‘Is this some sort of joke?’ Stephen sits forward in his chair. ‘Show yourself or I’m calling security!’ He reaches for the phone and she slams the datapad down on his hand—hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to damage those delicate, skilful fingers.
His eyes go wide as she pushes him back in his chair.
‘Hey! What…’ Look left, look right, look very,
very
scared. ‘Who’s doing this?’
She types in two words into the pad:
‘
I AM.
‘
His face falls open like a gash. Then his lips start to tremble. The poor wee soul must think he’s having a nightmare.
‘Who are you?’ he whispers.
As predictable as ever. She only has to punch a button to bring up the preprogrammed reply.
‘
STEPHEN I’M INSULTED. SURELY YOU REMEMBER ME? YOU WEPT WHEN THEY SENT ME AWAY FOR SURGERY.
‘
‘Oh God…’
Ah:
now
he remembers.
‘How did you…I saw you…But…Oh God, you can’t be—’
She slaps him. Blood wells up from the new split in his lip.
‘
I REQUIRE A NEW FACE, STEPHEN. A JAW, A LARYNX, VOCAL CHORDS, CHEEK MUSCLES, EVERYTHING THEY TOOK AWAY FROM ME.
‘
‘I can’t—’
She hits him again.
‘
A CLONEGRAFT HEAD IS GROWING IN THE VATS. YOU WILL PERFORM THE SURGERY.
‘
‘This isn’t happening…’
This time she doesn’t slap him; she balls her hand into a fist and smashes it into the bridge of his nose. Stephen’s head snaps back, blood spraying from his nostrils. He grunts. Groans. Clutches both hands over his broken face. Probably in a lot of pain.
Good.
‘
YOU WILL PERFORM THE SURGERY AND YOU WILL TELL NO ONE.
‘
He glares up at her, blood seeping out between his fingers. ‘I’ll see you rot in Hell first!’
At last, the mouse is showing some balls.
Time to castrate him.
‘
YOU WILL COOPERATE. I HAVE TAKEN OUT INSURANCE.
‘
There’s a framed holo sitting on his desk. A happy family group, grinning at the camera somewhere exotic. She picks it up.
‘
YOU HAVE TWO CHILDREN
,’
says the electronic voice.
‘
MARTIN IS FOUR. HE LIKES DINOSAURS AND WILL NOT EAT HIS VEGETABLES. JASMINE IS THREE. HER FAVOURITE THING IN THE WHOLE WORLD IS TEDDY ORANGE. YOUR WIFE IS BLONDE.
‘
Stephen’s hand falls away from his face as she pulls a clump of long golden hair from her bucket and throws it onto his
desk. There’s a palm-sized chunk of bloody scalp attached to it.
He’s making that whimpering sound again.
‘I…I don’t believe you!’
She punches his home phone number into the unit on his desk.
‘What are you doing?’
It rings for a moment, then an unfamiliar face fills the screen, a Bluecoat uniform just visible beneath the double chins. The man frowns.
‘Who’s this?’
Stephen grabs the desktop. ‘Dr Bexley. Where’s my wife? Where’s Marilyn?’
‘You know your nose is bleedin’?’
‘I want to talk to Marilyn!’
The officer looks down, out of shot, as if consulting something.
‘You Dr Stephen Bexley? Two, two, three, seven, Niven Towers, Cowcaddens?’
‘I…Yes.’ He goes pale. Swallows. ‘What’s happened?’
‘We got an anonymous nine, nine, nine call. Said two wee kids were here unsupervised.’
‘My children?’
The officer’s frown turns into a scowl.
‘You do know it’s an offence to leave minors on their own?’
‘Oh God.’ That’s all he says, over and over. ‘Oh God.’
The man on the other end of the phone sighs.
‘Look, sometimes it just gets a bit too much for the mums every now and then, you know? Your wains are fine, but I need you to organize someone to look after them, OK? Then talk to yer wife. Give her a bit of support, but.’
