Authors: John Matthews
The day-shift guard at
Blind
School
looked up as the night-guard approached, then glanced at the clock.
‘Didn’t realize it was that time already.’
‘Yeah. That time already.’ The night guard glanced back along the corridor. ‘All the kids left already?’
‘Yep. Those that have been here today. Half of them are off on some trip.’
The day guard leant across and tapped a code into a side cabinet. Opening its door, he took out a set of electronic keys and handed them to the night guard.
‘Thanks,’ Frank Lyle said.
For the first few minutes, Lyle checked the corridors cautiously, as if concerned whether all the students had gone. But halfway down one corridor he suddenly bristled with the noise of a door opening behind him.
He hustled down the corridor to get to its end and out of sight – but as he heard the shuffle of footsteps, he realized it was too late. His body froze, then a second later he heard the voice of one of the op-agents.
‘Catch you tomorrow, Frank.’
Lyle turned with a smile. ‘Not unless you come in before seven in the morning, you won't.’
He lifted one hand in parting, and watched the agent turn at the end of the corridor. Then he went to the monitoring room to follow the agent’s progress on screen. He watched him cross the car park, back out and leave. And when the final two agents’ cars left the car park an hour later, he re-set all the building alarms.
Then he went into the central ops room to start his search.
The row upon row of fallen angels trapped in their glass tubes had a visible impact on the
Blind
School
students as they walked through. The atmosphere was unsettling.
Jessica glanced nervously towards them as she jibed to Ryan: ‘If I'd known we were sightseeing out West, think I'd have preferred the Bellagio or
Grand Canyon
.’
‘Never let it be said that I don't know how to woo a girl.’
But their smiles were more hesitant now. They both knew it was just bravado; like those who chatter away on ghost tours to keep their minds off the worst. They looked ahead as Kendell continued his guided tour.
‘There are another seventeen corridors like this full of fallen angels, with fifteen yet to fill before we have to expand. And the secrecy paramount here is followed through at every stage. That's why we use containment guns that look like tasers and discreet containment vans.’ Ellis took a fresh breath. ‘Nothing untoward that might alarm the public.’
One girl student two ahead of Jessica appeared fixated by some of the tube specimens, her eyes reflecting the glow from the electric forks.
‘And do they have special powers or anything? Like can leap over tall buildings or throw people fifty yards?’
Josh Eskovitz smiled dryly at her. ‘Somebody might notice something
like that.’
Ellis nodded. ‘Like I said, nothing untoward. These are fallen-from-grace spirits. So they're useless without a body to function. But they're also then limited by that body's physicality. The most you'll get is some extra physical strength – like when you hear about
PCP
addicts needing five cops to pin them down.’ He paused, as if struck by an afterthought. ‘Or extra mental astuteness: invariably the murderers and master-criminals we find hardest to apprehend.’
TWENTY-
ONE
Bruno Teischen decided to keep the same venue for his next meeting, so arranged to meet hitman Vince Lupas at his downtown cigar club.
After lighting up, Teischen slid a folder across the table with details and a photo of the target.
As Lupas opened it, he raised an eyebrow. ‘Won’t be easy.’
‘No. That’s why your name was suggested.’ Teischen blew out a plume of smoke. ‘And that’s why the high fee.’
Lupas said nothing, sank back into reading the file. Teischen gestured.
‘For obvious reasons, no possible trace back to me. In fact, best that it looks like an accident.’
‘I understand.’ Lupas looked up finally, eased out his breath. ‘Looks like he has some risky hobbies.’
‘He does at that.’ Teischen tapped his cigar. ‘Good Cubans, no?’
As Jules Mentinck came to the end of another holo-pod session, some students compared their sketch pad images to the newly created lab demon still displayed on it –
Dalimus
.
The class had returned from the ‘containment facility’ late the night before and so had been given the morning off to make notes before resuming lessons.
A boy no more than thirteen raised his hand. ‘And what's that crazy gibbering noise all about when we see these demon auras?’
‘It's meant to represent all the voices of the numerous people they've inhabited over the years. You've probably more commonly heard it referred to as 'Speaking in tongues'.
Mentinck surveyed the class, a glint of recognition dawning on some of them after a second. Jessica nodded.
‘So foreign languages too?’
‘Yes. Latin, Akkadian, Hebrew, Elamite... Oscan. Don't forget, we're talking thousands of years here – and even ancient English was very different to now.’
A female student a row behind Jessica lifted her pen. ‘You said before about them 'bailing out' when their subject's dying. But what if there's nobody else they can jump to within thirty yards?’
