Spares

‘One of them is using a mobile,’ Ratchet interrupted suddenly. ‘Go. Go. Go.’ As he repeated the word, over and over with eerie similarity like some verbal siren, I heard a crash from down the corridor. I ran to the spares and shoved them out into the compound as footsteps ticked down the OR corridor. The steps paused for a moment, presumably by the body of the orderly, and then thundered towards us: aggressive, purposeful slaps of leather on dry tiles.

‘Get in the ambulance,’ I shouted at David, who just stared at me. He knew what a van was – he'd seen cars and trucks on television. As for how you got into them, that was a different matter, and not something they go to great pains to explain in films. It's generally taken as read. He started banging his hands, palms down, against one of the doors, frustration spiralling into fury.

Suej stared at me, ready to do something, anything, if I would only tell her what it should be; and Jenny stood to one side, head down, holding one of Suej's hands and crying into the wind. I felt a toxic gout of hatred of myself, for making her feel to blame for what was showering all around us. Then suddenly six cubic inches of the door frame exploded into my face.

I believe some moments in your life collapse into themselves, that some things never really happen at all except in the grainy slow motion of retrospect. Perhaps those moments, those sparks which flare and fall out of your life, are drawn together somewhere, to make a whole that stands apart from you. Maybe they are all part of some other life. The killing of the orderly had been a simple, savage act. The surgeon was different, was a glimpse of this other void swimming into vision out of darkness.

In silence, I turned slowly to see the surgeon bursting into the control room, his body surging towards me. His face was hard, with straight lines of bone, skin stretched with effort and two chips of ice in his eyes; his gun was steady in his hand. His mouth opened as he shouted something at me, but I never heard what it was. My hands pumped the gun, fired it from the hip, but I watched the effect it had as if my eyes were cameras and I was sitting in some entirely different room somewhere far away. The round caught him squarely in the stomach and it looked almost as if his lungs and bowels stayed where they were while the rest of his body leapt forward.

Then time hit me like a truck from the side and I stumbled backwards into the yard as Ratchet kept repeating his alarm, over and over again. There was something damaged and empty about the sound, and I wondered if he'd been hit.

The yard was brightly lit against the darkness by arclights in each corner. In less than a second I realized where the medic droid had been going when he left the complex: to cut the tyres of the ambulance. I guess he couldn't have known we'd make it there first and, since it couldn't harm SafetyNet employees, had done his best to destroy their means of pursuit. Nice thinking on his, or – more likely – Ratchet's part, but not everything goes the way you expect. As I stared bleakly at the vehicle I heard an excited squawk from behind me, and turned to see Ragald standing shivering in the door. Nanune was hiding behind him, gaping at the mess in the control room. Both were completely naked.

I got within an inch of shouting at them to go back inside, caught sight of Ratchet, and clamped my mouth shut. Wincing against the sound of David's continuing attack on the ambulance, I threw my bag at Suej and told her to get them dressed. Then I grabbed the neck of David's coat, hauled him away from a door which was now covered in dents from his fists, and ran towards the gate. I trusted Ratchet to keep the other doctor out of my hair for a few minutes at least.

I fired a round at the gate's lock mechanism, and then two others at the hinges. The metal bent and split, not completely but enough. As David and I kicked and shouldered the remains of the gate, we heard a bellow behind us. I whirled with the gun, teeth unconsciously bared, and came very close to blowing Mr Two to pieces. When I saw he'd brought half a body out with him I shut my eyes and nearly pulled the trigger anyway.

Suej held her hands up, took a coat and pair of overalls out for the latest addition to our merry band, and put the half spare in my bag, which was by now empty of clothes. What would have been enough to keep four people warm was now spread thinly over six and a half.

When the gate finally gave way, eventually aided by another round from the riot gun, I shouted at the spares and they straggled towards the gate with maddening slowness. When they reached the fence they all stopped as one, looking out through the hole in the gate like a litter of kittens; in front of an open window for the first time and not knowing what on earth to make of the possibilities beyond.

