Chapter 3
“What the hell do you think you were doing?”
Hazel Smith looked up at the Frother who towered over her, furious with
him.
“We’re
meant to be following this punk, Jason Ashe, not redecorating some tacky
Downtown bar with his Brains! Damn
it, how did I ever get mixed up with an idiot like you? Do you like Street Maintenance jobs, is it some sort of
religious thing with you, standing in the rain waiting for a psycho to take a
shot at you? If we screw up this
BPN, that’s all we’ll ever be able to do again.
Understand this, we mess up and we are history.
Am I getting through to you?”
Hazel
had removed the trench coat and had she’d been wearing in ZeeZee’s and was
dressed in a designer suit that cost more than most civilians would earn in six
months. Her long, red hair had been
brushed out and was tumbling gently over her shoulders but her green eyes were
anything but gentle. They flashed
with rage as she strode up and down the length of her apartment, pausing
occasionally in front of the gigantic Frother who stood staring out of a window.
“I
can’t believe you were going to shoot the guy that we’ve been following for
a week. For the last seven days
I’ve been rained on, I’ve talked to junkies and winos, I’ve hung around in
filthy bars, I’ve had to eat crappy take-away food and why have I had to do
these things? I’ll tell you why,
will I? I’ve had to do these
things because we’ve been following Jason Ashe.
We’ve been following him because he can lead us to Sheeala.”
Hazel
went to a wall in her lounge and opened a built-in cupboard that held a dozen
different bottles of spirits. She
took the time to carefully mix a Nuclear Dawn, one of her favourite cocktails,
and then turned back to the Frother.
“I’m
going to explain things to you in words of one syllable so listen very
carefully. We need Sheeala, Jason
knows where Sheeala is. We follow
Jason and we find Sheeala. We do
not bloody kill Jason, no matter how much you want to!”
She
took a sip of the swirling red and orange drink and licked her lips.
“”Why
did I ever let you talk me into going into that place?
When we saw Jason go in we should have waited outside, but oh no!
You had to go in and talk to him. ‘Put
the pressure on him’, you said. Well,
that certainly worked, didn’t it? From
now on, I do the thinking and you can stick with what you’re good at, whatever
the hell that is!”
She
threw herself down onto a sofa, took another sip of her drink and closed her
eyes. Thinking back, she remembered
the horror that she felt when Calumn had pointed the Blitzer at their target.
A week of work would have been wasted if the Frother had killed the Cloud
Runner and Hazel definitely did not want to spend more time than she had to
hanging around in Downtown. Calumn might like it down there, but she preferred to think
of herself as an Uptown sort of girl.
Opening
her eyes again, she looked around her luxurious apartment.
State of the art vid machines in every room, faxes in the lounge and
bedroom, three computer terminals, well stocked drinks cabinet, expensive
Virtuality set-up, view over Uptown, small kitchen that was filled with
everything she could possibly need. The bedroom was her pride and joy, an ancient four-poster bed
filled most of it and original paintings by Gallaney covered the walls.
Each painting was worth at least 500 credits and some of the larger ones
were worth much, much more. The
apartment cost Hazel 180 credits a month in rent but it was well worth it.
Quality cost, but Hazel was prepared to pay as long as she got the best.
Still
standing by the window, Calumn McGiver looked out over the city.
The rain was running down the window pane but Calumn had long ago stopped
even noticing it. When something is around you 24 hours a day, every day, it
soon fades into obscurity. A SCAF
zoomed across the night sky, not far from Hazel’s building, and Calumn
wondered how anyone, even a Shiver, could possibly entrust themselves to a
flying motorcycle.
He had
listened to Hazel ranting and raving for almost 30 minutes and had said nothing.
He knew that he was in the wrong, that’s he shouldn’t have gone into
the club and she shouldn’t have tried to shoot the target, but he could never
explain to Hazel the agony that doing nothing caused him.
He would never be able to find the words to explain how the drugs in his
body forced him into action, any action. Nobody
that hadn’t experienced it for themselves would be able to understand the way
that the drugs took over his thinking, that it was the UV that made him go into
the club, that it was the Ultra Violence that had made him aim at Ashe.
