Din Eidyn Corpus (Book 2): dEaDINBURGH (Alliances) (23 page)

Chapter 27

Joey

“Joey. What the hell are you doing?” Alys screamed at him as she noticed him making his way up and along to the Half-Moon battlements once again.

Joey staggered along the cobbles, falling over every few paces. Pain lanced his body with every breath he forced down into his lungs. His broken ribs punished him for every breath, his broken femur for every moment he stood.

Alys caught up to him, slipping an arm around his waist. She rotated him gently, forcing her friend to sit atop a stone bench in the lower courtyard.

Sweat saturated his entire body. He was pale as winter snow and his body trembled with pain and exertion. Stood over him, Alys held his face in her hands.

“Joe. Enough. It’s over.”

Joey shook his head and looked up at her through droopy, pain-filled eyes.

“Not yet. Tricia.”

Alys stood frozen. She looked over his injuries, wincing at the swelling and bruising already peeking out from under his clothing. He was shivering. He’d slip into shock soon.

Joey glared at her. “Get Tricia.”

“Joe, please. Let me do it.”

“No!” he screamed, increasing the pain in his chest. “It has to be me.”

Alys’s face hardened as she made a decision.

“Fine. But you can do it from here, and you’ll be taking some painkillers first, Joseph MacLeod.”

Despite the pain, Joey smiled slightly at her use of his Sunday name.

“Deal,” he said, voice a whisper.

Tricia knelt on one knee a metre from him, her little camera-linked to the Wi-Fi and pointed at an upward angle and focused on his face. Just his face. His body was a wreck, but the painkillers had taken the edge off and his eyes were alive and filled with venomous purpose. Alys and her family stood behind Tricia, out of shot. A craggy rock leading up to the upper Courtyard filled the space behind him.

Tricia signalled to him.

“Ready, blondie?

Five seconds.

She’d told him to look straight into the camera, to imagine its lens was the people on the outside. Keep it brief. Don’t go off on one. Say what you have to and not a syllable more.

Joey lowered his head, closed his eyes and counted to five.

Tricia pushed a button and Joseph MacLeod’s face became a series of electrical impulses, rushing through the invisible web of the city’s Wi-Fi, straight into the servers of The Hub. From there, only one destination was possible: the main servers in the UKBC headquarters, London, for editing and possible censoring and out through private feeds to the UKBC’s board members.

Chapter 28

Fraser Donnelly

“What is taking place in the city-centre of Edinburgh is no fluke or random luck, gentlemen. This day has been in planning for some time. Rest assured, the same attention to detail and commitment will be employed in Amsterdam.”

Fraser was interrupted by a priority one alert from his personal Holo-Tablet. His alert was followed quickly by a series of similar beeps and whistles from around the boardroom.

Contrary to popular belief, dEaDINBURGH was not a live feed. The footage was collated at HQ, edited and adjusted, with a full ninety-minute delay in place before the public received their supposed
live
feed.

Occasionally, the executive editor needed final approval if some particularly sensitive material was to be transmitted, or if perhaps a major event was unfolding and they considered holding back some footage to be relayed at a later date, when ratings needed a boost.

With the battle taking place at Edinburgh Castle and the unprecedented number of Ringed headed there, it was no real surprise that the editing department was getting antsy.

Gesturing that he would send his own feed to the large Holo-Screen in the boardroom, Fraser connected the call, finding a panicky Steve Garrett on the other end.

“Steve, good to see you. You’re on-screen to the board. What’s the issue?”

Garrett squirmed before speaking.

“Sir, it’s a very sensitive transmission we need your view on.” Garrett made a gesture intended to indicate Fraser’s subordinates.

“Oh, that’s fine, go ahead, Garrett. Just to our feed for now,” Fraser said.

“As you wish, sir. We’ll connect you from the start of transmission. You’re about seventy seconds behind live footage at this stage.”

Garrett’s face disappeared, and was replaced by the face of a dEaDINBURGH survivor. His eyes were closed and his face down, but each of the board members knew Joseph Macleod by sight. He was one of their biggest
stars,
after all.

 
As the camera began transmitting, the image of MacLeod flickered to life. Raising his face to the camera, the young man glared intensely into the lens. He said nothing at first, merely moved his eyes in a manner that gave each person in the room the distinctly eerie feeling that he was inspecting them. Elliot, one of the senior directors, performed a quick visual check that the feed was in fact not a two-way communiqué, such was the malevolence in MacLeod’s eyes.

Finally he spoke.

