Din Eidyn Corpus (Book 2): dEaDINBURGH (Alliances) (9 page)

One step away from entering her mother’s tent, Alys felt a familiar prickle at the base of her neck and cut a sidelong look back to her mother. Jennifer had risen to her knees and was sucking in litres of air with loud rasping breaths. Alys had assumed the little prickle was danger, but as she shifted her eyes along The Gardens and up the slope to the North Gate, she smiled broadly at the source.

Before she disappeared into the tent, she waved to Joey who was standing part way down the sloping grass, looking stunned. She beckoned him to join her.

Chapter 10

Joey

Wandering along Princes Street, his step lighter than it had been for days – weeks perhaps – Joey whistled a tune Jock used to sing often enough to drive his young charge crazy with the repetition. Now, the simple song brought the comfort of Jock’s presence.

Having left Suzy’s place the day before, Joey had strolled through the West End towards The Gardens, taking his time for a change. The absence of Ringed in the city-centre, whilst unsettling, made his walk to Alys’s home less hurried than it may have been otherwise.

As he walked, Joey pinched at his coat pocket with thumb and forefinger, reassuring himself that the little rubbery flash drive containing his mother’s message still lay securely zipped inside. Each time he thought of her – of Michelle – he smiled.

Suzy had been right. He needed to overcome the darkness, pain and anger he’d allowed to grow. It had been consuming him. Those feelings, the despair, weren’t entirely gone but he was in control of them. He was using them now, instead of them using him. He was consuming them as fuel, the energy he needed to do what he planned.

Joey sighed, content with where and who he was, perhaps for the first time in his short life. Purpose did that to a person.

With his purpose foremost in his mind, Joey had a change of heart and spun around on his heels, away from The Gardens, up Lothian Road to The Meadows and towards the little house where Suzy had told him her friend Tricia lived.

Her friend, Tricia Ferguson, the former computer technician.

Standing in the centre of the narrow cobbled street, Joey gazed up at the faded black and green sign of the former bar: the Banshee Labyrinth. Above the next window, another sign bore the legend ‘Scotland’s Most Haunted’. Joey smirked and nudged Tricia’s arm.

She followed his eye-line up and gave out a chuckle.

“Sure, I had a pint in here once, son.”

Joey smiled politely and let the reference he didn’t understand pass. He was used to ignoring wee idioms and phrases like that from his time with Jock. It was one of the things he missed most about his mentor. Spending time in Suzy’s and now Tricia’s company, their use of the same ancient-sounding phrases warmed his soul.

Tricia had welcomed him into her home, after an initial threat to gut him with a butcher’s knife for being on her property. Once he’d hurriedly explained Suzy had sent him, Tricia had ushered him through her perimeter defences and up the stairs into her small apartment in the former student residences.

She was perhaps sixty years old. The young people of Edinburgh found it fairly difficult to judge the ages of people over fifty since there were so few of them, but having spent much of his life surrounded by older men in The Brotherhood, and being brought up in later years by Jock, Joey was perhaps a little keener than most in guessing.

Tricia was a small, sturdy woman with faded red hair, lively green eyes and a quick smile. She frequently reached out to his head and ruffled his hair, in the way you might praise a child. It was an odd gesture from someone he’d just met and one that could be an annoyance in certain circumstances. Delivered with an enthusiastic smile and genuine excitement at his presence, Joey found it strangely comforting and entirely endearing.

 
Her overriding feature was that she couldn’t stand still. Her face, hands, eyes mouth and limbs were a lively, busy flurry of activity. Joey’s eyes felt like buzzing bees following her movement.

After relaying to her his mother’s description of The Hub, its contents and the possibility that it still lay fully-powered to her, Tricia had agreed enthusiastically to accompany him to the former pub on Niddry Street.

“The streets have been mercifully free of The Ringed this last week, blondie. And besides, can’t remember the last time I had any fun,” she’d told him.

Suzy had described Tricia as a computer genius. Tricia told him that she was a “hacker and communications specialist”. Whatever that meant.

Joey was hoping to get some supplies and perhaps send a message to the outside world, but mostly he just wanted to be there, in that place where he’d seen his mother speak to him across the decades. He needed someone who knew how to access and how to use The Hub’s resources, to fully understand how it may be utilised. Fearful that their conversation was being broadcast, Joey whispered much of it, but really, how could he know. He’d decided to be guarded but to assume that no-one could hear him, otherwise he’d be a bag of nerves.

 
On their way to The Hub, Joey had told her quietly about his mother’s message; of how she’d spoken to him by video message. All joviality had left Tricia’s face for a moment and she’d stood there, stone-still for once. Reaching up, Tricia had cupped his cheeks in her warm hands and told him softly, “That’s a real gift your mother gave you, Joseph. A real gift.”

He’d smiled and nodded at her kindness. She was right: it was a gift.

They’d continued their trip in warm, comfortable silence.

Tricia tugged at his hand, pulling his attention to the heavy, black doors of the pub.

“Shall we, blondie?” She giggled when she spoke.

Joey looked up and along Niddry Street. Peering out at The Royal Mile above he felt a pang, once again, at how close he’d lived to this secret place. He wondered if The Brotherhood were nearby since their fence began just up on The Mile, round the corner.

