Pain

00:00 hrs
System ignition cuts in on auto.
Neural gateway opened.
Visual parameters set to infrared with thermograph filter.
Sensory buffer on-line
His brain flooded with fire.
Three seconds of raging orange agony before blackout.
"David!" The woman's voice was pleading, sounded muffled, far
away.
"David! Please, stop!" He could barely hear what she was saying. He was
rocking from side to side.
"David."
Reality crashed through the black window. He couldn't hear her because
he was screaming. He opened his eyes and caught a glimpse of Sarah
kneeling over him on the bed, naked, shaking him, her face twisted with
fear. Then he remembered where he was and he curled up around her
thighs, hugged them and kissed them and cried.

The city was still sleeping.
From the 302nd floor view he gazed out across a montage of future
architecture. A step away from the clean sterile lines of the previous
decades. The sweep of sky-pointed arc lights glanced off the profiles
of baroque and organic structures, everything perched with spires,
domes, minarets, gargantuan sculptures holding up buttresses that
spanned whole avenues.
From this high up most illuminations were swallowed against the larger
shadows, the sheer size of the city reaching out to dampen the light;
only the lazily drifting advertising blimps and the large neon data
boards stood out.
He stood by the wide plate glass window, shivering as the sweat cooled
on his body, hugging the caramel coloured muslin robe to him with his
arms wrapped across the firm plane of his stomach. The streets below
were lost in darkness: the faint surge of red when a hundred ground
cars braked at the same moment. Headlights were shielded to prevent
upward glare which might confuse aerodyne pilots.
"Continuity." He spoke out loud.
"Yes?" The apartment replied in a soft female voice.
"Get me a commlink to..."
"I'm sorry Mr Von Kliest I do not understand the term commlink."
He grimaced. An apartment like this, thousands of dollars a week and
its management chip would have been outsmarted by a coffee machine. The
only consolation was he was not paying for it.
"Get me an external phone link with Sovitch."
Nothing. No response.
"Continuity!" Becoming angry.
"Yes?"
"Get me an external phone link with Sovitch. Do you know the
number?"
"Yes, of course."
Now it gets personality, he thought. It remembers a phone number he's
been dialing every day for the four weeks he'd been holed up there and
it wants to boast.
A man's voice cut through his internal dialogue. Sounding sleepy it
was a blend of articulate English and an East European accent.
"Hello David."
"Sovitch."
"David, it's six o'clock in the morning here."
That was incorrect, David considered; Belgrade was six hours ahead and
it was now twenty minutes past midnight his own time.
The voice continued after a pause, weary, "Are the pain suppressors
wearing off?"
"No. Not yet." After the 'incident' and before Sovitch he had endured
endless pain. This accompanied by memory loss, a thyroid disorder,
allergies, fatigue, rashes, and the pain. The persistent, all
encompassing, never ending, nerve splitting pain. He often wondered why
the tribunal rejected a jail sentence. Perhaps they hoped the illnesses
would drive him mad, send him seeking oblivion in suicide.
"I'll talk to Marshall, get him to up your doses." Sovitch said.
"No, I don't need more yet, not yet, goddamn, I only have so much time
before they loose effect altogether. Isn't that what you said?"
"Yes, but..."
"If I increase the doses now then I'll just become accustomed quicker.
Then I'll be back to where I was when you found me." David could hear
the quiver of terror in his voice despite the control he was
exerting.
"David, David," Sovitch was soothing, "No, there is treatment for what
you have but the costs are astronomical. When you win, they will pay
for the treatment."
When you win. He listened to those words in his head but they sounded
empty right now. Right now, after a month of gathering the evidence, he
still had nothing.
"Yeah," he said, taking Sovitch's words as a pacifying tactic, "Where
have you got with those vaccine tests?"
There was a long silence. When Sovitch answered he could tell the man
was holding back his irritation, "We will call you as soon as we get
conclusive results from the tests, which ever way they pan out. Get
some sleep David."
Sovitch cut the call leaving the room with a three second dial
tone.
