by Peter Liney
I never seen anyone’s attitude change so abruptly. “What?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh no! Oh, shit!” he said—Jeez, he even swore like a gentleman.
“Can you remove it?” I asked, feeling he might take it a bit more seriously now.
“How long have you had them?”
“I’ve got two more days before it can be keyed, or so I’m told. Thomas too, I guess,” I replied, feeling that deadline creeping up over the horizon like some black dawn. “What does it mean exactly? To be keyed?” I asked.
“I told you, you’ll no longer be the master of your own mind . . . ‘Chained’ would be a much better word than ‘keyed.’”
“Shit!” Gordie exclaimed, swearing like he was much more used to it.
“But how does someone actually get keyed?” I persisted.
“I don’t know. It needs some kind of conductor to ‘talk’ to you, to switch you on. Over the mountains you might get a few days’ grace—or you might not. A lot of people know a little about it; only one knows everything.”
I didn’t need to ask: that was so typical. Everyone involved was allowed their piece of the puzzle, but only she was allowed to put them all together.
Doctor Simon sat there for a while, staring at the road ahead, obviously thinking it through.
“I have to go to the hospital,” he eventually announced. “I need to pick up some equipment, speak to my assistant.”
With that he started the engine and was about to pull away when he obviously thought of something else.
“You’ve got one, too, I hope?” he asked, turning to Gordie.
“What?”
“An implant.”
“No.”
“Jesus!” he groaned, fumbling in his inside pocket, taking out this plastic container and extracting from it a tiny gray disk that he handed to Gordie. It looked a bit like a tinted contact lens. “Put it somewhere safe and always have it on you, no matter what,” he said. “Do you hear me?”
“Sure,” Gordie smirked, like he was humoring the Doc.
“It’ll save your life a hundred times over.”
At that, Gordie exhibited a little more interest, examining it closely before showing it to me.
“Is this what I think it is?” I asked.
“Early version, but still readable,” the Doc replied.
I gave it back to Gordie and he carefully placed it in his jeans pocket.
“You have no idea,” Doctor Simon warned us before flooring the Bentley and sweeping away.
Despite how recently I’d been there, it didn’t take long to get some idea of what he meant. There was a sense of madness gaining an almost irresistible momentum, rolling toward an unforgiveable conclusion. Nora Jagger was even more widespread—more statues, more screens—but it wasn’t just that; I had this suspicion that her clean-up of the City was gathering pace, that in some areas everything and everyone had been swept away and sterilized. Yeah, there were people there, but they weren’t like any I’d seen before. Something was missing from them, something had been taken away, and I got the feeling it was pretty fundamental.
“Does everyone in the City have an implant?” I asked.
“Not everyone, no,” the Doc replied.
“These people?”
He turned and looked outta his window. “I’d guess so.”
I stared out for a while. They weren’t robots or anything, but there was this sense that something wasn’t quite natural.
“What’s a ‘private’ implant?” Gordie suddenly asked.
“An old credit or identity implant that’s open to be adapted at any time,” the Doc replied, sounding matter-of-fact but also that bit concerned.
“So you’re screwed, too,” Gordie commented.
The Doc sighed to himself, but never actually bothered to reply.
Slowly, as we got into the more congested and poorer areas, you could feel yourself crossing boundaries, entering unmarked ghettoes, and the people changed, too: more diversity, less order, rawer emotions.
“I shouldn’t have come this way,” the Doc muttered to himself, as if a shortcut had gone wrong and he was regretting overriding the Bentley’s program. We turned a corner and found ourselves in a large open square. In the gathering gloom, I couldn’t exactly see what, but something was going on over on the far side. There was an agitated mob running around without rhyme or reason, like those huge flocks of birds you see sweeping wildly across the evening sky.
The Doc ignored it, like he’d seen it all before, but we continued to stare.
“What’s going on?” Gordie whispered to me.
At first I didn’t understand what he was talking about—it was just confusion, a crowd, a fight maybe—but then I did catch a glimpse of something. There was a squat dark shape running through the crowd, causing any amount of panic; what’s more, the way people were scattering, there was more than one of them.
“What is it?” I asked Doctor Simon.
“Shadows,” he replied, like he really didn’t want to talk about it.
I didn’t know if he was joking, saying we were seeing things or what. I looked back outta the rear window, but as I did, we turned a corner and whatever it was, was lost from sight. I could still see people leaving the square though, running as fast as they were able, as if their very lives depended on it. Obviously what the Doc had said earlier was right: we didn’t have a clue what was going on, and maybe it was best left that way.
The further we traveled, the more I began to notice a developing pattern: areas where Infinity were in control; areas where they weren’t. Whatever was back there in the square, we never saw it again, but there was this frequent shift from order to chaos. As we approached St. Joseph’s, there was even a little looting, this mall being plundered, just like when we were living in the City, the only difference being that there felt like much more urgency about it, as though, unlike before, they feared the authorities might appear at any moment.
The Doc left us in the basement at St. Joseph’s, parked in the darkest corner he could find, while he went to collect a few things and have a word with his assistant, assuring us he’d be back in thirty minutes.
