Little Emily Vaughan lay on her perfect feather bed in her perfect room and stared at the perfect white ceiling. There was a white desk, too, and white cupboards to match the white textured walls. The whole house was like that. Emily figured her parents would probably be buried in white coffins.
“Emily Marie Vaughan!” her mother called from downstairs, still fussing at her husband’s suit and her own elegant cream-coloured dress. “Get down here, we’re going to be late for the party!”
Sighing, Emily counted the steps as she trudged down in her faded jeans and t-shirt, new wood creaking under her feet. Moment of truth time. Maybe they’d finally get the hint that she was not going to any damned party, be it with the President or this new Federation bitch. It was tough enough to swallow the Fed propaganda she got dished up at school nowadays. She didn’t know how many more times she could nod, smile and lie through her fucking teeth.
Her father stopped her at the foot of the stairs. He looked immaculate in his suit, apart from the wispy blond hairline rapidly sprinting away from his forehead. Afternoon sunlight spilled onto him through the big bay windows along the west wall, a golden sea under orange skies.
“Oh no, no, no,” he declared. “You’re not going in that. Your mother picked out something for you to wear.”
“Teenage rebellion, dad,” she said, thick with sarcasm, arms crossed as she glared at him. “You may have heard of it.”
Dear old mother stood beside him and shared his disapproval. “This is bad cliché, Emily, and you’re not some soap starlet. We don’t have time for you to throw a tantrum. Get dressed and get going.”
Emily sneered. “Why don’t you get it through your head that I am not coming with you?” They answered with mute stares, which really got her goat. She snapped, “I’m not a fucking little robot that smiles and curtseys on command!”
Her father stepped in closer, his jaw set in anger, and a twinge of fear went through Emily. He pitched his voice low and hissed, “This is my house, and you are my daughter. You’ll do as I say.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. Until now she wasn’t quite sure if she’d go through with her plan, but now she knew she would. “Okay, dad, you win. I’ll change right now.” She took a step back, smiled and kicked off her sandals. Then pulled her top over her head and slipped out of her jeans. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath, just stood in front of him naked as her birthday. “How’s this?”
Edward Vaughan’s teeth ground together with a sharp crunching noise. His face went red, and he raised his hand as if to settle the matter that way, but his wife took his wrist and pulled it back down. “This is foolishness,” she said to him. For Emily she had nothing but frowns. “We’ll deal with you when we get back, young lady. I’m very disappointed in you.”
Emily giggled as she flicked her mother the middle finger. Then she turned her back on their shocked gasps, gathered her clothes and marched back upstairs with triumph in her heart. She heard some argument downstairs before they finally left, at which point she grabbed her keys and purse and slid out the door. It took some doing to avoid the police patrols, and her heart raced with fear whenever she spotted uniformed Feds out in the streets, an unpleasant reminder of the occupation. The back-ways of Hong Kong didn’t offer much solace for a girl like Emily, but if you looked hard enough . . .
A subway train took her into the heart of the city, and as she sat she imagined Sir Edward and Lady Laura arriving at their party, greeted by stiff Federal Constables in their shiny grey uniforms. Everyone important under the old regime had their own Fed assigned to them for these occasions. A year and a half after the start of the occupation they still didn’t really trust the local aristocracy, but needed them to keep things running. Even good little dogs like the Vaughan family were only now beginning to worm their way back into the upper echelons, after getting treated as simple informers for the past eighteen months.
Of course none of that mattered to Emily anymore. She’d made her decision. She wouldn’t be bullied into submission anymore; with a sudden shock she realised she wouldn’t even care if she never went back.
Minutes later she arrived at a nameless, run-down old tower in an unfashionable part of the city. She could always find refuge here. She picked up a fallen piece of concrete and used it to press the intercom call button, which would otherwise shock the crap out of you. Moments later it crackled and she shouted into it, “Yo, Alf, it’s Emily! Open up!”
The lock on the door clicked open. She could hear footsteps thumping down the stairwell to greet her. Paul and Kasumi were the first to fling themselves at her, while Alf hung back and grinned silently from the doorway.
“Good to see you, Emm!” they blathered. “We missed you! Did you bring any food?”