He was alone again. Sarah was crashed out in the bed. She would wake
up around nine like she did every morning, find him and fuck him, like
she did every morning. It was a mechanical process but she seemed to
get something from it, besides, the sex was good and kept him sedate.
Without it he knew a month padding around in the apartment like a caged
animal would have brought him to some crisis of frustration. He would
have done something rash and stupid. The days had blended into a
surreal montage of a routine, spent entirely in the confines of the
apartment, watching the news broadcasts and maintaining the doses of
suppressors to keep the pain away. He could no longer recall any
particular day, time had become punctuated by moments when Sovitch made
contact with updates or more requests. And Sarah was there. She fucked
him twice a day religiously, three times when she could. When they
weren't having sex, they spent silent hours together, or talked about
what was happening out in the world.
He placed his forehead on the cool glass and peered down. If he showed
his face down there he would be spat and shouted at, cursed as a
monster.
David shuddered. The media had brandished every gory detail of the
atrocity. Rumors floated up to him: there was a price on his head, the
bounty stacked up by the US Aryan youth gang the 'Patriots'; other said
the families of those involved were seeking to bring a civil action
against him after the military tribunal released him after the year
long investigation with a dishonorable discharge. One year in the 'Ice
Block', avoiding rapo's and death threats from other military inmates,
taking random beatings from guards...
David stepped back from the glass slamming his hands against it with
outstretched palms, gasping for air as the tide of memories and nausea
tightened every muscle in his chest.
He brought his breathing under control, shifted the focus of his gaze
from the city to his own reflection looking back at him. He smiled when
he recognised the face and not the monster everybody else saw him
as.
He was still David von Kliest, 34, 6 ft 3 inches and ninety-six
kilograms of toned muscle with the same bulldog face. A square skull
layered in folds of weathered and sun exposed flesh, a broad nose
flattened by several years bare-knuckle fighting in the army camps. And
in there, amongst all the lines and scars and the angry expression were
his eyes, wild and smiling, powder blue when the light was up. He was
no longer Sergeant von Kliest of the US Combined Infantry Corps. No
longer a pilot of powered assault-recon chassis.
They took all that away from him. The puppet trial was a publicity
statement. The only reason they didn't execute him was the political
slant against death sentences and the high brass seeking funding that
month for some new big project.
The court didn't listen to his counter claims. Substances to enhance
combat performance were old news: allegations of improper use of
experimental versions of these substances were old news. It was against
the Nuremberg Convention, but nobody wanted to listen. They wanted a
sane and quick conclusion to an insane act. They kicked him out the
service and stripped him of everything, then let the media drag his
name through the worst shit they could find. Leaked footage of the
bodies.
He massaged his neck with his hand, his fingers brushed the smooth
carbon sockets at the base of his skull; interface points that made
possible cybernetic linkage with the military machines he used to
pilot.
He turned away from the window and padded barefoot through the
apartment, crossing deep shag rugs, wooden floors richly glazed in
yacht varnish, and the heated marble floor of the bathroom. It was
luxury that Sovitch was paying for and all his other living expenses.
Expenses like Sarah.
Sovitch was going to help him fight the slander and the military
stonewalling of his search to expose the truth about what they did.
David had no qualms bout Sovitch's personal motives. The war in Europe
had been going on since the final months of the last century. David was
looking to inflict maximum collateral damage on the administrators of
the war machine. Sovitch probably had some scheme to escalate the
damage, use it for some subversive blackmail campaign against military
personnel he could prove committed illegalities, who he could prove
were in some part responsible for the incident. Then he would probably
threaten these people with exposure unless they supplied sensitive
intelligence or helped in some way to harm the war effort.
David could see the lines of manipulation being played but the way he
saw it he had another three weeks before the pain suppressors failed to
work any further without boosting the dosage to a level that would
cripple him; and Sovitch's story about getting a cure was probably
bullshit, unlikely at the outside, delayed at best. He knew the pain
would wear him down this time and any delays would be like living
through hell. The way he saw it he had another three weeks before he
ended it all with a trip to the roof and a single step over the
edge.
