Black City (The Lark Case Files)

by Christian Read

  'I know what you want. I have it marked.'

  She has. A time written down on a bit of scrap paper. Cross-reference, then we wait while it rewinds. Doesn't seem very high tech to me, but I'm not in a position to argue.

  'You need a password to make the video play, but that's where it started. I've been in here fifteen hours. I've looked over the tapes. That's it. Now get me out of here, that's the deal. And I'll give you the logon and password.'

  Part of me is annoyed she wants to play this game. I always want to take it to the cutting, see who has the stones, but I'm both bluffed out and bored by risk. I just want to finish this.

  'Keep your head down. Your eyes down. Do not look. Do you know the story of Lot?'

  'He's a prophet. Fled a bad city of homosexuals and his wife stayed behind. Fire. Salt. Yeah.'

  'Close enough. Well, here's the thing. Fuck around and look at the walls, you'll go mental. No messing about. If you can't do that, we'll find another way.'

  But she does. Puts her company jacket across her face and walks, head down, to the door. When she can feel the pre-dawn light, the early winter wind, she keeps her word. I write it down.

  'Go home. Then, get out of the city for a few days.' She nods.

  I get ready to walk her to the doors but she bolts into a run, keeping her eyes down. She opens the door, jumps at the guard. But he's not interested. She looks back just once but I'm already back in the office.

  'Wait!' she yells. I turn.

  'Thanks. And be careful.'

  Light up, hands cupped against the flame, knowing it makes me look spooky. Little glamour to fuel a long day.

  'Cheers. Run.'

  'My name's Imtaz. Tell me what this was about later.'

  'Maybe. Run.'

  She does. I go back into the secure room and lock the door. Type it in. The data is sent somewhere secure, but you can watch the last 72 hours here, stored on a laptop. It takes a picture every few seconds.

  Here it comes.

  Fifty-Eight

  image 1

  22:30

  Image

  Carpark. Car owner enters car.

  image 2

  22:32

  Slight figure, very young adult or teenager, enters into carpark. Blue trousers, hooded sweatshirt pulled up high. Carry-bag.

  image 3

  22:35

  Figure spraypaints on a cement pylon. Image unclear.

  image 4

  22:40

  Spraypainted image is a glyph.

  Translation: "All this is Empire."

  image 5

  22: 47

  No change.

  image 6

  22:51

  Man in suit, presumably resident, enters shot.

  image 7

  23:03

  Man is staring at glyph.

  Skip to the end.

  image 14

  23:11

  Man is still staring at glyph.

  Hooded figure stands with.

  image 15

  03:22

  Five figures stare at glyph. One, attention still on glyph, is handing hooded figure what appears to be a wallet and packet of cigarettes.

  image 16

  3:27

  All residents in shot kneel before hooded figure

  So that definitely explains that. This boy in the hoodie has somehow gotten the Scroll. Ransacked it or lucked it or whatever. He's tagging with it. Which is about safe as taking a gasoline shower in a fire factory. Still. An answer is an answer. Just follow the tags to the kid. Plan? Not yet. Let's hope something shuffles into my head through a hole in my skull before I find him.

  One day, we'll all live in a fire. The difference is, I'll have people waiting there for me.

  The Old Man's words to Mully. Fifty years ago now, I suppose. More. Fast forward through the tapes but they clear out after that. I look around this little room. Masking tape. Good enough.

  OK.

  I get into my mood again. Go back to see the doorman. 'Come in', I tell him. He ignores me. I pull his arm. I guess he has no orders.

  Draw a circle around the guard in tape. Yeah. High fucking Atlantean magic here. I just don't want to waste the supplies in my sexy bag. Glance at his watch. No one's coming in at this time to break my concentration. Stare at his eye. Go deep. Murmur a lullaby someone taught me somewhere, making that the spell. Looking for the domination spell. I envision his brain as a hot grey landscape, looking for a beastie biting.

  And I realise. He's not under control, hexed into submission.

  He's possessed. Possessed by that bastard kid who got a hold of the scroll. And by... others. All possessing each other. Super-positioned throughout the city. And more than possessed. I see something moving through his brain, eating, transforming.

  They're all becoming on another. One entity, unambiguous. Interchangeable.

