by Ian Williams
Finally the screen stopped moving and then spun up to show Elliot’s face. His cheeks and the end of his nose were a shade of red darker than the rest of him. The crisp evening air had been lashing at his skin for a while, it appeared. His eyes glistened in the night light as he peered down at the screen. “Everything’s fine, why?”
“Just checking. You seem a little tense.”
Elliot looked up to the street ahead of him and then back to his wrist screen. “I guess. It’s nothing to worry about. I’m just helping a friend out, that’s all.”
“OK. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow morning then. Late as usual?”
“Fashionably late, you mean. Sure, see you tomorrow.” Elliot ended the call immediately. For whatever reason, he had been deliberately cagey about where he was and why. His normally fidgety self had become overly jumpy during the conversation.
Graham rarely saw him like this anymore. There had been a period when Elliot had always acted this way. At the time everyone had put his highly excited state down to his insatiable need for new experiences, which he handled like an addiction. His problem would take him to lengths that most would have thought downright dangerous, from space-to-surface diving to deep sea trips.
Since then he had calmed down – to everyone’s agreed joy – and slowed his pace of life along with it. Although no-one had really understood why at the time. Graham knew little about drugs, yet it had occurred to him that it fit the symptoms of Elliot’s sudden change. Was he getting his thrills from substance abuse instead? They had stopped short of an intervention – mainly because they had no real suspicions, just a concern. Now he found himself once again suspecting his work partner.
He decided he would check in with Ruth and drop a few subtle hints about Elliot’s shifty behaviour after getting Alex to bed. That reminded him, Alex was supposed to be in bed by no later than nine o’clock and she had only just sat down for dinner. Jane would kill him if she knew he let her stay up late again.
Still sitting at the table, and with only half a slice of pizza left, Alex had turned to playing while she waited for him to return. When he saw the doll’s mouth moving and speaking to his daughter, he quickly regretted buying it in the first place. All it did was talk. It distracted her even when he told her to do something – like eat her dinner.
“Alex, time for bed. Come on,” he said.
She returned an overly expressive look of confusion in response. “I’ve just had dinner,” she said.
“Yes, I know. I’ve lost track of time a little. Come on, bed please.”
Alex jumped down from her chair and skipped away with her doll swinging by her side. He followed behind and watched as she raced into her room, pulled her covers back and leapt into bed. She then waited to be tucked in.
“Right,” Graham said as he began to push the folds of her duvet down the side of the bed. “When Mummy asks what time you were in bed by, you’ll say what?”
Alex laughed. “I’ll say nine o’clock.” She would go along with it too like any good co-conspirator. Of course the same could not be said of the Home Management System, which would rat him out the moment Jane asked it instead of him.
“Good girl. Now go to sleep. Oh, and I think Miss Chatterbox can go away in the drawer.” He picked up her doll and shoved it in the top drawer of her wall cabinet. The thing would talk all night if allowed, and he could do without the telling off from Jane. Also it slightly worried him; no toy should be so intelligent in his opinion. The thing was a plaything and not a real friend.
On his way out of the room the lights automatically dimmed, though not too far as Alex hated the dark. He slid her door almost completely shut and went back to the lounge. On the way he diverted into the kitchen and grabbed a self-chilled beer from the cupboard. He shook the can and waited until the drink had turned icy-cold in his hand. After a few sips his lips had become refreshingly numb. The cold moved past them and then spread throughout his chest. All in all, he thought himself a good dad as he enjoyed his reward.
He considered calling Ruth and checking everything was OK, but the time seemed a bit late to put his worries to her. By now his sister had probably already gone to bed. Telling her could wait. For all he knew she and Elliot had had a blazing row anyway, he had no desire to land himself right in the middle of that. He would try and tell her the next day while Elliot went for a piss or something.
To fill the time until Jane got home, he resorted to enjoying one more beer after finishing the one he already had. Any excuse indeed, he thought. With his new beer testing his hand’s resistance to the cold and both legs stretched out across the length of the sofa, he was ready to relax.
Except after only three sips, the wall screen interrupted his plans. Strangely, the call was coming from Elliot this time. Graham assumed he must have finished whatever he was doing and called back for a proper chat. He answered right away. “Hey,” he said, swinging his legs back around and onto the floor.
“Graham!” Elliot shouted.
The screen blurred as something flashed across, before darkness followed straight after. Graham found it impossible to see what was happening. From what he could hear there was some kind of physical struggle going on in the background. When a loud grunt echoed through his speaker, he placed his beer on the arm of the chair and lent forward. The tone of Elliot’s voice had disturbed him.
“What’s going on? Elliot, are you OK?” he said.
Elliot did not – or worse – could not answer. The noise coming from the speakers beside Graham sounded muffled and chaotic. Even so, he was positive he had heard his friend say, ‘get the fuck off’, or something to that effect. If what he watched was a fight, then Elliot was losing.