Calumn
smiled grimly as he remembered the way that Hazel had grabbed his arm.
She never saw the way that he had reached for the knife stuck on his
armour. Sure, she’d heard the
helmet that he carried clatter off the thigh plate of his armour, but she’d
never thought any more about it. Only
Calumn knew that if his left hand had been empty instead of holding a helmet,
Hazel would have been dead by now, and he was not about to tell her that.
It was
so hard for him to think before he acted now and, no matter how hard he tried,
his body would move before he had had time to think things through.
Calumn knew that the drugs he took were slowly killing him but he
couldn’t stop taking them, he didn’t want to stop taking them.
They were as necessary to him as eating was and he couldn’t imagine
life without them.
Calumn
belonged to Clan McGiver, the largest of the Frother Clans and he was proud of
his warrior heritage. His Clan had
prospered while others had faded or died out altogether.
Both of his parents had been warriors of the Clan McGiver, warriors for
SLA Industries, and the drugs that they had relied on had killed them.
Calumn knew this but it didn’t worry him, he would die someday and it
was surely better to go while you were still young and strong.
He fully expected to die while working for Mr Slayer and all he hoped for
was the chance to go out bravely.
Without
the drugs he would have been nothing, just another street punk.
When his mother had died, a couple of months after his father, Calumn had
been put into a SLA orphanage. He
was already bigger and stronger than all the children around him and this, along
with his violent temper, was a direct result of the combat drugs that his
parents had used. A Talent Scout for SLA Industries had seen the violence that
lay just below the surface of the young orphan and, when Calumn was old enough,
he was sent to school and began his training as an Operative.
None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for the drugs that
first his parents and now he took.
‘Sure,’
he thought. ‘The drugs are taking
over and they’re going to get me killed, one way or another, but it’s not
going to happen just yet. I can’t
change any of it, so why worry about it?’
He
turned away from the window and looked down at the woman who had been lecturing
him. She was tiny, barely more than
five feet tall and Calumn knew that if he wanted he could have broken her in
half but still, she was the one who gave the orders. Her green eyes looked up into his grey ones and the Frother
grinned sheepishly.
“C’mon,
things ain’t that bad,” he said. “This
Jason dude don’t know why we wanted him, right? He’s a dumb punk, it’ll be easy enough to pick him up
again.”
Hazel
sighed before answering. “How
many of these Cloud Runner have you ever come across?”
“Well,
just Jason really, but they keep themselves hidden away on the rooftops.
Some crap about being better than the Burrowers or some shit like
that.”
“Right,”
agreed Hazel. “They keep
themselves very much to themselves and Jason is the only one we’ve managed to
get any info on. We know that he
drinks in ZeeZee’s, or at least that he used to.
We know that he likes to hang out in the Pinstripe Arcade and we know
that he’s committed a lot of petty crimes in the neighbourhood. Not a lot to go on, is it?”
Calumn
paused for a moment, thinking before he answered. “We can stake out the arcade and catch up with him there.
No hassle, problem solved.”
He
went to the kitchen to get himself a beer from the fridge, leaving Hazel to
stare after him in open-mouthed astonishment.
Swinging the door open, he peered into the spotless interior of the
crowded fridge that was so different from the one in his apartment.
His fridge held only some mouldy cheese and a jar of mayonnaise that had
been there for as long as he could remember.
Calumn had always meant to stock up on food but it was so much easier to
send out for a pizza or a burger or something.
He
grabbed a can of Max-Light, popped the tab with an easy, practiced motion and
strolled back to the lounge where Hazel was still sitting.
Picking up the remote control from the arm of the sofa, he switched on
the Vid and settled himself down into a large armchair.
The Vid was sent to a Third Eye News program and Calumn
quickly flipped through the channels until he found a cartoon.
Settling back into the chair, he swung his feet over one of the arms and
prepared to watch the show, completely unaware of the glare that he was getting
from Hazel.