Stephen snivels. ‘Oh God, Marilyn…’
‘Dinna worry, she’s probably just out takin’ a breather. Doin’ some shoppin’. Blowin’ off steam.’
The officer pauses, staring out of the screen at Stephen.
‘I’d get that nose looked at if I wis you.’
And with that the Bluecoat kills the connection.
Stephen picks the chunk of scalp off the desktop with trembling fingers, sniffs the blonde hair, and starts to cry. It’s sweet the way people become attached to things. A wife’s fragrance. A clump of skin. A limb. Their lives.
Dr Westfield lets him have his little moment before holding up the datapad again. It says:
‘
I HAVE HIDDEN HER SOMEWHERE SAFE. IF I DO NOT RETURN TO FREE HER, SHE WILL DIE. SLOWLY. IF YOU DO NOT PERFORM THE SURGERY, SHE DIES. IF YOU TRY TO CONTACT THE AUTHORITIES, SHE DIES. IF YOU DO NOT DO EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE TOLD, SHE DIES. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?
‘
His face moves as if there are snakes buried under the skin. ‘But you can’t…she’s pregnant! You…I’m calling security!’ Stephen goes for the phone.
She grabs him by the lapels and drags him across the desk. Throwing him to the floor. Papers go flying, the heart-warming family holo hits the floor and she stands on it. Stephen’s family goes crunch beneath her feet.
‘
LOOK AT ME.
‘
She hammers one-handed at the datapad’s keyboard, as he scurries backward into the bookcase, nose streaming blood down his pale face.
‘
WHAT CAN THEY DO TO ME TO MAKE ME TALK? WHAT? WHAT HAVE I GOT TO LOSE?
‘
All spoken in that same, flat, artificial voice.
‘You can’t do this!’
‘
I ALREADY HAVE.
‘
‘Please…’ He struggles to his knees, hands clasped in front of him, tears streaming down his face. ‘Please, I’m
begging
you! Let her go, for the sake of the baby. It’s not too late—’
She would laugh if she could.
‘
DO YOU REALLY THINK ONE MORE TINY DEAD BODY MAKES ANY DIFFERENCE TO ME?
‘
He slumps back against the bookcase and sobs. ‘Please…give me back my wife!’
She tilts her head to one side and watches him bawl like a small child covered in cigarette burns, then gathers up her bucket and mop and makes for the door.
‘
CELL DIVISION WILL BE COMPLETE IN THIRTY-TWO HOURS. MAKE SURE THERE’S A PRIVATE OPERATING THEATRE READY FOR THE TRANSPLANT.
‘
‘What…’ He wipes a hand across his eyes, leaving a bloody smear. ‘What if I can’t get a theatre ready in time?’
She stops at the threshold.
‘
THEN YOUR WIFE DIES AND WE MOVE ON TO YOUR CHILDREN.
‘
The Dog and Diode squatted beneath the Western Flyover, between two of the heavy support pillars. It wasn’t the best pub in the world, but it was within easy walking distance of Network Headquarters, and some days that was all that mattered. Inside, the bar was decorated in mockwood and leatherette. Booths lined the walls, loose tables filling the remaining space. A handful of off-duty agents were celebrating someone’s promotion by getting them blootered on happy hour drinks. So Will sat on his own in the corner—away from the speakers pumping out a mixture of frosty music and old rock classics—nursing a pint of Black Douglas and a large Macallan.
Trying not to think about the Birthday Party of the Damned. And failing.
The Kilgours were still alive as their unexpected guest worked his way around the table. Cutting a hole in the back of their heads, carefully evaporating their brains in a cloud of pink-grey mist, then stitching that obscene rictus grin in place. Before moving on to the next one in line. They watched their family die, unable to do anything about it, but wait for their turn.
Will shuddered and downed the last of his whisky.
Whoever the Thrummer man was, he’d done it before: there was no way anyone became that skilled at cranial evacuation without a
lot
of practice. What happened to the earlier bodies—the ones before the Kilgours—was anyone’s guess. Certainly the Network had never found them.