"Jesus!" he cursed as his stream of piss swelled into a wide spray
that went over the sides of the toilet, across the wall and down his
legs. Sarah had been fucking him so much his balls would have been
aching all the time if he had not been on the drugs; he was surprised
he could still come.
He pulled back his foreskin to expose the bright pink head beneath,
retracting the sheath of soft skin from the flow of urine. By adding
pressure with his fingers he was able to control the flow like a nozzle
and direct the stream into the bowl with a satisfying thunder of fast
flowing liquid.
Watching the churning water in the bowl his eye spotted something
moving at the bottom, dislodged his urinating. Finished with pissing he
quickly shook away any lingering drops and let his foreskin slip back
into place, then stooped down to take a closer look.
Some kind of transparent plastic tube with broken edges. It appeared
to have been put or dropped into the toilet and not flushed away
properly. The apartment was not serviced by cleaners and there were no
droids. The only other occupant was Sarah, it could only be something
of hers. Curious, David reached his hand into his own urine and fished
the object out.
It was the remains of a cylindrical vial. Not plastic but glass and
David could see it was a type of specialist manufacture. Medical?
Nothing he was using. Holding the shattered remains of the tube up to
the light he squinted and read the fine letters stenciled along the
bottom.
'ProMedTech'
Was Sarah using medication? If so why wasn't she telling him about it?
Answer: she was a first class whore and probably had procedures she
followed like any other profession. Some kind of birth control? He
pondered as he lowered the vial and studied it in the palm of his hand.
It was true that she always made him come inside of her. It was also
true that she always, without fail, scurried into the bathroom
immediately after sex.
David accepted this as a reasonable explanation and decided not to ask
her about it. He dropped the broken vial into the toilet and moved his
hand through the flush sensor. Sterilized water swelled the basin and
carried the debris away.

PARC's were suits of armoured exoskeleton, varying in size and armament
depending on the operational criteria. Powered Assault-Recon Chassis
were state of the art military hardware, fitted with hi-tech sensory
arrays and control systems which were fed through to the enclosed pilot
via cybernetic linkage. The pilot's nervous system was literally
'plugged' into the machine. They were hardened against electromagnetic
pulse and microwave attacks, could withstand nuclear blast shock up to
1 megaton per three Millers Compound Ratio.
David lay on the wide circular bed in the apartment, thinking back on
the events that brought him to this moment.
Enemy forces had overrun a hotel in one of the war's fringe zones. The
hotel was full of international journalists. There had been recent
politically damaging exposure of the ethnic cleansing taking place. The
soldiers had begun making demands and killing journalists as a way of
enforcing those demands were met. Nothing more than rankless
terrorists. The 31st PARC unit was sent in to neutralize the heavy
concentration of ground forces and clear the way for a rescue operation
to extract surviving journalists
His unit.
Three Powered Assault-Recon Chassis. The PARC's were dropped in from
high altitude without pilots. Intelligent processors gave the bi-pedal
machines the ability to find suitable concealment until the pilots were
airlifted into location. This procedure avoided draining the PARC's
limited hydrogen power cells on the inbound journey. The PARC's could
withstand the high altitude drops but pilots would suffer concussion
and reduced effectiveness, so were sent in separately.
An hour before David and his team were due to be airlifted to a
rendezvous with the PARC's, two spooks appeared with intelligence
reporting the enemy forces were purchasing bio-chemical weaponry from a
Middle East despot. The spooks believed the soldiers David and his team
were about to engage were equipped with such munitions, including
modified strains of plague and anthrax.
The spooks had brought a vaccine - standard precautionary measures in
the event the PARC's suffered a hull breach. David and his team agreed
to the shots; why take the risk. The crew of the helicopter flying them
in were also vaccinated because after dust off they would remain within
two minute recall distance.
Two kilometers from their rendezvous with the PARC's concealment
point, their plans were modified again.
The enemy ground force occupying the hotel had just received
substantial re-enforcements. It appeared they were keen on securing the
bargaining advantage for their demands.
David saw the whole mission in jeopardy.