It
wasn’t that Calumn was a stupid person, it was just that the drugs had slowed
down his thought process and closed off some of the channels that were available
to normal people. When the Frother
got an idea in his head, he stuck with it, no matter what.
Calumn had decided that they would be able to pick Jason up at the arcade
and, as far as he was concerned, that was the end of the matter.
He couldn’t comprehend that things might not work out the way that he
thought they would and he saw absolutely no point in making contingency plans.
Hazel
Smith had been working with Calumn McGiver for almost 9 months now and they
normally worked very well together. The
BPN to pick up Sheeala was the most difficult one that they had ever had though
and the pressure was starting to show on Hazel. She was an organiser, an information gatherer and she relied
on Calumn to do the dirty work and the dangerous stuff. This time, however, it wasn’t that simple.
The team had had to do a lot of footwork in Downtown, trying to find out
where the Wraith had disappeared to and Hazel couldn’t use Calumn for that
sort of work. She had had to go out
into the slums herself, talking to the down and outs and getting her feet dirty
in the filthy streets. She wasn’t
used to that kind of work and she didn’t like it.
She
was a computer Operative, a person who investigated frauds and thefts in Uptown
and Central, not a combat Operative. She
had only taken this BPN because her career was going nowhere fast and she needed
the SCL boost that would come along with the financial reward for tracking down
the rogue operative. Sheeala had
dropped out of sight three months ago, simply disappeared and SLA Industries
were interested in knowing what had happened to her.
For
two months Hazel and the Frother had been following leads through Downtown.
They had asked questions, bribed, threatened, spied and spent a lot of
time getting wet. About a month ago
they had come across a rumour that a Wraith Raider had started hanging
out with a gang called the Cloud Runners. The two Operatives had spent another three weeks trying to
find someone who belonged to the Runners, not an easy task since the gang was so
small and spent most of its time far from the city streets.
Eventually they had come across Jason Ashe, apparently the only member of
the Cloud Runners who spent much time below the rooftops.
For a week that had been trailing Jason, trying to find out where the
gang hang out was but Jason had always managed to leave them behind.
Tonight
they had come across him in one of his regular haunts and they were going to try
to track him back to the gang, but the Frother had become tired of waiting and
might have blown two months of work. If
the team lost Jason, they might never get the chance to find out if the Wraith
that they were hunting was the one who had taken up with the Cloud Runners.
Hazel was expecting to pick up at least fifteen hundred credits for this
job and she didn’t give much for her prospects of promotion if they messed up.
This
BPN was vitally important to Hazel and she wished that she could make it clear
to the Frother just what a big deal it was.
As far as he was concerned it was just another ‘find the bad guy’
job. For some reason SLA Industries
had taken a great deal of interest in Sheeala and where she had gone to.
This wasn’t usual and Hazel had quickly realised that the Wraith must
have something or know something that SLA didn’t want her to have.
Hazel didn’t know for sure, but she guessed that they wouldn’t be the
only team working on the BPN and she was determined to be the one to bring the
Wraith back in from the cold. This
could get her noticed and you had to be noticed before you could climb the
Corporate ladder.
Calumn
was still staring at the Vid screen with a stupid smile on his face.
Occasionally, at a particularly violent part of the cartoon, he would
laugh out loud and Hazel wished that she could be as carefree as her large
friend. He was like an overgrown
child, albeit one with a bad temper. Hazel
considered trying to explain the situation to the Frother once more but decided
against it, it would only be a waste of breath.
She sipped her Nuclear Dawn and turned her attention towards the Vid.
“So,”
she asked. “Who’s the guy with
the arm growing out of his head and why’s he chasing the Low Wave?”
“Damn shame about Mike, he was an okay guy.”
Owen
had heard the same statement from nearly twenty people since he had got back to
the Warehouse and he was getting sick of it.
Everyone knew that Owen and Mike had been friends but no-one was quite
sure what to say to Owen, so they mumbled some commiseration and then tried
their best to avoid him. Owen
understood that it was difficult to know what to say in a situation like this
one but understanding it didn’t make it any easier to deal with.
