This is the text of the story so far, with polls and illustrative images taken out. If you want the bare bones summary, click here.
Carter didn’t even make it through the doorway, the poor bitch. Mayes and I leapt for cover as soon as the firing started, but she had nowhere to go. Her vitals winked out before I even hit the deck. I landed behind a ratty old armchair, already unholstering my pistol as I pulled my legs in and pulled myself up into a crouch. There was a nasty, wet thump behind me as the corpse collapsed on the doorstep.
I closed my eyes for a moment, mind spinning, and tried to gather myself. The house was supposed to be empty. A few feet away, I could hear Mayes swearing bitterly. Control would have been alerted by Carter’s death, but it would have been stupid to assume help was near. The room stank of blood, death and cooked meat.
“Hey, Taylor.”
I opened my eyes, and looked across at Mayes. He was tucked in behind the end of a sofa. He nodded his head in towards the shooter, and made a ‘cover me’ gesture. I nodded reluctantly, and he turned to start crawling along behind the sofa. I swung round to the far edge of the chair, eased my gun over the arm, and fired a couple of shots. A burst of fire immediately ripped into the chair. I could smell the burnt covers, a nasty chemical stench added to the already-foul air. No pain, though. Nothing got through. I sighed with relief, and popped a couple more shots off towards the doorway ahead.
“That’s impo…” Mayes was cut off in a loud crackle of blaster fire. He winked out a moment later.
Shit. Now I was on my own with the vicious bastard. I listened frantically, but there was nothing to hear. No movement, no shots, nothing.
I quickly rolled onto my back, facing the chair, gun ready. When the bastard came for me, he was going to get a nasty shock.
A moment passed, and then another. I tried to imagine how long I’d take creeping across a room, towards a waiting enemy. Fifteen seconds? Twenty? I thought about it a bit more, and decided that I wouldn’t do anything of the sort. I’d try to circle round to a different approach, or even better, try to flush him out.
Somewhere deep in the house, I clearly heard a large piece of glass breaking.
There was always retreat too, of course.
I rolled forward again, and snapped off a couple of cautious shots from the edge of the chair, then pulled back in. Nothing. I gave it a few seconds, then peeked round for a moment. No response, no shadowy figures in the dim doorway. I took a moment, and then stood up fully, ready to dive either way. Nothing.
Gun ready, I carefully came round from behind the chair, and crossed the room as quietly as possible. The light intensifiers kicked in, and the hallway brightened to a plain bit of corridor. Cheap wooden board floor, undecorated walls, a staircase up to the next level and a door through into what would be the dining room. At the far end of the corridor, another door opened into the kitchen. A hint of foul breeze was coming from that direction.
I worked round the staircase, and then ducked into the dining room, gun ready. No occupants. It was as ratty as the living room, and it stank almost as badly. I double checked it, and then swung back into the corridor. A faint yellow glow was coming from the kitchen. Keeping low and close to the wall, I advanced. The smell was getting worse.
A moment later, I saw why. There was a fat guy on his back on the kitchen table. He was nailed to it by a large knife through his throat, and by the bloating of the corpse, he’d been there for a week or more. What the hell? I steeled myself, and spun round into the room, trying to cover all the best firing positions.
The room was clear. I relaxed fractionally. The back window was smashed through, the back door partially barricaded. It looked like our guy was making a run for it. Except that the corpse was clearly Arthur Hallet. It didn’t make sense.
The yellow glow was intensifying. I looked over at the fridge. The side had been pulled open, and the light was spilling out of that. The fuel cell… Great. Just great.
I didn’t know whether I had seconds or minutes, but I couldn’t just abandon Hallet’s corpse. Either he’d decayed impossibly in half an hour flat, or he’d been copied perfectly, which was just as impossible. I gave the corpse a prod, but it was far too soft and sticky to risk picking up. I sighed, and started yanking the table towards the hallway door, trying not to think about the fridge.
