city of anarchy
chapter one
The Conceptual Realisation Facility had looked like something straight out of a space opera: three tall, slightly flat-topped domes with giant trapezoids of pale green light encircling the tops. Metal stairs had run symmetrically around the curved, sloping wall of the centre building, joining it to the other two and wrapping around them in the same way. They'd looked like the watchtowers of a faraway alien race.
Hermes cruised through the air as the entire thing collapsed in flames behind him, explosions sprouting across the complex as the fire reached new and excitingly flammable things within it. Something shot upwards in a streak of fiery light, vanishing as its upward acceleration put out the flames.
Holly had successfully delivered the package and left the building right before it happened. She turned and took a dumb step back. Then she felt the panic starting to rise. She was about to make herself scarce using her red motor scooter when she realised it had disappeared. She considered running for it, but then her legs were knocked from underneath her and a sack was thrown over her head.
Hermes felt the air gush past him, his red tie whipping at his face. He had quite a good view of the city from here. Not that even his extraordinary flight could hope to achieve the prodigious height of most of the buildings, but it certainly gave him an impressive shift of perspective.
Then he hit the ground and promptly stopped being conscious.
They tied Holly's hands, the men she could not see, dragged her along and lifted her up unsympathetically every time her benumbed legs stumbled. All she could hear was her own deep breathing, more distinct than usual inside the dark world of the sack, and the muffled sounds of the city outside. Her captors did not say a word. She blundered on, distraught, crippled by the shock.
And they did not let her stop.
A change in acoustics told her that she had entered a building. The sounds of late night traffic died away and there were low murmurs of voices. It was also momentarily warmer, but then the temperature dropped again as they passed through into a quieter part of the building and onwards.
Eventually they came to a stop. Holly screamed as she was lifted by the legs and turned upside down. Rope was wrapped around her several times like a skeletal cocoon, held tight around her midsection. It bound her ankles to each other, her arms to her sides.
The sack was pulled away. The darkness remained.
'So,' said a man's voice. It sounded very close. 'Care to tell me why you did it?'
'Where am I?' demanded Holly, blood rushing to her head. 'Who are you?'
'Oh, just the Saviour of the Universe,' the voice said impassively, 'The Preserver of All that is Good and Proper.' He paused. 'Destroyer of Those Disruptive,' he added.
'I didn't do it!' cried Holly.
'I completely and utterly believe you,' said the voice. 'But...'
There was a small fizzle and a flare of blue. For a moment her immediate surroundings were illuminated. She saw that the man was standing as close as she'd feared; she saw his face, his maliciously twinkling eyes, his very close-cropped hair and something halfway between stubble and an actual beard occupying the bottom half of his head.
She also noticed her scooter tied up in a similar manner to herself a few feet away.
The flash of blue did not manage to penetrate the darkness beyond that. But it had given her a worrying glimpse of the source of the light: a long, black object with two short, metallic prongs at its end.
The man finished, 'The electroshocker prodthing remains suspicious.'
Holly swallowed a whimper. She closed her eyes and tried to pretend that she wasn't there and that she wasn't so upside down, but another flash of blue and a very unpleasant sensation brought her back to attention, tearing another strangled scream from her vocal chords.
'I think you need a more convincing story,' said the man.
'OK, so I may have done it,' she admitted.
'That certainly sounds more probable,' he replied.
'Yes, but...'
'If the excuse I'm about to hear is in any way, shape or form an obvious crock of crappety lies, you're getting another prodding.'
'But if I did,' said Holly, 'I didn't mean to.'
There was a pause.
And then another flare of blue.
Holly cried out in anguish, tears trickling from her eyes. She felt like she was going to be sick.
'If it was a bomb or something, I didn't know about it!' she cried. 'I never ask; I just deliver! That's my job! I'm a delivery girl, that's all!'
'You're a delivery girl?'
'Yes!'
'Who do you work for?' he pressed.
'Eugene. Eugene Quirkor. Impassionate Deliveries.'
'And he would, of course, be aware of the contents of the package?'
Holly hesitated. 'Well...yeah.'
'Very well,' said the man, idly.
The rope around her suddenly loosened and Holly fell to the floor.
'You can stay here for now,' said the man. 'It seems we owe Mr Quirkor a small visit.'
Hermes woke up in a very white place. He wondered if Heaven was supposed to have ceramic tiled walls.
He tried to move a bit. He felt pain.
