A HARSH BLUNT pain in his side woke Ryan Granier with a start. The room was dark, but he could make out the outlines and sounds of at least three other people in front of him. He sucked in air painfully. Another strike came, this time to his stomach, winding him. The pain was intense. He tried to bring his arms up and curl into a ball, but two of his assailants prised his arms away from him and picked him up in such a way as to restrain him.
The light came on, blinding him for a moment. In front of Ryan, still in his wheelchair, was Yosef Klein. Surrounding him and holding Ryan up were the other members of Yosef’s unit.
‘Good morning, Councillor,’ said Yosef. ‘I hope you’re ready to go about your day.’
Ryan struggled to breathe as Yosef continued, ‘I wonder if you saw the news last night?’
Ryan shook his head, still gasping, almost unable to keep his chin off his chest.
‘Ahhh,’ said Yosef, a sick grin on his face. ‘Well, it turns out – and I was just as shocked as anyone else to hear this, in spite of my low opinion of you and yours – it turns out that the Soucouyant virus originated in a computer programming facility. And that computer programming facility was owned as a subsidiary of … what major New Cairo-based conglomerate was it again, Suhayl?’
The man holding up Ryan by his left arm said, ‘That’d be the GeniSec Corporation, Yosef.’
Yosef pointed at him. ‘How right you are, my friend. How right you are. The problem is, Councillor, we feel as though the misery brought upon us, and upon our friends and families, and really upon this whole city, is your fault by proxy. You got rich and powerful off the back of the exploitation of the downtrodden and the unfortunate. It’s because of you that the people of this city are suffering.’
Yosef reached up, crooked a finger under Ryan’s chin, and brought it up until he was looking him straight in the eyes.
‘We’re suffering, Councillor. We’re in pain, and we feel that it’s time that we share that pain with you.’
Ryan attempted to wrestle free from the grip of the man Yosef had called Suhayl, but a stabbing sensation flared where he had first been stomped, and he let out a whimper of pain.
Yosef did a half-turn in his wheelchair and said to the others, ‘Come on. Let’s take him downstairs.’
‘Please, don’t!’ Ryan gasped.
Yosef looked back over his shoulder, a glint in his eye. ‘It’s not my call, Councillor. It comes from higher up.’
The two NCLC operatives carrying him followed Yosef through the large steel door into the corridor leading towards the main complex of the safe house, Ryan slung between them. Whatever the building had been used for in the past, it was large and secure. Small letterbox windows were set all along the top of the ceiling, and most had been covered in black tape.
Suhayl clasped a hand over Ryan’s mouth as they entered a large room filled with mattresses, on which dozens of people appeared to be sleeping, though it was too dark to identify them.
‘Make a sound, and everything that’s going to happen to you happens much, much slower,’ Suhayl hissed into Ryan’s ear.
Moving between the mattresses, the group crossed to a door in the other side of the room, then went down several flights of concrete stairs. The wheels of Yosef’s chair warped as they descended, the tyres and spokes shifting, clinging to the steps and allowing him to roll down the stairs smoothly. Ryan was not so lucky. Every step the people carrying him went down caused a jolt of pain to run through his side. The stabbing sensation was becoming more and more intense. Ryan realized that he must have at least one broken rib. As his grunts became more and more audible, the jolt became harsher with each step and the resulting pain became worse.
Eventually they arrived at the bottom of the stairwell, facing into a long corridor. On the right side were four doors, each one looking heavy and tightly locked. Yosef spun round again to face Ryan.
‘This building used to be a bank, Councillor. I won’t tell you which one, because you not knowing where you are is rather important. But these are the vaults in which the safety deposit boxes are kept. They’re large, they’re impenetrable and they’re soundproof. As suited as they were to their old job, we’ve decided to appropriate them for our own uses.’
‘Is the white room finished yet?’ asked one of the NCLC operatives, a scowling woman a head taller than the rest of the group. The others looked at her, surprised.
‘No, it’s still under construction,’ said Yosef, taken aback, ‘and besides, we’re saving that for his father.’ He faced Ryan again. ‘We’ve got a far more immediate method of treatment for you, Councillor.’