Fresh orders came through.
Get to the PARC's then sit and wait. David thought it through: it was
suicide to go against the reported re-enforcements, it was unlikely
Command would be able to muster another PARC unit. What other options
were there? None he could come up with. Sit and wait? Jesus.
The helicopter hit the DZ then returned to base. There was to be no
two minute recall. David and the two other pilots were left with
nothing but the memory of back slaps and bravado from the helicopter
crew.
It was early evening and they were in an unfamiliar terrain in a
rapidly shifting fringe of the war zone. And they were alone. These
were the most dangerous moments, when an enemy patrol could investigate
the helicopter's flight path and find them before they got into the
armoured sanctuary of the PARC's.
David stretched on the bed and slipped his arms behind his head. He
closed his eyes and recalled the moment when he found the PARC where it
had hidden itself, lying flat, within dense foliage in a large area of
woodland. It responded to his voice commands and hoisted itself out of
the undergrowth with silent obedience; its movements possessed the
controlled fluidity of a ballet dancer; a giant humanoid figure,
perforated alloy mesh, neoprene and carbo-plastic body and limbs,
wielded by synthetic muscle fibres. It rose up from a crouch on long
limbs to tower another metre above his head. An imperceptible shadow in
the total darkness of the woods.
He listened to the other two pilots speaking to their machines and the
almost inaudible sound of bio-mechanical stirrings, the rustle of
branches being moved, and the slight hiss of hydraulic hatches opening
then closing to seal the pilots within safety.
He stayed outside for a while longer, savouring the sudden aura of
calm which had descended upon him. He liked it out here, amongst the
quiet of the trees. The hotel was only a kilometre to the North, on the
other side of a steep incline. He strained his ears to catch any sound
of the large military force which had occupied the area but there was
only the steady sound of his own heart and his breathing.
Sliding into the cockpit legs first was like slipping into a glove.
Internal dimensions had been set specifically for his body shape. Once
inside and the hydraulic hatch hissed closed, numerous pads
auto-inflated to lock him in place. He pressed his head back into a
cavity where a strip of interface plugs found the sockets set in the
base of his skull, and activated the cybernetic linkage. It registered
like a mild pulse of energy running through his head, down his arms and
legs, making his hands and feet tingle for a few seconds. Then he was
on-line. The machine ran some primary checks on the interface between
itself and its human pilot. When all systems came up green, David
followed orders and placed himself in standby. The machine injected him
with a powerful sleep inducer. Sit and wait began.
It woke him up when fresh orders came through. And that's when Hell
descended on him with all the fury of God's banished angels. The spooks
intelligence report had been inaccurate. The increased ground forces
were not re-enforcements but troop movements heading to front line
positions eight kilometres further West. The machine brought him back
on-line at midnight. As happened on each of his two hundred or so
previous PARC sorties, the machine shot him with a combat performance
booster. This time it was as if acid had been air pumped into his bone
marrow. Three seconds of the most unbelievable pain. That was the last
he could remember until the seizure wore off and he came round to find
he had taken out the two PARC's with him and murdered every soldier and
civilian within the hotel. His rampage had lasted twenty seven minutes
and left one hundred and seventy two people dead.
To say he had no memory of those missing twenty seven minutes would be
untrue. Many times during the months of investigation, when the pain
took him to a state close to delirium, he had glimpses of the shredded
bodies he left behind. His sanity countered these images with the
theory they were nothing more than hallucinations based on the shocking
footage the investigators forced him to watch. There was really no way
to tell. He had dreams of running up the steep rise, the long powerful
legs of the machine increasing his stride to superhuman lengths,
charging through the woods, vision blurring at the edges, toward the
hotel. Those dreams should have been filled with pain, or rage, or some
driving force to make him kill the two members of his team and do what
he did. Instead the dreams were underscored by the dramatic silence of
the woods. That silence was total. It gave his high speed progress
through the woods toward the hotel the same feeling as being carried
along by the crest of a vast wave. It was unavoidable. It was
destiny.
