by Ian Williams
“What’s happened to you?” Graham asked. He saw Elliot’s chest and nearly choked when the flashing device blinked back at him. It was unlike anything he had seen before and had evidently seared through Elliot’s shirt, leaving it flapping about in the breeze. Bright red smears of gel highlighted the multitude of cuts and grazes across his face and neck. Someone had at least attempted to seal the wounds with a sparingly light amount of Medi-Sealant spray – probably by someone with little or no training at all.
Elliot stayed silent. He only stared at his wife with the one eye he could keep open. His face had turned purple in most places that were not already cut or grazed. But the most worrying thing on him was the strange yellow, hexagonal box still flashing a threatening red, in his middle. Whoever had placed it on him had made sure it stayed put with tight straps that disappeared under the duffle coat.
“Help me get him inside,” Ruth ordered.
They both took an arm and helped Elliot hobble forward. He could hardly walk at all, they were doing most of it for him. How he had made it there by himself was anyone’s guess for now. The dark green duffle coat hinted at someone having helped him. As they moved him along, his feet dragging at times, Graham studied the coat. Something had him distracted all of a sudden.
“There on the sofa, quick.” Ruth pointed and then placed her hand on his side, which made Elliot breathe in sharply.
Graham ushered his friend over to the sofa and lowered him carefully onto the cushion. Even this caused his partner some degree of pain. There appeared no part of Elliot that had escaped an injury of some kind. He knelt down by the sofa and continued to gawk at the bloodied mess sitting in front of him. Then it hit him. He had seen the duffle coat before. The red haired woman!
“Where’s the damn bandages?” Ruth said, while rummaging through the kitchen drawers and cupboards in the background.
“Elliot?” Graham asked. “Where did you get this coat?”
Elliot stared up at the ceiling until the question sunk in. His mouth was split in two places, which still slowly seeped blood. The instant his lips parted he snapped his working eye shut for a second. As he began peering into Graham’s eyes he tried again to speak. “Girl,” he said, as if this was a complete answer.
“Here, put this over his eye,” Ruth said, handing a wad of damp gauze to Graham.
He gently placed it over Elliot’s face and watched as small trails of water, tainted red, dribbled down his cheeks, a layer of dried blood wiped away with little effort, though the skin still remained a worrying colour underneath. “Sorry buddy,” he said.
As Ruth attended to the various other injuries, Graham held the gauze in place. There was little else he knew how to do. He was finding it hard applying any intelligence to the situation. Instead he followed Ruth’s guidance to the letter. All the while he considered the significance of the duffle coat. Why had she given it to Elliot? Did she feel guilty about taking him in the first place? He was sure it meant something.
“I need to check for internal injuries. Graham, help him lie flat on the chair,” Ruth said. She then set about tinkering with her wrist screen, which she had removed from her arm. She flattened the screen out and pulled at the corners to expand its size. Once the device was set to its tablet-mode and able to be held with two hands, she looked to Graham and nodded. “Go ahead.”
With Elliot now lying straight on the sofa with his legs hanging over the end, Ruth began to scan his body. She held the tablet inches above and slowly ran it up and down the length of him.
“Anything?” Graham asked.
“Thankfully, nothing more than a couple of cracked ribs.” Ruth placed the tablet on the arm of the chair and perched on the edge, next to Elliot’s midriff. After gently stroking the side of his face to wipe away some of the dampness left by the gauze, she swooped down and kissed him. His reciprocation was joined by yet another pain induced recoil.
“Injury detected,” the Home Management System said suddenly. “Do you require assistance?”
“Yes please, send a medical team, thanks,” Ruth replied. She studied the device on Elliot’s chest and then spoke again. “What is it?”
“I have no idea, Sis. I think it’s stuck to him.”
“It is,” Elliot said. “Please don’t touch it.” He coughed sharply before speaking again, this time with an audible shortness of breath and a high pitched whistle. “Cancel assistance please.”
“Assistance cancelled,” the automated system confirmed.
“Are you sure you don’t want anyone to take a look at you? We won’t touch that thing, we promise,” Graham said.
Elliot nodded.
“What’s happened to you, buddy?”
No answer came. The ordeal Elliot had endured had begun to take its toll and now threatened to claim his consciousness too. He kept his head against the soft cushion and slowly faded, until his eyelids stopped half open and only displayed the bloodshot whites of his eyes. The pupils had vanished from view entirely, taking his waking mind along with it.
After nearly twenty minutes of covering cuts, soothing bruises with warm water and re-applying Medi-Sealant – from their own supplies this time – Elliot had drifted in and out of unconsciousness. He fell asleep without too much pain thanks to the strongest pain killers they had stored away. All Graham and Ruth could do was watch as he breathed heavily through his swollen mouth and half blocked nostrils.
A prolonged silence was broken when an exhausted looking Ruth turned to Graham. “We have to tell the police about this,” she said.
The only reply he could give was a slight nod of the head. He felt too numb to speak after seeing his friend in a way he never dreamt he ever would. The last twelve hours had drained them all. The hope was that Elliot could at least rest now. Once he was coherent again, they would push for an explanation. For now Graham just felt glad he was back and was in no doubt that Ruth felt the same way too.