He turned to the nearest door and tapped on the keyboard projected from his portable terminal. The door opened inwards, revealing a large room, its walls lined with metal drawers. In the centre was a single steel chair with handcuffs attached. The only light came from a large lamp which pointed at the chair and glinted off a steel tray on a stand near by. The operatives dragged Ryan inside, dumped him unceremoniously onto the chair, and clasped the handcuffs round his arms and legs.
‘Where’s Ava?’ Ryan yelled into the darkness behind the blinding light now trained on his face.
‘Oh, she won’t be up and about for another two hours or so. More than enough time to be done here and get you back.’
Ryan looked at the metal tray to his right. Lying on it, each on its own paper towel, were what were mostly either very old surgical tools or very old woodworking tools. His eyes widened. ‘What are you going to do to me?’
Yosef rolled into his field of vision, into the light from the lamp. ‘Oh, I’m not going to do anything to you. I’m in a wheelchair, you see.’ He motioned down facetiously. ‘And if I’m being entirely honest, I’m not sure that I could, even in an able state. But we’ve got a guy for this. Normally he does it for information, or he used to at least. Passwords to networks, plans for secret events. It’s amazing what he can make people do.’
There was a knocking sound. A coarse, deep voice rang out. ‘You didn’t start without me, did you?’
Yosef quickly turned himself around. ‘No, sir.’
‘Good. Let’s have this ready for the morning news. I want this setting the Council’s agenda for today. We might even have a response by lunch.’
Only the figure’s shoes showed in the lamplight. They were expensive-looking leather loafers, quite at odds with the clothes he’d seen on the other rebels. The metal door behind the shadowy figure closed with a heavy percussive clank.
The figure walked towards Ryan. ‘You, in the chair. What is your name?’
Ryan looked up. ‘What?’
A large gloved hand reached out and wrapped around the back of Ryan’s head, pulling it forward. At the same time, a hard elbow swung inwards, colliding with Ryan’s left cheekbone with extraordinary force. He felt himself falling backwards, in too much pain to realize precisely what had happened. He landed hard, his arms trapped under the back of the chair. He let out a scream of pain, and frantically twisted his body, trying to turn the chair onto its side and free his crushed arms. This just aggravated his broken ribs, resulting in an impotent flopping motion. Powerful hands pulled him back up, held him in place and sank a punch into his stomach. Again, the wind was knocked out of him and he doubled over, tears in his eyes. A slight darkness encroached around the edges of his vision for a second and receded.
‘STOP!’ he yelled. ‘My … my name is Ryan Granier.’
The gloved hands clasped his jaw and scalp and roughly held his head forward. ‘Say it again, with your title.’
‘My name is Councillor Ryan Granier.’
‘And who is your father?’
‘My father is High Councillor Tau Granier.’
‘The majority shareholder and former CEO of which conglomerate?’
‘The Genesis Security and Technology Corporation. GeniSec.’
Ryan felt the hands on his face loosen slightly, pinching less. He realized he was bleeding from a split cheek. Drops of b
lood spattered his already filthy shirt.
‘And how many days has it been since you were first taken?’
Ryan had to think for a moment. This was apparently a moment too long. The hands pulled him forwards again, and with his arms and legs still tied to the chair he was unable to stop the chair tipping forwards all the way, crashing with all of his weight onto his knees and face. He felt more blood well up, this time on his brow, and the rest of his face throbbed with pain. The chair was pulled back up, and him with it, and the hands grasped his head again. ‘How many days has it been, maggot?’
‘N-n-nine days, nine days,’ he said, his already swelling face tightening.
‘Good. Here’s today’s newspaper, to confirm that this isn’t staged.’
The figure behind him drew out a newspaper, but pointed it in the opposite direction, so he couldn’t see the headline or the date.
Who is he talking to?
‘As you can see, Councillor Granier is still alive.’ His tone was forceful and deliberate, as though he were formally addressing someone. ‘You graciously put your plans for total quarantine on hold for now. However, in light of recent developments, we’ve decided to push for something a little more ambitious.’
Ryan saw in front of him, in the darkness, a tiny little red light. They were filming this.
