“And we can take that choice away,” the robed shaman said. “To ensure that they don’t make the wrong one.”
The silver pen fell onto the carpeted floor and a designer jacketed arm reached down for it. “Are we prepared for everything that’s about to happen, though? The police are working hard enough as it is. There’s no way we can expect them to be able to cope with this influx of violence and crime.”
“There’s not much we can do,” Professor Wright pointed out, patting his inside pocket where he kept his gun, “except protect ourselves.”
“I have no need of weapons. The gods of my tribe keep me safe.” Leaving the two suited men to finish the discussion, the shaman pressed the ‘open’ button on the panel in the wall and stepped inside the lift.
THREE
“I want the whole package,” smiled Robyn as she stood in the middle of a room, covered by black dungarees and a red jumper. “All the extras too. And I want it now!” Patience was not a virtue with Robyn. She was standing in the middle of a computer shop, instructing one of the workers to get her a computer package. “Only the best for my Mika. His old computer caught fire and he wants a new one.” She turned around and stared at one of the teenagers who was walking around with his parents and younger sister.
“Hi,” he said, immediately caught up in her hypnotic gaze.
“We both get cranky when there’s nothing to play with.”
“The games section’s over in the corner.” Helpfully, the youngster pointed over to the far corner. “You’re really pretty.”
“I know. It’s part of my charm.” Robyn clapped her hands twice and the boy walked off with his family, frowning and shaking his head, unclear on what had just happened. “Aah, puberty,” she sighed. “I love that stage.”
“You want everything? It won’t be cheap, madam.”
“I’m not paying for it, silly,” Robyn giggled. “I don’t bother myself with such trivial matters as money.”
“So, who is paying for it? We at least need a deposit of some kind.”
Ignoring his last statement, she decided to change subjects, and gnawed at the scab on her lip. Robyn had left her hair loose to hang about her face so as to hide some of the fresh and ugly injuries Mika had delivered, but in her change of mind, she flicked her hair back and showed the bloody scratch on her head and the purple bruise on her jaw. Knowing that the clerk had seen and was about to comment on her injuries, she pretended to just realise and flicked her hair back over her face, looking around at everyone else in the shop.
“What happened?”
“Oh… er… nothing. It’s okay.”
“Something’s hurt you. Or someone.”
“I just, um… fell downstairs. It’s nothing, really.” The clerk truly believed that she was a victim of domestic violence, she played the role so well. Well, she’d seen enough of it to pull it off convincingly. “Nothing happened. It was just one of those little accidents.”
To the cashier, a stout, balding man in his fifties, any violence was a very serious thing, especially when people felt they had to hide it. He just didn’t understand why anyone would try to hide it. “You should go to the hospital and get it checked out. You might’ve hurt your head.”
“It’ll be okay.” Robyn looped a finger inside the plastic strip they used to tie it together and leaned over the counter. “Wanna know a secret?”
“Do you need someone to carry that out to the car? It’s quite heavy.”
“Do you wanna know a secret?” she repeated, heaving her boxes off the desktop to demonstrate her strength. The computer was heavier than she had imagined, but was light enough to carry without too much strain. “I begged him to do it.” Robyn smiled a thin, little smile as she saw the man recoil in horror. “And now, because you’ve been so helpful, you can have your reward. You get to come and watch.”
Her eyes momentarily glowed the fierce amber of a predator on the hunt, and in a tried and tested move she reached across, grabbed his wrist and yanked him towards her. “Hey! That hurts!” He grabbed onto the edge of the counter as Robyn tried to yank him over the top. “What are you doing? Let go of me, I have to work.” Robyn tightened her grip and put on a burst of pressure until she heard the satisfying snap of bone beneath her hand. “Bitch!” The man – his name badge named him as Adam – took his hand from the edge and slapped it over his broken wrist.
“Thank you.” Oblivious to the half a dozen or so people now watching the scuffle, Robyn hauled him over to her side and marched him out to the covered stock room where she had entered via one of the manholes. “Let’s go.”
Adam, cradling his injured wrist in his other hand, looked down the hole at the flowing sludge in the sewers. “We’re not going down there, are we? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Robyn stared down and squinted as she saw a rat scuttle over the metal rungs. “Do I look like I’m joking?”
Trailing the boxes behind her, Robyn licked her lips involuntarily as she caught sight of Adam’s bare neck. She tore her eyes away from the pulsing veins and carried on through the dirty tunnels. Her only priority now was to get home and make Mika happy with his gift. “Heaven on Earth. Have you ever heard such a ridiculous idea? And they’re going ahead with it.”
Adam stopped walking and bent down to scratch his leg. “No, never heard anything like it. But why are you so bothered about it?”
Robyn sighed in exasperation and poked him with him with one finger to keep him walking. “Keep going. I don’t know exactly what they’re doing, but it’s going to hurt. I know that much. It will hurt, and sting, and… “
As her speech trailed off, Adam turned around. “Are you okay?”
“Not in the mood for talking. Let’s go home.” Hearing his heartbeat quicken, however slightly, and seeing his muscles tense, invisible to human eyes, Robyn flicked an arm out and clamped her hand over his shoulder. “No running, or I’ll break your legs and you’ll never run again.”
