city of anarchy

chapter fourteen

'Come on, come on...'

Beans' fingers danced across the keyboard with the graceless clatter of a very impatient expert. Windows with flickering text blinked and vanished on his computer screen.

A big, green affirmation popped up.

'Yes!' he declared, hammering in his acknowledgement.

He nestled the single earphone more deeply into his right ear and held it there with his hand to block out all external noise. The single line now on the screen fluctuated briefly, giving him a steady oscillation for all of two seconds before the buzz in his ear fell back into soft static.

There was a knock at the door so sharp, after Beans had been listening through the static so closely, that he almost fell out of his seat. He waded quickly along the memorised route through the junk that buried his home and pressed his eye to the peephole.

'Agent Avgi,' he said, opening the door. 'Agent Yvonne. I was sorry to hear about Sofia--'

'We're going to establish base here,' Avgi cut across him, 'if that's not too much of an inconvenience. We would have looked for a more ideal spot, but we're short on time, and as you're already set up I thought this would be easier.'

Beans blinked as a further half-dozen Agents, emerging from their vehicles, assembled behind them. He scratched at the untidy hat that his hair provided and ruffled it anew. 'Sure, come in,' he said. 'Mind the stuff. If I'd known you were coming, I would have cleaned up a bit.'

'Let this be a lesson to you,' said Avgi. 'You must be prepared for any eventuality, always.' She marched through to the next room; the other Agents followed her.

Agent Hermes trailed somewhere near the back of the line. This was not enough to hide him from Beans' critical eye.

'What's he doing here?' the analyst demanded, as the last of them shuffled into his now extremely crowded workspace.

'Agent Hermes will be aiding us in our investigations,' Avgi informed him.

'Agent Hermes?' Beans scoffed openly. 'I'm not working with him! He looks about twelve!'

'Beans, you are barely out of the cradle yourself,' said Avgi. 'Agent Hermes has more than proven his worth. Now please prove yours. What have you found?'

Beans frowned at Hermes for a moment longer, which was as long as he dared to keep Avgi waiting, and then he leaned over with some performance to grab a print-out from his cluttered desk.

'This is a list of all the Governors currently in office,' he explained, handing it to Yvonne, who was nearest. 'Third entry is the old hag who was at that party. Her name is Electa Grieve. She's Governor of the Treasury and has held that position for approximately three years, first showing up two months before our last Mayor went insane and got put away with the other mad people.'

Yvonne nodded at the accompanying photograph. 'That's her,' she said, passing it along the Agents to Avgi.

'I noticed something else interesting about that list,' Beans said. 'Seven of those eleven Governors have not made a public appearance in the last six months.'

Avgi looked thoughtful. 'Interesting indeed,' she said. 'Anything else?'

'Just one more thing,' said Beans, preparing for a final smugness. 'I managed to pick up the signal for the bug we planted in the Mayor's office. The audio needs a little bit of tweaking, but we should be able to hear any conversations loud and clear pretty soon.'

'Good work,' Avgi said. 'Let me know as soon as it is ready. Now--do you have a coffee maker?'

For once, Holly was not the one running away--she was the one chasing. This thought encouraged her; spurred her on, even though the gap was widening.

That look--that grin--had been significant, somehow. The way he had moonwalked from the scene had been goading. He had either been beckoning Holly, or rubbing it in her face that he knew more than she did about the house they'd been watching, or both. Or he was simply a mad person, but Holly was willing to take the chance. After all, he had looked straight at her.

Eugene followed in an excited sort of fashion. Holly was focused on her quarry as the three of them raced through the alleyways--everywhere seemed to be an alleyway around these parts--but she heard him fulfil his self-decided duty by shouting nonsensical threats over her head to the man who probably could not hear him.

She hoped that they had not been noticed by the police back at Dagger Road--and that there were no other police about to notice them now.

The tattooed man disappeared for a second into an alleyway that went left; then he paused, his head reappearing at the corner, lifted his arm and waved.

Holly ran harder. 'Bastard,' she whispered, the effort riding the force of a deep exhalation as a stitch broke into her right side.

When she turned the corner, he was well into the next alley. It was a long, wide alley, cars passing along the sunlit road signifying an exit from the maze a few blocks ahead, and he stood dead-centre, his arms folded, that infuriating grin still on his face.

