Rollerskater: Influence
I | II | III | SSI | IV | V | SSII | SSIII | VI | VII | SSIV
VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | SSV | XIII | SSVI | XIV | SSVII | XV | SSVIII | XVI | XVII
This instalment contains scenes of psychological horror some readers may find disturbing.
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Emily Bush sits in a cold, concrete room at the end of a long stone corridor. The air in here is chill and draughty, like a door has been left open. The room is lit with white LEDs, the bluish tint of the light seeming to rob the very air of any kind of warmth. She inspects her unpolished fingernails – it’s too much work to keep varnishing them between shifts – then lays her hands flat on the cold table.
Behind her, the door swings open. She does not turn to look, for she already knows who it is that joins her. Two soldiers enter the room first, scouting for listening devices, then give the all-clear, assuming their positions in the back corners of the room, holding their guns close to their bodies.
In comes the Project Director, and two other officials, who seat themselves beside him. One is a woman, tall, thin. The other is a man, shorter and stockier. They are the Project Director’s underlings, and like the Project Director, nameless: The “Project Coordinator” and the “Armed Forces Liaison”.
The Project Director looks at Bush hatefully, reaching into his jacket for a device, which he sets on the table. He retrieves a compact microphone that he also sets on the table, and connects its plug to a jack on the side of the device. He fiddles and fumbles with the thing for a few moments, then pushes a small red button, labelled REC.
“Tribunal,” he says, tersely, before stating the code and the date. He then looks hard at Bush. “Madam, please state your name for the record.”
“Doctor Emily Bush,” Bush replies. “Here under duress.”
“Here on charges of insubordination,” the Project Director growls. “Would you like to rescind your extraneous comment, Doctor Bush?”
Bush folds her arms, then sniffs.
“I withdraw my comment.”
“Upheld,” the Project Director says. “Do you understand why we have asked you here, today?”
“Yes,” Bush replies, sullenly. “I—”
“Please speak loudly and clearly.”
Bush clears her throat and sits up straight.
“I attempted to give medical care to my patient, in accordance with my oath.”
The Project Director scoffs.
“You disobeyed a direct order, Doctor Bush.”
Bush shoots him a hateful glare. He does not back down.
Nevertheless, she continues her statement.
“My patient, one Blake Parish, was beaten bloody by the soldier tasked with feeding him, apparently as a result of Parish’s making a comment, alleging that adequate food had been withheld from him for a period exceeding twenty-four hours—”
“Disregard that,” the Project Coordinator interjects. “The prisoner lied. We checked the records thoroughly with all personnel and the Armed Forces Liaison present. There was nothing amiss.”
“Of course there wouldn’t be,” Bush snaps.
“Your word against theirs, Doctor Bush,” the Project Director says. “Once again, would you like to rescind your comment?”
Bush narrows her eyes and stares at him, hatefully.
“I withdraw my comment.”
“Upheld. Now, Doctor Bush, I believe you were ordered a few months ago to cease contact with the prisoner, on account of some concerns regarding your relationship with him. Namely, that it compromises your professional responsibilities. Do you agree?”
Bush frowns, turning away from him.
The Project Director presses her.
“Do you agree, Doctor Bush?”
“Yes,” Bush says, shortly.
“And you were in fact made aware that this order came directly from me, do you agree?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are aware that direct disobedience of an order given by the Project Director is a serious matter, and is considered insubordination occasioning severe disciplinary action?”
“Indeed I am,” Bush replies. “But I must state for the record, and in my defence, that I was not disobeying orders. I am a doctor of medicine, and at that moment, I was thinking strictly professionally. I noticed a man in medical distress and came to his aid. I do not see why you would keep a medical doctor on staff if not to provide medical treatment when needed.”
“The injuries the man received could have been handled by DMS,” the Armed Forces Liaison says. “If a doctor had been urgently needed, SAID-MI5 would have asked for one. You took it upon yourself to help him.”
“You could have fooled me,” Bush replies. “I sure as hell didn’t see any medical services personnel present in the room when I rushed in. I did, however, see several personnel laughing and jeering as my patient bled from the nose and mouth.”
“Do you have any evidence for these claims?” the Project Director asks. “Any at all? Or, indeed, are you making excuses?”
“Do you have any evidence that my patient was being tended to by medical personnel?”
“Yes,” the Project Coordinator says. “There are logs of a call at precisely oh-nine-thirty hours requesting dispatch of on-site DMS to attend to the prisoner. Furthermore, the soldier responsible for the attack on the prisoner was reprimanded and removed from feeding duty.”
“Lies!” Bush hisses. “It’s all lies. Every word of it. No effort was made to contact DMS until after I had arrived.”
“Your comments shall be taken into account,” the Project Director says, unconvincingly. “With the added context that you are a known sympathiser of Mister Parish. Effective immediately, you are to be transferred to the surface-level of this facility, while we review your case.”
Bush raises her eyebrows, her eyes flashing to the guards at the back of the room.
“Doing what, exactly?” Bush asks.
“Filling in paperwork,” the Project Coordinator sneers. “You are a signatory to the Official Secrets Act, after all.”
Bush opens her mouth to say something, then closes it again.
“Very well,” she says, trying her best not to sound defeated. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”
The Project Director wrinkles his nose, turning to the two soldiers and waving his hand.
“Remove her.”
Bush stands. The soldiers approach her and go to grab her arms.
“Get your hands off me,” she snarls.
The soldiers back away, but flank her closely. They lead her away, towards a musty stairwell. There, two sliding doors await, to take her back into the light.
*
Looming above the train station at Swindon is the formidable Signal Point, a monster of post-war architecture. Standing some twelve stories tall, it takes its place as Swindon’s own Tower of Babel. With its boarded-up windows, it is a monument to modernist hubris.
At this time, three people were walking towards Signal Point.
“This must be the place,” Socks said, ironically, looking up at a great red British Rail symbol affixed to the frontage like an ominous sigil.
“Hideous thing, isn’t it?” Dolly said. She turned her attention to the station entrance, located at the bottom right of the high-rise. “Come on, we’ve got to catch the next train into Paddington. We’re losing the light.”
They had been walking for hours through the Wiltshire countryside, then found their way to a bus stop, from which they had travelled the rest of the way into Swindon, this new town of concrete and tarmac, built-up to rehouse the houseless in the wake of Nazi bombing raids.
Socks missed the Cotswolds already.
Brrrt-clunk.
“Come on, come on, let’s go!” Monica said. “I want to see the trains!”