“What’s the time?” rasped Carly. “I can’t see my watch.”
Mika opened the curtains a tiny way and peeked out. “About five o’clock.” He walked across the room, trailing his fingers across the back of her exposed neck. Carly tried to pull away from his touch, and Mika let his hands drop to his side as he sat back down. “Why don’t you like it when I touch you? I’m trying to be friendly.”
“I’ve already told you everything that I can, Mika. Why are you doing this to me?” She didn’t understand it. Mika already knew everything she was going to tell him, so why was he still torturing her. Because he enjoyed it. That was the reason, but it was so sick that she didn’t want to admit it. “Why are you being nice to me?”
“Just because I’m a soulless killing machine, I’m not allowed to like people?”
“That argument would be a lot more convincing if it were possible.” Although Carly wouldn’t admit it to him, she was glad that she was being kept here. At least she no longer had to worry about keeping the secrets that FDR Industries had trusted her with. Mika and Robyn would find out sooner or later. Right now, she realised, her best shot to stay alive was to offer her help. “If you and the redhead can somehow get into the Crash Room, I can help you work it all out.” Mika looked up from the floor, where he was using his fingernail to doodle on the wooden floorboards, and motioned for her to go on. “I need another drink first.”
Without a word he left the room and returned quickly with another glass of water. “What do you mean, you can help/”
“Where’s the other one? I think it’d be easier to tell you both together.” Carly found herself transfixed by the droplets off her own blood that were staining the floor. She had shut herself off from all the burns and bloody wounds that Mika and Robyn had taken turns giving her, but knew that she would still be crying and screaming if she let the pain enter her thoughts. She tried to keep herself on such a low level of consciousness
that pain was out of range. Of course, it didn’t work completely but Carly made herself ignore the worst of it.
“The small cuts are always the worst, aren’t they?” Mika taunted her with a small piece of glass he found on the floor from the glass he smashed earlier and whipped it through the air in one fluid movement, drawing blood from a long cut on her upper arm. “It always hurts at first but can’t you just feel it getting better? Giving release to all that pent up tension?”
Carly flinched at she felt the skin tear but didn’t really feel it until she saw the blood trickling down her arm. “I’m chained up but I’m free,” she whispered. Normal ears wouldn’t have picked it up, but Mika’s enhanced hearing detected her every word.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“It’s just red. I’m watching it drip away, and I know it’s wrong but, it doesn’t feel bad.” Carly sniffed at a few new tears that had welled up and hung her head in shame – she shouldn’t be feeling this way. “It hurts and stuff but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s just blood.”
“Have I missed anything?” a familiar, dreamy voice echoed through the house. “Mika, I’ve got a present for you!” Robyn entered the room, dragging a large cardboard box behind her in one hand, and pulled an older man by the wrist. “His name’s Adam and I found him in a nice little computer place.” There were over a dozen people in that shop, customers alone, and Robyn herself wasn’t sure why she had chosen this older man over the other younger, tastier morsels available. “I don’t like him. He keeps talking at me.”
“I needed something to take my mind off all those rats in the sewers.”
“Well, there’s a simple cure for that.” Mika looked the man up and down, then turned him around on the spot as he inspected him. “Too old. Kill him,” he pushed the man over to Robyn, who grabbed his head in both hands, then paused as Adam spoke.
“H-hey. Don’t you want to show him his new computer?” he stalled, trying to grasp at a few extra seconds. “It’s a top-of-the-range model. It’s got a top graphics card and brilliant speakers.”
“You’re family are all in heaven,” Robyn said, just knowing.
“How do you know that? I never mentioned it.”
“My baby can see things in your eyes. In your heart.” Mika leaned over the man and reached for one of her trembling, white hands. “In your soul.”
“I see loss. And longing to see them again. And… mmmmm,” Hungrily, Robyn lifted her nose and sniffed at the air. “Sweet fear.”
Carly was watching this exchange from her chains, but didn’t even feel sorry for the man who was quaking with fear between them. “There’s no point,” she muttered to herself. “No point at all.” She didn’t feel anything for the man in the green PC Planet t-shirt – her emotions were no longer unstoppable chemical impulses in her body. They were now no more than a memory.
“… dead,” Robyn was telling him when Carly refocused her eyes. “It’s time for you to join them.” He closed his eyes as her hands gripped his head on either side and Carly heard his neck break before the dead man fell to the floor. She squealed in child-like delight and smiled at Mika; Mika returned a quick grin. “Do you like watching me do that?”
“Almost as much as doing it my self, love. Why did you take him in public?”
“The risk of it. Things are happening. People are too distracted to bother.” Robyn looked down at the front of her dungarees and brushed vigorously at a track of dirt that only she could see. How could she explain that it was so much more fun when you did things right under people’s noses? “It’s just a game.”
Mika took her hand away from her and held it to his smooth unblemished cheeks. He smiled as Robyn began to trace over the familiar lines of his face with her thumb. Carly turned her head away; there was only so much she could take of them hurting each other and being so tender with each other. Mika took his hand away and placed it on her cheek, above the large bruise. Her skin was cool to the touch, as was his, but it was creamy-white and lightly tinged with pink – a flush from the excitement of the last few minutes. “Let’s unchain Carly,” he suggested, wincing as Robyn dug her nails into his cheek, making deep marks in his flesh.
