The vac-train carriage had seating for a hundred. Louise, Genevieve, and Ivanov Robson were the only people using it. In fact, Louise had only seen a dozen or so people milling about on the platform at King’s Cross when they got on. She wasn’t sure if they were passengers or station staff.
Despite her growing uncertainty, and Gen’s sulky resentment, she’d followed the private detective in through the airlock door. Even now there was something about him that reassured her. Even beyond physical size, he had a self-confidence greater than Joshua. Which was saying a lot. She settled back with dreamy thoughts of her fiancй filling her mind. Although the seats were worn, they were comfortable; and her alcohol suppresser program was off. Joshua had such a warm smile, she remembered. It would be so nice to have it shine on her again.
“I love you, and I’m coming back for you.” His words. Spoken to her when they were naked and alone, their bodies clinging together. A promise that could be nothing but totally honest.
I will find him again, despite all this horrid mess.
Her news hound program alerted her to the situation developing in Edmonton. She went through Time Universe to access a sensevise of the fight. And there she was, crouched behind one of the abandoned buses, peering cautiously round the front at the crazy army marching along the street. Dazzling white fireballs were pumping up from a dozen upstretched hands, smacking into the skyscraper. Flames were roaring out of windows and missile craters all the way up the first eight or nine stories. Heavy-calibre guns were firing down in retaliation, pummelling the carbon-concrete sidewalk with small intense topaz explosions. Several bodies were scattered along the street, clothes still smouldering from beam weapon scorches.
Figures began to race past the bus. Police in dark-grey armour suits, hauling even larger automatic guns than those in use up ahead. Their movements were arachnid, scuttling from cover to cover. They began to fire; the discharge from their weapons a continuous howl ripping into the delicate tissue of her inner ear. She started, hands halfway to her ears before the reporter’s audio limiter program cut in. Then she was ducking down as multiple explosions ploughed up the street. White fireballs flew directly overhead.
Louise reduced the sensevise to monitor function, bundling it away until it became a vivid real-time memory. She looked at Ivanov. “Now what?” she asked. “They won’t let this train into Edmonton now, will they? Surely?”
“They ought to. Access the overview commentary. The possessed are concentrated in one area, and the police have them contained. They’ve got enough firepower concentrated on them to exterminate ten times as many as there are on the ground. Besides, if we were being diverted, the train company would have told us immediately.”
Louise accessed the carriage’s processor, and requested a schedule update. It reported that they were going to arrive in Edmonton in forty-one minutes. “That doesn’t make any sense. The authorities were paranoid about outbreaks before.”
“It’s politics. Edmonton is trying to prove they don’t have a problem with the possessed; that they’re on top of the situation.”
“But—”
“I know. They should have waited until after this fight is over before any grand announcements. Being premature with the good news is hardly new for Govcentral. As soon as the Edmonton isolation was announced, a lot of highly connected lobbyists will have been called in to pressure the president’s office and sympathetic senators to have the vac-train lines re-opened. If Edmonton is taken out of the global economic loop, all the companies in the arcology will start to fall behind their competitors; and an entire arcology is a huge market for outside companies to sell into; that’s a factor, too.”
“They’re endangering people because of money?” Louise asked in astonishment. “That’s awful.”
“Welcome to Earth.”
“Don’t they understand what’ll happen if the possessed get into other arcologies?”
“Of course they do. Now the possessed have been exposed in Edmonton, there’ll be an equal amount of pressure applied to close the vac-trains down again. Action and reaction, Louise.”
“You mean we might not get out after we arrive?”
“We will. There’ll be enough time. I promised you: back home again in five hours. Remember?”
She glanced over at Gen, who was sleeping, curled up in the seat, her small face scowling even as she dreamed. “I remember.” Not that there was much she could do about her worries now. The train was going to stop in the arcology. She hadn’t felt this out of control since that first mad horse ride away from Cricklade the day Quinn Dexter appeared.
That the fight around the skyscraper would be uneven was never in doubt. Even so, the effectiveness of the police tactical team was impressive. Heavy-calibre portable weapons deployed by the front line were backed up by X-ray lasers from the rear support groups, far enough back to resist glitching by the possessed. As a consequence, very few possessed actually made it in to the skyscraper; and judging by the amount of gunfire coming from inside, the sect members weren’t exactly a pushover. That was where the commercial sensevise coverage ended. B7 immediately switched to the surviving sensors in the headquarters, watching nervous, indistinct figures creeping along dark smoke-filled corridors. One of them walked over a grid with twenty thousand volts running through it. The body ignited into a pillar of flame hot enough to melt the concrete corridor around it.
“Well, that’s a neat trick,” Northern Europe said. “What kind of energy level is that, do you think?”
“Could be total chemical conversion,” Central America suggested. “It can’t be a direct mass energy reaction. That would eliminate the entire arcology.”
“Hardly relevant,” South Pacific said.
“On the contrary,” Central America said. “The more we learn of their ability, the closer we come to defeating them.”
“You can hardly classify their death throes as part of their ability.”
“All information is useful,” Western Europe said, deliberately bleeding a note of snobbery in to his representation’s voice. “We wouldn’t have had this kind of success without it.”
“Success?” South Pacific pointed at the image above the conference table. The possessed had burnt out, leaving a human sculpture of ash standing amid the drizzle of molten carbon-concrete. It pitched over, disintegrating into a slush of grey flakes. “That’s a success; Edmonton under siege from the possessed? May we please be preserved from your failures.”
“By studying the data on Dexter we determined his likely course of action. I told you he’d betray the remaining possessed to us. This merely proves I was right all along.”
“And Edmonton is not under siege,” North America said. “The police tactical teams have the possessed surrounded.”
“Wrong,” South Pacific said. “That friend of Carter McBride won’t be among this group. You haven’t got him surrounded.”
“He is not a threat to anyone other than Dexter,” Western Europe said.
“Only in your book. As far as I’m concerned, nothing has changed. One invisible possessed and one elusive possessed are running round loose. Your territories remain embargoed.”
“Thank heavens for that. We all know what would happen to Edmonton if you had any say in events over here.”
“At least with my way only one arcology suffers. I can’t believe you’re willing to expose another to Dexter.”
“You can’t win at this level without taking risks. And I do intend to win. Dexter is the epitome of all we have fought against these last five hundred years. He is the yobbish anarchy that B7 has successfully banished from this world. I’ll not have him return. The investment in blood and money it has cost us must be honoured.”