Husk (23 page)

My hand is flung far to the right and smashed against a dresser. The proboscis snaps on impact, the key drops to the floor. I wail with despair, certain we will now go mad and perish together. Winslade doesn’t think so. He turns my head, sets his sights on an object on the nightstand. There, beside a lamp, lies the cobalt-blue device,
red lights glowing on its side. He forces me to walk toward it. We stumble and fall, writhing on the carpet like the girl on the bed. Winslade makes me crawl, forces me to reach up and grab the device. I mash my thumb against the button repeatedly and feel it buzzing in my hand. The frequency with which it vibrates seems attuned to a frequency within my skull, igniting a splitting headache.
I scream, palms pressed to my eyes as I roll around on the floor, feeling unimaginable pressure. Just when I think the bones in my face and forehead might crack, the headache dissipates. Winslade slips away with it. The lights on the side of the device are now green and blinking.

The girl’s shrieks have weakened into sobs behind me. I crawl back to the bed, pull myself onto the bloodstained sheets.
She kicks at me feebly, eyes bulging, breathing shallow, everything from her chin to stomach red and wet. I reach toward her and she recoils.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I wail. ‘Please forgive me, I wasn’t myself.’

‘Bastard,’ she croaks, eyelids fluttering.

‘Don’t worry, keep calm. I’m going to free you. I’m going to call an ambulance.’

There are towels on the floor and I grab one, giving it
to the girl
and telling her to put pressure against the cut on her neck. I don’t know how bad the wound is, she turns away, won’t let me look. I stumble over to where my clothes lay and root around until I find my Liaison. Tapping the touch-screen with my bloodstained fingers, I bring it back to the bed and dial 911. When I look up the girl isn’t moving.

‘911,’ the automated voice says. ‘What’s your emergency?’

I roll the girl over. Her open eyes meet mine, glassy and unmoving, the light gone out of them. Deep down I know this isn’t the first time I’ve looked into the eyes of the dead.

‘What’s your emergency?’ the voice repeats.

I hang up quickly. The newly deceased girl sends shivers down my spine that turn into tremors. I sit on the edge of the bed and cry uncontrollably. When my tears are all used
up I cover the girl’s naked body with a sheet and begin searching the apartment. I want to release her so badly, but I can’t find the handcuff key anywhere. I’m looking under the bed when a call suddenly comes through. The screen says the caller is Renard.

Panicking, I immediately shut off my Liaison and remove the battery. Before I know it I’ve pulled on my clothes and cleaned myself up, running
on instinct and adrenaline. Pulling back the curtains and looking out the bedroom window, I realize I’m somewhere in the meat-packing district. In the bathroom I find the victim’s handbag and stuff the cobalt-blue device inside, throw Winslade’s straight razor in there after it. Next I disconnect the digital camera from the tripod and examine it.
There is no hard drive, no memory card. The red
light on top is part of a transmitter attachment, actively sending the footage offsite for safe storage. I turn the camera off and bag it before escaping the apartment.

I know Tweek will be working late at Solace Strategies. He’s a creature of habit with zero social life. On the elevator ride up, I regret using the retina scanner and keypad downstairs to access the building. There will be a log of my entry. I have to be
more careful, and not just for my sake. Nothing in the handbag provides me with the identity of the victim, though a handful of Winslade’s recent thoughts have been committed to memory in the brief time we shared. I remember her now from the session. I met the girl at a restaurant, charmed her with martinis and compliments before convincing her to come back to the apartment. Recollections of Delane
play on my mind too, the young witness Winslade murdered with my own hands.

By the time the doors open on the top floor I’ve formulated a short-sighted half-assed plan. The first person I see is Nikki, also working late, stuck at reception and dealing with our current short-staff problem. She looks up from her desk, surprised to see me standing there holding Winslade’s straight razor in one hand
and the woman’s handbag in the other.

‘What are you doing here, Rhodes?’

‘Is Baxter in?’

Nikki shakes her head. ‘No, she left for the day.’

‘Get up,’ I order, looking around the empty office,
noting the location of the security camera directed toward the elevator. ‘You’re coming with me.’

‘Pardon?’

‘You heard.’ I walk toward her, holding out the razor. ‘C’mon, move your ass.’

‘W-w-where
are we going?’ she stammers.

‘We’re going to the control room.’

She’s frozen with fear. I grab her by the arm and hoist her out of the chair, waving the blade menacingly. Pushing her in the direction of the control room, I feel a sliver of Winslade slither through me like a parasite. This is something he would do, I think, a way he would act. Nikki walks ahead of me, glancing back at the blade
in my hand. The sound of our voices alerts Tweek and he emerges from his doorway holding a cup of coffee.

‘Rhodes? What’s going on?’

‘You,’ I say, pointing the razor at him. ‘Turn the fuck around and get back in there.’

He complies without another word. I shove Nikki through the doorway after him and shut us inside the office, locking the door behind me. When I turn back to them I’m all apologies.

‘I’m so sorry, you guys.’

Nikki is furious. ‘Just what the hell was all that about?’

