Jen only understood parts
of what Claire was telling her. She was drowning in the flood of
information and couldn’t process it fast enough to clasp the whole
meaning.
It was a battery operated
lamp and it cast a muted orange hue about the room, just enough for
Jen’s struggling eyes to see who she was talking to. Claire had a
beautiful face to go with her pretty voice and the warm glow
accentuated her feminine chin and high cheekbones. She was slender,
but too thin for the word willowy – there was nothing graceful
about her slight frame. Jen thought she’d look healthier with
another ten kilograms. A white halter left her arms and much of her
back bare, and squeezed her breasts together to show ample
cleavage. Esteban made her wear it; he liked seeing her flesh ripe
to burst from her clothes.
Claire noticed Jen
staring at them. “I hate them.”
Jen blushed.
“
They drugged
me one day, during my first month. And when I woke up I had two
massive melons where my breasts had once been.” She looked sad. “A
cosmetic surgeon is a member of the Guild. They’ve done it to all
of us, I suspect you’ll have yours done soon too.”
Jen frowned. “The
Guild?”
“
You don’t
know?” It had been part of Claire’s reality for so long that it
hadn’t occurred to her outsiders might not understand. “God… how
can I explain something like the Guild?” She sat on her bed and
invited Jen to sit next to her. “It’s like a brotherhood of the
powerful, all men. Most are in upper management or on the board of
directors for a giga-corporation. They help each other out and use
their combined influence to annihilate anyone who stands in their
way. It’s profane, but they live by the motto of the musketeers –
all for one and one for all.” She cast her eyes to the floor. “And
they use women as sex slaves and little else.”
“
Do you mean
this is a secluded mingling place for rich people?” Jen was
outraged and not a little confounded.
“
Yes.”
“
How many
members?” Jen’s amazement seeped into her tone.
“
I can’t be
sure,” Claire said, shrugging so hard her breasts nearly leapt out.
“It’s a global network and they don’t all come here, but there must
be several hundred.”
“
And Esteban,
Adrian and Frank are in it?” In hindsight, it seemed like a stupid
question.
“
Yes.
Relatively new members from what I can tell.
Some of the
others
have been
here longer than I have and
said Esteban came about four years ago. I think he met his friends
at college, an exclusive college where the Guild scouts for
potential members.”
“
Where’s
everyone else?”
Claire cuddled
her lamp like a child clutching her favourite doll. It made her
appear vulnerable and scared, and Jen didn’t think she could be
older than 23.
Even younger then
me.
“
It’s nearly
midnight so most of the women are asleep or waiting in their
chambers for their masters,” Claire explained beneath lowered
eyelashes. “But most of the men have gone home. Only a few spend
the night here, most have wives and families.” Despite her misery,
Claire had compassion to spare for the other woman in the Guild –
or the Grave as she thought of it. It was underground and she would
die there, and that was grave enough.
A stone of
sadness settled in Jen’s chest.
I wish
there was something I could do
, she thought
despairingly. “Where’re you from? Originally, I mean.”
She summoned the courage
to smile, though it felt empty. “Texas,” she replied with a glimmer
of pride. “And you?”
“
Australia,”
Jen said, trying unsuccessfully to reflect Claire’s smile. “And I’m
going home.” Fear and determination waged war in her mind, each
pulling her in opposite directions.
A tear of hopeless
recognition sheened in Claire’s eyes. “I knew you’d try, everybody
does.”
“
What about
air shafts?” Jen asked. “They have to ventilate this place
somehow.”
Claire shook her head.
“One girl tried. She shinnied into a duct and found a shaft, but a
grate was welded across the junction. And there were sensors… they
disciplined her but cutting off her hands. She didn’t live long
after that and nobody’s tried since.” She swallowed bile. “Her name
was Heather… she was only sixteen.”
Jen recoiled but didn’t
intend to give up yet. “Then there has to be a sympathetic ear
somewhere in the Guild. A male one.”
Claire had
clung to hope for three months before finally wilting. She knew
from experience that the breaking point was the hardest. Hope was a
divine gift while it lasted, but it blinded people into believing
things that would never happen. All the women in the Guild’s
Baltimore bunker eventually lost hope and passed through a period
of suicidal depression before finally accepting their
circumstances. It was painful to watch, Claire knew. One of her
friends had hung herself with bed sheets, and another had locked
herself in the bathroom, smashed a mirror and sliced her wrists and
neck with the shards. It hadn’t worked; she hadn’t cut deeply
enough to sever an artery and the glass had been too slippery with
blood for her to finish the task. But it had left her hideously
scarred
and in the end that had been her
ticket out. The Guild wasn’t interested in flawed
specimens.
“We tried that too,” Claire
warned. “It doesn’t work.
The
Guild’s
very selective when recruiting new
members. They’re all psychotic… or so ambitious they’re
blind.”
“
Fine. Then
I’ll go through the portals.”
“
Without a
chip?” Claire raised an eyebrow.
“
Oh no, I’ll
get myself a chip.” Jen clenched her jaw and entwined her fingers
tightly around the sheets on the bed, screwing them into balls of
repressed rage.
“
How?”
“
I’ll rip it
from someone’s spine.”
And she looked so furious
that Claire wondered whether she might actually be able to do
it.
*
Saturday, September 18,
2066
18:14 Sydney,
Australia
Dan had
forgotten the mountain of
electronic
forms
required to requisition a
departmental vehicle. By the time they were dodging potholes
through seedy Sydney streets, Simon’s fingers had cramped due to
the number of times he’d
typed
his name. Traffic wasn’t a problem, even in Sydney
it hadn’t been a problem since portals became
vogue
.
