The Iron Swamp

by J V Wordsworth

  *

  I awoke to the sound of a gunshot and shattering glass. Within moments, one of the SP was pulling me out of bed in the dark.

  "Keep your head low." He pulled my arms one at a time through a bulletproof vest. "Keep to the ground. Don't get up until I say." With that he was gone.

  As the door shut behind him, the room went from dark to black. My heart was beating so fast, and the ache in my skull so severe, I thought my head might explode into a fountain of blood.

  The shattering glass meant only one thing. Someone was firing into the house.

  Two more shots were fired, this time much closer. I considered crawling under the bed, but I wasn't a child.

  I pulled myself along on my stomach towards the door and creaked it open. The lights were off, leaving the rest of the house as dark as my bedroom. In the room with the table, I could see the faint shapes of people standing at the walls, barely more than blurs in the blackness.

  With increasing frequency, the crack of pistol fire echoed around the house, but just as often the sound came from outside, followed by glass shattering or a dull pat as the bullets hit a wall. I crawled to the entrance of the living room, recognizing the black heap was a man's body. I didn't stop. Two fingers on his neck, I felt nothing. The puddle of blood seeping away from him across the floor began to wet my legs.

  I was about to crawl back into the hall just as another man catapulted backward onto the table which collapsed under the force, four legs splintering outward.

  The man dribbled blood as I reached him, grabbing me by the collar and breathing heavily as he attempted to speak, but his words were incoherent. His grip loosened, allowing me to ruffle through his cloak until my hands felt wetness around his abdomen. I grabbed some clothes from the pile and pressed them hard against his wound, but he spasmed upward with a look of mad panic as he punched me in the face.

  I slumped forward, the tip of my head touching the wall, now keenly aware that pressing a bullet into someone's gut was probably painful.

  I got to my knees again and pressed another few items of clothing more delicately onto his wound. This time, he barely flinched. Not a good sign. I needed to wrap something tightly around him to keep pressure on the wound, but he was a big man, and I was not. I tried anyway, pulling him into a sitting position just as the final standing hood crashed backward into the wall. He slid down slowly, as if he knew when he hit the floor he wouldn't rise again.

  In shock, I dropped the man I was holding, and he fell back to the floor as limp as a corpse. I winced as I picked him up again, half expecting another punch in the face that might be the end of me as well as him. I threw the arms of a dry-top around his waist and let him drop back gently before tying the arms together as tightly as I could.

  Cos erupted in a single all-encompassing noise. Bits of debris as big as my torso launched towards me. I was thrown into the outer wall by a gust strong enough to turn me inside out. For a few clicks I couldn't breathe. Then I vomited. It was too dark to see properly, but it looked crimson, the color of blood. I wretched again, but nothing came up, though my stomach was attempting to eject itself.

  The only sound was ringing. One unwavering high pitched screech like the wroth of a deity. The room was so full of dust it was like breathing sand. Smoke filled my eyes with water, all the enzymatic crap making them sting like bitches.

  The explosion came from the bedroom, which meant it was intended for me. At least three of my six guards were dead or dying, and I couldn't see or hear properly to check for the others. All I could do was feel around for something that might help. The cold steel of one of the hood's guns was recognizable even through my shattered senses. I picked it up by the barrel, my whole body pulsating with adrenaline.

  I wasn't built for this.

  The shots inside the house sounded like bubbles popping against the bloody siren in my ears. If there were any hoods still alive, they were in the kitchen or at the front door, so if anyone came from the remnants of the bedroom, it was an enemy. I slouched over trying to look dead, covering most of the gun with my body.

  The shooting went on for a few more clicks before silence returned. I readied my finger on the trigger, my throat thrusting blood and acid back into my mouth as I tried to breathe. A black figure appeared from the bedroom firing a shot into the head of the dying man who slid down the wall.

