Escape Velocity: The Anthology (59 page)
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Authors: Unknown
Our destination proved to be a white-walled cube of a room, mirror along one wall, a table and two chairs at its centre. The chair they sat me in was comfortable enough, apart from the two wrist restraints and the one secured around my neck.
I knew this type of chair.
The suit took the more conventional seat on the opposite side of the table, one of the soldiers stationed against the wall at his back, the other vanishing somewhere behind me, presumably to stand by the door. There was no telling who else might be present on the other side of the mirror.
Whatever they hoped to learn I was likely to prove a disappointment. In a tradition that stretched back untold centuries, I knew next to nothing about my side’s covert operations on their world, having only ever seen one other agent: my direct superior – a supposed ‘Aunt’ who had originated the message that started all of this. We’d met on two occasions and I had never been told her name. So there was precious little for them to learn and nothing at all for me to bargain with, even had that been a realistic option.
A 3D image of a man appeared above the bare tabletop: me.
“
Joshua Zy Symonds,” intoned the suit, in a rich but neutral voice. He then reeled off a list of facts representing the adopted persona that had been a part of me for the past ten years.
“
It’s a good cover,” he conceded. “Good enough to pass vetting at different levels on no fewer than four occasions.” He smiled; an expression that spoke of satisfaction rather than anything pleasant or comforting. “We’re looking forward to dissecting it, which I’m sure will prove invaluable when it comes to recognising others of your ilk.”
The image vanished, to be replaced by another – only a bust this time – head and shoulders emerging from the tabletop. It showed a distinguished lady, just on the wrong side of middle age. Intelligent, calculating eyes gazed from a face that had never gone down the route of rejuve or cosmetic surgery. My heart sank. It was my superior – the ‘Aunt’ who had sent me the urgent message.
“
Ah good, I’m glad to see that you recognise her.”
The suit’s comment was no surprise. The bands around my wrist and neck were more than restraints. The entire chair was designed to judge and interpret my response to anything I saw or heard – the ultimate lie detector and then some.
“
I’m afraid to say your ‘Aunt’ is no longer with us.” Again that malicious smile, conveying all the warmth of an ice storm. “But you were perhaps anticipating such a loss following this morning’s message and your subsequent capture.”
What was he driving at? I gazed back, maintaining my silence.
“
You see, your Aunt’s demise was… inconvenient. She took her own life, when we really would have liked to have chatted a little more.”
Why was he bothering to tell me all this? Why give so much away? Surely these bits of information were things he might have held back to play at a later stage. Unless there was something they wanted, something they needed urgently. I felt the faint stirrings of hope. Maybe I did have something to bargain with after all, or at least they thought I did. Perhaps the plans for Henderson’s battle armour or something of similar importance really were at large.
“
As you’ve doubtless worked out,
we
sent the message you received this morning.”
I concentrated on the suit’s every word, trying to figure out exactly where my angle was and how much leverage it was likely to give me.
“
You see, we knew that another agent was out there somewhere,” he continued, “but not exactly who he might be. Doubtless given time you would have revealed yourself. But as you may have noticed, there’s a war on, and we didn’t have the luxury of being patient. So this morning we sent out that bogus message to the six possibilities identified as potential spies. Then all we had to do was sit back and see what it flushed out. It worked royally. It brought us you.”
Still no clue as to what he wanted from me, what he thought I knew.
I looked past the image to where the suit sat, and attempted to gaze beyond the dark pools of his shades, to discover whether any degree of humanity lurked behind them.
‘
Auntie’s’ image vanished abruptly, to be replaced by another.
There was no way I could have hidden my reaction at seeing that face, wired-up chair or not.
“
Ah, good. I’m glad to see you recognise her as well. We know that she’s your contact, the third member of your little cell, but so far she’s managed to elude us. Now, does this have to turn ugly, or are you going to tell us where we can find her?”
For long seconds I simply stared, wondering if this were all some surreal nightmare. Hovering above the surface of the table was a vision of beauty – the image of the girl I had murdered and dumped in a refuse bin just a couple of hours earlier.
“
Oh yes,” I said, speaking at last as the final sparks of defiance and hope within me turned to ash. “I can tell you exactly where to find her.”
Red Monkeys
Rebecca Latyntseva
It was an ordinary, hung-over winter dawn, crows cawing in dissonant harmony with Papa’s snoring. Larisa edged out of bed, wincing as razorblading pain slashed. Navigating her way through an obstacle course of empty Stolichnaya bottles, handcuffs, full ashtrays and whips, she zigzagged into the bathroom.
As she tended to the wound above her eyebrow, dabbing vodka into raw flesh, Larisa tried to sluice her mind of thoughts and let them spiral down the plughole. Gazing at the reflection of a strange stranger girl, green eyes extinguished by sorrow; that long, dark medusa hair which he’d noose around her throat in moments of ‘passion’...
The doorbell shattered the mirror image into a thousand pieces. She hobbled to the door. A man in a broad-brimmed hat was holding out a letter, his eyes so light they seemed to be devoid of pupils. He smiled and nodded as Larisa signed for it.
‘
Good luck, young lady,’ he rasped. He seemed semi-opaque... or semi-transparent. A cocktail of pain and sleep deficit and alcohol was apparently befuddling her vision: Larisa could just distinguish the wall behind him, through him.
