Discovered in a Christmas Card - 2nd January - The Waters and the Wild by Slantedlight (Part 4)
Back to Part Three
)The heavens were just opening as Doyle stepped outside, so that he ducked into the Tube station rather than walk, hair still wet from his second shower, let himself be sucked upwards towards the sky and bustled across the platform to the waiting shuttle. It turned out to be the Circular Line, which suited him - despite what he’d said to Bodie, there was over an hour before he was due to meet Newbolt, who’d no doubt be restless after his previous night’s session in the House. Doyle needed some space between the two of them, between Bodie’s kisses and Newbolt’s lash. He needed time to think.
The simwindow was set to a more beautiful winter than they were having, a fairytale of pastel skies and glittering frost across the city, but he stared at it, unseeing. The Skin felt tight across his bones, as if it was burrowing into him, a layer of something nasty that he might never get rid of. What if Cowley kept presenting him with assignment after assignment in it, expected him to fuck his way around London for CI5?
A few weeks ago that might not have sounded so bad, Abri or no Abri, but now… The Tube pulled into a station, disgorged its contents, paused while the new masses poured themselves inside. Doyle slid across to the vacated corner seat, leaned back against it.
Now there was Bodie.
o0o
The flight path Krivas gave him wasn’t set for Russia, Bodie could see that straight away. Trouble was, it didn’t seem to be set for anywhere else either, nothing more than a piece of air over the heaving North Sea, somewhere off the coast of Scotland.
He’d tried asking where they were going, but Krivas had shaken his head, looking pointedly in the direction of their three passengers in the rear compartment - grey-suited businessmen, the lot of them, complete with briefcases and an unhealthy dedication to their mobiles. Krivas had met them and ushered them into the flyer with every appearance of affability - in exchange, no doubt, for the bulky envelopes he’d been given in return. Now and then one of them would look up and glance at his watch, as if impatient for their journey to be over, so at least Krivas didn’t intend to dump him and then take the controls himself. They were going somewhere…
Bodie resigned himself to finding out when he was told - Krivas hadn’t changed - and keeping one eye on the controls. It was a good night for flying this far north, they’d left the rain far behind them and the skies were clear. Now and then he caught a glimpse of the aurora, a pale green mist in the distance, dancing along some invisible airwaves and crackling at the electronics and radio, but mostly he was free to think his own thoughts.
Mostly he was still thinking about Doyle.
Eventually they crossed the coastline, leaving city lights behind them, bare minutes away from their target. Krivas began to look more alert beside him, and he could hear an expectant buzz of chatter through the plexiglass. Their passengers had been here before, where ever here was.
In front of them a light began to shine through the distance, brilliant and clear, and slap-bang in the middle of the sea. What the hell...? He could feel himself leaning forward, peering through the windscreen to make out the shape… an oilrig. One of the old oilrigs, the monsters that he remembered as tales from his schooldays, the homes of sea monsters and devils, forever consigned to the risen seas and lashing ocean storms.
Krivas was watching him, so he caught his eye briefly, looked amused. “What the hell are you up to, now?” he asked, just as a rush of landing instructions sounded in his ear. He concentrated on landing them safely, on being patient and getting them solidly on deck.
A welcoming party of what looked like mechas - sex mechas at that - strode staunch against the buffeting winds to the rear door, and opened it, helping their passengers out, greeting them like long-lost friends. There was a kind of carpet spread across to the flyer zone, a transport bug to collect them and roll them the few hundred metres to a door outlined in brilliant pink neon, glaring and inviting both, like something from Rouge City.
Krivas had unstrapped himself and opened his own door, so Bodie began to do the same. At least it didn’t look desperate - no armed guard, no freelance Hounds lurking in corners, no real guard dogs either, and who used pink neon if there wasn’t a bar involved?
Before he could climb out, Krivas grabbed his arm. “What name do you want?” he asked, and Bodie frowned, covered it by sniffing, trying to look thoughtful. Not completely clean then, if they were going in with pseuds, but then he hadn’t been expecting clean.
He shrugged. “Bentley,” he said at random from the half dozen he’d used before, “David Bentley.”
“Fine,” Krivas nodded. “And here I am known as Renton - just Renton.”
“Right then,” Bodie nodded back. “Now I’m hoping you’ve got something decent to drink in there - I could murder a pint.”
Krivas’ eyes narrowed, and he gestured towards the door. “Come on - we’ve got everything you could ever want.” He smiled suddenly, a flash of tiny, sharp teeth in the half-light that reached them from the main building. “I’ll show you around. There are perks for the pilots.”
Bodie climbed out, secured the flyer and followed him across the deck, thoughts crashing loudly around his head like the waves he could hear crashing around the great legs that stretched way down into the deeps.
Renton.
Bloody hell.
o0o
Time was running out, Doyle thought, absently avoiding the doorman’s eye, and emerging into the early morning air. He was getting nothing from Newbolt except a deeper dislike for his habits and more bruises. If Newbolt was planning to take over another country, he was hiding it well. He found himself yawning, looking around with gritted eyes and bad temper at the bright young suits who were already bustling in to work, keen to get on with whatever they’d left undone the night before. It’d be nice, he thought, to see dawn from the right side again, for a change - as a prelude to going out for a run around the park, or to a leisurely breakfast, an ordinary day, and then his own bed, to sleep, in the dark, through the night.
Or maybe not to sleep the whole time.
What would it be like to see Bodie first thing in the morning, to be awake with him through the day instead of just going to bed, to know he’d see sunlight on that face, in those eyes, and that by the time the sun was setting they’d be looking forward to an ordinary dark night, to sex and sleep?
He was looking forward to sex and sleep with Bodie now. London was almost pulsing around him - it had been a long night. If Newbolt was doing genuinely useful work during the day as well as spending nights like that, maybe they should be getting his bloodchem checked.
Doyle yawned again, glanced at his mobile. There was no hotel from Bodie yet, so he found one far enough away to charge a reasonable fee, not so far that he’d need the Tube to get there, made the booking, and sent Bodie the details, and then dialled Cowley’s number.
“Alpha.”
“Good morning, sir.”
“Ah - Doyle, good. You’re sure it was Johnson you saw the other night?”
“Positive,” he said, though he felt his heart drop as he walked. “No ident on film then?”
“Whatever they’re using as a scrambler, it’s new - we couldn’t get anything. The other man was Kennett Younger, a minor ruffian on the fringes of mercenary activity, but we have other confirmed sightings of him with Krivas. He’s not the issue. We need Johnson - he’s the link, he must be. I’m sending you his last known address. I’ve put a team on constant watch.”
“Bodie was off to Russia with Krivas today - maybe he’ll get something there.”
“Aye - maybe. But where ever they went today it wasn’t Russia, at least not by any known flight path. Tell him to report in as soon as you see him. And get me Johnson!”
The line ended abruptly, and Doyle frowned at the address that appeared via his scrambler. What the hell was he supposed to do about Johnson? Join the stakeout until he turned up, and then tail the man himself? Safer than Bodie trying it, he supposed.
He turned at last into Bucannon Street, spotted the Golden Apple halfway along, and breathed a sigh of relief. He was so tired he could sleep for a week…
Bodie hadn’t checked in yet, so he flirted idly with the bloke on reception in hope of an upgrade, and took the lift up to the fourth floor. The room itself was small but tidy, and all he cared about was the shower and the bed. The shower would have to wait until Bodie got there, but the bed beckoned, and he heeled off his shoes, let his jacket fall on the floor, and lay down, for just a minute…
o0o
He woke with a start to the sound of a door slamming along the corridor, the rattle of a servemecha. He was too warm, and the Skin felt tight, pricklish where he’d been sleeping on it. He turned restlessly onto his side, lifted a lazy hand to read his watch.
Three o’clock.
Fuck!Where the hell was Bodie? He sat up, startled alert, and checked his messages. Nothing. He re-sent the D and D booking address, then stood up and stretched, pacing the dozen spare feet from one end of the room to the other. No wonder the Skin was starting to feel tight - there was barely more than an hour before his twenty four were up, before the Skin bonded more firmly to him, before…
There was the tag. The skin tag in the belly button - if Bodie didn’t turn up he could always use that, get himself back to the lab. He took a deep breath, forced himself to relax. He’d give it twenty minutes, then go find Patricks.
But where the hell was Bodie?
o0o
“…the latest tactics, and the best weapons available,” Krivas boasted, sweeping an arm around the training field. In one corner a group of men were lined up outside a killing hut, far enough away that Bodie could barely hear the gunfire inside. The next corner was a firing range, and even from here it was obvious that the laser sights being used were incredibly accurate - either that or Krivas had the cream of the world’s target shooters at play right this minute. Above them, men dangled and swung from a rope course, with neither fear of the fall nor apparent effort.
