Charles Stross - The Atrocity Archives

The inspector comes up behind me, staggering slightly in the daylight. "What's going on?" she asks.

"Here, meet Scary Spice and Sergeant Howe. Sarge, Scary, meet Detective Inspector Sullivan. Uh, the first thing you need to do is to go round the site and shoot out every closed circuit TV camera you can see-or that can see you. Got that? And webcams. And doorcams. See a camera, smash it, that's the rule."

"Cameras. Ri-ight." Sergeant Howe looks mildly skeptical, but nods. "It's definitely cameras?"

"Who are these guys?" asks Josephine.

"Artists' Rifles. They work with us," I say. Scary nods, deeply serious. "Listen, you go outside, do anything necessary to keep the local emergency services off our backs. If you need backup ask Sergeant Howe here. Sarge, she's basically sound and she's working for us on this. Okay?"

She doesn't wait for confirmation, just shoves past me and heads out into the daylight, blinking and shaking her head. I carry on briefing the OCCULUS guys. "Don't worry about anything that uses film, it's the closed circuit TV variety that's hostile. And, oh, try to make sure that you are never in view of more than one of 'em at a time."

"And don't walk on the cracks in the pavement or the bears will get us, check." Howe turns to Scary Spice: "Okay, you heard the man. Let's do it." He glances at me. "Anything inside?"

"We're taking care of it," I say. "If we need help we'll ask."

"Check." Scary is muttering into his throat mike and fake firemen with entirely authentic fire axes are walking around the bushes along the side of the building as if searching for signs of combustion. "Okay, we'll be out here."

"Is Angleton in the loop? Or the captain?"

"Your boss is on his way out here by chopper. Ours is on medical leave. You need to escalate, I'll get you the lieutenant."

"Okay." I duck back into the reception area then nerve myself to go back into the development pool at the rear of the building, below the offices and above the labs.

Site Able is a small departmental satellite office, small for security reasons: ten systems engineers, a couple of manager dogsbodies, and a security officer. Most of them are right here right now, and they're not going anywhere. I walk around the service core in the dim glow of the emergency light, bypassing splashes of green paint that look black in the red glow. The octagonal developer pool at the back is also dimly illuminated-there are no windows, and the doors are triple-sealed with rubber gaskets impregnated with fine copper mesh-and some of the partitions have been blown over. The whole place is ankle deep in white mist left over from the halon dump system that went off when the first bodies exploded-good thing the air conditioning continued to run or the place would be a gas trap. The webcams are all where I left them, in a trash can at the foot of the spiral staircase up to level one, cables severed with my multitool just to make sure nobody tries to plug them back in again.

The victims-well, I have to step over one of them to get up the staircase. It's pretty gross but I've seen dead bodies before, including burn cases, and at least this was fast. But I don't think I'm going to forget the smell in a hurry. In fact, I think I'm going to have nightmares about it tonight, and maybe get drunk and cry on Mo's shoulder several times over the next few weeks until I've got it out of my system. But for now, I shove it aside and step over them. Got to keep moving, that's the main thing-unless I want there to be more of them. And on my conscience.

At the top of the staircase there's a narrow corridor and partitioned offices, also lit by the emergency lights. I follow the sound of keyclicks to Voss's office, the door of which is ajar. Potted cheese plants wilting in the artificial light, puke-brown antistatic carpet, ministry-issue desks-nobody can accuse Q Division's brass of living high on the hog. Andy's sitting in front of Voss's laptop, tapping away with a strange expression on his face. "OCCULUS is in place," I report. "Found anything interesting?"

Andy points at the screen. "We're in the wrong fucking town," he says mildly.

I circle the desk and lean over his shoulder. "Oh shit."

"You can say that again if you like." It's an email Cc'd to Voss, sent over our intranet to a Mike McLuhan. Subject: meeting. Sender: Harriet.

"Oh shit. Twice over. Something stinks. Hey, I was supposed to be in a meeting with her today," I say.

"A meeting?" Andy looks up, worried.

"Yeah. Bridget got a hair up her ass about running a BSA-authorised software audit on the office, the usual sort of make-work. Don't know that it's got anything to do with this, though."

"A software audit? Didn't she know Licencing and Compliance handles that on a blanket department-wide basis? We were updated on it about a year ago."

"We were-" I sit down heavily on the cheap plastic visitor's chair. "What are the chances this McLuhan guy put the idea into Harriet's mind in the first place? What are the chances it isn't connected?"

"McLuhan. The medium is the message. SCORPION STARE. Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" Andy sends me a worried look.

" 'Nother possibility, boss-man. What if it's an internal power play? The software audit's a cover, Purloined Letter style, hiding something fishy in plain sight where nobody will look at it twice until it's too late."

"Nonsense, Bridget's not clever enough to blow a project wide open just to discredit-" His eyes go wide.

"Are you sure of that? I mean, really and truly sure? Bet-your-life sure?"

"But the body count!" He's shaking his head in disbelief.

"So it was all a prank and it was meant to begin and end with Daisy, but it got a bit out of control, didn't it? These things happen. You told me the town police camera network's capable of end-to-end tracking and zone hand-off, didn't you? My guess is someone in this office-Voss, maybe-followed me to the car pound and realised we'd found the vehicle McLuhan used to boost Daisy. Stupid wankers, if they'd used one of their own motors we'd not be any the wiser, but they tried to use a stolen one as a cutout. So they panicked and dumped SCORPION STARE into the pound, and it didn't work, so they panicked some more and McLuhan panicked even more-bet you he's the go-between, or even the guy behind it. What is he, senior esoteric officer? Deputy site manager? He's in London so he planted the crazy blackmail threat then brought down the hammer on his own coworkers. Bet you he's a smart sociopath, the kind that does well in midlevel management, all fur coat and no knickers-and willing to shed blood without a second thought if it's to defend his position."

"Damn," Andy says mildly as he stands up. "Okay, so. Internal politics, stupid bloody prank organised to show up Angleton, they use idiots to run it so your cop finds the trail, then the lunatic in chief cuts loose and starts killing people. Is that your story?"

"Yup." I nod like my neck's a spring. "And right now they're back at the Laundry doing who the fuck knows what-"

"We've got to get McLuhan nailed down fast, before he decides the best way to cover his tracks is to take out head office. And us." He smiles reassuringly. "It'll be okay, Angleton's on his way in. You haven't seen him in action before, have you?"

PICTURE A LIGHT INDUSTRIAL/OFFICE ESTATE IN the middle of anytown with four cherry-red fire pumps drawn up, men in HAZMAT gear combing the brush, a couple of police cars with flashing light bars drawn up across the road leading into the cul-de-sac to deter casual rubberneckers. Troops disguised as firemen are systematically shooting out every one of the security cameras on the estate with their silenced carbines. Others, wearing police or fire service uniforms, are taking up stations in front of every building-occupied or otherwise-to keep the people inside out of trouble.