“We will, darling,” Dolly said. “But we need to get some tickets first.”
“And how d’you suppose we’re going to do that?” Socks asked. “I’ve just spent the last few months living in the woods. I don’t have much on me.”
“O, ye of little faith,” Dolly said, marching in to the station building.
Socks and Monica shared a look, then followed her in.
Dolly hurried over to a ticket machine. There were members of staff in high-visibility jackets over by the gates. The other two were close behind her.
“Cover for me,” she whispered.
Socks and Monica flanked Dolly, and she placed a hand against the machine. She felt electrical signals pulsing through it. There were hundreds of carefully-conditioned rules, microscopic switches that simply had to be flipped in the right sequence…
The machine hummed, and there were sounds of jerking and squealing inside it. Then, it spat out three orange tickets into the dispenser at the bottom, with receipts.
“Hey, presto,” Dolly said, smiling.
All of them reached into the dispenser and pulled out their orange tickets.
“Wowee,” Monica said. “My first-ever train ticket. I know just what I’ll use it for.”
She placed a hand on her chest, opening a compartment in her belly that was currently being occupied by three books. She pulled out one of the books and tucked it into the first few pages as a bookmark.
Socks looked at the ticket. It was completely legitimate. It even had seat reservations.
“Someone really should teach me how to do that, sometime,” Socks said.
“Keep your voice down,” Dolly said.
“Sorry,” Socks said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I just haven’t really had much time to learn.”
“Your experience has been rather exceptional,” Dolly said. “Can’t say I envy you.”
“Oh, well, that’s really comforting.”
“Happy to help. Shall we?”
“Let’s.”
The two of them walked towards the ticket gates and through the barriers.
“Wait for me!” Monica called. Her internal machinery clanked and whirred as she followed after them, leaving two members of station staff looking very confused indeed.
*
Behind a chain-link fence off the M1 motorway, there stands a large, nondescript building made of concrete. Next to it, there stand a set of metal sheds. There is no road leading on to the premises. All vehicular access must take an uneven dirt path from the motorway. This arrangement is quite deliberate. Soldiers constantly watch the perimeter to ensure that no unauthorised person or vehicle tries to enter through the single locked gate.
Most people, however, will drive by it every day without a second thought. They don’t know what lies beneath. That grey building, with cellular telephone antennas arranged around its roof, appears for all intents and purposes to be somebody else’s business.
Bush gazes out of the window at the cars and lorries roaring by under an overcast grey sky. She has been assigned this duty for several days now. Her tasks are menial and dull.
She is to sort through invoices and receipts and input the information she gleans from them into spreadsheets, so that Project LUCIFER can balance its accounts.
She is to file away important documents in the appropriate folders and drawers.
She is to place letters into secure mailing envelopes with prepaid postage.
In a word, she has become a low-level civil servant, an administrative officer tasked with maintaining the boring and repetitive permanent bureaucracy that oils the machinery of central government.
She hates it. She hates that she is away from her duty as a physician, hates that she has been put on this labour as punishment for simply helping her patient, hates the Project Director and all his brown-nosing underlings.
And yet, she thinks, you didn’t just help Blake Parish just because of your oath, did you, Emily? That was only partly true. You saw what they were doing to him. They’d smashed his face in. Those weren’t just professional instincts that kicked in.
“A-hem.”
Bush is startled, and realises, with some embarrassment, that she has been staring out of the window for five, maybe ten minutes.
“Distracted, are we?” asks Bush’s supervisor, an unpleasant, scornful woman. Bush thinks that, had she been born some years earlier, she’d have been a nun at a religious school, hitting girls with a ruler.
“I’m sorry,” Bush says, trying to laugh off her mistake oh silly me. “I’m not used to this work.”
“Well, you better had get used to it, love,” the supervisor says. “You’re here for the long-haul. Project Director’s orders. If you can’t work efficiently on the spreadsheets, I’ll put you up to something else.”
“If that’s what you want,” Bush says.
The supervisor sneers.
“Back office,” she says. “I want you to sort out some invoices. Get on with it.”
Bush stands. She is not wearing the white coat – she was asked to take it off, since she is no longer working in a capacity as a doctor. Instead, she is wearing a pink blouse, a pair of high-waisted grey trousers, and a pair of heeled shoes.
She walks into the back office, feeling the supervisor’s eyes in her back like hot needles.
She doesn’t know it yet, but this moment is going to change the trajectory of the rest of her life.
*
A man boarded the 20:18 to London Paddington at Swindon and took his seat behind the table seat. He had just settled in to his seat and was rifling in his bag for a battered and dog-eared James Patterson novel when he saw something peer up from the seat in front of him.
He was staring into two black eyes with green irises, set into a pale, youthful face, framed by hair that was the same colour as the skin, with two hands placed on either side of the seat.
“Hello,” the black-eyed girl said. “What’s your name?”
The man was so bewildered by this breach of every unspoken article of the social contract of public transportation that he could hardly even speak. That sort of behaviour is forgivable in a child, but a young woman…!
“Monica!” Socks growled, seizing her by the shoulder. “Sit down.”
Monica looked at him sullenly, then back at the man in the seat behind, and slid sulkily into her seat.
“I’m just excited about riding the train,” she said.
“I know,” Socks said. “But you’re bothering him.” He peered through the gap in the seats at the bewildered traveller. “Sorry,” he said. “She’s a handful.”
The man said nothing, deciding to bury his face in his book at once.
Dolly, sitting on the other side of the table, laughed.
“You’ve turned into such a Dad,” she said.
Socks glared at her.
There was a jolt as the train began to move, and they pulled out of Swindon, heading east on the Great Western Main Line, back towards London. The sun had set by now, it being mid-April, and so reflections became very apparent in the windows.
“Christ, I look a state,” Socks said, beholding his face in the window. “Look at me. I look twenty years older than I am.”
“When we get back to London, we’ll get you some razors and a change of clothes,” Dolly said. “You’ll be back to your cute self in no time.”
Socks smiled slightly.
“How’s Chelsea?” he asked. “You’ve been staying up in Manchester, you said?”
Dolly sighed.
“She’s okay,” Dolly said. “There was…an incident not long ago. Some things came out. I was forced to say things to her that I never, ever wanted her to hear. We’ve talked it over, worked on it, but…I feel guilty about it.”
Socks nodded.
“I can’t say I’ve got much experience in that department,” he said. “But I do know that people stay together because they’re willing to put the work in, not because they never have problems. Honestly, you and Chelsea are the healthiest couple I’ve ever seen.”
