The Nightmare Stacks: A Laundry Files novel (30 page)

A wave of electronic signals ripples out from the Duty Office and the Watch Team in the fourth-floor conference room, lighting up darkened offices across the nation and pulling key personnel back from their weekend retreats.

In Cheltenham, in an office deep inside an anonymous block not too far from the donut-shaped hub of GCHQ, two analysts suddenly find themselves inundated with transcription requests. They feed SIM codes and IMEIs to their secure terminals, provide override authorizations for the interconnects with the phone companies’ networks, and begin to replay the past day’s conversations to a farm of servers capable of turning spoken words into readable textual transcripts, accompanied by maps and a handy timeline to indicate who said what, where, when, and to whom.

In an aircraft hangar at Filton, not far from the Bristol Channel, a phone that should
never
ring begins to buzz in the ready room office, causing a man who wears a blue uniform to break into a cold sweat as he picks up the handset. He frowns intently as he notes the call in a logbook, pen clenched between white fingertips, not once looking at the sleek white shape that fills the hangar floor beyond his office window. If he did, he’d see a sudden burst of movement as the engineers on the night shift begin the ground prep checklists for a mission that should never fly.

Phones begin ringing in the Duty Offices of peripheral Laundry field installations everywhere from Penzance to Inverness, anywhere big enough to rate a 24x7 desk presence. The Duty Officers retrieve their contact lists from their office safes and begin to call people, working down the hierarchy. (Mobile phones are also displaying text messages, and priority email queues are overflowing – but the gold standard is a confirmation by voice, “message received” on a secure landline number.) One office, in Huddersfield, makes no such calls: instead, the Duty Officer walks out into the ready room next door, raises a protective flap, and pushes the alarm button concealed behind it. (Boots come running.)

Early on Sunday morning, the anthill finishes kicking its on-call elements into a state of high alert, and the ripples begin to spread out beyond the organization.

The first external signal goes to a call center in India, which is operated on behalf of a private security company based in Bradford. This call is started well ahead of midnight by a member of the New Annex Watch Team, but a number of obstacles delay its completion. For one thing, the call center is in the middle of an evening shift change, and the staff are reluctant to stay on line despite a client call. The call has to be repeated three times. For another, Telereal Trinium seem content to employ a subcontractor whose staff have poor language and communication skills and a lackadaisical approach to emergencies. (This issue will not go unnoticed by the Parliamentary Public Enquiry in the months to come.) In any case, it takes until 0014 before a private security guard from the Leeds office sets out to visit the Lawnswood bunker, and they do not arrive until 0028. Inexplicably it takes another twelve minutes for them to gain access, and the eventual call to the West Yorkshire Police emergency control room is logged at 0043, over an hour and a half after the incident.

It’s a Saturday night but the pubs have already closed, and the weekly cleaning-up action on the streets of Leeds is winding down. The first responder – as luck would have it, an Armed Response Unit – arrives on the scene at 0049, and the site is flagged as a homicide case within ten minutes.

While West Yorkshire’s finest are puzzling over the discovery of two armored bodies outside a supposedly secure government installation with a glowing green radiation hazard visible through the bashed-in door, phones are ringing elsewhere. In Fareham, a call is received at NATS Swanwick near the south coast, the national-level Air Traffic Control Center for England and Wales. Near Hereford, the Duty Officer in the Pontrilas Army Training Area takes a call and forwards it to a captain running a night training exercise. And elsewhere, calls are being made to various military and sensitive civilian installations that need to know that, in the vaguest possible terms, something big is about to kick off.

One fateful phone call goes unanswered.

The DM stares balefully at the phone as it rings continuously, then diverts to voice mail. “Pick it up,” he grates, “pick the damn thing
up
.” Then he ends the call and hits redial.

Derek the DM has been war-dialing Alex’s mobile phone continuously for close to an hour, hanging up and redialing endlessly. They’ve requested a trace from GCHQ, but it hasn’t arrived yet; there’s no way of knowing why it isn’t connecting. The Watch Team meeting room is now crowded with the great, the good, and the concerned – Dr. Armstrong was the first of the Auditors to arrive but they’re almost all here now, along with those local elements of Mahogany Row who aren’t already charging up the M1 motorway in a convoy of police cars with flashing lights. Dr. O’Brien, the newest Auditor, is still on medical leave, but her former unit – the Transhuman Policy Coordination Force, the police agency for superpowers – is represented by Mhari Murphy, ill-temperedly displaying her fangs over being called in on a weekend night. Bob Howard, lately standing in for the Eater of Souls, is somewhere in Japan, and Colonel Lockhart is listening in on the conference line from Leeds, making notes in case he has to brief the Cabinet Office in the morning.