“Could have done with that lot in Mid-Afric.” Bodie nodded up at them. “How long they been training?”
“They parkour every day for a year before we send them anywhere.” Krivas sounded satisfied - smug even, the proud benefactor. Speaking of which…
“So how’d you pay for this little lot, then?” he asked. “You never saved any more than the rest of us when I knew you.”
“Not a credit of it is from me,” Krivas said, watching as one of the trainees above reached the final platform, jumped twenty feet at a time down a series of outcrops in the wall of the rig, and when he reached the bottom jogged back to start the course again. “It’s fully funded - and so is that beer you wanted. Shall we?” He gestured to the bug that had brought them through three levels of the most sophisticated training areas that Bodie had ever seen.
“So who funds it, then?”
Krivas took the wheel, and set them trundling across the floor. “Patience, Bodie - you’ll see in just a moment. You remember our passengers?”
“What, the suits? They’re not political!”
“No, they’re not - but they also don’t care what they’re paying for, as long as they are safe to enjoy their own kind of distractions.” The bug reached another door topped by a neon pink sign. “Come on - I’ll show you the second floor.”
It was immediately clear that the second floor had nothing to do with the men training outside. The corridor inside was thickly carpeted, and lit bright, the walls a delicate shade of pale lilac, the year’s most popular colour. Old-fashioned uplights reflected from the ceiling, and a sultry perfume hung thick around them. Bodie paused to take it all in - fourteen rooms, seven on either side, another exit at the other end. Krivas wandered over to a door, apparently at random, glanced through a circular glass window and dismissed whatever he saw. He moved further along to a second door, watched avidly for a moment and then smirked and beckoned to Bodie.
“You might enjoy this one,” he said, turning his own eyes back to the room, and running a hand restlessly over his own crotch.
Bodie peered through the glass, into dim light on red walls, frowning at the shapes and shadows. There was a bed of course, and on the bed one of the men they’d flown in was sitting, sprawled against the headboard, having his cock sucked by a love mecha. One hand was stretched out to fondle another, and his other was shoving a large dildo in and out of the mecha who was pleasuring him. He looked alternately from one to the other mecha, and then to the wall. What was he…?
Bodie blinked. Tied spreadeagled around the wall were other love mechas, all engage in various acts of exposing themselves, over and over again.
He looked quizzically at Krivas. It was sordid, but nothing you wouldn’t find in Rouge City or any of the more dubious cathouses in the Old Town. “That lot fund your boys out there?”
Krivas laughed out loud at that, a half-bitten off sound, harsh in the quiet of the corridor. “That lot fund the beer,” he said. “No, twice a month we bring in the real thing, and that draws the money - the very top money, Bodie, and the men who don’t want anyone to know what they do when they’re not at home with their families.”
The real thing…? “And they don’t know you’ve got an army training right under their noses?”
“Of course they know.” Krivas turned and led him up the long corridor. Bodie glanced in the rooms as they passed, and Krivas let him. “It’s part of what they pay for - the ultimate security.”
“Bit small-league for you, isn’t it?” he asked. He’d always got most out of Krivas by poking him. “Rich man’s pimp?”
To his surprise, Krivas just laughed again. “You never did understand the subtleties, Bodie. Sex sells - but it buys, too. I want a vote in the House just so? I can do it. I want a certain advert across the infoweb? Done.”
Bodie’s mind was racing. Two sessions a month, at least fourteen rooms, how many politicos and influentials did Krivas have in his pocket? And the real thing? If that was true, then why was no one out there talking? Why hadn’t there been even a whisper of a rumour?
They passed through yet another pinkly-lit door, this one leading to a bar, a few people at scattered tables, most of them with love mechas, but quiet. A long window looked out on the landing pad, lights dim and moody across the stretch of tarmac, making the blackness beyond seem deeper, the end of their world. Krivas nodded at the servemecha, which began to pull pints from the taps. Bodie watched the foam rise in the glasses. “Still got your eye on that island, then?”
“King Krivas has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” Krivas smiled. “But you can get trapped on an island. All that water. You may have been right all along - there’s a lot to be said for civilisation. Especially when you control it.”
Bodie took the proffered pint, supped thoughtfully for a moment - Old Kentish, a premier brand, of course - and then looked sideways at Krivas. “Done alright for yourself.”
“I have.” That was Krivas, no false modesty. “And I can always use good men. You were always good.”
“You want me to do - what?”
Krivas shrugged. “My head of security is going to have an accident in a few days.”
“Making free with the goods, was he?”
“Making free with the customers. It turned out she was more brawn than brain. You wouldn’t make that mistake, not with your background.”
He pretended to think about it - but not for so long that Krivas decided he was being played. “What are you offering to keep me on the straight, then?”
“Let us begin with something better than your beer.” Krivas waved at the servemecha again. “Brandy for my colleague!”
o0o
Doyle was about to leave, reaching to scan for exit when he heard running footsteps down the hotel corridor, and so he’d drawn his knife and was standing behind the door when it burst open.
He took a breath, sheathed his blade, and decided killing the bastard could wait.
“Doyle?” Bodie spun at the soft sound of steel sliding into steel. “You’re still wearing it…?”
“Of course I’m still wearing it, you moron - you weren’t here to… oi! Watch the arm!” Bodie’s grip was fierce, an echo of the look in his eyes, and he dragged Doyle closer to him with one hand, dug into a pocket with the other. He had to let him go to undo the tube of gel, unusually clumsy as he tried to unscrew the cap fast, and Doyle pursed his lips on what he’d been about to say, turned around before Bodie could push him to do it, and waited for the slide of fingers down his back. When it came, it felt more sluggish than normal, as if the Skin was peeling away only reluctantly, and he found himself tugging it off with more haste than ever before. It felt tacky, pulling at his own flesh as he stripped it away. Bodie reached out to help, and together they finally freed him of it, letting it drop to the floor in a black and silver puddle.
Doyle stared at it for a moment, looked up to find Bodie doing the same, and then their eyes met. It was Doyle who reached out this time, pulling Bodie to him and kissing him for the frantic look on his face when he arrived, and for the fear that lingered yet in his eyes. Every inch of Bodie felt alive as they kissed, electric against his own skin, and Doyle reached down to undo his trousers even as Bodie pushed him back towards the wall, where they rutted hard against each other, skin on skin on heat and hardness and need, until they came in gasps of air that were almost cries, and stilled, and then just held each other up.
Bodie moved eventually, but only to the bed in the corner of the room, pulling Doyle with him. They slid under the duvet, tugging it around them until they lay close, entwined together, and cocooned in the warmth and comfort of it.
The moment stretched. “Alright?” Doyle asked at last, casually, and then found himself laughing. Underneath him, Bodie began to shake, and then he was giggling, and laughing as well, and the last of the tension drained from them.
“What the fuck kept you?” Doyle asked when he could speak again. “You cut it a bit fine, mate!”
“Got here as fast as I could. Got held up.” Bodie said, and his arms tightened again around Doyle. “I need to call Cowley,” he added, though he didn’t move.
“Bodie! What happened?”
“I found Renton - and he made me a partner in his little enterprise. Well - employee.”
“So it’s not Krivas then?” Doyle leaned up on an elbow, looked down at Bodie as he spoke.
Bodie was shaking his head.
“So it is Krivas?”
“You’re gonna love this,” Bodie said. “Renton is Krivas. He’s using it as a codename for his little scam.”
“No wonder we couldn’t find him.”
“Yeah - and his scam isn’t so little. He’s not after the Southern Confederates, he’s got his eye on bigger fish here at home.”
“Newbolt…”?
“A cog in the machinery.” Bodie raised an eyebrow. “A very small cog, it turns out.”
Doyle listened, frowning, as Bodie told him where he’d been and what he’d been doing - tried to ignore the fact that he’d been with a love mecha for half the night, as a reward and a temptation from Krivas.
“So they bring in real hookers for these sessions,” Doyle said at last. “So what? That’s not illegal - why the secrecy?”
“They’re not hookers.” Bodie looked grim. “They’re kids picked up from the street - mostly rain-dodgers, so no one’ll come looking for them, but not always. You remember that soap star who went missing a few months ago?”
“Cara Taitley?” It had made a splash in the news blogs, a minor but rising star who was using her body to get to the top, suddenly gone. “She didn’t turn up to work one day,” he remembered. “Never seen again.”