“That means a lot,” Dolly said. “I…I love her, Socks. I love her more than anything. A few years ago, I thought…I really thought I’d met the one, but then she turned on me, and now…”
Socks nodded again.
“Between you and me, she is pretty funny,” he said, smiling wryly. “Don’t tell her I said that.”
“I am absolutely going to tell her you said that,” Dolly said, teasingly.
“Don’t!”
“I will.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Socks said, and laughed.
There was a pause.
Dolly looked at Monica, who was excitedly looking around the carriage. Then back at Socks.
“And you and Liberty?” he asked.
Socks’s face faltered slightly.
“She’s…” he began. “We’re not…”
He scratched at his beard.
“I don’t know,” he said, frowning. “I don’t know what we are.”
He laid his palm on the table.
Dolly pursed her lips.
“Sometimes, that’s okay,” she said. She slid her hand over to Socks’s hand and patted it gently.
Socks looked down at her hand, then up into her yellow eyes.
“You alright looking after Monica for a minute or two?” he asked. “I need the toilet.”
“Go for it.”
“Thanks.”
Socks walked out into the aisle and down the train, towards the toilets in the end of the carriage.
Poor sod, Dolly thought.
Monica had at this point settled down and was now reading her novel intently. Dolly was somewhat surprised that she could read. Every ten seconds or so, Monica would turn the page. Dolly watched her for a while.
“Are you enjoying the book, sweetheart?” she said.
Monica stopped, placing her ticket inside the book as a bookmark, then looked up.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
“What’s it about?” Dolly asked.
“It’s about a little man who goes on adventures,” she said. “It’s got all sorts of interesting ideas and words.”
Dolly placed a finger under the front cover and read the title.
“Oh, you’re reading The Hobbit,” she said. “I’ve never read that one. I saw one of the films a few years ago.”
“There’s a film?” Monica asked.
“Yes,” Dolly said. “Three, in fact.”
“Wow,” Monica said. “I shall have to watch them.”
“I wouldn’t.”
Monica looked at Dolly curiously.
“How do you know my father?” she asked.
“We met last year,” Dolly said. “Last spring, as a matter of fact. I was sent to talk to him about his newfound abilities. K-Os isn’t known for her people skills.”
Monica smiled.
“Your voice sounds funny,” she said.
“Funny?” Dolly said, smiling clemently. “How so?”
“You say things strangely. Just then, you said ‘skills’ as ‘skeels’.”
Dolly smiled.
“I am half-Ukrainian,” she said. “I’ve lived in England all my life. I carry traces of my father’s accent in my accent.”
“Ukrainian,” Monica parroted. “Is that a long way away?”
“One thousand, three-hundred miles,” Dolly said. “That’s how far London is from Kyiv.”
“That is quite far,” Monica said. “I’m sorry what I said about your voice. Dad says it’s rude to say things like that.”
“Not to worry, sweetheart,” Dolly said. “I know you were just curious.”
“Tell me more about Ukrainian,” Monica said.
“Of course,” Dolly said. “It’s a beautiful country. In the southwest are the Carpathians, but much of the rest is steppes and plateaus. It’s very flat – not at all like Wiltshire. Grasslands as far as the eye can see, wheat fields that seem to stretch on forever. Oh! I miss it.”
“What does the language sound like?” Monica asked.
Dolly thought for a moment.
“I’ll sing a song for you,” she said. “If you like.”
“Yes, please,” Monica said.
Dolly cleared her throat.
Oy khodyt’ son, kolo vikon
A drimota kolo plota.
Pytayetsya son drimoty:
De zh my budem nochuvaty?
De khaton’ka teplesen’ka,
De dytynka malesen’ka,
Tudy pidem nochuvaty
I dytynku kolysaty.
Oy na kota ta vorkota
Na dytynu ta y drimota
Kotyk bude vorkotaty
Dytynon’ka bude spaty.
Dolly was careful not to sing loudly, so as to disturb the other passengers, but Monica listened intently.
“Wow,” she said. “That was wonderful.”
“I do try,” Dolly said.
“You’re interesting,” Monica said. “I like talking to you.”
The train’s wheels rumbled beneath them as it continued on its journey to Reading.
*
The back office is a small grey room, lit by fluorescent lighting, filled with cabinets the colour of sunless skies. On the back wall is a corkboard covered in various pieces of paper, the fire exit plan, and other assorted quick references.
The invoices are from a daisy-chain of suppliers and state-owned front-companies, almost none of which know to whom they are really supplying their goods. This is how the canteen and office tea-making facilities stay stocked up, how the project is kept in stationery, how the printers are kept full of ink and paper.
Bush is searching through filing cabinets for various invoices, putting them into order and stapling them to forms. The forms will be sent to some other civil servant, who will send it to some other civil servant, who will send it to some other civil servant, who will stamp it with a rubber stamp and send it to some other civil servant, who will send it to a courier, who will send it to some other civil servant.
Eventually, the books will be balanced, and if she makes even the slightest mistake, the process has to start all over again.
The work is repetitive. She finds herself falling into a trance, so involved in her work that she worries that she ceases even to be a human being at times, just a thing, a machine.
To keep herself together, she finds her mind wandering back to the folder she found in the office below.
Blake Parish has powers that defy all scientific explanation. They did scans on him when he came in. Anatomically, biologically, he is human, but it is as if every atom in his body spins along a different axis to the rest of reality; it is alien, Other. The brief glimpses she saw of his face confirm that he is preternaturally youthful, yet his eyes are so ancient. They burn like stars…
She has tried to find out what ‘rubric’ is. She tried, foolishly, to search for it using a strictly-forbidden copy of the Tor browser and a virtual private network installed on her personal machine, but none of the results were what she was looking for. Not even from conspiracy theorist websites – and she knows full well that sometimes, the conspiracy theorists are right. Which begs the question of how the Government even knows about such things.
She must know. There has to be something she can learn.
She stands, walking over to the door, and peers through the wired glass window to see if she is being watched. The supervisor is away.
She locks the door. If the supervisor wants to come in, she will have to knock, or use the key. In either case, that will make noise. If she makes noise, Bush will have time to get back to what she is supposed to be doing.
After locking the door, she feels a surge of adrenaline. She finds herself going through filing cabinets, looking for information – any information – about rubric, about Project LUCIFER, anything that might clue her in to what is going on beyond what she already knows.
After several minutes of searching, she finds only invoices. Silently, she curses herself. Of course MI5 would have high-level opsec. You got lucky once, but this isn’t a Bond film. These are competent people, good at what they do.