David opened his eyes and focussed on the slit of light hitting the
ceiling from the bedroom door. His ears caught the shower on full
blast. Sarah was back from another of her regular jaunts through the
city. He never asked her where she went. She was paid for by Sovitch
and to take an interest in her business was to open himself to
deceit.
In his mind he returned to the interrogation room and the harsh white
glare they used to point at his face, which always intensified the
pain. They called him a psycho. He told them the spooks must have
fucked with the vaccine. How come the other two men or the helicopter
crew didn't have the same reaction, they parried. The spooks only
fucked with his vaccine, he kept telling them. They laughed at him and
said he was mad.
The door to the bedroom swung open and Sarah stood naked, framed there
in the light with one hand gently resting on a hip pushed out to one
side. A faint steam vapour rose off her tightly toned skin. David
smiled and struggled out from his trousers, already hard and eager to
be inside of her.

The telephone disturbed his post-fuck slumber.
"Continuity, I'll take it in here." he mumbled out loud. Sarah was back
in the shower.
"David." It was Sovitch. The Serbian's voice sounded excited.
He snapped awake. "Talk."
"It is not the vaccine." Sovitch said with a solemnity that brought an
anticlimax.
David snatched the lamp from the table beside the bed and flung it
across the room. "Mother fucker!" he yelled. The lamp crashed into the
wall and dropped to the carpet.
Sovitch went on: "We tested your blood for antibodies for all the
protogenetic agents we know your military are developing."
David cut in sharply, "What about the squalene? You said they had
spiked the vaccine with squalene. Can't you use that against
them?"
"It's not enough David. The squalene would account for some of the
pain you have experienced, and many of the other ailments. We have
talked about this. Your symptoms are similar to the Gulf War Syndrome,
squalene was blamed but it was never held accountable and has never
been outlawed. The high concentration of squalene antibodies in your
blood proves that you have been subjected to it, but not when, nor does
this fact help us clarify why, you acted as you did."
"So that's it then." David said in a dejected growl.
"No. If you recall our first conversation. I said there was another
option."
David snorted a lungful or air, rubbed his hands across his face,
blinking and straining against the emptiness of his mind. He could not
remember.
"Which was?" he prompted, aggressive.
"The booster drug injected before you blacked out."
David expelled air through clenched teeth. "What the fuck!" he snapped
angrily, "Where am I supposed to fucking get hold of that?"
"The same place you acquired the vaccine."
He clawed his skull with his fingers: Norton, fuck, that was like
asking the pope to take it up the corn hole from a goat and then asking
him to turn round to the goat and suck the mess off after. Norton
wouldn't go for it.
"What if I can't get it?" David tested the waters, nervous about
Sovitch pulling the plug on his last days of free pussy and easy
living.
"It really is down to you." Sovitch said, as if answering both the
spoken and unspoken question at once. "I'll ring you in five hours.
Make progress." The line went dead.
The room began to swim in front of him. A sharp throbbing kicked off
the back of his skull and he knew the pain was coming in for him. He
tried to stand up but his balance did a fast pirouette and left him
tumbling over the side of the bed. He hit the floor hard, winding
himself. With a mixture of rage and desperation he dragged himself onto
his feet and stumbled out of the bedroom. The light stabbed his eyes
and sent shock waves through his skull. He moved toward the bathroom
where he kept his stash of suppressors, holding a forearm across his
face, tears streaming down his cheeks. He crashed into the door but it
was locked.
Sarah.
"Goddamn, Sarah, I need in."
"Not now!" she yelled, hostile.
Anger snapped through him like a leather strap yanked tight. "Fuck not
now you stupid bitch! Open the door!"
"Fuck you!"
For a moment his vision and the pain in his head cleared to leave him
staring calmly at the obstacle to his need. The was brushed steel but
it was hung from a wooden frame. He stepped back then surged forward.
The door smashed inwards, ripping the locking bolt from the wall.
Sarah stood frozen like an animal caught in the headlights of a
hovernaut. She was dressed. In her hands was a vial identical to the
one found broken in the toilet. He knew what the milky coloured liquid
inside of it was without a second glance.