An hour later we were on a CybTrak train, trundling round the outskirts of Roanoke and heading for the mountains. CybTrak wouldn't have been my first choice of transport, maybe not even my second or third. Like anyone else, when something's after me I want to be getting the hell away as quickly as possible: making a getaway on CybTrak was like taking part in a car chase while riding a pogo stick. The network is only there to transport non-perishable goods slowly round the backwoods. I could have made better time just running. But within a few minutes of leaving the compound I saw that there was a higher priority than speed: getting the spares somewhere contained, manageable and away from normal eyes.

They tried their best, David and Suej in particular. They'd all sat up nights and dreamed aloud of some day setting foot beyond the fence. I used to hear snatches of these conversations sometimes, as I dozed over a book at the other side of the control room. I'd let them talk, though I knew – or thought I did – that it could never happen. A release from pain, some better place. Everyone needs a religion, some unseen good to yearn towards.

The moment I actually got them out, they froze. It was too much. Way, way too much. Most stopped dead in their tracks, trying to inventory the new things one by one. As the new things started with the black road at their feet and continued indefinitely in every direction, I sensed it could take a while. Ragald went to the other extreme, tuning everything out and thrumming instead with a blind and nervous joy which pulled each limb in a different direction and threatened to tear him apart. Mr Two gazed meditatively across the hill, turning in a slow circle and intoning the word ‘spatula’ at regular intervals, and Jenny stood slightly apart, trying to occupy as little space as possible.

I got them moving eventually, but it was like trying to hurry a group of children on acid through a toy factory. Every step was too magical to understand, never mind leave behind.

There was a T-junction thirty yards up the hill. I couldn't remember where the two choices went, and squinted in both directions. One seemed to head round a hill, probably towards the town; the other looked as if it headed off towards the south end of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We didn't want to go to Roanoke – hell, who does? – so I took them right instead.

It was impossible. By dint of shouting at them I managed to focus David and Suej, but that was all. Mr Two wouldn't walk in a straight line, but in large bowing curves like a cat. Nanune was still trying to hide behind Ragald, and whenever the male spare turned to stare at something new she shuffled round behind him until they were suddenly walking in another direction altogether. I could have made quicker progress walking backwards on my hands. It was pitch dark, and the temperature was dropping like a stone. I was torn between a rising panic and insane calm. The two fed each other, melding together until they were transformed into some larger feeling of swift and glittering dread.

Then two yellow eyes appeared ahead, and I bundled the spares rapidly off the road. By the time the car had passed I knew that we couldn't simply keep on walking.

I got us a half mile up the Parkway, to a point where the trees were thickening on either side of the road. Then I collected the spares into a group, led them into the trees, and impressed upon them the importance of shutting the fuck up.

It was like being in the tunnels when the operating men came, I said — only even more important.

I walked away, turned back to check they were out of sight and saw Ragald obliviously following me. I returned him to the group under Suej's supervision, and then walked away again. From twenty yards they were invisible. They'd be safe for a little while — at least until SafetyNet came with dogs. Holding the gun up against my chest, conscious of how few cartridges I had left, I ran off to see what I could find.

I was too wired then to feel what I experienced the following morning in the CybTrak compound — a sudden delirious joy at being back in the world. Instead, I concentrated on keeping myself invisible, trying to work out a way we could get out of the area. The fact that the road wasn't crawling with SafetyNet security or Roanoke police already was almost eerie. We had very little time to vanish.

I found the CybTrak rails after about ten minutes and ran back to collect the spares. They were terrified by then, and so cold they could barely walk, but I got them back to the track. We waited, and it was not long before a train meandered past. I walked alongside the train hauling the spares one by one into a carriage full of computer parts.

Then I jumped up myself, pushed the panel shut, and we left the Farm behind for ever.

Howie sat staring at his hands, as he had for much of the second part. I'd seldom met his eye, just let my mouth run. It was the first time in five years I'd had a real conversation with someone who wasn't a droid or a spare. Even though I'd been describing a disaster area, it had felt good. Except now I'd finished I remembered it was all true, and that there were people who wanted to punish me for it.