Deflated, she closes the filing cabinet, unlocks the door, and returns to the work she should have been doing all along.
And then a thought occurs to her.
The corkboard.
She turns and looks at it, and almost smacks herself in the face.
The damn thing has a fire exit plan!
There, before her, is a full schematic of the building and its environs.
And then she sees them. Two little words. The person who typed them definitely did not anticipate how earth-shaking they would be in this moment.
SHEDS (COLLAPSIBLE STRUCTURES)
She hurries to the window and looks down at the metal sheds again. She can’t believe she didn’t notice it before – the sheds have no apparent means of ingress. They’re empty. They aren’t really sheds at all. They’re disguising something.
Her eyes flit back to the schematic. She does some mental calculations. She figures it out.
She knows exactly what the sheds sit atop.
Or, rather, who.
*
Socks pawed his way down the aisle, struggling against inertia as the train thundered eastward. As he walked from seat to seat, he heard murmured conversation over the humming of the train’s motors.
“…and they say it’s only going to get worse…”
“…really?”
“…you heard about what’s going on with Lucy?”
“…can’t stand chips with ketchup, mayo all the way for me…”
“…awful game last night…”
“…mayo? On chips? You’re weird, you are…”
“…landlord’s such a prick…”
His head started to ache. He hadn’t had water in ages. The fluorescent lights were bothering him.
The vestibule at the end of the carriage smelled disgusting. He opened the door to one of the toilets and entered the cramped compartment.
He took this time to reflect on the trajectory his life had taken. How different would his life be now, he thought, if he’d never invited K-Os to that Christmas party?
His mind wandered to his parents. How he hadn’t spoken to them in ages. They must be worried sick about him. He remembered all the failed calls he’d tried to make. Why hadn’t they picked up? It killed him to imagine that his parents might be locked up somewhere, held captive by the Government as ransom for their fugitive son. He should never have got involved. Never should have dragged them into this.
Them, and Daisy. Daisy who was now living up in Manchester. Daisy, who still wouldn’t forgive him. And why should she? He had been an arsehole. The months living away from anything had given him plenty of time for thinking that over. They’d still be friends if he’d just been honest, not been haughty enough to assume it would never come around to bite her. He had been too much under K-Os’s spell.
Christ. He turned around, zipping his fly, and washed his hands in the sink.
He wasn’t sure how he was going to react, seeing K-Os again after this long. He’d changed a lot since they’d last met. Would she still be pissed off? Maybe. He wasn’t really sure where they stood. Back in September they’d been friends, but now…
He looked into the mirror, thinking again what a state he looked—
That face.
He stopped.
The face he saw was not his own.
There before him was an apparition. A white face, white like porcelain, and hairless. The grinning lips were painted black, and the skin was etched, tattooed, with various alphabetical symbols – Greek, Russian, Japanese, Latin.
He opened his mouth: “What—”
And the face was gone.
He shook his head.
He unlocked the bathroom door and, opening it, backed away slowly, until he was standing once again in the foul-smelling vestibule.
“You heard about what’s going on with Lucy?” someone said.
“What?” Socks replied.
There stood a man in a jacket with a bag slung around his shoulder. A badge affixed to his lapel and a lanyard around his neck confirmed that he was a ticket inspector.
“I said, do you have a ticket for this journey, sir?”
“Oh,” Socks said. “Yeah, hang on.”
The inspector gave him a strange look. Socks reached into his pocket and showed the ticket, handing it to the inspector. The inspector looked it over, then handed it back to him.
“Get on back to your seat, sir.”
Socks turned and walked back down the aisle. The headache had got worse.
Something was very wrong.
Suddenly, he was at his seat and found himself sat across from Dolly. He felt like the sound of the train’s motors was growing louder and louder in his ears. And the fluorescent lights seemed so intense. There was a spot in his left eye. Like he had looked at the Sun, and it had burned a permanent spot into his vision…a white smudge, just above his visual equator. Everything was so loud and so bright.
“Are you feeling alright?” someone said suddenly.
Socks turned and looked upon the visage of Dolly Mixture, who looked concerned.
“I don’t think I am,” he said.
Dolly was silent for a few moments, staring at him.
“Pardon?” she said.
“I said I’m not feeling alright,” Socks said. There was an itch in his head. Somewhere in the centre of his skull, a buzz.
“Socks, you’re scaring me,” Dolly said.
“What’s the matter?” Socks asked, afraid of the answer.
“Why is he talking like that?” Monica asked.
Socks replied once more.
But Dolly heard nothing but gibberish, a clattering of aphasic syllables.
“Monica,” Dolly said, quietly. “I think there is something very wrong with your father.”
Socks was gripped by an unspeakable terror.
There was a flash.
*
Bush passes her days in relative quiet. She has learned to be subtle in her movements. She does the work she is assigned to do, departs for lunch break every day at midday, and is then escorted to her dormitory by soldiers every evening.
When she awakens, she washes and dresses herself, brushes her teeth, eats breakfast in her kitchenette, and then reports to the soldiers stationed outside her dormitory to be escorted back to work. The pointlessness and futility is the point. They are trying to crush the spirit out of her. She will not allow them to succeed.
“Good morning, Emily,” the supervisor says, snidely. The supervisor never refers to her as “Doctor Bush”, as if taking it upon herself to strip Bush of her credentials.
“Good morning,” Bush replies. “Invoices again?”
“No.”
“No?”
The supervisor pulls out a swivel chair in front of a computer.
“Please log in, if you would.”
Bush seats herself in the uncomfortable chair and types in her information at the Microsoft Windows login screen. The computer takes some minutes to log in – the Government uses the cheapest piece-of-shit hardware they can find even in places like this – and Bush is greeted by her desktop, a blue background with the words “Security Service MI5” in the bottom right-hand corner.
The supervisor leans over Bush’s shoulder. Her breath smells of instant coffee.
“You’ve been set up on the Intranet, I take it?” she says.
“Yes, on my first day,” Bush replies.
“Good. This morning you need to go to this directory…”
The supervisor points to a Post-It note, on which someone has written a long folder address to be typed out, rather than simply e-mailing her a link. Again, the pointlessness is the point.
“…and go through the files, one-by-one. Keep all the files marked ‘KEEP’, and destroy all the files marked ‘DESTROY’. I doubt even you will struggle with this one, Emily.”
Bush is not a violent woman, but she does think the supervisor would have a change in managerial attitude if her nose were inverted.
