His forehead stung, he remembered the concrete chip, found his skin to be sticky and cleaned himself with saliva and a sleeve. Nothing to be done about the marks on the platform. Maybe no one would notice. Or they’d blame kids. Birds. Raccoons. Aliens. People mostly did that these days: blamed aliens for anything out of the ordinary or annoying.
Nowadays fishermen have to have reference pictures of every known fish in the sea. Just in case they land a visitor from Alpha Centauri taking a bath.
I’m getting light-headed.
He thought about the renegade US Army Ranger, who’d been given temporary refuge in the Wild two years ago and who had said thank you by training a young, rookie cop.
“People react different when they kill for the first time. Some go all quiet, act as if nothing’s happened, others start to shake or pray or look for someone to fuck, which is a pretty crap idea but the body wants what the body needs. The real bad one is feeling invincible, 'cause that’s when you end up dead. But some just feel alive and ready for anything. Natural soldiers, women and men always apart from the crowd.”
Then the station filled with silver as the maglev eased in and hummed to a stop, far shinier and sleeker than Anson remembered. He walked to the far end, now the front, figuring any passengers would choose a carriage that stopped closer to the elevator and stairs. But there was only the conductor, who waved to his solitary passenger fifty metres away. Anson went directly to the carriage toilet, washed his face and hands with the complimentary pine-scented soap and examined himself in the mirror. A slight cut, more of a graze, above his left eye. Clothes not too rumpled although sweatier than he’d like. He should have brought a change. She used to say I had a hero’s face, but my green eyes were definitely faerie. She used to say that one day we’d sit in our rocking chairs on the porch and laugh about all the stuff we’d done when young. After Sara had died Anson had sensed her as being sad, confused and very alone. In his mind he’d tried to comfort her, saying it was okay, she was safe now, the nightmare was over and soon he’d be with her forever. Even though he’d known it was grief and guilt her presence had still felt real.
She still did. Greenaway froze as the sense of her filled him then vanished. He understood that something had changed. He was no longer so relaxed about dying. He wanted to live.
After he’d killed one more man. And as many as it took to get to him.
Greenaway took a window seat – plusher and better-smelling than he remembered – facing the now-front of the train. The adrenalin was running down and he needed to think about the past ten minutes. Any time now he’d probably begin to shake. Anson held out his hands. Steady as a rock. He looked for guilt and found none, not even over Sara’s death. Killing had changed him.
Why hadn’t Barnes killed him earlier? Shot him in the back as he walked away? Why kill him in the first place? Random, serial, sport murder? Mistaken identity? Greenaway relived those few minutes they’d been together.
First, Barnes getting close to make sure of his target.
Positioning himself by the top of the stairs, so he could shoot and leave, fast. Except that would mean Greenaway’s body was discovered when the train came in. Rethink. Right. They had both been close to the stairs when instinct made Greenaway turn. Barnes had skilfully manoeuvred him into the kill zone. Replay. Identify, move target into position, kill, drag body off platform... which was why the storage locker was unlocked, ready for the dead Greenaway. So a professional hitman, which made the main question all the more important: why Greenaway? And how did Barnes know where he’d be?
Within an hour of the body being discovered the cops would want to talk to the young man at the terminus. No name, but here’s a photo from maglev surveillance. His DNA, taken from the dead body, would match other DNA found on the train. And there seems to have been a gun battle on the platform. Anson could probably establish self-defence. Explain the taking of the man’s belongings, of lying to the conductor, as Wilder intransigence. But it would slow him down or worse, might alert his quarry. He’d allowed himself two days to kill Sara’s murderer. Now he shortened the time to twenty-four hours before officialdom got involved. Which was fine for a suicide run, but now he wanted to live.
"Hello," said a woman’s warm voice from a hidden speaker, "welcome to the Seattle Flyer. I’m the train AI and I’m here to serve you."
Before, all you got was a reminder to mind the doors, make way for other passengers and have a nice day. Sometimes, if the train unexpectedly halted, a garbled message from the conductor that no one could understand, which somehow made it more reassuring. Greenaway always felt a little cheated because the woman behind the announcements was a mass of electronics, not flesh and blood. It was time that AIs developed their own voices and stopped using human ones. He thought this again, then wondered if people in
