Déjà Vu: A Technothriller (20 page)

David raised the stun gun. It was plastic and shaped like a normal gun. He released the safety catch and the laser-sight projected a red dot on the door. His finger tightened on the trigger. If he squeezed hard enough, two barbed darts would fire at the speed of air-rifle pellets. Each would trail an insulating conducting filament back to the gun. On contact with the chest, they would lodge under the skin and unleash 50, 000 volts, 18 watts and 133 milliamps. The brochure had been quite specific.

He eased the pressure a fraction.

It was a monstrous weapon, but it had the stopping power of a high-calibre projectile firearm with one difference: the victim would survive.

The two shadows remained still.

Suddenly, a third voice erupted into the silence: “Delta Echo Two from Delta Echo Three, over.”

“Go ahead Three,” said the policeman. It took David long seconds to realise that the new voice had come from the policeman’s radio.

“Report of a six-four in progress, end of Main street.”

“Three, I’m assisting, assisting,” he said.

David froze in his marksman’s crouch. He couldn’t believe his luck. The landlord whined, “Aren’t we going in?”

The policeman hurried down the stairs. “Six-four is a rape in progress, Sam. Takes priority over a routine check.”

“Oh.”

The policeman’s footfalls became quiet and then louder as he ran out into the street. David kept the weapon trained on the door and his eyes on the shadow of Sam, the landlord. The door was still unlocked.

Sam muttered something and began to walk slowly down the stairs. David imagined his face: a little defeated, angry, and shamed that did not have the courage to face this potential murderer alone.

David held his position for a time. It might have been a minute or a few seconds. Only then did he exhale. His fingertips tingled. His heart thumped and his head ached with hot blood. He took another breath and pocketed the gun. He thanked the Fates for his outstanding luck and grabbed his helmet from the bed. He checked that his backpack was secure.

He walked to the window and parted the curtain with a finger. The policeman was running down the road and David felt a momentary flash of guilt. He had been ready to shoot that man, electrify him. And yet there he was running to help a woman in danger.

David went to the door and pressed his ear against it. There was no sound. He turned the handle and braced the door with his foot to dampen the noise. It opened silently on an empty corridor. He made his way downstairs. It was difficult to be silent in his hiking boots. He heard the far-off sound of a jukebox, some laughter, a breaking glass and then louder laughter. At the bottom of the stairs, he risked a glance into the bar. He saw Sam, the landlord, clapping someone on the back. He was not looking in David’s direction. Lucky the man hadn’t stood guard.

David took three huge steps across the entrance and slid through the exterior door. The street was deserted. He swung the helmet over his head and jogged down the road towards his bike. An inner voice kept telling him, Act natural, easy does it, but he had too much spare energy. He dipped into the alley and noted that the bike had not been moved. He glanced up at the old woman’s window. ‘Her Barry’ had clearly not come down to teach his bike a lesson in parking.

He jumped on the back and made ready for the long ride. He did this with frequent pauses in which he listened for running footsteps or a shout of alarm. Finally, he zipped his jacket and kicked up the stand. The alley was too narrow to turn around in, so he waddled the bike backwards to the pavement.

“Ego, are you there?”

“Yes,” said the voice in his earpiece.

“Can you interface with the bike’s computer?”

“No. It is a closed system.”

“Fine. Listen, the bike computer uses a vocal input. I don’t want to get the two of you confused. From now on, I’ll refer to you by name if I’m talking to you.”

“Understood.”

David cleared his throat. Still no police. He held the brake, turned the key and pressed the ignition. The bike rumbled into life. Its windscreen rose and the suspension adapted to David’s preference. The Heads-Up Display gave him the time, his fuel load and a route map. The excitement of escape began to creep over him. He had enough petrol for about one-hundred kilometres on the straight.

“Ego, what do you think will happen when the police find out I’ve disappeared?”

“A high state of alert for all police officers, particularly the local traffic division. Records indicate that the local constabulary has one helicopter. If it locates you, the probability of reaching Heathrow is almost zero. You must find a motorway immediately to leave the area before roadblocks are set, then transfer to minor roads to avoid detection. As the roadblock containment circle becomes larger, the number of roadblocks required to make it increases hugely.”

