Cronix (24 page)

“Well, in fact the problem has gotten worse since then. Quite significantly worse. The engineers topside have been working day and night to fix it, but still haven’t got it keyed in yet. A few downloads are coming through okay, but most…aren’t.”

‘What are we talking about here? How many subspecies do we have in the holding pens?”

Hencock, his left arm was still in a sling from the bombing, stroked his chin. “They’re full, sir.”

“
Full
?” Lupo’s ugly face was blotchy purple now. If it hadn’t been for his perfectly engineered circulatory system, Hencock might have worried his boss was about to have a seizure.

“And when exactly were you were going to inform me about this? How many Cronix are we talking about anyway?”

“About a hundred and twenty, sir.”

“A hundred and twenty? Are you insane? Do you know how dangerous it is to hold that many subspecians? What if there was a power-outage? A break-out?” Lupo threw his hands in the air, then pulled out a packet of full-tar cigarettes from his desk drawer. “Especially now that our Ranger forces have fucking vanished, and there’s crazy-ass bombers roaming the city” – he stared at Harrell – “apparently with pet Cronix in tow -- and you come to me and tell me that we can’t bring any reinforcements down without potentially adding to the problem? For fuck's sake, the local population are already up in arms about the Cronix infestation killing their kids. What the hell do I tell them? Huh?”

A look of unease crossed Harrell’s perfect face. “What about the soul poles? There’s still transmission back to the Orbiters, right?”

“Don’t worry, Harrell,” said Hencock. “The glitch appears to be one way only. No one’s gonna die around here.”

“Thank god for that.” the police chief said.

“Why wasn’t I informed about this situation sooner?” Lupo said. The DPP chief straightened his jacket. “I only just found out the exact figure myself, sir. Seems there was some kind of over-ride in the system.”

“An over-ride? That’s impossible,” said Lupo. “That system's infallible. There’s never been an over-ride.”

“Be that as it may, sir, it seems that’s what happened. As I said, the techs topside are checking it out. But so far they’ve drawn a blank.”

Lupo took a long drag on his cigarette as he eyed the inspector and the police chief with something approaching loathing. He pulled up his comms and demanded the justice department.

“Listen, I want an emergency session scheduled right now. No, now, I want people down there right away to start processing the population in the holding pens. We have a dangerously large Cronix population and it needs to be dealt with immediately. That is a direct order. Drop everything else. Okay. Good. Thank you.”

He hung up.

“Now listen up, both of two” the mayor said.” If so much as a whisper of this shit gets out, there’s gonna be a riot, so both of you, keep your traps shut, understood? And Harrell, as soon as any contact is made with the Rangers, let me know.”

The meeting was about to break up when Harrell’s screen emitted an alert. He pulled it out of his jacket pocket.

“Hey, it’s Ofrex,” the police chief said, his face brightening with relief. His smile instantly faded.

“Get him on the office screen now,” ordered Lupo.

When the Ranger commander appeared on the wall screen, the mayor understood Harrell’s dismay. Lex Ofrex was not in the depths of the forest, where he was supposed to be. He was sitting in a strikingly neat room with uniformed technicians behind him.

Lupo swore. “Ofrex, what the hell are you doing airside?”

***

With deep furrows criss-crossing his face and heavy bags under his eyes, people almost always assumed Doug Fitch was tired. Certainly the young man in front of him seemed to think his interlocutor was about to nod off. But Fitch never tired. As well as having the dull eyes of a shark, he was revered by those who knew him for sharing that predator’s other legendary quality: Fitch never seemed to sleep. His gaze darted from the page in front of him to the young man, then back again.

Glenn fidgeted on the sofa as Fitch took his time about reading the security notes. Finally, Glenn was about to find out what he was doing here. Destiny, he reminded himself. The lady or the tiger.

Glenn had been interviewed two days before by the head of security, a man introduced by Laura simply as “the Colonel.” An odorless, trim military type in a dark suit and silver buzz cut. The Colonel had spent hours going through a questionnaire with Glenn, filling in blank spaces on forms with neat handwriting. Glenn struggled to stick to his invented history while the Colonel stared at him, expressionless, any time he hesitated or stumbled.

Fitch picked up his cigarette and inhaled deeply, expelling twin jets of smoke from his nostrils.

“Well, Glenn, it seems the Colonel has given you his stamp of approval. Despite your unusual method of recruitment.” He crushed the cigarette butt into a small brass ashtray. “Not many people get the green light so quickly from security. But you have, which is fortunate for all concerned.”

Glenn nodded, pleased to have passed the first hurdle. “So what do you want me to do, Mr Fitch?”

“Call me Doug. We don’t stand on ceremony here.” Judging by his manner so far, Glenn guessed informality would take quite some time. What he said next only reinforced that opinion.

“One of the papers you signed for the Colonel was the Espionage Act of 1917. It’s roughly the equivalent of the Official Secrets Act in your own country, which means that if you ever try to disclose any of what I am about to tell you, you will end up in a supermax prison before you can even finish your first sentence. And you’d need much more time than that to convince anyone of the truth of what we are undertaking here.”

He paused to let the warning sink in.

“The reason for such secrecy is that we work for a very loose organization combining government institutions, from the Department of Defense and Nasa, to private companies doing research far beyond what the market currently supports. 'Blue skies' doesn't even begin to capture what we do. If anyone in the budgetary office knew what was going on, we’d probably be shut down in a minute.

“Officially, our main focus is enhancing the military’s capacity to fight wars. Traditionally, you can do that in several different ways, say, by creating better weapons. Even the simple threat of better weapons can tip the balance. These are very important considerations in a post-modern society like ours. People simply don’t want to die for their country any more: there’s too much to live for.