Her lips were mouthing the words `oh my god' but he couldn't hear her.
There was only the roaring of flames inside his skull.
Then everything went red.
David staggered back, his eyes stinging from something; he tried to
lift his hand to his face but they were being held. No, correction. He
was holding.... what? Blinking, lowering his head and raising his
shoulder he rubbed the wet mess from his eyes. He looked down and saw
the remains of Sarah's head between blood soaked hands. He arms hung
limp, her legs twisted across the floor beneath her slumped body; he
strained to keep her from dropping to the floor. Her face was a crushed
pulp of shattered bone and bruised and bleeding tissue. The hard edge
of the marble sink top was smeared in blood and mucus, he caught a
glimpse of chipped fragments of teeth scattered around the basin.
A strange sound began to escape from his throat, a wail of denial.
Then a bubble of blood welled up from the ruined cavity of her nose,
sprayed out on a gust of exhaled air and followed by a moan.
He cried out in terror, clutching the warm flesh of her face in his
fingers, feeling it moving now, the muscles working to say something,
to utter some damnation for what he had done. One swollen eyelid began
to flutter and David imagined with horror it snapping open to reveal an
eye, glaring poison.
Images of another trial made him shake and gasp for breath. A vision
of Sarah, healed but mutilated, sat for the world to see pointing
accusations at him. No, no, no, he couldn't let that happen. He let her
drop from his grip and took a step backwards. There was still strength
in her body. Her arms began shifting in jerky motions across the warm
marble floor, reaching out, finding support, ready to push herself up
to confront him.
He fired his leg forward and drove a toe-capped boot into her midriff.
Sarah gurgled blood as her body reacted instinctively to defend itself
and curled up. He kicked her again, she began shrieking like a dying
animal, twisting and shaking with what little energy she had left. His
head reeled with the madness of what was happening. He placed the heel
of his boot on her throat and forced all his weight onto it. Choking
sounds accompanied the weak thrashing of her limbs.
Her struggles rapidly dwindled into feeble tremors, and then finally
she was still.
Through his own heavy breathing he could feel the pain creeping along
the fibres of his nerves. He stepped off her neck, reached over the
basin and opened the mirrored cabinet above it. The suppressor was
already loaded into the air-hypo. The chrome and glass insertion device
was shaped like an industrial staple gun. He jabbed the flat gauss end
against the muscle of his neck and pulled the trigger. The sharp hiss
brought an end to the pain.
Glancing down he was sickened by what he saw sprawled around his feet.
There was blood everywhere. Turning away he walked out of the bathroom
to the kitchen leaving a trail of blotchy red boot prints across the
rugs. He stripped off his T-shirt and fatigues and threw them into the
sink. He let the hot water run for a while, watching the water lap
around the edges of the clothes, carrying away spatters of blood in
swirls; then began to wash himself standing naked. As he scrubbed, his
mind raced through his options.
Getting rid of the body was impossible: people were already highly
sensitive to his appearance. Somebody would not him, whatever he
did.
Sovitch was his only chance.
Sovitch wanted the booster drug used by the PARC's.
David padded into the lounge, naked, leaving the hot water pouring
over the sodden pile of clothes in the sink.
He stretched out on the black suede sofa and cupped his testicle in
his hands. It made him feel safe. A soft current of sexual energy
prodded his mind. Why was she taking his semen? What the fuck was all
that about? He ran a hand across the solid muscle ridges of his chest
and let out a growling sigh.
"Continuity."
"Yes?"
"Get me an external phone link with James Norton, Head of Research,
Bio Division, Kramer Pharmaceuticals."
A dialing tone followed. James Norton was one of the few advocates of
David's theory the military had experimented on him. David suspected
Norton was primarily concerned that the military were tampering with
Kramer Pharmaceutical products. If the tampering remained undisclosed
and the vaccine was blamed for his psychosis, there would be a negative
kick-back on the company.
The dialing tone was replaced by a voice, a rich Southern state drawl.
"How's the pain?"