“Pick up the bloody
phone
, Alex,” hisses Mhari as the DM dials his mobile number again.

But Alex is not going to pick up the phone that he set to vibrate, not ring, before he headed out for his fateful date. The phone is rattling and squealing like an overtaxed vibrator, its thaum flux warning app overloaded so badly that the regular buzz of an incoming call is swamped. Which is why he remains blissfully unaware that in the two hours after he sent his text message, it has triggered on the close order of half a million pounds in billable overtime hours, hundreds – soon to be thousands – of sleepless nights and abandoned weekends, and a full-dress Police murder investigation.

But that’s nothing compared to what’s going to happen in the next few hours.

The lights are on in drab-looking government offices in Leeds as well as London, and a crisis meeting is in progress in an office in Quarry House.

“He’s out late.” It’s Brains. He sounds both sleepy and irritable, as well he might. “He borrowed Ilsa to pick up his date and do dinner. That’s all I know.”

“Not good enough.” Gerald Lockhart frowns, mustache bristling. “
Why
is he late? He sent that message, then went dark, and now he isn’t answering his phone.” Gerald Lockhart, External Assets Manager, charged with executing the DM’s plan for the missing PHANG in Leeds, is distinctly unamused. “Pinky. What word on his phone?”

“The trace isn’t showing up.” Pinky twirls a finger across the trackpad of a laptop. He’s frowning, too, more in perplexity than disapproval. “It went to his parents’ street in Bramhope, then back towards town, but it stopped pinging when he hit the bunker. At least I’m pretty sure he went to the bunker – his last location is solid to within about a hundred meters —”

“So we know where he went, but not where he is. Not good enough.” Lockhart’s mood is not improving. “What does his activity log show?”

“Well. He ran OFCUT, but it’s offline now so it doesn’t tell me much. The thaum field it was logging was sky-high, but going by that report on the bunker it might just have gotten contaminated. It’s not paired with a high-precision field-effect counter so I can’t be sure.”

“So.” Lockhart taps his pen on the table, cap first. It makes an ominous
tonk
as it hits the hardwood. “Let me summarize. This morning, Weather Control flagged anomalous ley line activity to the east of the Pennines. The DM is on the list, and just under three hours ago he called Dr. Schwartz and asked him to check out the Lawnswood bunker. An hour later our man sent up the red flag. It’s geotagged from the bunker, and he reports CASE NIGHTMARE RED – how does he know this? It’s a mystery. He then goes off-grid. The police check on the bunker and find two bodies, deceased —”

Pete, who has been reading something on a tablet screen, looks up and diffidently waves his hand for attention. “They’re not human.”

“What.” Lockhart turns his death-stare on Pete, who seems unfazed.

“OCCULUS have been on-site for half an hour now. Sergeant Noakes just sent a preliminary sitrep. Look.” He lays his tablet on the table and tap-zooms on a photograph. “What does that say to you?”

Heads crane over the small screen. “What.” Lockhart’s tone sharpens. “That’s an ear? Dammit.”

Pinky is peering at the same report on his laptop screen. “There’s a cartoon convention in town but that’s no cosplayer, not unless cosplayers have plastic surgery and wear several thousand pounds’ worth of bespoke steel armor. And get into fights with… um.”

“Look,” says Brains, sounding irritated, “they’ve got Ilsa.”

Lockhart looks at him, then at Pinky and Pete. “So what are you waiting for?”

Pete stares at him. “What?”

“Go and get your half-track before some jobsworth tries to wheel-clamp it,” Lockhart snaps. “OCCULUS are busy with the incident scene and the police are as much help as a portion of warm ice cream so I’m relying on you troublemakers to locate Dr. Schwartz and extract him from whatever mess he’s gotten himself into. You
might
just need an all-terrain transporter with a solid steel body shell, if Forecasting Ops are right about this one. Go on, get moving.” He waits while they leave, then turns to Jez Wilson. “Do you want to call Dr. Armstrong, or shall I?”

“I’ll take it if you handle the army and OCCULUS,” she says automatically. “What’s the message?”

“He needs a full summary so he can report to the Cabinet Office emergency meeting tomorrow – this – morning. Assuming it’s not a false alarm.” Lockhart sighs noisily. “He’s going to have to explain to the deputy prime minister that one of our vampires is missing. And then the shit is
really
going to hit the fan. But first I think I need to talk to site security.”

