The Remnant Keeper (Tombs Rising Book 1)

by Robert Scott-Norton

  Letting himself breathe once again, Jack held the extraction tool over the third middle compartment of the memory box and released the clamp, watching his eye sink into the Nanosalve. Safe.

  He dipped the same tool into the right-hand compartment and the victim’s eye was secured. As he lifted the eye to his now empty socket, he observed the optic nerve had been suitably sheathed in a thin medical plastic with the artificial connector firmly clamped to the tail end. As the disc approached his own socket, he sensed the tiny filaments from his own connector disc spring to life, searching for its partner. With the faintest of clicks, the connection locked and the tool quickly worked the victim’s eye into Jack’s socket. Once done, he dropped the tool onto the table and blinked.

  Then he blinked again.

  Then he closed his eyes and let the dead woman’s memories come to him.

  Lavinia Wei Remnant

  Everything was fuzzy. A headache lurked.

  Nikoli still wasn’t home. He’d promised me he wasn’t going to stay late at this OsMiTech event and he’d be back home in time to get to Trish’s party. But it was now nine o’clock and I’d called Nikoli for the last time. His story better be fantastic, but I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be.

  The house was quiet and on most days this would have been good. I shifted on the cream sofa and reached out for the coffee table with my legs, dropping the book I’d been reading onto the cushion beside me. Ordinarily, the thought of a few hours alone with my wonderful collection of books would have been bliss, but with a missing husband and that threatening headache, it was the wrong distraction.

  I glanced at the access point above the fireplace—a flat silver screen connected to the house’s artificial intelligence and through that, the Net. The display scrolled my news feed, showing me there had been no new messages and no missed calls. I checked the HALO on my finger, thinking perhaps I’d set it into deep sleep mode and Nikoli hadn’t been able to get through. But no, it was on; the long history of attempted calls I’d made scrolled around the metal band. Where the hell was he?

  I got up from the sofa and crossed to the windows, great floor to ceiling folding doors that opened to the garden. The clouds caught the last red-orange rays of the setting sun and the great ash tree at the end of the garden became a lonely sentinel caught in silhouette. I shivered.

  The tiled floor chilled my bare feet as I walked around my precious bookcase dividing the lounge space from the rest of our open plan downstairs. Butler sensed my presence and subtly increased the ambient lighting, melting shadows away.

  A noise by the kitchen door caught my attention and I wandered past the dining table, looking for the source. The cat flap clattered closed behind Harris, the eldest of our two cats, who sauntered towards me with a mouse clamped between his teeth. Despite his age, Harris loved to hunt and annoyingly, he was terribly good at it.

  “Shoo, take it outside you bugger, go on.”

  He hesitated, recognising my anger.

  “Outside!” I said and pointed at the cat flap.

  Harris dropped onto his haunches and carefully deposited the mouse on the kitchen tiles. For a moment, the mouse remained motionless, not quite believing its luck. I froze. Then, just as I began searching for something to bash it with, Harris struck out an idle paw and swatted the creature’s tail. The critter ran at me and I yelped as it ran under my legs and squeezed into the ventilation grill beneath the kitchen cupboards. Harris tipped his head and looked dolefully at me.

  “Bastard,” I said, hissing at Harris.

  Ordinarily, that would have been me done with the kitchen until Nikoli came home and dealt with the intruder, but right now I needed a drink. I’d left a nice bottle of red out on the side with a pair of glasses—my attempt to get us in the mood for the party—but I wasn’t prepared to wait any longer. Soon it wouldn’t be worth going.

  The wine tasted better than usual, but not by much. With a harsh season and upgraded patrol drones, it was nigh on impossible to get contraband through.

  I sipped from my glass by the dining room window, glancing around the open plan living space, and shivered. Storm clouds had been building in the east all afternoon and outside the red twilight sky was darkening. A wind was picking up.

  “Butler, what’s the temp?”

  The AI didn’t respond.

  “Butler?”

  I stepped around the dining table to get a better look at the access point above the fireplace. The dark screen with extinguished lights told me it had crashed. Nikoli had spent a lot of time choosing that system and yet it had always been a bit flaky.

  A door closed upstairs.

  The noise was unmistakable. I’d lived in this house for the last ten years and knew every inch, top to bottom. The designer doors had chrome fittings and the noise of them closing was normally reassuringly expensive. But all I could think about right then was I was alone and someone was upstairs.

  I froze, ears attuned to the slightest vibration. Stealthily, I crept to the bottom of the stairs and peered up into the murky upper reaches of the house, listening. I must have made a mistake. That mouse had made me jumpy.

  The house had cost far more than Nikoli could afford on his salary but with the money my father had kept squirrelled away we were doing OK. Right now though, it was too large and full of empty spaces. I suddenly hated that I was standing alone waiting for my husband to make me feel safe again.

  “Butler, send a message to Nikoli. Tell him to get his arse back here now.”

  But the access point remained blank; Butler wasn’t listening.