She shook her head, much to their disappointment, but that changed instantly when she pulled out her credit card. “Order something,” she said. “It’s on me.”
Paul and Kasumi took it and ran away howling with delight. It was so easy to buy affection around here. They were all years older than Emily, but they treated her like a princess because Alf liked her, and Alf made the rules. She didn’t know what he saw in her, but there was more to it than money. Alf couldn’t be bought.
He beckoned her over and she came, leaned in and kissed him.
“You been away too long, Emm,” he told her in his rough, rude accent. He always slurred a little when he was sailing high on pixie dust. He didn’t use it around her ’cause she didn’t like it, she was always trying to get him away from the hard stuff, so he clearly wasn’t expecting her. “How I supposed to sleep if you’re not here nights?”
“I’m sure you’ve found something to get you through,” she shot back with a wicked smile.
He snorted and lit up an end of manna rolled in yellow paper, inhaled, then placed it between Emily’s lips. She took a drag and held the sweet smoke until she started to feel the buzz. To a girl who had to hide her cigarettes from her parents, it was the best thing ever.
Alf put away his lighter and said, “I know you here ’cause you need something.”
“Just someplace to kip for a couple days, right? We can make it fun.” She ran her fingers down his chest and let them slip down to his crotch. Excitement tingled in her chest as she felt him stiffen. Pixie dust amplified your emotions, including sex drive, so she could really work off her anger with him . . .
“You know you got kip anytime wherever Alfie’s at, Emm.” He jerked his head at the stairwell. “Come to my floor and we find some privacy.”
She took his hand and followed him.
Little Emily Vaughan never came back from that room.
She got a part-time job as a waitress to cover their food, while Alf kept up his habit by selling pixie dust on to other kids. Paul and Kasumi rigged up their stolen water, TV, electricity. Others joined and left their group, recruited for their skills or booted out because of personality problems, but the core team always held together.
Well, mostly. Fewer and fewer people came to their enclave, and no one stayed. Eventually Paul and Kasumi got married, got jobs, and left to rejoin the society that had abandoned them. That was the last straw for Alf, depressed and getting nowhere. He drifted further and further into his dust-induced dreams. He started to deal worse and worse things just to afford his next fix. To help Alf with his ever-growing money problem, the girl who had been Emily Vaughan quit her job and helped him run drugs through Hong Kong. She had to start using false names in order to keep them both out of trouble.
Every once in a while she stopped outside her old house, to see how her parents were doing. Moving up, of course. Always moving up.
She was twenty-two years old when she found Alf on the bathroom floor, bloody foam bubbling out of his mouth, his nostrils stained blue with dust. She knelt at his side, touched him, found him still warm. She bit back tears and closed his dry, staring eyes.
“See you later, Alfie,” she told him. Then she walked away from the flats and never looked back. The next few years were hazy. She went out a lot, drank a lot, flirted with any boy she liked but kept them all at a distance. Every once in a while she might bring one home, but never longer than one night. Slowly and gradually, Gina Hart grew into Emily’s hollowed-out soul, and that was good. She liked being Gina. Liked taking control of her own downward spiral.
So it came to be that Gina Hart stood up and blinked drunkenly at the night. The world looked very blurry. The unfocused green blob in front of her might have been a tree, or a bush, or a hill. The ceiling had hit her in the head a couple of times, and so had the floor. She didn’t feel too good.
“Gonna be sick,” she decided, then doubled over and spat acid. She hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in hours. Her stomach roared and her throat begged for a drop of water.
Food she didn’t see, but there was water right in front of her. She crawled towards an open-air pond and sipped from it. Brackish and horrible on her tongue, filled with algae, but wet. She choked down two mouthfuls, starting to feel a little better.
She turned around and saw the helicopter’s cockpit dangling upside-down from a tree by its parachute. The canopy was open and empty. Gina must have been flung out of the cockpit onto the lawn below, but where were the pilots? Had they even been real?
The manicured trees, lawns and water features suggested a park of some type. The sky began to colour itself in. It’d be morning soon and she needed to move, once again left without anything to keep her safe. She missed the warm feel of her taser more than ever.
She got up and wandered around in a daze, expecting to find an exit sooner or later. In the meantime she stabbed her fingers at her mobile. It wouldn’t hold still. It took her three tries to dial Rat’s number and no one picked up. She mumbled a few words into Rat’s voicemail, then hung up.
