Ecko Rising

For a moment, Lugan stopped pacing and glared at the pair of them as if he was the only sane man left in the city. Then he flung himself back in his chair, swore venomously, and picked up the now-cold mug of tea.

“What says Collator?” he said to Fuller. “You trackin’?”

“Still on radio silence,” Fuller answered. “For the moment, I got nothing.”

“Fuck.”

“Easy, Luge,” Fuller said. “If the Met knew anything, they’d be here with the tear gas by now. The chaos is calming down.” He glanced round at Ecko, the light from the little screen making his eyes glitter. “Luck is on your side, it seems. Again.”

“Luck, for chrissakes.” Ecko grinned back, like the Cheshire Cat’s evil twin. “Skill.”

“I swear, one of these days you’ll give me a fucking ’eart attack.” Lugan eyed the tea and thought better of it. He smacked the mug back on the table. “Now. Quit dodging the subject. If I’m gonna defend your arse to the Boss, I need to know what you did. And ’ow much of a mess you made.”

Ecko shrugged. “I went after the pharmacist, Grey.”

As Lugan opened his mouth to answer back, Ecko cut him off.

“C’mon, Lugan, we’ve done fuck all for months. D’you wanna do this, or what?”

“Grey’s the cook, not –”

“In fact,” Fuller commented, “Grey’s another major shareholder. When Pilgrim bought out the NHS in the early tweens, he was the orchestrator. It’s his utopia we’re living in.”

Ecko said, “See? Major bad guy. I found his Secret Lair.” He grinned. “So now we can go bust his ass.”

Lugan said nothing. On the desk in front of him was an old pub ashtray, half full of roll-up remnants. Carefully, he began to shred them and collect the remaining tobacco. It was a habit he’d picked up a decade or more before, while waiting on His Majesty, and he’d never quite given it up.

Ecko was bristling with anticipation, his obsidian-black eyes flickering with a faint, red light. His impatience was infectious, and Lugan could almost hear his thoughts, C’mon, let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s...

“We can get Grey? You serious?” As the realisation sank home, Lugan was beginning to think that, aggravating or not, Ecko needed to stay on his team.

Like, big time.

Ecko’s grin spread. “You wanted leads. I know where’s he’s at. An’ we can fuckin’ get him.” He was almost bouncing on the seat. “Well, I can.”

Fuller said, “It’s tempting, Luge. Pilgrim’s utopian society is largely attributable to Doctor Grey. You know the story – every GP, every researcher, every psychologist, was given a choice by their new employer: you prescribe the drug we give you, or you lose your job. Suddenly every dissenter, student, protester, everyone who’s unemployed – they all have ADHD, or depression, or anxiety, or maybe they just can’t sleep... A decade later, we’ve got almost complete servitude. No unrest, no remonstration, no riots, no freedom. The internet’s full of happy cats, and everyone loves their job. Whatever it is. It was bloody genius.”

Lugan glanced up – Fuller rarely swore, and his flash of rancour was unusual.

The commander shot back, “We’re not all fucking brain-dead. Pilgrim ’asn’t won yet.”

“The pockets of resistance get smaller with every year,” Fuller said. “You’re an anachronism, Luge, a relic, and they know it. They’ll get bored with you one of these days, and then they’ll send the boys round. I fear our time is borrowed.”

So we’d better make the most of it.

He didn’t actually say it, but Lugan heard him anyway.

Ecko said, his rasp soft and sinister, “So let’s gettem, for chrissakes, before they get us, huh?”

Lugan rolled the shreds of collected tobacco into a new cigarette that was almost pure tar.

“All right,” he said, shoving himself to his feet. “I trust my team. You included. I dunno what kind of mess you just made, mate, but if you’ve just given us Grey, I’ll back any fucking play you make.”

“That was well timed,” Fuller said suddenly. “Collator’s back online – and we’re wanted in the office.”

* * *

“Bollocks,” Lugan said cheerfully. He leaned back in the big black chair and thumped his size fourteens on the conference table. He’d picked up a disposable lighter, and a tail of greasy smoke curled from the dog-end that was glued to his lip.

Beside him, Fuller fidgeted like a child expecting a scolding.

Around them, the Boss’s office was silent, soulless and dark. It was steel and glass and cold, VIP perfection; long black windows were silvered with skitters of rain. Outside, the harsh, halogen lights of the city were smeared to a watery blur.

The room’s only illumination came from the big flatscreen at the far end of the table – and from its image, reflected in the tabletop’s gleam.

Lugan took another drag from the dog-end.

The screen showed a familiar figure, a phantom of gleeful darkness, his skin and garments shifting with shadows, his movements framed in blood and smoke. He was terrifying, more extreme than Lugan at his worst, and utterly unhampered by conscience. He was swift as a thought and just as fucking careless. He carried no firearm, no blade, but the goons fell like a street kid’s tin cans.

Ecko.

His skill and savagery were horrifying.

Lugan blew brown smoke, and kept watching.

From impossible stealth positions, Ecko taunted his targets – they coiled in fear long before they coiled in pain. While they were still looking for him, his fists and feet broke bones, and when they fell, he burned them and they died screaming.

Lugan took another lungful of smoke.

Jesus ’Arry Christ on a fuckin’ scramble bike...

Then, with a silent snap, the screen went black.

And the Boss’s soft, Scandinavian voice said, “Well, gentlemen? Would either of you care to explain?”

Lugan and Fuller exchanged a glance, their faces now almost in darkness. Tobacco wreathed in the air. Neither of them spoke.

Instead, Lugan blew out an irritated tail of tar that made the smoke curls dance. He’d no fucking clue how the Boss had got Ecko on camera, but the devastation only made his resolve stronger – he was going to keep Ecko on his crew.

And then, they were going after Grey.

The voice said, “I’m waiting.”

Biting back his initial, blistering response, Lugan answered, “’E did the job, didn’t ’e?”

The light on the screen came up, brightening the room and returning the shine to the table. It showed a woman, blonde and in profile. She was beautiful, flawless and pale skinned, and apparently naked right down to the part of her shoulder that Lugan could see. She didn’t turn to face them – her attention was on something else, a screen within the screen, a light source that decorated her porcelain flesh in a shifting, fractal pattern of illumination.

“He left a crater.” Even speaking, the Boss didn’t turn. She gestured with one pale hand.

Lugan said, “They didn’t track ’im –”

“That really isn’t the point.” The lights teased her skin, danced over the tabletop. “If we’re to tackle Pilgrim effectively, then strategy is crucial, discipline is crucial, orders are crucial. I’m not taking chances on a loose cannon.”

Lugan’s dog-end was coming unstuck. Wetting a tarred and callused fingertip, he made an industrious effort to dampen and reroll it. Choosing his words, he said, “Just because ’e ain’t good with orders doesn’t mean ’e can’t do the job. ’E’s got ’is own ways of doing stuff.” He examined the dog-end, frowning. “An’ they work.”

The Boss ignored him. “I’ve no tolerance for chaos. I’ve dedicated my life and this organisation to taking Pilgrim down – and I don’t like surprises.”

Down by her bare shoulder, the Pilgrim logo folded onto the corner of the screen – the image of the strongly