“My name is Joseph MacLeod. I’m a… survivor in the city of Edinburgh. Many of you may know me
–
my city and the people in it are your entertainment after all.”

The room was silent as they watched MacLeod’s anger fuel his speech, despite the obvious pain he was in. Fraser cut a look at Solveson, his one-time mentor, whose face mirrored the others’ in the room: disbelief.

“We don’t expect assistance. We don’t want or need your help, we’re quite capable of surviving alone. What we want… what I want is for you to know what your entertainment costs.”

“He thinks that he’s going out live to the public,” Solveson whispered to Fraser. Fraser nodded, without moving his eyes from MacLeod’s face. The boy’s voice had sent the same shock of recognition through him as he’d felt the last time they spoke.

“People from your world are being forced into this place. Dissidents, sympathisers, criminals, people who don’t agree with the existence of dEaDINBURGH or simply those who think for themselves, I don’t know. What I can tell you is that people are being disposed of into the quarantine zone.”

MacLeod closed his eyes once more, composing himself, biting down on the pain from his injuries. It was compelling viewing.

“My mother was one of these people. Her name was Michelle MacLeod. She was employed by the UKBC and was placed in the quarantine zone when she discovered that people were being forced through the fences. Pregnant, abandoned and terrified, she wasn’t like us, the people in here who fight and struggle and die for your viewing. She was just a normal girl with too much empathy who trusted the wrong man.

“This man took my mother’s trust and utterly betrayed their friendship. He attempted to silence Michelle MacLeod, to murder her. She survived long enough and well enough to give birth to me.”

Some of those present in the boardroom began whispering to each other. A few discussed the possibility of letting the transmission air to the public.
“What a ratings winner. A dEaDINBURGH star aware of the cameras, talking to the public.”

Others stole glances at Fraser, one hand shielding their whispers.

Solveson, the one man in the room aside from Fraser who knew Michelle MacLeod, was unreadable.

“The man responsible for throwing humans away like trash, for placing my mother into this city to die, is named Fraser Donnelly. If you have any morality, punish this man. I cannot. My mother cannot. Thousands of victims over decades cannot.”

The eyes looked through the lens into the faces of all gathered.

“You can.”

No-one looked at Fraser. All eyes stayed on the stoic face of Joseph MacLeod.

“We have a new home here within the city. Your cameras are no longer welcome.”

MacLeod nodded at someone off camera. A single second later the feed cut off, replaced by Garrett’s face.

“Sir, we’ve just lost all feeds to the city-centre.”

Fraser squinted into the Holo-Cam, more intrigued than concerned. “Lost? How do you mean, lost.”

Garrett shuffled his feet. They’ve been cut, sir. Most likely from The Hub.”

Fraser considered for a moment.
Joey’s mother somehow left him access to The Hub. Remarkable.

“How long until they can be reinstated, Garrett?”

“It seems that The Hub’s servers have been disabled. All of them. There’s no data or images coming from that location.”

Fraser cut him off, turning to the other directors. “Seems our Mr MacLeod has decided to teach us a lesson.”

One by one the vibe in the room began to change. Smiles broke out on the faces of those furthest from Fraser and spread quickly through the group. Solveson was the first to laugh, followed by the HR director. In moments the boardroom walls echoed with the booming laughter of twelve executives.

Colleagues, partners, co-conspirators, each of them laughed riotously at MacLeod’s
revelation
of Fraser’s part in placing innocents into the dead.

Fraser scanned the room as he laughed along. He was reasonably confident that none of them had linked him to Joseph and Michelle MacLeod, aside from his having worked with the girl, and of course having disposed of her when she’d become problematic. He was hardly alone in this room on that score though.

Yes,
he thought to himself.
MacLeod’s parentage is not on anyone’s radar.

As the laughter died away, Fraser coughed loudly and smiled at his assembled subordinates.

“Friends, as entertaining as this afternoon has proved to be, I suggest each of us erases this particular feed from our servers.”

Nods of agreement all around.

“Excellent. Now, to other matters.” Fraser swiped at the air, bringing a hologram to life above the table. A ripple went around the room as the directors murmured their approval. Fraser made a circular gesture with his hand, like he was opening an invisible jam jar, and the hologram rotated so that each of them could inspect it.

It was an audacious move by Donnelly but each of them had backed him fully in his planning, development and now execution of the new spin-off show.

“Love the name,” Solveson said.

A few others mumbled their agreement as they watched the logo spin around atop their table.

AMSTERDAMned

Coming Winter 2052

UKBC