I told Howie the rest, how we'd fetched up in a backwoods CybTrack compound that morning, and how Ragald had been cut in half by two security droids which had disguised themselves as an abandoned snow-covered carriage. Then I stood up, bones creaking, and fetched another beer from the fridge.

When I sat back down at the table Howie raised his eyes and looked at me. Then he started slowly shaking his head.

Five

I woke the next morning from dreams which had been confused and bitter. When my eyes blinked open and I found myself lying stiffly on the floor with my head on a balled-up coat I was seized for a moment with weary dread, the kind you get when you find yourself somewhere you have no recollection of going to, somewhere you can't even understand, and all you know is a churning confidence that you have done something wrong which you don't even remember.

Then I realized where I was, lying on the floor to Howie's storeroom, and fragments of dreams danced in front of my eyes. Trees, alive with flame, blackening leaves flicking back and forth with faces which were not there. Then real faces, faces ruptured with fear, studded with eyes which wore terror like milky cataracts. A smell, like the worst of the tunnels, but with a downwards slope towards death, a stench which had nothing to do with healing and everything to do with a final dissolution. A flock of mad, happy orange birds, disappearing behind a hut.

I screwed my eyes up and pushed my fists into them, morphing the flames into geometric patterns which swirled and jumped. Then I let go and they disappeared. I sat up, reaching for a cigarette, and looked around.

Suej was still asleep. After Howie and I had finished I carried her through and laid her on the sacks which looked softest. She woke and we had a talk, mainly about David and where he might be. It felt different, being with her. She was just one person in the world now. After years of being there for her and the spares all the time, I'd started to go away. Maybe it wasn't my fault. Perhaps it was just an inevitable consequence of returning here, like my increasing desire for Rapt. Ratchet once told me that you remember things best in the state that you learnt them in the first place. Being back in New Richmond and trying to remember how to behave while straight was like trying to balance a chainsaw on my chin while bombed out of my mind.

I'd lain on the floor thinking of Rapt the previous night, thinking of it for hours. Thinking of how the worst addictions are the easiest to get hold of. Like alcohol. There it is, in stores, in bars, in people's homes. It's right there. You can see it, reach out for it, fall into it. People don't have Rapt in their drinks cabinets, but it's not too hard to get hold of it if you know where to go, and I knew.

I could hear the sound of revelry from the bar, and checked my watch. Seven a.m. The first shift. I watched the smoke from my cigarette curl into the air, and wondered what I was going to do. Just about every part of my mind knew that I shouldn't be here, that I should take Howie's advice and get out. I'd had no right to bring the spares into this in the first place, into a city they didn't know and problems they couldn't understand. Now the city had stolen them, and at three a.m. there'd still been no word on where they might be.

I was finding it increasingly hard to believe it was SafetyNet who'd taken them. Before we'd gone to sleep I'd pressed Suej hard on exactly what happened when the men came to Mal's apartment. There was something about the way she described events that made me wonder if they hadn't been bargaining on finding the spares. I was also intrigued by the fact they'd blundered round the apartment before they went. I'm not a small guy – it would have been fairly evident if I'd have been standing there, not least because I would have been firing a gun. Finally, only leaving one guy to finish me off: why not two, or more?

Maybe it was some gang making good on the contract Howie had warned me about, and then just picking the spares up as booty. All of them, except maybe the half-spare, could have been sold on for some purpose. Jenny alone was worth good money.

I needed to know which was true. If it was SafetyNet, chances were it was all over. If not, then maybe there was still time to get the spares back before anything happened to them.

But first Mal needed burying. I wasn't going to leave him spread over his apartment to rot.

I rose quietly, used the men's room for a shave and then sat for a while on a bench in the street outside the bar, with a café au lait bought from a food stand on the corner. I knew there were only two questions worth answering – who the killers were and where they'd gone – but I felt as if I'd missed some train in the night. It was like I knew the rules but not the game any more; or maybe it was the other way around.