Perching on the edge of the bath, she studied the envelope. A Moscow postmark. Strange. She had no friends or relatives from there. For that matter, she had no one from anywhere.
Larisa squinted in the attempt to focus on the almost indecipherable scrawl.
larisalarisalariiiiiiiiiiisa listen to me quikquikquikly, ya gotta read this & soak it upupup into yr essence fore its toooooooo :::::::::::o but is tragic::::::::: late. time trickles on&on&on, that burbling gurgling stream ov seeped up me-mories... I know xactly what you plan feel you have must oght to do. butbutbut <<
Heart pounding, Larisa ripped up the letter and flushed it down the toilet. The demented ravings of one of Papa’s past victims. How many young girls had he infected with his poisonous lust? Larisa stumbled into the bedroom. The stench of last night’s rancid emissions hung in the air. She observed Papa’s soporifing form as if for the first time. His blood-smudged powertool, that drilling manhood, shrouded in red-stained sheets; wrinkle maps wending their way down his face, dripping into his dewlap. Old enough to be her grandpapa, he’d eject her into backpacked homelessness before too long, and kidnap his next child wife.
Seconds ticked into minutes tocked into hours ticked into days... Larisa was put to work, as usual, servicing Papa’s ‘colleagues’. Legs splayed, body numb, and mind astral gliding through clouds of thought. The letter, though quickly read and destroyed, was etched on her retinae and as she clamped her eyes shut, to avoid the visual atrocity of a sweating, panting Neanderthal, so the scrawling handwritten message danced in Larisa’s mind. An idea was slowly forming... tenuous as summer mist at first... Horrified at her own horrificness, she tried to banish this idea, to prevent it from crystallizing. She remembered her suicidal mother’s last words: ‘
If someone tells you not to think of red monkeys, what do you think of?’
When Papa was out and about machinating business deals, Larisa paced the apartment, grappling with the red monkeys hanging upside-down from branches in her mind. Household objects were slowly eroding their innocence: a cast iron frying pan, no longer the receptacle for risotto, could be raised high and smashed down on an unsuspecting skull... She had never contemplated butchering Papa until that rambling message from a madwoman urged her to abstain from killing him. The misty idea gradually seasoned into a block of ice. There were so many recipes for death, a murderous cornucopia. Kitchen knives were the obvious contenders, blunderingly brutal and leaving sanguineous trails of clues for detectives to sniff around. Heeding the letter’s advice, Larisa resolved to be
tiptoetiptoetiptoe
cautious. Within a few months – freedom.
Eyes resurrected and sparkling with life, Larisa bustled around the kitchen, assembling the ingredients for her cordon bleu borshcht.
Dr Arkadii Pavlov
Serbskaya High Security Psychiatric Prison, Moscow
Report # 973 ref: 173/lt/9056837
Patient: Larisa Tarasova, d.o.b. 09.12. 1992
Patient ref: 173/LT
Date: 08.09.2010
HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS:
173/LT was detained by the authorities as the main suspect in the murder, through arsenic poisoning, of her stepfather, Nikolai Belkov. Cause of death: Multi-system organ failure due to ingestion of arsenic. The victim was pronounced dead on 02.01.2010. Autopsy order: Suspect foul play. 173/LT was examined by myself, in capacity of Expert Witness, from 05.03.2010 to this present day. 173/LT was sentenced to life imprisonment at Serbskaya High Security Psychiatric Prison, Moscow, on the basis of my conclusions.
INITIAL PRESENTATION:
173/LT’s initial symptoms were of ontological insecurity. Her affect indicated severe delusions, in tandem with visual hallucination, such as her insistence that ‘a letter from a mad woman’ prompted her to murder Mr. Belkov.
173/LT manifested symptoms of persecution mania, claiming that she had been physically abused by the victim. The court ordered a medical examination of 173/LT and concluded that while 173/LT suffered from internal vaginal and anal lesions, bruising to the limbs, razor cuts to the arms and back and facial scarring, there was no evidence to indicate that these bodily injuries were inflicted by Mr. Belkov. I stated that, in view of her onset psychosis, these injuries were, in all probability, self-inflicted. Therefore no mitigating circumstances could be cited in this case.
173/LT’s behaviour became increasingly aggressive, prior to medication. She displayed sociopathic traits such as shouting, screaming, cursing and, on one occasion, she attempted to attack myself as well as my assistant.
TREATMENT:
On 06.04.2010, 173/LT was administered a loading dose of Largactil IM 50 mg. Largactil and normal saline IV piggyback will be instituted.
173/LT will be treated conservatively with medical management. Should this conservative approach not prove efficacious, ECT will be the next step in the treatment protocol.
Through the hospital course, 173/LT’s differential diagnosis has been expanded to include schizo-affective disorder with paranoid ideation, dissociative state, and progressive catatonia.
173/LT refuses oral intake. She is incontinent of urine and her kidney function cannot be measured.
173/LT has brief remissions from catatonia during which she demonstrates echolalia (repetition of words spoken by other inmates) and perseveration (obsession re: phrase ‘red monkey’)
173/LT is highly delusional with visual and auditory hallucinations.
173/LT no longer displays aggressive tendencies.
I have approved 173/LT’s request for writing materials. When she is in remission from petrification, her primary activity is writing. Hypergraphia is suspected, but this will have to be further examined before diagnosis. Diagnostic investigation will include samples of 173/LT’s own handwritten materials to augment psychiatric observations, conclusions, and plan of care.