When the wall screen switched itself on, Ruth then asked for the police to be called to their address. For a second the display turned red around the border to show the request had gone through. But strangely it then stopped flashing. They expected to see a friendly face appear next asking what they were in need of. What they actually saw was a fuzzy face appearing through a static interference that had frozen the images behind it.
“Hello?” the unformed face said.
Graham tried to make out the features of the person he saw and came up empty. Whoever it was he chose to speak from darkness. Disregarding the strangeness out of hand meant he could carry on with their request for help. “Hi, we need police assistance at apartment fourteen, on Westbrook aven–”
“That won’t be happening, I’m afraid,” the man interrupted. His featureless face moved closer to the screen to take up almost the entire display.
“Who are you?” Ruth asked.
“Elliot will explain. Oh, wait, is he sleeping?” The man chuckled. “I guess we tuckered him out. Oh well. Perhaps you two can help me then.”
It became abundantly clear that the person they were speaking to had no intention of calling for help. Graham knew exactly what has happening; the kidnappers had made contact. He made an assumption about the strange yellow box attached to Elliot’s chest straight after. Whatever it was, it was sure to be the reason the scumbags had let him go.
“What did you do to him?” Ruth shouted.
“Easy Ruth, we don’t know what he wants.” Graham tried his best to quiet his sister, for fear of provoking a reaction they could not defend against. His mind was never more than two thoughts away from what the device could be meant for.
“Please be quiet, there’s not much time. In fact there’s a little over twenty two hours until your friend there dies a very painful death. So I’d listen very carefully if I were you,” the man said, again with an oddly threatening laugh.
“You bastard! What have you done?” Ruth said.
“Shut up, shut your fucking mouth. I’m in charge here, so keep it
shut,” the man ordered at the top of his voice. It instantly silenced Ruth and woke Elliot up at the same time. The man then continued at a more normal speaking level. “I have a job for you and I need it done quickly. There are some rules to follow. The first is: no police. If the device sticking out of Elliot’s chest detects the presence of any police, then it will go off. If you contact anyone for help, it will go off. Do you understand me?”
No-one spoke, but they each nodded in agreement. Elliot, who had not fully awoken yet and was still halfway between lying and sitting, joined in to confirm as well.
“Good. Now, I need you to find someone for me. Do this in time and Elliot will live. It’s as simple as that. There isn’t much more you need to know about it from me.” The face shifted in position to reveal a modicum of light shining in the background. He was speaking from the shadows of a much larger room with little in the way of illumination, effortlessly conveying mystery and threat through the wall screen toward them. “When Elliot is feeling up to it, I expect he will have more to tell you. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” Elliot replied, inadvertently whistling through his teeth again. He rested on his right arm, with his shoulder pushed up to meet his ear. The position appeared incredibly uncomfortable at the best of times, with his injuries only making it worse. Yet it was causing him much less pain than the conversation they were having with the stranger. Graham saw a deep fear wash his friends face with a paleness that rivalled that of the dead.
“You may want to start with telling them who The Sentient Collector is,” the man finished with, adding just one more question to proceedings: Who is The Sentient Collector?
With the same immediacy it had begun with, the conversation abruptly ended. The images once locked and frozen behind the man’s fuzzy outline now came back to life. And as a demonstration of exactly how fleeting a moment, the same program was still on, like nothing had occurred at all.
Even though the man had vanished and the world had returned to its default setting of calmness, his presence was just as strongly felt. If he still watched from the shadows, they would never know it. For one of them this was the least of his concerns as a much more important issue loomed ever closer. Graham needed answers from his long-time friend, and it seemed a life depended on the answer.
Chapter 7
Moonlighting
“Before I explain, I need something from the bedroom,” Elliot said. He sat hunched in the chair with his head hanging level with his shoulders. Pain was not the only problem his body appeared to be fighting, extreme tiredness was too.
“What?” Ruth knelt beside the sofa and held Elliot’s left hand, unwilling to let it go for a second.
Sat on a small coffee table behind her was Graham. Not a particularly comfortable surface to be sitting on, except he could hardly really feel a thing. His mind and body had numbed somewhat since Elliot’s return. Now there was even more to worry about. What exactly had Elliot been hiding from them all? The request to retrieve some unknown item felt an odd one to him, but the time to question that was not now. He wanted the big answers quickly and had little interest in a delay. “Just tell us what’s going on,” he insisted.
“I will, but this is important. Please,” Elliot said, pulling Ruth up closer. “It’s in a box underneath the floorboard, just next to the cupboard.”
“You’re kidding, you’ve hidden something in the floor?” Ruth said.
“Please, it’s part of this.”
She stood and set off for the bedroom, with a frown highlighting her anticipation of something bad about to be revealed. After a couple of hesitations on the way, she then disappeared in pursuit of the unknown box. Only the sounds of her rummaging could be heard.
