11th December 2206
Cestus Odgers was easier than expected. Ollie turned up at his house, playing the desperate innocent routine, saying how eager he was to sell the Nightstar model for a cryptoken full of watts. Odgers wouldn’t buy it for himself. ‘It’s a small piss-poor market these days, fella. And I don’t have that kind of money any more. But I know someone that does.’
The finder’s fee was a half-charged quantum battery. Ollie didn’t try to haggle. An easy mark. So the call was made to Larson, who agreed to meet. But Ollie had to have the model for inspection, to prove he wasn’t a time waster.
So once again he found himself cycling into Docklands, this time with the Nightstar rattling along in the trailer behind him. He’d never had weapons peripherals, like some in the Legion. Instead he put on the jacket with the systems from his stealth suit, ran diagnostics on the darkware Tye was loaded with, and finally stashed the nerve-block pistol and synth slugs into the Nightstar’s hangar deck. A twenty-centimetre ceramic blade was strapped to his forearm, under the jacket.
The Icona entrance had an old-style intercom, with an actual physical button for every apartment. When Ollie pressed for the third-floor penthouse, Tye used the passive sensors stitched into his jacket to see if he was being scanned. But the only electrical activity it could detect was a small current in the intercom panel, powering a camera.
Larson’s voice came out of the intercom. ‘Come on up, and bring the model.’ The door lock buzzed.
Ollie hadn’t anticipated having to carry the model, and definitely not up three flights of stairs. It wasn’t excessively heavy, but getting it up the twisting stairwell without knocking it against the wall was a bastard of a trip.
He was sweating heavily by the time he reached the third floor and came out onto a long corridor with half a dozen doors. There were no windows, but one of the doors was open, providing some light. As he passed it, he saw the apartment had been ransacked. Tye detected an active local network using sensors lining the corridor to scan him, so it infiltrated the node and launched a series of darkware packages into the system.
The door at the end of the corridor didn’t have a handle; instead there was a single red LED glowing in the centre. Ollie stood in front of it, looking twitchy, as any chancer would.
There was a soft click, and the door swung inwards a couple of centimetres.
‘Come in,’ a voice said from inside. ‘The power hinges don’t work, so you’ll have to push.’
The door was as heavy as a bank vault’s. Hard to get moving, but once he’d applied enough pressure it swung back as smoothly as if it was floating on oil. Ollie staggered in with the Nightstar clutched in front of him. Tye splashed the progress of the darkware as it slipped undetected through the penthouse systems. Larson clearly took his security a lot more seriously than Schumder did. There were five concealed guns in the walls and ceiling, as well as a panic room. Tye disabled the weapons.
Ollie peered around the purple-and-black mosaic that was the Nightstar’s curving wings. The penthouse was open plan, presenting a single split-level reception room with a high ceiling, and a window wall looking out across the Royal Dock outside. Once upon a time it must have been a swish place to live, but now . . . Tall glass display cabinets cluttered the floor, the only furniture left – esoteric tombstones turning the big space into a mausoleum of extinct trash-culture. Every centimetre of their shelf space was full of figurines and toys and show-branded games and badges, but that still wasn’t enough space for the collection. Ollie managed to walk six paces into the room and then couldn’t go any further. Plastic crates were piled up in the aisles, overflowing with more junk. Models of vehicles combined with furry alien creatures to form long, unruly dunes, onto which tides of actual paper books had fallen, their bizarre, colourful covers slowly fading as entropy brittled them. Signed posters of ancient blockbuster movies in fanciful gothic frames covered two walls, while the final wall was made up of screens stacked like oversized glass bricks. Most of them were dead, leaving the few live rectangles playing drama shows that had peaked over a century ago. To Ollie, they were windows into odd alternative pasts that – given Blitz2 – actually now seemed quite enticing. The central screen was playing a Nightstar episode.
He looked down at his feet in puzzlement. There really was no way further into the room without wading through and over this hoard of valueless treasure. ‘Hello?’
‘Welcome, welcome,’ said a voice overhead.
Ollie assumed it was a speaker, but glanced up anyway just as a peculiar motion caught his eye. The room’s ceiling had exposed metal beams, painted as black as the concrete they supported. They now served as rails for an industrial hoist mechanism. Ollie’s jaw dropped. Karno Larson was hanging from the hoist on metal cables. He was obscenely large, his torso a flaccid globe covered in a shiny green toga that was more like a wrap of bandages, ensuring no skin was visible. Limbs were equally gross – thick appendages that were so bloated they seemed incapable of movement. His corpulent head rose out of the toga without any sign of a neck, rolls of skin glistening under a film of perspiration. Straggly grey hair was tied back in a ponytail, woven with strips of orange leather.
