Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

  My body was filling with the weary aches which usually indicate I need either sleep or coffee, or both at the same time, which would be handy. I’m sure I could rig up some kind of intravenous drip.

  As I dumped blood-soaked surgical gloves in the incinerator tube and gracefully stifled a huge yawn, it dawned on me that my earlier ‘episode’ had taken more out of me that I’d realised. Whatever condition I carried these days, it seemed to have the same effect as an adrenalin rush – a great surge of energy (unfortunately coupled with blinding rage) followed by a huge crash, where all I wanted to do was snuggle down somewhere comfortable and have my hair stroked. I wondered absently if Epsilon could have the same effect on the Pale. The trouble with their bloodlust and mindless fury was that they never came down from it. Maybe once Epsilon was fully stabilised, we could crop-dust the countryside and the hordes of genetically-modified killing machines would all curl up and have a peaceful snooze on the hillsides like adorable baby lambs.

  Odd that I was morally against human testing, but had become my own unwilling guinea pig.

  “You look tired, Doc,” Griff said. He was diligently stitching the white torso of our recently disembowelled guest back together. Only Griff could somehow manage to make this act look oddly innocent and adorable. He might well have been hand-quilting for a summer fair. As lovable and earnest as he might be, he also looked like he might pass out soon.

  “Ditto,” I said. “Coffee run?”

  I wasn’t offering to go. I was suggesting he might want to. I am the boss after all. I have to have a few perks, don’t I?

  While Griff left the lab to see if any coffee houses were open yet, I logged onto my Datascreen and activated the audio-file.

  “Subject is female, appearance estimated at fifteen years old. Actual age likely to be much less. Confusing data in that while the body appears wholly organic, bone density suggests that of an infant. Kneecaps unformed, lungs, liver and heart all perfectly formed and apparently…un-used.” I shuffled around on my chair to peer back at the body on the slab, which Griff had thoughtfully recovered with the medical tarp before leaving. “Other anomalies: no hair follicles anywhere on subject. No fingerprints of any description. Reproductive organs intact, subject has never been sexually active. Ears and ear canal intact and fully formed. Subject’s face is otherwise…” I paused, listening to the absurdity of my own words. “…absent. Initial assumption that deformity had caused skin to grow over features inaccurate. Autopsy reveals facial features have never been present. No eye sockets, nasal cavity or jawbone present in skull. Skull appears whole bone. Brain intact and appears normal.”

  The lab was very quiet, apart from my voice and the subtle, ever-present hum of the blue lights in the corridor beyond. I don’t creep out easily, but maybe due to tiredness, I couldn’t help imagining the body breathing quietly under that sheet, its chest rising and falling slowly, its blank head turning ever so slowly in my direction. This wasn’t possible, of course. Its lungs were in a tray across the room for a start, but still. Heebie-jeebies.

  “Preliminary conclusions?” I said. “Subject is…anomalous. Either heretofore unknown or unclassified GO species, or…” Or what? “Or other,” I finished lamely.

  I ended the recording, and watched as the clever electronic pixies who live inside my Datascreen transcribed my words, typing my report up in seconds. I manually added some further notes, primarily that tissue samples, blood samples and various other far more fiddly tests were to be carried out by myself and my team in the next few hours. I refrained from adding ‘I think we found some kind of half formed pod-person!’, wishing to remain professional.

  Griff reappeared shortly after with two things. Coffee, which made my heart sing with joy, and Veronica Cloves, who did not.

  “Did the stiff wake up and order Starbucks?” my boss asked as she followed Griff into the lab. Griff gave me an apologetic look, handing me my drink. “I met Servant Cloves in the Atrium,” he explained.

  “Well?” Cloves blinked at me, absently taking Griff’s coffee from him and walking over to the gurney. Griff pursed his lips and thrust his hands into his pockets. “What is it? A mermaid? Some kind of stillborn vampire? You’ve had your new toy for hours, Harkness and I haven’t heard a thing from you.”

  “I’ve just filed my initial findings,” I said. “I was going to email them over to you, but I figured with the hour being so early, you’d probably be asleep.”