She was beginning to think she’d be alright when a house came out of nowhere and bumped into her. Columns and big double doors swam out of the blur. She rubbed her nose and deduced with surreal clarity that she probably had a concussion. Suddenly light-headed and dizzy, she tried to lean on the wall and missed.
“I’m going to lie down here for a minute,” she said and did so. Grass soft underneath her, the sky dark and beautiful above. Little drops of rain pattered on her face.
She watched a little light circling down from the dark, swinging this way and that with smooth grace. It came down towards the lawn where Gina lay, its only sound the thin whistle of rotors slicing the air. Gina knew she ought to be worried about that, and that distant impulse of fear brought her crawling up on her hands and knees. Lightning flashed in the sky and the boom of thunder nearly knocked her back down. Her hair clung to her face as the heavens broke and the rain started pouring down in earnest.
Scraping her knees on the rough ground, she hauled herself into the underbrush. No escape. She found her path ahead blocked by a wire fence lined along the top with spikes and barbs of every variety. She was in no state to climb it even if she dared. Then she spotted a deep pit where dogs had tunnelled under the fence. She hurried into the slippy, sucking mud and strained against the mesh, forcing herself through.
As the wire dug bloody furrows into her back and legs, Gina could hear shouts and the squelching of boots on wet grass. Her dulled senses told her something was wrong, a presence close by. She closed her eyes for a moment and reached for it. It was the worst thing she could’ve done. Gabriel saw her, and there was a moment of instant, mutual recognition. All his attention whipped round to focus on her with merciless intensity.
“Gina!” Gabriel’s voice boomed, a real voice out on the grass. The next moment Gina pulled herself upright and ran. Her jacket was gone. She just threw herself through bushes and grass and puddles of water until her feet hit tarmac. She found herself on an abandoned country road lined with rows of dark, lifeless warehouses, closed for the night. Dozens of old cars sat abandoned along the verge, some resting on cinderblocks without any wheels, others showing empty space where engines should have been. Not one living soul anywhere in sight. She was alone.
Another blast of thunder rattled her teeth, and she heard Gabriel shout, “Where are you?!”
Part of her wanted nothing more than to turn back and go to him. She remembered lying in his arms, all her worries forgotten. Maybe it was time.
Then the dead city flashed into her mind, its acid-scarred towers creaking and swaying in the wind. Ash rained down from the sky like snow. Charred faces stared at her with empty eyesockets. Gina stumbled and fell to her knees, trying to shut out the horrible vision.
Gabriel wouldn’t do that, she argued with herself, but when she really thought about it she wasn’t so sure.
Forks of lightning speared the sky and suddenly there he was, standing over her.
Gina froze like a statue. A gentle touch in her mind stripped away the pain and confusion, leaving her nothing but fear and desire and love.
“No more running away,” he told her, and smiled his angelic smile. He wasn’t even wet. The horizontal rain never seemed to touch him. “You know, it’s funny. A month ago I didn’t know you, and all of my plans were going so well.”
“What plans?” she asked without understanding. Her legs wobbled and her head spun, but still she did her best to resist his intoxicating presence. Even in the real world he had a glow about him, a white aura outlined against the stormy sky, something otherworldly shining through from someplace else.
“This is the beginning of the end, Gina. We’re nearing the culmination of over ten years of research. I’d like you to be there when I finally get what I’m after.”
“That sounds like a bad idea . . .”
She said it without much conviction. One by one her resistances crumbled under the addictive touch in her mind. It was no longer a trickle, no subtle dream-like enchantment that appealed to her curiosity and sexuality. This was a tidal wave; something that swallowed everything in its way and pulled it along in the overwhelming currents. It was a drug you could never get enough of.
Emily Vaughan would’ve given up in an instant. Gina Hart, on the other hand, held on for dear life.
Synapses fired at the back of her brain. Something awakened that had been forged in anger under her father’s thumb, quenched in the icy numbness of Alfie’s death, and finally sharpened to a point in the meanest back-ways of the City. It had given up on innocence and trust and all those comfortable illusions. It was capable of putting five bullets through a thug in Hangzhou airport, pulling the trigger for each one. It could grab hold of a Federal Constable’s mind and twist it back upon itself until all the lights went out. It was a piece of the Street of Eyes she carried inside her. Without really thinking about it, five fingers curled into a fist behind her back.