“OK, I agree. Computer, I need to get to a motorway fast.”

Nothing happened. He clicked his tongue.

“Computer, show me the fastest route to the nearest motorway.”

The route map changed. He could be on the A1 in just under twenty minutes. It was a labelled a ‘main route’, not a motorway, but it was fast. The first motorway was the M18, an hour and a half to the south. He would pass through settlements called Walshford, Fairburn and Darrington. Names he would never remember. He could reach as far as Leicester without stopping for fuel.

He gunned the throttle, then let the engine idle. He released the brake. He rode slowly to the T-junction. The route map indicated that he should head in the same direction as the running policeman. That was fine. They would be inside, or down an alley.

He reached the junction and looked left. The two police officers were standing not ten feet away. They had their backs to him. Between them, being berated vigorously by one, was a little girl called Janine. Her eyes dropped down briefly and touched upon David’s. Her expression did not change. David nodded his thanks.

He controlled his breathing. He turned in the road and raced away, retracing himself along Main Street. The police did not glance around.

“Bike, change colour.”

The motorcycle rode through one pool of white streetlight with a silver finish. By the next, it was midnight blue.

The blackness rushed up and engulfed her. Her stomach rose. An older, wiser part of her brain began to cringe. She accelerated. She was falling too fast. She heard Hannah say, “A friend of mine was paralysed by one of those,” but he wasn’t with her. It was a memory. Dust filled her nostrils. Smoke. She was still falling. Her bladder tingled in anticipation that the equipment had not worked, that she was going to hit the ground

(spin, measure, snip) fast enough to break into pieces, mirror fragments.

She saw a circle of light below her. The universe was moving but she was not. She began to (spin) slow. The decelerator squealed and the harness bit into her pelvis. Gravity reached from the darkness and clawed her down.

Garrel said, “You took your time.”

She opened her eyes. She could (measure) see her feet centimetres from the ground. She pinched the decelerator. It sprang open and the (snip) rope was released.

She landed without grace, but upright. A quick pat confirmed that her gun was still in place.

“I was examining the shaft,” she said half-heartedly.

Garrel began to creep away. His steps were slow and high to avoid the debris. “Your light. It has three levels of brightness. It will go through them in the order when you tap your helmet. Understood?”

Saskia tapped three times. The beam became very bright and localised. The spot stained her vision. She looked around.

This had once been part of a corridor. It was a long, grey chamber, almost completely choked with remains. She saw corners of furniture, computer equipment, filing cabinets and paper. Mostly paper. As she moved forward, the shadows they cast moved backward. The air was stale.

“What happened down here?”

“Fire. Proctor tried to clear everyone out. The ventilation is poor. Don’t be surprised if we suffocate.”

“Understood. May I use my recorder now?”

He turned his light in her direction. She moved her head to protect her night vision. “Your what?”

“It is simply a recording device. It takes pictures.”

“Go on, then. Just be careful where you step. Don’t touch anything unless I say so. There’s a good chance it might cave-in again.”

“May we see the lab?”

Garrel stopped again. Saskia could not see his face. “Of course. We’d already be inside if I hadn’t stopped to answer your questions.”

“A good point. In future, perhaps you could try walking and talking at the same time.”

She heard an intake of breath as his formulated a reply, but it was followed by silence. Saskia smiled.

Immediately before them was a ragged empty rectangle that had once held a door. Garrel stepped through and Saskia followed. Puddles splashed under their feet. The room was even darker than the corridor. It was so black that she had no sense of its true dimensions. The torches didn’t help because the dust and smoky remains made the light scatter like headlights in fog. Garrel stepped aside and she saw a great, smashed tank. The sharp edges sparkled.

“What was in there?”

“That,” Garrel replied, at length, “was a liquid storage device. A prototype.”

“What did it store?”

He laughed. “A whole world. A world in a fish tank.”

“I do not understand.”

He turned towards the right. “Proctor’s old office was in there. That was where the first bomb went off.”

She took a picture. The recorder charged and clicked. There was no visible flash. It used an infra-red bulb. “It must have been a very localised explosion,” she mused. Something crunched under her foot. She glanced down and saw the glassy eye of a flattened rat. She stepped back. She bumped into an overturned chair. Her heart seemed to grow large and hot in her chest.