The news post on the corner kept distracting me; burbling the day's current factoids. Another woman had been found dead, this time on the 104th floor. The story rated slightly longer than the previous day's, because the victim lived the right side of a certain horizontal line. Her face had also suffered ‘unspecified damage’.

I frowned – two homicides with the same MO, on different floors, on consecutive days. ‘Unspecified damage’ smacked of the cops holding back something distinctive to weed out hoax confessors. For just a moment my mind clicked into an old frame of reference, stirred sluggishly towards interest.

Then I told myself it was none of my business any more.

The rest of the bulletin was fluff. New advances in some technology or other, recent statistics on something else. Some guy believed to be a mob figure had been found dead, and someone had discovered that Everest wasn't the highest mountain after all.

‘Beignet?’

‘No,’ I said. I hate breakfast. I turned to see Howie standing beside me, contentedly munching.

‘You should eat something. It gives you a good start on the day.’

‘It gives you brain tumours,’ I said. ‘I read it somewhere.’

Howie sat on the bench next to me and took a sip of my coffee. He chewed for another few moments, ostensibly watching the newscast. Then he turned his round face towards me.

‘I know this is turning into a constant refrain,’ he said, ‘But what you're thinking about is not a good idea.’

‘What am I thinking about?’

Howie pointed at me with a beignet. ‘You should go bury Mal, if that's what you're going to do. Then find some wheels, and I'll get Paulie to deliver Suej to wherever you are. You could be in the mountains by lunchtime, who knows where by tomorrow. That's what you should do. To be frank, Jack, you're not the guy you used to be — and I mean that as a compliment. I don't look at you and think “Christ — a psycho” any more. You've already fucked off the guys who owned your Farm. Topping that by paying a visit on a certain spaghetti-eater of our mutual acquaintance isn't such a hot idea.’

‘What makes you think I'd do that?’

‘Your head gives you away. It glows when you're about to do something stupid. And that would be really stupid.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It would.’

When I was outside Mal's door I hesitated for a moment. I'd seen a lot of bad things happen to friends, admittedly usually while Rapt, but none of them had ever truly gone away. Sometimes I could feel them, just out of sight, as if I could turn my head quickly and catch them for a moment, bright and backlit and eternal.

On the other hand, if I didn't do this now it wasn't going to happen at all. I unlocked the door and opened it. The apartment was cold and it hadn't really been that long: while I wasn't expecting the smell to be bad, I wasn't anticipating enjoying it.

I was surprised to find it wasn't there at all. Slightly relieved, I shut the door behind me and crossed the room. I stopped abruptly halfway.

Mal's body wasn't there.

I stood there stupidly, waving my head this way and that, trying to see it differently. I couldn't. His body simply wasn't there. Closer inspection revealed that the floor was clean, with no sign of the blood, bone chips and brain smear which had been there the night before.

I checked the john, Mal's sleeping area, the cupboards. The latter were stuffed full of Mal's patented brand of junk. Everywhere else was empty.

Mal's body had been taken away, taken by someone who'd unlocked the door and then locked it again behind them.

The only person who could have known about it was someone connected with the killer – whose own body had not been in the bottom hallway when I'd entered the building.

Leaving Mal's apartment unlocked, I ran downstairs a flight and knocked on the door from behind which, for once, no music was coming. After a pause it opened. The rat-faced man stood and glared at me.

‘What you want?’ He looked nervous as hell.

‘Have you seen anyone go upstairs in the last twenty-four hours?’

‘No. Been too busy fucking your mother,’ he said, and pushed the door back at my face. I stuck my foot in the jamb. It probably hurt, but I was too wired to notice. Rat-man's head appeared again. ‘Go 'way before trouble starts, man,’ he advised, face pinched.

