“We didn’t have a real long conversation on top of the lift,” Dariat said. “It was the kind of pressurized memory exchange
I experienced in the beyond. The creature’s thoughts weren’t very stable.”
“You mean it knows about us?”
“I expect so. But don’t confuse knowing with being interested. Absorbing life-energy is all they exist for now.”
Erentz squinted after the receding OrgathÉ as it headed over the circumfluous sea. “We’d better get organized, I suppose.”
She couldn’t have sounded less enthusiastic.
Dariat gave up on the dark invader, and looked around. A crowd of ghosts was hanging back from the cavern entrance, keeping
among the larger boulders littering the desert. They regarded the little band of tenacious corporeal humans with grudging
respect, avoiding direct eye contact like a shoplifter eluding the store detective.
“You!” Dariat barked suddenly. He started to march over the powdery sand. “Yes, you, shithead. Remember me, huh?”
Tolton and Erentz trailed after him, curious at this latest behaviour.
Dariat was closing on a ghost dressed in baggy overalls. It was the mechanic he’d encountered when he went searching for Tolton
just after the habitat arrived in the dark continuum.
Recognition was mutual. The mechanic turned and ran. Ghosts parted to let him through their midst. Dariat chased after him,
surprisingly fast for his bulk. As he passed through the huddle of ghosts they shivered and shuffled further away, gasping
in shock at the cold he exuded.
Dariat caught hold of the mechanic’s arm, dragging him to a halt. The man screeched in pain and fear, flailing about, unable
to escape Dariat’s grip. He started to grow more transparent.
“Dariat,” Tolton called. “Hey, come on, man, you’re hurting him.”
The mechanic had fallen to his knees, shaking violently as his colouring bled away. Dariat by contrast was almost glowing.
He glowered down at his victim. “Remember? Remember what you did, shithead?”
Tolton drew up short, unwilling to touch his erstwhile friend. The memory of the cold he’d experienced back in the station
was too strong.
“Dariat!” he shouted.
Dariat looked down at the mechanic’s withering face. Remorse opened his fingers, allowing the incorporeal arm to slip away.
What would Anastasia say about such behaviour? “Sorry,” he muttered shamefully.
“What did you do to him?” Tolton demanded. The mechanic was barely visible. He’d curled up into a foetal position, half of
his body sunk into the sand.
“Nothing,” Dariat blurted, ashamed of his action. The fluid which brought him solidity apparently came with an ugly price.
He’d known it all along, simply refused to acknowledge it. Hatred had been an excuse, not a motivator. As with the OrgathÉ
instinct was supplanting rationality.
“Oh, come on.” Tolton bent down and moved his hand through the whimpering ghost. The air felt slightly cooler, otherwise there
was no trace that he existed. “What have you done?”
“It’s the fluid,” Dariat said. “It takes a lot to maintain myself now.”
“A lot of what?” Rhetorical question: Tolton knew without needing an answer.
“Life-energy. Just keeping going uses it up. I need to replenish. I don’t have a biology, I can’t breathe or eat a meal; I
have to take it neat. And souls are a strong concentration.”
“What about him?” A tiny patina of silver frost was forming on the ground within the ghost’s vague outline. “What about this
particular
concentration
?”
“He’ll recover. There’s plants and stuff he can recoup the loss from. He did a lot worse to me, once.” No matter how much
Dariat wanted, he couldn’t look away from the drained ghost. This is what we’re all going to end up like, he acknowledged.
Pathetic emancipated remnants of what we are, clinging to our identity while the dark continuum depletes us until we’re a
single silent voice weeping in the night. There’s no way out. Entropy is too strong here, drowning us away from the light.
And I was instrumental in bringing us here.
“Let’s get back inside,” Erentz said. “It’s about time we put you under the microscope, see if the physics gang can make any
sense of you.”
Dariat thought about protesting. Eventually he just nodded meekly. “Sure.”
They walked back towards the cavern entrance, through the clutter of subdued ghosts. Two more OrgathÉ hatched from the Gonchraov
starscraper lobby, tumbling up into the wan twilight sky.
