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discoveredinaljBack to Part Four
The sun burned bright and hot above the cloud as they headed back. It shone across the waves, a straight path for them to aim for, ever east.
“We fuck it all up, don’t we?” Doyle said beside him.
“You what?” Bodie glanced through the dim light of the cockpit at him. Doyle had been melancholy since they’d picked up Joe, when he should have been celebrating. “All what?”
“Everything…” Doyle swept an all encompassing hand towards the world outside the plexiglass. “Did you know people walked on the moon, once?”
“Every kid knows that. What about it?”
“My teacher said it was a myth, like Icarus flying to the sun - but I looked it up in the Histories, and it’s true. We got all the way up there, and we walked on the moon, and then we just stopped going.”
“Money,” Bodie said, knowingly.
“Money,” Doyle confirmed. “And jealousy and greed and fighting. And then we flooded the world and now we’re stuck down here. Serves us right.”
“Ah come on, it’s not so bad here, is it?” He locked the stick - the copter’d fly just as straight on autopilot - and looked properly at Doyle, willing him to look back. After a moment Doyle did, and Bodie raised an eyebrow at him. They’d have the op wrapped up in a day or two - maybe Cowley had already raided the rig, and they could interrogate Joe about Newbolt and then go home, work out where they’d go from here. Life was suddenly pretty good.
“What about him?” Doyle pointed a thumb back at Gigolo Joe as if he’d read Bodie’s mind. “Wanna bet he’s in for some bad times?”
“He isn’t in for anything, Doyle. He’s a mecha, just bits of metal and fibre and plastic. And yeah - datachips, lots of datachips.”
Doyle shook his head. “I don’t believe that. He’s not just anything - not any more he’s not. You heard ‘im. We made them too well, we set them going and made them to learn, and now we’re scared of what they’ve learned and we tear ‘em apart at flesh fairs under the moon.”
“Look, they’re mecha, we’re orga…”
“We might be orga, but the flesh fairs aren’t human - you tell me they’re more human than one mecha looking after another one!” Doyle’s eyes were hard and hurt at the same time, flashing at some injustice that he was seeing. “They are us, Bodie! The things we do to them, the way we treat them - that’s what makes them the same as us. We use them - we use each other. If we tear them apart and throw them away when we’re done with them, then what..?” His voice cracked, and he looked away from Bodie, out at the stretch of cloud below them. “I’m telling you, Bodie, it frightens me to death.”
Bodie took a breath, and after a moment he turned back to the controls. He unlocked the stick, but he kept them above the cloud, away from the leaden, colourless world below. The one thing he’d always liked about the Afric states, was the way the sun shone every day, through clear skies. It was light or it was dark, sun or shadow. Straightforward, even when you were fighting for your life. Even when you were praying for rain.
…because they’ll be here when we’re gone… He wasn’t wrong about mechas, he knew he wasn’t. But in this grey world, maybe Doyle wasn’t wrong either. “Maybe, but…” He paused.
“But what?”
“Yeah, well, Cowley’s got a job for us.”
“Losing battle. An’ what’s the end result? We catch this lot, the flesh fairs just bring up new monsters.”
He shook his head. “Then Cowley’ll have another job for us. Look…” He hated this. If Doyle had been a bird he would have reached out, touched him, but he didn’t think he quite dared. He didn’t want to fuck this thing up, whatever it was, that had grown between them. He could almost feel it, a physical thing, as if their veins and vessels were stretching between them, electric, so that they were joined, right down to the singularities. “What we do is fight it, that’s what’s important.” He looked back over his shoulder at Joe, caught Doyle’s eye again. “And we’re not losing all the battles.”
Doyle didn’t say anything this time, but he glanced back at Joe, tipped his head to one side in a shrug, and looked away again. Maybe…
The air prickled between again, not just electricity this time, something deeper, pulling them closer together, always closer together.
o0o
The interrogation room that they took him to was not what Joe had been led to expect. It was an ordinary room, an office, and there were no deconstructed mechas pinned to the walls, no piles of pieces and spare parts. His captors weren’t ordinary police either - no uniforms, they didn’t seem to care about his missing tag, and they looked serious, but not unkind. The one with curly hair who was not a mecha, although he’d looked like one at first, had even offered him a seat, and they’d introduced themselves. Usually the only people who introduced themselves had made a booking.
"Right metal man," the one called Bodie said grimly, "What do you know?"
"Joe," he said with a strange dignity, "My name is not metal and it is not man, it is Joe."