He wished that people could just stop talking about Mike and let him get
quietly drunk.
He was
sitting in the far corner of the Warehouse, watching the Runners go about their
business. Most were sitting and
talking, drinking, smoking and doing their best to get high.
Danny and Sheeala were on one of the upper walkways whispering about
something, Elaine was staring at them while pretending to watch the Vid and
Jason was trying his damndest to chat up Mary-Anne.
Everyone knew that Mary-Anne wasn’t the least bit interested in Jason
but it didn’t stop him from trying. If
anything, it only made him more determined to score with her.
It was
a standard night in the Warehouse but Owen felt that there was something not
quite right. He couldn’t put his
finger on what it was but he knew that something was out of place and it was
making him feel really uneasy. The
more he drank, the harder it became to think and he was faced with a difficult
decision. Should he stop drinking,
try to sober up and make the effort of figuring out what it was that was
bothering him or should he get so drunk that he wouldn’t worry about it
anymore? Owen must have pondered
this tricky decision for a full three seconds before opening another can of
lager.
On the
uppermost steel walkway that ran around the four walls of the Warehouse, Sheeala
was listening to Danny boasting about the things he had done in the past.
It was obvious to her that the human was trying to impress her but she
couldn’t possibly believe that he could possibly think that she was interested
in him. She didn’t have anything
special against humans but she wasn’t about to sleep with one of them.
This was in particular was loud, vulgar, unfit and he stank.
“My
test jump was wild,” Danny was saying. “The
wind was blasting in out of the Cannibal lands but Matt wouldn’t let me back
out. Matt was the headman for the
Runners before me and that guy really hated me.
I reckon that he knew that I was better than him and he was hoping that I
wouldn’t make it through the test. Everyone
else knew that it was too fucking windy to jump but Matt said that I did it then
or I never did it.”
Danny
had been going on in the same vein for quite some time and Sheeala was allowing
her mind to wander. She thought
back to that night, three months ago, when she had first seen the figures
speeding across the rooftops. She
had been on the run from SLA Industries and needed a place to hide out.
Alone, lost and scared she had not known what to do.
The figures on the roves had given over a sense of freedom, of
recklessness and Sheeala had been attracted to that.
Without really knowing why, she quickly scrambled up a fire escape and
made her way up on to the same buildings that the people were crossing.
It had
taken only a few minutes for the agile Wraith to catch up with her quarry but
she hadn’t let them know that she was there. For an hour she followed them over the roves, revelling in
the fact that she was still as good a huntress as ever. When she felt comfortable enough, she let her presence be
known and walked up to join the humans. It
had taken a lot of persuasion but they had let her join them for the rest of the
night. By the end of that night the
Cloud Runners had so impressed with her skills and abilities that there was no
question of her not going back to the Warehouse with them.
Every one of the gang members who had seen her perform that night had
agreed that Sheeala had been born to be a Cloud Runner.
Her
test, only a few nights later, had been laughably easy for someone who had been
born and bred on the harsh landscape of Polo.
It was mostly a matter of courage and timing and Sheeala had both of
these qualities in abundance. She
had paused for only a moment while standing on top of the roof of the Wilson
Jones building and then executed an almost perfect dive off the roof and through
the gap. Sheeala loved the freedom
that she felt while falling through the air and she knew that she had found her
place to hide. The Cloud Runners
would give her the cover she needed to avoid the attention of SLA Industries,
but they would also provide her with the thrill she needed in her life.
‘Yes,’
she thought. ‘I’ve found a good
place to rest and hide but where do I go next?.
The Company will never stop searching for me and sooner or later
they’ll find me. I need to get
off this mudhole of a planet and back to Polo, back to the clean fresh air of my
home. Back to the simplicity of the
life I knew before! But how?’
Sheeala
forced herself to concentrate on what Danny was saying, leaving her musings
behind. As much as this disgusting,
fat slob of a human repulsed her, she knew that she needed him and the Cloud
Runners. She couldn’t afford to
offend him, not yet anyway.
“Tomorrow
night we’re gonna hit the liquor stone on Ryder Avenue,” Danny was saying.