______
There were vigilantes at Kings Cross station, hard young gang members drafted in from the low-cost residential estates scattered
around the outer districts of Westminster Dome. Their uniforms went from pseudo-military to expensive business suits, denoting
their differing membership. Ordinarily such a mixture was hypergolic. See/kill. And if civilians got caught in the line of
fire, tough. In some cases, feuds between boroughs and individual gangs went back centuries. Today, they all wore a simple
white ribbon prominently on their various lapels. It stood for Pure Soul, and united them in commitment. They were here to
make sure all of London stayed pure.
Louise stepped off the vac-train carriage, yawning heavily. Gen leaned against her side, nearly sleepwalking as they moved
away from the big airlock door. It was almost three in the morning, local time. She didn’t like to think how long she’d been
up for now.
“What are you creeps doing getting off here?”
She hadn’t even noticed them until they stood in front of her. Two dark-skinned girls with shaved heads; the taller one had
replaced her eyeballs with blank silver globes. Both of them wore identical plain black two-piece suits of some satin fabric.
They didn’t have blouses; the jackets were fastened by a single button, exposing stomachs as muscular as any Norfolk field
labourer. Their cleavage was the only way to tell they were female. Even then Louise wasn’t entirely sure, they might just
be butched-up pectorals.
“Uh?” she managed.
“That train’s from Edmonton, babe. That’s where the possessed are. Is that why you left? Or are you here for some other reason,
some kind of freako nightclub?”
Louise began to wake up fast. There were a lot of young people on the platform; some dressed in suits identical to the girls’
(the voice finally convinced her about gender), others in less formal clothes. None of them showed any inclination to embark
on the newly arrived train. Several armour-suited police were clumped round the exit archway, with their shell—helmet visors
raised. They were looking in her direction with some interest.
Ivanov Robson moved smoothly to stand at Louise’s side, his movement hinting at the same kind of inertia carried by an iceberg.
He smiled with refined politeness. The gang girls didn’t flinch, exactly, but they were smaller now, somehow, less menacing.
“Is there a problem?” he asked quietly.
“Not for us,” the one with the silver eyes said.
“Good, then please stop hassling these young ladies.”
“Yeah? So what are you, their dad? Or maybe just their great big friend out for some fun tonight.”
“If that’s the best you can do, stop trying.”
“You didn’t answer my question, bigfoot man.”
“I’m a London resident. We all are. Not that it’s any of your concern.”
“Like fuck it isn’t, brother.”
“I’m not your brother.”
“Is your soul pure?”
“What are you all of a sudden, my confessor?”
“We’re guardians, not priests. Religion is fucked; it doesn’t know how to fight the possessed. We do.” She patted her white
ribbon. “We keep the arcology pure. No shitty little demon gets in past us.”
Louise glanced across at the police. There were a couple more of them now, but they showed no sign of intervening. “I’m not
possessed,” she said indignantly. “None of us are.”
“Prove it, babe.”
“How?”
The gang girls both took small sensors from their pockets. “Show us you contain only one soul, that you’re pure.”
Ivanov turned to Louise. “Humour them,” he said in a clear voice. “I can’t be bothered to shoot them; I’d have to pay the
judge far too much to bounce us out of jail before breakfast.”
“Fuck you,” the second gang girl shouted.
“Just get on with it,” Louise said wearily. She held out her left arm, the right was curled protectively round Gen. The gang
girl slapped the sensor on the top of her hand.
“No static,” she barked. “This is a pure babe.” Her follow-up grin was weird, showing teeth that were too long to be natural.
“Check the sprog.”
“Come on, Gen,” Louise coaxed. “Hold out your hand.” A scowling Genevieve did as she was told.
“Clean,” the gang girl reported.
“Then you must be what I can smell,” Genevieve scoffed.
The gang girl drew her hand back for a slap.
“Don’t even dream it,” Ivanov purred.
Genevieve’s face slowly broke into a wide smirk. She looked straight at the girl with the silver eyes. “Are they lesbians,
Louise?”
The gang girl had trouble controlling her temper. “Come with us, little girl. Find out what we do to freshmeat like you.”
“That’s enough.” Ivanov stepped forward and proffered his hand. “Genevieve, behave, or I’ll smack you.” The gang girl put
her sensor to his skin, taking care to do it softly.
“I’ve met a possessed,” Genevieve said. “The nastiest one there’s ever been.”
Both gang girls gave her an uncertain look.
“If a possessed does ever comes out of a train, you know what you should do? Just run. Nothing you can do will stop them.”