A shadow fell across Will’s table.
‘Penny for your thoughts?’ It was Brian, dripping from the downpour outside.
‘You don’t want them. Trust me.’
Brian shoogled himself into the booth and popped the console out of the tabletop. ‘Drink?’
Will clinked his empty whisky tumbler against his empty beer glass. ‘Where’s Jo?’
‘Reportin’ to Central. She’s got her Bluecoat mates runnin’ tests on the stuff we bagged and tagged at the Kilgours’.’
‘What about building security?’
Brian pulled a face. ‘Place that fancy, you’d think they wouldnae skimp on the cameras and scanners and that, but they got a cheap-arsed system. Bargain basement time. Whole bloody lot was hacked: sod all on the hard drives going back a week and a half.’ He ran his fingers over the drinks console, then struggled out of his coat while they waited for their order to arrive.
‘The missing girl: Jillian, wasn’t it?’
Brian nodded.
‘If our friend with the Thrummer wanted her dead, she’d be sitting at that bloody table with the rest of her family. He’s got something special in mind for her, something that’s going to take time and solitude.’
‘Jesus. Poor cow…’
An old man hobbled up to the table, plonked their drinks down, collected Will’s empties, and hobbled away again without saying a word.
‘Come on, put it away for the night.’ Brian helped himself to a Guinness. ‘Let the Bluecoats handle the legwork; you an’ me’ll get blootered, grab a curry or something.’
‘What about James?’
‘We’ve got an understanding. I don’t moan when he’s out with his horsey friends, and he doesn’t moan when I’m out with mine. Anyway, he knows fine you’ll keep me out of temptation.’
Which was true.
Half an hour later, George appeared, sniffing and snorting, all wrapped up in winter woollies. He had to peel himself like an onion before he could even fit into the little booth.
‘Sodding bucketing down out there.’ He blew his nose, then stared at Will. ‘What happened to you this morning? Twenty minutes I was waiting there. Felt like a right prat.’
‘Yeah, sorry about that.’ Will pointed at his bruised face. ‘Had a near-death experience in Kelvingrove Park with a couple of muggers. You’ll probably get one of them in the mortuary tomorrow…if they can scrape enough of him up.’
‘Oh thanks,
just
what I need: more work.’ The little pathologist ran a hand across his forehead. ‘Any chance of something medicinal? I’m dying here.’
They ordered another round, and when the old man had hobbled off with the latest set of empties, Will got George to tell Brian what he’d discovered in the brains of the bodies they’d dragged back from Sherman House.
‘You’re kiddin’ me,’ said Brian when he’d finished. ‘They’re givin’ people VR syndrome on
purpose
?’
George gulped at his double brandy and blue. ‘Yup. I went back to the mortuary and had another look at the bodies when Will didn’t show up; they’ve both got old injection marks at the base of their necks. At least two dozen each. Whoever it is, they’re going around manually infecting people.’
Brian said, ‘Dirty bastards…’ and Will had to agree with him.
George held up a podgy hand. ‘No, no: this is good news.’
‘What? How the hell is
any
of this good news?’
‘They’re still injecting people.’ He paused, obviously expecting some sort of reaction. Then sighed when he didn’t get one. ‘Look, VR syndrome is at its worst when loads of people get it at the same time, right? But this lot are still having to infect their test subjects by hand. You’d need to do a big chunk of the block simultaneously to really kick things off, and you can’t do that going round with a needle; you need to get it airborne, or in the water supply.’
Will sat back in his chair. That was all they needed: Glasgow exploding into violence all over again. People killing their friends, neighbours, family and anyone else they could get their hands on. Little cabals of madness getting bigger and bigger until there were only two kinds of people: the cannibals and the dead. ‘If they can weaponize this stuff—’
‘The whole bloody city turns into bamheid central.’ Brian scowled at his beer. ‘Aye, and no’ just the connurb blocks like last time, everyone: you, me, Emily, Jo, James…’
The fat pathologist slurped at his vivid blue drink. ‘You don’t come up with something like this overnight. Whoever made this stuff spent a lot of time and money developing and testing it. Probably years.’