A little less than a minute later, I had the table up to the door. There was no way it was going to fit through upright, of course. If I could get the corpse onto a sheet or something, I could pull it down the hallway safely enough. The living-room curtains. I dashed back to the front room, trying to ignore Carter and Mayes, grabbed a big armful of curtain, and heaved. The rail was as crappy as everything else in the house, and it came down immediately. I put my foot through it, bundled the curtain off, and ran back into the hallway.
A giant hammered me in the chest, and everything went white.
* * *
“Taylor? Taylor!” Someone slapped me in the face, a little too enthusiastically.
“Fuck off,” I mumbled. Good god, what was that hideous stink?
I opened my eyes, and found myself staring up an unlovely nose. I jerked back reflexively, thumping my head into something hard. My body felt heavy and wet, as if I was underwater.
“Wakey wakey, Taylor.” Todd Robbins was from my office. He had a voice like burnt coffee, but he was OK really. Most of the time. He swivelled his middle finger up at me. “How many fingers?”
“Ha ha.” I tried to move my arm, but it was sluggish, unwilling to respond. I looked down nervously. Hallet was smeared all over me, but particularly across my stomach and arms. His head was lying in my lap, minus the lower jaw. Perfect.
I pulled an arm out of the mess, and shook the gore off. Robbins dodged out of the way, cursing.
“We need to get this bagged,” I said.
“I was planning on having you hosed down,” said Robbins. “I suppose I can find someone to scrape you clean, though. What the hell happened?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Someone opened up on us as we came through the door. I was lucky. Carter and Mayes… Well. Whoever the shooter was, he made a run for it. How long has it been?”
“About twenty minutes since Carter offlined.”
“I guess he’s not coming back right away, then. Someone will need to head out back, see if there’s a trail.”
“They’re already on it.”
“Ok.” I closed my eyes and lay back against the wall. “Will you get me cleaned off now, please?”
Two hours and three thorough hair-washes later, I was in the office. Someone had boxed up Carter’s stuff already, which was a relief. You never get used to losing team members. With Mayes gone, Carrie Ransom was sole lead, and naturally she wanted to go over every detail three times. It was past 8pm when I finally got to my desk.
Preliminary analysis confirmed that Hallet had been dead for twelve days. Speech and retina analysis from surveillance confirmed that he’d been fine this morning. The guys on the ground had followed the shooter’s trail for a few hundred metres — until it just vanished into thin air somehow. The footprints matched Hallet’s weight and foot size. What the hell was going on?
For the last twelve days, there had been two copies of Arthur Hallet, one live and one dead. Nothing else could fit with the facts. How the hell did you copy a middle-aged man though? Replication was still theoretical. Clones couldn’t be force-matured. Identical twins? There was no hint of a sibling in his history. It was just possible that Hallet had spent his life engaged in a very subtle, careful deception, but why? And why would one murder the other and then leave his body out on the table like that?
We’d been watching him for three days, on and off. Surveillance had put him across the city shortly before we’d gone into the house. So… maybe the shooter wasn’t the Hallet copy, but an associate. Except the footprints leading away from the house were Hallet’s, or those of someone very similar… Two similarly stocky guys with the same brand of size 9s?
I set a search running with Overlook, digging for any records of Hallet out in public in the last two weeks, and put a call through to Steve Clark in surveillance.
He answered immediately. “Clark. What’s up, Taylor?”
“Hi Steve. You’ve been tracking Arthur Hallet.”
“Yeah, three days now, on and off.”
“How did we get interested in him?”
“He wandered out of the black market operation on Beak Street. We recorded his ID and forgot about him. A couple of hours later though, we saw a surprisingly shabby guy heading into the Regency. We’re keeping an eye on Salia Moses there, so we dug a bit deeper, and it was Hallet again.”
That was odd. “What does Moses have to do with the black market?”
“Nothing, as far as we know.”
“Hallet was playing courier for her?”
“Maybe. He wasn’t carrying anything visible, but that doesn’t mean much.”
“Right.”
