Novel - The Supernaturalist (18 page)

Abracadabra Street

Cosmo hadn’t spoken much all the way back from space. He wasn’t sulking exactly, because there was no one to be angry with. He was just wondering when it was all going to end? How many times did one person have to escape death in a week? And now he was being asked to go back to the place of his nightmares. The place that he had spent the past fourteen miserable years trying to get away from.

“Will you do it?” asked Stefan, when they were gathered around the table.

Cosmo studied the faces looking back at him. The Supernaturalists. He was one of them now—after all, he’d gone into space for them. But it wasn’t all about him, or even the group. This energy pulse had to be detonated for every human on the planet. When you grew up an orphan, sometimes it was difficult to think about anyone besides yourself. But now he had Mona to think about, and Stefan and Ditto.

“It’s a simple plan,” continued Stefan.

“Oh, like the last simple plan,” said Cosmo.

“That was a simple plan, until you began improvising. This time you will simply be pointing the way.”

“You make it
sound
simple, but something will happen, it always does. I’ve noticed that my new knee starts to itch when trouble is near, and it’s itching like crazy now.”

“Trust the knee, Cosmo,” said Ditto in a spooky voice.

“Shut up, Ditto,” snapped Mona. “This is important.”

“Sure, it’s real important that we plant Myishi’s bomb for them.”

“It’s a pulse. An energy pulse.”

“So they say. Who knows what this thing really does?”

Stefan opened the briefcase, swiveling it to face the Bartoli baby. “It’s a pulse, Ditto, okay? I checked it myself.”

Ditto ignored the device. “Yeah, whatever. Did Myishi give you stock options too?”

Mona lost her temper. “Can’t you say anything positive? I’m beginning to wonder whose side you’re on.”

Ditto jumped to his feet, which didn’t make much difference. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Stefan put a hand on Mona’s arm. “Leave it.”

“No. I’m starting to think that you don’t want us to catch the Parasites.”

Ditto’s face was crimson. “Maybe I don’t want us to catch them for Myishi.”

“Well, then, maybe you should find some other line of work.”

They stared at each other for several seconds, then Ditto broke eye contact, storming off to the elevator.

“You were out of line, Mona,” said Stefan, when the echoes of the argument had faded.

Mona folded her arms stubbornly. “So was he.”

Stefan stood, selecting a suit from a hanging rail. “You’re going to have to apologize before I get back.”

“Before
we
get back,” said Cosmo. “You’ll never get under there without me.”

Stefan threw him a smaller suit from the rack. “Well done, Cosmo. I need you to lead me into the lion’s den. You’re going back to Clarissa Frayne, one last time.”

The Clarissa Frayne Institute for the Parentally Challenged

Marshall Redwood wasn’t unduly concerned when the two suits came in the front door. The men were probably medical reps looking to test some new product. They looked a bit like a comedy double act. One tall one and one short one. They could have been slave traders as far as Redwood was concerned. If they wanted to kidnap the orphans, Redwood would help them load the truck. He didn’t owe the Clarissa Frayne Institute a single thing. Especially not since they’d stuck him behind a desk in the security booth pending an investigation. And all because of that slippery no-sponsor Cosmo Hill. Apparently Cosmo had survived the dive he took from that rooftop and was now listed as a fugitive. If Cosmo had just been a good little boy and died when he was supposed to, then Redwood would not have to sit here with the other lame idiots, watching TV eight hours a day.

Fred Allescanti, possibly the biggest idiot in Satellite City, was drinking sim-coffee in the security booth’s only decent chair.

“Hey, Fred. You want to give me a turn in the swivel chair?”

Fred took another annoying slurp of brown liquid. “No can do, Redwood. My back plays up something terrible if I don’t support it right.”

Redwood frowned. “What if I just take the chair? Let’s say I just go crazy and throw you straight through the window, and just occupy the chair while you’re getting your sutures?”

“Go ahead, big shot,” grinned Fred. “I could use the compensation money.”

Maybe Allescanti wasn’t as dumb as he looked.

“Well, at least stop slurping that sim-coffee. I swear, Fred, you’re driving me demented. Who knows what I might do?”

Fred pointed at the camera over their heads. “Make sure you do it on camera, Redwood, I can use the footage in my court case.”