He picks up the handset and dials an extension. “Site security? Colonel Lockhart here. Authenticate me, please… good. I am declaring a Code Red for Quarry House and the Arndale Satellite Office in Leeds. I repeat, Code Red, Code Red. Please tell Control that I recommend transferring control over MAGINOT BLUE STARS coverage on the Leeds Inner Loop Road and all approaches to Quarry Hill to site security here, in anticipation of a hard incursion. Then you will call the office of the Commander Land Forces at Army GHQ in Andover and tell them that PLAN RED RABBIT is in effect.”

Jez Wilson stares at him, aghast. “You want to activate SCORPION STARE in a city center? Are you out of your mind?”

“I hope not,” he says grimly, “I really hope not. I also fervently hope that Forecasting Ops have got egg on their face. But it’s best to be ready for the worst. Then you won’t be disappointed when it happens.”

Cassie leads Alex down the stairs into the bunker, marveling at and simultaneously mourning his misplaced loyalty. She feels a stab of lust and tenderness that surprises her with its intensity. He’s following her of his own volition, despite knowing what lies ahead. She may have freed him from her will to obey, but love is also a kind of
geas
, and one that she can’t control. (Part of her wonders whether she would have been consciously able to free him from her third-date snare of compulsion if she hadn’t been aware of his obsession; probably not, she decides. All-Highest’s goals override both whim and reason.)

Agent First understands Alex a good deal better now. She’s seen the house that shaped him, and has the perspective from Cassiopeia to recognize the claustrophobia and alienation that drive him. The beginnings of a plan are coming together in her head. It’s a plan that would be hopelessly naive and foolish if Alex was of the People, with their candidly nihilistic outlook on life – but he isn’t. He’s
urük
, and these round-eared folk are gentler and more trusting than her own kindred. So is she. Among these people, the fatal flaw in her soul that she has concealed for so long is unremarkable. But there are limits to trust, and this plan won’t work unless —

She licks her suddenly dry lips. “Alex, do you trust me?”

“That’s a leading question, isn’t it.”

“Yes.” Ahead of her a tunnel slants down into the earth. The overhead strip lights are out, but the glowing runic tracery of the ward upstairs sheds just enough light for her crepuscular vision.

“Well.” He pauses. “If I didn’t trust you I wouldn’t be following you, would I?” A momentary catch in his voice. “I have an idea, but – what do you think we should do?”

She walks forward slowly. “My father bears your people no particular ill-will; they are simply
in his way
and he’ll try to crush them. Our world is no longer inhabitable. My father thought to lead the Host somewhere they can live safely. Stepmother suggested this world. She fed him old reports which were at best wrong and at worst disastrously misleading. He thinks to conquer and compel obedience, as is usual among our kind. I believe
her
plan was to let him, but to encourage him to bleed himself in the process, weakening him to pave the way for her ascendancy.” She closes her eyes, seeing in her mind’s theater the television set downstairs in her student lodgings, the evening news, the unimagined vastness of this crowded city-hive of humanity overhead, the realization that this isn’t even a
large
human city, that it’s a provincial capital in a medium-sized nation, the creeping apprehension of scale— “But he’s wrong. Your people are far stronger than they expect. He will kill a lot of people, all of his own and many of yours, if he is not made to stop. And she’s even worse.” She is choosing her words very carefully here, walking along a razor-edged precipice between suicidal treason and rationalized defense of the All-Highest’s interests. “I do not want that to happen, Alex, but I cannot stop him because I am bound to obey the will of the All-Highest.”

“And your father is the All-Highest,” Alex says tentatively.

“Yes. But he wasn’t always.” Around the curve of the tunnel, she sees an open door ahead. She stops and Alex wraps an arm around her shoulders. “The, the empress died, and her city and her advisors: all the
chain of command
. The bindings and power of All-Highest fell on him then, and nearly broke him. He was a general before. Now he is the empire itself: the
Crown
, as you put it.”

“And you can’t disobey him or betray him or your head catches fire or something. I get it.” His fingers contract around her upper arm and she shifts her balance uneasily in response.

“If he dies, the chain of power that defines All-Highest falls next to my stepmother. It would have been my mother’s, if First Liege of Airborne Strike had not denounced her for treason while my father’s mind was wandering,” she adds with quiet venom.

“Ah.” He moves his hand: fingers begin to stroke her tense shoulders in tiny circles. She breathes deeply as she waits to see if he is canny enough to realize what comes next. “And if your stepmother dies, who becomes All-Highest next?”