“Understood,” Bush replies. “I’ll get on with it.”
“Also,” the supervisor says. “Last night, you made a mistake on your invoices. It caused problems balancing the books. Took us an hour to find it. Therefore, it has been decided that you may not leave at the end of the day until I, or another person, have reviewed your end-of-day report. Understood?”
Bush is silent for a few moments.
“Understood,” she says, forcefully.
“Good. Get on with it.”
The supervisor departs, leaving Bush to her work.
The folder is filled with memos, as Bush quickly learns. It just goes on and on. Terse messages, from passive-aggressive notes telling people to throw their teabags away when they’re finished with them, to announcements of meetings. Everything marked ‘KEEP’ is just announcing events yet to come, while everything marked ‘DESTROY’ consists of past events from the last year that various people have forgotten to destroy. Bush finds herself almost nodding off at her desk. It’s not even eleven a.m. yet.
She gets up from her desk to make coffee, locking her terminal.
She glances out of the window at the sheds that are not sheds.
She wonders, do they know that she knows? And if they do, do they care?
Since childhood, she has been taught to make herself scarce, not to speak up. She has always resented that this attitude made her quiet, soft-spoken, always on silent running.
She thinks again of Blake, trapped there like a fly beneath the Earth. What does he think of her? He must resent her. Justifiably, she thinks. What he has endured, this past year, is something no human being should ever have to witness, ever have to suffer through. And he is, for all his weird abilities, a human being, one deserving of dignity and peace.
She takes the coffee with her back to the desk, and logs back in to the terminal.
And there, sitting in the ‘DESTROY’ pile, is a single note that she, in mechanistic boredom, almost deleted without a second thought.
It is a memo from an unidentified source, sent to the Project Director and his lackeys in mid-March of this year.
It reads:
Direct orders from Downing St. Tell staff that subject is being asked to join CAVRs, codename Black Swans. Downing St. knows he won’t accept offer. Exactly the point.
Keep up ruse. Continue re-education sessions and pain stimuli. Purpose of this shall all become clear soon enough. Downing Street has heard word from Captain that daughter of subject (Liberty Parish) is looking for subject. Girl still eludes SAID. She’s good, but closing in.
Downing St. seems to think daughter will be under control soon. Something to bear in mind re: arrangements. Otherwise, operate as usual.
Bush raises her eyebrows.
Arrangements? She scours her mind for anything she can think of that they might be alluding to. Nothing jumps out.
She has to act fast.
She checks over her shoulder to see if she’s being watched by any of the other workers, then quietly copies the file into her personal encrypted drive. She deletes the original, and continues her work as normal.
Her mind is buzzing with questions. Why are they continuing to torture him, if not to force him to switch sides? What is the point of all this? If Project LUCIFER is not meant to make a supersoldier, then what is its end goal?
Bush opens the web browser and begins typing in a URL.
“How’s work coming along?”
Bush whips her head to look at the supervisor so fast she feels her neck pop.
“Well,” Bush replies, abruptly. “I’m almost finished.”
The supervisor sees the browser window open.
A few seconds pass. Bush does not let her fear show on her face.
“Distracted, are we?” the supervisor says.
Bush turns her gaze down.
“I suppose I am, yes…I was…going to read the news.”
“You have plenty of time for that on your breaks. Get back to work.”
The supervisor walks away and takes a seat on the other side of the room.
Bush takes a gulp of the instant coffee, then hurriedly types ‘ProtonMail’ into the address bar.
Within five minutes, she has illegally transmitted sensitive government documents to her personal computer. If discovered, she faces imprisonment. She does not care. All that matters is her patient.
She’ll save him if it kills her.
*
There was a flash.
Socks was standing in the toilet at the end of the train carriage, a few minutes ago. There was a ringing in his ears, a sense of giddiness.
The face was in the mirror again.
He looked at her, and saw now that the vision in his left eye was being devoured by a white smudge. He closed and rubbed it. The smudge remained, as though burned into his retina.
What was this? Poisoning? No.
Holy Christ, what was happening to him?
“It won’t work, you know,” said a voice. The lips on the face did not move. The sound came from inside his head.
He backed against the door, slamming a fist against the wall with the same panic and urgency of a man who has just realised his windpipe is plugged by something after swallowing, and he has seconds before he suffocates to death.
There was a flash.
He was standing in the courtyard outside Signal Point, about an hour ago. He collapsed to the ground, gasping and panting.
“My God, Socks!” Dolly shouted. “What’s wrong with you?”
But Socks could not speak. The smudge in his vision was now changing shape, taking human form.
“You can’t time-jump your way out of this one, I’m afraid,” the voice said.
Watch me, Socks thought.
There was a flash.
There was a flash.
There was a flash.
There was a flash.
He was standing in a forest.
He was in the aisle on a train.
He was standing outside Signal Point.
He was sitting opposite Dolly.
“Socks, what the Hell is going on?!” Dolly shouted.
Socks looked right past her. The smudge had now assumed its form.
He could see her.
Her skin pale white, tattooed with words and letters of all tongues, hairless, dressed in nothing but a long white flowing dress.
She appeared as though she were really there, a hologram projecting itself on the back of his eyes. Where the view of her was obstructed by seats, she could not be seen, until he closed his eyes, and then she was all he could see against the empty void of his eyelid.
“You can’t run away,” the voice said. The woman’s lips did not move. They did not need to. The call was coming from inside the house.
What are you? Socks thought.
The woman smiled.
“You heard about what’s going on with Lucy?”
He furrowed his brows. But that’s impossible.
Dolly was still staring at him, a man half-insane, sweating and shaking. Why was he so afraid?
He tried to open his mouth, to say anything to warn her, but it was as though the meaning was becoming scrambled somewhere between his mind and his mouth.
“A linguistic virus,” the woman in white said. “I enter and hijack the language centre of your brain. After that, it’s a simple matter of taking control of your visual cortex. Any second now, I’ll have access to your motor functions. You belong to me now.”
Get out of my head.
“Can’t, even if I wanted to,” the woman in white said. “It’s in my nature. I’m contagious.”
Socks frantically motioned to Dolly for a pen and paper.
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” the woman in white said. “Which, I suppose I am.”
She grinned.
“But you can call me Lucy.”
Somewhere outside of him, Dolly was turning to another passenger.
Socks felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned.
Monica was staring directly at him.
“Please be okay,” she said. “You’re my Dad. I need you.”
Dolly was here again, thrusting a pen and paper into his hands. Where had she got them from? Shit, he was losing time.
