A second vehicle, battered and dirty, had awaited her. Once again, all of the occupants were hooded, their faces concealed.
The road surface was broken into a patchwork of shattered asphalt and dense grass, buildings lining the streets filled with gaping black holes where once windows had been. An emaciated fox scarred by patches of rotting flesh darted out from where it had been rummaging through trash spilling from an alley, nipping across the foliage filled street and vanishing into what had once been a convenience store, the signage faded and cracked. Across the wall of the building beside it was a faded slogan sprayed in paint across the brickwork.
Life’s a bitch and then you… Oh crap.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she demanded again of her captors.
‘Somewhere safe, believe it or not,’ came the reply from the hooded driver, who guided the vehicle slowly through the ghostly remains of the city.
‘Safe?’ she uttered. ‘This is the perfect location for a vector, a place where we could be infected!’
‘We’ve taken precautions, just in case,’ said his companion.
‘Oh, thank God for that, otherwise I’d be worried.’
The hooded men said nothing more as the vehicle drove up a ramp into a loading bay at the rear of a large, dilapidated apartment building, the shutter doors that once protected the entrance rusted solid into their mounts. The sound of the car engine changed note as it echoed around the interior of the parking bays inside. Arianna saw rust, decay and damp brickwork everywhere and a dirty, stained elevator door nearby.
‘Put this on,’ said the man next to her as he handed her a translucent oxygen mask and a portable cylinder attached to it. ‘Four minutes of air.’
‘Four minutes?’ she asked nervously.
‘Head to the elevator. It will open.’
Arianna looked across at the elevator door nearby. It looked as though it had not moved for half a century.
‘It’s supposed to look old,’ the driver informed her. ‘I can assure you that it’s perfectly serviceable though.’
Arianna figured that she had little choice. She slipped the mask over her head and opened the feeder valve on the cylinder. Cool air breezed into her nose and almost made her cough, but she could feel it bleeding out around the edges of the mask and knew that she could not become infected by any airborne pathogen as long as the air kept flowing.
‘Go, now,’ said her captor, ‘and don’t forget to switch the valve off once you’re up there. You’ll need the rest for the return journey.’
The car door unlocked automatically and Arianna climbed out. She shut the door and the vehicle reversed out of the building and drove away.
Arianna hurried across to the elevator, fearful of fox bites or dog attacks. The doors pinged and opened as she hurried inside. The building had power, although she could not imagine where from. She turned to look for which of the aged buttons to press, but before she could even decide the doors closed and the elevator climbed up to the top floor. When it opened again, Arianna stepped out into a perfectly furnished apartment. She twisted the cylinder valve to the off position and slipped the mask off her face as she stood and stared at the white leather sofa, tasteful kitchen and beautiful ornaments.
‘What is this?’ she whispered to herself.
‘Your new home.’ She whirled as a holographic projector hummed into life and Alexei Volkov smiled at her. ‘You’ll be safe here.’
‘Alexei!’ she gasped. ‘What the hell is going on?’
Alexei raised his hands at her in defence.
‘I’m sorry for the way in which I’ve handled this, Arianna,’ he said quickly, ‘but I had already tried to convince you that you were in danger and you would not listen.’
Arianna tried to think of a suitable response.
‘They said that the police want me dead,’ was all she managed to get out.
‘Possibly,’ Alexei nodded. ‘There are bigger forces at work around us, Arianna. I believe that it was the police who murdered me, and that they were trying to pin the murder on you.’
‘What the hell for?’ Arianna asked. ‘Why on earth would they have tried to murder you Alexei?’
‘To silence me,’ Alexei said and gestured to the kitchen. ‘Please, fix yourself a drink and let me explain.’
‘I’m not thirsty,’ Arianna replied. ‘Just tell me, everything.’
Alexei hesitated before speaking.
‘Arianna, I have not been entirely honest with you over the time we have known each other. To put it simply, I was not sure whether I could trust you or not.’
Arianna almost laughed. ‘Trust me? I’m your daughter.’
‘No, Arianna,’ Alexei smiled. ‘You are my daughter to all intents and purposes, but we both know that you were adopted.’
Arianna smiled to hide the pain that sliced through her. It was rare for either of them to mention the fact that Arianna had been adopted at the age of seven years by Alexei, who himself was childless. Driven by a deep rooted need for financial success, by the time the businessman had even considered marriage or children The Falling had decimated the population and he was in his fifties.
‘Why bring this up now?’ she asked, not really able to look Alexei in the eye.
‘Because you hate holosaps,’ he said, ‘you always have.’
‘What does that have to do with me being here?’
‘Because they’re the ones behind all of this, and that means you’re the least likely person I know to be working for them.’
Arianna felt briefly off–balance. ‘I work for Re–Volution.’
‘You’re contracted to them,’ Alexei corrected her. ‘So are their cleaners, but they’re not going to be informed of what’s going on in board meetings any more than you are. Arianna, I believe that it is the intention of Re–Volution to eradicate what’s left of humanity and preserve only holosaps for the future of our species.’
Arianna sat in silence for a moment as she digested what he was saying.
‘What the hell good would that do?’ she asked. ‘They only exist because we do.’