  Ready to... I think the Archon just wants to enter every mind at once. No human could bear the pressure of such a thing within them. A man in a child's dress hardly describes the magnitude. A million humans couldn't.

  Hits me. He's an old man. There's a hint in the name. Old when Mully was dancing the jitterbug. Old now. Death obsession. Playing around with an entity that can replicate forever. This is what he wants. To stretch out and be eternal.

  I have to find the kid whose doing this. Have to sort this out tonight. Bad suspicion walks with me.

  Fifty-Nine

  That night, Bettina dreamed.

  Her dream was this.

  She was a lake and someone had dammed her tributaries and rivers. She was unable to flow, was suddenly a prisoner to her own banks. Then she became (there was) a predator that was within her body of water. So much more intimate than her body of flesh, which she had long ago lost intimacy with. Since she had died, skin and skeleton seemed a bludgeon rather than a home.

  The thing within her was no sleek, and it came up, gulping grotesque wheezes on the surface. It was not a thing natural to her water. It was bulk and mass and bullfrog-throat ugly.

  And growing. And swallowing water.

  Bettina longs to boil. Is it now or then? She tried to wake up but that was a habit of the living. There was no snapping awake, she was dead and would never wake again. Yet, she dreams.

  Her water slips into its mouths. It is a greedy thing - it also takes mud and rushes and fish and oxygen and all the good things in her liquid corpus. It will never stop. Its thirst will not be sated here. It has ambitions to mar oceans, spoil seas.

  It spills it out of mouths and viler organs, polluting her waters forever. A bad yolk in a broken egg.

  Worms never eat her body. She wondered why.

  Sage. Her name in the dream, suddenly. It's a flavouring for meals like the one this monster has made of her. She thinks of droll worms. 'I had Bettina, with some sage.' Hell, she thinks it's funny enough. Lark wouldn't. He'd look at her with his mummified expression and roll his eyes minutely if he heard that.

  They don't eat her because she's wrong. Dead. Outside a system. Rebel flesh and a traitor's mind. Not a part of God's plan. Undead. Unalive.

  But there's worse than her. Something that would foul everything with a gulping mouth and an ungainly swim.

  Bettina knows she can turn off completely. Go into darkness and peace. Not all her kind (true damnation for them, to be exiled from all oblivion) can, but she could. She can't remember why she's here. Some old man? But the urge to melt into nothingness is overwhelming.

  Why won't she?

  If only she could rot.

  She can't sleep while the monsters drink her.

  Sixty

  The kid is going to ground.

  To the west side, mid, there's a few neighbourhoods that just... gave it up. They're just empty of life, urban qlippoth zones. Community housing. Tower blocks filled with drug dealers who can't even get a proper clientele. The twenty-four hour shops are grilled, and the clerks are armed and sell cigarettes by the single and home-made whisky for ten dollars a
quart. Seven blocks of hobos on the pavement and broken glass and bass-thumping cars driven by gangsters too depressed to even roll you.

  It's called Cherryville.

  Funny thing is, fifteen years ago, the city repurposed this district for 'community outreach.' Put everyone poor and stupid and drunk, give them a cheap one-bedder, choke them with cheap plaster ceilings and forget to incite local business' to move here, throw eleven times the amount of halfway houses and methadone clinics and all that. 'To cope with demand.' Throw everyone with bad wiring in their head, bad blood or hungry hip pockets together, stick iron-armoured cop shops at either end and, well, problem solved, with Jesus giving you the nod for your charity.

  There's a youth centre. The kind of place where a creep with a beard, in cords, pretends he has a good sense of humor and walks around with a clipboard. He's gone. It's gone. It's just a shell. But it's a meeting place for certain of 'the youth'.

  Taggers, I'd wager. Magicians, in their own way. Creating a semiotic and sharing it. But this one boy went too far and charged his marks with power magicians would commit genocide for.

  A car turns a corner. I hide in a shadow. Ludo's boys? I don't know. No intention of finding out. Into the shadows of an old petrol station that just sells porn mags and cigarettes, no fuel. Its lights are out and it's easy to sink into darkness.

  Alright. Let's go.