‘Not only just nobody – but also 'susceptible' to being inhabited. That vulnerability or dark edge I mentioned earlier.’ Mentinck grimaced. ‘But if there's no possible receptor nearby at that crucial moment, then they end up going to Erebus – their spirit limbo – for forty years before they can return.’
Ryan was pensive for a moment. ‘And is there anything that will stop us being able to view these apparitions in people?’
‘As you know from our past lessons, that ability will eventually fade.’ Mentinck looked towards the side glass, suddenly struck with a thought. ‘But if you're talking in the short term, there is perhaps something I could show you.’
Suddenly animated, he left the classroom, a faint hubbub rising behind him. He’d planned to show the class in any case in two lessons time, but since the question had come up now, no harm in changing the order of play. As he knew from his years of lecturing, capturing student’s attention was half the battle:
strike while the iron was hot
.
He found what he was looking for in the second lab-locker along: it appeared like a standard Kevlar vest, except that strapped around its waist was a flat battery pack. He turned to the nearest technician.
‘This one okay and ready to go?’
‘Yeah. Finished the tests yesterday and fully recharged it.’
‘Thanks.’
The class looked up with curiosity as he re-entered the classroom and strapped on the vest.
‘Something we've been working on the past few years – experimenting with what might impede 'viewing'. He pressed a button on the pack and the vest crackled with visible energy forks for a few seconds, then settled. ‘It creates a force-field that blocks the aura and related sound. But it's only at the prototype stage: the battery packs last only sixty hours between recharges.’ Mentinck looked round the classroom. ‘So in answer to your question:
no
. This sort of protection doesn't exist out there. If they're there to be seen – you'll see them!’
As Vince Lupas exited Teischen’s cigar club, he didn’t notice the FBI monitoring van across the road.
The two operatives inside the van watched him walk across the road on their screen, and the same view fed in turn to the
Blind
School
central ops room.
Ellis Kendell and Josh Eskovitz looked between the live image of Lupas and those of Culverton on an adjacent screen leaving the same club two days before.
‘Another face I wouldn't like to meet on a dark night – Vince Lupas,’ Josh commented. ‘Looks like putting a tail also on Teischen has paid dividends.’
‘Another piece of the puzzle.’
‘Unless it was just a coincidence. He was meeting someone else in there.’
Ellis smiled his indulgence. ‘One thing you quickly learn from working in this section. Your belief in those quickly goes.’
Frank Lyle had been searching through the past day’s security cam videos for almost an hour when on screen he picked out the girl in the classroom.
His thoughts drifted back to the group of girls he’d seen across the inter-section from his van that day. And as his mind’s eye panned across the four girls with sunglasses he’d returned to view the other day, he hit a match with the girl on screen.
He leant closer, zooming in on the girl’s face until it filled the screen.
The aircraft hangar was large and cavernous, only a quarter of it occupied by two small turbo-props to one side. The skydiving instructor’s voice echoed as he addressed the class.
‘Okay. Eight of you for the jump tomorrow. And I'd like to welcome to the group, Jack Latham.’
The group dutifully look in Latham's direction, among them John Culverton.
They nodded, smiled and said ‘hi’, and Vince Lupas reciprocated:
‘Hi, there.’
The instructor picked up again:
‘But a few things to run through for tomorrow – not least what sort of visibility and wind shift we’re probably looking at.’
The next night after leaving
Blind
School
, Ryan and Jessica stopped off at a cafe. He reached across the table and touched her hand.
‘You gonna be okay tomorrow?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ She opened her bag, reminding herself of the sequence as she touched the bottles. ‘Got it all worked out: pills, eyedrops... drops, pills...
shit
!’ Her expression fell.
‘What is it?
‘I... I think I left my inhaler back in the school washrooms. Had a little panic attack there.’
‘It's okay. I'll run you back.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘No problem.’
They knocked back their coffees and walked towards a Ford Focus that looked like it had come out the wrong side of Pimp-My-Ride ten years back.
Jessica smiled as they approached it, and couldn’t resist breaking into a chuckle as it let loose with a couple of backfires halfway back to the school. Ryan leered.
‘Don't knock it, okay. It's a first car.’
But Jessica's smile was mellow rather than mocking.
‘It's okay. We've got this spoilt-bitch friend whose got a brand-new Mercedes Kompressor. And I was actually thinking how nice and cute this was in comparison.’
Ryan looked at her askew. ‘Nice?
Cute
? In comparison to a Mercedes Kompressor?’ He shook his head. ‘You're a strange girl at times, Jessica Werner.’
But Ryan's return smile was equally warm and mellow.
When they got back to the school, the Day-Guard was still on duty. He watched Ryan's car approach the gates and buzzed to let him in.