‘We, the people of New Cairo, want to see the ban on people from “high-infection” areas getting in and out of the city lifted, seeing as how being poor and scared is not in fact a sickness. Furthermore, we want to see the resignation of the High Councillor for having overseen the greatest massacre this city has ever known. We want an investigation into who created the virus and, more pertinently, under whose orders. We want whomsoever this investigation turns up, at whatever level of the government or corporate ladder, to be tried and, if found guilty, executed for crimes against humanity.’
The figure, still masked by shadow, gestured towards Ryan.
‘You have a week to comply with these demands, or we will kill your son, Tau Granier. Of course, we expect that you will require extra proof that this really is the councillor. He’s not shaved in over a week and he’s not currently in the best physical condition, after all. With this tape, you’ll find a viable DNA sample. You won’t be able to miss it. Hold him.’
Four masked operatives rushed forward and held Ryan in such a way as to stop him moving anything other than his neck. He thrashed and struggled all he could, but the people holding him were too strong.
The man who had been tormenting him walked round to his right and reached for an object on the tray. It was a thin handle of what looked almost like a craft knife. A gloved thumb flicked a switch on the handle. A steel blade protruded from the top, about an inch in length, which quickly began to glow red.
Ryan’s breath caught in his throat. He yelled, horrified, and struggled even harder against his captors, disregarding the pain in his ribs or his face. He thrashed his head around, trying to bite or head-butt, and desperately attempted to move his limbs. It was no use.
The figure leaned forward into the light. It was the old man who had taken care of the children, whom Ryan had not trusted. Ryan searched for the name. Maalik. Expertly, the bearded old man sliced at the material of Ryan’s left trouser leg, the edges burnt black, opening a small window and exposing the skin of his thigh.
‘If you’ll notice, the skin on the enclosed sample is artificially darkened, as is Councillor Granier’s, and also High Councillor Granier’s, as a matter of fact,’ Maalik said into the camera. ‘As status symbols go, it’s certainly the only one of his that still endures now. So we feel that it’s useful for our purposes.’
The blade grazed Ryan’s skin. The heat was extraordinary, more than Ryan could have imagined. He let out a scream and recoiled, attempting to get away from the pain, but his captors held him tight. An angry red burn sprang up.
The stroke completed, Maalik reversed the blade and brought it back. It slid into Ryan’s skin as easily as into butter, the skin melting and charring where the blade came into contact with it. Ryan screamed again, louder this time, and struggled still harder against his restraints, disregarding every injury but the one being inflicted upon him, but the NCLC operatives were much stronger than he was. The blade completed its stroke, and a wafer-thin slice of skin fell to the ground. Ryan sobbed and muttered whatever pleas he could string together, but his captors continued regardless.
‘As you can see, Councillor Ryan, a small piece of flesh gets burnt too easily. The greatest boon of this particular tool is the instant cauterization. Which allows us to do this.’
He plunged the blade into Ryan’s thigh, and pulled it down. Ryan howled, every thought and sense blocked out by one great message of pain, pain, pain.
A second stab and pull yielded a wedge of flesh, which Maalik tugged from Ryan’s leg. There was only a small amount of blood. As Maalik had said, the wound had been cauterized immediately, leaving a gaping wound and a smell sickeningly reminiscent of steak. Ryan twisted and vomited from the pain, spraying one of the operatives standing next to him. He heard a storm of expletives, as though they were somewhere far away, and receding. His vision grew dark.
A few trace sensations lingered, and then stopped.
For the second time that day, Councillor Ryan Granier awoke in pain. There appeared to be a mask over his face, blindfolding him. He tried to reach up and pull it off, but was stopped by the extraordinary pain in his arms.
‘I wouldn’t. You have a number of fractures, plus that mask’s all that’s keeping the cuts and swelling where we want them.’ He recognized the voice. It was Ava. ‘I don’t know what happened, and I don’t want to know. I’m assuming this came from higher up the food chain from me. As far as I’m concerned you have a hell of a bad sleeping position. But I’m going to do what I can to help you.’
Ryan attempted to muster a response, but all that came out was a groan.
‘You’re welcome.’