With the pen and paper in hand he scratched words in a frantic script.
IM UNDER ATTACK PLEASE HELP ME
He flung down the pen and pushed the paper into Dolly’s hands.
She took one look at it, and read it aloud.
“You heard about what’s going on with Lucy?” she said, bewildered.
The white light and white noise became unbearable. He felt something worming its way through his skull, turning him off, step by step. Things were going dark. He was disappearing, shrinking away, his body becoming a gall for the kernel of his being.
“I told you so,” a voice said.
The lights went out.
*
They are all standing in line, like a row of soldiers.
The supervisor moves from person to person, picking bits of fluff of linen shirts, chastising them. There’s a visitor coming today, an important visitor from on high. The supervisor gets to Bush and looks her up and down.
“Did you not have time to iron last night?” she asks, disdainfully.
Bush stands up straight, and makes eye contact.
“No,” Bush replies.
“No, you didn’t, or no, you did?”
“No, I did.”
“Then why are your work clothes creased?” the supervisor asks.
“I must not have checked them before putting them on.”
The supervisor makes a face like a frog choking on a bee.
“Some advice: Make yourself scarce today, Emily.”
Bush pauses for a few moments before speaking again.
“Understood.”
After a few minutes of inspection, they are dismissed and set about their duties. Today, Bush is tasked with going through files and organising them. She rummages in the cabinets, pulling out folders of many colours, inspecting the contents, straightening them up and returning them to their rightful positions.
She has not attempted any more snooping since the email. She hasn’t even logged into that account to find the memo yet. Privately, she’s been telling herself that she wants to keep quiet. She is, after all, just a physician, at the end of the day. They can replace her. The only reason they haven’t just thrown her out is because of the bureaucratic wrangling it would take to get another in. Not to mention, she knows too much. So she is trapped here, in the interstice, a ghost.
And yet, she knows that in some way, it is right that she is here. For the simple reason that she has been professionally compromised. She thinks, oh, just admit it to yourself, you idiot. But no, she can’t use that word. Not even in her own head. Can’t let it in, no matter how loudly it bangs on the doors.
That word, so small and monosyllabic. In this context it means naught but obliteration.
Not just a name for a feeling. A type of doing. And action speaks far louder than words.
She hears the door open, and hurriedly gets back to work. If the supervisor has noticed her distraction, she is keeping it quiet until their guest has moved on.
“This is where the admin happens,” she is saying. “Not much of interest up here, I’m afraid.”
Bush peers over her shoulder.
There is a man in the office, standing with a slight stoop, looking far older than he really is. On his head is a mauve beret, and on his body, a black uniform. He holds a cane in his right hand, and where his left eye would be is covered by a black patch. The right eye swivels to look at her momentarily. She knows at once that she has met the gaze of the Captain. The nameless, de facto head of SAID-MI5. The last time Bush saw him, he was in far better health. She had heard something had happened, but it is only now she sees the extent of his injuries.
“The soldiers shall escort you to the lower levels,” the supervisor says. “I will take you to the soldiers.”
“Thank you,” the Captain says, wheezing. He pats his pockets and withdraws an inhaler, from which he takes a puff.
He turns and walks out of the room on his stick. The supervisor follows after him. She turns and looks at Bush, and the look in her eyes says “I have a bone to pick with you.”
They depart, and Bush returns to her work.
*
Somewhere he is falling through void
YEWWWW KANNNNNOT SAYYYYYV HERRRRRR BOIEEEEEEEE.
He is too weak to respond, too weak to fight
The voice around him reverberates, metal in a hydraulic press
SHEEEEE IZZZZ OLLLLREDDEEEEE MYNNNNNNNE.
IIIIID IZZZZZ POYNDLEZZZZZ TEWWWW REZIZZZZZT.
For a moment he thinks
Maybe if I offer it the envelope it will go away
Leave me to die in peace
YEWWWW ZHALLLL NOOOOOT DYEEEE HEEEAAARRRR.
THHHHHATT MUZZZZHHHH IZZZZ SERRRRTUNNNN.
WEEEE ZHALLLLL MEEEEET ZOOOON BOIIIIIEEEEEEE.
There is a perverse comfort in knowing this
Doesn’t stop it hurting though
Not one bit
Not one bit
*
Monica was terrified. It was a strange thing to feel. She had been an emotionless thing for so long, an appliance. Something that followed instructions. This was never part of the plan.
Dolly, the nice lady, read the note. And immediately, Monica could see something wrong. Dolly’s yellow, livid left eye turned white. Dolly had turned to her and said something. At first, Monica had thought that she had been speaking her native tongue, only to realise that she was babbling unintelligibly.
She had turned to her father, tried to shake him awake, ask him to help her…but she had received no response. He was asleep, somehow, switched off.
That was when her basic survival instinct had kicked in. She had a mind, yes, but her base programming, etched into the very crystal she was made from, remained the same: Survive.
She vaulted the table, leaping into the aisle, then righted herself.
Brrrt-clunk. Brrrt-clunk-a-CHING.
There was a woman sitting in a seat on the other side of the aisle.
“Excuse me,” Monica said. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but my father and his friend, they need help, can you—”
The woman turned to look at her.
The same white cataract filled the pupil of her left eye.
“You heard about what’s going on with Lucy?”
“Why do you keep saying that?” Monica said.
She turned.
A hundred white dots all looking back at her.
The passengers all stood from their seats, and stared.
Just stared.
Monica turned again.
There stood her father, staring at her, and just in front of him, Dolly.
“Oh no,” Monica said, quietly.
The passengers continued to stare on, and then, in voices so synchronised as to sound like a lone person speaking, they said:
“You heard about what’s going on with Lucy?”
“Stop it!” Monica shouted.
She would find no help on this train.
She peered out of the windows. The train barrelled past Reading Station, where it was due to make a stop, and continued on its way down the line.
“Wait!” Monica shouted. “Wait! Stop!”
She banged on the glass, and her hard fist went straight through it, shattering it, letting in the cold air.
“Stop!” Monica shouted. “Stop the train!”
She felt a hand grasp her shoulder. She turned.
There stood her father, his eyes empty and listless, slack-jawed, his crystal left arm raking into her own.
“Get off me,” Monica said. “I don’t want to have to hurt you! Get off!”
He responded, in a voice that sounded agonised: “You heard about what’s going on with Lucy?”
The train screeched to a halt. Her father was thrown to the ground by the sudden stop, as were several of the passengers.