The harness that held him also sported various modules that Tye was telling Ollie were medical support machines. Tubes snaked out of them, disappearing into the toga between the bands of cloth, swaying about as fluids pumped through them.
Staring up as Larson slid towards him like a dirigible Peter Pan, Ollie could easily believe the man was the victim of a cocooning gone horribly wrong. The hoist came to a halt, and motors made a loud whirring sound, lowering Larson down towards the jumble of ancient merchandise. Globular feet touched a batch of coffee-table books featuring science fiction artwork, and they started to bend beneath him.
‘What an excellent –’ Larson paused and his head bowed forwards, allowing him to suck air from a tube – ‘specimen.’
‘Are you all right?’ Ollie blurted, which was probably dumber than anything even Lars had ever said.
‘Absolutely fine, my dear fellow. You don’t get live this long without making a few compromises.’
Yes, you fucking do. ‘Right.’
‘In these sorry times, I feel quite privileged. I am the last person alive who appreciates the culture of ephemeral modernity.’ Motors whirred again, and slim wires Ollie hadn’t noticed before lifted Larson’s arms into a benediction posture, as if he were the puppet of an unseen deity. ‘So every relic I desire now flows to me, as your presence proves. I am become the ultimate steward of this glorious genre of human creativity. As such, I have determined that when we fall to the Olyix, I will welcome them here into my temple of unparalleled artistic wealth. And together, we will carry this unique trove to the end of time. Their god will rejoice in what I bring.’
‘Uh . . .’ Ollie let out a long breath of dismay, as he realized that Larson was utterly crazy. But the information about Nikolaj’s location was in that deranged head of his. ‘Isolate the penthouse,’ he told Tye.
‘Done.’
‘Please hold the Nightstar up,’ Larson said. ‘It looks truly magnificent. You say it is handmade?’
A smiling Ollie proffered the Nightstar as if it was a religious artefact. ‘Tye, disengage the hoist.’
Larson’s shiny forehead crinkled into a frown. ‘Something is wrong.’ He sucked on the air tube again, then let out a wild mewling sound as the cables that held him started to unwind off the winch drums. He toppled backwards in a curious slow motion, as if gravity hadn’t quite established a decent grip on him. The toys and books he landed on bent and crumpled in a grinding dissonance.
Ollie pushed his hand into the Nightstar’s hangar deck and tugged out his nerve-block pistol. It occurred to him that using it on Larson might not be the smartest idea. Who knew what would happen to a body like that if the nervous system suffered a failure? Tye was busy splashing up the medical data from the man’s modules. Ollie wasn’t much good at reading the details, but the number of amber icons was unnerving. He fished the synth slugs from the Nightstar and clambered over the ridiculous memorabilia to stand where Larson could see him.
‘Take – take—’ Larson gasped. He sucked frantically at his air tube.
‘Take what? No, listen, I don’t care about this junk. I’m here to find out where Nikolaj is. That’s it, that’s all I need, understand? So, where is the Paynor family house where she’s holed up? Tell me that and I’ll let you up again.’
Larson’s frightened eyes stared up at him.
‘Tell me.’ He held up his ace, the synth slugs, remembering the speech he’d given Schumder. Though to be honest, he wasn’t sure he could even find a bone on Larson without some kind of hospital scanner.
‘I – I – Help!’
Ollie set his jaw as several of the medical icons turned red. He had to do this. And quick, because – ‘These are synth slugs, and they’ve got this sparkle. Okay, forget that. They’re like a diamond – they are diamonds. Girl’s best friend right, cos they’re fucking hard, like me. And I’m going to let them eat you – er, no, eat through you. Yeah. That’s going to be agony, see. If you don . . .’ A whole series of Larson’s medical icons turned scarlet. One of the modules on the harness started screeching out an alarm.
‘Fuck!’ Ollie shouted.
Larson’s mouth was opening and closing feebly. Obese fingers wiggled like electrocuted worms.
‘Air?’ Ollie cried. ‘Do you need air?’ He knelt down fast and tried to lift Larson’s head. The pile of crap he was poised on shifted alarmingly, jolting the pair of them. For one horrific moment Ollie thought the massive body might roll on top of him. Larson’s tongue was protruding between his lips.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ollie yelled. ‘Oh, fuck, fuck!’ The medical modules were trying to send an emergency call to a specialist cardiac hospital in Chelsea, but his own darkware was blocking it perfectly. ‘No! No, please. Tell me where Nikolaj is. Please! I’ll call the paramedics. I swear. They’ll save you. Just tell me.’
‘He has gone into cardiac arrest,’ Tye announced.
‘No, no, no! He can’t do that.’
‘Life signs are flatlining.’