Yes!
Something inside her exults, but she stills the traitor realization instantly, terrified of exploring the possible consequences. “The chain of command continues,” she says. “First through the bloodline, by marriage, then by descent; then, if not, to his highest-ranked oath-bound officer. That is how he became All-Highest after all.” She opens her mouth and chooses her next words very carefully: “It is
very important
that my father must outlive my stepmother.”

“Ah,” he says again, then hesitates on the brink of further speech. And nods, wordless, clearly understanding what is better left unsaid.

It’s time for the final step, for Agent First to place her neck willingly on the block if she has misjudged this boy-man. She hopes not: he certainly seems as besotted with her as she is with him. But trust is a strange currency, and her upbringing has taught her that if she expects betrayal she will not be disappointed. So Agent First closes her eyes, and leaves it to Cassie to ask the final question. “My father has summoned me and commanded me to bring you as the, the enemy magus I have bewitched. He believes that you will then obey me and allow him to gain access to the citadel on Quarry Hill, which he believes to be your queen’s castle.” She chokes on her own tongue for a moment. “Will you come with me
not
under compulsion, but of your own free will, with volition preserved?”

“You want me free to act as I see fit?”

“Don’t tell me what you’re thinking,” she warns. “If I am aware of any threat to my Liege I am compelled to act.”

“Then I’ll make no threats,” he says, deceptively light-heartedly. “And you’ll take me into your father’s court without alerting your stepmother’s servants, and let everyone assume I’m bound by, by your
geas
?” His hand moves away for a moment as he pats down a pocket.

“Yes. And remember, it would be a
very bad idea
to show them how fast you can count your way past a circle of salt. Or to show any sign of agency. They’re not stupid: if you aren’t
clearly
in thrall they’ll strike immediately.” She turns and rests her chin at the base of his neck and licks his ear lobe delicately. “When this is over we will have to spend some time together. My magus.” His intake of breath hisses quietly. She rubs against him: “My
special
magus.”

“Why special?” he pants.

“Our magi can’t count that fast. They can’t do this either.” She touches the bulge in his trousers: “The men, I mean. They’re cut. The women are controlled differently. To make them placid,” she adds, then growls in the back of her throat. “Else they would drink us dry. You are different, I think.”

“What do you want, after all this is over?” he whispers.

“I want
you
.” She lets go of him reluctantly – the lust is rising – and stares into his eyes, seeing the green glow of the tunnel walls mirrored there for a moment, green strands of light writhing behind his pupils. “But first I must slay my stepmother, the dragon.”

The white Transit van turns into the open gates at the top of the driveway and stops. A light rain is falling, visible in the beams of its headlights as they illuminate a scene of organized chaos.

Four police cars are parked around the building like toys discarded by a bored child. They’ve been joined by a scene-of-crime van, and another van full of uniforms who are now swarming around the site like angry bees in hi vis jackets and rain gear. What appears to be a City of London fire service major incident support truck is parked alongside the police cars, and men in what looks at a distance like fire service protective gear are moving between their truck and the door to the building.

“Oi! You can’t park here —”

Pinky winds his window down and shoves his warrant card in the cop’s face. “Yes we can, we’re from the Ministry,” he snaps. “This is one of our sites.”

“Tough.” The constable isn’t backing off, and this is a very bad sign indeed when there’s a Laundry warrant card in play. Pete, unbuckling his seat belt on the passenger side, looks through the rain-streaked windscreen and sees two more bodies erecting a white dome tent in front of the door to the bunker, while another cop – holding a G36 assault rifle – keeps a wary eye on the new arrivals. “Go through channels, piss off and don’t bother us until we’ve secured the site, this is an armed incident —”

“Excuse me,” Pete says mildly, “we’re here for our half-track.”

“What?”

Pete rests his hands on the dash, sweating. Where there’s one armed officer there will be more and if they’ve brought out the long arms he’s willing to bet there’ll be one aimed at the Transit right now. “Excuse me,” he calls past Pinky, “can we talk to the OCCULUS crew?”

“Stop right —” The cop stops, finally recognizing what’s going on. “You’re with the spooks?”

Pete slowly opens his door and steps down beside the Transit. He shuts the door and raises his hands as Pinky begins to back up. A couple of the fake firemen are approaching him warily, holding what look like infrared imaging cameras. Pete’s skin crawls. “Head office!” he calls, allowing his warrant card to unfold from his right hand. “Ministry of Defense, Officer. This is one of our sites, we’re here to help. Take me to your incident commander and I’ll explain everything…”