Fletcher (4 page)

#0954

“Valerie... Don’t wait for this to finish playing... Start fixing me up right away... Just pulled a practical joke... on the leader of one of the bigger... gangs in the gutterage. Made him think... his food was poisoned... Looked so smug that he’d worked it out. Then I shot him... in the face. Heh... Guards couldn’t take a joke though... opened fire almost immediately. Got out... still running... took a bullet to the gut... Another to the hip... Stapled together to stop the bleeding. Just fix me up... I swear to god, if you leave... another piece of steel... inside me, I will kill you. Happy... April first.”

5: Exposition

Few things act upon my mind as bizarrely as morphine. Other than an occasional aid to sleep, I choose to avoid it, preferring to run with more mainstream pleasures such as murder, arson and digital piracy. It gets in my head and stays there, like a Russian ice-pick. I don’t think straight (do I ever?); instead, my mind follows strange patterns and fluxes.

When the world started burning, Germany burned brighter than everyone else. Maybe it was the political tension; maybe it was the suffering economy and rising taxes. It could have been anything, really. Maybe Germans are just extra-flammable. Whatever the reason, where England and France had widespread anarchy, Germany was pitched headfirst into something resembling a civil war. The world just dropped them. France was the first to shut off all borders to the refugees, and the rest of Europe followed suit. Nobody in, nobody out—a desperate attempt to keep the mindless German violence out of the rest of the mindless European violence. Needless to say, there were consequences. German relatives outside of the nation—many of them already involved in or affected by the chaos—became even more angry and disillusioned. Bombs went off in public spaces, adding to the terror. Proud landmarks which had withstood the wild population fell to concentrated attacks. It took months to root out the German terrorist cells, and in that time they successfully bombed the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and the Houses of Parliament, to name but a few. The casualties were enormous, but to the world they were just another statistic in a rising tide of statistics.

I guess the most critical effect morphine has on me is that it stops me from focusing. On small doses—ones that don’t render me unconscious—I turn dazed and distracted. It regularly seems like I’m about to change—

—topic, but usually it’s just a bait-and-switch. The double-vision and strange feelings of affection get in the way too. It’s like my mind is on vacation, and my mouth is–

Before Germany, there was Africa. In particular, South Africa. Appropriate, right? The cradle of humankind was also the resting place of Pandora’s Haemorrhagic Box.

May 25, 2012: the National Institute of Health shocks South Africa and the world by announcing the finalisation of a full cure to HIV.

May 26, 2012: the National Institute of Health shocks the world again, this time by getting ransacked by a desperate population.

May 29, 2012: the initial raiders start developing fever symptoms.

June 1, 2012: four hundred bloody deaths herald the coming of worldwide anarchy.

The Red Masque Fever—named due to its virulence—lived up to its moniker. Created under laboratory conditions by extrapolating the evolution of other common haemorrhagics, Red Masque made Lassa fever, Ebola and the Marburg virus look like a bad case of the sniffles. The National Institute of Health had samples kept under the strictest of procedures, but wild mobs are never the best at following protocol.

There ain’t no fever like a haemorrhagic fever.

For three days, Red Masque lurked in the bodies of the desperate looters, unseen but still contagious. On the third day it rose again, in accordance to its epidemiology, and began to systematically ravage their internal organs, manifesting in feverish temperatures, vomiting, intercranial pressure, haemorrhaging, cell necrosis and convulsions. By the end of the fifth day, every single initial infectee was dead.

The world had watched their bloody seizures in terrified silence. Some countries reacted quicker than others, immediately shutting down all airports and denying flights from Africa. For most, it was far too late. All it took was a single returning tourist to cough in a crowded airport, and within days the city would be wiped off the map. Naturally, South Africa was hit the hardest, with a death toll in the millions. The rest of Africa suffered sequentially, with border controls unable to stop infected refugees.

It was in late 2012 that new complications started arising. Through their quarantines and their military and their cutting-edge protective gear, Red Masque Fever was all but eradicated in developed countries. Naturally, there were mistakes: misdiagnoses triggered false alarms over the world, and with those false alarms came panic and fear. Eventually, all it would take was the sight of a pressure-protective suit in a neighbourhood to trigger all-out chaos. And thus the gutterages came into being—monuments to panic without due cause, and chaos for the simple sake of chaos.

