Frank Tayell - Work. Rest. Repeat.

“It was that easy?” Ely asked.

“Easy? You think it was easy? I’ve worked everyday for the betterment of my species. I’ve given up my life to ensure that humanity will continue stronger, purer, able to reconquer the world. It was never easy.”

“And now it’s over,” Ely said. “The Tower has failed. People will have to leave.”

“The explosions have brought that time forwards,” Arthur said. “But that time was coming, anyway. Yes, people will have to leave, and they will need to be led.”

“By you?”

“No, no. Not by me,” Arthur snapped. “Weren’t you listening, boy? If I’d just wanted power I could have had it long ago. This is about our species, about our future. No, I won’t lead. I’ll be the villain, the puppet-master who kept you all imprisoned these decades past. I will become the devil future generations will fear and revile. But I won’t care, because my job has been done.”

“Who then? Or are you expecting me to be their leader?”

“You? No, you’re a brawler. You’re good in a fight, but you’re not a thinker.”

“Then who?” he asked, again.

“Me, Ely.” Vauxhall stepped out from a doorway about twenty feet down the street from Arthur. Like the older man, she kept one of her hands behind her back.

“Hello Vox. I thought you’d be around here somewhere. So, why did you do it?” Ely asked.

“I found out twenty years ago. I was only ten, and I worked out how to hack into the system. I found out, and Arthur found me. He offered me a job. He taught me everything and then, together, we came up with the plan. It was the only way, Ely. The Tower was failing. More energy was being consumed than generated. We did our best to keep things going, but we knew it wouldn’t be long before we had to venture out into this wasteland. We had to prepare the people. More than that, we had to ensure we had the right people. It took us a generation, but we’re nearly ready. Most of the people in the Tower are of the right sort, the right mentality. There are just a few more to weed out.”

“You mean those forty-seven suspects. You were the one who left that note for Penrith?”

“It wasn’t her, it was me,” Arthur said.

“Which amounts to the same thing,” Ely said. “You planted the note as a test, to see who was loyal and who wasn’t?”

“The woman, Penrith, she told over four hundred people over the course of a year,” Vauxhall said. “Only forty-six of them proved unreliable. The others all reported it.”

“But not to me,” Ely said.

“Oh, some did,” Vauxhall said. “I intercepted their messages. I didn’t want you finding out before it was time. I won’t apologise for it, Ely. It was a necessary deception. There’s a time coming when we need to know upon whom we can rely.”

“I don’t imagine for a moment that you’re going to apologise for anything that you’ve done,” Ely said. “But when I asked you why you’d done it, I was talking about the murders.”

“We didn’t kill Gower or Bradford,” Arthur said. “That was your ghost.”

“Gabriel, yes. I know. You needed those two nurses. Who else was there to deal with people supposedly sent for transport to Tower-Thirteen? They were killers, real murderers.”

“That wasn’t murder,” Arthur said. “The Tower was failing. It grew inefficient. More energy was being consumed than created. The population had to be pruned. And who else should I have sacrificed, if not the subversives whose deviance imperilled the future of our species. It wasn’t murder. It was housekeeping.”

“It was murder. The deaths of Gower and Bradford weren’t. That was revenge. But I’m not talking about those deaths.” Ely gauged the distance between himself, Vauxhall and Arthur. He began to walk slowly up the street towards them.

“No,” he said, turning to look at Vauxhall once more, “I want to know why you murdered the Greenes.”

She said nothing.

“I knew something was wrong with the wounds,” Ely said. “Something was wrong with the timing, too. You tried to throw me off track. Both of you. You did a good job. I was concentrating so much on whether the crime took place at three a.m. that I forgot to consider how someone could sleep through the pod being opened and their spouse being murdered right next to them. Of course, I was tired. I suppose that’s why you picked that time for the murder.” He took another step forward. “But I might have worked it out earlier if you hadn’t destroyed most of the archives. If Gabriel hadn’t killed Gower and Bradford, if he’d not slit their throats in revenge, if the blood hadn’t sprayed out onto the walls, I may never have realised. But he did. And I did. Eventually.”

“I didn’t slit their throats,” Vauxhall said.

“No,” he agreed, “you didn’t. It was Arthur or Gower or Bradford. It doesn’t matter which, because they didn’t kill the Greenes. Their hearts had stopped beating long before the blade sliced through their throats. What was it you said? You control the pods and the air-filtration system? You just cut off their air supply. Tell me why.”

“ When we came back,” the ghost had said, “we told them what we found. And they tried to kill us. They thought they had succeeded. But we couldn’t leave. The woman who died in that elevator shaft, Fern, she was Finnya Greene’s sister. She wouldn’t leave her family here. She wanted to help them escape. We had to stay close, but we couldn’t risk hiding outside. We hid in the only place we knew they wouldn’t look. The tunnels. You see, we discovered what they really were, how this city is honeycombed with them. We got access to The Foundations, and to the servers. We found out how to hack into the system and we learned to watch them, and we watched you. It took us years before we discovered how to alter the records and camera footage, and then we had to find clothes, and then, oh and then… It took so long. But we finally managed to make contact with Finnya.”

“ That was six months ago?” Ely had asked.

“ Yes, how did you know?”

“ That was when she handed back her visor,” he had said.

“ Ah.” She’d nodded. “It wasn’t easy. And it wasn’t easy persuading her of the truth. Nor was it easy for her to persuade her family to come with us. But it was all in place. We were going to spirit them out, and at the same time we would cripple the Tower. Everyone would discover the truth, and then do with it whatever they wished. We would be long gone. We were going to act today. It was always today, the day of the election. It seemed fitting.”

“We suspected she knew something,” Vauxhall said. “Handing back that visor, not communicating on-net, and then there was the night the camera moved in her room. She was up to something, and we couldn’t allow that.”

“So you wanted me to think it was Penrith? She didn’t recognise the clothing. I just assumed she was lying, but she wasn’t, was she? She had nothing to do with the deaths. She didn’t know Fern or the Greenes. You planted that evidence, because you wanted me to execute someone.”

“She was guilty, Ely,” Vauxhall said. “It was a test to see whether you were up to what comes next. Whether you would be prepared to help lead your people out into this Promised Land.”

“And it was you who shot at me. Or one of you. I suppose you needed me to think the threat was real. You know, it’s almost funny,” Ely said, as he walked around a mound that appeared to be more metal than moss. “You must have spent a long time working out which room could be accessed without someone appearing on the cameras. But then it turned out that the ghosts actually could get into the system and wipe the records. All that effort on your part, all wasted. But because of it, because they died, all the rest of these events occurred. The woman who died in that elevator, her name was Fern, and she was Finnya Greene’s sister. All she wanted to do was get her family out of the Tower. The killing of Gower and Bradford aside, they don’t believe in killing. Even after you murdered her sister, Fern didn’t come after you. She wanted to lead me up to the roof. Fern wanted me to see the truth. She thought that she controlled the elevator. But you still had control of that, Vox. You disconnected the brakes. You caused it to plummet. That’s another death on your hands.”