It faltered when she met Gabriel’s eyes, pools of liquid fire that stared straight into her soul. She couldn’t help smiling at him, couldn’t deny the adoration that bubbled up from the very middle of herself.
Then she brought her arm around and punched him in the mouth.
The sheer surprise of it knocked Gabriel on his backside. The narcotic glow faded, and though her mind screamed for more, Gina asserted bitter control of herself. The first clear thoughts of the day coalesced in her mind. She found him staring up at her, his expression both shocked and hurt, and she knew her window of opportunity was already shrinking.
“I’ll come with you, Gabriel,” she said softly, the words coming out with pinpoint precision, “when you learn to stop playing games. This is the really real world, and people ain’t toys or pawns on some chessboard. They hurt, they bleed, and they die. Jez should’ve taught you that.”
She leaned down, kissed him quickly, then turned her back and started to walk away. It came as no surprise when her legs froze, her soles rooted to the ground.
You’re wrong, you know, Gabriel’s voice sounded in her ears without bothering to pass through the air in between. The world is a board, and people make themselves into pieces. I never did that for anyone.
The words rang through her like steel ringing off an anvil. Nothing could shut them out. Lightning lit up the sky, followed by a long blast of thunder. For a moment Gina was sure she saw a shadow moving by the side of the road, illuminated by the flash, but when she looked again there was nothing there.
“Let me go,” she told Gabriel in a voice as hard as iron.
I said, no more running. And I meant it. His emotions were not unpleasant, or angry, or even annoyed. All Gina could feel in him was a kind of patient indulgence. His fingertips explored his face where she’d hit him, and he laughed inside her mind, still a little bit shocked. You really are full of surprises, Gina.
That moment a rock flew out of the bushes, aimed squarely at Gabriel’s head. He raised a hand and caught it without even looking. Slowly he brought it up to his face, studying it with intense curiosity. They were supposed to be alone.
A sudden spike of fear echoed off to her left, but it only lasted a moment before the owner clamped down with iron discipline and dropped into a blinding rhythm of telepathy avoidance techniques. Gina slid off that mental wall as if trying to grip a handful of ice cubes. Then she heard a voice.
“Don’t just stand there, you dumb bitch!” it cried, and another rock flew out at Gabriel from the opposite direction. “Run!”
She stood stunned for a moment, then took back her limbs and bolted.
Gabriel’s power flooded the world behind her, attacking everything at once. Over her shoulder Gina saw one shadowy figure clutch its head and tumble to the ground. She’d hoped for an army but there were only two people, hopelessly outclassed. Then the ocean of force swept over her. She sagged her knees, too exhausted to go up against it. Only the avoider was still afoot, and Gabriel tracked him with the concentration of a sniper. His forehead creased slightly as he focused.
Shockwaves rippled through Gina from halfway down the street. She heard a scream, and knew her would-be rescuers had lost. They were all at Gabriel’s mercy.
Or they would’ve been if he’d spotted the van in time.
A driverless blob of white fibreglass barrelled down on him from behind, its electric engine as quiet as a knife. No human sense could’ve felt it coming. The van drove him down with a sickening crunch, leaving a red smear on the front, and his body rolled away behind. For a moment she sensed only stillness. Not even an unconscious mind burned in that mangled heap of flesh. Then Gina felt a flicker inside him, like a fire guttering back to life. It reignited with frightening speed. Gabriel reached out to her again, but this time he was too late.
Gina’s rescuers bundled her into the van. Tires squealed as the autodrive sped away, and for half a moment Gina dared to let herself think she was out of it. Then . . .
Thunder slammed into the van. It shattered every window and knocked the vehicle sideways so hard that two of its wheels left the ground. It teetered there for one endless, heart-stopping moment, then came down again.
A storm of plexiglass whistled past Gina’s ears, slicing cruelly into her skin. Her eyes stayed open out of sheer panic; she saw chunks of plastic bury themselves inches deep in the rubber interior. Even when the storm died down, though, she could feel Gabriel’s crushing presence all around her.