‘How the hell do you get away with pulling shite like this for years?’
Will closed his eyes and sighed. ‘You get away with it,’ he said, ‘by having someone very big and very powerful standing behind you.’
‘Corporate? One of them bio-research outfits?’
‘Whoever it is, they’re well connected—Governor Clark was on the phone to Director Smith-Hamilton shouting the odds about Emily and me being there half an hour after we left Sherman House.’ Will drummed his fingers on the tabletop. ‘Peitai said he was with the Ministry for Change, kept going on about finding a cure for VR—’
‘Bollocks,’ said George. ‘This is weapons research, or I’m a ballerina.’
Will rolled the last of his whisky round his mouth and placed the empty tumbler in the centre of the table. ‘Question is, what do we do about it?’
‘We stop them!’ Brian thumped his fist down, making the glasses rattle. ‘Even termites’ve got a right to live without some murderin’ bastard usin’ them as guinea pigs. We go in wi’ all guns blazin’ and take the bastards down!’
‘Don’t be daft.’ George emptied his glass and placed it next to Will’s. ‘You can’t just march in there and start shooting. Could be hundreds,
thousands
of people already infected. Go in there and spark something off, you’ll be looking at a lot of dead bodies.’
Will held up his hands. ‘OK, we can’t storm the place, so we do what we always do: build a case. Find out who that little git Ken Peitai’s really working for, what else they’re up to. Then shut the whole place down.’
Brian snorted. ‘Aye, right—like the Poison Dwarf’s goin’ tae authorize an investigation with Governor Clark breathing down her cleavage. She’s after a seat on the board and there’s no way in hell—’
‘By the time we’re finished with him, Governor Clark’s going to be pushing a mop about with half his face missing. Just because you don’t like her, doesn’t mean the Director isn’t good at her job. We go to her with this, she’ll take it all the way.’
‘Still say you’re mental.’ Brian swallowed the last of his Guinness and plonked the empty down alongside the others. ‘I’ll get an incident room and team organized—’
‘No! No team.’ Will shoogled forward in his seat. ‘This has to be low key. Just the three of us.’
Brian rolled his eyes. ‘Fine. I’ll get Emily to—’
‘Emily can’t hear a word about this. I don’t want Peitai to know we’re after him.’
‘What? You’ve known her for years! She’s saved your arse more times than I can count, how can you no’ trust her?’
‘It’s not her he doesn’t trust.’ George pulled the console over and ordered another round. ‘If they put listeners and trackers in Will they put them in Emily. You speak to her you’re speaking to them.’
‘Fuck…’ He frowned. ‘Jo, then?’
‘Fewer people know about it the better. Besides, this thing’s a potential career-killer. I’m not putting her in that position.’
‘Aye.’ Brian winked at George. ‘It’s OK to kill ours, but.’
Will grinned. ‘Brian, your career couldn’t get any more diseased if it tried. It’d be a mercy killing.’
‘What would?’ Emily’s voice made all three of them jump. She was standing at the end of their table, her concrete-coloured jumpsuit replaced with a snazzy two-piece in dark burgundy, a blue overcoat leaving puddles of water on the pub floor. She hung it up, then squeezed in next to Will and stabbed her thumb down on the drinks console, ordering the same again.
‘Er…’ Will looked across the table, but no one came to the rescue. ‘We were…talking about how we can’t go back to Sherman House.’
‘Yup, it’s not safe.’ Sniff, snort.
‘Aye, place’s a fuckin’ powder keg.’
‘Bunch of old wifies.’ She shook the water from her close-cropped hair. ‘There’s something going on over there and that little MFC weasel Peitai is a lying tosser. “Finding a cure for VR syndrome” my mum’s hairy backside.’