Once she was out of the room, Elliot turned to face Graham. His mouth remained open at all times, except when he was forced to swallow. Each time he did, the act played out in an exaggerated way that caused him to wince. “I’ve been lying to you, G,” he began. “There’s more to me working with you than you know. There has been for a few years now. I couldn’t tell you what I was doing without putting you and Ruth in danger.”
“What are you talking about?” Graham sat up abruptly. “We’re no more than tech repair men. What real danger is in that?”
“No, we’re more than that. We’re murderers, each and every one of us at Simova. The MARCs aren’t just corruptions, they’re alive.”
“Not this bullshit again,” Graham said, shaking his head in disbelief.
Elliot threw himself back into the cushion of the chair in obvious frustration. “It’s what I’ve been doing that caused this.”
With the black box in hand and a look of utter betrayal on her face, Ruth reappeared and broke up the hushed conversation. She held the box up and as if presenting the evidence to a jury, she said, “Can you please explain this?”
“Here,” Elliot said, gesturing to Ruth to hand it to him.
When she did, she followed it straight away with a sigh. “What the hell have you been hiding from me Elliot?” she said.
On top of the box was a fingerprint scanner that had been worn from years of excessive use. Elliot placed his forefinger over the scanner and held it still until a beep noise rang out, followed by a click. The lid then popped open. He lifted it the rest of the way and removed something from inside. For a moment he held the item without revealing it to Graham or Ruth, suggesting there was no going back after he did.
“Show me,” Ruth said.
What Elliot eventually found the courage to produce was a small inhaler item with all labelling scratched away to nothing more than rough paper scrapings. He handed it to Ruth, who looked it over but could not make sense of it. Up to the point it was passed to Graham, Elliot remained silent. The need to explain quickly became obvious. “It’s a D-Stim inhaler.”
“You’re a damn D-Stim addict?” Ruth said, withdrawing to the kitchen before continuing. “I can’t believe it.” She remained away from the sofa while her confused anger settled. Away from the rest of them, her arms flapped around as they tried to find somewhere to hang. Eventually she decided on placing one hand on her side and the other resting on the top of her head.
It was now Graham’s turn to ask. “So this has all been about drugs; the kidnapping, this?” He pointed to the flashing device on Elliot’s chest.
Before Elliot could reply, Ruth returned, with her eyes much wider than before and filling up quickly with tears. “You bastard,” she said. “How long have you been using?”
“About five years, on and off.” Elliot said, surprisingly calmly. “But in that time I’ve learnt to control it.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Elliot, look at you.”
“Please Ruth, I need to explain everything. This isn’t why they took me. They took me because, for the last four years I’ve been working for The Sentient Collector. He’s why they took me, or at least his collection of MARCs.”
Graham’s mind flashed with a white-hot rage at the mention of an ulterior motive for working with him all the years before. He could not fathom a reason why Elliot had kept this a secret for so long, and all for the sake of some random person’s collection. “Why work for him? What does he want with MARCs? And where is he getting them from?”
“Isn’t it obvious? People like me have been giving them to him.”
“Oh shit. Are you telling me you’ve been keeping the ones we caught alive? Are you mad? They’re dangerous Elliot. They don’t last long enough to do anything, except destroy things.”
“That’s what Simova wants people to think. The Sentient Collector has shown that to be a lie. He’s probably collected hundreds by now, and each one is more intelligent than you could imagine. I don’t know how he does what he does. All I know is that I’ve been helping him save MARCs from their death sentences.”
“Hang on, let me get this straight…” Graham began, but soon found it too difficult to continue. He chose instead to wander the floor like a confused animal looking for shelter. A
quick march to the window provided him with a temporary place to hide away for the time he needed to comprehend the crazy things Elliot was saying.
“I know this is a lot to take in–”
“You’re not kidding,” Ruth interrupted. “All this time I believed I knew you. But this.” She held the D-Stim inhaler up in the air, then threw it to the far wall. Upon contact with the hard surface it smashed into smaller pieces on the floor. The plastic had broken instantly, yet the small pressurised canister remained untarnished, almost as though it was taunting her weakness.
“It’s not like that, honey, please.” Elliot reached for his wife. When she turned away he stretched out and took a hold of her arm. He pulled her close and held his hands on her waist. In this position he refrained from looking at her, but rather rested his head against her stomach.
Graham watched from his refuge while the urge to speak again built inside of him. Elliot’s explanation still did not fill in enough of the missing pieces for him. The moment the question had fully formed in his mind he put it to his friend. “So if it wasn’t because of the drugs, then why did that woman and those men take you?”
The question hung for a second or two. When Elliot finally pulled away from his wife and looked toward the window, his face contorted – whether through physical or emotional pain, Graham found it hard to tell. “Because I took MARCs from their boss. I don’t know any more than that, I promise. Why they were collecting them I don’t know, possibly for the same reason. They weren’t at all pleased to hear I’d done it for The Sentient Collector.”
“So they want us to find this person? Who is he then?”
“Graham, honestly I don’t want you two getting involved. I can find him by myself, I don’t need your help.”
Taking the seat beside Elliot, Ruth faced him and held his gaze implicitly while she spoke. “You can’t leave this apartment.”
