During the day the refinery would be packed with labourers, which was why the company had her working nights, tucked away while production went on. Other than a couple of watchmen she was alone in the complex. But she didn’t feel alone now. In fact she felt crowded, as though the place were teeming with unseen people.
Not people. Not any more.
Chel halted and gazed down at the grey pools, studying them with an honesty she’d never allowed herself before. This place was haunted, but its shades weren’t true ghosts. They were too diffuse and degraded for that, their spirits dissolved alongside their bodies, blended into an aggregate spectral sludge.
Processed like sewage.
Once she accepted the truth she began to see the dead, swirling through the gloop in tides of distended, melded faces and groping hands. They were hollow-eyed and hopeless, bereft of sense or sanity, yet suffering all the same. It wasn’t just flesh and blood the city recycled and shovelled into its poor.
We’ve turned them into soul-eaters.
Chel realised she was crying, but she didn’t try to stop the tears falling into the grey swirl below. It was already contaminated beyond anything she could offer, tainted though she was. There was no denying her guilt, of course. Ignorance couldn’t acquit her collaboration, especially when it was wilful.
‘I knew,’ she confessed to the dead. ‘I’ve always known.’
Somewhere far away, the fading fantasy of her old self railed against the admission. This wasn’t – couldn’t be – real! It was just another drug-fuelled delusion, like her nightmares. She wasn’t herself – hadn’t been since she’d taken that first, fateful dose. Why else would she have swallowed more of the damned thing?
They were tempting denials, but they were still lies and she was past humouring them. The narcotic wasn’t an engine of delirium, but revelation, and once the taste was acquired there was no going back. The change it engendered in the brain, perhaps even the spirit, was permanent. She grasped that viscerally, with both regret and relief, but above all curiosity. Why would anyone create such a provocative substance, let alone seek to spread it among the city’s forsaken? Why wake them up to the horror of their existence? It was those questions that had led her here. She needed to find the sample’s source container. Perhaps it would offer a clue as to its creators.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered.
‘Doc?’ someone asked behind her. She turned, unsurprised, as though she’d always known the man was there. He was in his late sixties, but his back was straight and his shoulders broad. The face under his cap was like carved mahogany, leavened by bushy white brows and lively eyes.
‘Sergeant,’ Chel answered. She didn’t know the watchman’s name. Everybody just called him The Sergeant, the same way they called her The Doc. It was rumoured he’d been in the military in his younger days. There was a laconic authority about him that supported that, yet he was an affable fellow. They’d shared the occasional mug of caff, even played cards once. Regarding him with her new-found clarity, Chel realised he might even have become a friend of sorts, if she’d been open to such things.
‘You see something down there?’ he asked, his eyes sweeping the refinery floor. ‘Something off?’
‘Nothing that wasn’t there before.’
He frowned. ‘You all right, doc?’
‘I don’t know.’ She was unwilling to lie any more, even for convenience.
‘You got the look tonight,’ he gauged, taking a step closer.
‘The look?’
‘Thousand-yard stare. Like yer seein’ right through things.’
Chel lowered her eyes, unsettled by the observation.
‘Maybe a brew to perk you up?’ he suggested gently.
‘Another time, sergeant.’ Then a thought occurred to her. ‘But there’s something you could help me with.’ She showed him her data-slate. ‘I’m looking for this warehouse.’ The stock manifest had identified where the VLG-01 was stored, but she’d been going round in circles trying to find it.
‘Yeah, I know the place,’ the watchman said, squinting at the slate. ‘Ain’t used much these days.’
‘Can you show me?’
He raised an eyebrow, weighing her up. Though the warehouses weren’t off limits to her, it was an unusual request.
‘Please, sergeant. It’s important.’
He held her gaze a moment longer, then nodded. ‘Okay, good enough for me. This way.’
Getting inside the complex had been easy. The first door the Needleman tried was unlocked and unguarded. The worst of the refinery’s security was probably behind it, but haste had already cost it gravely so the intruder proceeded cautiously. Not that speed was an option any more. Its mauled leg had become a dead weight, trailing behind it as it crept through a maze of vats. Every step sent slivers of pain up its leg, threatening to break its equilibrium, but blood loss was a more pressing concern. The crude tourniquet had staunched the flow somewhat, but without stitches the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Unfortunately, despite its name, that craft was alien to the Needleman. Its vocation was dissolution, not restoration.
This body is failing, it judged, accepting the conclusion without emotion. It was of little consequence. Another herald would take its place – perhaps many others. After all, its kind was legion.
A clatter of footsteps approached from somewhere overhead. The hunter pressed itself against a vat as a pair of figures appeared on the gantry above – a man in a grey uniform and… The Needleman smiled, recognising its prey. There was a new vibrancy about the woman, as though her potential had bloomed since their last encounter. It could hope for no finer offering for its final sacrifice.
‘Will you, won’t you bleed to feed the night?’ it whispered.
The cord between them grew taut as the woman passed by, tugging the hunter after her. Relenting, it shadowed the pair as they crossed the concourse then fell back when they descended a stairway to its level.
‘This is the one,’ the watchman said, grabbing the handle of a heavy door. It creaked in protest when he yanked it open, like nails raking metal. ‘Like I