“That’s right. One of the clients had a yen on for her - paid nearly a million credits.”
Doyle whistled, low. “And she’s still there?”
But Bodie was shaking his head again. “They don’t bring them back. When they’re done with ‘em they go over the side.” He looked away briefly. “What’s left of them.”
“Christ…”
“Yeah.” Bodie took a deep breath, then sat up and reached for his trousers, pulled his mobile from a pocket. “I’ll call Cowley. At least you won’t have to see Newbolt again.”
For a moment, for just a moment, relief washed through Doyle like cool, clear water - and then it froze in place. “You didn’t have a recorder with you,” he said, matter-of-factly, and waited for Bodie to look at him. “And we haven’t got any evidence that Newbolt’s involved.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Bodie’s face had hardened. “We knock out Krivas’s rig and Newbolt’s got nowhere to go and do his nasty. And Krivas finally gets his.”
“No. He’s managed just fine without Krivas so far.” He glanced down at the almost permanent bruises around his wrists, flexed his back so that the skin pulled there too, a reminder. “Getting Krivas isn’t enough - I want Newbolt.”
“You can’t go back…”
“We need the evidence, Bodie! Look, call Cowley - now we know what’s going on, I can draw Newbolt out, we can set something up. It’ll be alright.”
“You’re not telling me… Afternoon, sir.” With a final glare, Bodie turned his attention to his phone, began the formal report of his information, and Doyle lay back on the pillows, running a hand through his hair, and half-listening, trying to think. Cowley would come up with something, he was sure - but how far would he have to let Newbolt go before the plan kicked in?
o0o
Bodie kept his flyer at a careful distance from the Minister’s own transport, hidden behind at least two other vehicles at all times, and now and then he flicked on the colour tint, so that his energy tiles tilted in one direction or another, making him darker or lighter as the ambient light flowed around him. It was expensive to use, draining the fuel cells each time he did it - and on this occasion he didn’t care in the least. Doyle was in Newbolt’s flyer, and they were headed to the Minister’s current private country residence, far away from the bustle and safety of town.
Anything could happen in the country, in the quiet enclaves of the rich and famous and powerful. Newbolt hadn’t brought Doyle anywhere near the place until now, though Doyle hadn’t read anything into it, and Bodie frowned as he tried yet again to work out why. A change of location had been Doyle’s idea to keep the Minister interested, to introduce the idea of escape, and one that Newbolt had agreed to readily enough - and then derailed all Doyle’s exotic suggestions and told him only that he fancied some at home time, whatever that meant. Government mandarins didn’t have permanent residences, they were rewarded with them when they resigned their service, and there was no reason this place should mean anything more to Newbolt than his other houses and flats. Unless he had something there that he couldn’t risk using often - it was what Bodie returned to, time and again. Nothing as extreme as on the oilrig, or he wouldn’t go out there, but something…
Bodie found himself thinking of some of the darker corners at the Flesh Fairs, where love mechas could be reduced to their specifics, and used until they fell apart. It had never appealed to him, but he’d never thought of it as more than another, albeit fairly disgusting, way to get rid of worthless metal. Now it worried at him, nagged at him, kept him cautious on Newbolt’s tail.
Cowley hadn’t helped - his focus was Johnson, still trying to make that link between Newbolt and Krivas, and he didn’t have much sympathy for Bodie’s worries. Doyle’s vital signs were on constant record via the datacatch, he was fit and healthy, and, Cowley reminded him impatiently, probably safer while he was wearing the Skin than Bodie was.
It wouldn’t stop him feeling pain. Wouldn’t stop Newbolt touching him.
The flyer ahead slowed as they approached the gates to Newbolt’s estate, and Bodie snapped on the snag device on the seat beside him, drove past the entrance, and kept going until he was around a curve in the flyway, then swooped into the return lane, changed his tiles again, and headed back. Everything was quiet, the gates closed, the electric field over the place reading secure.
If this didn’t work… It would work. He coded the readings from the snag into his flyer, waited impatiently for them to match the readings from the field, and then aimed for a space just to the side of the gates, where a row of tall bushes would hopefully protect his entry from less technical security, such as prying eyes. He took a deep breath, and accelerated straight towards the field.
Entry was underwhelming - not even an extra buzz of current - but he was safely inside, his flyer hovering easily, and in just enough space between the wall and the bushes to be concealed. He opened the door wide enough to squeeze through, aware of the full moon high in the sky and looming brightly over the world, giving more light than he would have liked. There was cover from the bushes and trees around most of the perimeter, but wide stretches of empty lawn between the bushes and the house. He’d have to go around and hope that there would be outbuildings of some kind to give him cover. He glanced around once more, poised to move - all was still, the windows on this side of the house dark.
His mobile buzzed in his pocket, and he started, then crouched back into the shadows and pulled it out. It could be Jen, it could be Sarah, it could be Doyle calling for help.
It was George Cowley.
“Where are you, man?”
“Following a lead, sir,” he said, wincing and hoping Cowley hadn’t pulled up a map on his number.
“Drop it,” Cowley said briefly. “I need you back here.”
“News?”
“Aye - we’ve a lead connecting Johnson to the murder of his girlfriend, and to another woman associated with Newbolt. I want you to follow it up - I’m filing a flight plan for you to Manhattan.”
Manhattan? “That’s halfway to the Americas!”
“I’m aware of its location, Bodie. You’d better hurry then, hadn’t you?”
“Doyle…”
“Is with Newbolt as we speak, I know. But you can manage this on your own, it’s a simple pick up.”
“Yes, sir.” Except he’d risk Cowley’s wrath rather than leave Doyle out here on his own. “On my way, sir.”
He could almost hear a snap as the call ended, and stared at the screen for a moment before shoving it deep into his pocket again, and starting to move around the edge of the property. The house was set further back from the front than from either side or the rear, and as he followed the wall around, he came closer to the building. There were lights on at the back of the house, on the ground floor and one each on the first and the second floors, and voices loud from what he assumed was a kitchen or some kind of servants quarters. Would the Minister use mecha or orga at his house in the country? Didn’t matter much, he didn’t want to meet anyone.
A series of greenhouses stretched around the back garden - naturally the Minister would eat fresh - and Bodie made his way carefully from one to another, until he was close enough to run four steps to the side of the building. It was too cold in December for open windows, but his skeleton keys made short work of their digital locks, and then he was inside a dark room, a library, lined floor to ceiling with books on shelves, and scattered with armchairs. There was a desk at one end, and he thought briefly about searching it, deciding with relief that he didn’t have time. Anyway, if Cowley’s lead was good, he didn’t need to. He just had to find Doyle.
The bedrooms were probably upstairs, and he slunk carefully along walls and corridors and bannisters in the shadows. The place was almost entirely in moonlit darkness, the lights presumably all inside rooms, but he took care anyway. In this sort of place, the slightest noise could bring someone out, and he had no intention of explaining to Cowley why his lead had brought him right to the lion’s den.
The room on the first floor with the light on was simply a bathroom, empty and glaring, and so he carried on even more carefully to the second floor. There was no sound - no shouts or slaps or cracking whips, and surely Newbolt hadn’t had time to finish Doyle off yet. Besides - Doyle wouldn’t give up without a fight if it came to that, Bodie was sure of it.
He opened door after door, carefully, just far enough to see that the rooms were in darkness, and it wasn’t until he reached the last room in the hallway that he was rewarded by a chink of light. No movement though, and no sound… He took a chance, pushed the door open far enough to look past, and peered around.
Doyle’s eyes glared back at him from the opposite wall, glittering above a wide strip of silver tape across his mouth. His hands were cuffed to metal rails on the wall, his legs spread-eagled and feet cuffed in the same way. His clothing was undone, but he looked otherwise intact, and Bodie gave him a bright grin, then held a finger to his mouth, and pulled out his mobile. The snag device had pulled all the codes and numbers in the house, and he keyed in a message, then coded it to voice and sent it through the ether, aware of Doyle’s angry stare the whole time.
A door slammed downstairs, and Bodie stepped quickly to the far side of the bed, sliding underneath just as the door opened and Newbolt strode into the room.
“Well Ray, our plans have been interrupted again. Had you chosen your toy yet? Decided which one it should be? I thought perhaps the crop, because it makes such a satisfying sound, but I must admit that I was hoping for the cat. But it will have to wait - the House has been called.”
A slap of flesh on flesh, and then heavy breathing, and Bodie gritted his teeth.
“Let yourself out - call a flyer on my account and take a booking for tomorrow night.”
