Ken’s boss stopped fiddling with the tube and placed it down on the table with a delicate clink. ‘Go on.’
Ken nodded. ‘I passed on your instructions to get Dr W brain-fried for good, but Stevenson came down with the flu and Moncur’s been up to his eyeballs with other projects. I checked their logs: she’s not been in for over three weeks. That means she’s not had her medication. And that means-’
‘I’m quite aware what that means. Find her. Find her and bring her in now.’
‘That ain’t going to be necessary, sir. She’s in the morgue. Roadhugger she was in went for a flying lesson off the ring road and smacked bang into a bus. Boom!’ He mimed a small explosion. ‘No survivors. Hospital morgue ran a DNA check on Westfield’s remains-idiots got the sample wrong, but Moncur says he gave them a false positive anyway, just in case they decided to dig any further. ID chip matched, so it’s OK: all taken care of.’
The old man pursed his lips. It made his face look even more aerodynamic than usual. ‘Moncur and Stevenson?’
‘This is the first time either of them has screwed up, Mr Kikan. I gave them a first and final warning. One more breach and they’re testin’ the next batch of mixture.’
‘Three weeks.’ Kikan frowned. ‘When I give an order to have someone lobotomized, Ken, I expect it to be carried out immediately. If Dr Westfield had gotten “out of hand” without her medication it would have raised some very awkward questions.’
‘Yes, sir. But she didn’t and now she’s dead.’ He watched his boss pick the test tube up and set it dancing again.
‘And the other thing?’
‘Ah…yeah…the other thing. You remember that Network guy we had in the other day: William Hunter? Assistant Director?’
‘The one you were supposed to be keeping an eye on?’
Ken cleared his throat. ‘Yeah…that’s the one. Publicly he’s been making all the right noises about steering clear of the test zone, but we’re monitoring his home line and he’s been poking around in the PsychTech files.’
‘So?’ There was a hint of boredom in the man’s voice, but Ken knew better than to believe it.
‘He’s also been runnin’ searches on you and me. Hasn’t found anything yet, but the guys in statistics say there’s a six point three percent chance he’s going to find something we’d rather he didn’t.’
‘How did he get my name, Ken?’ The old man’s eyes were like ice.
Ken stuttered. ‘I…I don’t know how-’
‘This is supposed to be a discreet operation, Ken. First the Westfield woman is allowed to outlive her usefulness and now this. I am not pleased. Not pleased at all.’
‘No, sir. I understand, sir.’
‘Then you know what to do, don’t you?’ He slipped the test tube back in his pocket and stood.
‘Actually…’ Ken shifted from foot to foot. ‘You think I should maybe have a friendly chat with him first?’
The old man stopped on his way to the exit, his cloat slung over one shoulder. ‘What is this strange aversion you have to killing the man, Ken?’
‘He’s a hero, sir. I’ve read through his file and William Hunter’s one of the good guys. I’d kinda prefer not to go rubbing him out unless I absolutely have to.’
Kikan shook his head and smiled one of his rare smiles. ‘Just make sure he doesn’t cause any more trouble than he already has. The first sign of anything inopportune I want him removed. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir!’ Ken snapped off a smart salute. ‘Don’t you worry about Mr Hunter, I’m gonna make sure he stays nice and friendly. And if he don’t I’m gonna make sure he stays nice and dead.’
20
Will looked back over his shoulder and watched the city burn. The air was misty with evaporated flesh: soft pink clouds drifting gently to the ground, leaving a faint slick of human cells on anything they touched. He turned his attention away from the funeral pyres and palls of thick, greasy smoke and examined the Whomper in his hands. It was less than half full; whatever Jo was going to do she’d have to do it soon.
The barricade he was hiding behind rocked under another onslaught. Chips of smoking concrete rained down all around him. The noise was deafening. Over in the distance, through the fog of skin and bone, he could just make out Jo’s outline, hiding behind the wreckage of a school bus. The vehicle looked as if it had been put through a mangle, and Jo didn’t look much better. Her jumpsuit was stained and scorched, the middle section slashed almost in half, exposing swollen, burnt flesh.
She looked back at him, their eyes meeting over the barrel of her Crackling Gun. For a moment Will just crouched there, not moving, then the man standing next to him exploded.
The gun in Jo’s hands howled.
They were running out of time.
He vaulted the barricade, and sprinted across the war-torn street, trying not to get his head blown off. The pavement buckled beneath his feet as he ran towards the dark-red troop carrier, chunks of concrete shattering all around as the gunners tried to kill him.
Jo’s Crackling Gun howled again, her siege weapon carving bite-sized chunks of metal out of the carrier’s hull. Will slithered to a halt, skidding on a patch of someone as he drew level with the craft. He snatched up his Whomper and turned the driver’s head into a green-grey stain on the vehicle’s roof.
The passenger snatched up something shiny and pointed, like an electric squid, lights twinkling along its length. Will didn’t wait to see what it did, just turned the Whomper on him and thumbed the trigger, spreading him all over the inside of the cab. He didn’t even have time to scream.
Comlab’s computer-generated fantasies always made Will feel vaguely uncomfortable. Here it was OK to kill anything you liked and, as he jumped about the game ring like a lunatic, he couldn’t escape the feeling that it was all just a little bit too real. As if the boundaries between what was, and what wasn’t, didn’t apply here. But that didn’t stop him playing.
Will leaned back against the dispenser, totally knackered. Sweat ran down his back and pooled in his unders; he never wore the right thing to play in the game rings. Jo was a lot more sensible: she’d ditched her day clothes and slipped into an all-in-one that clung like a second skin. Her hair was plastered to her forehead, a thick red line marking where the headset had sat. But she was smiling.
He ran a hand over his face, then wiped his damp hands on his trousers. ‘How did we do?’
Jo gulped her plastic of fizzy down. ‘Not bad,’ she said, suppressing a belch. ‘Not the highest score ever, but we kicked some serious Martian arse.’
‘Glad you came?’
She rubbed at her forehead. ‘Been years since I had to wear a headset. Forgot how much it throws you off. Full immersion is a hell of a lot easier. Less sweaty too.’ Jo looked at him for a moment. ‘You really don’t have a jack point? On an Assistant Director’s salary?’
‘Yeah…Sorry about that.’
‘Nah, it was fun. Kinda nostalgic.’ She reached up and touched his cheek, then grimaced. ‘Urgh…You’re sopping!’ She backed off towards the female locker rooms. ‘I’m going to shower and change. If you weren’t such a mincehead, Mr “Outside Clothes Will Be Fine”, you could do the same.’
‘Blah, blah, blah. I’ll see you in the cafeteria, OK?’
‘Try not to stink the place out.’ She stepped closer and for a moment Will though she was going to kiss him. Then something happened and she changed the movement into a smile instead, turned, and disappeared through the locker-room door.
They’d been like that all afternoon; as if last night had never happened and they were back to acting like nervous teenagers. It was driving him mad.
Slinging his new jacket over his damp shoulder Will went for a stroll through the gaming hall to cool down a bit. The place was mobbed, as usuaclass="underline" the last shift of gamers milling around, talking over their latest adventure, even though they’d only finished playing it five minutes ago; the next shift plugged in and ready to go. As he walked around he watched them logging on. It was one of the funniest bits for him, over a thousand people, standing in wide, elevated rings eight feet across, doing the hand jive: hitting buttons only they could see. Loading up pre-saved characters and scenarios so they could get on with the violence and the sex.