Holly staggered, slowed down but kept marching forward. She curled a hand into a tight fist: he was asking for it.

'But why follow me?' he shouted across to her, his head doing a funny little roll. 'We don't know each other, do we? Have I wronged you? Why do you look so angry?'

'That house--' panted Holly. It came out almost as a growl. 'Why--why were you watching it? What do you know about it?'

'What if I'm just a curious spectator?' he said, spreading his arms. 'Just having a little look, yeah? Just like yourselves. Where's your friend? Not used to the exercise?'

Finally Holly stopped; but she did not look behind her for Eugene. He came lurching exhaustedly into the exchange as if on cue. 'Stay right there!' he cried. 'Or we'll destroy you!'

The man raised an eyebrow. It occurred to Holly that Eugene might at any moment get them beaten up, for the man was by no means scrawny.

'Look, you obviously know something,' she said, as calmly as she could. 'Nobody would risk being a curious spectator where the police are involved unless they already had a very good reason to be curious. I mean, you were trying to get noticed--and you knew we were there--'

Holly did not know exactly what it was that she was trying to ask. She looked at him imploringly, yet furiously, willing him to give some answers anyway.

The man seemed to be getting bored of the conversation; his gaze wandered to the black frame of a fire escape attached to the building on his left. Holly saw where he was looking and she tensed; she felt herself bending at the knees, a gesture that must have been obvious, for the man's grin widened.

'You know, you shouldn't follow people around dark alleys like this,' he said. 'I mean, you never know--you could be walking right into a trap.'

Holly kept her eyes locked on his, refusing to be drawn. But after a few drawn-out seconds, an inconsequential noise proved too much for her heightened senses to bear and she turned around.

Eugene had looked too, and was the first to turn back and see the man escaping. He cried out and Holly whipped her head back around, launching herself after him.

The three of them wound in a clatter up the steps. The strange man was giggling, and continued to do so even as his escape came to an abrupt end at the top, where he arrived at only a boarded-up window and a locked door.

Holly and Eugene stopped before him poised like fighters. He was nodding again, slowly this time, and Holly thought he was about to admit defeat.

'Do you know where you can get really cheap drinks?' he said conversationally, suddenly hitching his backside up onto the rail. He swayed a little. 'The Dark Circle nightclub. Drinks are really cheap there. Cheap as piss, I'd say. Same great taste, too.'

Holly stared at him as he tipped himself back. 'Wait!' she cried, lurching forward impulsively as he let go. Her hand brushed his legs as they left the rail--he seemed to fall outwards as much as down, dropping through four storeys' worth of air and hitting the ground with an audible squelch--

--and then bouncing, rolling down the alley like a kicked dustbin, leaving a crack in the ground for every time his flipped body impacted with it again.

Holly and Eugene gaped.

The bouncing man rolled to a stop and wobbled back to his feet. He giggled again, stopping only as he noticed the blood gushing from his nose, which he then felt at with his hand.

'Aw, what the fuck!' he exclaimed, somehow dismayed, and ran off once more.

At the top of the fire escape, there was silence.

'But,' said Eugene. 'But...'

Holly agreed.

Something smashed. One of the Agents had broken Beans' coffee maker.

Avgi, unlike the rather exasperated Beans, took no notice, allowing the steaming scent of her fresh mug to fill her senses. She opened her eyes and continued her examination of the print-out.

'Focus, Beans,' she ordered, without looking up, as the disgruntled analyst got up to complain. Beans dropped back, scowling at the computer screen.

Hermes leaned against the wall in the undersized kitchen, watching the guilty Agent nudge the broken machine with his foot and then edge away.

Another Agent appeared in the doorway and sighed. 'See, this is what you get when you hire Peripherals,' he said loudly, earning him some glares.

'Peripherals?' asked Hermes.

The Agent turned to him, giving him that same look of accusatory curiosity as all the others. 'You're the intern, right?' he asked. 'What's your name?'

'Hermes,' said Hermes.

'Well, Hermes,' said the Agent, 'you're just another decision of Agent Avgi's that I don't understand. You've not been hired in Peripheral capacity?'