  Cloves gave me a withering look over her shoulder. “When have you ever known me to sleep?” she said. “Send me the report now to my private address, I’ll read it in the car on our way over.”

  I stood up, flicking my Datascreen off before Cloves could read how scant my ‘findings’ were and tear me a new one.

  “Our way over?” I asked, puzzled. “To where?”

  Cloves peeled back the sheet, peeking beneath at the faceless corpse, her tangerine fingernails lightly plucking the shroud almost gracefully. She made a disapproving face and let it drop back. If she was disturbed or unsettled by the body, it didn’t show. She largely looked inconvenienced by it.

  “The Liver,” she said. “You’re wanted.”

  Griff’s eyed widened. He peered at me with mute surprise. I couldn’t blame him. The Liver was Cabal HQ. A largely fortified, almost inaccessible hub of Cabal’s greatest and most high. Nobody went there except director-level Cabal Servants and above.

  New Oxford was a lot larger than the Oxford which had stood here before the apocalypse. When you’re sheltering the remains of humanity behind a vast encircling wall, you want to try and fit as much in as possible. The wall which now defined the borders of our built up city took in all of the old Oxford, but also many outlying areas, previously rolling meadows, quiet suburbs, picturesque forest. It was mainly all city now, our bastion metropolis. Through the ingenuity and very specific talents of the GO Bonewalkers, who had the ability to ‘move’ things, we had managed to salvage a lot of buildings from other post-war cities, relocating them throughout ours like architectural refugees. It was quicker and a lot cheaper than building new. The Liver building has originally been in Liverpool. It now stood proudly in South Park, surrounded by annexes and a hive of Cabal outbuildings. For reasons no one seemed to remember, it had become Cabal’s centre of operations.

  But the question remained: why the hell was I suddenly going there?

  Cloves read the question on my face. “It’s the first I’ve heard too, Harkness,” she snapped. “So don’t ask. I have no idea why you or why now.” She set her stolen coffee down and drummed her fingers on the lid. “I’m assuming it’s regarding the recent murders, or our blank faced discovery here. Maybe both, but I’m not entirely in the loop. My best guess is that with these two shitstorms, and the political tensions with the damn Tribals right now, they want a GO expert. And that is you.” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Director Coldwater requested you herself. So we’re going. And you are going to do or say whatever they need you to.” She gave a tight smile. “Don’t fuck up.”

  “I have tests to run on this subject,” I protested, somewhat feebly.

  Cloves waved a hand airily. “And you have drudges for what? What on earth do we pay your lab rats for? Let them do the grunt work.”

  Griff glared silently at the back of Cloves’ head. He still hadn’t forgiven her for stealing his coffee.

  “Now get your coat. I doubt very much that the board have ever been kept waiting before and I’m damned if I’m going to be the one to try and teach them humility.”

  5.

  An hour later I sat in a dimly lit, finely appointed boardroom. Cloves had explained somewhat brusquely on the drive over here that I was to give an outline of my knowledge of the GOs I had encountered. The board were particularly interested in hearing what I knew about vampires. She warned me that they probably knew more than I thought about whatever I thought I knew anyway, so not to try and bluff my way through.

  Her sentence made my head throb so I
didn’t reply, but I wondered just how much they knew. Surely they weren’t aware of my condition? I would have been quarantined by now or incinerated, one or the other. Either way, I’d had no sleep and was already beginning to feel sketchy. Cloves’ aggressive driving style had done nothing to soothe my mood and prepare me for this. The woman drove like a demon. I did my best not to dig my fingernails into the Ferrari’s dashboard.

  Cloves told me that if I play my cards right and impress the board, they might – just might – approve her request for the full murder files to be released to her jurisdiction. If we were ever going to make any headway with who or what was stalking folks uptown, we needed more to go on than what minimal information had been allowed to drip down to our level so far.