‘It's already started,’ I said, kicking the door straight back at him and crunching it into his nose. He clattered back into the hallway and fell somewhat awkwardly on his head. I strode a couple of paces into the apartment, which smelt bad, looking for more fun. Rat-face's friend appeared in another doorway, recognized me, darted back the way he'd come. I followed, and found myself in a room with a gun pointing at my head.

Sitting at a table in the corner was a large black man, head shaven, the whites of his eyes luminous in the gloom. A line of blue LCDs was tattooed into his scalp from front to back, blinking softly in the twilight. His features were broad and brutal, and his skin was greasy. He stared impassively at me. Narcotics were spread out in front of him, arranged into piles of various sizes. I'd interrupted a buy – no wonder people were kind of edgy. I stood still. It seemed the thing to do.

After a moment the big man lowered the gun. He looked at me a little longer, moving his head slightly as if trying to catch a glimpse of me in a different light. Something about him struck me as strange, though I couldn't put my finger on what it might be.

Rat-face reappeared raggedly from the hallway and started squawking, hungry for blood. ‘Say adios to your brain, motherfuck,’ he snarled, and my head was suddenly knocked forward as he jammed the barrel of his gun into my neck.

‘Ain't no call for that,’ the big man said mildly. ‘Leastways not until we find out what he wants.’

‘I want to know if anyone saw someone go upstairs since last night,’ I said, trying to avoid looking at the man's flashing head. I thought I could hear it blinking on and off like a car indicator.

‘Well?’ the man said, raising his eyebrows at the other two men. In variously bad tempers but with apparent sincerity, the men denied having seen anyone. The big man looked back at me. ‘This be anything to do with the dead dude in the hallway?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And who the fuck are you?’

‘No one in particular,’ he said. ‘Just passing through, doing a little deal with my new friends here. I ain't seen anyone either, and I didn't recognize the bag of bones lying downstairs. You want him, you can find the body in the bins behind the back of Mandy's Diner out on the edge.’

‘You moved it there?’

‘Surely did. It was lowering the tone.’

‘Okay,’ I said, starting to back out of the room.

‘Now I'm going to blow his face off,’ said Rat-face, getting excitable again. The big man tutted.

‘No you ain't: can't you get that into your head?’

Rat-face stuffed his gun into the front of his pants and squared up to me instead. ‘Okay, well Marty and me'll just beat the shit out of him, then. Okay?’ He glanced at the black man for confirmation, and I wondered what the power structure was here.

Marty looked less than enthusiastic at the prospect, and quietly relieved when the big man shook his head. ‘You welcome to try,’ he said, ‘but the dude has the Bright Eyes and in my experience they tend to be some crazy motherfucks.’

He winked at me, and went back to sorting his piles of drugs. Rat-face glared. Marty had taken a step backwards at the mention of Bright Eyes, and took another as I turned to him. I walked unmolested through the gap and out of the apartment.

Back in Mal's I stood for a while, wondering what to do next. Then I noticed something, and walked slowly to where Mal's display hung on the wall down by the window. When the sheet of cloth was pulled away it confirmed what I'd suspected.

The display had gone. The board was still there, covered in tiny holes where pins had been, but all of the photos and notes had been removed. I let the cloth fall again.

Who'd done this? Not Mal. He wouldn't have had time before being killed. And why would he take it down? He was a cop. It was his work. He was entitled to have what the fuck he liked on his walls. So who?

Whoever cleaned the place up.

Or, I thought, maybe it had happened earlier than that. When I'd come back to find Mal dead, checking whether his board was still intact had been the last thing on my mind. Perhaps the fumbling Suej had heard was a scrabbling as they ripped everything off of the board.

Either way, it begged questions: why remove evidence of what Mal had been working on? What did that have to do with me?

Answer, nothing.

So maybe it wasn't me they'd been after. Maybe Mal had been the target all along.

I lit a cigarette and stared out of the window until I'd finished it. I was thinking, I guess, though it was like swatting flies off a piece of meat. Then I locked the door so I wouldn't be disturbed, and tossed Mal's apartment. Not all of it, you understand; the cupboards alone would have taken months. Just the places a cop would hide things.