“It’s got masses of security on front and back doors, but there’s a
small skylight that we should e able to get in through.
If we go in about 11 o’clock, just before the old bitch puts her
takings into the bank, we should come away with close to a thousand Uni.
Not bad for a night’s work, eh?”
Sheeala
forced herself to smile as she replied, “Yes, good!” She still wasn’t comfortable with the Killan tongue that
was spoken on Mort and she usually spoke in short, clipped sentences.
Danny grinned and went off to the toilet, leaving Sheeala to her
thoughts.
‘A
thousand Uni,’ she thought. ‘A
lousy hundred Credits. These people
are going to be risking their lives for a hundred Credits, pathetic!
I shouldn’t be helping them to break the law but what choice do I have?
They’ll be hurting innocent citizens but there’s nothing I can do to
prevent it. If I try to stop it,
Danny will get suspicious and if I refuse to go along, Danny will still get
suspicious. I should go, just to
make sure that no-one gets hurt if nothing else.
All this for just a hundred Credits.
It’s very sad that I’ve fallen so low.”
The
Wraith took along look around the room, making sure that she as aware of
everything that was going on around her. It
was part of her training to be constantly in touch with her surroundings and
this training had only enforced a natural caution that was built into every
Wraith Raider. In fact, virtually
all the training that she had received at Meny had been geared around enhancing
her own talents and aptitudes. Many
times over the last couple of years since leaving her training, Sheeala had been
grateful for her alertness and she didn’t intend to get out of the habit just
because she was no longer working for SLA Industries.
She
saw Elaine glowering up at her and laughed silently to herself.
‘The
stupid, foolish child,’ Sheeala thought even though the human was a full five
years older than the Wraith. ‘That
one hates me because of Danny’s infatuation with me. She believes that I have taken him away from her but she
should know that she never had him. The
male only uses her to show that he could have the prettiest girl around.
Elaine has so much to learn and if she goes against me she will never
have the chance to realise her mistake. I
hope for her sake she an get over her hatred of me, I would not like to
embarrass her in front of all her friends.’
Shaking
her head at the folly of humans, Sheeala saw Danny returning from the toilet and
braced herself for more boring anecdotes.
Jason had given up on Mary-Anne, but only for the moment. His ego could only take so many knock-backs and insults in
one night and he was getting very close to his limit. He lit up another Feelgood and wandered over towards Owen,
hoping that his friend would do something to boost his ego back to its normal
level. Walking a little unsteadily
across the Warehouse, Jason saw that Owen had fallen asleep or, more likely, had
fallen into a drunken stupor. Cursing
under his breath, he changed direction and veered towards the large Vid that
most of the Runners were sprawled in front of.
Almost
falling onto a beanbag, Jason tried to make out what was happening on the screen
but without much success. Through
the haze that the narcotic cigarette had set up in his mind he couldn’t
understand what everyone was talking about or what was meant to be happening.
The Vid was showing Amos Sharp, a popular comedian going though one of
his routines and Amos was famous for his rapid, punchy one-liners. He
was snapping these off with a speed that was leaving Jason far behind and when
Jason finally did manage to get one of the jokes, Amos had long ago moved onto a
new subject.
Before
long, most of the Runners who had been watching Amos started watching Jason
instead, watching him trying to make sense of the show instead.
Jason was oblivious to all this attention he was receiving and was still
feebly trying to catch up with the comedian.
As
soon as he’d got back to the Warehouse from ZeeZee’s, Jason had been
chain-smoking Feelgoods, trying to forget about the two Operatives who had been
going after him. He was convinced
now that it was him they were after and not Owen.
Even besides the strong evidence for this, his ego would not have let him
believe that they could be after Owen and not him.
Try as he might, he couldn’t come up with any reason for SLA Industries
to be interested in him so he tried to blank the thought from his head.
The only way that he could accomplish this was through completely
shutting off his mind and Feelgoods were the quickest way of doing this.
In his confused state he had totally forgotten about what had happened
earlier in the night and the rest of the world was pretty much just a hazy
memory to him.