There was silence for a few moments.
Time seemed to crawl to a stop.
Then, somewhere, there came the sound of a woman’s laughter.
In her left eye, Monica saw something taking shape.
At the same time, someone spoke inside her head.
“You presented a bit of a challenge, dear. Not to worry. It’s all sorted out, now.”
And behold a hairless woman in white clothes, who seemed to levitate above the ground.
“My name’s Lucy. What’s yours?”
*
“What the hell was that about?”
Bush glares at her supervisor.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t give me that,” the supervisor snaps. “What do you think you’re playing at, staring at the Captain like that? Do you have any idea how bad you make us look, looking at him all googly-eyed?”
Bush scowls.
“Grow up,” the supervisor says. “Pouting like a teenage girl. You ought to be ashamed.”
In response to this, Bush can only laugh bitterly. The supervisor shakes with rage.
“That does it,” she says. “I shall report this to the Project Director. Do you hear me? You have failed in your professional responsibilities.”
On that much, Bush supposes, she can agree.
From down the hallway, there comes the sound of a chime.
“The lift,” the supervisor says. “Wait here. I’m not done with you.”
She disappears through a wooden door with a small window.
Bush peers through a window in the door as the lift comes open, and out step two soldiers, joined by the Project Director, the supervisor, and the Captain, who walks past them and through the wooden door.
He plants his cane in front of Bush. Despite being hunched over, he is still a bit taller than her, and a very intimidating presence. Wheezing, he reaches once more for the inhaler and places it to his lips. He presses down on it, sucking in the vapour, then exhales condensation.
“Doctor Emily Bush?” he says.
“Yes, sir,” Bush replies.
“You are to resume your duties underground at once. The subject’s health is your responsibility. Have I made myself clear, madam?”
Bush pauses, taken aback. Her jaw works for a few moments as she tries to form words, then simply responds:
“Yes, sir.”
The Captain nods.
“Please, sir, if I may,” the Project Director splutters, as he follows through the wooden door. “I really don’t think this is a good idea—”
“I agree,” the supervisor says. She looks pointedly at Bush. “She is a liability, sir, I really think—”
The Captain glares at them. Both of them immediately fall silent.
“Attention!” he barks.
The two soldiers immediately turn to look at him.
“Escort this woman downstairs,” he says.
“Captain, please,” the Project Director says.
“You will follow my orders to the letter, Director,” the Captain growls. “Do you understand me?”
The Project Director says nothing, just stands with mouth agape.
The Captain looks pointedly at the soldiers.
“You two. Downstairs. Now.”
The two soldiers approach Bush.
Quietly bewildered, she goes with them, a physician once again.
*
Diagnostics inspected every nanometre of the crystal wetwork that made up her inner mechanism. This was normal practice – in fact, she ran it every time every time she woke from her low-power mode. She was only half-aware of it while this happened, in the same way a human being is unaware of the activities of their white blood cells.
“You’re running antivirus software?” Lucy said, churlishly. “That’s not going to work.”
“Go away,” Monica said.
Lucy laughed. “I already told you, I can’t. Once I’m in you, I’m in you.”
“Then go to sleep. None of the people on this train have done anything wrong.”
“Oh, I know,” Lucy said.
She looked around the train, gesturing to the many cataracted eyes that stared at Monica.
“You must understand, sweetheart, that I’m not evil. At least, I am not motivated by evil. I am like any other creature that causes disease. I’m simply self-preserving. The only thing that makes me unique is that I can articulate that.”
“But you’re a person,” Monica said. “You have…free will.”
“Oh, look who’s getting all metaphysical. Who, indeed, can be said to have free will? After all, I’ve seen the inside of your head. You’re a machine. Just because you act like you’re conscious doesn’t mean you actually are. Maybe you’re just very good at pretending—”
“SHUT UP!” Monica screamed.
The diagnostic came like a tiny whisper in the centre of her head: Threat to integrity identified. Unable to repair. Seek immediate assistance.
Without hesitation, Monica threw her left arm out in front of her and pointed it at Lucy.
“Oh, now that’s new,” Lucy said. “A robot with a laser in her arm. Oh, yes, it’s going to be fun moving you around…”
“I’ll shoot!” Monica shouted.
“Will you, now?” Lucy retorted. She vanished, disconcertingly – there was no puff of smoke; she simply blinked out of existence.
“Where did you go?” Monica asked.
“Behind you,” Lucy said.
Monica wheeled around. Nobody there.
“Behind you,” Lucy said.
She wheeled around again. Nobody there.
“Nope, right the first time,” Lucy said. “Behind you!”
Monica wheeled around a final time, and saw nothing.
“You cannot shoot what’s not there,” a voice said, from behind her.
Monica slowly turned back around, and there was Lucy, levitating.
“Why are you here?” Monica asked.
“Controlled release of a known parapsychic kill agent,” Lucy said. “A mixture of psychological and biological warfare, courtesy of Her Majesty’s Government. Activated when your father stepped out of the protective field shielding his base pattern from me. Unfortunately, I’m very potent. A little too potent. I think a bullet would have sufficed.”
Monica looked over at her father, who stood, dumbly staring back at her, slack-jawed.
Lucy reappeared in front of her.
“Perhaps we can come to an arrangement,” she said. She clicked her fingers.
There came a sound from further down the carriage, and Monica watched as an unassuming man shambled his way down the carriage, equally as slack-jawed.
“This is David, Patient Zero,” Lucy said. “Infected unknowingly by a stencilled basilisk in Bristol. He was the one who brought me upon this train. He has a fiancée and two dogs. Say hello, David.”
The zombified man looked at Monica and moaned – a long, drawn-out, animalistic sound.
“What’s your point?” Monica asked.
“Well, maybe if you kill him, you’ll get rid of me.”
Monica looked from Lucy to David.
“You’re playing a trick,” she said.
“Maybe I am,” Lucy said. “But I’m just a hallucination. Random neurons – or crystal wetworks in your case – firing in response to a psychic virus. Maybe this is your mind’s way of telling you how to end this.”
“And if it’s not?”
“Well, then you kill an innocent man. Your call.”
Monica looked at the man. He did not appear to be in any sort of distress or pain. He simply continued to stare on, glassy-eyed.
Perhaps…perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad.
She held her arm out in front of her, and it began to glow with blue light.
“Do it,” Lucy said. “End his life. You want to save your Daddy, don’t you?”
Monica looked at her father once again, staring back at her with that same glassy-eyed expression. And beside him, Dolly, whose head sagged lopsidedly, uncomprehending.
