She sighed. ‘Dmitri, his father and his father’s men were taken from their beds during the early hours. Dmitri’s men were actually my men. They were weak, easily turned in a hot bed on a cold night. Here they are the next morning.’
Contorted faces, twisted with hate stared back from the screen. Mouths were frozen in rage as they fought against the chains tethering them to racks in the castle’s dungeon.
‘This is Dmitri.’ Lytkin pointed to a tattooed captive scowling at the camera. ‘He was a fine figure of a man, in spite of the food shortages.’ She ran her fingers across the image. ‘I know you’re keen to skip forward, as you put it, so we’ll simply go with the before and after and leave out the stages of reverse metamorphosis. You could hardly describe them as butterflies.’
Helix snatched his eyes from the image. The dormant surgical armoury surrounding his chair clicked into life, hissing and flexing. Blades and drills spun, salivating liquids. Lasers painted lines across his body at the joints of each minor and major limb and appendage. A crystal bead from a syringe coalesced at its tip and dripped onto his arm as they fell still.
‘Far easier to relate to them as creeping crawling caterpillars. It takes time to recover from the surgery, manage the infections and allow the wounds to heal.’ Lytkin gritted her teeth. ‘And six months later, this is what we had.’
Lytkin stood admiring an image of the same men, minus their arms, legs, genitalia and one of their eyes. Gone were the restraints, rendered redundant, leaving them writhing in the mud and filth of the dungeon floor. His body weighed heavily on the chair as if he and hope were being sucked below the black surface of an icy sea.
Archer untied the drawstring at the head of the writhing canvas bag and tipped a tattooed limbless living cadaver onto the floor.
‘Major, I’d like you to meet my husband,’ Lytkin said, crouching down. ‘Dmitri, say hello to the Major.’
The tormented creature’s single eye widened. A laboured gurgling hiss issued from behind two rows of shark-like titanium teeth.
‘To return to your earlier questions, Major,’ Lytkin said. ‘What do I want?’
Helix held her gaze.
‘I want you to bring Gabrielle Stepper to me.’
‘And?’
Archer responded to her nod by tossing one of the dog’s tongues onto the floor. Dmitri squirmed and rolled onto his stomach devouring the offal in a single choking gulp.
‘Was that a yes, Major Helix?’
‘If I can find her.’
‘I hope so,’ she added, turning to the wall. ‘Because if not, Dmitri will be getting a new playmate.’ She pointed back at the screen.
Helix couldn’t recall ever seeing Ethan so helpless and terrified. No sign of the cocky bravado that characterised his younger brother. The medieval dungeon in the virtual window bore a sinister resemblance to the one in Ukraine that Lytkin had shown earlier. Like Dmitri, his father and his cohorts, Ethan yelled soundlessly, thrashing against the manacles and chains that secured him to the metal rack suspended from the dank stone walls.
‘I need proof he’s still alive,’ Helix said. ‘That could be a recording or another holo’. Let me speak to him.’
The clattering and clanking of chains ceased as their eyes met across the void. ‘Nate? What the fuck!’ Ethan said, breathlessly.
Helix clenched his jaw. His tightening muscles screamed against the restraints. ‘It’s OK, Bruv. I need to do an identity verification, input—’
‘Of course it’s me!’ Ethan yanked against the chains deepening the raw welts on his wrists. ‘You dumb fucking cyclops.’
Cyclops was one of several epithets his brother used when frustrated, but it wasn’t enough. ‘Ethan, you know better than anyone what’s possible. Come on. Electric.’ He swallowed. ‘Say the word, Bruv.’
‘Sheep.’ Ethan gave the paired word, eyes darting at Archer and Lytkin. ‘She’s going to kill us, Nate. Kill us all. You me, Gab—’
Helix’s body mirrored Ethan’s except this time it was his brother in the burning grip of the electrical charge coursing through his body. His chair rotated to face Lytkin.
She assumed the holographic persona and voice of Gabrielle Stepper once more, straddling him, face inches from his. ‘You’ve got approximately forty-eight hours, Helix. 11AM on the 11th of November. After that Archer gets to work without anaesthetic. For every hour late, Ethan loses something.’
10
47 Hours
Overnight temperatures had dipped to two degrees. London was shivering under a cloak of falling snow. Heavy flakes, whipped by the wind, danced their descent between buildings. Surplus solar power warmed the roads and pavements, the melt water harvested to irrigate sky gardens that clung in clumps to the glassy walls and façades of the high-rise architecture.
London, like the other cities, was sustained by Gaia. According to Greek mythology, Gaia was the ancestral mother of all life. Gaia in her modern manifestation was a quantum artificial intelligence that, amongst other things, monitored and managed the health and education of all city dwellers, eugenically selected which couples were granted permission to have a single child and when. She orchestrated the production and delivery of all nutrition, managed the production of electricity, regulated the city environment and disposed of all waste. Financial institutions and functions fell under Gaia’s auspices and before long so would justice and what remained of the military.
Civil servants, 98 percent of the population, gossiped over coffee, nestled in warm cafes and bars along the edges of St Swithin’s Lane. Office attendance was optional not compulsory. For those not participating in the ritual of preening and parading, work could be attended to by logging in from home. Lunch was an opportunity to meet and greet the middle shift who in turn would meet with the late shift and so the merry-go-round would continue. In exchange for three hours of screen staring, each received the adequate Government living allowance. Psychological evaluations, secreted in