More complications swarmed in from Africa. Without advanced technology and equipment, Red Masque continued to scourge across the continent, and with outbound planes getting shot down by UN-endorsed fighter jets the ways out were severely limited.

With the death toll in the thousands of millions, a massive exodus of uninfected citizens had sprung up. Initially, they had formed huge groups for safety, but the larger groups never made it for more than a few weeks before statistics alone beat them. It was always safer to travel in smaller packs, avoiding marauders and cities in an attempt to get farther north. For them, north meant hope; it meant first world countries with their friendly doctors and their friendlier vaccines.

Of course, there were no vaccines or cures, only containment and quarantine. Africa had depended on first world emergency aid for far too long, but instead of finding Europe with arms open, they found the Mediterranean as dangerous as Africa. Any boat attempting to cross was boarded by special forces in containment suits. If the tiniest trace of infection was found, the boats were sent straight to the bottom. It didn’t have to be any more than a sneeze or a minor temperature.

The Middle East wasn’t any more accommodating. As refugees reached Egypt, a pre-emptive exodus struck up tensions on the Israeli border, resulting in civilian casualties on both sides. Israel’s response was almost unprecedented; their superior military annexed the part of Egypt on their side of the Suez Canal in less than a week of brutal Blitzkrieg and began construction of the monolithic Suez Barrier.

Nobody in, nobody out.

The world had simply abandoned Africa, and Africa wasn’t too happy about it. Attacks on coast patrols became part of the daily routine, and special forces medics starting coming in accompanied by full complements of troops. Surrounded by Egypt-sympathetic countries, Israel was forced to defend its new territory from all sides.

In short, a lot of negative energy brewed in 2012. By the start of 2014, the estimated death toll due to Red Masque alone was two billion, with more statistics leaking in each day.

Overall, three billion people have died since June 1, 2012. Not including African ones, twelve countries had been wiped out, with thousands of cities becoming ghost towns world-wide.

A sea of statistics. A sea of angry, venomous statistics, which no one was really reading because they had more concerns closer to home. And the one thing angrier than a statistic is an ignored statistic.

Goddammit, Valerie.

I woke. Extreme nausea throbbed in my stomach; movement at this moment was unwise. Deep breaths, mediated, in through the mouth, out through the nose. I wasn’t alone in the ward, though the other patient seemed to be comatose.

Valeri
e
reall
y
loved her morphine. A look at the clock on the wall told me that I’d been out for eight hours. I gave it five minutes then stood uneasily. The queasiness struck again and I spent a few minutes dry-retching over the sink. Breathe in, breathe out. I made a mental note to hurt Valerie for using such a high dose, even though I knew it wouldn’t teach her a lesson.

I extracted my cell phone from the folds of my coat and peeled dried blood off the screen. Like a destitute amputee, my battery was on its last leg, but I took the time to read the blinking message.

“Problems with the relationship? With our help, those days are over! Body and mind spirituality courses. Meet up with professionals. At affordable prices, you can’t miss this! Train to be a better you.”

An annoyed smile seized my face, briefly. While the message brought bad news, it also brought the promise of an eventful day. Vincent had a knack for making weekends entertaining.

#0903

“People are like onions. There’s always someone crying when you start peeling off the layers.”

6: The Principles of Pain

I loved the empty train station. There was something hallowed and mournful about the dust and the murk and the quiet, something that spoke in disresonant tones about the fall. Many thought it haunted, and it wasn’t hard to understand why.

“...rain from... city central...”

After 2012, an incompetently decommissioned power grid had left an intermittent trickle of electricity seeping into the station. Turnstiles would occasionally flick on and off, or snap unlocked while suddenly registering tickets from ages past. The ticket counters occasionally flickered to life, bleeding yellow light through the bars. Above all, the dark was permeated by a crackled, ancient voice, blithely announcing a schedule years out of date.

“... has been ...layed for nine-nine-ni...”

I vaulted the turnstiles and moved deeper into the must, keeping an eye on the ground for signs of thoroughfare. There were other reasons for the legend around this place, though. Typical ‘never-seen-agains’ blended with talk of ghostly footsteps and of doors locking of their own accord. It was even said that, if you put your ear to the pipes, you could sometimes hear the screams of those trapped deep underground long ago.