“Now, I’m not saying the US doesn’t have a great military. It's just that as a superpower, we've gone a bit soft. Even if our brave boys in uniform are heroic enough to die in foreign adventures, are their families, and the public in general, willing to pay that terrible price?”

Glenn shrugged.

“Opinion at the top is divided on that one,” Fitch went on. “And if there’s one thing the top brass hates, it's doubt. Grey areas. So some of the more adventurous generals asked, what if you could overcome the ultimate hurdle facing soldiers?”

“What’s the final hurdle?” Glenn said, like a plant in a magician’s audience.

Fitch smiled. “Death.”

Glenn waited for a long moment, unsure whether Fitch was going to go on. The older man didn’t.

“Wait, you mean, you have a plan to overcome
death
?” He laughed.

“Not quite,” said Fitch. “Not yet. But we are working on it.”

***

Night had fallen over London, a blank gloom that brought no rest or respite to the city. The torches of patrols winked among the trees, and every now and then a gunshot interrupted the nocturnal bugs. When Lola came into Oriente's room, she found him staring out the window, a whiskey in his hand. He didn't look round.

“Why the hell did you go to the bombing this morning?” There was barely suppressed fury in her voice, but still he did not turn.

“You know there's a DPP agent outside your room again? I thought you’d won their trust. Now there's orders you’re not even to leave the building.”

He made no response. She came over and took the glass from his hand.

“Do they think you had something to do with this?”

He shrugged. Finally, he looked at her. “It’s possible they think so.”

“And did you?” She folded her arms, staring at him. “You appear out of nowhere with some crazy story about a wolf eating your eyes, and you being the Missing Link or whatever, and now, all of a sudden, bombs start going off and people who are supposed to be indestructible start disappearing.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I'm not sure I know anything anymore.”

Lola sat on the bed, took a slug of his drink.

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “I think I may be going crazy. I've been hearing these voices...or at least, a voice. And when I saw the footage of Rangers getting sliced up in the woods, I ...” He wasn't sure if he could trust her. She had worked for airside intelligence, after all. But he wanted to trust her, more than anything he'd wanted anything in a long time.

“When I was still at my cabin in the woods, before the wolf appeared...”

“Yes?”

“Well, I kept on seeing these strange visions, like ghosts. People who looked real, but who weren’t really there. It went on for a few weeks, then suddenly stopped. Just before the wolf showed up.”

She frowned. “You think they were connected?”

“I don’t know. They seemed so random, disjointed. Like memories, or dreams or something. But the wolf’s visit was clearly deliberate.”

He chewed his lip. “Could those transmitters you used project your gods into the Zone...”

She shook her head. “Like I said, totally illegal outside of the Zone.”

“But lots of illegal things seem to be going down recently. The bombing, that crazy carpet-bagger Wexler offering to smuggle me out. Hell, strictly speaking, even I'm illegal here.

Lola smiled, stepped closer to him and put a hand on his arm. “You know what? I like you illegal. Gives you a heroic air.” He didn't smile, so he she stroked his hair. “And I don't think you're crazy. And I'm a nurse right? I should know.”

He smiled at that, and she leaned over and kissed his cheek. They stared at each other, as though weighing what was about to come. He leaned in and kissed her. She closed her eyes, smiled, put her arms round him they slowly toppled on to his bed.

***

They were finishing breakfast when Fitch invited Glenn to accompany him to the Temple. Glenn, who had not noticed any other significant building as far as the eye could see, frowned over the remains of his fried eggs.

“The Temple?”

“That big barn next door,” sighed Laura, who had just returned from an early run, and was wearing sweat pants and a hoodie as she fixed herself a shake in the blender. “They call it their Temple. Think they’re being clever.”

“We
are
being clever,” said Stiney, rising to join Fitch and Glenn. “It’s what we’re paid to be, remember?”

“In that case, you’re way over budget,” said Laura. Stiney grinned and flipped her the finger as they walked out.

The barn door was hidden from the road, facing the open plains. Fitch pulled out a swipe card from his wallet, then punched in a digital code.

“Welcome to the Temple,” he said.

He flicked a light switch and Glenn was surprised to find himself inside a small room, barely larger than the kitchen in the house.

“Looks much bigger from the outside,” he said. “Maybe you should get a better decorator.”

“Ooh, so he cracks wise now and then,” said Stiney. “You know, you’re right, it’s not very Feng shui. But this is only the anteroom.”

Stiney produced his own swipe card and dialed yet another code on a door that Glenn had not at first noticed on the far side of the room. Glenn now saw there were other doors leading off in different directions.

“Ta-da!” Stiney beckoned Glenn into a room that was larger, yet still not nearly big enough to fill the interior of the barn. Clearly the building was subdivided into many interior spaces. This room looked like a cross between a research lab, a computer geek’s den and a doctor’s office. Fitch beckoned him to sit down on a padded bench next to a computer.

The air was still and cold, ruffled only by the warm ripples of a heater that whirred into life as they entered. There were computers all around, and the gleaming white sarcophagus of an MRI machine. On a bench beside it sat what appeared to be crash helmets in different colors. The place was spotless and sterile, which struck Glenn as odd: no one ever came out here, so who cleaned all this?

“Okay,” said Fitch, slipping off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. He picked up one of the helmets, which had a thick visor made of some brown, glassy material.

“This is modeled on a virtual reality helmet,” he said as he fitted it over Glenn’s head. It must have weighed at least five pounds. “Usually in a VR lab, what you’d see in one of these is a virtual environment, and we would ask you to do something, like walk along a plank over an abyss. You’d wobble and balance like it was real, even though you’d still be in this room. That’s the fun of VR.”