Stuart MacBride - Halfhead

The dark-red stains gradually lighten and then disappear, leaving shiny, wet concrete that smells of pine.

He was good. Wonderfully soft and yielding. And he screamed so beautifully. She already has her souvenirs floating in a plastic of formaldehyde. Such lovely eyes…

She’ll have to make a little trip to the incinerator later-get rid of Kris and what’s left of Norman-but first she pops the top off an ampoule and snaps her medicine into her neck. It’s good to be back in control again.

And now that the urges are satisfied, she can prepare: she has people to visit. Labs to break into. Tissue samples to culture.

Revenge to take.

Darkness fills the lift shaft like a tumour, pressing against him on all sides, throbbing in time with the drums. Relentless, impenetrable, deafening. Will locks his arms around the rusty maintenance ladder and lets his forehead rest against one of the cool rungs.

What sort of fucking idiot thought this would be a good idea…

He tries to laugh, but it comes out as a strangled, painful noise.

Will grits his teeth, screws his eyes shut, and bounces his forehead off the ladder. Stupid. Thump. Fucking. Thump. Idiot.

How could he let them take Private Alexander?

He opens his eyes-even though there’s no point: he can’t see anything-and stares up into the darkness. Had to be somewhere near the ground floor by now, surely . All he has to do is lever open the lift doors on the next level he comes to, find the nearest window, tear off the boarding, smash the glass, jump out and run like Hell.

Freedom.

Get the fuck away from this hellhole asylum.

But he doesn’t. Instead he takes a couple of deep breaths and continues down the ladder. Feeling his way rung-by-rung deeper into the darkness. Towards the drums.

The going’s a lot easier without Private Alexander’s weight dragging at him. Now the only thing Will has to carry is the Whomper with the dead battery. It might be little more than a high-tech paperweight, but it’ll still scare the shit out of anyone he points it at. Maybe that would be enough?

Sergeant William Hunter-second-class-can’t just run for it, no matter how much he wants to. Not without Private Alexander. He’s come through too much to leave him behind.

Besides, maybe the cannibals have eaten some of the fat bastard by now? At least that’d mean a little less weight for Will to carry.

‘That’s right,’ he tells himself, the words swallowed by the never-ending pounding rhythm. ‘Look on the bright side.’

The clock in the kitchen slowly ticked its way to half past nine. Will sat at the little table, nursing a cup of coffee and a foul mood. His head ached, his back hurt, and his eyes felt as if someone had rubbed broken glass into them. That’s what he got for mixing nightmares with whisky.

He shuddered, then went back to staring out of the window.

He’d already called the office twice that morning and been told politely, but firmly, that he was on compassionate leave and Director Smith-Hamilton had ordered them not to bother him at home. Not even if he begged.

So he watched the rain hammer Glasgow into submission instead. A thick lid of bruise-coloured cloud lay over the city, hiding the sun, trapping everything in glooming twilight.

The view of Kelvingrove Park he and Janet had paid so much for was a miserable mix of grey and green, fifty-seven floors below, the paths marked by flickering sodiums-ribbons of weak, jaundiced light that bobbed and swayed in the downpour. The other tower blocks that lined the park like a thirty-storey picket fence of glass and foamcrete marked the end of the world, everything beyond that was lost in the storm.

A Hopper sizzled across the sky, engines whipping the rain into spirals and whorls. And then it was gone.

Will got up from the table and rested his forehead against the window. From up here it was easy to believe he was the only person in the whole world.

When the phone rang he jumped, and lukewarm coffee splashed down his front and onto the carpet. ‘Buggering hell…’ He thumped the cup down on the table and stabbed the ‘pickup’ button.

‘What?’

‘Will, is that you?’ The Network pathologist’s face filled the screen on the kitchen wall, then wrinkled into a pinched frown. The image jiggled about as he belted the screen at his end. ‘Bloody thing’s not working.’

‘It’s OK, George.’ Will settled back against the work surface. ‘Camera at my end’s broken.’ Which was true: he’d fried the imaging circuits with a soldering iron. ‘I can see you fine. What can I do for you?’

‘You remember those stiffs I said had VR syndrome?’

Will nodded, before realizing the fat man couldn’t see him. ‘What about them?’

‘I was wrong, that’s what.’ The pathologist scooted closer, until his round, pink face filled the space between the working surface and the spice rack. ‘It’s not VR, it just looks like it.’

‘It’s not…? Then what the hell is it?’

‘That’s the scary bit. I found traces of a chemical in both brains. At first I thought it was just crap on the slides, but it’s not.’ He ran a handkerchief under his nose and sniffled. ‘Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it’s what changed their brain chemistry to look like they had VR.’ He paused, then started hitting the screen again. ‘Will? Will, you still there?’

‘I’m thinking…’

There was good old Ken Peitai looking after a building full of people with VR syndrome: keeping them safe. Only they didn’t really have VR, did they? Someone had pumped them full of chemicals to make them look and act as if they had. And Will’s prime suspect for that was Ken Bloody Peitai.

And if Mr Peitai was quite happy infecting the occupants of Sherman House with fake VR, planting listening bugs and tracking beacons under the skin of a Network ASD, would he have any ethical problem with tapping that same ASD’s phone?

‘Damn it.’ Should have thought of that earlier. ‘Brian, I’m feeling a bit cooped up here, can you meet me in half an hour for coffee or something?’

The pathologist’s face wrinkled. ‘If…em…I suppose so. Where?’

‘Remember where we had that birthday bash for Emily last year?’

‘Oh, the-’

‘That’s the place. See you there.’ Will hit the ‘disconnect’ button before George could give anything away.

He grabbed his coat and took the elevator down to the ground floor. Normally he’d just keep going to the subbasement, hop on the next shuttle, which is exactly why he didn’t do it this time: avoiding the predictable. Anyway, he had half an hour. More than enough time to nip across Kelvin grove Park, cut down Sauchiehall Street and meet George.

Turning his collar up, Will stepped out into the deluge. He was wet through before he’d gone more than half a dozen paces.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all…

The park was even gloomier than it looked from the kitchen window. Only half of the sodiums seemed to be working, the floating globes hissing and steaming in the pounding rain, like little dying suns. Their light a pale golden glow that shimmered back from the wet path.

No one in their right mind went walking through Kelvin-grove Park when the weather was like this. They huddled indoors, plugged into whatever computer-generated rubbish Comlab were pumping through the public channels these days. Or they hopped onboard the shuttlenet, or the nearest bus. What they didn’t do was squelch along in the rain, going from one patch of yellowed light to the next.

Will kept on walking.

The city sounds were swallowed up by the downpour. Only the flickering holoverts broke the silence-pseudo celebrities pimping unnecessary products whenever he came within range of the sensors. Some public-spirited individual had vandalized a lot of the emitters, leaving blissful stretches of commercial-free peace.