Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

‘She was evil. You’re not. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. And I don’t believe you think like that. You tell me what you think. For real. You tell me that. Do you really want to know? I wish I’d never shot either of them, Turtle. I really do. Maybe I could’ve lived with just shooting her. I don’t know. But shooting that man, I wish, I just wish I’d never done that. It’s as simple as that. I told you it was simple from the start.

It’s just that there’s nothing I can do about it now.’

Harrigan repeated the final words and then stood there in silence.

His spoken greetings, his apology for arriving unannounced like this, were lost.

‘What is this, Toby? Is it a joke? Are you and a friend doing a bit of role-playing over the Net? Is that it? Or are you going to tell me this is real?’

Toby had a file in which he kept his one-way conversations with his father, a silent recording without a playback option, a series of responses which begged the other side of the conversation. He opened it to a smaller window. He reached out to type, Yes just a joke dad , and stopped. His father pulled up a chair beside him, they sat in their common silence. Harrigan, who had never really heard his son speak more than a few disjointed words, always listened in his mind to the voice that he imagined Toby might have had.

‘Do you want to tell me?’ he eventually asked.

If I do, Dad, will you cut me out of this? If I could have just one more talk to her, then I could get her to give herself up to you. I could have said to her, you call my dad. He’ll come and get you, he’ll make sure they won’t hurt you.

Words which Toby did not type, which instead, like so much of his speech, found no way into the atmosphere, living and dying like small moths in the hermetic seal of his thoughts.

If I tell u — then u have 2 let me talk 2 her when I want 2

‘Talk to who, Toby?’

U have 2 promise

‘I can’t stop you doing anything on this machine. We’ve been down that road before. That’s your world in there, not mine. I know that.’

How come you’re here anyway???

‘You’re prickly tonight. What is it?’

You are asking me amp; I am asking u Ok???

‘Do you wish I wasn’t here? Do you want me to leave? I can go if you want.’

No dad I’m just asking have U got a reason yeah??? U always do Harrigan reflected that his son was better at reading his thoughts than anyone else had ever been.

‘I haven’t been able to concentrate, mate. I was worried about you.

Something was on your mind this morning and I didn’t know what it was. I wanted to see if you were okay.’

Toby did not type anything for a few moments.

U haven’t promised dad

‘I said I’m not going to stop you doing anything on this machine.’

That’s not the same thing I was going 2 tell u anyway U just had 2

wait But u asked so I’ll tell u It’s no joke It’s 4 real I wish it wasn’tDad I am telling u this because she’s my friend I know wot she’s doneBut u have to remember she’s my friend Now u watch Tell u somethingu didn’t know

In Toby’s room at Cotswold House the screen flickered into life with the warning: You are in Armageddon. The time starts now. A clock was ticking down, second by second. A dark-haired figure in a short black coat and jeans appeared on the screen, she was in a long dark corridor of a house filled with rubbish. ‘I am the Firewall. Stay with me, I’ll keep you safe,’ the figure said and stretched out her hand. Seven small glittering stars appeared, balanced in a diamond shape over her outstretched hand. The figure spoke again: ‘We are in the darkness, you and I. Come with me and I’ll show you the way to the light.’ She reached out to Turtle in his wheelchair and drew him to his feet. They hugged each other and he walked with her down the corridor.

Toby tapped out words for his father. She wants me 2 walk Saidshe’d give her life for that I said no one can do that 4 me So she didthis instead

Reduced back to his professional role as a watcher, Harrigan found himself excluded from the electronic scenario. This hurt him much more than he could have expected. He wondered how images as crude as these and voices so tinny had this kind of power.

‘She can’t want you to walk any more than I do, Toby,’ he said in his neutral voice.

Within the confines of the monitor, Lucy led Toby past dirty rooms towards a distant doorway. A man and a woman followed them, grinning, carrying knives dripping with lurid fake blood. The corridor was truncated and the door opened. The Firewall stepped out into the open sky with Toby and together they went soaring among the glittering stars while the house burst into flames below them.

She only ever takes me this far She said it was too dangerous 4 me2 go any further I said 2 her this isn’t real She said it was And it is 2

her I say to her that’s OK I can talk to u where u are I didn’t think she’ddo more than this I thought it was just the website and nothing else The scene dissolved. Harrigan saw the sky split open and the four horsemen of the apocalypse raged across the screen. The scene switched to a back alley of terraces and warehouses where the Firewall appeared on the street, armed. A woman in a white coat walked out of a building and the sight of an end of a gun filled the screen. Light exploded within the barrel. The scene turned side on and bullets punched through the air. The woman was shot dead and the Firewall held a smoking gun. The buildings and the streets around them both were consumed by nuclear fire.

‘Can you stop it?’ Harrigan asked. ‘Can you roll it back so I can see that again?’

Wait dad

As the whole city descended into devastation, an angel in gun-blue armour came to the Firewall and handed her a book. Its pages had been cut out and, instead of words, a gun was stored between the covers.

The angel gave her the weapon and said to her, ‘Knowledge is bitter.’

‘I know that now,’ Lucy said aloud, alone in her room, immersed in her images. ‘I know what they mean now, when they say knowledge is bitter. Turtle, you don’t understand — I did have to do what I did. I just have to be strong enough to live with it. You have to forgive me for it.’

On the screen, humans became monsters prowling the earth, murdering the living, eating corpses. The Firewall roamed amongst them, shooting them down. As they died, they evaporated into particles of light. In the end, there was nothing left other than an empty wasteland and the quiet sound of the wind, moaning like the voices of young children, fading into silence.

In her room, Lucy was working. She was building a new city in the middle of this empty place, a vision of towers, fountains and trees. A garden, rows of terraces with rhododendrons and camellias, azaleas and gardenias, sloping down to the edge of a eucalyptus forest. Out of the commands of computer language she was fabricating a place to be safe and happy, somewhere that was home.

In Toby’s room, the screen was frozen on the image of Dr Agnes Liu dying in a backstreet. Harrigan sat staring at it for some moments.

‘How long have you known about this website?’ he asked.

A while A few months

‘Has that picture been there all that time?’

Yes

‘You didn’t tell anyone?’

Tell them wot??? I never believed she would do it

‘Do you know anything about this person at all? Her name, where she lives, anything?’

No she won’t tell me She’s just the Firewall She says she’s got nohome We talk dad, we talk all the time She said she knows what itslike 2 be treated like she’s just a thing and she does We talk turtle dadJust like u amp; me