'You're not going anywhere,' said someone. 'I'd like to say that this is because we're the police, who say things like that all the time, the malicious bastards, but never get any proper work done. That is, of course, always left to us, while they get all the resources we need. All I ask for is a helicopter fitted with a minigun, but apparently that's asking too bloody much. No, the reason you're not going anywhere is because you are physically unable. Hitting the ground from a great height is not, I'm afraid, the best way to keep your legs in working order--though it's a wonder you did not damage them more.'
'Oh,' said Hermes. He tried to lift his head. His office clothes had been removed and he was dressed in a crinkly white patient's robe. 'Who are you?' he demanded. 'And where am I?'
'You are in Secret Room X, on the seventy-seventh floor of the Sir Tenebrous Tower, Hocus Street, second door on the left when you reach the top of the stairs. I am Agent Avgi,' she told him. 'Strictly, technically and, well, basically speaking, I am not actually a qualified doctor, but if you don't mind, now that you're awake and therefore much more aware of what is happening to you, I'd like to perform a few tests.'
'Why did you strap me to the bed?' Hermes queried uncertainly.
There was a moment of silence before Avgi replied, 'You know, I hadn't realised I'd done that. Still,' she shrugged, 'it'll stop you from squirming.
'Before we make a start with these tests, I have some questions I need you to answer. When the explosion happened, you were on your way out of the Facility, yes?'
'Yeah.'
'I assume you worked there?' she asked.
'Yes,' he replied.
'So just what the hell was going on in there?'
'I don't know.'
'You don't know,' said Avgi, deadpan. 'Did any of you fools know?'
'I'm not allowed to know,' Hermes told her. 'I'm just an intern.'
Avgi's voice dropped even lower. 'An intern. Tell me'--she glanced at the ID card she had found in his wallet--'Hermes. How was it you got this job? This internship?'
Hermes shrugged, or at least attempted to. 'It was sort of a work experience thing. Through some agency. There were a few people interviewed, I think. But they picked me. Why does it matter?'
'And you have absolutely no idea what they were doing in there?' asked Avgi. 'Didn't you ever glance at any important documents? Wheel equipment into strange and wonderful laboratories?'
'It was only my first day,' said Hermes. 'Why, what happened? Why do you need to know all this?'
'You weren't given a guided tour, by any chance?' Hermes got the feeling that Avgi was clutching at straws and that he was one big scarecrow of disappointment. 'No,' he replied. 'They just sat me down and made me sign a load of confidentiality agreements. I didn't even get the name of the guy who gave me the pen. He was still inside when I left, though, if that helps.'
'No, it doesn't,' she said. 'Right, can you feel this?' She jabbed him in the foot.
'Ow. Yes.'
'Now wiggle your toes,' she said, and there was a metallic chink as she picked something up.
Hermes wiggled his toes. Then he saw a white labcoat, and a face framed by dark, curly hair.
Then Agent Avgi stabbed him in the face.
Holly sat on the floor, hugging her knees and wondering what was going to happen to her. She did not much like being the prime suspect of these people; they were ruthless, and the flaw in the idea that they were supposed to fight crime was that their often unscrupulous tactics were themselves too close to criminal. They crept around in the dark, watching the city from shady corners, bringing down their targets like wolves.
She hated them for the way they had made her involve Eugene. Eugene wouldn't blow up a building. He was one of the nicest, kindest people she knew. A little eccentric, maybe, and quite possibly living in his own little world, but he would never hurt anyone.
She sighed, curled up on the hard floor and made herself as comfortable as she could, worrying over what she had done.
What had she done?
Avgi walked down to Secret Room Y, where she made herself a coffee. She gulped it whole and slammed the plastic cup down on the counter, where it broke.
So it had finally happened: something had gone wrong. She had been waiting for it, ever since the Facility had first appeared, obliterating what had been a rather pleasant inner-city park. The Mayor had been somewhat sketchy with the details deliberately evasive, neglecting to give Avgi and her people the information they needed to check it out.
In frustration, she picked up the coffee-maker in both hands and threw it on the floor, utterly destroying it and adding yet another item to the long list of things that the Agency now required. She wanted to do the same to the Mayor's head.
But no--she had to be professional about things. Calming herself, and wiping spattered coffee from her trousers, blouse and the white coat she was still wearing, she walked over to the large window that occupied most of the room's back wall. She gazed anxiously out at the night-time cityscape of illuminated buildings, neon signs and car headlights. Her eye rested on the smouldering carcass of the Facility, surrounded by firefighters. A pillar of thick, black smoke rose high into the dark sky. She knew that even with the Facility now in ruins, she was not going to be able to stop worrying about it. In fact, the Laws of the Universe dictated that things were only going to get worse.
She needed to plan her next move.