‘That?’ I say, folding the razor and pocketing it. ‘That was an act for the security camera out front.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because I don’t want you two to get in any trouble,’ I say. ‘As far as anyone out there will know, I came in here and forced you both at knifepoint.’

Nikki and Tweek stare at me as I clear
a space on Tweek’s cluttered desk. They both take a curious step closer when I open the handbag and reach inside.

‘Forced us to do what, exactly?’ Tweek asks.

I pull out the digital camera and lay it on the desk. ‘I need you to trace the outgoing signal on this camera.’

Tweek looks it over. ‘Why?’

‘Because Winslade used me to murder someone an hour ago,’ I say. ‘He cut a girl’s throat in an
apartment over in the meat-packing district.’

There is stunned silence. Nikki holds a hand to her mouth, places the other on the desk to steady herself. Tweek’s face pales. He sits down, head lolling, looking as if he’s going to be sick. Neither of them knows how to respond.

‘Who was she?’ Nikki finally manages.

I shake my head and turn away, uncomfortable with making eye contact.

‘No idea,’
I say. ‘But this camera was set up in the room, recording the whole thing and transmitting the footage offsite. I need you guys to find out where it was being sent, and I need it done quickly.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Nikki says, looking back and forth between Tweek and me. ‘How is it that you aren’t in session with your client right now? Can someone please explain?’

‘Before the gig, I swallowed an
Ejector so I could re-emerge mid-session and find out what Winslade was doing with me during his rentals –’

‘Uh, Rhodes?’ Tweek interrupts, shooting me a nervous look. ‘Where exactly is Winslade now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What the hell do you mean, you don’t know?’ Tweek says, beginning to panic. ‘Do you not have him stored on the drive I gave you?’

I reach back into the handbag and pull out the
cobalt-blue device. Tweek gasps when he sees it. Nikki looks even more confused than before.

‘What’s this?’ I ask.

‘Oh shit.’

‘Oh shit what?’

Tweek scratches at his neck, furrows his brow. ‘If my theory is correct, that thing is some newfangled wireless transmitter, designed to sync with the Ouija, built specifically to transfer large amounts of data in seconds.’

‘Yeah, well, Winslade used
it to check out before I could do anything.’

Tweek snatches the device from my hand and takes it to his desk. Under the swing-arm magnifier, he turns it in his fingers, examining it closely.

‘Winslade’s done this before,’ Tweek says. ‘He jettisoned himself minutes before Miller died in that club. That’s how he managed to survive without being plugged into a terminal when Miller perished. I think
as long as Winslade can pick up a strong enough Wi-Fi signal, he can jump out of a Husk and hitch a ride online back to his server with the push of a button.’

‘I’ve seen this thing before,’ I say, pointing at the device. ‘Last week you had one right here, in this office.’

Tweek opens a desk drawer and pulls out the thing I’m talking about. He holds it next to the one he took from me. They look
identical.

‘This is some cutting edge shit Winslade has been developing. Mine is the one the police found next to Miller’s body. Baxter claimed it was company property and managed to retrieve it. She brought it in for me to examine, made me keep quiet about it. I’ve been trying to reverse engineer it ever since. I haven’t managed to get very far. It’s too damn advanced.’

‘So, what does it mean?’
Nikki asks.

‘It means Winslade is on the loose and is most likely looking for me,’ I say. ‘It means I don’t have much time. Tweek, can you find the location of the footage?’

‘I can try.’

He carefully separates the transmitter from the camera and connects it to his tablet via a pair of cables. The HG starts up, holographic numbers and codes appearing before us, hacker programs working to break
down the security measures in place.

‘Someone sure didn’t want this signal traced,’ Tweek grumbles.

Nikki and I watch patiently as he runs a decryption algorithm to reveal the signal, tracking the transmissions to their destination. A minute later a ping sounds from his tablet, indicating success. Tweek looks at the screen and his jaw drops.

‘Holy shit,’ he says. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘What?’

‘It must be an error.’

‘What’s an error?’ I press. ‘Where does the signal lead?’

‘This … this can’t be right.’

‘What can’t be right?’

Tweek looks up with worried eyes. ‘Rhodes, this transmitter was sending the footage back to Solace Strategies.’

My legs go wobbly, weak in the knees. I feel light-headed, have to pull up a chair and sit down. Nikki leans forward and looks at the tablet in Tweek’s
hands.

‘No, no, no,’ she whines. ‘There must be some mistake.’

‘There’s no mistake,’ Tweek says, reviewing the results again. ‘It most definitely came here.’

‘Access it,’ I say. ‘Show it to me.’

‘I can’t,’ Tweek mutters, typing into his tablet. ‘It’s not available on our office network. It isn’t even on the server system.’

‘Where is it then?’

There is a long pause as Tweek checks, then double-checks,
the information. When he finally speaks his voice is trembling.

‘It was sent directly to Baxter’s personal computer.’

I try to rise, wanting to see the evidence on Tweek’s tablet for myself, but my burgeoning shock plunks my ass back down. Mouth goes dry, headache starts. Sweat breaks out over my body. I notice Tweek and Nikki starting to sweat too.