"I'm living through it - I need a favour Norton."
"Another one?" Norton's tone was slightly amused, vaguely sarcastic.
David felt a twinge of paranoia and mustered all his mental forces
toward his objective: this man had to help him.
"I can give you proof, scientific proof that your vaccine did not
cause the incident."
"Well, son, that's a righteous statement you have made there. I
gather, however, that there will be a price."
"Man, fuck that, I am not in this for fucking money. I'm trying to
prove I'm innocent."
"I know son, I'm sorry."
David smiled then. He heard it in Norton's voice. Norton wanted that
proof. "Norton I need you to get me a sample of the amphetamine the
PARC spiked me with."
"It's not an amphetamine." Norton lengthened every syllable.
"I don't care, get me some. Get me a sample and I'll give you all the
evidence you need to sit pretty."
"It's certainly possible." Norton said, "David, I'll call you
back."
The line went dead.
David waited.
He played with his testicles, alternating between making himself go
hard and abating, letting himself soften again. During this he wondered
about Sarah: how long did he have before decomposition stunk out the
apartment? He could chop up the body and stash the bits in the freezer,
but he knew there was only a kitchen knife, nothing like an axe;
getting through the bones and sinewy tissue would be a fucking pain in
the ass. He told himself Sovitch would be his salvation.
The telephone rang.
"Continuity, answer it." he ordered.
James Norton came through, "Okay David, we can do this."
"When?"
"One hour."
"Christ, how come so fast?"
"We've got samples here. We requested them during your
investigation."
"Where?" David asked, excited by the prospect of Sovitch ringing back
and him already possessing the samples.
"Your place? I'll bring them over myself."
"Wait-" David hesitated; this was his secret hideaway. Nobody knew
where his address was, and there was a body in the bathroom. But then
he couldn't meet Norton anywhere else. He couldn't go outside.
"David?"
"No, no here's good. Yeah, come here but I don't want you to come in.
Ring the bell and leave it by the door."
Norton sounded unsure but agreed, "Okay, David, this is your call.
What's the address?"
David gave it to him.
When the connection ended the apartment spoke to inform him, "Water
flow in kitchen has been terminated due to overflow. Blockage must be
removed from drain. Shall I call maintenance?"
"Fuck maintenance." David climbed off the sofa laughing. "Fuck the
world."

When the doorbell went David stopped and made another sweep of the
passage with his eyes. Bathroom door closed. Bloody footprints covered
in sheets of paper: overlooked as mud or other spillage. He checked the
camera watching the hall outside. It was off-line.
The doorbell rang again.
David balled his fist and thumped it against the back of his
neck.
"Continuity," he barked, "Why's the fucking hall camera off?"
"Technical fault. Maintenance has been informed."
"Shit."
He moved to the door and listened. Nothing. He smiled and pushed away
all the demons his imagination had placed on the other side.
He opened the door.
A slim attach? case stood upright on the floor.
He stepped forward, reached down and grabbed the handle. The stun dart
hit him in the shoulder. Fifteen thousand volts knocked him to the
floor, half-in, half-out of the apartment, flopping like a fish out of
water. Through the streaks of white pain and flashes of darkness he saw
the corridor was full of men, all armed and amoured, cloaked in dark
blue assault rigs. He heard someone say he had killed her. Then someone
swung a boot into his face and the darkness consumed him.
The flickering between light and shadow hit his eyelids in regular
intervals. He could feel he was in a car, handcuffed, propped between
two bulky figures. They were moving. He opened his eyes a crack and saw
Brooklyn bridge flying past; Manhattan and his haven behind him now and
out of sight.
He shut his eyes again and tried to return to the darkness, but it
rejected him like oil hitting water, leaving him to dwell on his
uncertain future.

They drove into a decaying multistory car park converted into self
storage units. Brick walls damp with condensation and corroded metal
bulkheads. They said nothing when they shook him alert. Four men.
Strong jawed, broad chested, dark wraparound glasses concealing the
humanity of their eyes; all wore the same anonymous blue windbreakers.