‘For now,’ Alexei agreed. ‘But plans are already in motion to change that, if you hadn’t been watching the news.’
‘The bill of rights,’ she recalled dimly. ‘Homo immortalis?’
‘Holo sapiens was only ever a temporary name,’ Alexei explained, ‘coined more by popular culture than anything else. The new name implies the kind of permanence that I think we all fear. The proposed bill of rights for holosaps essentially means that they will be able to continue their lives as they would have done were they actually alive, in the traditional sense. They may return to their jobs, control their companies, influence politics in their favour and so on.’
Arianna shrugged.
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ she said. ‘If they started to become a problem we could just pull the plug, right?’
‘Wrong,’ Alexei said, ‘because doing so is now considered by law to be murder. That’s the charge the people who caused the Re–Volution blast yesterday are facing: mass murder, genocide. Call it what you like, but switching off the holosaps is no longer an option. Their rights, human rights, will soon be enshrined in the same way as yours or mine.’
Arianna tried to understand the motivation behind the claim, but she simply could not fathom how a species, or whatever people called them, so dependent upon their creators could possibly seek to overthrow and even eradicate them.
‘They’d be signing their own death warrants,’ she said, ‘so to speak.’
‘Would they?’ Alexei asked her. ‘Holosaps are sentient holograms, people as alive as they were before they died. Their only disadvantage is that they are non physical, simply tricks of the light that with quantum physics become self aware again. But that disadvantage is merely an inconvenience: think about it. We use touch screens, motion sensors, all manner of minimal contact devices. Given a year or two the holosap community could easily develop a means of controlling machinery, allowing them
to build and control physical devices.’
‘Perhaps,’ Arianna conceded, ‘but they’re contained, unable to leave the walk lanes, projectors and the colony itself.’
‘As a holder of Re–Volution’s Futurance, their insurance program, I was able to read the bill of rights proposal a month ago,’ Alexei said, ‘long before it was revealed to the general public. Freedom of movement, without restriction in any normal field of operations and recreation enjoyed by normal human beings, is part of their charter.’
‘You think that they could do that?’ Arianna asked.
‘Sure,’ Alexei said. ‘We’re imaged by lasers, ultimately, which move at the speed of light. All we’d need is a sufficient number of relay stations in order to maintain the signal in any location on Earth and you’re done.’
Arianna stood up and paced the living room as she thought.
‘Why would the police be involved? And why would they try to kill you, or me for that matter?’
‘Me, because I was always opposed to becoming a holosap,’ Alexei replied for her. ‘I guess that they figured if I decided to use my futurance that I might become a thorn in their side and oppose the bill from within.’
‘But if that’s true, then why didn’t they just prevent you from uploading?’ Arianna asked. ‘If they wanted you out of the way, the last thing they should have done was let you become immortal.’
‘I do not know,’ Alexei said. ‘I can only assume that they have their reasons. As for you, Arianna, there is something that you should know.’
Arianna sensed a blow coming, and waited silently for Alexei to continue.
‘You will recall how I adopted you when you were seven years old, from the old boarding houses in Leadenhall?’
Arianna nodded. ‘You saved my life, even before we’d first spoken.’
Alexei nodded, and his gentle smile seemed broader than ever. ‘I was a billionaire, but nothing I have ever earned has given me such pleasure as saving you from that awful place. However, my selection was not entirely based on personal preference.’
Arianna felt something uncomfortable coil within her belly as Alexei went on.
‘Twenty eight years ago, I was approached by a man who was involved in advanced research at a now defunct government facility. He was a genius who had decided to start his own company and develop something known as Holonomic Brain Theory.’
It did not take a genius to figure out who Alexei was referring to. ‘Cecil Anderson.’
‘The same,’ Alexei confirmed. ‘This was before The Falling had emerged. Cecil was seeking private funding and his work was remarkable to say the least. I backed his projects for several years, before Cecil died and the government took over his work.’
‘He made the first digital brain, Adam, right?’ Arianna asked. ‘It went nuts a few times before he gave it a body to stand in, the first holosap.’
‘He did,’ Alexei confirmed. ‘Cecil was driven initially by curiosity, then by greed, and finally by grief. His daughter died of The Falling and was buried down near Coulsden, back when they still bothered to bury the dead instead of burning them. The loss of my own family as a young boy drove me in much the same way to finance his work.’
‘So, what’s this got to do with your murder and the police?’
Alexei took a breath, an act entirely of habit rather than necessity, before he spoke. His voice trailed off in her mind as she digested what he was saying, as though his voice were from a dream.
‘Cecil Anderson’s daughter did not die,’ he said finally. ‘Cecil hid her away to protect her. He implanted her with a chip, fully ready for upload, then used his knowledge to erase any knowledge of his existence from her mind. She was placed in a boarding house in Leadenhall for several months before I was then to go in and find her, adopt her and protect her.’
Arianna sat in silence for what felt like an age, her eyes unfocused.
‘He was my father?’ she whispered.
‘You are the daughter of Cecil Anderson,’ Alexei confirmed. ‘You were sent to the boarding houses a few days before Cecil was killed.’