There was a small, cold pressure on the back of his neck. The pain began to melt away, leaving him with a detached floating sensation.
‘Now, that nerve block should help the pain. You’ve cracked your seventh rib through ninth on your right side. I’ve done what I can with calcium scaffolding there, which should stop anything really bad happening. You’re lucky you don’t have flail chest. As for your leg, congratulations, you’ve got a wedge of your thigh missing, which I’d imagine you can feel. Now, you should be haemo-dynamically stable, but I can’t get in there and rebuild anything because, I’ll be honest, if I use medical supplies that are meant to help people who get shot fighting I’m going to get in a lot of trouble. Your left forearm’s fractured, but calcium scaffolding is already making good progress; I’ve relocated your right shoulder dislocation and the mask is reducing the facial bruising and swelling. You’re in for a boring day of waiting around for different treatments to work, but it’s all just going to get better from here.’
‘Is the video on the news?’ asked Ryan, his voice raw from screaming and vomit, and muffled by the mask.
‘Headline. It feeds nicely into the overarching “GeniSec is public enemy number one” narrative, and it’s antagonizing both GeniSec and the Council at once.’
Something damp and cooling slid into the dent in his leg.
‘There,’ said Ava, exhaling with relief. ‘That’s as much as I can do with biological medical solutions. As for mechanical, if there’s still a GeniSec left after all this is over, I’d imagine you can swing whatever bio-augs will help.’ For a moment, Ryan lay there, enjoying the relief from the crippling pain in his leg.
‘So do you think your father’s company really did make the Soucouyant?’
Ryan hadn’t had time to consider the question properly, so he thought out loud. ‘I don’t know. I mean, we basically know nothing about the virus, except for what it does, so that’s really all I can judge. But I don’t understand why it was to their advantage to do this. Last time I checked, Ge
niSec was doing great. I get why people might think that it’s forced obsolescence for the bio-augs, but there’s honestly no need. There was no new generation of bio-augs coming for at least another half a decade. The research and development money is all going into more AI development right now.’ He paused, letting the pain in his raw throat subside. ‘The risk is pointless. If it could be proved, GeniSec would be destroyed overnight, and most of the people who wouldn’t get the upgrades don’t have the money to replace dead augmentations anyway. I don’t know how it got there, but I don’t think GeniSec ever knew it was coming from them.’
Ava peeled the mask from Ryan’s face. ‘Don’t try and sit up yourself.’ He was lying on an elevated bed in the middle of the office used as a makeshift operating room. Ava grabbed his still bound ankles and swung his legs round so they were dangling over the edge of the bed. Taking hold of his shoulders, she pulled him into a sitting position, and it was only then that he realized he was wearing a medical gown and a pair of shorts as opposed to the suit he’d spent most of the previous week in.
‘Can I stand?’
Ava let out a snort of laughter. ‘Councillor, they took a chunk out of your leg that’d feed a family of five. The flesh binder will heal a lot of it within a few days, but for now, you’re going to have to use these. The calcium scaffolding on your ribs and shoulder should keep it from hurting too much.’
She handed him two crutches, and he placed them under his arms, balancing on his good leg.
‘Hey, Ava … thanks.’
After a pause, Ava replied, ‘I didn’t sign up for this. It’s all getting out of hand. At one of the other safe houses, a dozen Security Force officers were killed last night.’ Her composure left her and she looked sick with anxiety. ‘There’s something good and righteous at the heart of this organization, something about fighting for the right thing. But there’s so much anger, and it’s growing worse. They didn’t have to do this to you.’
‘Why did you join?’
‘Because I hated the Council. I hated the fact that people like me or my cousin, the most vulnerable kinds of people in this city, were considered necessary sacrifices, rather than people with a right to decide what to do for ourselves. So, between my shifts at work, I started volunteering with the old NCLC, back when it was an advocacy group. Even after it changed into a paramilitary operation, there were people like Kahleed and Jacob, who were just trying to make a bad situation better. But then Maalik came along, with his dead son and his military experience, and I’m here thinking, does he want a war? Jacob got killed and now it’s all just about striking back. Honestly, I hate this whole thing. This isn’t what I wanted.’
The Hive Construct Page 14
