The Farm. 16:04:32, Monday July 22, 2002
The Farm was locked down tight as a drum. On the surface, people swarmed around the farm buildings, Michaels included, checking every square inch of the premises just in case Inmate Five had managed, somehow, to get as far as the surface already.
The lift had stopped working, except under the express command of Smudge - Colonel Smith. Libra watched as Smudge opened a hatch beside the lift doors, placed his palm on the glass. Light scanned the palm, and the lift car began to descend.
"So I'm going back down to the compound, then?" Libra asked. Smudge shook his head.
"First, you're going to be shown something," Smudge said to Libra. "Then you'll know why we're in such a flap over Inmate Five. All right?"
The lift opened and Libra and Smudge emerged into a part of the compound he'd never seen before. Here, the walls were still steel and concrete, and striplights shone through diffused ceiling panels to destroy shadows.
However, the corridors were straight, with ninety degree corners. Libra felt oddly uncomfortable: he'd gotten used to gentle curves and no hiding places.
Around the corner was the command office. Libra watched as Smudge had his palm scanned again, and the double doors slid open.
If the compound below was the Big Brother House, this part was the studio. Libra looked around in the dark room, taking in all of the glowing monitor screens.
"Where's Davina McCall?" he quipped. Smudge smartly stepped past him, began to tap something into a computer keyboard to Libra's right.
"So far, nobody's reported sighting Inmate Five anywhere," Smudge said.
"How about his cell?" Libra asked. Smudge tapped a sequence of keys on the keyboard, gestured towards a big central screen. Libra looked at what it displayed.
The screen showed the Isolation level, where he'd been held until recently. He saw his own cell door, and the one next to it ...
... was open. Not merely open: the door was lying on the floor. The hinges were smouldering.
"Some sort of corrosive agent," Smudge said.
"Or one of our abilities," Libra replied.
"Sort of like being able to make a chair leg burn when you pick it up?" Smudge asked. "Those hinges were solid steel!"
Libra shrugged. "Maybe you're right. He fabricated some sort of really powerful acid, and smuggled it into Isolation in a vial hidden inside his rectum." He glanced at the screen, then returned his gaze to Smudge. "So how did he get to a Chemistry lab to make that acid?"
Smudge looked at Libra, weighing something up. Then he made a decision, and turned towards the computer again, tapping in a sequence on the screen.
A machine whirred to Libra's left. It sounded like a laser disk or DVD or something. "You don't use video tape?" he asked Smudge.
"EMP would wipe the records," Smudge replied. "As soon as the technology became available, we moved to recording DVD. We're working on an experimental version using a blue laser. Smaller dots, larger resolution. One DVD sized disk can store up to thirteen hours of continuous video. They say Sony'll have them in the shops for Christmas 2004. We might get them by September this year."
"Fuck ..." Libra said, then thought of Zeiss and what he would make of this place.
It had been a long time since he'd thought of Zeiss, or the Vagabond, or Charlady, or Warren the Chef. Herald Recruitments' headquarters in Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, swam into his forebrain. Libra felt unaccountably nostalgic.
It's called 'hiraeth' in Wales, whispered a familiar voice in his ear. Just keep looking at the screen, and ignore me. Your old pal can't see me. If he did, he'd shit himself.
Libra stared straight ahead, and didn't try to turn around. But the shimmer was visible in his peripheral vision to his left.
Just watch the show, Emrys said. I'm going to scout around for Inmate Five.
The shimmer vanished. Libra continued to stare at the screen as it cleared, glowed solid blue, and then went black for a moment. Smudge paused it, looked at Libra.
"Okay, Peck," said Smudge. "This ... is why we have cause to fear Inmate Five."
The video showed a scene from Red Sector. It was time stamped. The date stamp read October 11, 2001.
"Inmate Five had been with us for about a month or so," Smudge said. "Do you remember the incident in Portsmouth last year, about April? It made all the news."
"I was ... busy in April," Libra said. "I didn't have time to stop and watch much telly. Sarah Lancashire and Niamh Cusack just don't stir the old stick so much any more, not when there are Things outside, in the streets."
Smudge thought about that a moment. He paused the display again.
"There are a lot of people in that shot," Libra said.
"Most of the inmates are here," Smudge said. "There was a time, like I said, when Red Sector really was painted red. We had a few scuffles then, but after we repainted the walls a nice tan, everyone seemed to calm down. We found that everybody liked to sit and chat in their own company in Red Sector, and they left Blue Sector for food preparation and for meetings with us."
"You mean interrogations," Libra said.
"No, I mean meetings," Snudge replied. "Informal chats, discussion about how we could improve living conditions, things like that. For a top secret compound, we were pretty friendly with the inmates. I mean, where could the wardens go? All the guards you see here are legally dead. They have no lives, no homes, no identities to go back to."