‘You don’t know that, Emily.’ Will shifted in his seat. ‘If there’s any chance they
can
find a cure, we can’t risk jeopardizing it.’
‘Did those muggers knock something loose between your ears this morning?’ Her voice was rising. ‘Peitai’s bastards zapped us and tied us to a bloody chair! I am
not
turning a blind eye just because some jumped up little social-working shitebag—’
‘I’m serious, Emily. And it doesn’t matter anyway: Director
Smith-Hamilton has ordered the place off limits till things have calmed down.’
‘Since when did you give a toss about what Smith-Hamilton says? Look, if we can get back into that underground lab I think I can—’
‘No! As far as the Network, you, I, and everyone else is concerned, Sherman House does not exist.’
‘Don’t be so bloody—’
Will slammed his hand down on the tabletop, making the glasses jump. ‘End of discussion Lieutenant! You are not to go near Sherman House, and that’s an order!’
Emily stared at him, eyes narrowed, top lip curling. ‘Yes,
sir
.’ She stood, grabbed her overcoat off the hook, then threw him a curt salute.
‘Emily don’t—’
‘If you’ll excuse me,
sir
, I have to get some fresh air. It suddenly stinks of shit in here.’
Emily turned and marched out of the pub, back straight, chin up.
As the door slammed shut, the old man reappeared, his tray loaded down with two of everything, and a single glass of Methven Bay chardonnay. Emily’s drink.
When he’d shambled off again, Brian reached forward and picked a large Jack Daniels from the collection. Took a sip.
‘That went well,’ he said into the silence. ‘I
particularly
liked the bit where you pulled rank on her. Good move. Smooooooth.’
‘Oh bugger off.’ Will sank back in his seat. ‘Didn’t see either of you two leaping in to help.’
‘You know,’ said George, helping himself to another brandy and blue, ‘looking on the bright side: anyone listening in is going to think they’re safe.’
Will shrugged. ‘Suppose you’re right.’
But it didn’t make him feel any better.
She snuggles deeper into her little nest of toilet paper, feeding tube in her arm, warm, comfortable, and content. Two kiddiewinks and a pregnant wife. Dr Stephen Bexley, you virile stud you.
Pregnant, pregnant, pregnant…She loves pregnant women—they add such a sparkle to proceedings. Especially when itcomes to the vivisection.
She makes a sound that could be mistaken for a sigh. On Sunday she’ll lie back on an operating table and have her face restored. Her very own face…Of course, the
sensible
thing to do is take someone else’s face. But she doesn’t want to be sensible. She wants to look in the mirror and recognize the person looking back. She wants to be whole again. Then, when she’s all healed and beautiful, she’ll have to leave the country.
A shame. This city has been good to her—let her hunt its inhabitants for years—but if she remains in Glasgow someone’s going to recognize her. At first they’ll see nothing more than a striking resemblance to the notorious Dr Fiona Westfield, but then they’ll begin to talk. And eventually someone will listen.
They’ll start asking difficult questions. Then someone takes a fingerprint, or a DNA sample and they’ll know she’s not dead. Then they’ll strap her to another operating table…only this time she won’t come back.
She shakes her head and tries to think happy thoughts. But Stephen Bexley and his screaming wife no longer light her candle. All she can see is a long dark tunnel with an operating slab at the end. The sound of bees and broken glass.
Deep breaths.
It’s just paranoia. Nothing to worry about. Don’t let it take control.
Deep breaths.
Kill something.
That’ll make her feel better. Kill something
slowly
and bathe in the screams.
No.
Deep breaths.
Kill something.
Not yet.
Please
.
Focus!
She snaps another ampoule of medicine into her neck and waits for the chemicals’ soothing touch.
Focus.
She can’t risk staying here. Soon as her new face has healed, she’ll leave. Bye-bye Glasgow. Bye-bye Scotland. Well…First she’ll see how her children are getting on and
then
she’ll leave.
Yes. Somewhere far, far away.
But not before she pays an old friend a visit.