was human. It's one of the things they specialise in. This building is defended by guards and wards, and this is just part of the security system's front end."

  "But she, she spoke . . ."

  "Yes, but she's not a human being." I point to the thick ribbon cable that connected the computer to the pentacle. "See, that's a control interface. The computer's there to stabilize and contain a Dho-Nha circuit that binds the Dee-space entity here. The entity itself–it's a lamia–is locked into the box which contains, uh, other components. And it's compelled to obey certain orders.
Nothing good for unscheduled visitors." I put my hands on the lamia's head and work my fingers into the thick blonde hair, then tug. There's a noise of ripping Velcro then the wig comes off to reveal the scaly scalp beneath. "See? It's not human. It's a lamia, a type of demon bound to act as a front-line challenge/response system for a high security installation with covert–"

  I manage to get out of the line of fire as Josephine brings up her lunch all over the incredibly expensive bleached pine workstation. I can't say I blame her. I feel a little shocky myself–it's been a really bad morning. Then I realise that Andy is trying to get my attention. "Bob, when you're through with grossing out the inspector I've got a little job for you." He pitches his voice loudly.

  "Yeah?" I ask, straightening up.

  "I want you to open that door, walk along the corridor to the second room on the right–not pausing to examine any of the corpses along the way–and open it. Inside, you'll find the main breaker board. I want you to switch the power off."

  "Didn't I just see you splashing paint all over the CCTV cameras in the ceiling? And, uh, what's this about corpses? Why don't we send Dr. Voss–oh." Voss's eyes are shut and the stink of roast meat is getting stronger: he's gone extremely red in the face, almost puffy, and he's shaking slightly as if some external force is making all his muscles twitch simultaneously. It's my turn to struggle to hang onto breakfast. "I didn't know anyone could make themselves do that," I hear myself say distantly.

  "Neither did I," says Andy, and that's the most frightening thing I've heard today so far. "There must be a conflicted geas somewhere in his skull. I don't think I could stop it even if–"

  "Shit." I stand up. My hand goes to my neck automatically but the pouch is empty. "No HOG." I swallow. "Power. What happens if I don't?"

  "Voss's pal Mark McLuhan installed a dead man's handle. You'd know all about that. We've got until Voss goes into brain stem death and then every fucking camera in Milton Keynes goes live with SCORPION STARE."

  "Oh, you mean we die." I head for the door Voss came through. "I'm looking for the service core, right?"

  "Wait!" It's Josephine, looking pale. "Can't you go outside and cut the power there? Or phone for help?"

  "Nope." I rip the first strip of sealing tape away from the door frame. "We're behind Tempest shielding here, and the power is routed through concrete ducts underground. This is a Q Division office, after all. If we could call in an air strike and drop a couple of BLU-114/Bs on the local power substations that might work"–I tug at the second tape–"but these systems were designed to be survivable." Third tape.

  "Here," calls Andy, and he chucks something cylindrical at me. I catch it one-handed, yank the last length of tape with the other hand, and do a double-take. Then I shake the cylinder, listen for the rattle of the stirrer, and pop the lid off.

  "Take cover!" I call. Then I open the door, spritz the ceiling above me with green spray paint, and go to work.

  * * * *

  I'm sitting in the lobby, guarding the lamia's corpse with a nearly empty can of paint and trying not to fall asleep, when the OCCULUS team bangs on the door. I yawn and sidestep Voss's blistered corpse–he looks like he's gone a few rounds with Old Sparky–then try to remember the countersign. Ah, that's it. I pull away a strip of tape and tug the door open and find myself staring up the snout of an H&K carbine. "Is that a gun in your hand or are you just here to have a wank?" I ask.

  The gun points somewhere else in a hurry. "Hey, Sarge, it's the spod from Amsterdam!"

  "Yeah, and someone's told you to secure the area, haven't they? Where's Sergeant Howe?" I ask, yawning. Daylight makes me feel better–that, and knowing that there's backup. (I get sleepy when people stop shooting at me. Then I have nightmares. Not a good combination.)

  "Over here." They're dressed in something not unlike Fire Service HAZMAT gear, and the wagons are painted cheerful cherry-red with luminous yellow stripes; if they weren't armed to the teeth with automatic weapons you'd swear they were only here because somebody had phoned in a toxic chemical release warning. But the pump nozzles above the cabs aren't there to spray water, and that lumpy thing on the back isn't a spotlight–it's a grenade launcher.

  The inspector comes up behind me, staggering slightly in the daylight. "What's going on?" she asks.

  "Here, meet Scary Spice and Sergeant Howe. Sarge, Scary, meet Detective Inspector Sullivan. Uh, the first thing you need to do is to go round the site and shoot out every closed circuit TV camera you can see–or that can see you. Got that? And webcams. And doorcams. See a camera, smash it, that's the rule."