  I fired. The bullet caught him in the torso, and he staggered backward raising his weapon to return fire. I fired again, and then again holding the weapon in both hands to lessen the recoil. One of the shots buried in the wall under his arm, but the other cut deep into his abdomen. He squeezed off one shot before he fell sideways, embedding a bullet into the floor a finger's width from my head. Above the ringing the shot sounded like someone flicking a tin can with a knife.

  I held the gun out, waiting for another one, but none came. My arm shook so wildly that the gun was slipping from my hand. As police sirens began a new cacophony, I let it drop. If they were here to help or hurt me, I didn't care.

  The building filled with lights as people with torches crowded in the hallway. They pulled the hood off my attempted assassin, revealing a woman so beautiful that the red stains on her face looked as if someone had murdered an angel. As the sea of human faces filled the room, I felt an exhausted ecstasy that whatever was about to happen, at least I was no longer alone.

  Chapter 8

  15/09/2256 FC

  I could hear voices over me before I opened my eyes. Two nurses looked at me with surprise as I took in my surroundings. Both short with all knowing faces, neither looked pleased by my awakening.

  Memories of the ambulance and the sirens came flooding back to me; the paramedics poking me and pressing on my arms and chest, the needle that jabbed into my flesh as Cos darkened and the pain vanished.

  "How are you feeling, Mr. Nidess?" said the black lady.

  "Fine, I think." I clenched my fists and felt the tension in my knuckles and forearms. I flexed my toes, legs, and arms and everything seemed to be working. The eternal ringing was gone. "I feel good."

  On my left a window looked out onto a caapark surrounded by several buildings, all made from the same red brick. Even with the dull gray sky, I'd seen worse views. "Why are there bars on the window?" I said, and then I saw her. Over in the next bed was the woman who tried to kill me.

  "Relax Mr. Nidess, she's chained to the bed," said the nurse.

  "I don't care if you've cut her legs off. I don't want her in the same room as me." I threw off the sheets and jumped to the floor. It wasn't far. The trolley had been especially lowered for me.

  "Get back into bed, Mr. Nidess, or you'll do yourself another injury. You don't want to have to come back here."

  "I don't want to be here now. How many of the men protecting me did she kill?"

  "If you don't get back into bed, Mr. Nidess, someone will put you there."

  I sidestepped, and both the nurses followed me like bits of metal on a magnet.

  "How many of them survived?" I asked.

  The blond nurse stepped toward me impatiently. "You two were the only people brought to this hospital."

  "And where is this hospital?"

  "Makari Hospital," said the blond nurse.

  So the rumors were true. Set up through one of Clazran's government charities, Makari was supposed to treat people who couldn't afford medical care, but several journalists disappeared along with the rumor that this was Clazran's private hospital.

  Both women stood like wrestlers, the spaces between their legs so wide that I could have jumped underneath. "You need to get back into bed, Mr. Nidess, or you mark my words you will be back here before long."

  "Am I still going to see Clazran today?"

  The black nurse nodded. "Someone is coming to pick you up."

  I knew the answer even before she said it. Clazran didn't care if I was in sixteen different pieces. If he wanted something, then it happened.

  The assassin was covered in breat
hing apparatus, and hooked up to enough machines to sink an aircraft carrier. The determination on the faces of the nurses suggested that they were currently more dangerous. I got back into bed, examining all the tubes and wires of different colors that made my attempted murderer look as if she was caught in a rainbow colored web.

  Her eyes opened.

  I watched her go through the same disorientation as me. The mask on her face was feeding her the gases she could no longer extract from the atmosphere. She tried to lift both hands above the bed, but the handcuffs clanked as they pulled against the bars. Instead, she turned to me, piercing me with eyes cold enough to freeze lava.

  One hand poked out between the bars in the shape of a gun, the slightest upward tilt of which made me swallow hard. Neither of the nurses saw. The instant I was back in bed, they were both tucking me in tightly enough to cut off the blood supply.

  "She's awake," I said.

  Both nurses looked round. "Yes, Mr. Nidess, other patients are allowed to be awake."

