city of anarchy

chapter twenty

'That was the Hood,' Vann confirmed to the Dark Circlers on the mounds of boxes, who were crouched in expectation.

'Well, no shit,' said the black-eyed man. 'Time to move?'

'Yep.' Van stuffed his phone back into his pocket.

'Where are we going?' Aura asked, springing to her feet as Holly and Eugene cumbersomely unfolded themselves.

'Different places. Anybody got a pen?' One was handed to him and he scribbled down a note on a torn-off piece of card. 'Aura, you're going to this address to pick up a very important package. Take those two with you,' he said.

'What?' She took the note. 'You want me to babysit? Why can't you--'

Holly snatched the note from her. 'I know where this is.' Aura tried to snatch it back but Holly held it out of reach. 'Sort of. What's the package?'

Vann grinned. 'You'll find out once you've got it. Aura knows where to go after that. Consider this your first official assignment.'

'Hey, are you sure we can trust them? What if they run off and tell the police or something?'

'That's not going to happen,' Vann said, his eyes still on Holly. 'And besides, we already lost the club and we're not coming back here, so there's nothing for them to tell.'

'But what if they try to steal the package?'

'You can handle them, Aura. Get going.'

'It'll be just like old times!' Eugene said brightly, on their way out. All three of them squinted in the sunlight as the painted door of the warehouse was opened and shut behind them. 'A straightforward courier job, right? Impassionate Deliveries lives on!'

'Yeah, except I don't have my motor scooter,' Holly mumbled. The thought developed into a pout. 'I don't suppose I could pick that up at some point?'

* * *

Hermes meandered through the daytime streets.

He was fighting some kind of frustration as he hobbled hastily along, but except for the pain shooting up his injured leg, which certainly did not help matters, he could not quite explain it. He'd just narrowly avoided the police, yes, and he'd lost the Dark Circler to them--all that effort and nothing to show for it when Agent Avgi bothered to show up again. But it was something more. He almost didn't care about the Agents.

He felt annoyed with Mrs Brue. Had she called the police? If not, couldn't she have warned him? Or maybe he was being unfair. Hermes still hadn't got around to being as grateful as he probably should have been, he knew, considering everything she had done for him.

Despite his feelings of ambivalence, he had nothing to do now but go back to the Sir Tenebrous Tower and hope that he could meet someone there.

He slowed his pace and stopped meandering once he felt he had distanced himself enough from the police, who did not seem to have pursued him, and took a more direct route to the Tower. As his sense of urgency slipped away, his thoughts drifted, considering the events of the past few days. A lot had happened to him since he left the place in his inexplicable decision to hop onto that van and masquerade as one of the Electric Man's goons. He had seen a lot of things.

The Tower came into view around the next corner, still a few blocks away and mostly obscured by the buildings close to him. As he got nearer, he slowed his pace even more, finally coming to a stop at the end of the street that the Tower dominated.

Even from here, he could see that the place was crawling with police, black figures entering and exiting and spilling out onto the street like a colony of ants, their hulking four-wheel-drive vehicles parked at angles on the road and effecting a kind of barricade.

Hermes looked up to the top of the Tower. It seemed absurdly big for the Agency, now that he thought about it. He did not suppose that the congregation at Beans' apartment had been the Agency in its entirety, but still they could only ever have occupied a few floors--maybe less than a third.

He imagined however many storeys filled from top to bottom with the seemingly limitless supply of officers, their ever-expanding black mass. If they were not quite at that stage yet, they soon would be.

He shivered, hunched his shoulders and moved his hands around in his jean pockets. His right hand brought out a crumpled note, money he had thought he might need and probably most of his savings.

He turned and walked back the other way.

* * *

'This is it,' Aura announced, pushing open the grubby glass-panelled door with a tingle. 'I think.'

The three of them shuffled into the narrow space on the inside and looked around. It was a shop, crowded with racks of ridiculous garments, colourful clothing, costumes and feathery hats. Cheap, novel props of all descriptions were scattered about the place, hanging from pegs, sat on benches, stuffed in boxes or left on the floor.

It was also an atmosphere of dust.

Aura coughed and waved her way through the stuffy particles to the squat, mono-browed woman behind the counter, who replied with a louder, phlegmy cough of her own.

'What could they possibly want from here?' hissed Eugene, gazing around doubtfully.

'It's obviously a cover,' Holly decided. 'A front to shady operations.'