"So you and the inmates were friendly," Libra said. "But if they tried to escape, you'd cut them down."
"Well, there was that much to it, yeah," Smudge said. "But then the news broke about Portsmouth. There'd been some sort of explosion and fire."
"I was otherwise engaged," Libra said. "I missed this."
"The offices of Rushton and Williams, Solicitors, were razed to the ground one afternoon. There'd been a massive explosion, and suddenly the flames were roaring out of control. Fire units were called to the scene from all over the South Coast. It took days to put out the blaze. To call it an 'inferno' was an understatement."
"Yeah. So?"
"The fire investigators found burned plastic containers with traces of accelerant all over the building, in rubbish bins filled with paper and in the air conditioning; an incendiary device in the basement; and loads of other evidence which pretty conclusively showed that the blaze had been set deliberately to cause maximum combustion, and to defy all attempts to put it out. Whoever it was who'd set the charges and the accelerant was a real pro arsonist.
"The fuse for the incendiary charge that set off the blaze had been set on a timer. The time was established at 10:35 am, on a Monday." Smudge looked at Libra. "Whoever had set the charge had gone around all the fire exits and padlocked them. He'd also done something to the automatic doors: at 10:30, they closed, and the shutters automatically came down. Surviving securicam footage showed them still working on the door when everything went up."
Smudge looked at Libra. "Peck ... there was a creche in the building. Nine mothers had their kids in that creche. There were sixteen children in the building. The youngest ... was two."
Libra stood, impassively listening to this litany of atrocity. "Inmate Five."
"Inmate Five," Smudge said. He pressed a key. The playback resumed.
The inmates of Red Sector sat in the room chatting, smoking, drinking tea. Then, as Libra watched, they brought in Inmate Five.
Libra looked at the standard issue jumpsuit, with the number 5 blazoned on the front. The man was bald, about average height, slim built and bore no distinctive marks.
Except his eyes. Libra caught a glance of them as the Inmate looked up briefly at the camera. He turned away, covering his eyes, shuddering.
"Yes, we all did that at first," Smudge said. "Now watch."
The guards brought in Inmate Five, sat him down in the centre of the room, in the middle of the CCTV camera's field of vision.
"Can you see what's already started to happen?" Smudge said. Libra looked, unsure as to what was going on. He noticed that people had unconsciously started to put down their cups of tea, put out their cigarettes. They'd stopped chatting.
They'd started paying attention to Inmate Five.
"Did they realise what they were doing? What his presence was doing to them?" Libra asked. Smudge shook his head.
"Were they aware of what he'd done?" Libra asked.
"No," Smudge replied. "We don't feed you inmates news, you understand."
"Tell me about it," Libra replied, chuckling. One of the first things everyone'd asked him about was what was going on in the world outside. Everyone'd wanted to know what was in the news. Whether it was serious stuff about Afghanistan, or news about the runup to the World Cup, or even celeb gossip piffle about who Kylie was sleeping with that evening or what was happening in EastEnders, everyone'd wanted to know something.
"So why this response?" Libra asked.
"If you'd met him close up," Smudge replied, "you'd understand. He is magnetic. I've served under charismatic leaders who could whisper a command and just have you leap out of your bunk and charge across a desert in your socks and underpants, ready to fight or die, but this man ..." Smudge shuddered. "Within a week, it was as if he was giving me orders."
"What did you end up giving him?" Libra asked.
"Access to the laboratories," Smudge replied. "He checked the place out, pointed out basic flaws in our safety procedures and had us tighten them up. Saved us millions of pounds, and eliminated at least three fire hazards we hadn't even been aware of. That's how good he is." Smudge glanced at the screen, and the continuing playback.
"The man is smooth, suave, urbane. He is an accomplished mimic, a scientist, a philosopher, and he retains every bit of knowledge he finds." Smudge watched the crowd as unconsciously they began to turn to face Inmate Five, like iron filings aligning around a magnet's pole. "He was quoting Goethe and Dante and Martin Luther King to the policeman who brought him down."
"And," Libra said, "he is completely barking."
"Totally," Smudge said. "He'd burned the building to get at one man. Someone who worked in the finance department. We found out that he'd been suborned by someone our department was after." He glanced at Libra. "Hence our interest in Inmate Five."
"So you kidnapped him, brought him here," Libra said.
"A shame, though," Smudge said. "We were apparently minutes away from Inmate Five 'dying from a fall down the stairs.' Coppers right up to the Chief Superintendent were willing to do life sentences rather than let this monster continue to breathe for one minute longer."
"And stupidly, you came in and took him away from all that," Libra said. Realisation dawned. "And because of him, half the inmates are dead, and here you all are today, running around like headless chickens."
"Yeah," Smudge said, pausing the tape. "Watch this. This ... is why we have such huge gaps in the numbering scheme."