  "She's a killer. Awake killers need guards on them at all times, and I don't particularly like sharing rooms with them."

  "There is no point in getting you another room, Mr. Nidess, as you'll be leaving shortly."

  "Could you dose her with something so she goes back to sleep?"

  The black nurse's brow furrowed almost enough to cover her eyes. "We do not drug patients so other patients can feel more comfortable–"

  "If that woman gets out of those restraints, she'll kill you, me, and anyone else between her and the door."

  "She's on a ventilator, Mr. Nidess. If she gets out of those restraints she will die."

  "She's on a ventilator," I said, "because you put her on a ventilator, not necessarily because she needs one."

  "We put her on a ventilator, Mr. Nidess," said the blond one, "because she needed one. I have other things to do now, but nurse Lint will be by the door if you need anything."

  Fache strolled past the nurse on her way out, smiling like a kid on top of a chocolate castle. "How are you feeling?"

  "Like I was in an explosion."

  He waved the token plastic flower in front of me and dropped it on my bedside table. "Is that her?" he said, staring at the assassin. "She's beautiful."

  "She's not prize livestock, Fache. That woman killed six SP agents."

  He turned away from her, ignoring the set of eyes focused on him with cold hate. "And you took her down! Just as well you did, or things might have gone a bit differently for me." He paused as if he was about to unveil his own statue. "I've been promoted."

  "You got Dollews job?"

  His grin widened. "Better. I got Lodale's job. I am now in charge of the entire science division, and it's all thanks to you." He paused. "And me I suppose, for persuading you to do the right thing." He tapped me on the shoulder with his fist. "I didn't get a meeting with the President though."

  "You need to tell me what's going on."

  He shrugged as if it were all unimportant now. "Peti was found in Govios. Well, bits of him were. If we'd found him, Figuel would have covered it up, but Govios has its own Commissioner, and apparently he and Figuel don't get on."

  "Making it impossible to hide that Peti died before the murder he was supposed to commit."

  Fache nodded. "Didn't stop Vins from trying. A few special police broke into the morgue in Govios HQ and there was a shootout. Probably would have succeeded too, but someone down there had the sense to hide the body where they didn't think to look. Vins' men all got out, so there was no proof he was responsible."

  "What happened to Peti?"

  "Dunno. Clazran had no idea who to trust. He had Figuel and the Commissioner from Govios up to see him, and he told them both to drop it. He wasn't interested. Supposedly, he and Figuel were pretty good friends, and he didn't want to believe in a cover up." Fache got up again and went to the window. "I started to worry for my safety, being a loose end for Vins and Figuel."

  "Like myself," I said, "Whom you failed to warn."

  Fache smiled guiltily. "I knew I had to go into hiding straight away or I was dead. I figured you'd done the same."

  "You were wrong."

  His smile faltered. "I knew Clazran had to be informed about your report, or I was a dead man."

  "Which you knew was a death sentence for me."

  "I tried calling, but you didn't respond. It was over a week since Peti was found, so it seemed most likely Vins had already killed you. Either way, your report was our only hope. I couldn't go to Govios with it because they were already saying Peti wasn't responsible, and no one was listening. I needed someone else to go against Vins and the Commissioner; someone they couldn't just crush." He drew a stick man in the condensation on the window. "At terminus, there were only two options."

  "Reens and Sina." The SP agents in charge of Kenrey's murder.

  He nodded. "Fortunately, they had no loyalty to Vins. They passed on the info and put me in witness protection, but nothing happened. Vins and Figuel had enough pull to stop it reaching Clazran."

  "Then what happened?"

  "Philip Rake changed everything."

  "Rake sided with us?"

  Fache snorted. "Nothing that noble. You know he's Figuel's son?"

  I nodded.

  "Rake had a dispute with this guy named Welker over gambling debts, and he goes and kills him, then for some reason confesses to one of his friends."

  "Gambling debts," I said, considering the lie aloud.