From the moment that those elevator doors slid across his polished face and we were left alone, I was at the mercy of my fears. Why the hell was I trusting this guy, after everything he’d done? He could come back here with a whole pack of Infinity Specials and force us to take them to Lena and Thomas—not that we would, and I guess he knew that.
“If we drive through the night,” I said to Gordie, trying to engage myself with other things, “we could be there by midday or so.”
“We’re gonna drive the whole way?” he asked.
“The Doc ain’t gonna leave this in the middle of nowhere,” I said, referring to the Bentley.
“We gotta lock-up,” Gordie joked.
“Yeah, I can just see this in the cave,” I said, stroking the hand-stitched and monogrammed leather.
“What about our limo?”
“We’ll have to leave it, for the moment.”
Gordie paused for a moment, looking that bit thoughtful, “I just hope he can get those implants out.”
“As long as he can remove the one in Thomas.”
“Both of yous. What you and Lena got . . . it’s special,” he said, with an awkward honesty. “One day, you know, I’d like to have something like you two. Maybe,” he added, and I realized where this was coming from.
“You gotta treat her right,” I told him. “Let her know how you feel.”
“Oh yeah, yeah. I know all that,” he said dismissively, and I was tempted to remind him of how offhand he’d been with Hanna when they parted company on the mountain, but I wasn’t sure if my of credibility was up to it.
Again he went quiet, but I could see I’d set him thinking. “How long d’ya think the Doc’s gonna be?”
I checked my watch. “Another fifteen,” I said, knowing that, if nothing else, Doctor Simon was usual
ly punctual.
“Can I have the laser?” he asked, as if he just wanted to take a look, to play with it until the Doc reappeared.
I handed it to him—I mean, without a power-pack, it didn’t represent any kinda threat to anyone.
“That mall around the corner,” he said, referring to the looting. “People always drop stuff when they’re running away. I might go and see if I can find something. Sort of a present,” he announced, stuffing the laser into his pocket and opening his door.
“Hey, hey!” I told him. “Forget it.”
“I won’t go in—just check the sidewalk. I wanna take back something for Hanna,” he said, knowing how fond I was of her and hoping it might sway me. “Please!”
I hesitated for a moment. It wasn’t like him to beg, and it was only a coupla hundred yards away. On the other hand, I didn’t feel comfortable about it.
“The Doc’ll be back soon,” I said, trying to put him off.
“So will I.”
He was so keen, in a way I didn’t associate with him, that in the end I gave in. “Just the street. Don’t go inside,” I said, pointing my finger at him.
“Promise.”
“And leave that, too,” I said, wrenching the laser out of his pocket, not prepared to risk him waving it around and someone getting the wrong idea.
He gave me a bit of a look, like I was undermining his masculinity in some way, and I was reminded again that he wasn’t a kid anymore, that it wouldn’t be long before that look sent people backpedaling for the door.
“Just think of me as the mother you never had,” I told him, as he got outta the Bentley. “Ten minutes, no more.”
“Yeah, yeah,” was the last thing I heard him mutter before he made his way to the ramp and disappeared up to street level.
It wasn’t ’til he’d gone that I fully appreciated how I’d just doubled my problems: now I had two people to wait for and worry about. I sat there idly playing with the laser, checking its settings, so mindful of the time I forgot, how things would’ve been so different now. If Doctor Simon was up there talking to her on the screen, double-crossing me again, there’d be no reprieve this time.
But he wasn’t; in fact, the doors to the elevator slid open precisely forty-five seconds short of the thirty minutes he said he’d be. He made his way to the Bentley carrying one large and obviously heavy case, and one small, shiny black one that had an air of importance about it. He put the large one in the trunk, then opened the passenger door and placed the small one on the seat, carefully folding his jacket and placing it on top as if to make sure no one saw it. He then made his way to the driver’s side and got in, only then realizing Gordie wasn’t in the back.
“Where’s he gone?”
I half-smiled, a little embarrassed that my ten-minute curfew was about to lapse. “To get something for Hanna. He won’t be long.”
Doctor Simon turned and stared at me. “Not in the mall?”
“Just the street—I told him.”
“Jesus!” he gasped.
“What?”
“Please, tell me he’s got the implant?” he said, starting the engine.
“Sure,” I said, and then, I don’t know why, maybe instinct, but I looked down at where he’d been sitting, and despite how small it was, it caught the light and I spotted it instantly. I also knew how it’d got there: when I’d jerked the laser out of his pocket, I must’ve pulled the implant with it. “No. No, he hasn’t.”
“Oh no,” Doctor Simon moaned, accelerating toward the ramp.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, thinking he was overreacting.
“I told you, you don’t know what goes on anymore!”
He hit the speed-bump at the top of the ramp so hard I banged my head on the roof. “For chrissake!” I shouted, “what’s the problem?”
But as we sped up toward the mall, I began to get some idea: a whole crowd of looters had been flushed out of the building and were now scattering in every direction; it was the same sorta chaos, the same sorta panic we’d witnessed earlier back in that square.
“What’s going on?” I asked, sliding my window down to get a better view.