“Wrong, titchy bitch.” The gang girl patted a pocket; there was something heavy bulging the fabric. “We just pump them with
ten thousand volts and watch the firework display. I’ve heard it’s real pretty. Be good to me, I’ll let you watch, too.”
“Seen it already.”
“Huh!” The girl turned her silver eyes on Banneth. “You too. I want to know you’re pure.”
Banneth laughed gently. “Let’s hope your sensor can’t probe my heart.”
“What the hell are you all doing here?” Ivanov asked. “The only time I’ve seen the Blairs and the Benns in the same place
before was a morgue. And I can see a couple of MoHawks over there as well.”
“Looking after our turf, brother. These possessed, they’re part of the sect. You don’t see none of those bastards down here,
do you? We’re not going to let them crunch us like they done New York and Edmonton.”
“I think the police will do that, don’t you?”
“No fucking way. They’re Govcentral. And those shits let the possessed down here in the first place. This planet’s got the
greatest defences in the galaxy, and the possessed just breezed through them like they weren’t even there. You want to tell
me how come that happened?”
“Good point,” Banneth drawled. “I’m still waiting to hear on that one myself.”
“And why haven’t they shut down the vac-trains properly?” the girl continued. “They’re still running to Edmonton where we
know the possessed are. I accessed that sensevise of the fight, it was only a couple of hours ago for Christ’s sake.”
“Criminal,” Banneth agreed. “They were probably bribed by big business.”
“You taking the piss, bitch?”
“Who, me?”
The gang girl gave her a disgusted stare, not knowing what to make of her attitude. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder.
“Go on, get the fuck out of here, all of you. I hate you rich kinks.” She watched them walk through the exit archway with
a vague sense of unease scratching away at her mind. There was something badly wrong about the group, the four of them were
a complete mismatch. But screw that, as long as they weren’t possessed who cared what kind of orgy they were heading off to.
She shivered suddenly as a cold breeze swept along the platform. It must have been caused by the carriage airlocks swinging
shut.
______
“That was awful,” Genevieve exclaimed when they reached the big sub-level hall above the station’s platforms. “Why didn’t
the police stop them doing that to people?”
“Because it’s way too much trouble at three o’clock in the morning,” Ivanov said. “Besides, I expect most of the officers
down there are quite happy to let the vigilantes take the heat if a possessed did step out of a train. They act as a buffer.”
“Is Govcentral being stupid allowing the vac-trains to continue?” Louise asked.
“Not stupid, just slow. It is the universe’s largest bureaucracy, after all.” He waved a hand at the information-als flittering
overhead. “See? They’ve shut a few routes down already. And public pressure will close a lot more before long. It’ll snowball
once everyone’s had time to access the Edmonton fight. This time tomorrow you’ll have trouble getting a taxi to take you further
than a couple of streets.”
“Do you think we’ll be able to leave London again?”
“Probably not.”
The way he said it sounded so final: a pronouncement rather than an opinion. As always, an authority in knowledge he had no
business knowing.
“All right,” Louise said. “I suppose we’d better go back to the hotel, then.”
“I’ll come with you,” Ivanov said. “There might be a few more of these nutters around. It wouldn’t do for the natives to learn
you’re from Norfolk right now. These are paranoid times.”
For some reason, Andy Behoo popped into Louise’s mind; his offer to sponsor her for Govcentral citizenship. “Thank you.”
“What about you?” Ivanov asked Banneth. “Do you need to share a cab?”
“No thank you. I know where I’m going.” She walked off towards the lifts around the rim of the hemispherical cavern.
“Don’t mention it,” Louise muttered grumpily at her back.
“I expect she’s grateful, really,” Ivanov said. “Probably just doesn’t know how to express it.”
“She could try harder.”
“Come along, let’s get you two home to bed. It’s been a long day.”
______
Quinn watched the lift doors close on Banneth. He didn’t bother to rush after her. Finding her again would be relatively simple.
Bait was never hidden. Oh, it wouldn’t be obvious. He would need time, and resources, and have to make an effort. But her
location would be filtered through the arcology’s downtowners, the sect covens and gangs would be informed. That was why he’d
been lured here, after all. London was the largest, most elaborate trap ever assembled for one man. In a strange way, he felt
rather flattered. That the supercops were prepared to sacrifice the whole arcology just to nail him was a mark of extreme
respect. They feared God’s Brother exactly as He should be feared.