'I don't know,' Hermes replied. 'What does that mean?'

'Peripheral Agents aren't proper Agents,' he replied, with an air of authority. 'You must have noticed them all milling about and never really doing anything. They get the title, but really they're just here to bolster the ranks. Fill the positions. Run errands. It's all about appearances, see? I don't even know most of their names. They're just screened volunteers given basic training and lower pay. Most of them are pretty clueless'--he gestured at the coffee maker--'and they're certainly not equipped to handle the kinds of situations that Avgi's been sending them into recently.' He looked thoughtful and idly scratched his chest through his buttoned shirt.

'Problem is,' he said, lowering his voice, 'all the talent's been creamed off into the police. I'm sure we'd like to offer bigger incentives, but it's just not possible. So instead, we're pretty much sending these guys out to their doom.'

'But they seem pretty dedicated,' Hermes said in their defence, recalling the battle with the Electric Man.

'That they are,' conceded the Agent. 'So they haven't got sense enough to quit while they still have their heads. I can see why Avgi wanted them before, but now I don't know why she doesn't just let them go. Maybe she knows she should...but with everything that's happened, maybe she wants to keep them around because she's afraid of seeing how few of us there really are.'

'Agent Ian,' Yvonne said coldly, and the Agent spun around. She had clearly not appreciated his public monologue. 'That coffee maker needs removing. Please see to it that any mess is swept up.'

Agent Ian flushed red and promptly turned his attention to the task.

Yvonne's blue gaze switched to Hermes, but she said nothing and walked away.

'I have it!' Beans announced.

Back in the other room, Avgi set the mug aside and accepted an earphone. 'I don't hear anything,' she told him.

'There's someone in the office. Keep listening and you'll hear movement; footsteps, or rustling paper or something. All we have to do now is to wait for somebody to start talking.'

'Good,' said Avgi. 'Keep an ear on it.'

She leaned back in her seat and looked out of the window. Outside, the light was failing.

'But it wasn't possible!'

'We can't worry about that now, Eugene!' Holly said as they walked. 'He gave us a huge clue about where to go next! He couldn't have made it more obvious! So let's... for now...forget about the...the other stuff.'

Eugene looked troubled. He must look exactly as she did now, Holly realised. If Eugene had not seen it too, she would have been inclined to dismiss that it ever happened.

'So the Dark Circle nightclub,' Eugene said, complying with her change of subject. 'How do we find it?'

'I think I know where it is,' Holly said. 'I've never actually been there--it's not really my kind of place--but I've seen it. On the other side of the city.'

'The other side of the city?' asked Eugene. 'And we're walking there?'

'Yes,' replied Holly. 'It won't be open yet anyway; it's too early. In the meantime, we just have to keep an eye out for any sadistic people wearing black. And when we get there--I hope drinks really are cheap.'

By the time they did get there, it was dark.

The Dark Circle nightclub was a grungy-looking place: the entrance was set about a metre wide into a wall plastered with flaking posters, made out only by the two burly bouncers positioned either side of it, and the name above, made out in black letters bordered by fluorescent white light. The second C of 'Circle' flickered, like everything else about the nightclub's appearance demanded it. Already they could hear the pounding music.

'Are we sure we want to go in there?' Eugene asked.

Holly nodded slowly. 'We have to,' she said. She looked at him in his shoes and the trousers and shirt he had worn to work all those days ago. 'Just do your best to act casual. And, er...inconspicuous.'

They approached the entrance with a sort of tentative confidence; the bouncers eyed them lazily but with a trace of suspicion, enough to make them nervous. As the two of them passed through, nobody said a word, though the bouncers' doubled gaze watched them as they entered.

Then they were inside. The music was now much louder, but not loud enough to drown out the animated conversation of the rest of the nightclub's fresh clientele.

'What are we looking for?' came Eugene's vocalised hiss, made redundant by its need to be heard above the other noise.

Holly looked around and about, wide-eyed and alert. They walked through the atrium, past the cloakroom and poised themselves at the door to the club itself. 'We're just having a look around,' she said, her hand on the door. 'And remember, we must be cautious. We must blend in. We must dance!'