Arianna blinked and looked up at Alexei. ‘Cecil Anderson died of The Falling, didn’t he?’
‘He died at the hands of either government soldiers or private troops,’ Alexei informed her. ‘He would have been one of the first to upload if he could have. He believed in his work, but he also believed that holosaps, Adam in particular, were somehow dangerous. He was trying to shut his work down when the government intervened.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I withdrew funding when it became clear that Adam, the first holosap, was unstable. He displayed psychotic tendencies, was angry, dangerous, impetuous and if he had been alive he would have been cruel. Cecil and I had a falling out of sorts. He believed that the work could be improved, whereas I felt it was a step too far. When I withdrew my funding, Cecil went elsewhere.’
‘Re–Volution,’ Arianna finished the sentence for him. ‘They were already looking for a cure for The Falling.’
‘And were failing dismally,’ Alexei confirmed. ‘Cecil’s work was the perfect solution. Why find a cure when a hologram can’t catch the disease? Can’t catch any disease, for that matter. Re–Volution stepped in, but Cecil soon realised that I had been right, that he could not control his creations, that if they got loose they would see humanity as nothing but a threat to their own existence. He called me on the night that the city was quarantined, told me I was right and that he was going to shut it all down. I helped him hide you, Arianna, but after the quarantine I never saw him again.’
‘And the first holosaps appeared a few years later,’ Arianna recalled. ‘Re–Volution saves the world.’
An image of Han Reeves appeared in Arianna’s mind. Two police officers had tried to kill her. Could Detective Reeves have sent them, and if so, just how far did the conspiracy run in the force? Alexei answered her question with clairvoyant accuracy.
‘You must remain out of sight for the moment,’ he told her. ‘You cannot trust the police or the government. For this to have happened requires collusion at the highest levels and until we can figure this out, you could be in danger.’
Arianna nodded, and looked about at the apartment.
‘How come you were not staying here, if you feared for your own life?’
‘If only I had feared for my life,’ he said. ‘I did not understand that I was in danger until it was too late.’
Arianna nodded. ‘What do we do now?
‘You have a person on the inside now,’ Alexei said. ‘Me. We figure out who’s behind this and we take them down.’
‘How?’
‘That’s simple,’ Alexei said with a grim smile, ‘we cut t…..’
The holosap transmission flickered, Alexei’s voice warbling with interference. Arianna saw him speaking but nothing but static and high–pitched squeals reached her ears.
‘Alexei, I can’t hear you!’
Alexei kept talking, but his image shuddered and then blinked out.
Moments later, as she stared at the projection platform, the locks on the apartment door clicked loudly, trapping her inside.
***
17
‘What the hell happened?’
Detective Han Reeves stood alongside Myles Bourne in front of their superior officer, a former Guards man called Harrison Lee. Short, with cropped white hair and a stiff moustache that looked like a thin mouse perched on his top lip, Lee was not a man to be trifled with and somewhat reminded Han of a Confederate general or something.
‘You let her go, and now she’s disappeared?’
Han did the talking by instinct, diverting the flak from his partner.
‘We didn’t let anybody go, sir,’ he explained. ‘We couldn’t get anything out of her here at the station and when Alexei Volkov turned up with her alibi we couldn’t justify holding her for the full ninety six hours as a suspect. It was my idea to let her go and have a couple of guys put o
n observation.’
Lee ground his teeth in his jaw, making the mouse on his lip twitch as though awoken from a slumber.
‘It would appear your men were not as bloody observant as they should have been, detective, because now we have both a murder to solve and a missing person. Who the hell took her?’
‘We don’t know,’ Han replied. ‘My men were ordered to keep their distance. The idea was to see what Arianna Volkov did after we released her, whether she would contact any criminal elements or people otherwise implicated in the Re–Volution blast case and Alexei Volkov’s murder.’
‘And did she?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Han said. ‘Our men were observing her on the west–bound platform at Station Seventeen when they saw her being approached by an individual who then attempted to guide her away from my men. They pursued, and were fired upon from within the station. They lost Arianna after a getaway vehicle intercepted her, but we caught the shooter on the platform.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Intensive care,’ Myles replied. ‘He was hit twice in the upper chest and shoulder and suffered a collapsed lung. Surgeons say he’ll pull through but he’s not answering any questions right now. My guess is he’s just a hired hand and won’t be able to provide us with any useful information.’
Lee nodded thoughtfully.
‘Where was she taken?’
‘No idea sir,’ Han said. ‘We managed to track the vehicle to the water but we lost it after that. The camera coverage is patchy at best.’
‘Why would they take her over there?’
‘As you know there’s a strong criminal element sheltering from law enforcement south of the water sir,’ Han pointed out. ‘If Arianna is indeed involved in the crimes we’re investigating and fears that she’s been exposed, it’s the perfect place to hide out.’
Lee peered at Han with interest.
‘You’re convinced that she’s behind all of this, even though Alexei Volkov himself said that she could not have killed him?’
‘She didn’t have to pull the trigger to be involved, sir. Maybe she clocked the tail we put on her and decided to call in some help. So far she looks guilty of something, I’m just not sure what.’
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