Ollie looked pleadingly at Larson’s vacant face. ‘Where are the Paynors?’
‘Multiple organ failure. Support machines unable to sustain basic body functions.’
Larson stopped breathing.
‘You piece of shit,’ Ollie screamed, and hit him, fist slamming directly into that wretched pudgy face. Hit him again. A third time. Nothing. ‘You bastard! You stupid, stupid bastard! Why did you let yourself get like this? Why?’ Ollie sagged back, gazing in disbelief at the one chance he’d had to find Nikolaj, to save Gran and Bik. Two years. Two fucking years to find him. And he fucking DIES?
*
Ollie had no real awareness of walking downstairs and back out of the Icona building. It was only when the light and sound of London’s devil-sky engulfed him with a greater vehemence than usual that he started to notice the external world again. Buildings and docks were just smears of drab colour. Even the abrupt change of the data splashed across his tarsus lens didn’t really grab his attention. It was only Tye saying, ‘Eight targeting lasers have now acquired you,’ that jolted him alert again. His surroundings crunched into extreme focus.
Paramilitaries in black armour were crouched at the corners of nearby buildings. Overhead, three ugly urban counter-insurgency drones hovered just above the Icona’s roofline. Various barrels pointed down at him.
Ollie let out a wordless scream of hatred, clenched fists rising.
‘Ollie Heslop, you are under arrest,’ a voice boomed out. ‘Deactivate any peripherals and get down on to your knees. Put your hands behind your head and lock your fingers together.’
‘Fuck you!’ Ollie bellowed back. There were tears streaming down his cheeks. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He’d walked through the Icona’s entrance ready to get Nikolaj’s location, to start saving Gran and Bik. Now he had nothing, and Special Branch had found him. Bik and Gran were lost, doomed to be taken by the Olyix when London’s shield finally broke.
‘You will not be told again. Deactivate your peri—’
‘No!’ He took a step forwards, jabbing a finger at his black collar. ‘Scan that, you shits! Go on. Scan it. See that? See what it is? I’ll use it, I fucking swear I will! Just piss off and leave me alone.’ The tears were flowing faster now, and with them came miserable sobs making his chest judder. ‘Leave me alone,’ he wailed. ‘You’ve won. Do you understand? Whoop bloody whoop. What more do you want? You can’t send me to Zagreus, not any more. We’re all going to be cocooned anyway, so what’s the fucking point?’ He slumped back against the wall and slowly slid down it. His head bowed low so he didn’t have to see anything, and he carried on sobbing. When he had no tears left – when every thought was numb – he’d do it. The collar really was insurance. Packed with explosives, it would decapitate him instantly, and the blast would shatter his skull, pulping his brain. The Olyix wouldn’t be able to cocoon that.
It was the only victory he had left.
*
Twenty minutes later, he still hadn’t moved. The tears had stopped a while back. In his head, he was living in the past, replaying the memories of the time before. Of Bik larking about. Gran, always so stressed and tired as she struggled to bring up two boys, to get them to go to school, to stop them hanging with the wrong crowd. No. Not them. Me. I was the one who let her down. I should have stayed at university. I shouldn’t have got myself thrown out. I shouldn’t have gone back to the Legion.
It’s why I’ve finished up here. It’s why we’re all here. I was so dumb, I helped the Olyix. I did this to London, to the world.
The sound of approaching footsteps registered through the black grief. He took a breath and focused on the collar icon. The last thing he’d ever see. Here we go –
‘Ollie, darling.’
Un. Be. Fucking. Leavable! Ollie started to laugh hysterically. He was at absolute rock bottom, the worst state it was possible for a human to be in – but no, there was still a single way he could be brought lower. And who was the one and only person who could do that . . .? ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Ollie, please don’t do this.’
He glanced up. Lolo was standing ten metres in front of him, wearing a scarlet summer dress with big white polka dots that glimmered an unwholesome lilac under the devil-sky. Despite that, sie looked amazing. Beautiful face so full of sorrow and worry and love.
‘I’m pregnant, Ollie.’
Ollie’s entire body shut down. Not a muscle moved – certainly not his lungs, probably not even his heart.
I must have triggered the necklace. More than once. And this is what hell is – the same world, but progressively worse each time you die.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lolo said. ‘I should have told you. I’ve wanted to tell you. But there’s never been a right time, has there? Please, this is Kohei Yamada. Listen to him. None of this is as bad as you think, Ollie. Really, it’s not.’
A man was standing next to hir, face stiff from anti-ageing treatments, wearing a windbreaker with a Connexion logo. Ollie drew down a punishing breath.
‘Hello, Ollie,’ Kohei said. ‘We want Nikolaj, too. And we know where she is. Interested?’