She pushed the door open. The acidic feel of the music, grinding itself into a fervour as they entered, throbbed at their ears, filling their brains with unnatural, manipulated sound. The beat struck deep; they felt their hearts pounding with it; it struck at their tightly-wound anxiety and they threw themselves into an overzealous sequence of highly abstract moves, the pulsing light catching them in a different frame, a different colour, a different variation of their desperate state of mind, every time it filled the room. They were letting it all out.

The drunken-happy crowds parted with resistance and the occasional peevish glare. Before long, Holly had arrived at the bar, pulling herself towards it and wiping her brow. 'A superslap, please,' she shouted into the barman's ear.

'That was some pretty crazy dancing,' the barman shouted back.

'I live for it,' she said, and turned to see Eugene emerging, freeing his caught leg from the seething crowd. 'And something non-alcoholic for my friend, too,' she requested.

She looked around. The club was basically one big dancefloor, or a pit of happy, sweating bodies, with a bar at either end and four sets of stairs up to a wide, metal balcony that wrapped around as a sort of partial second floor. Up there, drinkers and weary dancers leaned and looked down at the people below. Some returned Holly's gaze: one in particular, a bouncer-type, seemed to be taking a special interest. Holly looked away.

Eugene finally joined her. They had their drinks, went back to the dancefloor for a while, returned to the bar sometime later, repeated their slow ricochet between the bar and the dancefloor for an hour or more, losing themselves in a haze.

Eugene staggered back to the bar. 'Same again, please,' he slurred. The barman gave him a look; Eugene had been drinking lemonade all night.

'I think you're in trouble now,' said the barman.

Eugene, who would not have understood his comment even without the diabolical influence of the lemonade, simply stared at him. Then he felt a large hand on his shoulder and turned to see the owner of this hand--another bouncer, by the look of it. The bouncer said nothing, but steered him firmly away from the bar and up the steps to the second-floor balcony, pushing him through a door at the back, into a poorly lit corridor.

Eugene was terrified enough to sober up, as all the lemonade drained straight to his bladder. They ended up in what seemed to be a dingy backroom, just as lacking in light as the corridor--Holly was already there, and Eugene was put by her side.

Both stood before a pair of smartly-dressed legs and shiny shoes, and two large hands, on a throne of silver. The rest of the man's body, including his face, was completely swathed in black shadow.

Holly had already noticed the strange, tattooed man standing with others to the side. She exchanged a look with Eugene--a slightly bleary look, for the alcohol was still coursing through her.

The occupant of the throne then spoke; a deep, calm voice: 'Welcome to the Dark Circle.'

Most of the Agents were slumped on the furniture, or curled on up the floor, dozing. Hermes, however, was still awake, his eyes on Avgi, Yvonne and Beans as they sat around the sole light of the computer.

Avgi and Yvonne had an earphone each; Beans was turning his head from side to side to view their reactions.

In the Mayor's office, Mawgly and Electa Grieve were having a conversation.

'I can't do this,' Mawgly said, emphatically. 'I just can't!'

'We must stand firm, Mawgly,' came Grieve's scratchy, high-pitched voice. 'Now more than ever! I will not allow you to jeopardise an occasion of such importance with your weakness. You must convince me of your dedication!'

There was a pause. 'Yes, Governor,' said the Mayor, her voice suddenly deadpan. 'I understand, and I apologise for my outburst. I should never have doubted your...infallible intelligence. Please forgive me.'

Another pause. Then Grieve said, 'Phase Two will begin shortly. We must not fail. It is imperative that we take control. The world will be ours. Now, however, I must meet with an associate downtown. You must keep me informed of any developments.'

There were sounds of movement, and then the office was silent once more.

Yvonne looked at Avgi. 'What do you think she means by "Phase Two"?'

Avgi stood, removed the earphone and grabbed the print-out. 'We have Grieve's address here. The penthouse suite of the Kogen building, about ten miles from here. Yvonne, I need you to go there and have a look around while the Governor is out.'

Yvonne nodded and began to gather her things.

'Get there as quickly as you--' Avgi paused. Her phone had lit up on the desk. She picked it up and answered. 'Yes?' she said.

'Agent Avgi?' The voice was Mawgly's, whispered and shaky. 'Please...please come to my office immediately. I want to tell you everything.'

[next chapter]