“...nine-nine-nine-nine hours and n...”

It was nonsense, of course. I mean, if he wasn’t at his home or his office, Vincent had to lurk somewhere. Right?

I turned down a final passage and was met with a locked door. There was a male bathroom symbol on the front, but a closer inspection showed that it had been stuck there recently. Feeling around in the gloom, I located the exposed piping and listened closely.

Sure enough, I picked up faint sounds of pain. I smiled, and struck the pipe with the handle of my knife.

Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

“nine-nine-nine...”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“...ine-ni...”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“...ne minutes... City rail apolo...”

I stood in the door’s blind spot, and waited.

“for the inconve...”

Three minutes passed before a thin beam of light oozed through the keyhole. The lock clicked, but the door didn’t open. A silence followed.

Inconvenient.

I coughed before speaking. “I was really hoping to surprise you. This is just awkward.”

The door pushed open, and Vincent regarded me coolly from the entrance. He was standing in a small room, in front of a flight of descending stairs.

“K. Been well?”

“As if you don’t know. I’m sure I’ve been keeping you busy. Also, in case no one told you, you have a fingernail in your hair.”

He patted around for it and flicked the red speck into the dark. “Carried away. Don’t know how I missed that.”

“Are you busy? You know I’d hate to spoil the mood.”

“He can wait. Not going anywhere.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“The usual. National security. I’ve spent the last six months finding the leak in the company; now I need to find who he’s leaking to. Some of those numbers tie back to our players in the field; lots of sensitive stuff that the world isn’t ready for... Please, come in. Make yourself at home.”

“How gentlemanly. Need any help?”

“If that was supposed to be emasculating, it wasn’t. It wouldn’t matter if you spent your days braiding hair and wearing pink lace; you’ve got an edge I’ll never have.”

“My talent?”

“No. You’re completely insane.”

I pouted as we walked down a flight of grimy stairs.

“That’s not an advantage. It’s a lifestyle choice.”

“You didn’t choose insanity, K. You only chose to embrace it.”

I sulked until we reached the lower levels. He wasn’t right, but he had a smarmy, superior way of being wrong. The smell of must was residual here; a large area had been swept clean under the glow of a yellow bulb. Propped up next to a door was a bloody set of bolt cutters. I squinted through the dusty pane.

“He’s definitely not going anywhere... I think he needs some time to adjust to having no toes.”

Vincent didn’t speak; instead, he began to rinse his hands in the chipped basement sink.

“Nothing? Tough crowd. Well, I got your message... You had a problem getting to the body?”

“Getting there wasn’t an issue. I’ll tell you everything in a moment; right now I need you to repay the favour.”

I nodded at the room behind me. “He won’t talk?”

“No. Whoever he works for, they scare him more than I do. The only person I know who fits that bill is you.”

“Hard to tell through the blood, but I don’t think I know him.”

“You don’t. We started investigating this one in 2010. You were busy stirring up rebellion in North Africa that year, if I recall.”

“Just during the winter. You know how my skin loves the sun.”

“Regardless. I need you to break him.”

I stared through the window for a long stretch of time. The huddled mass on the floor was barely moving, save for the occasional shudder of breath. I mentally patted down my pockets for an appropriate monologue.

“Vince... Vincent? Torture—be it physical, mental, social—is not about what you do to a person. It’s all about making it clear that what you’ll do next will be worse. It’s not the pain that makes people break, since pain is just the body suffering for the past. Expectation... Expectation is what really destroys a man. Take his family, and he has nothing left. The pain he feels is only for the past. But take his least favourite child, and the pain serves as a signpost for the future. And because he knows that the pain is only a herald for things far worse, a Herald of Future Agonies, he will break. It’s inevitable.

“You’ve botched this one; sent him too far over the edge. You can’t re-amputate his toes.... But I might be able to help... I’ll need some paper, and a pen.”

Vincent stopped the tap. “You have a plan?”

“A theory. Time for some proof of concept.”