Footsteps again, and then he was gone. Bodie waited until the whine of a flyer could be heard outside, and then he rolled out, dusting himself down. Doyle was uncuffed now, leaning against the wall, clothes straightened, and arms crossed over his chest. He’d taken the gag off.
“Would you like to tell me…?” he began, spitting fury, and Bodie cut him off.
“Cowley called,” he said. “He wants us in HQ - we’re off to Manhattan on a pick up. Something to do with Johnson.”
Doyle glared suspiciously at him, then nodded him at the door, and followed close behind as they left the Minister’s house.
o0o
There was something up with Bodie, Doyle thought, as they flew back to town, something he wasn’t talking about. Cowley’s lead was good news, but Bodie was almost too happy about it - wittering away about the last time he’d flown to the Americas, and about this flyer and that flyer, and whether it was likely to be Johnson himself that they were collecting. Doyle didn’t bother trying to get a word in edgewise, nodding and making the right noises at the right places, and no more, but only half his attention was on the route, and the rest was watching his partner.
Bodie took them straight to CI5, where Cowley had given them all the clearance they needed to be whisked from the flypark to his office. His assistant showed them through with a smile, as if this was nothing more than an ordinary business meeting, and Doyle was perhaps no more than he appeared to be - a mecha.
“Doyle.” Cowley frowned at him, glanced at Bodie, and then back. “I thought you were booked with Newbolt tonight?”
“Er… Yes sir. He was called to the House. I’m booked again tomorrow.” He very carefully didn’t look at Bodie, but he felt him, attention-straight and tense beside him.
“Hmmn.” Cowley tapped a file of papers against his hand for a moment, and Doyle waited impatiently. “Well, you’re here now,” he finally said, “And I daresay Bodie would appreciate some company.” Dry as dry.
“Who’re we picking up, sir?” Bodie asked quickly, so that the corner of Cowley’s mouth twitched, and Doyle frowned. What was the joke?
“A witness to Samantha Bevin’s murder - someone who saw Saul Johnson kill the girl. A mecha - Gigolo Joe, a sophisticated model. One of your kind, Doyle.” Cowley’s gaze flicked to him, and there was a definite twinkle in his eye. Who would have thought the old man had a sense of humour? “A love mecha.”
Doyle rolled his eyes. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that. Hang on - what’s a love mecha doing in the Drowned City?”
“He’s in the company of an even more sophisticated model - a prototype by Cybertronics, based in the New Jersey Islands, based on a child. For some reason, the pair made their way to Rouge City, and then stole an amphibicopter. We think David is trying to return to his maker, Allen Hobby. We’re not sure why Joe seems to have decided to accompany him.”
“Gone rogue?” Bodie suggested. “He should have turned himself in when he witnessed the murder.”
“Assuming he did,” Doyle interrupted. “Are you sure he saw it?”
“We know he had a regular appointment with Bevins, and that he checked into the hotel on time. We also know he left the hotel before the appointment was scheduled to end - and that his operating tag was found cut from his collar.”
“Told you,” Bodie said. “Gone rogue.”
Perhaps…” Cowley sounded thoughtful.
“He ditched his tag!”
“And stole a copter,” Doyle agreed. “So we go and pick him up.”
“Yes. I want to find out what he knows. There’s an amphibicopter with the necessary equipment waiting for you in the pool. You’ll find the flight path set. And here.” He reached into a drawer, and drew out a datadock, gestured at them impatiently when they hesitated. “Your phones - you may need clearance ident, and we don’t have time to chip you. You’ll also maintain radio silence unless absolutely necessary, and use call-signs rather than names. Bodie - you’re assigned as 3.7. Doyle - 4.5.” He scanned the data into their phones. “Well get on with it, then! You haven’t got all night!”
The copter waiting for them was high-spec, so that they both eyed it appreciatively as they typed in their codes for the sign-out. Bodie clearly assumed that he would be the one piloting it, so Doyle made a point of beating him to the flight seat and scanning his phone to the comms, raising his own eyebrow to Bodie’s.
“Come on, Bodie - we ‘aven’t got all day, you know.”
Bodie looked sideways and dubiously at him. “Alright - but I get return flight,” he finally said. He grinned suddenly. “Of course I suppose it looks better if my mecha does the donkey work on the way out.” He’d relaxed at some point, Doyle thought, once they’d left Cowley’s office, anyway.
“You…” Doyle was acutely aware that he hadn’t de-Skinned. There was no particular reason he should - if things went smoothly they’d be back well inside the safety parameters, and Bodie was right beside him in any case. It tingled around him - at least he wouldn’t fall asleep at the controls - but he had a feeling that some of that electricity was still Bodie.
They cleared the city, avoided the Bristol Channel when the geocheck reported strong pirate activity, and flew along the French coast instead, before dropping down and across to open waters. From there it was nothing but sea and sky, and eventually Doyle took them up above the cloud layer, to the soft blue sky and shining sun of the dawn behind them. The air was too thin over the ocean to climb high with the chopper blades, and now and then they cut through mists and strips of cloud, but the sun brought him a kind of wakeful energy, and a kind of peace. He thought about the crowds behind them, setting off to an ordinary day’s work, and thought that, despite everything, for now it was good to be here instead, together in the emptiness with Bodie.
When they got closer, Bodie began telling ghost stories, legends about great golden lions, weeping for the ghosts of the city that once was, and about giant women who flew around the towers of the drowned. Doyle countered with cynical looks, and retaliated with more practical tales he’d heard about the place, scrapers crashing dramatically into the sea and sending their waves as far as Ireland.
“And this Hobby bloke lives there,” Bodie said at last. “What does that make him, I wonder?”
“A right nutter,” Doyle said, decidedly. It was one thing to cling onto the scrapers and bridges of Old London, communities of people, no matter how tenuous, but Manhattan was so far gone, anything still habitable so far from rescue should it be needed, that Hobby must be the only person there. He couldn’t be entirely sane, genius or not.
After a couple of hours, he dropped them back below the clouds, and they scanned the horizon for the first glimpses of the city. They came darkly, a skeleton of spires and jagged shapes on the horizon, that gradually resolved into buildings and towers. They passed a great hand, rising from the waters, holding a flaming torch, ducked around concrete and metal and broken girders.
“Definitely mad,” Bodie said, leaning forward in his seat, eyes tracking the movement of wind and waves.
It felt as if they were the only things alive for a thousand miles, for all Doyle knew there were island states within only a hundred. No wonder it had been so completely abandoned - it felt… wrong, somehow. Worse than anywhere back home, grey and grim, where once people had lived, loved, laughed and cried.
The bright line on their tracker drew them on, ever toward the stolen amphibicopter, and finally towards a solid building gridded with windows, and guarded by three enormous golden lions, water gushing from their mouths to fall, in a kind of beauty, back into the risen sea. They looked at each other, Bodie’s tales still vivid, smiled wryly.
“There!”
Doyle set the controls to hover, followed Bodie’s pointed finger. And there it was. There was the amphibicopter, and there with it, two figures. The taller was recognisably Gigolo Joe, a perfect match for the scan stats. He was crouched at the side of the vehicle, seemed to be listening intently to the boy mecha sitting inside.
“Take them,” Bodie suggested, and Doyle nodded briefly, matched the electromagnet to Joe’s specifics, and dropped it from the belly of their craft, feeling the slight resistance as the copter adjusted its flight to the extra pull.
“He doesn’t want to come,” he said, trying to watch dispassionately. Just a mecha he told himself, it wasn’t real reluctance. But Joe was grasping the edge of the amphibicopter, even as his body started to lift. When the magnet made contact, the audio cut in.
"Goodbye, David. When you become a real boy, remember me to the ladies when you grow up.” A pause, and then a strange kind of hope and certainty. “I am."
Doyle frowned. “I am? Bit abstract, innit.” He glanced at Bodie as they reeled Joe in. “Tell me again they’re no more than nuts and bolts and datachips.”
“Doyle… What the hell?”
As if Joe had somehow released it, the amphibicopter with the boy mecha was sinking downwards, submerging into the dark, slate grey, waters. It bubbled its oxygen away, and then it was gone, as if it had never been.
“Well, Cowley only wants Joe,” Bodie said at last. “The boy’s got nothing to do with it anyway.”
“Yeah…” It was true, he knew it was true, and yet the face that had stared momentarily up at Joe… It had been a very real face, the face of a boy.
“Come on Doyle - wind him in, shove over, and let’s get out of here.”
They’d done what they came for, they were a step closer to stopping Newbolt for good - his penchants, his incidental politics, the role he played in Krivas’s grand scheme. The boy was a mecha, and whatever that meant, he was gone.
o0o
To Part Five...