There was no more gentleness, no more pleasure or persuasion. Only a command so absolute that it filled Gina up from the inside. Before she even knew it her hands were fumbling at the door. She genuinely wanted to run back, to forget everything, to be with him — her deepest longings were dredged up and amplified beyond measure. She fought wildly as arms pulled her away from the door and bodies piled on top of her. They kept her down.
Pain began to throb at the base of her skull. Desire faded, replaced by a terrible stretching, her mind being pulled in one direction while her body moved on in the other. This wasn’t telepathy. This was more like being pried loose from herself, as though someone had sawed off the top of her skull and was stringing her brain out behind her like warm toffee.
Still the iron grip on her mind didn’t fade.
She howled, “Back! Take me back!”
“Hang in there,” a voice told her, tinny and distorted through the red haze of agony. “We’re almost away.”
You’re tearing me apart, she wanted to scream, but her throat had clenched shut. Everything she was was being pulled out of her. It stretched away in a thin, ghostly line, taut as a bowstring.
She made one last, desperate lunge for the door but the bodies blocked her way and wrestled her back down. She couldn’t get out, no matter how she bit and clawed and kicked.
Gabriel howled with frustration, a sound that went down through madness and out the other side. His grip suddenly changed, and Gina felt him tear something out of her. A piece of her mind ripped away, left a bleeding hole that Gabriel staunched with care and compassion. Then he poured himself into the wound, filling up the gap, trying to calm the agony inside her.
She let out one final scream and passed out.
Her dreams were dark and cold. She kept seeing mirrors, but the reflections were wrong, fragmented and confused. Her breath steamed in the air. The moisture on her eyeballs started to freeze.
The next moment she found herself looking up at Gabriel, shining like an angel, radiating warmth from his body. She basked in it for a long time and stared up in mute awe. Then she started to come back to her senses. She began to remember. An overwhelming current of rage swept her up in its arms.
“You don’t take fucking ‘no’ for an answer, do you?” she hissed, her hands balling into fists. “What did you do to me?”
“What do you think I did?” he asked gently.
She bit her tongue so hard that warm dream-blood filled her mouth and ran down her chin. Never before had she felt anything like true hate for Gabriel, but here it was. “You took something out of me, and put something else in its place. Give it back. Now.”
A calm smile played on his lips, and his eyes glinted with something like pride, or admiration. “You can have it back, but you’ll have to come and get it.”
“This is not a fucking joke!” she screamed, grabbing him by his collar.
He looked back at her, suddenly serious and sombre. His aura dimmed the closer she got to him. “I’m not joking, Gina. I can’t just undo what happened. I’ll need you here.”
With a wordless cry of frustration, she lunged forward and threw him onto the ground. She wasted no time pulling his clothes off, then climbed on top of him and ground down. He let out a gasp, and she smiled nastily, without so much as a hint of warmth.
“You made a big mistake putting yourself into my head, Mr. Lowell.” She hovered over his face as she started to move slowly back and forth. “I’m the boss here. Not you.”
The next moment he took her by the wrists and pushed her over until she was underneath him, and it was her turn to moan, her pleasure as real as anything the flesh had to offer. His arms were too strong to fight.
“Are you sure about that?” he breathed in her ear. She could feel his blood racing, and her own heart beating in her throat. Their combined rhythm boomed like drums in the background.
“Fucking positive,” she snarled and twisted her legs into a roll. They wrestled and fought until she came up straddling him, leaning on his chest with both hands, wearing nothing but her fiery hair. “Why this, Gabriel? Why hurt me like this?”
For a moment he grabbed her, stopped her from continuing, and held her eyes. “Because I have so much to show you. I’ve got to make you understand.”
“Understand what?” Gina sneered, pushing down hard enough to force the breath out of him. “That you think you can do any fucking thing you like to me and I’ll just take it? Believe me, I got that part.”
The next moment Gabriel went up in smoke, and a great black rift opened up in the floor, sucking Gina down into the abyss. Strange colours and sounds surrounded her. Then something solid appeared under her feet. She stumbled and fell to her knees, lost and disoriented.
Slowly her surroundings resolved into a clearer picture, and a strange calmness settled over her. She was alone. Things were happening.