“After that, we starting looking out for him in earnest. He’s been popping up around town like a jack-in-the-box for the last couple of days. He doesn’t seem to be making any effort to stay hidden. The order to tail him came through about an hour ago.”
“Where is he?”
“Not sure. He was out north four hours ago, at the university. Next time he appears, we’ll keep eyes on him.”
“OK Steve, thanks. Let me know if you spot him.”
“Sure thing.”
I closed the connection. The raid had been a little over three and a half hours ago. Hallet’s place was south-east, in Oakdale. It would take you more than an hour to do the journey by road. Sure, you could do it in five minutes in a flitter — if you didn’t mind scrambling all kinds of military response as you thundered over the city. It had to be a third man. Damn.
I checked my Overlook search. It was still rolling along happily, churning out hits. Lots and lots of hits. A nasty sinking feeling crept over me. I opened the log, and stared. The first three days of the search, he stayed local. Then eleven days ago, Hallet had been registered flitting in to San Francisco. And Boston. And Tampa. And Milwaukee, Vancouver, Columbus, Las Vegas, Austin and Detroit. All before midday.
Hell’s teeth. How many damned Hallets were there?
I needed to find out if anyone else was tracking Hallet. He might have just slipped under the radar. Hopefully one of the larger agencies had noticed his movements though. They might have some useful answers, if so.
Overlook wasn’t showing any case flags, but that only meant no-one was tracking him openly. I logged into the Washington system and pulled up Hallet’s file there. No flags there, either. Damn. It was just us, then. I flagged it myself, and tied it back to my Overlook search with a safely bland note about ‘anomalous movements’.
I had a quick skim through the Washington data. There wasn’t anything there I hadn’t already been briefed on. He was nobody, just a low-rent guy who dabbled in the odd bit of trouble.
I jumped slightly as a call came in.
“Taylor.” It was Ransom, and she sounded unhappy.
“Hey boss. Look, about…”
“Later. You need to get out to Devonshire and 8th right away. Tell me what they’ve got down there as soon as you know.”
“Uh, OK. But…”
“Now, Taylor.”
“Right.” I closed the connection, grabbed my coat, and got going.
It took about twenty minutes to get out to the location. Local forces were being cagey; all they’d say was that there was a body. It was a fairly cheap area — cut price clothes, small grocery stores, take aways, electronics shops, that sort of thing. Lots of gaudy LED lighting.
I pulled up near the scene perimeter, flashed my badge, and got waved through. The officer pointed me to the side of a small gyros place, as if the knot of people and the flashing bulbs wouldn’t have given it away. I walked over to the group.
“Evening guys, I’m John Tay…”
The words died in my throat. It was Hallet, partly. His face, for sure. But the body was melted and stretched, like warm toffee. It flowed out from the chest, belly and thighs, horribly slick, until it melded into a second set of body parts. Ripped clothes surrounded the whole mess, and the stench was unbelievable. I stared at it for a long moment, too stunned to feel sick.
One of the officers nodded, slowly. “Yeah.”
“Is it one body?”
The guy who had nodded looked up me sharply. “Two, as best we can tell. Any ideas?”
I shook my head, and opened a comms line to Ransom. All I got was a nasty whine. What the hell was going on now? All my sensors were green, so my kit was working normally. No sign of a connection error. A glitch at her end? I tried Control, and then Clark. The same.
Shit. If we were being jammed…
I looked back to the officer. “Are you connected to your base?”
He went vacant for a moment, and then nodded. “Yep.”
“Try calling DSP, will you?”
“Sure.” Then a moment later, he frowned. “They’re off-line.”
That was definitely screwy. This whole thing made no sense. At least we weren’t being jammed, but even so, we needed to play it safe. I’d seen more than enough bodies for one day.
I nodded confidently – or tried to, at least. “We need to establish a defensive perimeter and prepare for possible attack.”
The guy blinked. “Attack?”
“Better make it at least 30 feet from this spot in both directions. Guns out and ready. Have the men warn off anyone approaching, particularly tall, chunky guys. If someone keeps coming, or reaches for a weapon, open fire.”