)The heavens were just opening as Doyle stepped outside, so that he ducked into the Tube station rather than walk, hair still wet from his second shower, let himself be sucked upwards towards the sky and bustled across the platform to the waiting shuttle. It turned out to be the Circular Line, which suited him - despite what he’d said to Bodie, there was over an hour before he was due to meet Newbolt, who’d no doubt be restless after his previous night’s session in the House. Doyle needed some space between the two of them, between Bodie’s kisses and Newbolt’s lash. He needed time to think.
The simwindow was set to a more beautiful winter than they were having, a fairytale of pastel skies and glittering frost across the city, but he stared at it, unseeing. The Skin felt tight across his bones, as if it was burrowing into him, a layer of something nasty that he might never get rid of. What if Cowley kept presenting him with assignment after assignment in it, expected him to fuck his way around London for CI5?
A few weeks ago that might not have sounded so bad, Abri or no Abri, but now… The Tube pulled into a station, disgorged its contents, paused while the new masses poured themselves inside. Doyle slid across to the vacated corner seat, leaned back against it.
Now there was Bodie.
o0o
The flight path Krivas gave him wasn’t set for Russia, Bodie could see that straight away. Trouble was, it didn’t seem to be set for anywhere else either, nothing more than a piece of air over the heaving North Sea, somewhere off the coast of Scotland.
He’d tried asking where they were going, but Krivas had shaken his head, looking pointedly in the direction of their three passengers in the rear compartment - grey-suited businessmen, the lot of them, complete with briefcases and an unhealthy dedication to their mobiles. Krivas had met them and ushered them into the flyer with every appearance of affability - in exchange, no doubt, for the bulky envelopes he’d been given in return. Now and then one of them would look up and glance at his watch, as if impatient for their journey to be over, so at least Krivas didn’t intend to dump him and then take the controls himself. They were going somewhere…
Bodie resigned himself to finding out when he was told - Krivas hadn’t changed - and keeping one eye on the controls. It was a good night for flying this far north, they’d left the rain far behind them and the skies were clear. Now and then he caught a glimpse of the aurora, a pale green mist in the distance, dancing along some invisible airwaves and crackling at the electronics and radio, but mostly he was free to think his own thoughts.
Mostly he was still thinking about Doyle.
Eventually they crossed the coastline, leaving city lights behind them, bare minutes away from their target. Krivas began to look more alert beside him, and he could hear an expectant buzz of chatter through the plexiglass. Their passengers had been here before, where ever here was.
In front of them a light began to shine through the distance, brilliant and clear, and slap-bang in the middle of the sea. What the hell...? He could feel himself leaning forward, peering through the windscreen to make out the shape… an oilrig. One of the old oilrigs, the monsters that he remembered as tales from his schooldays, the homes of sea monsters and devils, forever consigned to the risen seas and lashing ocean storms.
Krivas was watching him, so he caught his eye briefly, looked amused. “What the hell are you up to, now?” he asked, just as a rush of landing instructions sounded in his ear. He concentrated on landing them safely, on being patient and getting them solidly on deck.
A welcoming party of what looked like mechas - sex mechas at that - strode staunch against the buffeting winds to the rear door, and opened it, helping their passengers out, greeting them like long-lost friends. There was a kind of carpet spread across to the flyer zone, a transport bug to collect them and roll them the few hundred metres to a door outlined in brilliant pink neon, glaring and inviting both, like something from Rouge City.
Krivas had unstrapped himself and opened his own door, so Bodie began to do the same. At least it didn’t look desperate - no armed guard, no freelance Hounds lurking in corners, no real guard dogs either, and who used pink neon if there wasn’t a bar involved?
Before he could climb out, Krivas grabbed his arm. “What name do you want?” he asked, and Bodie frowned, covered it by sniffing, trying to look thoughtful. Not completely clean then, if they were going in with pseuds, but then he hadn’t been expecting clean.
He shrugged. “Bentley,” he said at random from the half dozen he’d used before, “David Bentley.”
“Fine,” Krivas nodded. “And here I am known as Renton - just Renton.”
“Right then,” Bodie nodded back. “Now I’m hoping you’ve got something decent to drink in there - I could murder a pint.”
Krivas’ eyes narrowed, and he gestured towards the door. “Come on - we’ve got everything you could ever want.” He smiled suddenly, a flash of tiny, sharp teeth in the half-light that reached them from the main building. “I’ll show you around. There are perks for the pilots.”
Bodie climbed out, secured the flyer and followed him across the deck, thoughts crashing loudly around his head like the waves he could hear crashing around the great legs that stretched way down into the deeps.
Renton.
Bloody hell.
o0o
Time was running out, Doyle thought, absently avoiding the doorman’s eye, and emerging into the early morning air. He was getting nothing from Newbolt except a deeper dislike for his habits and more bruises. If Newbolt was planning to take over another country, he was hiding it well. He found himself yawning, looking around with gritted eyes and bad temper at the bright young suits who were already bustling in to work, keen to get on with whatever they’d left undone the night before. It’d be nice, he thought, to see dawn from the right side again, for a change - as a prelude to going out for a run around the park, or to a leisurely breakfast, an ordinary day, and then his own bed, to sleep, in the dark, through the night.
Or maybe not to sleep the whole time.
What would it be like to see Bodie first thing in the morning, to be awake with him through the day instead of just going to bed, to know he’d see sunlight on that face, in those eyes, and that by the time the sun was setting they’d be looking forward to an ordinary dark night, to sex and sleep?
He was looking forward to sex and sleep with Bodie now. London was almost pulsing around him - it had been a long night. If Newbolt was doing genuinely useful work during the day as well as spending nights like that, maybe they should be getting his bloodchem checked.
Doyle yawned again, glanced at his mobile. There was no hotel from Bodie yet, so he found one far enough away to charge a reasonable fee, not so far that he’d need the Tube to get there, made the booking, and sent Bodie the details, and then dialled Cowley’s number.
“Alpha.”
“Good morning, sir.”
“Ah - Doyle, good. You’re sure it was Johnson you saw the other night?”
“Positive,” he said, though he felt his heart drop as he walked. “No ident on film then?”
“Whatever they’re using as a scrambler, it’s new - we couldn’t get anything. The other man was Kennett Younger, a minor ruffian on the fringes of mercenary activity, but we have other confirmed sightings of him with Krivas. He’s not the issue. We need Johnson - he’s the link, he must be. I’m sending you his last known address. I’ve put a team on constant watch.”
“Bodie was off to Russia with Krivas today - maybe he’ll get something there.”
“Aye - maybe. But where ever they went today it wasn’t Russia, at least not by any known flight path. Tell him to report in as soon as you see him. And get me Johnson!”
The line ended abruptly, and Doyle frowned at the address that appeared via his scrambler. What the hell was he supposed to do about Johnson? Join the stakeout until he turned up, and then tail the man himself? Safer than Bodie trying it, he supposed.
He turned at last into Bucannon Street, spotted the Golden Apple halfway along, and breathed a sigh of relief. He was so tired he could sleep for a week…
Bodie hadn’t checked in yet, so he flirted idly with the bloke on reception in hope of an upgrade, and took the lift up to the fourth floor. The room itself was small but tidy, and all he cared about was the shower and the bed. The shower would have to wait until Bodie got there, but the bed beckoned, and he heeled off his shoes, let his jacket fall on the floor, and lay down, for just a minute…
o0o
He woke with a start to the sound of a door slamming along the corridor, the rattle of a servemecha. He was too warm, and the Skin felt tight, pricklish where he’d been sleeping on it. He turned restlessly onto his side, lifted a lazy hand to read his watch.
Three o’clock.
Fuck!Where the hell was Bodie? He sat up, startled alert, and checked his messages. Nothing. He re-sent the D and D booking address, then stood up and stretched, pacing the dozen spare feet from one end of the room to the other. No wonder the Skin was starting to feel tight - there was barely more than an hour before his twenty four were up, before the Skin bonded more firmly to him, before…
There was the tag. The skin tag in the belly button - if Bodie didn’t turn up he could always use that, get himself back to the lab. He took a deep breath, forced himself to relax. He’d give it twenty minutes, then go find Patricks.
But where the hell was Bodie?
o0o
“…the latest tactics, and the best weapons available,” Krivas boasted, sweeping an arm around the training field. In one corner a group of men were lined up outside a killing hut, far enough away that Bodie could barely hear the gunfire inside. The next corner was a firing range, and even from here it was obvious that the laser sights being used were incredibly accurate - either that or Krivas had the cream of the world’s target shooters at play right this minute. Above them, men dangled and swung from a rope course, with neither fear of the fall nor apparent effort.