"Alright," Doyle interrupted, before Bodie could advance more than a step towards him. "What do you know, Joe?"
Now that was more like it - now they were getting somewhere. Joe turned his head to look at Doyle, moved his eyes to range across his body.
"I know what you like," he offered. He leaned forward, filtered his sensors to take in the essence of the man more purely. Very strong pheromones, and nearly 90% ready-to-active. He turned down his volume, turned up the variability so that his voice was low and husky - promising. "I could take you home and we could do something about all that pent-up sexual..."
Doyle withdrew from him sharply, and Joe frowned, watching him. He didn't think he'd read the situation that badly...
"About the case, Joe. What do you know about the case?" Doyle asked him.
Bodie was grinning broadly. "What were you doing all the way out at Hobby's?"
"Looking for Blue Fairy."
"Blue Fairy?"
"So that I could make her a real woman, and she would make David a real boy, and then all would be right with the world."
"David the mecha?"
Joe nodded. "He has found her, and we will just have to trust that she will be able to do her work without my attentions."
The men looked at each other, and Bodie rolled his eyes. They didn't believe him? "I am very good at..."
"What about Johnson?"
Saul Johnson. "I'm in bad trouble..." He would be shut down. Of course, there were men and women across the British Islands and as far away as Rouge City and the Scattered States who would remember him. Gigolo Joe, what do you know..? Maybe some would weep when he did not return, and he’d asked David to remember him. He was.
"Well that depends on whether you can help us," Doyle was saying, and it took a moment for his synapses to catch up with each other. There was a way out, a way to stay am...
"What do you need me to do?"
"We know that Johnson murdered Samantha Bevins, but we need to know why. What happened, Joe?"
"I didn't arrive until after he had committed the murder."
"How do you know it was Johnson who killed her?"
Was this a trap? "Because he told her so."
"He told you so."
"No." Joe could remember it clearly. "He leaned over her still body and he said - " He paused to modulate his voice to Johnson's. "Goodbye Sam, and never forget, you killed me first and then he left the room." He switched his voice back. "I'm in bad trouble. But she shouldn’t have tried to blackmail him about the blackmail. She was also in bad trouble."
“Wait - blackmail him about the blackmail? She was blackmailing Johnson?”
“What did she know?” Bodie cut in. “Why didn’t you report this?”
“I can send you a report,” Joe said brightly. If these orga caught Johnson then perhaps he could go back to his life. It had felt strange to wander without bumping into Jane or Dan or any of the other love mechas he knew. “I can send you data about the original blackmail if it would help.”
“It would help,” Bodie said.
"Do you know who this man is?" Doyle flashed an image from his phone to the table top, waited while Joe looked at it.
He scanned it carefully. "This is Sir John Newbolt, current Minister for Overseas Intervention. Born in Southampton on the twenty sixth of January, twenty-"
"That's right. Have you seen him before? In person?"
Joe scanned his files. "At ten-fifty-five on the fifteenth of October this year, at twelve-oh-three on the 17th of October this year, at..."
"Alright, alright," Doyle looked impatient, "Have you ever seen him with Saul Johnson?"
"At five-twenty-one on the twentieth of October this year, at seven-ten on the twenty-fifth of October this year, on..."
"Stop!” Doyle had looked at Bodie, and Joe could tell that they said something to each other with their eyes, but he didn’t know what it was. “Have you ever seen them talking together?"
They were looking excited in the way that orga pretended they weren’t excited, so Joe decided it might be worth anticipating a true desire. It was always risky, requiring a short-cut between synapses, but it was usually worth it for the reactions of... But these men weren't new lovers. He collated the relevant files, started to replay them. "You're early tonight - I'm busy tonight - That makes two of us. You've heard from your contacts then? - They're agreed. - The shipments will route through Plymouth on the tenth. Full operation in Russia by the thirtieth. - I thought we said five o'clock, you're late! - Trouble in the House. - Tell me that in a year's time and I'll celebrate. - What does Krivas have to - "
"Stop!" Bodie said again, "Krivas?"
"Enrico Krivas. Born seventeenth June..."
"We've got him!" Bodie was looking at Doyle, and there was a gleam in his eye. "Krivas and Johnson and bloody Newbolt, all three connected!"
"Yeah, but testimony from a mecha? It won’t hold in court on its own.”
“It will if we can back it up."
"The Session - the Minister won't miss that, and if either Krivas or Johnson is there… We arrange a bust in."
"Tricky - he's got good surveillance."
"Cowley's gotta have the pull. We can get them."