There must have been something in my voice. The officer grimaced, and said “Sure. What about windows and rooftops?”
I looked around. We were overlooked by scores of windows up and down the alley, and at least five different roofs. “We’ll just have to keep alert.”
“I hear you.” He started organising the rest of the squad. I heard one or two grumbles, but clearly they were all unnerved enough to take me seriously.
I bent down to have a closer look at the thing while the locals dug in. Like the guy had said, it appeared to be two separate people. One was Twisted Hallet. His flesh and bones had deformed away from his body, as if some sort of irresistible pull was tugging him towards – into – the second corpse. His clothes had just burst out of the way. The molten flesh looked the same colour and consistency as usual. I tried prodding it, and it was hard, like plastic. So was the rest of Hallet’s corpse.
From the bits I could see, the other body appeared to be clothed. The Hallet material engulfed much of it, but it seemed to be a male, average sort of height and build. He still felt fleshy, and although he was cooling, he was still warmer than Twisted Hallet. There was a fairly thin tendril at the edge of one of the engulfing spurs. I gave it an experimental tug, and then a hard yank, and then pulled out my pistol and thumped it with the butt. The tendril finally shattered. I picked up the bits in my handkerchief, and folded them away.
“Mr. Taylor.”
I looked up at the officer, who was nibbling his lip. “Yes?”
“You have to get back to DSP, sir. Urgently. There’s been an explosion.”
I stared at him.
“They told me you needed to hurry. I don’t have any details. I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. An explosion. My head felt like it was stuffed with sand. “What about this mess?”
“Someone is sending a team to collect it.”
“I see.”
I tried to pull myself together. An explosion at the office had to be an attack of some sort. And there was the comms silence, too… I shook my head. After the day I#d had, it felt like absolutely anything could be going on back there. Caution seemed sensible.
“Alright,” I said. “I’m on my way. I’ll need a full report on this scene, everything from the person who called it in through to wherever the bodies end up. What’s your name, officer?”
“Mortimer. We’re based at Cadogan Place.”
“Gotcha. Good luck.”
I sprinted back to my pod, and told it take me back to the office. No sense logging a deviating route plan. I sped off down Devonshire. A pair of anonymous grey APCs thundered past, making for the Cadogan Place people. The pick-up team had obviously been sent by someone heavy. With luck, they’d just take the whole thing over.
As the pod got close to the office, I told it to pull up on the far side of James Park, and then powered it down completely. My blank glasses were in the door pocket, and I looked at them for a long moment, then pulled them on. I felt ridiculously paranoid… but I also felt safer.
I left the pod, and headed for the archway into the park. The park’s scanners tried to identify me, found the glasses, and promptly forgot I was there. I started making my way towards the gate near the office. It was getting late, but it was a mild enough night, and there were a few people around. I kept my head down and stomped along the path impatiently, but slowly enough not to attract attention. Just another tired business guy taking a short cut.
It took about five minutes to walk through the park. As I cleared the last stand of trees, I looked across at the office, and stopped dead.
It was gone.
The whole fucking building was gone.
I stared at the hole dumbly. A moment later, I realised I couldn’t hear any sirens. No flashing lights, either. No hubbub. No news skycams. Nothing.
Before I knew it, I was back in the trees, pressed against a rough trunk, the blood pounding in my ears. I peered back round the tree trunk and through the foliage, hoping crazily that I’d been mistaken somehow. The hole where the office should have been gaped back at me like a missing tooth.
I was still gazing at it dumbly a couple of minutes later when I heard a commotion start up ahead. A long moment later, a suited figure shot through the gate ahead, running flat out towards the trees. It was a bit too far to tell for sure, but it looked like a slender red-headed woman.
A couple of seconds later, she was followed by two people in peculiar environment suits. The suits were white, with odd distended rings at the wrists and neck, and near-spherical helmets. I’d never seen anything like them before. The pair stopped, raised weapons, and fired before I could even shout a warning.