  Inside the old building, there's Primal Sigil everywhere, incomplete. A decoration, but still powerful enough to fill up my head like cathedral bells. Feel like I've been swallowed as I go through the broken front door. A spider's parlour. It's all shadow and reflected blue streetlight and needles and plastic bags underfoot. Sneaking around is a waste of time.

  Sounds. Hollow hit. Hollow hit. Wrapped up in magic, you know how it works by now, I find it.

  Rec room.

  Table tennis. How they found a ball, I don't know, but they're playing. A young girl, ratty, giving me hep c. just from her sniffles. An Indian boy with dreadlocks. They play. Slow. Sure. Free will, sure. But they're filled up with dozens of other people and splintered into that dozen as well. The weight is slowing down their thoughts, sure as carrying mass.

  Another room. Sick bay. Jesus. Some kid has killed himself in here. Sliced the back of his knees with broken glass. Wears stupid big underwear he's soiled. The smell is vile, and I close the door. Don't need to be in that room to feel the intent, the information. That was payback. The bastard kid who has the scroll decided on a little revenge.

  Turn into a corridor. Lined with the sigils. Door at the end, and I can hear the hissing of spraypaint behind it. It's dark and that'll help me not see. If I don't linger, don't try to read it, that'll help too. Pull up my hood to cut off peripherals. My head is still guarded by my sentinel imagery.

  But my biggest assist is that I've been staring at the damn graffito for a night now. I've kind of built up an immunity. Course, in the same way you slowly build up an immunity to fucking bullets. But it's what I have.

  Knock on the door.

  'Hey. My name's Lark. I want to talk.'

  Silence. Been a few days since anyone could talk to this boy. Figure he's forgotten about anything but puppets right now.

  'I'm not a cop or anything stupid like that. I don't have a gun. If you don't want to talk, I'll go. But I think it's important.'

  Beats. 'Come in.'

  Open the door. The imagery nearly snuffs me like a candle in a storm. Unfocus my eyes. Go blank inside. Slowly, slowly, phase into high-consciousness. Step in.

  Dorm room. Bunk beds. Piss stink. Windows about the bunks, letting in weak streetlight.

  The kid is in the middle of the room. Arms crossed, can in fist.

  A girl. That change anything? Doubt it. Watch her carefully. Tiny. Underfed. Amateur piercings, slightly infected. Thirteen?

  'How come you're not me?'

  'I'm not like other people.'

  'I can fuck you up.' Angry. Scared. Wrong-footed.

  'Yeah, probably. Can do the same to you, if it comes to that. But I didn't come in, all attitude, looking to throw down. This isn't 'come at me.' I just want to talk.'

  Gestures with her pointy chin. 'What's in the bag?'

  'My stuff. Want a smoke?' I offer the pack. She takes one, lights her own. Me too. Nearly finished this pack. Check for an extra. No. Shit.

  Put the bag down, sit on one of the bunks, trying not to worry about the worrying moisture.

  'I'm Lark. When things get weird, it's my job to find out why and see if I can stop it.'

  'You can't stop me. You can't stop it.'

  'Not even sure I want to, kid.'

  'Wick. Don't call me kid. I'm not a kid.'

  'Yeah.' Wave at the room. 'I can see that. So let me see if I can put this together, yeah?'

  Wick sneers.

  'You went into the big old mansion. Not sure how you even knew it was there.'

  'Even before all this started, I could see things. You just have to look careful.'

  She'd be a fuck-off good magician with that sort of talent, but ingratiating myself to her would be fatal. She'd just hear a teacher's voice, or a stranger with candy. But her eyes keep lingering on all the glyphs she's painted. Nods.

  'The house is called the House of Gallowglass. A group of people who worship things used it as, like, their base. Another group of people, like a crazy church group, took on the Gallowglass crew. Then the church group got taken out by a third lot. And somewhere in all that, you found a scroll.'

  She waits. Cocks her head as if listening but not to me.

  'Yeah. So what?'

  'Why could you find it when no one else could?'

  'It knew someone was coming for it, someone who had plans it didn't like. So when it saw me, well, felt me, you know, in the house? It let me see it.'

  'Do you know what it is?'

  'Sorta.'

  'So you get the scroll. Use it to tag some places. And it gets stronger. Shows you some tricks.'