Garrel continued obliviously, “It was big enough to kill.”

“I see,” she said automatically. Not the rat, the bomb.

Garrel shone his light in her direction. The glare blinded her. “You know, we have a saying in England: ‘The murderer always returns to the scene of the crime.’ Shimoda’s body was in that room along with the bomb. He still is. Pieces of him, anyway.”

Saskia tried to ensure that her light pointed at Garrel’s face. She sensed a change in his mood. Perhaps he thought she was scared. Perhaps he was right. She remembered crying in the back of a taxi after Simon, her boyfriend, had thrown the pasta pot at her face. The boyfriend that never was. “Are you trying to scare me, Andrew?”

He laughed and turned away. She could not see his expression. “Where is the interface with the computer?” she asked.

“Over here.”

He clambered across the room towards a doorway in the left wall. The plaintive cries of the rats became more audible. So did their smell. Why were there so many? What did they have to eat down here? Each other? She stepped through the gap in the wall.

The room was small. There was a certain power here: it was a room in a room in a room, buried deep in the earth. It had lain in wait for twenty years before Bruce Shimoda arrived. Saskia was struck by the thought that, after she and Garrel completed their underground tour, and this place was capped, its silence would be preserved and its power – the fear it could generate, just this small, concrete-lined room – would grow again. An Egyptian tomb would feel the same.

“It has a creepy feel, don’t you agree?”

Saskia cleared her throat. “It is certainly dusty.”

“Look over here.” He trained his light on the wall to their immediate right. There were two alcoves. On her first sweep, Saskia had mistaken them for shower cubicles. The transparent doors were broken. One was discoloured. She sniffed and there it was: dried blood. “That’s where Proctor killed Caroline Benson, the soldier assigned guard duty.”

She walked tentatively to the booth and peered in. She saw only pieces of meat. There were no impurities. Caroline had died naked. She took another picture. “Tell me how she died.”

“The computer interface works like a dust-storm,” Garrel said. She was struck by the casual interest in his voice. He was not, she realised, the technophobe she had taken him for. “It uses tiny flying robots to simulate surfaces. If you change the arrangement, you change the apparent surface. A small army of those little robots could form a very solid edge. A sharp edge. Or very many sharp edges. That’s how she died. There were safety mechanisms built into the program. They were turned off. For technical reasons, Shimoda did not have the power to do that. Proctor did. He turned that booth into a giant blender.”

Saskia nodded. There was another smell. Decay.

“That what you want?” asked Garrel.

“Please?”

“You wanted to get into Proctor’s head. Are you close enough? You can almost smell him, can’t you?”

“I-I would,” she stammered, “I would like to leave now.”

“It has atmosphere, doesn’t it? My little Magical Mystery Tour.”

“I would like to leave.” Her voice was firmer. Her hand rested on her gun. “Now.”

He laughed. She saw, despite the darkness, that his expression hardly changed. This man was strange. But what power did he really have? What was he compared to the Angel of Death?

“Of course,” he said. “Let’s go.”

They retraced their steps through the debris. When they reached the corridor, Garrel was quick to attach himself to a rope. “Going up is more fun than coming down,” he said. He connected the decelerator and climbed upwards in a caterpillar-like motion, alternately grasping the rope his hands and feet. After a few metres he looked down at her. “Are you coming?”

“Yes. I just need to check my recorder took those pictures. I don’t want to get to the surface and find there was an error.”

“Well, don’t stay too long. I heard some noises just now.”

“What kind of noises?”

“Just noises.”

He caterpillared upwards. His breath echoed down the shaft and sounded close. She was alone. She willed herself to picture a summer’s day and her fear withdrew. On with the job. She gazed at the luminous screen on her recorder. The first picture, being the last taken, showed Caroline’s remains. It was monochrome and crisp. It showed every detail and more. The room had contained an upturned filing cabinet, three broken chairs and large chunks of masonry. She had not seen them. In fact, she had imagined that part of the room to be empty. Next, she checked the picture of the main laboratory. Next, the corridor shot.