Twin blaster flashes cut through her, and she collapsed, limbs flailing. I winced, crouched down instinctively, and tried not to think about Carrie Ransom being a slim red-head. The suited figures walked up to the corpse, grabbed a leg each, and casually dragged the body back the way they’d come.
This was insane. More importantly, whatever was going on, it was way above my pay grade. I needed to get hold of someone who could give me some sort of perspective. I started carefully picking my way back across the park, away from where the office used to be. A couple of tense minutes later, I was far enough away that I could relax enough to start thinking.
Ransom reported straight to Captain Browne. They were both obvious people to turn to, but I just couldn’t shake the image of that woman collapsing in a bloody heap. I had contacts in the local force, but this was surely out of their league too. Other agencies were unlikely to be much help. The press were obviously being kept out of it. I didn’t know anyone in the region’s military. That left Overlook. Chances are my buddy Don wouldn’t have any idea as to why or who, buthe ought to be able to let me know what had happened, and that had to be a start. I put a call through.
“Don Simmons.”
I sighed with relief. “Don, it’s John Taylor.”
“Hey, John. How are things at the DSP?”
“Uh, that’s why I’m bothering you this time of night.”
“That sounds ominous. What’s the problem?”
I hesitated, trying to think of a good way to put it. “The building has been destroyed. I saw a woman who looked a bit like my boss getting gunned down by a couple of guys in crazy hazmat suits, and I think they may want me too. I really need to know what happened. I’m sorry to dump this on you Don, but I don’t know who else to turn to.”
Don was silent for several seconds, then he took a slow breath. “Man. I don’t suppose you’re joking? Damn. Alright. I’m at home, but give me a couple of minutes and I’ll see what I can get. This is a secure line, right?”
Huh. “Personal encryption, of course.”
“Peachy, John. Just peachy.” Don sounded disgusted, but not panicky, which was something. “I’ll call you back.”
He cut the connection. He was right of course; I should have been more careful. I decided to divert away from the car, towards the far corner of the park, and tried not to feel like an idiot.
Ten minutes later, I was getting seriously jumpy. A call came in, no identifiers, no origin. I froze, but it wasn’t like I had much of an option. I opened the line, but said nothing.
“John.” It was Don. Thank fuck.
“Yeah. Good to hear you.”
“According to the beast, your office is right where it should be.”
“What? That’s impossible. I just saw…”
Don cut over me. “Relax, John. It’s not the whole story.”
“OK. Sorry. I’m just…” I trailed off.
“It’s cool. Like I said, Overlook thinks your office is fine. But raw high-bird imagery shows that it’s been demolished. Someone’s put up a smoke-screen.”
“Christ. I didn’t know that was even possible.”
“Oh, it’s possible, but it’s very, very hard. Whoever they are, they’re really good, or in very deep, or both. I’ve been through the raw files, and about forty-five minutes ago, there was a flash, and the building collapsed. Some sort of implosion, because there’s no damage to adjacent blocks. Less than a minute later, several black APCs pulled up, and a bunch of guys in those white envirosuits piled out and set up a cordon. They’re still there.”
“Any idea who they are or what they’re up to?”
“No.” I could hear Don scowling. “The vehicles are unmarked. I don’t recognise the model, or the suits. But they haven’t made any obvious attempt to search for survivors, tidy up, or do anything else you’d expect. It looks like they took some samples, though. I saw the incident with the woman, too. She arrived on foot, came through the cordon, approached the site, and then bolted.”
“What are they up to now?”
“The same,” Don said. “Poking around, mainly.”
I shook my head. “Alright. Thanks, Don. You’re a life-saver. I owe you, big time.”
“Listen, be careful, OK?”
“Yeah, I will. You too.”
“Always,” said Don. “Call if you need anything else, but do it securely.”
“Thanks. Catch you soon.”
“Luck.”
I tried to make sense of it all.