Libra watched as someone wandered into the shot. "This one was the head honcho of the inmates," Smudge said. "Nice lad, name of Walter Bell."
Libra watched as Walter went up to Inmate Five, stood over him for a moment. He spoke. There was no sound. Inmate Five looked up at Walter.
"Why no sound?" Libra asked.
"There was some sort of malfunction," Smudge said. "We suspect Inmate Five had screwed around with the sound. He'd been planning what was to happen next."
"Which was?"
"Watch ..."
Libra watched as Walter produced something, a small box with wires protruding from it. He shook it angrily in front of Inmate Five.
Inmate Five just smiled.
"That had been found in Walter's cell," Smudge said. "It was a dud, but it looked like an assassination attempt. Walter thought he'd been targetted by Inmate Five for murder, so Inmate Five could take over. Inmate Five had had no intention of taking over, though ..."
Libra watched as Inmate Five stood up, faced Walter, and spoke a few quiet words Libra couldn't quite make out. Lipreading was not one of his strong points.
The effect of those words was instantaneous. One moment everyone had been sitting quietly watching Inmate Five. The next, they were getting up, faces contorted with cold, blind fury, reaching for heavy glass ashtrays, picking up the low trestle tables with the glass tops and steel tubing. Tables and ashtrays started to glow and smoulder with waves of heat.
Everybody began to advance on Walter.
The footage continued, as Libra looked on with mounting horror at what followed.
"And here," Smudge said, "is where Inmate Five makes good his escape, while the rest of us were on our way down to subdue the crowd. After dealing with poor old Walter, he then got them to turn on one another instead. At this point, as he surmised, there was nobody in here monitoring. All hands were on alert. They were killing each other down there."
Libra watched as Inmate Five, still with that slight smile, paused before fleeing, to look right into the camera.
And winked.
Emrys was roaming around the corridors in spirit, listening with his senses for a certain part of the noise.
It was as if he were stuck inside a big tin megaphone. Being inside his body was bad enough, with the noise coming at him at all times, even invading his dreams: but outside of his body, it was as if he was almost in the presence of the Shining Ones themselves, and he couldn't count on the protection of having a meat body to shield him.
Emrys wandered into Blue Sector, watched as the wardens arrived to escort the balancers to their cells to lock them in. They'd been herded into Blue Sector whilst the guards had done a check of their cells, to make sure Inmate Five hadn't been lurking around inside one of them.
He hated doing this: the Shining Ones' messages were always coming through around monsters and balancers alike, at first whispering, then shouting and finally screaming.
Couldn't they see? The Shining Ones didn't abandon them when they were first chosen. The act of choosing them somehow sealed their souls shut against further communication: either that, or this was something they chose to set up around the balancers, so that they could continue to function for as long as possible. And then they spent the rest of the time hollering at the balancers, mostly saying things like "No, no, you're not going about it the way we want! We want you lot to do this!" and hoping some of what they said could penetrate those shields.
Emrys had known men like Walter - thoughtful, pensive men who'd made the noise tolerable for a time. He knew why this was so: the Shining Ones had made the seals around them a little thinner, so they had more of an inkling of what was going on. Some of the other balancers had thin shields, too, but like lens filters the only messages they seemed to get from the Shining Ones were the words they wanted to hear. But the thoughtful people with the thin shileds were different. They had colourless shields, so to speak. The message was unfiltered.
This was because, of all the people they chose, the Shining Ones most wanted to talk with these thoughtful people. The ones most likely to get even a little bit of their message.
And then there was Emrys, and maybe one or two others he knew of: the poor bastards the Shining Ones had left without shields around their souls at all, so they could hear every word spoken by the Shining Ones, loud and clear. No bloody wonder Emrys had been on Prozac since that day in 1999.
People like Emrys were meant to be the Shining Ones' mouthpieces, to talk to people like Walter, to speak to them in terms people like Walter could understand.
But you guys fucked up, didn't you? Emrys said to himself and to the Shining Ones, the words totally unnoticed by the people passing by him. Your screaming just sends us away, drives us nuts. We have had to figure out what we were here for by ourselves, and try to train ourselves to tolerate the noise so we can get close enough to give the balancers enough info to do the job right. He watched as Blue Sector was finally emptied. You fucked up, and you're still fucking up.
He stood a while, listening to the silence, broken only by the hum of the air conditioning: an air conditioning which seemed to whisper random words to him: "THEY - LOOSEN - INSIDE - FEEDING - STORM - PUNISHMENT - THEY SUFFER - MAELSTROM - HEAL - RETRIBUTION - SACRIFICE - ESCAPE - DEATH - DEATH - DEATH -"
Ah, said Emrys. He's here.
"Hello, Emrys," said a voice from behind him. Emrys turned, slowly, feeling a chill course down his astral spine, and stood face to face with Inmate Five.
By: Fiat Knox
Copyright © Fiat Knox, 2001