They lifted him out from the backseat of the vehicle and propelled him
toward the narrow opening of a bulkhead door. The grey metal was
stenciled with 'STORAGE CELL 7 SUB-LEV 4'. Underground. His stomach did
a tight double flip.
Inside the cell were another three men. Smart suits, cropped hair,
hard features. Military. There was an operating table, racks of modular
computer hardware, monitors and a tall chrome cylinder. The three men
turned to face his entrance, their expressions cold, serious,
impossible to read. David recognised the tall dark haired one with the
angular cheekbones: one of the intelligence spooks from the mission,
the one with the vaccine.
The man's ice mask melted into a thin lipped smile. "Hello
David."
He felt his legs buckle and would have collapsed if the windbreakers
hadn't grabbed him. The voice, the fucking voice, God, it was
Sovitch.
David tried to speak but he was trembling so hard he couldn't get the
words out.
"You dumb piece of shit." Sovitch told him, "James Norton would have
blown the whole thing wide open. Your little fuck pad was there to keep
you out of sight. We gave you the drugs to take away the pain. We gave
you a woman. We gave you heaven."
David lurched sideways in the grip of the four men and shook his head,
an exaggerated gesture of denial and lack of understanding.
Sovitch explained, "You're unique David. Your physiology is perfect.
Your chemistry makes you a natural psychotic but in the most
controllable way." Sovitch stepped back and picked up a surgical steel
hacksaw from a trolley.
"We can switch you on with a jolt of the right stuff." Sovitch winked,
"In itself this is nothing special. We have a plethora of substances to
make our soldiers run berserk. But what's the use of that? They either
kill each other or run amok with no interest in the objective. Then
they are burned out, traumatized, vegetables." Sovitch put down the
hacksaw, moved across and embraced his shoulders with outstretched
arms.
"You, David, are special. You continue to follow orders. You complete
the objective. And you recover. You have endurance and that makes you a
worthwhile investment."
"But I killed both men in my unit." David blurted out.
"Because you had to, because they would have prevented you completing
your objective."
"But the journalists died!"
"An oversight on our part."
"I don't understand."
"You will..." Sovitch smiled and David was reminded of a shark.
The intelligence spook released his embrace and walked across to the
tall chrome cylinder. He patted it gently then twisted round and gazed
at David. "We are growing an army out of you. A special unit. Long term
objective. Europe threatens the global stability. Their ideals belong
to a dark age. Sarah was gathering the seeds for us. We have labs
already teeming with the first embryo's of your children. They will
grow to be very special soldiers. We wanted to make it good for you. We
didn't want to just take and not give, but," Sovitch sighed, "Another
oversight on our part I think. You nearly brought the sky down on our
heads, David. James Norton was delayed in traffic. His taxi was
involved in an unfortunate collision. Unfortunate he survived but he
will never get to see the mess you left for us to clean up. And David
von Kliest will simply disappear."
David was shivering, taking in the wickedly sharp instruments lying on
the trolley.
"You're an intelligent man." Sovitch said, "We knew we couldn't just
stop the pain with a magic shot and let you get on with your life. That
was possible, but we felt it would have been too simple you would have
become suspicious and then you would have become a threat."
David spoke shakily, "The suppressors were losing their effect."
Sovitch pulled his shark smile. "After another couple of weeks we
would have said we had come up with a wonder cure. And you would have
accepted it, and believed you had earned it. And you would have gone on
living your life and we would have controlled it, and collected our
seeds from you. But that's not going to happen now."
Sovitch ran a hand over the smooth chrome of the cylinder. "Welcome to
your new home, David. I'm sorry it will be nothing like we gave you
before but we can't afford another oversight. We'll keep you in here
where we can keep a close eye on you." Sovitch gestured to the four
windbreakers and they began dragging David toward the operating table.
"The bits we need anyway."
David screamed and lashed out with his legs, but there was nothing he
could do. He was powerless against their combined strength. They got
him onto the table and somebody stuck the end of an air-hypo against
his neck. He heard the hiss and saw the darkness rushing up to greet
him.

END