  "Cameras. Ri-ight." Sergeant Howe looks mildly skeptical, but nods. "It's definitely cameras?"

  "Who are these guys?" asks Josephine.

  "Artists' Rifles. They work with us," I say. Scary nods, deeply serious. "Listen, you go outside, do anything necessary to keep the local emergency services off our backs. If you need backup ask Sergeant Howe here. Sarge, she's basically sound and she's working for us on this. Okay?"

  She doesn't wait for confirmation, just shoves past me and heads out into the daylight, blinking and shaking her head. I carry on briefing the OCCULUS guys. "Don't worry about anything that uses film, it's the closed circuit TV variety that's hostile. And, oh, try to make sure that you are never in view of more than one of 'em at a time."

  "And don't walk on the cracks in the pavement or the bears will get us, check." Howe turns to Scary Spice: "Okay, you heard the man. Let's do it." He glances at me. "Anything inside?"

  "We're taking care of it," I say. "If we need help we'll ask."

  "Check." Scary is muttering into his throat mike and fake firemen with entirely authentic fire axes are walking around the bushes along the side of the building as if searching for signs of combustion. "Okay, we'll be out here."

  "Is Angleton in the loop? Or the captain?"

  "Your boss is on his way out here by chopper. Ours is on medical leave. You need to escalate, I'll get you the lieutenant."

  "Okay." I duck back into the reception area then nerve myself to go back into the development pool at the rear of the building, below the offices and above the labs.

  Site Able is a small departmental satellite office, small for security reasons: ten systems engineers, a couple of manager dogsbodies, and a security officer. Most of them are right here right now, and they're not going anywhere. I walk around the service core in the dim glow of the emergency light, bypassing splashes of green paint that look black in the red glow. The octagonal developer pool at the back is also dimly illuminated–there are no windows, and the doors are triple-sealed with rubber gaskets impregnated with fine copper mesh–and some of the partitions have been blown over. The whole place is ankle deep in white mist left over from the halon dump system that went off when the first bodies exploded–good thing the air conditioning continued to run or the place would be a gas trap. The webcams are all where I left them, in a trash can at the foot of the spiral staircase up to level one, cables severed with my multitool just to make sure nobody tries to plug them back in again.

  The victims–well, I have to step over one of them to get up the staircase. It's pretty gross but I've seen dead bodies before, including burn cases, and at least this was fast. But I don't think I'm going to forget the smell in a hurry. In fact, I think I'm going to have nightmares about it tonight, and maybe get drunk and cry on Mo's shoulder several times over the next few weeks until I've got it out of my system. But for now, I shove it aside and step over them. Got to keep moving, that's the main thing–unless I want there to be more of them. And on my conscience.

  At the top of the staircase there's a narrow corridor and partitioned offices, also lit by the emergency lights. I follow the sound of keyclicks to Voss's office, the door of which is ajar. Potted cheese plants wilting in the artificial light, puke-brown antistatic carpet, ministry-issue desks–nobody can accuse Q Division's brass of living high on the hog. Andy's sitting in front of Voss's laptop, tapping away with a strange expression
on his face. "OCCULUS is in place," I report. "Found anything interesting?"

  Andy points at the screen. "We're in the wrong fucking town," he says mildly.

  I circle the desk and lean over his shoulder. "Oh shit."

  "You can say that again if you like." It's an email Cc'd to Voss, sent over our intranet to a Mike McLuhan. Subject: meeting. Sender: Harriet.

  "Oh shit. Twice over. Something stinks. Hey, I was supposed to be in a meeting with her today," I say.

  "A meeting?" Andy looks up, worried.

  "Yeah. Bridget got a hair up her ass about running a BSA-authorised software audit on the office, the usual sort of make-work. Don't know that it's got anything to do with this, though."

  "A software audit? Didn't she know Licencing and Compliance handles that on a blanket department-wide basis? We were updated on it about a year ago."

  "We were–" I sit down heavily on the cheap plastic visitor's chair. "What are the chances this McLuhan guy put the idea into Harriet's mind in the first place? What are the chances it isn't connected?"

  "McLuhan. The medium is the message. SCORPION STARE. Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" Andy sends me a worried look.

  " 'Nother possibility, boss-man. What if it's an internal power play? The software audit's a cover, Purloined Letter style, hiding something fishy in plain sight where nobody will look at it twice until it's too late."

  "Nonsense, Bridget's not clever enough to blow a project wide open just to discredit–" His eyes go wide.

  "Are you sure of that? I mean, really and truly sure? Bet-your-life sure?"

  "But the body count!" He's shaking his head in disbelief.