Ten
minutes after sitting down in front of the Vid, Jason was asleep, much to the
disappointment of his companions. Deprived
of this form of entertainment, they turned back to the Vid and Amos Sharp.
It was just another night in the Warehouse.
Mort Central
is made up of crowded, jostling monoliths that have been erected to worship the
great god that is SLA Industries. Somewhere,
deep in the heart of all those office blocks, a man sat at a desk, pouring over
the files that were on the computer in front of him.
He had been sitting, staring at the same files, all night and the dim
light of dawn that broke over the city had no effect on his studies.
His hand reached out to grasp the cup of cold coffee that he had made for
himself hours earlier and he gulped down the bitter liquid, not liking the taste
but wanting and needing the caffeine rush that would soon follow.
“Computer,”
he said to the machine that sat in front of him. “List the information on Sheeala for me again, please.”
He
knew that there was no need to be polite to the computer but it was a habit he
had had for years and he saw no reason to change it now.
“Sheeala
Marax,” the coldly feminine voice of the computer stated.
“Wraith Raider, female, age 12 standard years.
SCL rating of 8C.2. Reference
number WF/35991/KM. Sheeala was
born on the Ice planet of Polo but moved to Mort when she was old enough to
enter training as an Operative. Trained
in the Kick Murder regime, she entered the Urban Clearance squad and worked with
them until her disappearance 3 months ago.
Current whereabouts are unknown but it is believed she has gone into
hiding somewhere in Downtown. BPN
for her capture has been offered to 5 squads but there have been no sightings of
her as yet. BPN reference
IA/5585G/12.
“It
is believed,” the computer continued, “that Sheeala Marax found remnants of
the Integration Twenty article that was lost when the buildings of Downtown
Phoenix were destroyed in a fire. Access
to Integration Twenty is limited to SCL 2 and above and Sheeala has no right to
the information that is contained within Integration Twenty.
She is to be found and brought back to Central for questioning.
She must be found before she can pass on any of the information that is
contained within Integration Twenty. Other
members of Urban Clearance have been thoroughly questioned and do not know
anything of Integration Twenty or where Sheeala can be found.”
“That’s
enough computer,” the man broke in. “Thanks
for your help. Could you make a
hard copy of all the files that I’ve scanned over the last 8, no make that 10
hours, and could you print them out in my apartment please.”
Leaning
back in the chair, he stretched and yawned, listening to the bones in his back
protest. He’d been sitting in the
same position for hours on end and he wasn’t as young as he used to be.
“Lights,”
he called and the bright overhead, fluorescent light flickered into life.
Pushing the chair back, he stood and paced around the office a few times,
more to get the kinks out of his legs than for any other reason.
Despite the fact that Harry Munslow had been out of the field for more
than a year now, he still thought of himself as an active Operative and he
didn’t like the inactivity that had been forced upon him.
One of
his superiors had decided that Harry could be more use to SLA Industries behind
a desk and so he’d been banished to this small office in Central.
Harry worked for the Department of Internal Affairs and liked his job
very much. He believed that there
was no greater threat to SLA Industries than corruption from the inside and it
was his job to cut out the corruption whenever and where-ever he could find it.
For the first eight years of his career, Harry had been a field
Operative, he had been one of the highly skilled and even more highly trained
individuals who had the difficult task of finding and eliminating Operatives who
had gone bad. It was an extremely
dangerous job but Harry had been very, very good at it.
Time
had been the factor that had beaten Harry.
As he grew older, his reflexes slowed down and he no longer had the
stamina that was necessary. New,
younger Operatives came along, all of them hungry for his job, and many of them
had the new implants that made them faster and stronger than Harry could ever
hope to be. The stakes were being
raised and Harry simply couldn’t compete any more. His bosses had spotted this and took him out of the field
before he could make a potentially fatal mistake.
Normally, an Operative who had grown too old would have been retired but
Harry had gained a lot of useful experience that was too valuable to be wasted.
So, Harry was given an office, a desk and a computer and he was still
hunting out internal corruption but in a different way.