The fact that Overlook had been hacked around was really frightening. Given the limited information that I had access to, I simply had to assume that Hallet was a lethally off-bounds. Officially, the government would never take military action against its own loyal employees. In reality though, there were more than enough sudden heart attacks, woodland wrist-slittings, mysterious car crashes and tragic gas main faults to go around. It had to be one of the deep, dark agencies cleaning up a mess we should never have stuck our noses into. The alternative was too terrifying to contemplate.
That meant my choices were to check in as ordered and go down like Ransom, or drop right off the grid and wait for the storm to pass.
It only took a bit of fiddling to cut the power on my comms unit, and my blank glasses were ID-neutral, but my appearance was a problem. Disguises had to be pretty sophisticated to convince Overlook you were someone else, and furtive behaviour threw up flags like crazy. There were a couple of basic precautions I could take, though.
I bent down, and rubbed my hands in the cold mud at the path’s edge. Then I used it to slick my hair back off my forehead, darkening it a couple of shades in the process. I smeared a thin swish of it around my mouth and chin too, giving me a semblance of a stubble goatee. It would be obvious if a human operator paid attention, but in the dark, it might help me to avoid tripping automatic facial recognition patterns. Wads of turf in the heels of my shoes added an oozy inch to my height, and a small stone in the left one gave me a tentative gait.
Next, I pulled my shirt out of my trousers, and dumped my jacket and tie under a bush. Finally, I rooted around in several bins before finding a trashy news-sheet to pretent to be absorbed in — far less suspicious than wandering around with my head down and shirt-collar up.
I left the park and started walking, feeling cold, squishy, stupid, miserable and scared, all rolled into one. The urge to head back to my car, go home, and have a hot bath was almost painfully strong. I ignored it, and limped down the road away from the office.
One of the dubious benefits of agency work was that you learnt where the city’s bad guys hung out. It took me more than an hour to walk the two and a half miles across town to Campbell Street. I wandered up the road idly, but there was no hint that anyone was staking the place out in the flesh. I decided to risk it, and went into the ugly little convenience store on the corner. I rubbed the mud off my face as best I could as I walked through the door, and just hoped my hair didn’t look to mad.
The kid at the counter shot me a suspicious glare as I entered. I nodded to him pleasantly, and headed deeper in. At the back of the shop, there was a small door with a dirty entryphone. I pressed the buzzer, and waited.
A moment later, it crackled into life. “Who the hell are you?”
“Taylor. Adam sent me.”
“So?”
I lifted up my hand, and waved my watch at the camera.
“Alright,” muttered the crackly voice. The door clicked open.
I pushed through into a sterile, neon-lit little room with another door at the far end. There was a metal table in the middle of the floor, with a yellow plastic tub on it.
“Show me what you’ve got,” said the crackly voice. It was louder in here, and there was no obvious speaker grille. I took off my watch and put it in the tub, and then followed it up with my communicator unit, my DSP ID card, and two of my bank cards.
There was a pause. “Is he dead?”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
“Good enough,” said the voice. “Four hundred.”
“That’s way too little,” I said. Even for a cheap-ass fence, the fucker was gouging me.
“Throw in the glasses, and I’ll call it 1000.”
“No way.”
“Whatever. Four hundred then, or fuck off.”
I sighed. “Okay.” This was going to cost me a fortune.
A couple of moments later, a knuckle-dragging, muscle-bound expendable came in through the far door. He squinted at me, scooped up the tub, glanced at the contents, and put a stack of cash down on the table. I picked it up and riffled through it, then stuffed it in my front pocket.
Knuckles left the room again, and I turned to do the same. I paused when the speaker came back on.
“Taylor, eh? Cute. Come by again, and you’ll get a better rate.”
I bit back my first reply, and nodded instead. “Ok. Thanks.”
I went back into the shop, and blew some of my cash on a pair of scissors, cheap hair dye, some cotton wool and a few candy bars. There were several cheap motels in the neighbourhood, so I left the shop and headed for the nearest, a couple of blocks away. The clerk was only too happy to give me a room for the night for cash, and handed over a key. I didn’t ask for a receipt, and in return, he didn’t even ask me to sign a fake name in the book.