  It became obvious what I was here for: so Cloves could dangle me in front of the board, using me as leverage to get her clearance granted. That was what this ‘interview’ was really about. I don’t like playing bait on someone’s hook, but I couldn’t really argue. Just like Cloves, I needed more info on these killings. So I’d decided to play my part and give my best ‘what I did during my summer holidays’ report to the board.

  Soon, Cloves swiped us through the security gates of the South Park compound and New Oxford Cabal HQ slid into view.

  I was only a child when the Bonewalkers began salvaging buildings from other cities and giving them a new home here. The Liver was one of the first, at Cabal’s request. It had been considered impossible to build in its time, a three-hundred foot draconian statement of might over thirteen floors, crowned at either end with a clock tower. The clocks are huge, each face larger than London’s famous Big Ben, which is ashes and dust these days like most of the former capital. At night, Cabal use a yellowish, greenish light to illuminate their faces, which always seems surgical and oddly oppressive to me. They look like giant, unblinking eyes, staring out over my city like sentinels.

  The most distinctive features perhaps are the great sculpted birds which crown the towers. Old world legend used to say they looked over the city. Guess they’re not looking over Liverpool anymore, which is just as well as that place fell to the Pale long ago. It’s an overrun hive these days, a no-go area.

  Here in its new home in the previously grassy expanse of South Park, the Liver rears up amidst a hive of lesser, purpose-built buildings, nestling around its feet like a crust of barnacles. I like architecture, but the sight of the Liver is an odd one to me. It has no definitive exterior style, but echoes of baroque and byzantine. It’s something of a chimera, which I suppose fits with its current occupiers. A dramatic fortress, floodlit and rather sinister, and filled to the brim with the highest, most powerful and arguably most dangerous people in charge of our new world. The Servants.

  And I was driving right up to it. Lucky me.

  If it was impressive from without, the building was oppressive within. I sat in possibly the most silent boardroom I had ever encountered, and reported as best I could to my betters.

  “Everything you think you know about vampires is wrong,” I began.

  Five expectant faces peered back at me from behind the long, dark wooden desk. I made a conscious effort not to shuffle in my seat. It was an uncomfortable chair, in an uncomfortable room. I’m sure they design them that way on purpose. Like a swivelling barstool with a tiny back. Far too tiny to actually lean on. I was practically perched.

  The windowless room was grey and gloomy. Cloves had not come into the meeting with me. She hadn’t been invited. The five board members, none of whom I knew, evidently wanted me alone. Cloves had been reduced to sitting outside in the lobby reading a magazine, as though I were her daughter being a big girl at the dentist.

  “The Genetic Other subclass who call themselves vampires are not, and never have been, remotely human,” I continued, ignoring the fact that, unlike myself, the five people behind the large desk across from me were seated in large and comfortable studded-leather chairs. Chairs which were in fact, just one small crenelation away from being thrones. If the Illuminati had an office furnishings catalogue, these guys would have ordered from it. The only thing wrong with the scene was that the board members I faced were not wearing shadowy hoods and mumbling Latin.

  “The pervasive myth that they are ‘undead’ or that they were once homo-sapiens who underwent some manner of post-mortem transformation is just that,” I explained. “A myth. Vampires are an entirely different species to us. We just happen to look largely similar, like gazelle and antelope. But the two are distinct genetic species. A vampire cannot turn a human into a vampire by biting them. The vampire state is not an infection or a disease, and as far as we have so far been able to ascertain, it is not possible for the two species to cross-breed in any natural way.”

  One of the dark-suited and sombre individuals behind the desk raised a polite hand slightly off the table top. He was an elderly but smartly-turned out fellow.

  “So when one does…bite…a human…?”

  I shrugged. “Sustenance for the vampire, and remarkable health benefits for the donor,” I said simply. “Vampires can and do eat and drink regular food, though it does not appear to serve any nutritional value when they do. They need blood to survive. The mechanics are not yet understood. It’s my findings so far that in the biting, there’s rather a heady transference of fluids into the donor’s bloodstream, a portion of the vampire’s DNA, and a quite complex cocktail of pheromones, antibodies, anaesthetic and other ingredients, the sum effect being that the donor finds the experience both intensely pleasurable and also very rewarding physically. So long as the donor is not drained to death, it’s a very profitable symbiotic relationship.”