  'Want to see something? It's pretty cool.'

  'Not really.'

  'Look out the window.'

  I get up. Do. There's about a hundred people who weren't there a while ago. Staring up at me. They all whisper my name at once. Creepy. Most of them have cans of paint or markers or crayons or something like that in their fists. She's been busier than I ever expected.

  'They're all me.'

  'Are you them?'

  'Nah.' She gets back to work. Nods as she curves the spray. Satisfied with tricky work.

  'So you get to tagging, all around the city. And the thing in the scroll, right? It helps you get bigger.'

  'Yeah. Got some payback too.'

  'Who wouldn't?' Seems reasonable.

  'So what do you want?'

  'Well, there's a few things. But, and listen, I don't know how it's going to play out between you and me but... This work is good. Like, you're a great artist.'

  Shuts down the hiss of the paint and throws back the hood. shaved head. She stares at me with bird-bright eyes that gleam in the dark. 'Serious?'

  'Yeah. It's real good. I had to follow it, tag to tag, to find you here. I like it. Middle-eastern, sorta, but your own style.'

  Wick goes back to work, turning her face, fighting a style. Under the breath, 'Cool.' Pleased but too cool to show it.

  OK.

  'What I want to know is, what's the endgame for you?'

  'What?'

  'Like, what do you get out of it?'

  Pause, consider. 'Tag the whole fucking city.'

  'You want to become everyone in the city?'

  'Everyone? I don't care about that.'

  'What does it care about?'

  'Wants me to tag the whole fucking city'

  Got it.

  Like I said. A human mind and body, even combined, just isn't enough. But like it's colonising human heads, it's also planning flesh. A city-god. Ten-by-two miles of concrete, steel and dirt to put on like a coat. A titan, wreathed in buildings, streets its
veins, a power grid its nerves. You get the picture.

  The Old Man either has big plans or can't know what he's grasped. He doesn't want to die.

  'So, Wick. OK. I don't want that to happen. I want to be me.'

  She shrugs. 'Run. Soon as I'm done here, making this place like, my base, I'm going to tag buses, trains, cabs. Tried it before, but that was just practice, you know? Let the images out into the world. Get a lot of people. Then, they'll start tagging and drawing. I just need to have a place like this. Strong, you know, to get my back up against. Then it's happening.'

  'OK. I'm going to run.'

  'Wait. It says no.'

  Shark in the water. Some intelligence comes swimming into the lines of the sigils. I feel a terrible attention on me and fight not to fall apart. Feels like a massive sugar crash. Fuck. But wait a second. It's... not all here. Diffuse. Hypercephalic. It's too big yet. I can hold on for a minute. After that. Try to get up and get to the door but no. Fly in a web. Like that. Lark's last stand if it tries for me. Bloody the fucking thing's nose.

  Then Wick saves my life.

  'But you liked my work, man. You're ok.'

  The Archon withdraws, slow as sludge.

  'Thanks,' I mutter, stumbling to the door. Grabbing my bag.

  I leave. She calls after me. 'But if I see you again, you're fucked.'

  Outside, the various Wicks don't even stare at me. They're just waiting. Not puppets, they cough, shift their weight, some scratch. They're people, but all those people are Wick. Evicted from their own bodies, but bodies they are.

  I get away. Walk over to the station and grab two packs. Smoke one and look over the centre, seeing the people shuffle around it.

  And there it is, a plan in my head. Without method. Just thinking about Scarlet and her boyfriend and the idea sneaks into my head.

  Take my phone. Make a call.

  'This is Lark. I want to talk to Ludo.'

  Sixty-One

  The blanco faggot has some balls. Ludo answers the phone.

  'You shouldn't even be alive.'

  'The Hollow? Come on man. I'm Lark. Send a knifeman to take me out?'

  Ludo can hear the false bravado but under the words, there's an undeniable truth. Lark is indeed alive. Ludo's seen the Hollow's terrifying capabilities before. The Old Man has used him three times in the last few years, and twice, Ludo had to check on the results. Fucking terrifying. Not just because of the violence. Anyone can hack with a dull knife. It's the speed. Same-day service. No matter the odds. The Hollow got into a prison for the Old Man and it took six hours.