A
n occasional red sports car
laid
rubber as it
screech
ed
around a
blind corner, but mostly pedestrians were the concern. With fewer
cars on the streets people wandered wherever whim took
them.
Simon had insisted on
using the car, he didn’t want PortaNet logging the location of the
safe house. Besides, it was standard operating procedure and Dan
hadn’t told him they were all unchipped.
Dan was
thoroughly lost. He watched the decaying city flash
past
from the safety of the unmarked police
car
. He was
glad
Simon knew where they were. The best he could guess, they were
approaching Blacktown. But that was an extremely rough guess and it
could’ve just as easily been Campbelltown on the other side of the
sprawling city. There weren’t any street signs worth reading,
they’d peeled and faded due to lack of funding for road
maintenance. But it was clear Simon wasn’t navigating toward a
prosperous suburb. Dan doubted he could’ve found a poorer slum if
he’d tried and he could feel the discomfort radiating from Samantha
and Cookie on the back seat. They were staring wide-eyed at signs
of street riots and gang warfare. The older parts of Sydney had
become war zones for street hoodlums who were too poor to integrate
properly with society. Their parents couldn’t afford portals so
their families had been castrated from society decades ago. The
government, recognising the problem, had petitioned PortaNet to
install public stations in poor suburbs to boost the underclass’s
chances of economic survival. But by then it was too late, the rich
had moved to the country and flocked to Australia’s golden beaches,
and those with money
had fled
the poor suburbs. Slums like Blacktown and
Campbelltown simply didn’t have the population to interest PortaNet
in spending millions installing and maintaining a public station.
So the families with the most need received nothing but a kick in
the teeth as they spiralled into a cesspool of violence and crime
that the police didn’t have the personnel to do anything
about.
It was therefore the
perfect setting for a departmental safe house. Who would suspect
the police would trust a key witness to the most dangerous suburb
in Australia?
“
Well, here we
are.” Simon pulled into the drive of a dilapidated weatherboard
house. Its beige paint was cracking from too many Australian
summers and litter was piling up in the front yard next to mounds
of canine faeces.
“
No.” Cookie’s
mouth was agape.
“
Yep.” Simon
pulled on the handbrake and switched off the engine. “Welcome to
your new home.”
“
You must be
kidding.” Cookie didn’t feel safe to leave the car, let alone spend
a night there. “I think I’ll take my chances in a
hotel.”
Simon grunted. “Suit
yourself.”
“
No,” Dan
interrupted. “This looks perfect.” He was the first to step from
the car and waited patiently by the door while Simon fumbled with
the keys, looking for the sequence that would unlock it.
The dilapidated
weatherboard was just a façade. Inside it looked sturdy enough to
survive a mortar blast. Thick reinforced-concrete walls and a
titanium vault-like door helped ease Samantha and Cookie’s nerves.
Someone had spent much time and effort ensuring the house was
secure. After all, in this neighbourhood there was no such thing as
too cautious.
“
You see…” Dan
was pointing at the various security features to make them feel
more comfortable. “Nobody’s getting in here without you knowing
about it. Not unless they ram the wall with a tank, and even then
you’d have long enough to duck out the back.”
“
There are
only three ways in and out,” Simon explained. “The front, the back,
and the portal.” He showed them how to operate the locks. When he
turned the handle they listened to the comforting sound of massive
bolts sliding home inside titanium-reinforced concrete.
The furnishings were
scant but adequate and Cookie was pleased when he found a digital
television he could use as a monitor and a network access socket
for his computer.
“
Right.” Dan
was eager to get moving. “You two stay here. Don’t open the door
for anyone except us, don’t let
anyone
– even us – through the portal,
and most importantly, don’t go outside for anything. And Cookie,
keep rummaging through UniForce’s network and see what turns up.
Right now we know squat, so anything you can find is a bonus.
Okay?”
They both nodded
obediently. Samantha said, “Okay. But what’s the long term
plan?”
“
Uh…”
“
We can’t stay
here forever, right? What’re we going to do? Where’re we going to
go?” She was the type of person that needed a certain measure of
stability in her life, and in tumultuous times needed a plan on
which to cling. She’d never been good at improvisation; she wanted
to know what tomorrow would bring and wanted to prepare for
it.
Dan stalled his answer.
“Well, that depends…”
“
On
what?”
“
On whether
Jen’s alive. If she is, then you’ll stay here until I get her
back.” He glanced at Simon, silently imploring him to keep Samantha
and Cookie safe for that long. “But if she’s… not alive,” – he
couldn’t bring himself to say ‘dead’ – “then we’ll have to plan
where to start a new life. I’ll help you set up wherever you want
to go, so maybe you could start thinking about it in the
meantime.”
Samantha wasn’t stupid,
she knew Dan would try to exact revenge for what Esteban had done
whether Jen was alive or not. “And what if you don’t come
back?”
An awkward silence
suffocated the room. Nobody liked thinking about those
things.
“
If you don’t
hear from me by noon on Monday, and if Simon’s
Superintendent
won’t endorse your
entrance into the protection program-”
“
Not a
chance,” Simon said unequivocally without emotion. “I’m not due
back at work until Tuesday so I can stall until then, but by
midmorning Tuesday my boss will reject the petition and a fistful
of cops will override the lock on the portal to evict
you.”
“
I don’t need
that long,” Dan said. “Either you’ll hear from me on Monday or
you’ll never hear from me again. So I want you ready to leave by
noon on the twentieth.”
“
Fair enough,”
Cookie answered. “Good luck, man.”