The Doc pulled in a little down the road from the mall, and on the opposite side. “I told you,” he said, fear now slicing at his voice. “Shadows.”
Before I could ask him to explain, this group of people, homeless by the look of them, came running past as fast as they could, their mouths wide open, their eyes bulging with fear. The last one, a woman, was screaming this constant, shrill note at the top of her voice. This was obviously why everyone had wanted to get in and out as quickly as they could, what they’d been running from earlier—but what the hell was it?
Then I saw them, coming out of the mall, one by one: squat black things, moving like launched missiles, the first one gaining on the homeless group with every stride. And suddenly I realized there was something chillingly familiar about that pursuit.
“Is that what I think it is?”
The Doc nodded, visibly shaking. “I hate those things.”
“Growlers?”
“Yes.”
Infinity kept growlers in underground bunkers around their headquarters: anyone who tried to break in, who got through the fence and attempted to cross an expanse of grass, was chased and simply torn to pieces—as we so nearly found out to our cost one night.
“I thought they only functioned in the Infinity compound?”
“They’re shadow-growlers,” he told me. “They’ve got another purpose altogether.”
At that exact moment, the pursuing growler caught up with the fleeing group, leaping through the air and knocking the woman flat on her face, clamping its huge jaws around her waist while she screamed and writhed with the raw terror of impending death.
I’d never seen anything like it and I never wanna again either, not as long as I live. With her body just hanging from its mouth, it shook her from side to side so violently and with such force that she fell apart, the bottom half of her flying off into the street.
“Jesus!” I groaned.
Her companions must’ve heard her screams but they didn’t even look back, just continued their hysterical flight, and within moments the shadow-growler was joined by another and they both turned and went chasing after them.
“They won’t get far,” the Doc said quietly.
It was only then, as I leaned outta the window to watch the pursuit, that I realized there was another shadow-growler standing right beside the Bentley, so close I could’ve reached out and touched it. It fixed me with these cold slashes of eyes, obviously checking me out, sifting through its software, and I gotta say, it damn near frightened the life outta me.
They weren’t the same as the ones that guarded Infinity: dull black rather than shiny silver, stockier, with feet wider apart, I guessed to make them more stable. But it was the head that was most different: much broader—to accommodate even larger jaws—and across the expanse of its forehead a row of vicious spikes. At the center of the “face” where the nose might be was a gaping hole that looked like it might just latch onto you and suck out everything in your body. Jeez, it was an evil-looking thing, and I guess that was the whole point; someone had labored long and hard to design the most frightening deterrent a human being could ever have to face.
God knows why, but I pressed the window button, wanting something between that thing and me, though I suspected it could probably jump straight through the glass, bullet-proof or not.
“It won’t touch us,” the Doc said.
“How d’ya know?”
“It’s already scanned us for implants; it’s only non-imps it’s after.”
So that that was how it worked: if you didn’t have an implant, one of those things would eliminate you. And the moment I appreciated that, it hit me that Gordie was out there without one.
“I gotta find Gordie,” I said, fumbling at the door.
“Clancy!” Doctor Simon cried, “it’s too late—he’s g
one.”
“How d’ya know?”
“No one escapes the shadows. Believe me.”
He might’ve been right but I didn’t take any notice, just carefully put Gordie’s implant into my pocket, then opened the door, the Doc again begging me not to do it.
The shadow-growler stood there as I eased my way out, studying my every move—Jeez, all it would take would be one spring and a snap of those huge jaws and you could toss me on the barbecue already jointed.
“Clancy—” Doctor Simon pleaded.
“I’ll be back soon,” I told him, sliding along the side of the limo, keeping my eyes on the growler.
“I warn you, even with imps there’s often collateral damage.”
With those words still ringing in my ears, and the memory of how the Infinity growlers had attacked almost everyone that night we got in there, I ran toward the mall, deciding to go with the worst-case scenario: that Gordie hadn’t been able to find anything for Hanna in the street, and not wanting to go home empty-handed, had gone inside.
It was one of the older-style shopping centers: four floors with balconies and the familiar laser-waterfall cascading down in the middle. All kinds of stores—furniture, clothes, techno—though food had obviously been the main reason for most of those people to risk their lives. For sure, a lot of them hadn’t lived long enough to regret it: the place looked more like a slaughterhouse than a shopping center—dismembered bodies were strewn everywhere, lying in pools of blood that in places had merged into congealing crimson lakes. One or two folk were still looking for food amongst the carnage, trying to keep a low profile; I presumed they were imps.
“Gordie!” I hollered, my concern ousting all caution. “G-o-r-d-i-e!”
I started to check through the corpses, saying a silent prayer he wasn’t one of them, still calling out his name from time to time.
There was no sign on the first floor so I went up to the second, again working my way through the corpses, though there were far fewer up there away from the food halls. I turned a corner, calling out to Gordie once more, the name dying on my lips when I was suddenly confronted by this shadow-growler standing directly in front of me.
It seemed to be staring, but I guess that I was being scanned again; that weird hole in the middle of its face was expanding and contracting like it was breathing. It was one helluvan irony, but for the first time since I’d discovered I’d got it, I was glad I had that implant inside me.
