‘The girl?’ the American woman asked. Balor took his time looking Morag up and down in a way that made my skin crawl.
‘Bring her to me,’ Balor said finally, and turned to leave. It was the perfect time for me to shout no and start struggling but I knew that would have been a pointless gesture in this league.
‘Mr Balor sir?’ Morag said, her voice sounding somehow tiny and scared. Balor stopped and turned to look at her. ‘I really don’t want to be raped or eaten,’ she said. There were a couple of sniggers from the gunmen and -women surrounding us but most of them looked less than impressed, and although Balor’s strange features may have been difficult to read he seemed to be one of them.
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he rumbled. I was desperately looking around for an opening but finding nothing, when I saw someone I recognised. She was short but heavily muscled, a lot of upper-body strength. She wore tatty but still-functional armour and a telltale bandanna across unkempt short hair. She was carrying a Metal Storm gauss rifle slung horizontally across her torso.
‘I know you?’ I said, desperately trying to place her face.
‘Yeah, you know me,’ she said in a resigned manner. She sounded like she came from the Arizona coast. Then I placed her.
‘You were on the Santa Maria,’ I said. She seemed to consider this for a while. Balor was watching her. Everyone in the special ops community knew the significance of the Santa Maria, the cargo ship we were on when they tried to dump us into space.
‘Yeah. Yeah, I was,’ she finally acknowledged.
‘SEAL, right? I’ll have your name in a second,’ I said. Balor looked at the ex-SEAL and then back at me, his expression unreadable.
‘Cage,’ he reminded the people guarding us.
‘Our gear?’ Morag asked. I groaned inwardly. Balor turned to regard her for a moment, just long enough for the monster’s gaze to make her really uncomfortable.
‘Bring it to me,’ he finally ordered. ‘If there’s anything really good it’ll get split.’ Morag had inadvertently tipped them off that we were holding something worthwhile.
‘Bollocks,’ I said with some feeling. On the one hand I wasn’t dead, which meant I’d lived longer than I thought I would with Rolleston on my trail. On the other hand I was still less than pleased about being in a reinforced cage waist-deep in freezing-cold water. The irritating thing was that the locks were solid, heavy duty and mechanical so Pagan couldn’t even hack them. Nor had boosted muscle been able to bend the bars. It was almost like they didn’t want us to escape. We didn’t even know what part of New York we were in. Our only frame of reference was the occasional dead rat floating by.
We were in a series of partially submerged cages that formed a kind of grid. There were some other people in here but they didn’t show much interest in talking to us. I clambered down from the cage and held myself as I shook from the cold in the water.
‘How’s our girl doing?’ I asked Pagan, assuming that he’d link with Morag.
‘Don’t know, they’ve got too many other hackers keeping an eye on us,’ he said. He seemed pissed off. At me, I mean.
‘If it makes you feel better you can tell me we should’ve gone to Russia,’ I said.
‘Chinese parliament,’ he said. ‘I raised my objection but in the end agreed to come with you – can’t complain about it.’ He didn’t sound like he meant it. Balor had taken the solid-state memory cube that housed Ambassador. The pair of us lapsed into silence.
‘Good work on that missile,’ I eventually said. Meaning the one he’d dropped into the Atlantic before it had gone off.
‘Wasn’t me.’ That got my attention.
‘What then? Malfunction?’
Pagan shook his head. ‘Morag did it.’ I stared at him for a while.
‘Even I know that’s a pretty sophisticated hack. She doesn’t have anything like the experience.’
‘I agree,’ Pagan said. He had a funny look on his face.
‘She scares you, doesn’t she?’
Pagan gave this some thought. Eventually he answered, ‘I’m not so sure it’s her so much as her and Ambassador.’
‘It’s helping her?’ I asked, worried by this alien influence over Morag.
‘Don’t get me wrong. She’s good, she’s definitely got the talent and will be a brilliant hacker, better than me probably, but yeah, to do what she’s doing she’s getting help.’ I wasn’t sure what to make of what he’d said. It was so beyond my scope of experience. Was she still Morag?
‘You sure this isn’t an attack by Them?’ I eventually asked him. He considered my question, shivering in the cold water.
‘I’m not sure of anything – seems an unlikely way to go about it,’ he finally said. He looked up at the network of corroded pipes and the pitted concrete ceiling above us.
‘He’ll sell us to Rolleston, won’t he?’ Pagan asked. I shrugged.
‘I honestly don’t know. I don’t think he thinks like anyone else. He could do anything.’
‘What do you think he wanted with Morag?’ Pagan asked. I just looked at him. I felt that was a pretty naive question for an ex-special forces operator. Pagan had just as much knowledge about these kinds of things as I did and I was trying really hard not to think about it. Co-opted by an alien, and now Balor himself had her. I was trying not to think that maybe it would’ve been better if I’d put a bullet through her head a while back.
We heard the clanking of an ancient freight elevator. Moments later webbed feet stood above us on top of the cage.
‘Balor wants to see you,’ said the strangely modulated voice of one of the Fomorians.
We were under heavy guard. I could barely stand but it made me feel better – it’s nice to get some respect. Outside it was muggy and close, the air ionised, black clouds rolling in above the spires of the partially submerged city. When the rain started it was hot, the pollution making it feel greasy, like being sweated on. We were in what used to be called Times Square. We made our way over surprisingly well-made catwalks towards what looked like some proto Ginza writ large. Neon signs leaked dust from ruptured tubes. Huge viz screens had been hung over the scarred facades of old buildings. They seemed to be showing wildlife documentaries about sea life.
Craning my neck I could just about make out various defensive emplacements around the square, concealed and otherwise. This area was well protected. The well-armed denizens of New York seemed to be congregating in the square. Below us in the water, powerful speedboats, hovers and hydro-bikes were landing at small jury-rigged jetties. In the centre of the square held up by high-tensile steel cables, was part of the flight deck of the USS Intrepid, an ancient naval aircraft carrier that had once been moored in New York. Apparently the Intrepid was now suspended inverted between two crumbling buildings further uptown. The pieces of suspended flight deck were the focus point for the crowds assembling in Times Square. Hovering cameras floated around it and I could see on one or two of the smaller screens pictures of the empty platform from the cameras. On the one hand I had a sinking feeling, on the other it didn’t seem possible that all this attention could be for us.
We climbed up ringing metal steps. The rain was beginning to worsen now, but I was already wet and cold. We headed towards what was once a semicircular lounge in the Marriott Marquee above the waters in Times Square. The roof of the lounge had long since gone and it was now open to the elements. Seated back in the Marquee, sheltered from the open air, a string quartet played something understated and pleasant.