“Could have done with that lot in Mid-Afric.” Bodie nodded up at them. “How long they been training?”
“They parkour every day for a year before we send them anywhere.” Krivas sounded satisfied - smug even, the proud benefactor. Speaking of which…
“So how’d you pay for this little lot, then?” he asked. “You never saved any more than the rest of us when I knew you.”
“Not a credit of it is from me,” Krivas said, watching as one of the trainees above reached the final platform, jumped twenty feet at a time down a series of outcrops in the wall of the rig, and when he reached the bottom jogged back to start the course again. “It’s fully funded - and so is that beer you wanted. Shall we?” He gestured to the bug that had brought them through three levels of the most sophisticated training areas that Bodie had ever seen.
“So who funds it, then?”
Krivas took the wheel, and set them trundling across the floor. “Patience, Bodie - you’ll see in just a moment. You remember our passengers?”
“What, the suits? They’re not political!”
“No, they’re not - but they also don’t care what they’re paying for, as long as they are safe to enjoy their own kind of distractions.” The bug reached another door topped by a neon pink sign. “Come on - I’ll show you the second floor.”
It was immediately clear that the second floor had nothing to do with the men training outside. The corridor inside was thickly carpeted, and lit bright, the walls a delicate shade of pale lilac, the year’s most popular colour. Old-fashioned uplights reflected from the ceiling, and a sultry perfume hung thick around them. Bodie paused to take it all in - fourteen rooms, seven on either side, another exit at the other end. Krivas wandered over to a door, apparently at random, glanced through a circular glass window and dismissed whatever he saw. He moved further along to a second door, watched avidly for a moment and then smirked and beckoned to Bodie.
“You might enjoy this one,” he said, turning his own eyes back to the room, and running a hand restlessly over his own crotch.
Bodie peered through the glass, into dim light on red walls, frowning at the shapes and shadows. There was a bed of course, and on the bed one of the men they’d flown in was sitting, sprawled against the headboard, having his cock sucked by a love mecha. One hand was stretched out to fondle another, and his other was shoving a large dildo in and out of the mecha who was pleasuring him. He looked alternately from one to the other mecha, and then to the wall. What was he…?
Bodie blinked. Tied spreadeagled around the wall were other love mechas, all engage in various acts of exposing themselves, over and over again.
He looked quizzically at Krivas. It was sordid, but nothing you wouldn’t find in Rouge City or any of the more dubious cathouses in the Old Town. “That lot fund your boys out there?”
Krivas laughed out loud at that, a half-bitten off sound, harsh in the quiet of the corridor. “That lot fund the beer,” he said. “No, twice a month we bring in the real thing, and that draws the money - the very top money, Bodie, and the men who don’t want anyone to know what they do when they’re not at home with their families.”
The real thing…? “And they don’t know you’ve got an army training right under their noses?”
“Of course they know.” Krivas turned and led him up the long corridor. Bodie glanced in the rooms as they passed, and Krivas let him. “It’s part of what they pay for - the ultimate security.”
“Bit small-league for you, isn’t it?” he asked. He’d always got most out of Krivas by poking him. “Rich man’s pimp?”
To his surprise, Krivas just laughed again. “You never did understand the subtleties, Bodie. Sex sells - but it buys, too. I want a vote in the House just so? I can do it. I want a certain advert across the infoweb? Done.”
Bodie’s mind was racing. Two sessions a month, at least fourteen rooms, how many politicos and influentials did Krivas have in his pocket? And the real thing? If that was true, then why was no one out there talking? Why hadn’t there been even a whisper of a rumour?
They passed through yet another pinkly-lit door, this one leading to a bar, a few people at scattered tables, most of them with love mechas, but quiet. A long window looked out on the landing pad, lights dim and moody across the stretch of tarmac, making the blackness beyond seem deeper, the end of their world. Krivas nodded at the servemecha, which began to pull pints from the taps. Bodie watched the foam rise in the glasses. “Still got your eye on that island, then?”
“King Krivas has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” Krivas smiled. “But you can get trapped on an island. All that water. You may have been right all along - there’s a lot to be said for civilisation. Especially when you control it.”
Bodie took the proffered pint, supped thoughtfully for a moment - Old Kentish, a premier brand, of course - and then looked sideways at Krivas. “Done alright for yourself.”
“I have.” That was Krivas, no false modesty. “And I can always use good men. You were always good.”
“You want me to do - what?”
Krivas shrugged. “My head of security is going to have an accident in a few days.”
“Making free with the goods, was he?”
“Making free with the customers. It turned out she was more brawn than brain. You wouldn’t make that mistake, not with your background.”
He pretended to think about it - but not for so long that Krivas decided he was being played. “What are you offering to keep me on the straight, then?”
“Let us begin with something better than your beer.” Krivas waved at the servemecha again. “Brandy for my colleague!”
o0o
Doyle was about to leave, reaching to scan for exit when he heard running footsteps down the hotel corridor, and so he’d drawn his knife and was standing behind the door when it burst open.
He took a breath, sheathed his blade, and decided killing the bastard could wait.
“Doyle?” Bodie spun at the soft sound of steel sliding into steel. “You’re still wearing it…?”
“Of course I’m still wearing it, you moron - you weren’t here to… oi! Watch the arm!” Bodie’s grip was fierce, an echo of the look in his eyes, and he dragged Doyle closer to him with one hand, dug into a pocket with the other. He had to let him go to undo the tube of gel, unusually clumsy as he tried to unscrew the cap fast, and Doyle pursed his lips on what he’d been about to say, turned around before Bodie could push him to do it, and waited for the slide of fingers down his back. When it came, it felt more sluggish than normal, as if the Skin was peeling away only reluctantly, and he found himself tugging it off with more haste than ever before. It felt tacky, pulling at his own flesh as he stripped it away. Bodie reached out to help, and together they finally freed him of it, letting it drop to the floor in a black and silver puddle.
Doyle stared at it for a moment, looked up to find Bodie doing the same, and then their eyes met. It was Doyle who reached out this time, pulling Bodie to him and kissing him for the frantic look on his face when he arrived, and for the fear that lingered yet in his eyes. Every inch of Bodie felt alive as they kissed, electric against his own skin, and Doyle reached down to undo his trousers even as Bodie pushed him back towards the wall, where they rutted hard against each other, skin on skin on heat and hardness and need, until they came in gasps of air that were almost cries, and stilled, and then just held each other up.
Bodie moved eventually, but only to the bed in the corner of the room, pulling Doyle with him. They slid under the duvet, tugging it around them until they lay close, entwined together, and cocooned in the warmth and comfort of it.
The moment stretched. “Alright?” Doyle asked at last, casually, and then found himself laughing. Underneath him, Bodie began to shake, and then he was giggling, and laughing as well, and the last of the tension drained from them.
“What the fuck kept you?” Doyle asked when he could speak again. “You cut it a bit fine, mate!”
“Got here as fast as I could. Got held up.” Bodie said, and his arms tightened again around Doyle. “I need to call Cowley,” he added, though he didn’t move.
“Bodie! What happened?”
“I found Renton - and he made me a partner in his little enterprise. Well - employee.”
“So it’s not Krivas then?” Doyle leaned up on an elbow, looked down at Bodie as he spoke.
Bodie was shaking his head.
“So it is Krivas?”
“You’re gonna love this,” Bodie said. “Renton is Krivas. He’s using it as a codename for his little scam.”
“No wonder we couldn’t find him.”
“Yeah - and his scam isn’t so little. He’s not after the Southern Confederates, he’s got his eye on bigger fish here at home.”
“Newbolt…”?
“A cog in the machinery.” Bodie raised an eyebrow. “A very small cog, it turns out.”
Doyle listened, frowning, as Bodie told him where he’d been and what he’d been doing - tried to ignore the fact that he’d been with a love mecha for half the night, as a reward and a temptation from Krivas.
“So they bring in real hookers for these sessions,” Doyle said at last. “So what? That’s not illegal - why the secrecy?”
“They’re not hookers.” Bodie looked grim. “They’re kids picked up from the street - mostly rain-dodgers, so no one’ll come looking for them, but not always. You remember that soap star who went missing a few months ago?”
“Cara Taitley?” It had made a splash in the news blogs, a minor but rising star who was using her body to get to the top, suddenly gone. “She didn’t turn up to work one day,” he remembered. “Never seen again.”
“That’s right. One of the clients had a yen on for her - paid nearly a million credits.”