'Aah,' Eugene said softly. 'Like drugs, you mean?'

'I wouldn't be surprised.'

Aura drew herself up at the counter in a show of importance. 'We are here to pick up a package,' she said to the woman, 'on behalf of the Hood.'

The woman coughed again, and at her own, creaking pace went to check a list with a grubby finger. Then she went into a stockroom at the back, rummaged around and returned after a while with a taped cardboard box.

Aura took it from her. 'Do I need to pay for this?' she asked.

The woman shook her head. 'Paid for in advance,' she croaked.

Aura shrugged and walked back to the other two, who still lingered by the door.

'What is it?' asked Eugene.

'I don't know,' said Aura. 'Feels pretty light, though.'

'Are you going to open it?'

'No,' Aura replied. 'We're just delivering. We'll get to see later.'

* * *

Officer Killet tugged the curtains shut and turned to face the bruised man bound to a chair from the kitchen, tying her long, brown hair back into its ponytail, which had become loose in the brawl.

Mrs Brue still sat gripping the arms of her armchair, paralysed with apprehension. The other two officers remained on the sofa, one tending to the lump on his head, the other munching at biscuits.

Killet stood over the Dark Circler in the red-auburn gloom afforded by the minimal, filtered sunlight. She struck him sharply across the face with a backhanded slap.

'Wake up,' she said.

Boris made a noise like a man turning over in his sleep. 'I am awake,' he said faintly. 'Why don't you wake up?'

Killet struck him again.

'Here are the facts,' she said. 'I will break every bone in your body if you don't tell me where your friends are hiding. I'll start with the fingers, break all twenty-seven in each hand and work my way from there. It will not be a comfortable experience.'

'What are you doing?' cried Mrs Brue. 'There's no need for this, surely--how dare you act like this in my house--'

'If you don't like it, have a nap and we'll wake you when it's over,' Killet replied. 'But of course, you are not leaving this room.'

'Are you sure we shouldn't just take him back to HQ?' asked the officer with the sore head, feeling the ash-blond bristles of his hair. 'I know you like this sadist's routine, Killet, but we really ought to leave him in one piece.'

The other officer grinned. Killet scowled at them both. 'If you don't like it, Coates,' she said calmly, 'you're free to sleep as well.'

Coates shrugged and leaned back, but kept watching.

Killet knelt down by Boris' side, facing him, looking into his bleary eyes. She took his right hand in hers, wrapped her fingers around his, stared at him for a moment, a smile forming--and yanked.

There was a faint crack as his first finger broke. Her smile transformed into a malicious grimace when the damage barely registered as a flutter of his eyelids. She took his next finger and began to work faster. 'Why doesn't he feel it?' she demanded, dislocating a third finger and his thumb. 'This is so fucked up!'

The others in the room looked on with a mixture of horror and fascination.

Then Boris grunted--a sound, finally, of discomfort. His hand cramped, convulsed, tightened into a grotesque, partially inverted claw. He tried to move his fingers one by one, snapped as they were at jagged angles.

He let out a long groan, which rapidly amplified into a hoarse scream, his fingers performing an involuntary dance, the muscles of his hand writhing, veins protruding along his forearm. He felt the bones, all of them, bending.

Boris squirmed in his seat and delivered a long, deep, vocal exhalation. Then his breath caught and his eyes shot open as one of his metacarpal bones tore from the joint and erupted through the back of his hand.

Killet flung herself backwards as the rest of Boris' hand came apart in a similar series of pops and explosions, blood spraying decoratively, until moments later there was nothing left but a sticky, mangled, dripping ruin.

Boris passed out with a whimper. Everyone else looked pale and ill.

Killet covered her mouth with a sleeve, closing her eyes as she fought with the impulse to gag. The situation, she felt, had suddenly exceeded her abilities.

'Let's take him to HQ,' she said. 'Somebody wrap up his...Rolo, you do it.'

* * *

The passage descended down a wide, electric-lit slope, along which Beans was dragged by an officer at either shoulder. There were no doors in this passage, no windows; just rough, concrete walls and lights at spaces above. Beans' head lolled, his breathing was coarse, and twin-pointed burn marks showed through his shirt. Down and down and down they went and the analyst was only dimly aware, all his energy and consciousness nearly spent.