I went up to my 3rd-floor room, threw myself through a blissfully hot shower, scarfed down a candy bar, and was unconscious within 30 seconds of getting into bed.
I woke up, fuzzy in the darkness, with someone rapping on the door. “Open up, Taylor.”
Shitshitshit. I didn’t know the room, and I could hardly see a thing, but even so, I didn’t remember any useful makeshift weapons. I considered the window too, but I was nearly naked and several storeys up, and besides, they’d have people on the street too. I certainly would, in their place.
I called out incoherently, trying to sound confused, and fumbled the light on. Four in the damn morning. Naturally.
“Open the bloody door, Taylor.” It was a strong voice, peaty. He sounded bored and impatient, as per regulation.
“Wrong room, friend.” I forced my voice deeper, mushed the words up a bit, tried to inject a bit of southern into them. “Fuck off and let me sleep.”
My eyes darted all over the room, but there wasn’t anything that could help disguise me even a bit.
“Don’t be ridiculous, man. Just open up.”
Maybe I could charge them. I lined up with the door, across the room. “Just a moment,” I yelled.
The door crashed in as I lowered my head and started running. I didn’t see the Jangler that they shot me with, but all of a sudden my body felt like it was on fire, and my legs collapsed. I fell flat on my face in front of the door. The fire vanished again, and I realised how much my nose and teeth hurt. Someone snorted. I tried moving, but my body was jelly. A hand grabbed my hair, and pulled my head up. Something frighteningly complex — and sharp — was shoved in my face, and everything went black.
* * *
I came round quickly. No pain, no discomfort, just soft, white comfiness. I blinked at the ceiling, and realised I was lying down. And alive. They were wonderful revelations — for a moment or two. I tried lifting my arm, then all of my limbs. Nothing happened, but a sense of increased pressure suggested that I was strapped down rather than paralysed. I tapped a finger to confirm it. That was a momentary relief as well, but I had a nasty feeling that I would regret discovering why I seemed to be unharmed.
Some time passed, then I heard some footsteps approach. A moment later, a face slid into view; a chap in his fifties, in an anonymous suit. Then he vanished again, and a metallic scrape suggested he’d sat down.
“If I unclamp your head,” said the voice I remembered from the motel, “Will you behave yourself?”
I gathered all the dignity that I could muster, and said “Just what do you expect to get from me?”
He sighed. “I’ll take that as a no, shall I? Look, Taylor, we found your car. In fact, I even retrieved your ID and communicator from that nasty little weasel you sold them to. I imagine you must have seen what happened to your office.”
“I saw what you did to Carrie Ransom too, you son of a bitch.”
“Carrie Ransom has been dead for three days.”
“Like hell.”
“We found her body stuffed into a suitcase, inside her closet.”
“Just what sort…”
“TAYLOR.” He sounded monumentally pissed off — and bloody loud, in my ear — so I shut it. “Better. Look, I understand that you’re feeling paranoid. You had the sort of day yesterday that would usually earn you several weeks of expensive, boring therapy time. Complete with group hugs and bright crayons. For Pete’s sake, man. If I was going to kill you, you would be dead.”
He was trying to sound reasonable, but that didn’t mean anything. “Yeah. You need me for something.” I couldn’t keep the sneer out of my voice.
“Yes, you stupid little prick.” Guess I’d annoyed him again. “I need you to pull get back to fucking work.”
It took me a long moment to get my voice working again. “What?”
“I don’t have time for you to go all basket-weaver on me, man. This is a crisis.”
“Wait. You’re legit? Who the hell were those freaks who blew up the office, then?”
“That was us,” he said frostily.
The penny dropped. “Oh. Oh, fuck. How many?”
“At last,” he said, the relief audible. “I was beginning to think you were going to be fucking useless. At least four. Ransom, George Cho, Martin Lucas, and one of the cleaners. For sure. No idea how many others. But not you. Although I had my suspicions, until the lab guys cleared you.”
“Who or what are they?”
“Absolutely no idea. Are you in?”