  It was stupid, I mean really stupid. My imagination was running away with me. There was no one upstairs. And yet where did that thought come from? Why would there be someone upstairs?

  “Nikoli?” I queried up into the darkness.

  I realised my mistake then and felt like a little girl again. It would be Harris doing his rounds, maybe even getting lucky and catching the mouse he’d brought me. My glass was almost empty and I would have gone back to the kitchen had it not been for that one little thing I noticed as I began my about turn.

  The front door was ajar.

  I didn’t leave it ajar; I wouldn’t have done anything so careless. Softly, I crossed the hallway, feeling the cool breeze drape around my bare shoulders, sending my arms into a worry of goose bumps.

  Outside the front door, I caught the scent of the lavender bushes I’d made Nikoli plant—a smell that reminded me of my grandmother back in Poland. The driveway was empty. If he’d come back, where was the car?

  I stepped back inside the house and shut the door carefully, checking the catch clicked home. That should have made me feel safer, but it didn’t. The headache was edging into focus—the wine not helping. I would cancel Trish’s party, the desire to mingle with a gaggle of her friends had long evaporated. A lie-down and a few pills were now the order of my evening. If Nikoli ever showed up again, he’d find me flat out in bed, his pyjamas waiting for him outside the bedroom door with a pillow. The spare bedroom would be waiting for him.

  As my foot touched the bottom step, the lights upstairs failed to come on. Butler had crashed for sure. I hesitated, feeling that familiar unease about stepping into the darkness that I’d always had as a child. I touched the edge of my HALO and the device lit up and cast a bright glow, bright enough at least to find my way around upstairs without bumping into the furniture.

  I hurried upstairs, holding my hand before me to let the light break apart the shadows. My heart beat faster in my chest and I began to feel light-headed, the stress of the moment unsettling me.

  The landing wrapped around the staircase leading to the bedrooms and bathroom and at the far end, towards the back of the house, Nikoli’s study. I shone the light around and saw all the doors were closed up here. I relaxed, wondering what had gotten me so wound up that evening.

  I grabbed the handle on the bedroom door and hesitated. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing. That panicked feeling
had only settled, not gone completely, and then I heard the door to Nikoli’s office click open.

  I wanted to run, but my legs wouldn’t move.

  With a shaking I couldn’t control, I lifted my arm and let the light from my HALO cast its glow along the landing corridor.

  The door to Nikoli’s office was open.

  And standing in the doorway—

  1:55 PM

  Being pulled back by a chain. That’s what it felt like. A sudden tug around the belly and a sickening sensation as the recall ended prematurely and the real world returned to smack Jack around the face.

  Jack shivered.

  This was not good. Retreat from a recall should always be a measured, patient affair. Even when those memories ended in death, a trained remnant keeper should be able to withdraw from the recall zone with calm. Being thrown out into the now was like being thrown from a moving car.

  As he began to get his bodily sensations back, he felt battered and emotionally drained. Every muscle ached.

  When he tried to stand he realised two more things. Firstly, he was lying down, staring straight up at the office ceiling, and secondly, his muscles weren’t responding.

  You’ve been stunned.

  And then as quickly as the thought came, it went and Jack wondered how he knew what being stunned felt like.

  His mind raced. He could blink, so he still had some control over his body. Also, there was the pain from the back of his head. Throbbing like he’d woken up to the most terrific hangover. A keeper could expect some discomfort after retreating from a recall, headaches and slight nausea, but nothing like this. Something had gone wrong.

  Back to basics then, what do I know?

  He was in the office. But how long had he been lying there? Light bounced from the ceiling and that suggested it wasn’t yet twilight.

  Air passed over his cracked lips as he breathed, but when he tried to call for help, he failed.

  Pain became more distinct, centralising around the back of his head.

  And there was that smell.

  And a noise. Possibly. His senses couldn’t be trusted, and Jack knew all too well the warnings about waking and resting to balance the body’s senses but he might have heard a noise from somewhere in the house. Where was his watcher?

  A tingling in his arm was the first sign that the paralysis wasn’t permanent. Relief rushed through his mind casting aside the panic that this was how he would spend the rest of his life. The tingling spread quickly, a lazy kind of pins and needles that shimmered across his body, freeing his muscles.

  He turned his head to the side, then stared aghast at the vision before him.

  Keeley had come home.

  A pool of blood had formed from the open wound sliced into her neck. Less than a metre from him, the blood had reached Jack and as he sat up he realised that he had been lying in his dead wife’s blood.

  That wasn’t the worst of it.

  Jack couldn’t help but stare into the burnt-out remains of her eyes.

  2:01 PM

  Jack scrambled to his feet, trying to put distance between him and the horrifying image of his dead wife.

  Oh my God, oh my God.

  His head swirled in a fog of guilt. He should have taken more precautions. Hell, they were supposed to take more precautions. Where the hell was his watcher? He’d been downstairs. Did he do this?

  Pride. A filthy word. Pride had got his wife killed.

  Keeley had told him she was coming round. She’d told him to wait before starting the memory recall, had been insistent, and yet he’d been dismissive.