Tricia tugged at him again and pointed at a dust-covered keypad with faded numbers on the doorway. She reached out and wiped a finger over the corner of the pad, shifting decades of dirt and exposing a dim green light.

“C’mon. Move yer erse.”

Joey smiled and stepped towards the keypad. A final check up and down the narrow street to confirm they were alone and his fingers moved across the keypad, pressing the numbers his mother gave him.

A gentle
blip-bloop
followed by a lock clanking made them both jump.

Joey slipped through the doorway, gently pulling Tricia into the darkness with him. As soon as they’d cleared the door frame, Joey carefully closed the solid metal-covered wooden door, fearful of unwanted eyes chancing across it if left open. Not a scrap of light penetrated the door’s edges.

Taking a deep breath, Joey allowed his senses to adjust to the lack of light. In its coolness and impenetrable darkness, the chamber felt familiar. Like home. The total absence of light was a security blanket around him. He allowed himself a moment to relax into it and listened as Tricia’s hands searched for something on the wall.

A faint clang of hand on light metal rang and Tricia called out, “Shut yer eyes, Joseph.”

Joey closed his eyes tightly and covered them with the palms of his hands a millisecond before something clunked behind him and harsh, sterile white light filled the chamber.
 

Tricia let out a whoop of delight. Through the cracks in slightly raised eyelids and between fingers, Joey squinted and watched Tricia dance a wee victory jig. As his eyes adjusted, he looked around the room, taking in its contents. He and Tricia beamed at each other, big goofy smiles that his face had never worn and hers hadn’t for years. Tricia whooped and ran to the nearest machine.

“It’s all live, it’s alive!” Tricia laughed more loudly than ever at her own joke.

Joey scanned his adjusting eyes around the room and winced as cold, clinical bright light reflected around the chamber and pierced his eyes.

The high, dome-shaped ceiling, carved from solid rock, was covered with massive halogen floodlights whose harsh light bathed the room in unnatural brightness. Tricia was picking her way through the chamber, taking a mental note of the equipment.

She shouted across to him.

“Mostly processers and servers.” She pointed around at black and grey boxes covered loosely with thin dustsheets that did little to block the blinking lights on their surfaces.

“’Kay,” Joey said, uncertainly.

They walked together around to the rear of the chamber where an office area lay. Box files, stacked tidily atop each other, lined a wall. Several desks with laptops, their charging lights blinking, filled the rest of the area. Joey’s heart lurched as he realised that he’d be able to watch his mother’s message again.

 
Exploring the remainder of the chamber, they found a sleeping area with tidy cotton-covered bunks, a bookshelf and a white box.

Tricia let out a little giggle once again and flipped a switch on the device. Pulling a comfortable, reclining chair towards it, she sat upright, bathing her hands in the orange glow of what she called “a halogen heater”. Joey eyed the device suspiciously but marvelled at the seemingly unending heat it generated.

Standing once more, Tricia flicked the orange halogen heater off and led Joey through to the final area they’d yet to explore.

Reaching the storeroom, she found a heavy steel doorway with a spinning wheel mechanism in the centre. Joey stepped forward and spun the wheel around. Shoving it inwards it clunked to a stop. He and Tricia gasped.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves were filled with supplies. Dried cereals. Long-life UHT milk, massive containers of water, dried fruit and dozens upon dozens of cans of tinned goods: peaches, meat, vegetables, beans, spaghetti – more than enough to last ten people for months.

The corners of Joey’s mouth fell in disgust.

“This is all just lying here? For a few visitors every few months or so?” he said.

Tricia nodded.

“That’s how the world used to be,” she said. “Still is, out there, I suppose… probably worse. You’d know better than I would, blondie.”

Joey took her hand. He had, of course, told her of the cameras, of the outside world watching them. Of dEaDINBURGH.

 
He’d hated doing it. Alys was right: the knowledge was essentially useless, and worse, it was a burden. But he couldn’t bring Tricia to The Hub without revealing to her its purpose. She’d have seen that for herself anyway as soon as she inspected the cables and computers feeding the images to the outside.

Tricia gave his hand a squeeze, planted a half-hearted grin on her lips and left the storeroom.

Scanning around the rest of the store, Joey found good stocks of various supplies. Matches, camping stoves, duct tape and boxes of clothes. Closing the storeroom door behind him, Joey went looking for Tricia.

Seated in the centre of an array of monitors, Tricia looked like everyone in the city: grimy, spirited and battered. In the midst of all this technology, she resembled a moss-covered caveperson, sitting with modern-day equipment. And then she did something miraculous. Something nobody in the city had done for more than thirty years. Something that made the lively little redhead feel alive once again. She reached out and took control of the machines around her

To Joseph, it was a wonder akin to witchcraft.

Tricia’s fingers tapped on keys, flipped switches and commanded banks of artificial intelligence. She brought images, streamed from every corner of the city, before her on thin screens, which she scanned and moved and reconfigured. Her eyes danced, not just with the lights reflected in them but with the joy of an artist who’s finally able to paint once again.

After three minutes she began to laugh. After a minute more, she cried. Finally Tricia spun around in her chair and looked through sodden eyes at Joey.

“Thank you for bringing me here, Joseph.”

After an hour or so, Tricia gave her initial discoveries and her assessment of the chamber’s capabilities to Joey.