  "Initially his friend was too scared to say anything," Fache continued, "but as the cloud of dis above Figuel's head began to darken, this guy coughed up the info. Rake was arrested screaming all this stuff about Welker being a murderer and a rapist and all that, but there was no evidence for any of it. All it did was show his guilt."

  "He's in Sytheria?" I asked.

  "He's in Cythuria for all I care," Fache said. "The point is that we got lucky. The President had some connection to Welker that made him pretty angry, and he took it out on Figuel. Finally, your report gets shunted up through the SP until it reaches him, at which point it's all over. Figuel, Vins, Dollews, and a few others are arrested, and they put me in charge of the science division."

  I wasn't sure that Fache being put in charge of the science division was the proper conclusion to the story, but I had a different question. "When the six policemen came to collect me, they said there was an assassin on the way up to kill me, but why did it take Vins so long?"

  Fache looked at me as if I was his mother catching him sneaking money from her tablet. "When I went to Reens and Sina about the report, I wasn't sure whether they were really on my side, so I told them you panicked and fled The Kaerosh. I figured if you were still alive then you were in hiding, not back at your flat waiting for the first assassin to walk through the door." He laughed nervously. "But with all the backstabbing and interrogating that followed, both sides thought you were long gone. Reens said the guy coming up to kill you had been there for days, most likely waiting for you to come back."

  It was difficult to believe that a woman who could take out six men on her own didn't have the sense to check my unguarded flat first, but sometimes things worked out that way. "So why does Cla-, the President want to see me?"

  Fache laughed. "I'd start practicing that title. I don't really know to be honest. I assume he just wants to shake your hand in front of the cameras."

  "Cameras!" I blurted the word before I could choke it back down. The whole nation was going to see me shake hands with the monster on the hill. I knew exactly what my father would think if he saw that footage. He'd expect me to make some ridiculous assassination attempt that was doomed to fail before it began. But he wouldn't see it because he couldn't go near a network screen without being hunted by the SP. I was not such a fool. I would shake the monster's hand, smile, and walk away to live another day.

  "Everyone wants to meet the man who stood up to corruption," Fache said, "and that was before you took out the assassin that k
illed six SP agents."

  A doctor walked in trailed by nurse Lint. Not an unattractive man, but the workload and bad diet had combined to enhance his jowls and gut. "How are you feeling, Mr. Nidess?"

  "Like I've eaten a bowl full of my own organs."

  "Interesting." He felt no need to look at me as he tapped away on his tablet.

  "I think that's nerves," Fache said. "He has to meet the President today."

  "Understandable." The doctor pressed the screen a few times and then appeared to be reading. "Have you eaten anything?"

  His single word responses did not leave me desperate to cooperate. "I think I swallowed a fair bit of wall."

  Lint gave me a cold stare. "Doctor, I really don't think we should allow this man's release. He's been through a serious ordeal and–"

  "He'll be quite alright nurse, don't worry." The doctor turned back to me, his cheeks sagging with exhaustion. "Have you eaten anything of nutritional value?"

  "You mean something not provided by the hospital?" I said, smiling at my own joke.

  "Nurse?"

  Lint was staring at me, her puffy face streaked with irritation. "No doctor, he hasn't eaten since he woke up."

  "He'll need food then. We can't have him fainting while he's with the President."

  "Yes doctor." Lint tapped on her tablet. "But I still firmly believe that this trip could be highly problematic to the patient's health."

  The doctor was about to respond when I interjected. "I appreciate the thought nurse, but it would be far worse for my health not to attend."

  Both doctor and nurse looked as if I was whispering treasons. Finally, Lint nodded. "Alright, but after you're finished you get home and take lots of rest. Don't exert yourself unnecessarily, or you will be back here before the moons cross."

  Both doctor and nurse headed for the exit. Fache lingered, but the sight of the hooded SP agent in the door hastened him to follow. "I'll just get you some snacks in case what they bring isn't substantial enough."