Doyle whistled, low. “And she’s still there?”
But Bodie was shaking his head again. “They don’t bring them back. When they’re done with ‘em they go over the side.” He looked away briefly. “What’s left of them.”
“Christ…”
“Yeah.” Bodie took a deep breath, then sat up and reached for his trousers, pulled his mobile from a pocket. “I’ll call Cowley. At least you won’t have to see Newbolt again.”
For a moment, for just a moment, relief washed through Doyle like cool, clear water - and then it froze in place. “You didn’t have a recorder with you,” he said, matter-of-factly, and waited for Bodie to look at him. “And we haven’t got any evidence that Newbolt’s involved.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Bodie’s face had hardened. “We knock out Krivas’s rig and Newbolt’s got nowhere to go and do his nasty. And Krivas finally gets his.”
“No. He’s managed just fine without Krivas so far.” He glanced down at the almost permanent bruises around his wrists, flexed his back so that the skin pulled there too, a reminder. “Getting Krivas isn’t enough - I want Newbolt.”
“You can’t go back…”
“We need the evidence, Bodie! Look, call Cowley - now we know what’s going on, I can draw Newbolt out, we can set something up. It’ll be alright.”
“You’re not telling me… Afternoon, sir.” With a final glare, Bodie turned his attention to his phone, began the formal report of his information, and Doyle lay back on the pillows, running a hand through his hair, and half-listening, trying to think. Cowley would come up with something, he was sure - but how far would he have to let Newbolt go before the plan kicked in?
o0o
Bodie kept his flyer at a careful distance from the Minister’s own transport, hidden behind at least two other vehicles at all times, and now and then he flicked on the colour tint, so that his energy tiles tilted in one direction or another, making him darker or lighter as the ambient light flowed around him. It was expensive to use, draining the fuel cells each time he did it - and on this occasion he didn’t care in the least. Doyle was in Newbolt’s flyer, and they were headed to the Minister’s current private country residence, far away from the bustle and safety of town.
Anything could happen in the country, in the quiet enclaves of the rich and famous and powerful. Newbolt hadn’t brought Doyle anywhere near the place until now, though Doyle hadn’t read anything into it, and Bodie frowned as he tried yet again to work out why. A change of location had been Doyle’s idea to keep the Minister interested, to introduce the idea of escape, and one that Newbolt had agreed to readily enough - and then derailed all Doyle’s exotic suggestions and told him only that he fancied some at home time, whatever that meant. Government mandarins didn’t have permanent residences, they were rewarded with them when they resigned their service, and there was no reason this place should mean anything more to Newbolt than his other houses and flats. Unless he had something there that he couldn’t risk using often - it was what Bodie returned to, time and again. Nothing as extreme as on the oilrig, or he wouldn’t go out there, but something…
Bodie found himself thinking of some of the darker corners at the Flesh Fairs, where love mechas could be reduced to their specifics, and used until they fell apart. It had never appealed to him, but he’d never thought of it as more than another, albeit fairly disgusting, way to get rid of worthless metal. Now it worried at him, nagged at him, kept him cautious on Newbolt’s tail.
Cowley hadn’t helped - his focus was Johnson, still trying to make that link between Newbolt and Krivas, and he didn’t have much sympathy for Bodie’s worries. Doyle’s vital signs were on constant record via the datacatch, he was fit and healthy, and, Cowley reminded him impatiently, probably safer while he was wearing the Skin than Bodie was.
It wouldn’t stop him feeling pain. Wouldn’t stop Newbolt touching him.
The flyer ahead slowed as they approached the gates to Newbolt’s estate, and Bodie snapped on the snag device on the seat beside him, drove past the entrance, and kept going until he was around a curve in the flyway, then swooped into the return lane, changed his tiles again, and headed back. Everything was quiet, the gates closed, the electric field over the place reading secure.
If this didn’t work… It would work. He coded the readings from the snag into his flyer, waited impatiently for them to match the readings from the field, and then aimed for a space just to the side of the gates, where a row of tall bushes would hopefully protect his entry from less technical security, such as prying eyes. He took a deep breath, and accelerated straight towards the field.
Entry was underwhelming - not even an extra buzz of current - but he was safely inside, his flyer hovering easily, and in just enough space between the wall and the bushes to be concealed. He opened the door wide enough to squeeze through, aware of the full moon high in the sky and looming brightly over the world, giving more light than he would have liked. There was cover from the bushes and trees around most of the perimeter, but wide stretches of empty lawn between the bushes and the house. He’d have to go around and hope that there would be outbuildings of some kind to give him cover. He glanced around once more, poised to move - all was still, the windows on this side of the house dark.
His mobile buzzed in his pocket, and he started, then crouched back into the shadows and pulled it out. It could be Jen, it could be Sarah, it could be Doyle calling for help.
It was George Cowley.
“Where are you, man?”
“Following a lead, sir,” he said, wincing and hoping Cowley hadn’t pulled up a map on his number.
“Drop it,” Cowley said briefly. “I need you back here.”
“News?”
“Aye - we’ve a lead connecting Johnson to the murder of his girlfriend, and to another woman associated with Newbolt. I want you to follow it up - I’m filing a flight plan for you to Manhattan.”
Manhattan? “That’s halfway to the Americas!”
“I’m aware of its location, Bodie. You’d better hurry then, hadn’t you?”
“Doyle…”
“Is with Newbolt as we speak, I know. But you can manage this on your own, it’s a simple pick up.”
“Yes, sir.” Except he’d risk Cowley’s wrath rather than leave Doyle out here on his own. “On my way, sir.”
He could almost hear a snap as the call ended, and stared at the screen for a moment before shoving it deep into his pocket again, and starting to move around the edge of the property. The house was set further back from the front than from either side or the rear, and as he followed the wall around, he came closer to the building. There were lights on at the back of the house, on the ground floor and one each on the first and the second floors, and voices loud from what he assumed was a kitchen or some kind of servants quarters. Would the Minister use mecha or orga at his house in the country? Didn’t matter much, he didn’t want to meet anyone.
A series of greenhouses stretched around the back garden - naturally the Minister would eat fresh - and Bodie made his way carefully from one to another, until he was close enough to run four steps to the side of the building. It was too cold in December for open windows, but his skeleton keys made short work of their digital locks, and then he was inside a dark room, a library, lined floor to ceiling with books on shelves, and scattered with armchairs. There was a desk at one end, and he thought briefly about searching it, deciding with relief that he didn’t have time. Anyway, if Cowley’s lead was good, he didn’t need to. He just had to find Doyle.
The bedrooms were probably upstairs, and he slunk carefully along walls and corridors and bannisters in the shadows. The place was almost entirely in moonlit darkness, the lights presumably all inside rooms, but he took care anyway. In this sort of place, the slightest noise could bring someone out, and he had no intention of explaining to Cowley why his lead had brought him right to the lion’s den.
The room on the first floor with the light on was simply a bathroom, empty and glaring, and so he carried on even more carefully to the second floor. There was no sound - no shouts or slaps or cracking whips, and surely Newbolt hadn’t had time to finish Doyle off yet. Besides - Doyle wouldn’t give up without a fight if it came to that, Bodie was sure of it.
He opened door after door, carefully, just far enough to see that the rooms were in darkness, and it wasn’t until he reached the last room in the hallway that he was rewarded by a chink of light. No movement though, and no sound… He took a chance, pushed the door open far enough to look past, and peered around.
Doyle’s eyes glared back at him from the opposite wall, glittering above a wide strip of silver tape across his mouth. His hands were cuffed to metal rails on the wall, his legs spread-eagled and feet cuffed in the same way. His clothing was undone, but he looked otherwise intact, and Bodie gave him a bright grin, then held a finger to his mouth, and pulled out his mobile. The snag device had pulled all the codes and numbers in the house, and he keyed in a message, then coded it to voice and sent it through the ether, aware of Doyle’s angry stare the whole time.
A door slammed downstairs, and Bodie stepped quickly to the far side of the bed, sliding underneath just as the door opened and Newbolt strode into the room.
“Well Ray, our plans have been interrupted again. Had you chosen your toy yet? Decided which one it should be? I thought perhaps the crop, because it makes such a satisfying sound, but I must admit that I was hoping for the cat. But it will have to wait - the House has been called.”
A slap of flesh on flesh, and then heavy breathing, and Bodie gritted his teeth.
“Let yourself out - call a flyer on my account and take a booking for tomorrow night.”
