Ecko Rising

                    THE BIKE LODGE AND THE BOSS’S OFFICE, LONDON

Through the single grubby window in the Bike Lodge office, the sky was a thunderous black. It was still early spring, but the London weather was close and stifling, and it was making Lugan tetchy.

On the old couch, Fuller had long since fallen asleep. Still in his habitual battered suit, he was curled round his laptop as if he couldn’t bear to let it go. He was snoring, gently and sweetly, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Both men had been working through the night, systematically digging for obscure information, but for all their spade work, they were no closer to realising a decision. Ecko had been with them for three months, his probation was nearing its end, and Lugan still didn’t know which way he was going to jump. The little bugger was invaluable, had skills that surpassed the Boss herself, but he was about as reliable as a... Oh for fuck’s sake, Lugan was getting too tired for creativity.

Wincing, the cell commander took his glasses off, laid them on the desktop and then tipped his chair back to stretch the kinks from his shoulders. Tendons crunched, and he swore.

Bloody Pilgrim, Lugan thought, all the tricks they’ve pulled in the last ten years, all the bullshit they’ve promised, the new fuckin’ world they’ve built, they could at least have done something about my vision, about the old road wounds that still gimme gyp in the cold.

Nah. Fuckers. We know what their priorities’ve been...

Searching his pockets for a dog-end, he slammed the chair back onto all fours and Fuller started awake, blinking.

“What? What? What’s the time?”

“Half one?” Lugan patted another pocket. “An’ I ain’t no closer, mate. If I’m gonna make the Boss listen, I need more than old-school biker loyalty and all that bollocks – I need facts.” He patted the pocket again. Stood up. Patted the pockets in his jeans. Turned to his battered leather, hung on the back of the chair, and patted the pockets in that, too.

He’d been working sixteen hours, and he was not in the mood for this.

“On the other ’and, I could just let her shoot the little bastard.” Sending the old desk scraping backwards with a hefty shove, Lugan slammed the office door open and bellowed, “Ecko? Ecko! Bring me back my fucking lighter or I’ll wring your fucking neck!”

Fuller groaned and sat up.

Outside the office door, the big, open floor of the Bike Lodge was silent, the roller door shut and locked down. Metal shelving and skeletal frames made odd shadows on the oil stains, the current chop-job watched them from its one lidless and lightless eye.

Half expecting Ecko’s characteristic cackle to come from somewhere in the ceiling, or from down among the bikes themselves, Lugan was disconcerted to find the shop as quiet as the proverbial grave. Over his shoulder, he said, “Get the kettle on, willya?”

And the now-familiar voice in his ear said, “Boo.”

In no mood for it, Lugan spun, scowling.

“Will you fucking stop doing that?”

Ecko was standing directly behind him, his skin and cloak reacting to the overspill of light from the office. Lugan had no idea how he’d got there or where he’d come from, and his sense of humour was struggling. He’d been all night trying to find a concrete reason to keep this little bugger, to add him to the Boss’s tightly run cell network, and right now, Ecko’s pranks were a temptation to just tie a bike frame to his ankles and chuck him in the Thames.

Lugan said, “Gimme my lighter back.”

“Don’t have it.”

“It’s too early for this. Give me my lighter.”

“Don’t have it. Not this time. This time you lost it all on your ownsome.”

The commander drew a breath. “I’m warnin’ you –”

“I said, I don’t have it. An’ if you keep bein’ an asshole, you don’t get dinner.”

Motion pulled Lugan’s attention downwards. In Ecko’s hand, swathed in his stealth-cloak, was a crumpled brown bag. From it came the faint, curling scent of takeaway.

The smell made Lugan’s belly grumble, loud in the stillness. Shaking his head, he said, “I don’t s’pose you paid for that?”

“Don’t be stupid.” Ecko grinned like a fiend.

Unable to help himself, the cell commander chuckled, half in relief, half in exasperation. Ecko might be off- the-fucking-wall annoying, but what they’d do without him... Lugan didn’t want to finish the thought. Instead, he cuffed Ecko’s shoulder, made the smaller man wince. Ecko’s ability to get in and out of local businesses was frankly astonishing – hoverdrones, cameras, recorders – the little man might as well have been invisible.

One way and another, it was sodding handy.

And not just for free food.

“Well, what the fuck have I done with it, then?” His dog-end still between his lips, Lugan made one last search of his pockets and then shrugged and reached for the arc welder, behind him on a shelf.

He shielded the cigarette with his opposite hand and then swore round the thing as the arc nearly torched his beard.

Ecko cackled. “Addict.”

“Freak.”

The welder went back on the shelf with a bang.

“Serious for a minute?” Fuller’s voice came from the office. “My newsfeed’s just gone batshit. I think –”

From outside, there came the first wail of sirens.

* * *

Half two.

The lights in the Bike Lodge were off. Outside, it was quiet; the last yowl of siren was finally fading. Inside, the curry was roiling uncomfortably in Lugan’s belly, and he still hadn’t found his lighter.

Agitated, the cell commander was pacing.

In this new age of Pilgrim’s social tranquility, sirens were rare and disturbing things. Sirens for almost an hour could well mean the fucking apocalypse.

Bollocks.

Lugan spun on his boot heel and paced the other way. The various oil-stained papers tacked to the wall – ID numbers, serial markings, notes, addresses – fluttered in his wake as though trying to escape.

On the couch, Fuller had discarded the older laptop and was glued to his tiny, secure flatscreen, trying to track and identify the night’s events. Ecko was sat next to him like some sort of urban grotesque, hunched up with his knees almost into his chest.

Lugan had never seen him look this pensive.

And it made him angry.

“What the fuck did you do? I thought you went out after dinner! Tell me you got out clean and they didn’t follow your arse back ’ere?” The commander paced back, jabbing a stained and callused finger at Ecko as he did so. A dog-end was still clamped in the corner of his mouth and reflexively his hands kept going for the lighter that wasn’t there. “I got your future to fight for, mate, an’ you better not be takin’ the piss.”

Ecko snarled back at him, “I’m doin’ your job, for chrissakes. I went out after leads, on Pilgrim, on how to take them down. Better than sittin’ on my ass in here.”

“What I don’t want is the Met on my doorstep...”

“Please.” Ecko snorted. “They couldn’t find me with Sherlock Holmes and a bloodhound.”

That much was probably true. One advantage to the little fucker being so reckless – Ecko wasn’t afraid of much, and that made him honest.

Lugan spun again. “I ’ope you’re right, you little bastard, because if they do, I’ll slit your throat myself.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Watch me.”

“Chrissakes, I can’t watch my own throat.”

Fuller chuckled at their double act, smothered it.