One of the officers took his full weight as at length they paused in front of a heavy, bolted steel door and the other officer got out his security card, swiping it through the reader. The bolt released with a hiss and a clank and the door swung open.

The passage continued on for some way as a broad, poorly lit aisle between two long rows of similarly formidable-looking steel doors, half-swathed in shadow. Each had a small barred window, and from these peered eyes as Beans was dragged past. A chorus of loathing jeers greeted the indifferent officers.

Dorz, the owner of two of these eyes, leaning with his shoulder against the door of his cell, grunted. 'There goes another one,' he said.

He glanced back behind him into the cell, where Russ was stood on his mattress, determinedly scraping at the ceiling with a spoon.

'You know that's not going to work,' Dorz said, folding his arms.

'It's crumbling here,' Russ responded, his beady eyes on his work. His previously candle-flame styled hair had turned into an angry, matted mess and his beard had grown. 'If I keep at it--'

'Then the whole thing will crumble down on top of us. Give it up.'

'It's your fault we're in this mess!' Russ snapped, not for the first time. 'So you come up with something better, before we die in here!'

Dorz ignored him and put his face back to the bars, angling his gaze. He watched the back of Beans disappear further down the passage, swallowed into darkness.

* * *

Hermes took the beer to the little round table in the corner of the bar, where he sat alone. He stared into the froth, one hand around the cold glass, and sipped; then he set it down, turned the glass and watched the golden bubbles rise to the top. A mass exodus of bubbles.

He sighed and slid back in his hard seat, a bench of curved plastic fixed to the wall, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, it was to the sound of another beer being set down on a coaster at his table.

Hermes lifted his head. The Agency's nurse, last seen handing Agent Avgi her chainsaw in an image that still burned vividly in his memory, looked back at him levelly. Not taking her eyes off him, she perched her squat figure on the stool. She still wore her white nurse's uniform, tunic and trousers, her dark hair clipped in a hygienic bun.

'I followed you,' she said. 'From the Tower. I had to make sure I was the only one. How's your leg?'

Hermes shifted in his seat. 'Same as it was,' he said. 'Where's Agent Avgi?'

'I don't know,' the nurse replied. 'I was hoping you would.'

Hermes watched her as she took a long draw from her pint.

'The police must have taken her.' She sounded doubtful, unconvinced, as she said it. 'And all the others, seems like. I wish I knew what the hell was going on.'

'I had one of them,' Hermes said. 'One of the Dark Circlers.'

The nurse looked at him blankly. 'One of the who?'

'This gang we were after. They're involved in everything. I took him to Beans' place, but nobody was there so I took him home. The police showed up, though. I don’t know how they knew, but they got the Dark Circler and I escaped.'

'They probably followed you,' the nurse told him. 'I was on my way to the analyst's place--Beans?--as per my instructions, but before I got close I saw police there. Turned back.'

Hermes wondered why, in that case, they had allowed him a full night's sleep before they had made their move; why they'd been chatting away to a petrified Mrs Brue. He had wanted to blame her, but it didn't seem likely when he considered it--she would have wanted his side of the story first. Maybe the officers had simply been sniffing him out, getting information on him, before they moved in. They knew his name now--but it hadn't really been him they were after.

'I have another problem I need your help with,' the nurse said frankly, 'seeing as you're the only one around. That Turnfly girl, the one we found in a coma, has disappeared from her hospital bed. She may have woken up, or she may have been taken. I need your help to track her down.'

An Agent's work is never over, Hermes thought. He felt a monotony creeping in, despite everything, that made him want to resist another errand--no doubt fuelled by the recent futility of lugging that Dark Circler around the city. Was he still even an Agent? He had not yet decided.

'What's so important about her?' he asked, taking a swig of his beer. 'Why not just let her go?'

'She remains a link to all these strange goings on, according to Avgi. That Electric Man must have had a reason for stealing her away like he did. She might be the only one to give us the answers we need. The only person who can explain any of this.'

'But do you have any idea where she might have gone?' Hermes asked.

'Well, we check all the obvious places first. Her home, her friends' homes, Goodpatron's where she saw her therapist, and any other old haunts we can figure out.'

Hermes appraised her. 'You seem to know a lot for a nurse,' he said.

She gave him a blunt look. 'I have my specialty, boy, but I am still an Agent. Are you going to drink up and help me?'

Hermes looked down at his beer again. 'I guess so,' he said.

The bubbles were still speeding to the top as he tipped back the glass.

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