Now
Harry provided information for the young, fresh Operatives who were still out in
the field. He searched out
corruption and left it up to others to operate on the cancer that threatened SLA
Industries. He was one of the many
people who spent their working lives investigating and spying on their comrades
and fellow workers. It wasn’t a
particularly pleasant job but it
was one that had to be done and anything that Harry did, he did to the best of
his abilities. He prided himself on
being very good at a very difficult job.
For
the last three months he’d been working on finding Sheeala.
He had been doing other tasks during this time as well of course, but it
was the search for the rogue Wraith Raider that was taking up the majority of
his time. Harry had discovered that
Sheeala had stumbled across some hard copies of the infamous Integration Twenty
material and that the Wraith had gone underground instead of reporting the find
to her superiors. Harry had never read Integration Twenty and he had no desire
to, but he knew it was a traitorous article written by a trouble-maker called
Wave Lindsay. Lindsay had worked on
the newspaper called Downtown Phoenix and for many years he had written articles
that portrayed SLA Industries in a bad, in a very bad light.
Obviously,
none of these articles were true, but Harry knew that the citizens of Downtown
would believe anything that they were told and many of them were taking Wave
Lindsay seriously. Eventually,
Lindsay had gone too far and he’d forced SLA Industries to take steps to
protect their good name. Downtown
Phoenix was going to print an article called Integration twenty and this article
contained many derogatory lies about Mr Slayer and his company. The people from Internal Affairs who were sent to prevent
this article from seeing the light of day were perhaps slightly too zealous and
there had been a fire. The fire
destroyed the buildings and presses of Downtown Phoenix and the article had been
lost forever. Supposedly!
Wave
Lindsay was thought to have died in the fire but his body was never recovered.
He has not been seen since so it was assumed that his remains had been
completely destroyed in the conflagration that had spring up.
In the 5 years since the fire, there have been rumours that copes of
Integration Twenty still exist and that they have been seen and read by certain
individuals.
Harry
Munslow, and therefore the Department of Internal Affairs, knew for certain that
there are still copies of the article circulating in Downtown and they are
constantly trying to get hold of these copies.
Sheeala had somehow come across one of these copies and Harry figured
that she must have believed the lies that were printed in it.
She should have reported her find to her superiors but instead she fled
into Downtown. What she hoped to
achieve was anyone’s guess but Harry knew that she had to be found, and soon.
Harry
was co-ordinating the actions of five different squads, each one of the them
trying to find the elusive Wraith and none of them aware that they were not the
only ones working on the BPN. Harry
listened to reports from all of them and compared information and leads, hoping
that he would be able to piece together a complete picture from the bits of the
jigsaw that were coming in. Three
of the squads believed that Sheeala had joined with a Downtown gang called the
Cloud Runners and one squad knew where the gang were holed up.
They intended to swoop on the hang-out this evening when Sheeala was
likely to be there and, if things went well, the Wraith would be home by this
time tomorrow and the problem would be solved.
For
some reason Harry was worried. For
more years than he cared to remember he had listened to his hunches and he had
one now, a strong one. Things would
not go according to plan! He
didn’t know why, or what would go wrong, but he wasn’t going to hold his
breath waiting for the Wraith to be brought in.
Harry had a very bad feeling about the planned raid but he had no
evidence for this feeling.
He
opened the blinds that covered the window and stared out into the falling rain.
Something was wrong, he didn’t know what and it was annoying him.
Central was starting to come to life with the arrival of morning and
Harry smiled to himself as he realised that he still preferred
to work in the hours of darkness, probably this was a throwback to the
time he had spent in the field. Dangerous
creatures come out in the night and Harry had always considered himself to be
one of the most deadly creatures that roamed Mort.
“Computer,
switch off please,” he called. Making
his way to the door he picked up his coat and hat and raced himself
for the long, slow journey home. He
always hated travelling through the morning rush but he was tired and wanted his
bed.
“Lights
off!” Harry pulled the door
closed behind himself and made his way down through the office block and out to
the taxi rank. It was time to go
home and get some sleep. Things
were going to happen this evening and Harry wanted to be on hand when they did.