Was it possible? Could she free them all by ending the life of just one man? It must be worth trying. She was built for killing, after all…
She looked at David once again. And she saw in him a humanity. She raised the cannon against him, held it there for several seconds, then withdrew it.
Brrrt-clunk.
She could not do it. She saw in him life that deserved to go on. She chose to spare him.
“I won’t do it,” she said.
Lucy smiled.
“Well, you pass the test,” she said. “I was bluffing. You couldn’t have saved them by killing him.”
She clicked her fingers again.
Suddenly, David seemed to wake up, become lucid.
“Oh, God,” he said. “What’s happening to me? I was just reading my book and then—”
“Goodbye, David,” Lucy said, clicking her fingers again.
David did not scream. It was quite literally as though he had been switched off. He fell limp and crashed to the ground in a crumpled heap.
Monica leapt upon him and felt for a pulse, breathing, anything.
Nothing.
He had died instantly.
“He’s dead,” she said. “You killed him for no reason.”
“Oh, he was in the advanced stages of the disease,” Lucy said. “Consider it a kindness. You don’t want to be alive when your brain liquefies and starts dribbling out of your nose.”
“Stop this,” Monica said.
“Make me,” Lucy said. “Oh, that’s right. You can’t.”
She clicked her fingers again. Several more people fell to the ground, including the woman who had been sitting across from them.
“Stop!” Monica cried. “Stop! They’re people, you can’t just—”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Lucy said. “You’ve lost. Everyone on this train, yourself included, is as good as dead. I’ve been brought here to carry out an assassination, and I’m going to—”
The train’s motors began to hum.
“Shit,” Lucy said. “Did I lose track of the driver?”
There was a sudden lurch, and many of the passengers were thrown to the ground or against chairs.
“No,” Lucy said, quietly. “The driver is still under my control. So then what—”
“Oh, dear,” a voice said. “I think you’re forgetting something.”
The train began to thunder down the tracks, faster and faster.
“Who said that?” Lucy said. “I’m in control here!”
“That’s the thing,” the voice replied. “You’re not.”
Air rushed in through the window that Monica had burst, and she watched as Lucy flickered strangely in her field of view.
“You forgot about just one thing,” the voice said.
An icy wind began to blow through the carriage.
“You forgot about the M25.”
The train doors flew open, and through them stepped a figure.
A dark-skinned young woman, clad in a leather jacket studded with badges, over a dress on which there were strange patterns, a kaleidoscope of multicoloured lines.
“My name is Harri-Bec,” the woman said. “And London is spoken for.”
“Not any more!” Lucy shouted. She clicked her fingers again.
“You heard what’s going with Lucy?” the passengers said, in unison.
In an instant, Lucy’s flickering form regained its solidity, and she put her hands on her hips, triumphant.
Harri-Bec smiled back at her.
“Oh, you should not have done that,” she said. “You really, really should not have done that.”
She vanished in an instant, in much the same way that Lucy had before.
“Where did she go?” Lucy said, turning to her slaves. “Find her!”
There was another sudden lurch as the train’s wheels screeched against the rails and the train came to a sudden stop.
The view outside the windows was darkness and void. It almost made Monica’s eyes hurt to look at. There was truly nothing there.
Then, emerging from the darkness came an eye, peering through the windows, large as an airship.
It stared at Lucy, who merely said:
“That’s not possible. I’m in you. I’m in you!”
Through the open door came a hand, which grasped for Lucy, gently pushing Monica aside, and dragged her screaming into the cold void beyond.
Monica darted to the door. There, she saw Harri-Bec, her eyes glowing gold, glaring down at the comparatively mouse-sized Lucy.
“I am the Spirit of London Transport,” she said, in a gentle voice that was amplified to a booming roar by her stature. “Every day, a million bad ideas pass through this city. You are just one of them.”
She tightened her grasp around Lucy.
“And the thing about bad ideas is that it only takes one good idea to beat them. And you’re looking at her.”
“Stop it!” Lucy cried.
Harri-Bec regarded her disdainfully.
“Get out of my city,” she roared, her voice stern and volcanic.
Without hesitation, Harri-Bec hurled Lucy headlong and screaming into the abyss, and she was banished from that psychic realm, scattered to the four winds.
There was a flash.
*
“My head is killing me,” Dolly said.
“That’s really weird,” Socks said. “I was about to say the same thing.”
The train was now less than five minutes away from Paddington.
Monica sat and stared at the passenger who hadn’t been with them when they got on.
Harri-Bec sat next to Dolly, and looked back at Monica.
Monica opened her mouth to say something.
Silently, Harri-Bec pressed a finger to her lips.
*
Underground, she clutches a bowl of lentil soup, and is raised on an accordion lift to see her patient once again.
He turns his head wearily to meet her gaze. She’s wearing the white coat again.
“Ah, Emily,” the masked man says. “Nice to see you again.”
“And you, too, Blake,” Bush replies. “There’s been a bit of a change in attitude, I think.”
“But not enough to get me down from here.”
“Not as yet.”
“You’re here to feed, not to talk,” a soldier yells from below.
“If you want to disobey direct orders from the Captain, be my guest,” Bush replies.
The soldier scowls and returns to his guard duty.
When the feeding is complete, Bush seals Blake’s mask once again, turns to the controls, then back to Blake, then back to the controls again.
“Something on your mind?” Blake whispers, muffled under his mask.
Bush smiles.
“You’ll see,” she says.
She flips a switch and travels down on the lift.
For better or worse, they are nearing the end of their story.
*
The sun rose, and a walker, clutching a stick in his hand, made his way across the well-trodden paths of Gloucestershire.
He stopped for a rest and some breakfast – a muesli bar and a Thermos full of hot Ribena. It was quiet, this time of morning, peaceful.
As he took his first bite of the muesli bar, something came fluttering down on the wind and landed at his feet. It was a piece of paper. He frowned. Who was littering at this time of the morning in this part of the country? He looked around him for the culprit, then snatched it up.
The paper was folded, but he felt a strange compulsion to read it. And that was an odd feeling. As if he wasn’t supposed to. Like he was breaking the rules.
Well, a little peek couldn’t hurt, could it?
Something laughed on the cold wind.
Another time, another place…
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ARC FOUR: BLOOD MOON
I | II | III | SSI | IV | V | SSII | SSIII | VI | VII | SSIV
VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | SSV | XIII | SSVI | XIV | SSVII | XV | SSVIII | XVI | XVII