And then the final security clearance was offered, the linkage was established, the vocal channel opened with a greasy pop, and I was listening to static.
And someone breathing.
And a voice that said: 'Are… Are you there?'
I recognised it.
'Oh.' I said. It was all I could manage. It came from the one deep-buried part of me that – alone – was able to function in the face of this revelation. The rest of my brain was a stunned fish, flapping on a pier, waiting for a rock to pound it to paste.
'Oh…'
And then the reserve power died, the channel closed, the screens winked to blackness one by one, the lowlights perished and the great black silence rolled in to gobble the building like never before.
I remember losing it. Just a little.
I remember storming and breaking things and snarling. I remember the blood so thick on my mangled knuckles, from beating on the walls and the consoles, that they dripped across the carpet. But most of all I remember the feeling swelling up inside me; the feeling I'd forgotten, cast off like a dead skin all those years ago. The feeling that said, loud and clear in the base of my skull, wrapping iron knuckles around me, straightening my posture and giving me no room to argue:
Don't you fucking give up, sold Something touching my face.
I came out of the delusion/flashback far quicker this time, and with the scream of engines abusing the edge of my consciousness I remembered where I was without much preamble. It felt like I'd managed to pull myself up into another of the plane's chairs – still as groggy as fuck – and, nylon be praised, the blood had stopped trickling down the inner edge of my arm. I wondered how long had passed.
Somewhere an alarm was whooping quietly, a polite emergency. I almost laughed at the idea, and decided, with a half-hysterical chuckle, the drug was still in me.
Concentrate.
I felt another light touch, a gentle something brushing against my lips and, with sluggish realisation, tried to form words.
'No, Bella…' I mumbled, struggling to open my eyes. 'S'not… s'not likethat…'
The plane seemed to shiver. She touched my lips again.
'Toldyou…' I slurred, aware of the spittle hanging off my chin and the cotton wool dampening every movement. 'I'm not… not innarstd inthatshit…'
Then my ears accustomed themselves to the whine of the plane (higher pitched than before?), filtered it out like layers being peeled clear, and picked up the mantra of garbled words hammering out of the distance, lurking beneath.
'…fuck…' it hissed. 'Fuck fuck fuck… oh god fuck no… what's… what's… oh, fuck…'
Bella. Still in the cockpit. In trouble.
So who's-?
I rammed my eyes open, combat conditioning superheating every instinct, muscles tensing from head to toe… and wished I hadn't. My senses shortfired, adrenalised my fragile waking mind, and kicked the last vestiges of the Bliss into action. It came on like a storm of white noise, wrapped under and over everything I could see and hear and touch, and my last impressions before I slid under for a third time were of a tangled, tentacled thing stretching down towards me from above, brushing sensually against my lips.
Air mask. Emergency procedure. The plane's in trouble.
Shit.
Alarms and swearing and airquakes, adjustments to fickle impermanent gravity A siren raced past outside. Two, maybe three weeks ago I would have bothered to get up and check what it was. Police, fire, ambulance, mountain-sodding-rescue?
Now there wasn't much point. They were all ambulances.
This was… before. At the start. This was before The Thing went airborne, before the mass graves and gasmasks, before they firebombed St Mary's and sent out the A-Vee body carts with the speakers and the flamethrower turrets ('…deposit all corpses upon the pavement… do not approach this vehicle… deposit all corpses upon the…'). This was at the very beginning, when the hysteria hadn't had time to get going, when people clung to their fragile little hopes of stability, when no one had quite figured out how bad things were going to get and the brass were playing it cool. No need for alarm, blah-fucking-blah.
This was five years before I got the signal.
I slumped into an armchair, alone in my flat, listening to the alarm dopplering its way into the distance, and swirled the ice in my drink. For some reason the tinkling of cube against glass put me in mind of the street cafe in Kabul – tanbur and sarinda music, heavy scent of melon-molasses in shisha pipes – where two months before I'd broken two of my fingers.
I winced at the memory. Getting old, maybe. The mark's guards had soaked up both clips of hollow point. 22, and in the end I had to choke the poor bastard to death as he did his best to prise my fingers off his windpipe.
Krak, krak, gurgle.
Don't you fucking give up, soldier.
Sir, no sir, etc etc.
I took a sip of scotch. Glanced around, gloomy.
The flat wasn't up to much, if I'm honest. A smattering of CDs on shelves, expensive but unnecessary gadgets to sharpen kitchen knives and open wine bottles, an aquarium with no fish (who'd feed them?) and a double bed that was rarely double booked.
I believe 'unlived in' is the phrase.
Sometimes I'd feel inclined to pluck shirts and socks – fresh – out of the drawers in the bedroom, and drape them artfully about the place, like they'd been thrown off or forgotten about. Designer slobbery, for Christ's sake. How tragic was that?
Well it was all going to change, and there was no avoiding that. I glanced at my watch and took another sip, wondering why the removal van was so late, and fidgeted.
Another ambulance, another streetside-dirge for the slumbering city. I think even the throb of a helicopter (air ambulance, sure as eggs are eggs) passing somewhere in the background hum of London.
On the TV a BBC anchorman was busily disseminating the day's developments.
'…and was joined by the health secretary in re-issuing his assurances that all possible efforts are being made to contain and counter the epidemic. When challenged by protestors on the alleged withholding of public inoculations, the prime minister appeared visibly shaken; assuring members of the press that viable treatments could not be issued until scientists understood more about the nature of the disease.
'In a parallel incident, the Pentagon was today sealed off as protestors converged upon Washington, DC demanding action against soaring cases of infect…'
I hit the 'standby' stud like it had offended me.
Another ambulance, outside. Sounds of people arguing in the next flat along.
Someone coughing in the room above. Not a good sign.
I was woken up an hour later – unaware I'd even fallen asleep – by a shrill double-bleep from my mobile phone. A text message. I flipped the oyster-lid open, spotted the name in the 'Sender' register and hurried to open the message, feeling a vague sense of unease that I could neither shake nor explain.
SOZ. It read. CHANGE F PLAN.
BIN CALLED IN.
MAYB 2 WKS?
U WAIT?
I stared at it for about an hour. Like watching a football replay, hoping against hope you'll spot something you missed last time, hoping it'll all turn out differently.
'Oh.' I said. To myself. To the invisible fish in the tank, maybe. Maybe just to the phone, which kept switching off its illuminated display every time I left it alone. 'Oh.'
Another ambulance went past.
And I woke up for absolutely the last time in the blood-streaked shuddering cabin of a hijacked Boeing 737,