***

I opened the door five minutes later. He froze mid-shudder as the latch turned. I spent a full minute looming over him before he opened his one intact eye. It shut rapidly, before tentatively peeling open again.

The fact that I clearly wasn’t Vincent took him by surprise. The hope had already run its course; he knew I wasn’t an officer or a military official on a rescue mission. His face returned to a battered-yet-resigned expression.

I dropped to my haunches, triggering an instinctive flinch. Another full minute of silence followed, while I wrote something on the pad. Eventually, the scratching of the pen levered his eyelid open again.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

I didn’t respond. Instead, I touched his hand—another barely-suppressed twitch—and started counting fingers.

“Five... Nine.”

His eye tracked me as I leaned in, tracing a finger over his face while continuing my write-and-tally.

“Two. Two. One.”

Confusion slowly paved the way for apprehension. A noticeable stiffness grew in his body. Now was the time to escalate.

Rolling him onto his back, I levered open his mouth and started tapping on his teeth, one by one. I kept counting under my breath.

The tears began at seven. He was no longer trembling exclusively with each breath; deep spasms radiated out from his core as he screwed up his remaining eye and began to cry silently. I kept counting, louder now, with more emphasis to my taps.

The first audible sound arrived just after I moved onto his top jaw; a wet, pitiful wheeze dredged itself out of his throat. He stared at me through leaking slits, one oozing red, and coughed out a plea. The count went on.

He grabbed my wrist as I touched the final tooth, fingers limp and barely holding on.

“Please.”

I feigned concern for a calculated instant, clasped his wrist with my pen hand, and looked into his eyes for three seconds, before lightly stroking his tendons. I smiled.

“One.”

***

The sound of sobbing cut off as I closed the door behind me. Vincent was rinsing his hands off again.

“He’s been fixed. Wait an hour, then go talk. I’m sure you’ll find him to be more cooperative.”

“Much obliged.”

I spent a minute cleaning my own hands. The water wasn’t much cleaner than the blood and saliva, but it was arguably more hygienic.

“So. The boy?”

“You were right about the morgue. Some big police commissioner was found dead. Overdosed on heroin. Of course the first thought is homicide, no one uses the old narcotics anymore. Hell, people can barely get their hands on them... Hence the protection. Big-name pathologists were flown in and everything. I’m surprised you didn’t know.”

I’d known about the incident, but I simply hadn’t put the two together. I slapped myself inwardly.

“Was it a problem?” I asked.

“Not at all. I have levels of authorisation most of them couldn’t count to as a team. I don’t think they made eye contact with me once after my ID was verified.”

“And the body?”

“Wasn’t there, but hold your horses. Noticed something strange.”

Lies.

I held up a finger.

“Nothing at all?”

“Nothing. I checked all records. The only new inhabitants for the last week were the commissioner and two old people who got shot during a botched robbery.”

“Can’t be. I saw the record, Vincent. I saw it. New body, young adult male. Cold chamber three-zero-two. It had his picture and everything, Vince. I saw it.”

“I’ve been sceptical. I still am. But I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt. Did some snooping. Turned up something distinctly interesting, if you’d let me finish.”

My spirits lifted somewhat. Vincent didn’t find many things
distinctly
interesting; last time he had used that phrase, the subsequent investigation had pitched Tunisia into total chaos.

“There was something in the records... A lack of something, to be precise. The commissioner is filed with the ID thirty-three-eleven, but the old couple is under thirty-three-thirteen and fourteen respectively. There was a record at thirty-three-twelve, and it was removed.”

Vincent handed me a sheet of paper, with a chunk of what looked like a hospital record database printed in a table.

“That’s him.” I grinned.

“I don’t know. I checked further back, and missing IDs aren’t uncommon. People spell names wrong, or enter in duplicates; it happens. Don’t read too much into it.”

“It’s him. No way we can recover the record?”

“I tried. No go. Database doesn’t keep deleted records. You could always give the medical staff a grilling. The head coroner was on call for the commissioner and the couple. He’s good at his job, though, so try not to kill him.”

He gave me a name—Alex Sturrock. I thanked Vincent—not out loud, of course—and turned to leave. He placed a hand on my shoulder for a second and spoke.

“One last thing, K. Be careful what you dredge up. Make sure you can put it down again.”