“Good,” she said.
Ely had a small single-occupancy unit down on Level Two. It contained a sleep-pod, a desk, and a chair. He shared a printer, shower and toilet with the other civic servants.
Having a room to himself was considered a luxury and a privilege. It was palatial compared to the units the workers were allocated. Ely hated it. He hadn’t slept properly since he’d become a Constable. The lucid dreams induced by the machine were meant to be more restful than normal sleep, yet he couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken refreshed.
He looked at the blank walls, and thought of the Greenes, and their family photograph with the fake Martian background. Ely had no pictures to display. He had no one with whom he could share his hopes for the future. He slumped down in the chair, and filled his display with the newsfeeds. He was being hailed as a hero. The articles were singing his praises with a near fanatical hysteria. Even the few pieces that criticised him for destroying the elevator, and the universal view was that he had done it on purpose, had hundreds of comments arguing that the sacrifice had been necessary. It was just as Arthur had said. The timing had been perfect. His victory was assured. And he didn’t care.
Perhaps he’d feel differently when he reached Mars. He’d never really thought about what life would be like there. Somehow, it had always been this distant dream, something that was close, but still unattainable. He yawned. Whether he would feel better afterwards or not, he needed to sleep.
He took off his helmet and placed it on the desk. He looked at it for a moment. He did need a new one, but he would never get one now. He looked over at his pod. Just a few hours sleep. They said four hours of L-sleep was all that anyone technically needed. Technically.
He checked the time. He’d go to sleep in a moment. Not yet. There was something someone had said. Something important, something that, he was sure, would cause all the pieces to fit together. It was there, just at the edge of recall.
Still trying to work out what it was, he fell asleep in his chair. For the first time in his life, he didn’t dream.
Two hours later, he was woken by a noise. It was an automated alarm. Blearily he raised his wristboard to his eyes. There had been two more deaths. He grabbed his helmet and pulled it on. He tapped out a command, accessing the cameras. His worst fears were confirmed. It was murder.
Chapter 9 - Ghosts
“Out of the way,” Ely yelled. His voice didn’t carry above the chattering terror of the workers gathered along the corridor. He tapped out a command, sending a message telling the citizens to disperse. No one paid any attention to it. As he pushed his way to the front of the crowd, he saw the scene was far worse than it had appeared on the cameras.
Ten feet from the edge of the crowd was the body of Nurse Gower. She lay face down, a red stain spreading from a shallow wound in the small of her back. Judging by the pool of blood that surrounded her, there were other wounds on her front.
Twenty feet further on were the open doors to one of the elevators. Just inside, leaning against the wall, lay the body of Nurse Bradford. Blood had poured out of his slit throat, soaking his clothing, and seeping across the elevator floor.
“Control? Come in Control.”
There was no answer. Ely had tried to contact her as he’d made his way up to the crime scene but, struggling with trying to wake after insufficient sleep, he’d not thought anything of it when he received no answer.
“Vox? This is Ely. Are you there?”
This time there was a reply. “Ely? Yes. Yes, I’m here.” Her voice was stilted. She sounded scared.
“Can you pull up the footage from when it happened?”
“It… it’s been wiped.” She spoke so quietly Ely almost couldn’t hear her.
“We should have expected they would have done that,” he said.
“What? Oh, yes… I suppose…” Her voice trailed off.
Ely looked around the crowd checking that, as he focused on each worker, names appeared on his display. There was more than one killer, but hadn’t he already known that? But this time the victims weren’t just workers on the Assembly. As productive as they’d been, the loss of the Greenes was nothing compared to the deaths of these two civic servants. Thoughts like that wouldn’t help, Ely told himself. He needed to find out who had done this, and then he needed to find them, because he now knew that the killer wouldn’t stop until he, or she, or they were all dead.
Most of the crowd wore visors. Most of those were now looking directly at him, the little blinking red lights indicating that they were uploading his every move.
“Did anyone see this happen?” he asked.
No one spoke. There was a little shuffling of feet, but otherwise barely any movement. Even now, gripped by shock, or perhaps because of it, no one wanted to ruin their recording.
“Vox, someone in this crowd must have seen something. Go back through the footage and find me something. Vox?”
“Yes, yes. I’m doing it now.”
“Find me an image of the killer, and find out which way they went.”
He turned his attention to the bodies. Moving carefully, so as not to step in the blood, he approached Nurse Gower. He knelt down and looked at her injuries. An inch of thin metal protruded from the wound in the small of her back. It wasn’t a bullet. Nor was it the broken blade of a knife. It was too narrow, and the end appeared smooth, not sheared off. He wasn’t sure how the metal had ended up in her back, but he guessed that had been the first wound she had received. From its position, it looked like it had severed her spinal cord.
Carefully, he rolled the body onto its side. He immediately wished he hadn’t. With a blow similar to that which had killed the Greenes, Nurse Gower’s head had been nearly completely severed, and as Ely moved the corpse, the wound opened, exposing sinew, muscle, and bone. He wondered what could propel anyone to that kind of savagery.
Gently, he lowered the body back to the ground. He stood up, and stepped carefully away from the corpse. There was blood on the corridor floor, some small drops, some large, all leading from Nurse Gower to the body of Nurse Bradford.
The small ones, he thought, were the woman’s blood, dripping from the blade. Could the larger ones belong to the killer? No, both trails ended at the body of the man.
He walked over to the elevator and looked down at the body of Nurse Bradford. There was a similar stub of metal, this one protruding from the man’s leg. His hands were covered in shallow slashes, as if they had been raised in defence. He’d been killed with a slashing cut to the throat, though his wound was not as deep as the one that had killed Nurse Gower.
There was so much blood. So much more blood than had been in the Greenes’ pods. Those two had almost looked like they had died in their sleep. Here, the blood had poured out of Nurse Bradford, drenching his clothing. But it had also sprayed up over the walls of the elevator. It must, Ely thought, have covered the killer too.
He tried to picture what had happened. The two nurses had been walking, presumably to the elevator. The killer had then… what? Shot them? The metal protruding from Gower’s back and Bradford’s leg could be the end of a dart of some kind. Yes, that fit. The killer had shot the two nurses. Gower’s spine had been damaged. She’d fallen. Bradford had been hit in the leg, but he’d managed to crawl to the elevator, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.
“Vox? Did you get any calls from either of the two nurses? Vox?”
“What? Yes. I mean, no. I mean…” There was a pause. Ely had never heard her sound so discomposed before. “If you’re asking me,” Vox continued, “whether they called after they’d been attacked, then no, I didn’t receive a call. I think, maybe, and I’m not sure, but maybe the communication system might have been hacked. Maybe they tried to call, but it was blocked.”