  And now, she was dead; an empty shell.

  With limbs that belonged to somebody else, the tingling sensation still working through his muscles, Jack shuffled away from the dead shape of his wife.

  He was going to be sick. His stomach lurched but he held it back, twisting his head towards the window, thinking he needed fresh air.

  The back of his head hurt. Gingerly, he touched the sore area and winced. A large bump protruded. He dropped his hands before him, and he suddenly saw the nightmare scene before him with fresh eyes.

  Blood on his hands. Blood all over his clothes. Keeley dead, violently attacked. Her blood on him. They would lock him up. They had to. He’d been pulled out of it by—what exactly? He didn’t know but he wasn’t stupid enough to appreciate how bad this looked. The police were not the best of friends with telepaths. A lowly class two, like Jack, would be an easy target.

  Panic seized him then like a cold iron fist squeezing every last rational thought from his mind. Voices clamoured for attention, telling him he was doomed, bereft, guilty—all at the same time. One stood out from all the others: the one that told him he was on his own.

  He was seeing her through a dead woman’s eyes. That thought popped into his mind and wouldn’t go. One of his eyes wasn’t his own. Keeley was dead and he was still playing the role of dutiful employee, using another woman’s dead eye to see his own loss. If Keeley were alive, what would she say to him?

  Jack had to get his act together quickly. He needed to understand what had happened before he called anyone in or he didn’t stand a chance. All of this happened quickly. He’d been in the recall for under an hour and Keeley’s blood was still spilling from her body—it hadn’t yet coagulated. So, what else did he know? What signs of struggle were there? Nothing looked disturbed in here.

  He got to his feet and swore to himself that her killer wouldn’t get away with this.

  Nausea hit him again and he grabbed the waste paper basket and voided his stomach. On everything he touched, he left his bloodied hand prints.

  There was only one reason why her eyes had been destroyed—to stop someone doing to her memories what he was attempting with Lavinia Wei’s. They’d used an eye burner. He knew their use was becoming more and more common as murderers became desperate to conceal their crimes. Jack’s vision was confused. Having two different eyes in his head with different prescriptions made focusing on anything difficult. Depending on which eye he tried to use, a blurry veil appeared over the other.

  He held his hand before him, like waving hello, and projected a dial pad from a tiny projector set in the HALO ring on his index finger. The pad appeared in the air in front of him. With his other hand, he called the police.

  “Please state the nature of the emergency,” an automated voice said dispassionately.

  Jack’s voice almost choked on the words. “My wife… she’s dead. Murdered.”

  “Please confirm. A murder has been committed?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is the location of the dead person?”

  “My wife, it’s my wife goddammit. Let me speak to a real person,” Jack demanded.

  “All operators are busy. Please respond. What is the location of the dead person?”

  “My house. My wife’s lying dead in my office. Please send someone.”

  “Is the perpetrator on the premises?”

  “No. Please hurry.”

  “Your request for assistance has been logged. Please standby. Do not touch the crime scene. If your safety is at risk, please take necessary steps to protect yourself.”

  “How long until the police get here?”

  “The response team is on its way. Please relax and do not touch the crime scene.” There was a pause and then some interference on the line, then another voice, human this time. “Whom am I speaking to?” the voice asked.

  “Jack Winston,” Jack replied. “Who are you? Is someone really coming?”

  “You’re a remnant keeper.” A statement, not a question.

  Jack hesitated. “Yes.”

  “We’ve a car on its way. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.” The voice belonged to a middle-aged man, confident and self-assured. Despite the man’s evident calm, it did nothing to quell the rising storm of panic in Jack’s head.

  “Please help, I don’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t worry, sir. We’ll be there as soo
n as we can. I’m on route to your house now. Just hang tight for a few more minutes.”

  “But my wife—”

  “Is your wife alive?”

  “No.”

  “Then there’s nothing you can do to help her now. We’ve called an ambulance. Don’t go anywhere.”

  And then the line went dead and Jack stared at his HALO and wondered what had happened. Amongst all the fear and anguish he could feel, there was a new emotion jostling for position—doubt. It was that detective, not one specific thing he’d said but the way he’d spoken. His tone just a little too civil and formal for the situation perhaps. And what did he mean by telling him to not go anywhere? Why would he have wanted to go anywhere?

  Unless they thought he was a suspect. Casting aside that thought—Jack knew it wasn’t going to help him—he got back to the other pressing matter on his mind. He had to get this eye out of his head. He needed the memory box. He knew it was missing as soon as he looked for it on the table. He’d been very careful about where he’d placed it. Sitting in his leather chair in the study, facing the window. Placing the memory box on the low table. Arranging his tools. These were all elements of Jack’s personal recall ritual. A creature of habit and despite being ribbed about this side of his psyche in the past, anchoring little points of certainty into his day helped him progress from one minute to the next.

  The killer’s taken it.

  This cast things in a new light. Keeley’s death was unintentional. Her killer was after the memory box, and the only reason for taking that would be to get their hands on Lavinia Wei’s eye.