*********************************************************
Night flees from Mort and it is time for me
to leave my classroom. My pupils
have seen a great lesson but now I must go back to my lofty home and rest before
the next class. The lesson went
well last night and I feel awake and alive.
The mask has been satisfied for the moment and it should leave me alone
while I sleep. Perhaps I will be
able to rest without the nightmares that haunt me, perhaps I will find the
blessed oblivion of sleep that so often forsakes me.
The
mask sends visions into my sleeping mind, visions that force me to search for
new victims. The visions can only
be held at bay by blood and gore. Or
perhaps it is the pain and suffering of others that the mask thrives on.
Whatever it needs, whether physical or mental, it punishes me if it
doesn’t get its fill.
It fills my mind with visions of death and destruction, visions of mass
chaos that only I can prevent.
It was
the mask that first showed me how to educate the termites.
The mask showed me how fear is the greatest teacher and that I must
become feared in order for my message to be understood.
Without fear, the message would be lost in the media jungle, simply one
news broadcast amongst hundreds of others.
But with fear, my message is studied by millions.
Termites across Mort watched open-mouthed and wide-eyed as I vented my
fury upon the Operatives who had been fated to cross my path.
Ahh,
the fight was a great relief for me. I
was able to unleash all the emotions that were bottled up within me and I could
teach my pupils a great lesson at the same time. As my axe cut through the ceramic armour that the chosen
victim wore, the camera zoomed in on the conflict and beamed its images to the
watching billions. The pupils were
desperate to know that they would be safe for another night, that my wrath had
fallen upon some other poor termite.
My
victim was not alone but he might as well have been for all the good his
companions did him. One fell to the
first swing of my axe, another was too scared to move and the last …… the
last aided me with my lesson for the watching termites. She held the camera that caught my lesson, she held the
camera that showed the termites the power of fear.
The battle was fierce and I did not leave it without pain but it is
something that I must endure. Pain
holds no surprises for me since my entire life has been made up of pain of
differing degrees. Pain tells you
that you are still alive. Without
pain there is no clarity of thought. It
focuses the images that crowd through my head, it allows me to pass the pain
onto others. Pain is my greatest
gift.
My
victim fell to the blows of my axe but he managed to shoot me before he died.
I can still feel the bullet passing through my arm, its path marked by a
fiery pain that will be with me forever. Drugs
will dull the pain but they will never be able to completely stop it.
The drugs will heal the wound while I sleep but the pain will be a
constant reminder of this night and the lesson I gave.
The mask does not feel the pain that I suffer, it only knows that the
lessons must be given and that I am the teacher.
Once
the warrior fell, I walked towards the camera.
The pupils will have seen the image of the mask getting larger and larger
on their screens but will not have moved. Fear will have kept them in their seats, fear and relief.
Relief that they were not the ones to face my blade.
For the time that the mask filled their vision they will have been glad
to be alive, they will have gloried in the simple joy of life.
It is a shame that the vision could not have lasted longer but the camera
fell to the ground when I brought my lesson to the woman holding it.
She should have been happy to die for the greater good of the termites
but she screamed when I crushed her neck in my hands,
She clawed and kicked and screamed and died.
Only
then was the mask satisfied. It
withdrew from my mind and I was alone in the streets. Alone with the object lesson that lay on the ground around
me. I have returned to my lair now
and prepare myself for the next lesson. The
termites need constant reminders of their lessons so there will never be a time
when I am not needed. The mask will
drive me on and the pupils will devour my lessons. Caught between the needs of the mask and the needs of the
pupils, I can only continue giving, giving until they have consumed all of me
and there is nothing left to give. When
that day comes, the mask will choose another teacher and the pupils will listen
to other lessons. Nothing will
change.
The
night has gone and the mask is asleep. I
will sleep now and I pray that there will be no nightmares.
My pupils will remember the lesson of the night and they will be glad to
have their lives. But what do I have? Only
the knowledge that my task will never be over and I will never be able to live
without the mask.
Pity
me and fear the mask.