She marched under a smoke-black sky. Her feet slipped and slid through piles of rubble amid the still-fresh nuclear wasteland. A huge yellow-black hologram hung in the sky behind her, warning people that they were reaching the edges of the ME-LA Nuclear Exclusion Zone. Bit of a clumsy name, she reckoned. People were already starting to call it ‘Radiation Alley’ instead.
She’d been hunting for something. As she crested the hill, she finally found it.
A low, burnt-out hulk of a structure stood in the sheltered valley bellow her. Time and weather were disassembling it piece by piece. A few blackened trees still clung to the slopes around the building, long dead but untouched by rot. Rot required living bacteria. Nothing lived here anymore.
She rode a slide of loose rocks down the treacherous slope, battling the unwieldy radiation suit to keep in control of her descent. Then she shook off the dust and headed into the very guts of the old hospital.
The valley had shielded it from the nuclear heat of the bombs, but in an ironic anticlimax, an ordinary wildfire destroyed the whole complex shortly after its evacuation by Federation troops. So Gina navigated through the charred timber and steel, into a maze of overturned file cabinets, towards her goal.
The old laws had required hospitals to keep hardcopy data on every patient. She was counting on that. However, many folders had spilled out, now lost to the wind, and she bit her lip hoping she wasn’t too late.
She searched tirelessly through the archives. Hours passed checking each file by hand, brushing the ash off the covers, piecing together bits of burnt paper. Finally she pulled out a folder whose name had blackened but whose contents were exactly right.
She flipped open the folder, shook some ash off the paper. It read,
John Doe, accepted April 21, 2067. A few days after the nukes, she noted. Sounded about right.
10:18: Admitted subject, adult male, mid-twenties, no clothes or identification. Trauma, acute fatal radiation poisoning. Beta and Gamma burns covering over 90% of body. Severe diarrhoea and intestinal bleeding. Subject remained conscious but irrational at arrival until administered sedatives. Declared unsalvageable at 10:23, prescribed lethal dose of morphine to facilitate humane euthanasia. Anticipated time of death 10:45, April 21, 2067.
11:00, subject has not succumbed to either radiation poisoning or morphine. Believing subject to be in intense pain, prescribed additional dosage to facilitate humane euthanasia. Anticipated time of death 11:30, April 21, 2067.
11:45, subject has still not succumbed. Radiation burns have actually receded since previous assessment. Subject immediately moved to isolation ward, Room 17, and quarantined for investigation. Violently resisted application of straps, had to be held down by 4 orderlies. Extra security personnel posted to isolation ward and Room 17 entrance.
13:00, subject has disappeared from isolation ward. No evidence of tampering on locks, windows or vents. Security personnel posted to Room 17 are also missing. Armed search of hospital grounds in progress.
14:00, search of hospital grounds resulted no further evidence of subject or missing security personnel. Search cancelled due to fallout hazards. John Doe presumed at large, description has been forwarded to
The rest of the page had been left blank. In those heady days the Federation was just being formed, and its new government was only gradually assuming control of the United States. The hospital staff hadn’t known who to forward it to.
“I don’t understand,” she said to Gabriel. “What does it mean?”
Sudden images flooded Gina’s head, memories of Gabriel’s body smashed and driven under by the van, rolling away from her limp as a rag doll. It was followed by another one of Gabriel sprawled in front of her with a huge crack in his skull. A blood-stained pipe clattering on the floor. Bomber loomed over the body, breathing hard, while Gabriel lay still. There was no movement at all, not even breathing.
Then it clicked.
“It’s you,” she whispered. “John Doe is you. You survived the nukes.”
I think so. I can’t remember. There’s nothing left from before I woke up in cold storage.
“Jesus, what happened to you?”
Nobody knows. Only one man in the world has some answers, and I’ve had people looking for him for years.
“Who?” she gasped.
You might know him. His name’s Obrin, Colonel Keith Obrin, model Marine in the best traditions of the service. Friend of a friend, I think. Gabriel chuckled with contempt. He won’t be able to hide much longer.
“But Colonel Obrin’s dead . . .”
Really? How interesting. I guess I’ll be talking to a corpse then.
It was too much to take in. Gina shut her eyes tight and fled her own mind before he could say any more.
