Decay Inevitable

“–but I’m fucking well going to. Fuck up once, just once, mind, and your arse is going to look like a choice cuts diagram on a butcher’s shop wall.”

Gleave swallowed hard, wishing there was some ice in his drink, something to chink against the glass and lend a little relief to this ordeal.

“We had word come in this morning. There’s agitation.”

“Where?”

“You know where. Fifteen years of nice and easy, and now the blood’s up. Check out this convergence. I want them wasted. I don’t want any fuck-ups. Now finish your drink and fuck off.”

Gleave put the glass down, even though he had barely wetted his lips with the contents. He knew Butterby well enough not to piss him off; at least he went through the motions of hospitality. Butterby and Lousher were yesterday’s men; they just didn’t realise it yet. Old, old men. Their power was failing. A tingle in his gut, unlike anything he’d felt in a decade and a half, drove him to pick up his pace on the way back to the ops room. A convergence. He wondered which of the Inserts it might be. Chances were, they’d be able to hit them fast before they became aware of their abilities.

Cheke was mopping up the juices on the carpet. Everyone else was watching her, afraid to say anything. Gleave went to her. “Come with me,” he said. And to one of the suits: “Bring me a file on the lost.” He would have to work through the night to train her on the basics of human interaction. She must learn not to draw attention to herself. She must be a ghost, until circumstances demand she reveal her gifts.

Pausing in the chill corridor, before allowing her into his office, he said: “Cheke. How are your eyes now?”

She shifted behind him, in the brown gloom of the passageway. “I can see...” Her voice was that of a child’s opening a Christmas box and finding what its heart had ached for. “I can see the pores on the back of your hand closing. I can see your pulse in the cut of your clothes.”

Gleave moved, all the better to disguise the shiver that ran through him. “That’s good,” he said.

She digested the file within minutes, the photographs and names committed to a mind that was still sharpening yet was already far beyond the swiftness of anything human.

“We’ll start you off on someone easy,” Gleave said. “It’s the man in the flat. The man we should have finished off, but he got away. He could be dangerous. He might expose us. Then there will be others.”

“When I’ve caught them–”

Gleave leaned forwards across the desk. For the first time, he was able to scrutinise properly the face that was gathering itself from the genetic spaghetti of its constituent parts. She was going to become rather lovely. Her eyes were hooded, and cat-sly, a blue so pale it was almost dangerously conspicuous. Her hair was black, piled in thick curls. The cruelty in her mouth made up for the innocence of the arch in her brows.

“Yes?”

“When I’ve caught them...” She smiled, desperation edging her words.

Gleave tried to return the humour, but his lips failed him. “Yes?”

“Can I eat them?”

CHAPTER NINE: CONTACT

IT HAD BEEN a good five years since Will had set foot on Dartmouth Park Road. He hoped Elisabeth still lived here and hadn’t moved on. He pushed through the gate – which still wailed in the same high-low fashion – and rapped on the door. When it opened, there was a hand that flew to a mouth, a dreadful crash as the plate Elisabeth had been drying fell to the floor.

Will said, “Pleased to see me then?”

WHAT HAD BEEN their living room contained the same curtains they had picked together from IKEA. Mango, the cat they had chosen from a litter belonging to a Maine Coon breeder in West Croydon, regarded him from the windowsill with the same mix of disdain and suspicion. Elisabeth was sitting with her slim legs winding around each other, elbow resting on her knee, cigarette burning between well-manicured fingers. Her hair had been cut short; her high cheekbones formed the inverted base of a triangle completed by the thick, ruby bow of her mouth.

“You look fantastic,” he said.

“You look like a stunt, Will,” she said. “You look like shit in a jacket.”

“I aim to please.”

“That’d be a first.”

Will held his hands up. “Look, Elisabeth. I’m not here to fight you.”

“What the fuck are you here for? Money? You still living in that shit pit with vinegar tits? My fucking patient, she was. I should have pulled the fucking plug on her before you got wind of her.” Elisabeth took a huge, violent drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out in an ashtray that might as well have been Will’s face.

“Elisabeth, I–” And then he couldn’t go on. The grief that had been rattling around inside like a loose coin in a machine spat out of him with such force that Elisabeth moved back in her seat, her hand covering her mouth, her eyes large in their sockets. As she blurred before him, Will slid onto the floor and let it happen. By the end, his chin and chest were a thin gravy of snot and tears and saliva. His chest hurt from all the sobbing. He was exhausted.