‘Can you break into it?’ I ask, voice hoarse.

Tweek swallows hard. ‘I don’t think I want to.’

‘Please, Tweek.’

Without another word he recommences hacking, remotely connecting to Baxter’s hard drive from the control room. Results take longer this time, causing Tweek to bitch and moan under his breath as he tries to outsmart
the computer’s security while at the same time cover his tracks. We wait until we hear the tell-tale ping from his
tablet.

‘Whoa,’ Tweek says, recoiling from the screen.

‘Whoa, what?’

‘There’s a whole collection on Baxter’s comp.’

‘Collection?’

‘I’ve found a whole damn catalogue. I’m putting them up on the HG now.’

Tweek brings up a selection of videos on the Holographic. They begin playing randomly side by side in high definition, some kind of stats listed beneath. They’re no longer than thirty seconds
or so in length, quick shots cutting to different angles, edited like porn movie trailers. Each features a Husk from Solace Strategies, and every one of them is horrifying. The revelation is more than I can take.

I see a naked Husk approaching a crying child clutching its blanket on a four-poster bed. I watch a Husk in a skintight white latex outfit strangle a naked man tied to a velveteen throne.
I witness a Husk beat a middle-aged woman senseless with a baton, then begin having sex with her unconscious body. I close my eyes to a Husk who is about to do something horrible with a car battery and jumper cables to terrified cats and dogs in metal cages. I recognize each of the Husks perpetrating the crimes: Phineas, Ryoko, Clive, Miller, and more.

When I open my eyes again I see a Husk standing
over a terrified teenage girl, ripping her blouse and gripping her hair, forcing her to say dirty and demeaning things that bring tears to her eyes. It takes me a moment to
realize who this Husk is. When I finally do, I’m watching myself handcuff the girl to a bed against her will. I beat her so viciously her crying soon stops. I tear my eyes away, unable to look any more at this CCTV footage
from Hell, unable to watch myself committing the damning act.

‘Holy shit,’ Tweek gasps, eyes skimming from video to video. ‘Is that you, Rhodes? Is that Phineas there? And Ryoko?’

‘Turn it off,’ I moan.

‘Oh my God,’ Nikki whines, hand held to her mouth. ‘This is unbelievable.’

I risk another glance at the footage. For one second I see my sister kneeling among a group of naked men wearing colourful
masks. It’s from the party Ichida threw at his mansion, the same one he rented me for.

‘For God’s sake
turn it off
!’ I scream.

Tweek closes every video except one. Together, in silence, we focus our attention on the newest recording in the catalogue as it begins to play unedited and uninterrupted. We watch as I bring the raven-haired girl into the room. We watch me seduce her, strip her, have
sex with her. We watch as I handcuff her to the bed, then strangle and slit her throat. Then we watch as I almost lose my mind.

‘How many of these videos are on Baxter’s drive?’ I ask.

‘Dozens,’ Tweek croaks.

‘What the fuck is she doing?’ I shout. ‘Why is she keeping them?’

‘Keeping them?’ Tweek replies, bringing up the other
videos again and pointing to the stats listed below them. ‘Look
at the numbers and names at the bottom of each one. Those there are prices and those are bidders. This is an auction, Rhodes. Baxter is
selling
them.’

‘And for hell of a profit too,’ Nikki says, leaning into the HG and peering at the names. ‘I recognize some of those user handles. They’re Solace Strategies’ clients. This is some kind of private file-sharing network they’re all logged into.’

‘Solace Strategies gives their clients what no one else can,’ I whisper. ‘That’s what we do.’

‘Huh?’

‘Something Baxter said to me the other day,’ I say, pointing at the videos. ‘Now I get it. All of this, it’s our boss giving clients what no other company will.’

Nikki gulps. ‘Jesus …’

‘I need a copy,’ I tell Tweek. ‘Of everything.’

‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I reply.
‘But it’s evidence I can stop Winslade with.’

Tweek shakes his head. ‘All it proves to anyone else watching is that you and the other Husks are guilty of crimes you didn’t actually commit.’

He’s right. How would I convince anyone that the man murdering the girl in the footage isn’t actually me? How could I explain that the villain in each video isn’t in control of his own actions, is just a
puppet on a string? How would I begin to tell the authorities about an underground consortium of digitally enhanced prostitutes that have dealings with the world’s wealthiest deceased?

‘I’ll figure something out,’ I say. ‘I’ll try and get –’

We freeze. A three-note electronic chime sounds at the reception desk. I hold my breath as Nikki shoots me a terrified look.

‘Someone’s downstairs,’ she
says. ‘Someone wants to be let in.’

We hear the chime sound another two times, loud and impatient. Tweek turns on a flat-screen on the wall and checks the front door’s security camera feed. I see Renard’s stoic face looking into the lens. The two security guards from Winslade’s penthouse flank him, both dressed in civilian garb. Inside Renard’s jacket I see the butt of his Rapier in its holster.