Stuart MacBride - Halfhead

It was a dimly lit, circular room, empty except for Will, Emily, the two interrogation chairs, and the man-mountain. The wall was one continuous mirror that wrapped all the way around, their distorted figures reflecting back at them. There would be cameras and scanners on the other side of the glass, recording everything, right down to their blood pressure and pupil dilation.

So it was official-they were fucked.

But at least they weren’t dead yet.

Will spat out another sliver of blood. ‘How far did you get?’

‘About a hundred yards.’ Emily’s scowl turned into a smile. ‘There’s at least three of them won’t be walking home tonight.’

‘Two of them,’ said a cheery, educated, mid-Atlantic voice, ‘may never walk again. Not without some serious surgical intervention anyway.’ The newcomer stood in a doorway that hadn’t been there the last time Will looked. The man was backlit, turning him into a silhouette against the painful glare. ‘Gotta admit: I like a woman who knows how to take care of herself.’

Emily’s eyes narrowed. ‘Blow it out your arse!’

‘Ah, touché.’ The silhouette folded its arms and leaned against the doorframe. ‘Well, now we’ve got the witty repartee out the way, I wanna know who you are and exactly what you’re doing at Sherman House.’

Silence.

‘OK…let’s try again. We know you don’t live here, so what are you: Newsies? Hope-Heads? Malkies? Don’t tell me you’re Flatworlders , that would be too disappointing. No? Neo-Christian Jihad?’

More silence.

The man shrugged. ‘You know, I don’t have to do this. If you like, we can just pump you full of chemical co-operation. Save everyone a load of time: I get what I need to know and you get moderate-to-severe brain damage. No skin off mine, is it?’

Will cleared his throat. ‘I don’t know who you are, but I can promise you we’re not journalists, religious freaks, enforcers, or Terra-rists.’

‘Glad to hear it. Your girlfriend’s too spunky for all that “space is for the Martians” bullshit.’ The silhouette cocked its head. ‘So what are you then?’

Will threw the question back: ‘What are you?’

‘Nope, sorry, that’s not the way it works. You answer my questions, or you end up taking your meals through a tube. So one last, and final , time: Who are you?’

Will shut his eyes. Tell the truth or lie?

Given the setup here, they’d be monitoring everything right down to his pupil dilation and skin temperature. If he tried to lie they’d know about it before he’d finished the sentence. And then the interrogation drugs would come out. Moderate-to-severe brain damage-there was no way he could do that to Emily.

He brought his chin up. ‘William Hunter: Assistant Network Director for Greater Glasgow and Central Section. This is Lieutenant Emily Brand, Rapid Deployment Squad Team Lead.’ He tried to put a bit of steel into his croaky voice. ‘Now exactly who and what are you?’

But the man in the doorway wasn’t playing.

‘If you’re a Network ASD, what you doing poking round Monstrosity Square without armed backup? Mind you, considering the mess your girlfriend made of Davis, McLean and Simpson, maybe you didn’t need it.’ There was a pause. ‘Why Sherman House, Mr Assistant Section Director?’

In for a penny: ‘Last week an SOC team was called out to flat one-twenty-two, forty-seventh floor. Their scene-of-crime scans show the place covered in blood, but when I went back there on Monday it was stripped clean. No bloodstains; just an old, tatty flat with faded wallpaper.’

‘You came all the way down here because someone tidied up?’

‘Two of the bodies we collected from Sherman House this week tested positive for VR syndrome. We need to know if there’s another outbreak brewing.’ It wasn’t the whole truth, but it wasn’t a lie either. The machines wouldn’t get suspicious.

‘I see.’ The figure took a step back and the doorway faded, leaving nothing behind but mirrored glass. That fake American accent echoed around the room, ‘Don’t go anywhere, will you?’

And then Emily hissed at Will, ‘Why the hell did you tell him who we are?’

‘You want your brain fried with chemicals?’

‘You have no idea who he is! Terra-rists, Neo-Christian Jihad, even Gaelic Nation Separatists for fuck’s sake. They didn’t know who we were, and you just handed them a Network ASD for a hostage!’

Will nodded at the mountain of muscle in the dark-grey jumpsuit. ‘Look at him: he’s not a fanatic, he’s military. This whole place stinks of Black Ops.’

She looked at him. ‘That doesn’t exactly make me feel any better.’

Ten minutes later, the dim room blossomed into full light, sparkling back off the mirrored wall. A door popped open somewhere behind them, and that same transatlantic voice said, ‘Angus, please unfasten our guests.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The man-mountain started on Will’s restraints.

A figure wandered into view, hands in the pockets of his sharp, bottle-green suit. Late twenties. His hair was mousy brown and wavy, his eyes unremarkably blue. The kind of face you wouldn’t remember clearly when you were questioned by the police. He walked with a pronounced ‘clip clop’, on a pair of dark brown Cuban heels that added an extra inch-and-a-half to his height, and even then he only just scraped five-foot-eight.

‘Sorry for the inconvenience, Mr Hunter, but we gotta be real careful about who’s wandering about down here. Someone kicks something off and “boom”; we got ourselves a full-blown riot.’ He stuck out a hand. ‘Ken Peitai, Senior Social Engineer, Ministry for Change.’

They shook, then Peitai handed over a plain business card.

Will pointed at the sergeant untying his feet. ‘Since when does the Ministry for Change need military backup?’

‘Since Sherman House.’ The man in the bottle-green suit smiled, eyes twinkling. ‘They keep a lid on things: neutralize flare-ups before things get out of hand, tidy up afterwards, make sure it doesn’t explode like it did during the VRs. Couldn’t do our job without them.’

Peitai helped Will to his feet. ‘See, that’s why the apartment you visited didn’t look like the SOC recording. We erased the crime scene when you’d done with it, scrubbed the place from top to toe.’

Will winced, pins and needles making him hobble. ‘The wallpaper had stains printed on it.’

‘Yup.’ Peitai watched the man-mountain trying to unstrap a glowering Lieutenant Brand without getting anywhere near her. ‘Our psych boffins figure if we leave the place spotless and smelling of paint, the next load of occupants will know something horrible happened in the flat before they got it. Imaginations run riot, they start to obsess, and next thing you know they’re out in the corridors blowing off steam by kicking someone’s head in. So we print on a bit of grime; make the place look lived in. So far it seems to be working.’

Will nodded-it actually made sense. Which meant that all the sneaking around he’d done had been a stupid, and dangerous waste of time. Dragging Emily down here, getting them almost killed…

Moron.

He cleared his throat. ‘Sounds like a good plan.’

‘You know,’ said Ken, ‘there’s so much Spontaneous Violent Aggression down here we’re pretty sure the original Virtual Riots weren’t actually caused by them shutting down the VR channels after all. That was just the trigger. And when you got so many people living on top of each other in connurb blocks like this, there’s plenty other triggers to choose from.’ He started to recite facts and figures, throwing hands about to emphasize various points.