  The old man raised an eyebrow.

  “Intensely pleasurable?” he muttered, sounding disapproving.

  I could feel my face reddening despite my best efforts. “And by physically rewarding I refer of course to the temporary absorption of the vampire’s DNA, which has the effect in the donor of curing even serious wounds, and jump-starting the metabolism.”

  There was a long, uncomfortable silence. The board members appeared to be studying papers and notes laid out before them. They had the utterly unhurried air of those who are important enough that they know the world will wait patiently until they are ready to speak again. I had the urge to reach down and scratch my ankle, but I was worried I might fall off the chair.

  “How deeply have you researched this phenomenon, Dr Harkness?” another of the suited panel asked, his fingers steepled under his chin. This guy wasn’t as old as the first one. Mid-fifties I guessed. He had papery, lined skin. None of the board looked as though they got enough sun to me.

  “Not very,” I replied, deliberately blunt.

  “It seems you are working in an…interesting field,” another of the sombre panel offered.

  Not entirely by my own choice, I felt like saying, but this was a Cabal panel, and I don’t know how well they would react to my sass. Instead I just smiled professionally.

  “My main work is with the paratoxicology unit at Blue Lab, of course,” I said. “But my understanding of the purpose of this meeting today, of which I only became aware an hour ago, was that the board wished for me to reveal my own findings regarding any and all of the Genetic Others. Servant Cloves believes that due to my interaction with the GOs last year, I am in a unique position to bridge the chasm of ignorance between our species.” I pushed my frameless glasses further up my nose. “Her choice of words,” I added dryly. “Not mine.”

  Another of the five panel members grunted, a heavyset man who looked a few expensive steaks away from a massive coronary. “Sounds like something Cloves would say,” he muttered into his ample jowls. “She’ll start believing her own bloody spin one of these days. The woman needs to spend less time in front of the cameras.” He leafed through his notes. “So, I presume this unique position of yours that Servant Cloves is referring to is your relationship with the vampire named Allesandro?”

  “It’s not a relationship,” I
said quickly.

  The old man’s eyes flicked up at me. His world-weary stare making it perfectly evident that he couldn’t give a dry papery fart about it either way.

  “Your interaction then,” he amended indulgently, making me feel unnecessarily petty. “And has there been first hand…in your words, ‘heady transference of fluids’?”

  “I beg your pardon?” I almost dropped my notes.

  “Has the GO bitten you, Dr Harkness?” another member asked, a thin angular woman. Her voice was very clear and authoritative.

  “Oh…no,” I stuttered. “That’s outside of my work brief.”

  “How frustrating for him,” she commented. She must have noticed my expression. “By which I mean, it’s their nature, is it not? To bite?” She smiled at me. It was quite a warm friendly smile, rather out of place on a panel of otherwise scary high level Cabal. She was rather handsome, cool blue eyes and an expensively shaggy bob of ice blonde hair. The smile didn’t remotely meet her eyes however. They remained clinical and calculating. That was more like the Cabal I knew and loved.

  “We know precious little about them, Servant Coldwater,” the board member I had silently christened ‘Jowly’ said to her short-temperedly. “Hence this meeting.” She inclined her head respectfully at him, but her glassy eyes never left mine, and her chirpy smile didn’t drop.

  Ah, so this was the famous Director Coldwater? I thought. The woman Cloves herself seemed slightly awed by?

  Jowly turned his attention back to me.

  “It may well be, as you say, ‘outside of your work brief’, Dr Harkness. But were you not bitten by another vampire during the trouble at Carfax?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “A particularly unpleasant one.” I really hadn’t come here to discuss Gio, the least pleasant person I had ever met. He was dead now, thank goodness. I had fed him to a biological murderous mutant myself. Long story, I didn’t regret it. “I should point out that apparently it is within the vampire’s power to withhold the anaesthetic and other hormones which make the draining a positive experience. This was the case with me.”