Footsteps again, and then he was gone. Bodie waited until the whine of a flyer could be heard outside, and then he rolled out, dusting himself down. Doyle was uncuffed now, leaning against the wall, clothes straightened, and arms crossed over his chest. He’d taken the gag off.
“Would you like to tell me…?” he began, spitting fury, and Bodie cut him off.
“Cowley called,” he said. “He wants us in HQ - we’re off to Manhattan on a pick up. Something to do with Johnson.”
Doyle glared suspiciously at him, then nodded him at the door, and followed close behind as they left the Minister’s house.
o0o
There was something up with Bodie, Doyle thought, as they flew back to town, something he wasn’t talking about. Cowley’s lead was good news, but Bodie was almost too happy about it - wittering away about the last time he’d flown to the Americas, and about this flyer and that flyer, and whether it was likely to be Johnson himself that they were collecting. Doyle didn’t bother trying to get a word in edgewise, nodding and making the right noises at the right places, and no more, but only half his attention was on the route, and the rest was watching his partner.
Bodie took them straight to CI5, where Cowley had given them all the clearance they needed to be whisked from the flypark to his office. His assistant showed them through with a smile, as if this was nothing more than an ordinary business meeting, and Doyle was perhaps no more than he appeared to be - a mecha.
“Doyle.” Cowley frowned at him, glanced at Bodie, and then back. “I thought you were booked with Newbolt tonight?”
“Er… Yes sir. He was called to the House. I’m booked again tomorrow.” He very carefully didn’t look at Bodie, but he felt him, attention-straight and tense beside him.
“Hmmn.” Cowley tapped a file of papers against his hand for a moment, and Doyle waited impatiently. “Well, you’re here now,” he finally said, “And I daresay Bodie would appreciate some company.” Dry as dry.
“Who’re we picking up, sir?” Bodie asked quickly, so that the corner of Cowley’s mouth twitched, and Doyle frowned. What was the joke?
“A witness to Samantha Bevin’s murder - someone who saw Saul Johnson kill the girl. A mecha - Gigolo Joe, a sophisticated model. One of your kind, Doyle.” Cowley’s gaze flicked to him, and there was a definite twinkle in his eye. Who would have thought the old man had a sense of humour? “A love mecha.”
Doyle rolled his eyes. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that. Hang on - what’s a love mecha doing in the Drowned City?”
“He’s in the company of an even more sophisticated model - a prototype by Cybertronics, based in the New Jersey Islands, based on a child. For some reason, the pair made their way to Rouge City, and then stole an amphibicopter. We think David is trying to return to his maker, Allen Hobby. We’re not sure why Joe seems to have decided to accompany him.”
“Gone rogue?” Bodie suggested. “He should have turned himself in when he witnessed the murder.”
“Assuming he did,” Doyle interrupted. “Are you sure he saw it?”
“We know he had a regular appointment with Bevins, and that he checked into the hotel on time. We also know he left the hotel before the appointment was scheduled to end - and that his operating tag was found cut from his collar.”
“Told you,” Bodie said. “Gone rogue.”
Perhaps…” Cowley sounded thoughtful.
“He ditched his tag!”
“And stole a copter,” Doyle agreed. “So we go and pick him up.”
“Yes. I want to find out what he knows. There’s an amphibicopter with the necessary equipment waiting for you in the pool. You’ll find the flight path set. And here.” He reached into a drawer, and drew out a datadock, gestured at them impatiently when they hesitated. “Your phones - you may need clearance ident, and we don’t have time to chip you. You’ll also maintain radio silence unless absolutely necessary, and use call-signs rather than names. Bodie - you’re assigned as 3.7. Doyle - 4.5.” He scanned the data into their phones. “Well get on with it, then! You haven’t got all night!”
The copter waiting for them was high-spec, so that they both eyed it appreciatively as they typed in their codes for the sign-out. Bodie clearly assumed that he would be the one piloting it, so Doyle made a point of beating him to the flight seat and scanning his phone to the comms, raising his own eyebrow to Bodie’s.
“Come on, Bodie - we ‘aven’t got all day, you know.”
Bodie looked sideways and dubiously at him. “Alright - but I get return flight,” he finally said. He grinned suddenly. “Of course I suppose it looks better if my mecha does the donkey work on the way out.” He’d relaxed at some point, Doyle thought, once they’d left Cowley’s office, anyway.
“You…” Doyle was acutely aware that he hadn’t de-Skinned. There was no particular reason he should - if things went smoothly they’d be back well inside the safety parameters, and Bodie was right beside him in any case. It tingled around him - at least he wouldn’t fall asleep at the controls - but he had a feeling that some of that electricity was still Bodie.
They cleared the city, avoided the Bristol Channel when the geocheck reported strong pirate activity, and flew along the French coast instead, before dropping down and across to open waters. From there it was nothing but sea and sky, and eventually Doyle took them up above the cloud layer, to the soft blue sky and shining sun of the dawn behind them. The air was too thin over the ocean to climb high with the chopper blades, and now and then they cut through mists and strips of cloud, but the sun brought him a kind of wakeful energy, and a kind of peace. He thought about the crowds behind them, setting off to an ordinary day’s work, and thought that, despite everything, for now it was good to be here instead, together in the emptiness with Bodie.
When they got closer, Bodie began telling ghost stories, legends about great golden lions, weeping for the ghosts of the city that once was, and about giant women who flew around the towers of the drowned. Doyle countered with cynical looks, and retaliated with more practical tales he’d heard about the place, scrapers crashing dramatically into the sea and sending their waves as far as Ireland.
“And this Hobby bloke lives there,” Bodie said at last. “What does that make him, I wonder?”
“A right nutter,” Doyle said, decidedly. It was one thing to cling onto the scrapers and bridges of Old London, communities of people, no matter how tenuous, but Manhattan was so far gone, anything still habitable so far from rescue should it be needed, that Hobby must be the only person there. He couldn’t be entirely sane, genius or not.
After a couple of hours, he dropped them back below the clouds, and they scanned the horizon for the first glimpses of the city. They came darkly, a skeleton of spires and jagged shapes on the horizon, that gradually resolved into buildings and towers. They passed a great hand, rising from the waters, holding a flaming torch, ducked around concrete and metal and broken girders.
“Definitely mad,” Bodie said, leaning forward in his seat, eyes tracking the movement of wind and waves.
It felt as if they were the only things alive for a thousand miles, for all Doyle knew there were island states within only a hundred. No wonder it had been so completely abandoned - it felt… wrong, somehow. Worse than anywhere back home, grey and grim, where once people had lived, loved, laughed and cried.
The bright line on their tracker drew them on, ever toward the stolen amphibicopter, and finally towards a solid building gridded with windows, and guarded by three enormous golden lions, water gushing from their mouths to fall, in a kind of beauty, back into the risen sea. They looked at each other, Bodie’s tales still vivid, smiled wryly.
“There!”
Doyle set the controls to hover, followed Bodie’s pointed finger. And there it was. There was the amphibicopter, and there with it, two figures. The taller was recognisably Gigolo Joe, a perfect match for the scan stats. He was crouched at the side of the vehicle, seemed to be listening intently to the boy mecha sitting inside.
“Take them,” Bodie suggested, and Doyle nodded briefly, matched the electromagnet to Joe’s specifics, and dropped it from the belly of their craft, feeling the slight resistance as the copter adjusted its flight to the extra pull.
“He doesn’t want to come,” he said, trying to watch dispassionately. Just a mecha he told himself, it wasn’t real reluctance. But Joe was grasping the edge of the amphibicopter, even as his body started to lift. When the magnet made contact, the audio cut in.
"Goodbye, David. When you become a real boy, remember me to the ladies when you grow up.” A pause, and then a strange kind of hope and certainty. “I am."
Doyle frowned. “I am? Bit abstract, innit.” He glanced at Bodie as they reeled Joe in. “Tell me again they’re no more than nuts and bolts and datachips.”
“Doyle… What the hell?”
As if Joe had somehow released it, the amphibicopter with the boy mecha was sinking downwards, submerging into the dark, slate grey, waters. It bubbled its oxygen away, and then it was gone, as if it had never been.
“Well, Cowley only wants Joe,” Bodie said at last. “The boy’s got nothing to do with it anyway.”
“Yeah…” It was true, he knew it was true, and yet the face that had stared momentarily up at Joe… It had been a very real face, the face of a boy.
“Come on Doyle - wind him in, shove over, and let’s get out of here.”
They’d done what they came for, they were a step closer to stopping Newbolt for good - his penchants, his incidental politics, the role he played in Krivas’s grand scheme. The boy was a mecha, and whatever that meant, he was gone.
o0o
To Part Five...