Another flash raced across the screen. This time followed by a brief shot of the city in the distance and the Mag-Lev line glowing brightly as it weaved away behind, heading off deep into the night. The illuminated buildings in the centre of the cityscape were far smaller than he expected, meaning his friend was on the outskirts somewhere. His home was much closer to the centre than where he had called from. Before any other details could be seen, everything returned to black again, followed then by a loud crack.
The sound caused Graham to squint as he anticipated the pain the noise must have been accompanied by. “Elliot? I’m calling the police now buddy, just hang on,” he shouted. As soon as he finished speaking the screen began to pulsate with a red border, signifying that the police had been alerted. He was stuck watching as whatever was about to happen to his friend played out.
“Daddy?” Alex said to his side.
“Honey, don’t come in here. Just stay there,” he said. He raced over to her and kept her away from the screen. Even though his drink was sent spinning along the floor and spraying its contents, his concern was that something horrible could be about to happen, and he did not want her seeing that.
The moment he was about to begin speaking a deep thud from the speakers stopped him. He waited for a response, but none came. The struggle was over and from what he could hear Elliot had been silenced. Graham’s mouth hung open as he returned to watching, with Alex hidden behind him. Had they just killed his friend?
The screen cleared suddenly to reveal an odd looking person standing a few metres ahead. The woman had flame red hair that stood to attention as it ran along the middle of her head, from the front to the back. She also wore a dark coat and eyes encircled by a smudged layer of black mascara, as dark as the night surrounding her. This was no bystander or witness, but the person in charge. Despite the sound still being too muffled to hear what anyone said, this was clear by the way she stood ordering the others about.
His glimpse of the woman was cut short when the view began to spin, along with Graham’s head. When it stopped, he could only see the floor at an angle to the screen. They had removed Elliot’s wrist screen, then tossed it away with little concern. It was at least certain that the incident had not simply been a mugging. Except he had no idea what it was about, only tha
t his friend had come off worse than the others involved.
In the top right corner were nothing but large black boots, with red shoelaces tied clumsily and tightly together. The woman wearing these was then joined by two men dragging a body between them. Graham leapt back as soon as he realised whose.
“Oh shit! What have you gotten yourself into, Elliot?” he said with his hand clamped across his forehead.
As the men moved further away they struggled with Elliot’s weight. At one point the man on the right even dropped him, leaving his hand to scrape across the ground before the man raised him up again. They had their man and were hardly worried at all about hurting him as they carried him off. All the while the woman shouted to them to ‘hurry up’.
Graham slumped into his sofa and watched helplessly as they all slowly disappeared into the distance. The night had claimed his friend and he saw no way of getting him back. The one comfort was that the police had been notified as soon as it had happened. Surely they would find Elliot quickly?
Feeling his throat suddenly become dry and his hands become damp by the ordeal – they had conspired to exchange fluids it seemed – Graham tried to stay calm. It was no good, however much he told himself everything would be OK, he just could not be sure.
“What’s wrong Daddy?” Alex asked. She walked into the room, her eyes glazing over with tears.
In his panicked state he had terrified his little girl and now he had to explain why. He pulled her close and held his hand over the back of her head, flattening her bouncy hair. He kept her from looking at the screen while he comforted her. “It’s OK honey, don’t worry. Daddy’s friend, Elliot, is in a bit of trouble and I’m going to help the police get him back.”
Alex moved away and looked him straight in the eye. “Is Uncle Elliot OK, Daddy?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.” He pulled his daughter close again and hugged her tightly. The truth was, he was lost for words. He doubted Jane could have explained this to Alex any better either.
* * *
Phoenix walked ahead of the two men Anthony sent along to help her take the Simova man. They had made a complete mess of grabbing him quietly, with the ensuing fight even claiming the nose of one of them too. The other had only sustained a few punches to his stomach, which nearly winded him. In the end they had to whack the Simova employee over the head with a weapon.
“Will you guys hurry up? We need to get to the Mag-Lev line quickly. Anthony said we’ll have less than ten minutes before the system will pick something up,” she said.
“Why didn’t he give us longer,” the man with the bloodied and broken nose said.
Phoenix turned and began to walk backwards as she spoke. “Because, genius, his toys can’t do everything. Interfering with the city’s network isn’t easy. He managed to get us ten minutes, so that’s what we make do with.” She spun back around and walked ahead, her pace faster than before.
No more than fifty metres in front of them was the Mag-Lev line. By now the traffic had almost completely disappeared. She kept her eyes locked onto it, just in case she saw the blue flashing lights of a car laden with police officers. Luckily they had managed the job well enough so far. That someone had probably seen the whole incident only worried her a little bit, no-one could find them now. The police were already too late.
She would stay completely focused, as she always did, until the possibility of trouble had gone. The job would only be complete once they delivered the Simova guy to Anthony. She had no idea what he wanted with the man, only that his suspicious behaviour had piqued her boss’s interest. Anthony’s plans had been building in recent weeks and she guessed the guy they were kidnapping was a possible threat to that. Whatever the reason, she was told to take him straight to Anthony’s hide-out and that was what she intended to do.