Robyn’s eyes filled with tears and she sank to her knees by the side of the dead man. “Why am I crying? I’m not supposed to feel like this.”
Mika squatted down and held her gaze. “You’re sad.” A second later, he realised that that wasn’t true – she was far from sad. He felt Robyn run her fingers through his hair and hit the floor on his side as she pushed him away from her. He squinted up at her but, as fast as he was, he didn’t even have time to sit up before Robyn was on him punching him repeatedly in the face.
“I am not sad!” she cried, punctuating every few words with another assault. “I don’t get sad! I don’t feel that any more!” But, of course, that wasn’t entirely true. Robyn felt sad whenever she thought Mika might be hurt. No, she wasn’t sad – she was angry and scared. And she was dealing with these strange human emotions the same way that she dealt with all problems – by lashing out at them. “Don’t pretend you know how I feel when you don’t feel anything yourself.” She looked down at her bloodied knuckles and then at Mika’s lumpy and bruised face. In disbelief at how she had hurt him, Robyn moved back to the floor and cradled Mika in her arms. “I don’t understand all these things inside. Everything’s switching and making me feel like this.”
Mika wasn’t sure he understood. Robyn had adapted to all kinds of change in the past, but this one was too big for her too handle. And Mika would do anything to stop her from feeling like this… to stop her from feeling.
“Back to the Crash Room, Carly,” said Mika around a rapidly swelling top lip.
She looked up, no longer affected by the painful-looking injuries they bestowed on each other. She couldn’t bring herself to watch the couple hurt each other, but all she felt was relief that it wasn’t her they were torturing. “What about it?”
Robyn shuddered as Mika rose on unsteady legs, and moaned softly. “Don’t go. There will be danger and shooting.”
Mika raised one quizzical eyebrow in Carly’s direction, and she nodded.
Gareth Jordan-Smyth was sat in his large, airy office on the first floor of the tall building, looking out of the window at the warehouse opposite. Hr also had an office on the first floor of the warehouse where he usually worked but it was nice to come over here every once in a while. “Don’t you just love life?” he asked his assistant.
“You haven’t got kids at home, have you?”
“Blissfully no.” He threw the window open and took a lungful of fetid, smoke-filled air. “Haven’t you ever wanted to know what it’d be like?”
“What what would be like?”
“Not to have to worry about getting attacked in the dark.” Gareth turned around to face her. “Not to have to read about murders in the newspapers, or hear about war in the news. Not to have to go to court because someone did something wrong.”
Lizzie held out the papers that needed to be signed, and sat down as she waited. “I never even thought about it, to be honest. Life is just life. We can’t change it.”
“What if we could change it, though? Wouldn’t you prefer to live in a world where nothing bad ever happens rather the violent one we live in now?”
No, I don’t think I would.”
“Why not?” he asked, taking out his silver pen and signing the papers on his desk.
“Because we wouldn’t really be living if we didn’t have conflict,” Lizzie said after a moment of thought. “We need bad people in the world to keep the balance with the good. Without that, we’re not living. Just existing.”
“Haven’t you ever wished it, or thought about it… just for a second or two?”
Thoughtfully, Lizzie chewed on the inside of her cheek and picked at the corner of her plastic covered black clipboard
. “I’ve thought about it, I suppose. When you’ve got three fighting teenagers at home, it’s your only refuge. But I wouldn’t swap the kids for the world. I think life’s pretty good as it is.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.” He took the gun out of his pocket and laid the silver and black weapon on the table between him and Lizzie. “Look at that, Liz.”
She put her clipboard on the table and bent over the gun. “It’s a gun, sir.”
“I know what it is, Lizzie. I have to carry it around with me all the time. The point of it is that I shouldn’t have to need to keep that for protection.”
Listening to her boss speak, Lizzie picked it up and turned it over in her hands, strangely fascinated by it. She didn’t like guns – or any weapons of any kind, for that matter – but she liked the feel of the cool, heavy metal in her hands. “Such a small thing can cause so much damage.”
“… what I’m saying?” he finished.
“You’re right. You shouldn’t have to protect yourself with this,” she agreed, still holding the gun in one hand. “But there’s not much we can do about it. Life’s dangerous, you just learn to get on with things.” Suddenly, Lizzie raised the gun and aimed it straight at his chest.
“Lizzie. What are you doing?”
“Getting on with things.”
Gareth held up his hands and smiled, nervously. “Put the gun down, Liz. It’s not a toy.”
“Oh, I know.” She flexed her fingers around the rubber grip and stared at him, hard. She watched him as he slowly closed his laptop, and pushed the papers over the desk. She put them on the top of the clipboard and picked them up in her free hand. “It’s very real.”
The pistol still trained on his chest, Gareth was almost too afraid to breathe – but only almost. He wasn’t too scared to beg for his life. “You don’t wanna do this, Lizzie. Are you angry with me about something; I thought we were mature enough to talk about things.”