Redwood’s face burned red. Even Fred Allescanti was getting lippy since he’d been demoted. He needed to get back on the streets, back where he had some power. If only he could somehow recover Cosmo Hill.

A red alert began to bip softly on a security computer. The icon was in the shape of a running man. One of the no-sponsors was on the move outside a designated area. At last, someone to vent his frustration on. Redwood activated the tracker-pattern program, running a match on the pattern. One by one the orphans were eliminated, as they were located in their beds or designated leisure areas. Who was on the move? Who was left? The signal was very faint, as if most of the electronegative micro beads used to track the orphans had been removed, or shorted out.

Shorted out? Redwood’s heart rate speeded up. Only two orphans could have shorted out their micro beads. One was dead, and the other was Cosmo Hill.

Redwood called up Cosmo’s pattern. It was very faint, only the faintest pulse, but definitely active. The ex-marshal doubted if the scanners would have picked him up at all if he weren’t close by. Very close by. On his way down to the basement by the looks of it.

Redwood consulted the security screens, checking the two suits he’d mistaken for medical researchers. The short one must be Cosmo. For some insane reason, Hill had actually returned. Redwood didn’t know why, and he didn’t care. This was his chance to redeem himself. He could bring in Hill and his accomplice. Of course, he would need to talk to Hill alone first, to make sure they had their stories straight about the night of the crash. Redwood stood, taking a rod from the gun cabinet.

“Hey, Redwood,” said Fred. “What are you doing with a rod? You’re not a floor marshal anymore.”

Redwood didn’t even look at him. “I’m going on my rounds.”

“Rounds? What are you, a doctor? We’re security, we don’t do rounds here. That’s why we have cameras.”

“Not in the basement, we don’t. It’s about time someone checked down there. You want to come?”

Allescanti lolled back in the swivel chair, wrapping his hands around a warm coffee mug. “No thanks, Redwood. It’s all yours.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Redwood, holstering the rod.

Cosmo and Stefan walked straight in through the front door. Cosmo’s knees almost buckled as soon as the smell of the institute’s cheap disinfectant hit his nostrils. He stood still for a moment, allowing the memories to wash over him. Ziplock, Redwood, and years of medical experiments. He took several deep breaths, steeling himself. Stefan peered at him from under the brim of a felt hat.

“Are you okay, Cosmo?” he said, the bristles of his false moustache waving slightly.

“I’m okay. Let’s go.”

“Are you sure?”

Cosmo nodded. “Ten minutes, and we’re in and out.”

They approached the admissions booth, and Stefan flashed two laminated fake IDs at a guard playing a handheld video cube. Cosmo kept his head down, in the shadows of his own hat.

“Komposite,” said the guard, trying to look as though he cared. “You guys had quite a fire over there last week.”

Stefan nodded. “Yeah. Took out the entire canteen, worse luck.”

The guard shook his head sympathetically. “What are you testing this time?”

Stefan patted the attaché case under his arm. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

The guard gave him two visitors’ passes. “Yeah, sure. Good one. You can collect these ID cards on your way out.”

Stefan clipped a pass to his lapel, handing the other to Cosmo. The guard was back playing his video game before they had taken half a dozen steps.

“He never even looked at me,” whispered Cosmo.

Stefan smiled. “They don’t pay these guards enough to pay attention.”

Cosmo led them through a vaulted reception area lined with 3D photos of a long-dead Clarissa Frayne doing noble things with youngsters. Hiking, reading, digging holes, among various other outdoor activities. There was nothing noble about the Frayne Institute. The authorities were more inclined to dip the no-sponsors in experimental vats than take them mountaineering.

They passed several guards, but no one questioned them. They were simply two more suits from some medical company. And anyway, who would possibly have a motive to break into an orphanage? Cosmo kept his eyes down and his collar up, hoping that people would think he was a short man and not a tall kid.

“In here,” said Cosmo, shouldering a flimsy plastic door hidden behind a statue of Clarissa Frayne. In this particular statue, the institute’s founder was cradling an abandoned infant. Every orphan in the orphanage had heard stories about Miss Frayne. Apparently the woman had hated children, and she was the one who had coined the term
no-sponsors
.