Once on their way she would relax and begin her plan to break her brothers out. She had done enough to earn help with that. They were useless with authority, due in large part because of her mistrust of people with power. Leaving them with the police would be a mistake and a huge risk to any plans Anthony had. Of course she could never tell him this. Her only chance of protecting her brothers lay with breaking them free.
“How far now?” the man with the bloodied face asked. He snorted up a lump of dried blood from his nose, then spat it on the floor as he walked.
“Relax, we’re not far,” she replied, with a look at the red patch left behind them.
The man’s behaviour disgusted her. More importantly it was a record of his DNA just lying there to be found. There were times when she regretted rounding up so many miscreants from outside the city for Anthony to rely on. Sometimes they proved more of a hindrance than a help. If the man’s discarded DNA was linked to the crime, then he would face the law alone. That was the rule. Yet so many of them flaunted their stupidity that she wondered if they really thought the rule would be enforced.
A few minutes later and the Mag-Lev line was the brightest thing in sight, criss-crossing the city like a motorway of light. Its glow represented the end of their task. Each route offered them an escape. They only had to jump aboard a car.
This was the time she had saved the remaining battery power of her new toy for. The one final thing she needed from it was to hide their use of a Mag-Lev car. If the Simova system realised what they were doing, it would drop them off straight outside the nearest police station. What Anthony had given them would destroy the evidence of their crime – apart from the witness – and prevent the system from taking action against them. All she had to do was activate it when they needed to be ignored.
She pulled a small yellow box out of her bag and began to fiddle with the dial. She set the device to emit a scrambling signal at the highest power setting. Confusing street cameras was one thing, confusing the entire Mag-Lev network into disregarding them was something different altogether. As a car pulled up and the doors opened automatically she lent around the back and slapped the magnetic surface of the device to the rear panel of the vehicle before she entered. Following that she helped her accomplices pull their captive into the car with them.
By her estimate the scrambler device would stay on until they were clear. That was all they really needed. However, if her guess was out by only seconds, then they were possibly about to screw things up and face Anthony’s wrath thereafter.
When the doors closed and the car sped off along the track – as if nothing were amiss – she finally relaxed. They had tricked the entire city’s so-called Intelligence Network and gotten their target alive. Anthony would be pleased.
She manually entered a destination into the dash screen and then watched as the view out the window passed them in a blur. She let out a breath, things appeared to have worked. The Mag-Lev car had questioned none of it. It happily assumed they were just ordinary passengers travelling into the city.
The man flat on his back in the middle of the vehicle hardly made a sound as he breathed. Phoenix looked down to him and saw a trail of blood that had run down his forehead, before drying into a crimson track. “Did you have to hit him so hard?” she asked.
The man without a bloodied face, but holding his side instead, shrugged his shoulders.
“If he doesn’t wake up when we hand him over to Anthony, you can tell him why.” She returned to staring out the window as buildings flashed across her eyes. They relied on violence far too quickly for her liking. She had seen her fair share already and never liked seeing it when not required. It demonstrated their inexperience. For now she enjoyed the view, with the worry that their captive was useless in his current state.
Nearly twenty minutes later, the view had become much flatter after traversing the middle of the city and out the other side. This part appeared a mixture of industrial areas and office buildings, with a few rough housing blocks thrown in for good measure. What no-one knew was that this was also the base for Anthony’s operations. He had chosen the area for the reason of hiding and it had worked flawlessly so far.
>
The warehouse the Simova man had been working at was one of many dotted about the city, each of which had a similar purpose. All she ever understood was that they were searching for things within the city’s network and collecting them. What happened after that was not her concern.
Along a final curved section of Mag-Lev track was their stop. The car slowed sharply before pulling into the lay-by track. Once it had stopped the doors opened and the bright lights of the station shone down upon them. If everything was working as she had intended, then they would be able to drag their unconscious man out of the Mag-Lev car without setting off any alarms. To find out she stepped out first; her description would have been around the city multiple times if they had been spotted.
“Quick,” she said, waving her accomplices along. No alarms, sirens or warning messages met them as they exited, which told her that they had succeeded. All that was left was to carry the man to Anthony’s building, which stood between warehouses of equally nondescript design.
* * *
Graham’s sister, Ruth, came straight over the moment he called and told her the terrible news. Since then she had managed little in terms of conversation and only said a few words each time, before resuming her tears again. Now she sat sobbing hopelessly into her hands.
“I don’t understand…” she began to say.
Beside her was Jane, with little Alex sat watching with worry from the kitchen table. To keep Alex quiet Graham had given her some ice-cream to occupy her, which had since melted. Standing a few feet from his sister, Graham could only watch for the time being. He had no idea what to say to her. After ‘Your husband has been kidnapped’ he ran out of things to say. So once again it had fallen into Jane’s lap. Except she was good at it.
“We’ll find him, Ruth, don’t worry. The police will be calling back any minute with news, I promise,” Jane said.
“Why was he there?” Ruth asked, looking up at Graham. He wanted to reply, but his sister had already moved on to her next question. “Did he know them?”