I mulled it all over for a bit, and groaned quietly. “Look, maybe you’d better spell it out for me first.”
There was a long moment of silence, and then the guy sighed in resignation. “If you insist.”
I heard a rustling, and then a couple of seconds later, a metallic clank vibrated unpleasantly through my skull. The pressure on the right side of my face vanished. I wiggled my head experimentally, then turned so I could actually see my companion properly. He was sitting in a tiny plastic chair, looking vaguely ridiculous in his bland grey suit. He had a solid chin that went with his voice, and slightly alarming eyebrows. It looked like he was in fairly good shape for a fifty-something.
“Thanks,” I said.
He grunted. “You identified ten of them heading into various cities. There were at least six more here — the one who shot up your team, the four we know of for certain at your office, and possibly whatever it was the Ransom-thing sent you to check out a few hours ago. That’s twenty. From talking to your former colleagues’ neighbours, we suspect that they all started out using the same template.”
“Hallet.”
“Quite. We were lucky. They’ve been sloppy about the bodies. If a local patrol hadn’t investigated the stench from Lucas’ apartment, we’d never have suspected a thing.”
“So you killed everyone.” I did my best to keep my voice reasonable. It didn’t really work.
“Of course not.” He sounded dismissive, rather than wounded. “We waited until outside main hours, and brought in everyone we could catch alone — off-duty or whatever. We’re working through them now, testing them. We had to take down the building, though. We had no idea whether there were any tricks waiting for us, and we couldn’t afford to risk anyone slipping away if we came in gently. Survivors will be tested too.”
“I see,” I said.
He snorted. “I hope so. We’re not fucking around with this, Taylor. We’re taking it very seriously indeed. Twenty might just be the tip of the iceberg. There may have been other templates, too.”
“And you don’t know anything about them.”
“Not a thing. The four bodies we have all seem virtually identical to their originals so far. There’s a trace chemical marker which they’re missing, apparently, which is how come we’re having this little chat.”
“Why me?”
“You were sent on the disastrous raid, and didn’t get killed. You spotted the template’s diaspora. You are known to have been at that fucking alley. You had the sense to drop out of sight. Damn it man, you’re our pet expert.”
I frowned. “But I don’t know anything!”
“NEITHER DO WE,” the chap bellowed. He closed his eyes for a moment, and took a deep breath. “Don’t be an obtuse shit, Taylor. We don’t know what they want. We don’t know who they are. We don’t know their numbers. We don’t even know for sure whether they’re from here or not, and frankly that should scare the crap out of you. It certainly does me. You’ve seen them, chatted to them, fought them. Who else is there?”
A thought hit me. “The finger!”
The man flushed red, and his eyes actually bulged slightly.
“No, wait,” I said quickly. “Relax. Do you have the body from the alley?”
“So there was a body. No.”
Worrying. “Well, I took a sample. It’s in my trouser pocket, in my handkerchief.”
The man’s face lit up. “Great God! Wait here.” He leapt up and dashed off somewhere before I could even reply, leaving me strapped to the bed. A couple of minutes later he was back, looking happier than before. “Marvellous work, man. Knew you’d be useful. I’m Travis. We’ll bump you up to LT; once you’re finished here, come on up and you can help us try to fix this mess. Alright?”
“Okay…” I began.
“Good choice,” said Travis. He bustled out.
Eventually, someone unstrapped me, and left me my clothes. As I finished dressing, a pleasant-looking medical guy knocked at door to my little room, and came in.
“Good morning,” he said brightly.
“Hi. Uh, what time is it?”
“Ten forty-five. How are you feeling?”
I felt fine. “Fine, thanks.”
He nodded. “Good. There won’t be any negative effects, so don’t worry.”
“There won’t?”
“No.”
“Ah. Right.”
“The Colonel gave you your instructions, I assume?”
“Travis?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Yes,” I replied. I was starting to feel a little out of my depth.
“Right,” said the chap. “Well, if there’s nothing else.” He turned to leave.
“Wait!”