The doorway opened onto a claustrophobic corridor, devoid of decoration and with only emergency lighting.

“Charming,” said Stefan.

“You should see the dormitories.”

The corridor became colder as it sank below sea level. The emergency lights grew more and more ancient, until eventually their path was illuminated by wall-mounted coil bulbs.

“Lightbulbs,” chuckled Stefan. “You don’t see those anymore, outside a movie theater.”

“All the power is leeched from the main power lines. Clarissa Frayne has been doing it for as long as I remember. For some reason, down here is the only place no-sponsors can go without being detected.”

Stefan nodded. “Of course. The energy leak would white out your scanner patterns.”

The corridor sank down and down, until finally they came to a dead end, flanked by two overflow pipes.

“Back in the early days, when the city used to flood, these made sure the basement drained.”

“And now?”

Cosmo hauled back a maintenance hatch. It opened surprisingly easily. “Now the orphans use them to hang out.”

Inside the pipe were several levels, constructed from cardboard and waste pig iron. Rickety ladders connected each level, descending farther into the darkness.

Stefan tested a ladder with his weight. It collapsed beneath him. “I’m not twelve years old anymore,” he said, opening his jacket. Strapped to his chest was the one of the vests that Ditto had stolen from lawyers on the roof of the Stromberg Building. He tore open the Velcro pad covering the rappelling kit and wrapped the cord around a solid handle.

Stefan slapped his own back. “Okay, Cosmo. Climb on.”

Cosmo did as he was told. “Next time, promise me that we’ll use the stairs. Just for once.”

Stefan winked. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, swinging down into the blackness of the pipe.

They seemed to drop forever, right down into the center of the earth. In fact the cord ran out before the pipe. Stefan took a lumi-light from one of his pockets. He snapped it to activate the luminous crystals before dropping it to the ground. The bottom of the pipe was inches away.

“Maybe tonight is our lucky night,” he said.

“It’s about time.”

They disengaged from the rappelling cord, dropping to the floor with a thump. The pipe was almost entirely corroded, so they felt their way out onto a hard rock floor. Cosmo stubbed his toe against a thick cable. He dropped to his knees, tracing it back to a junction box.

“I’ve got something here. A switch.”

“Makes sense,” said Stefan. “If the Clarissa Frayne people are stealing power, they would have to be able to see what they’re doing. Turn it on, Cosmo.”

Cosmo wrapped his fingers around the thick switch and pulled until he heard a sharp click. The cavern was instantly illuminated by a dozen halogen spotlights. They were in a vast tunnel, originally blasted by Satellite City’s sandhog crews almost a century ago to accommodate gas, water, and electricity pipes. The hundred-foot-high power conduits had been stripped back to bare wire in places and were feeding several small generators. A bass hum emanated from the naked wires.

The wires weren’t exactly naked. They were clothed in a luminous blue carpet. Sleeping Parasites. Millions of them. Each creature’s silver heart pulsed in time with the alternating current.

Stefan tightened his grip on the energy pulse.

“This must be the place,” he whispered.

Cosmo’s first thought was to run. It was his second thought too.

Stefan placed a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Cosmo. We’re not dying or in pain. If we were, they’d be all over us. All we have to do is tread carefully, and there’s no reason for the Parasites to take any notice. Hell, we could sing an opera now, and it wouldn’t wake them up. They don’t respond to sound, just pain.”

“You’re sure about that? You have actual evidence?”

“Not as such, no. But I feel it in my gut.”

Cosmo giggled with more than a touch of hysteria. “I’m feeling something in my gut too.”

“All you have to do is stay here. I’ll plant the energy pulse, then we go out the way we came in. Two minutes. That’s it.”

Stefan walked carefully through the maze of piping and cable, stepping over sleeping Parasites as he went. His aim was to plant the pulse as close to the heart of the group as he could, where it would do the most damage. They could remote detonate it from the street, unleashing an electrical storm on the creatures. If Ellie Faustino’s theory was correct, the dirty energy should rip the hearts right out of the Parasites, but not affect the humans at all, so long as they weren’t too close to the blast.

Stefan climbed an ancient stepladder, gently wedging the attaché case beneath the main pipe’s lower curve. There were Parasites all around him, breathing, glowing, living.