Wooded lawns sloped up to a partially burnt-out apartment block, perhaps six or seven storeys high. Streetlights cast a pale orange glow on its façade. Broken windows rose up like dead eyes above a ruined entrance hall. Double doors gaped open beneath the ragged remains of a canvas canopy. A high metal fence blocked any access to the complex. Jack trotted along it until he found low hanging branches reaching out from within. It only took a moment to pull himself up, over and into the garden.
Jack thought of the terrorists the block must have harboured. It was hard to believe that all of its inhabitants could have gone over to the enemy. But then, he’d just witnessed a petty criminal who had become something approaching a Totality mind. It seemed that the distinction between human and other was no longer as hard and fast as it had once been.
He set off towards the block, finding a path glowing palely in the moonlight and following it towards the front doors he’d seen from the road. Once inside, he planned to rest up and closely monitor the initial stages of Fist’s revival. When the renewal process was fully underway, Jack would be able to sleep. His dreams would be infected with Fist’s rebirth. He wondered what details would spring into his sleeping mind, seeding images of reconstruction and growth to half-recall on waking.
Trees hung over the path, holding back the gently silvered light. Bushes clumped beneath them. Jack walked quickly until something snapped beneath his foot with a loud crack. He instinctively dropped into a crouch and moved sideways into the trees, worried about being heard but making even more noise as he went. He stopped in the shadows and reassured himself that he’d left his pursuers far behind, then looked round to see what he’d trodden on. Complex geometric shapes stretched away in straight lines along the path. He’d squashed several of them. He reached for one that was still whole. It was a hexagonal prism made of whittled sticks, tied together with rough twine.
‘Shit,’ he whispered.
There was a rustling in the leaves behind him. Jack thought of the rain, but it had stopped a while back; of the breeze, but the night was still. There was more rustling and he turned through a full circle, only to be faced with silence and a path lined with obsessively repeated structures. Looking more closely, he saw empty glass vials scattered between them. That confirmed his suspicions. He’d stumbled on a sweathead factory.
Fear bit him. Sweat was a worker’s drug, designed to make six-day weeks of fourteen-hour shifts bearable. It gave its users energy while numbing their minds, helping them focus on tediously repetitive actions for hour after hour without any breaks or lapses in concentration.
Most carefully managed their use of the drug to avoid addiction. Those that didn’t usually ended up abandoned and homeless until the drug at last devoured them. When they took a sweat hit, they’d spend hours feverishly, repetitively creating pointlessly complex objects. Until the high wore off, they’d react violently to any sort of break in their routine or assault on their creations.
Jack glanced to left and right, hoping that the sweatheads who’d created these objects were long gone. He moved along the side of the path in a low, crouching trot, carefully avoiding any of the little wooden structures. In a minute or so, he’d be able to find a room inside the block and safely barricade himself in. Darkness loomed around him, rich with its own ancient threat. He tried to convince himself that he’d soon be safe, that there was no need to panic. And then a sweathead exploded out of the bushes beside him, and rammed something sharp and hard into his side.
Jack screamed and ran. His attacker clung to him, as dry and light as the bundles of twigs on the path. Jack crushed more as he ran. Another sweathead howled in the darkness. The path left the trees and crossed a wide lawn. A mouth that was all dry gums scrabbled at his neck. Pain pulsed across his ribs as his attacker jabbed him again and again. Jack reached up and back for its head but couldn’t grip it. He threw himself sideways and rolled, and the creature cracked beneath his weight and let go.
In an instant he was up and running again. The path led round the side of the building to the front of the apartment block. Jack risked a quick glance back. Two more dark shapes howled across the lawn behind him. They were lost to sight as he rounded the corner and reached the block’s entrance. He planned to hide inside, but was baffled to see that its doors were now closed. He slammed against them. Pain shot out of his ribs. The doors wouldn’t budge. There was a broomstick pushed through the inner handles.
A moment of puzzlement – they’d definitely been standing open when he’d seen them from the road – and then the sweatheads appeared round the corner of the building. One of them pointed a three-fingered hand at him and gibbered threats. There was a rock in its other hand. The other kept running, a single eye blazing rage out of a broken face. It was holding a vicious-looking knife.
Jack reached up to the flayed canopy above him, tore a strip of canvas from it, and ran for a forlorn clump of bushes. He pushed himself inside them and knelt down. His right hand grasped a rock. The running sweathead approached, casting around uncertainly for its prey. Jack felt suddenly lightheaded. He wrapped the rock in the canvas strip. The sweathead jogged past his hiding place. Its knife shimmered in the moonlight.
Jack moved silently to his feet and stepped out of cover. He swung his weapon and the rock smashed against the sweathead’s arm. He’d hoped that he’d only make it drop the knife and perhaps wind it, but it was far gone and physically very weak. The rock snapped through its arm and carved a dark hole in its flank. It collapsed, whinnying painfully.
‘Fuck,’ said Jack, and took a step towards it. Blood poured out like dust, staining the ground. It wasn’t going to survive. Shocked, Jack forgot the third sweathead until it swung its own rock down on his shoulder. He staggered and nearly fell. It howled at him, then bent down and scrabbled around for the knife.
In pain, and wanting to hide from rather than hurt the sweathead, Jack turned and ran for the doorway. As he reached it, he leapt up and grabbed the front of the structure supporting the canopy. It gave a little under his weight, starting to pull away from the building. He swung his legs forward towards the double doors, hitting them with both feet. There was a crack and a moment of resistance before the broomstick that held them closed snapped in two. The doors slammed open and Jack flew through them feetfirst. He landed hard, sliding across the floor. He flipped himself over and looked back.
The canopy was hanging down, blocking the door. The surviving sweathead was climbing through it, the knife sharp in one hand and the rock heavy in the other. The canopy frame collapsed on to its head and shoulders, pulling it backwards. It staggered and fell. Jack stood up, wondering if the fight was over. He felt unsteady. The sweathead rose to its feet again and kept coming. The canopy had knocked part of its scalp off. Jack looked round. There was nowhere to hide and nothing he could use as a weapon. Guilt bit him, and then he realised how easily Kingdom would find him if the fight left him badly injured or even unconscious. His last opponent staggered towards him, weapons raised.
Jack ran for the stairs. The sweathead chattered something incomprehensible and followed him. There were bullet holes in the stair walls. The building must have seen some fighting. The stairs ended in a long corridor lined with numbered doors. Most were closed. A jumble of luggage bags, suitcases and briefcases lay on the floor, clothes scattered around them. There was a broken window at the end of the corridor, a fire extinguisher hanging beside it. A couple of seconds, and he was tearing it off the wall. Darkness gathered at the edges of his vision.