They smiled at each other - not nicely - and turned for the door.
"Gentlemen!" Joe stood up to follow them. "You'll be needing my further assistance?"
"Not just now."
"Then I am allowed to leave?"
They looked at each other again, and then back at him. "Not just now." Doyle repeated, although he’d modulated his voice, made it softer.
"You wait here," Bodie suggested, "Nice and safe for us."
"You do not require..."
"Standby-mode zero-one," Doyle said, "Background data dump. Over-ride code Herbie until further notice."
This time they did leave, and the last thing Joe saw as his optics faded to black, was Bodie's hand on Doyle's back, the way their eyes shone, and the way they smiled at each other.
o0o
One more booking, Doyle kept telling himself - just one more. He could do this again because even now Cowley was gearing up CI5 to raid the rig, and because Bodie would be waiting for him after, and he’d never have to wear the bloody Skin again. If Cowley thought otherwise then he could shove it where…
“Ah, Ray. Right on time - it’s a shame, I was hoping you’d be unpunctual.” Newbolt was sitting, relaxed, on the sleek white sofa in his current city flat, and he was stroking a riding crop back and forth across his thighs. Doyle’s eyes were drawn to it, an automatic reaction that Newbolt no doubt thought the mecha had done on purpose, to show obedience.
He reminded himself again why CI5 was worth this.
“You don’t like me to be late,” he said, almost by rote after weeks of it. “You would think I was very bad if I was late.”
“Don’t you want to be bad for me? What do you say, Ray?” The Minister gestured to his crotch.
Doyle swallowed, took the three steps between them because he had to, and dropped to his knees. Thinking about it, that was worse than doing it. “I say…”
Newbolt smiled, stopped him with a flick of his hand. “You say what I want you to say, don’t you Ray? You’re a much more obedient mecha than you pretend to be - all those synapses, sparking away, clickety-click… clickety-click, Ray! Not a single misfire yet, not one…”
“My synapses are guaranteed for…” Doyle began, cataloguing the room in his peripheral vision. If he had to he could knock Newbolt out, but the game would be up. They needed more on him than just a vague connection to Renton - he wanted more.
“Too long,” Newbolt purred. “We’ll have to see what we can do about that. Come on!” He jumped to his feet, his groin momentarily in Doyle’s face, and then away, almost dancing to the door.
“Come on, where?”
“Come on, come on - I have a special treat for you! And a special treat for me - but first we have to get there.”
“Where are we going? I have a booking at…”
“Cancelled.” Newbolt smiled at him, wide and gleaming and unpleasant. “All of them cancelled! Come on, come on! You can fly us.”
“Fly us where?” Doyle repeated, trying to keep his voice even and uncurious beyond what a mecha would always ask for practicalities. All of them cancelled? He needed a destination for Cowley - the sooner he had it, the sooner rescue would find him. He had a bad feeling about this.
“Fly us to the moon…” Newbolt crooned for a moment. “To a special moon, Ray, just for us. We’ve got a session booked - a special session, and far away! Come on, come on, come on!” He lowered his voice, held out one hand for Doyle to join him, with the other he slapped the riding crop hard against the door. “It will make up for all the interruptions - I promise.”
He reached out, and found the spot behind Doyle’s ear that was a pressure pad, switched him into blind mode.
o0o
A crescent moon was rising to the east, a dim glow that barely shone on the matte finish of Krivas’s flyer, barely lit their way. While they were on the main paths, they met and crossed other flyers now and then, shining their own lights, reminding him that there were people out there who were getting on with their ordinary lives - were going home for the night, or to bars or parties or gigs. They would have sex and sleep with people who would still be alive in the morning.
“I promised I’d take you to the next one,” Krivas had said. “You should participate once before you begin work. Use it to assess the strengths and weaknesses of those you see. Use it to impress me, Bodie.”
He’d laughed it off, pretended excitement, pretended glee, wanted to hit the man, and keep hitting him. There’d been no time to warn Cowley that the session was now, was scheduled so soon after they’d got the information about it. He’d never get there in time, and they’d have to wait two more weeks for another opportunity. Two more weeks when Cowley might decide he needed Doyle right where he was, to allay suspicion.
There was no one else with them tonight, the customers would come later, by separate transport, once everything was in place. And everyone, thought Bodie - or were they there already, the street kids and frightened young things who were never going to leave again?
The flight felt endless.
Eventually the rig came into view, from a distance nothing more than a dark mass above the heaving waters of the North Sea, but as they came closer it resolved into a ring of dim lights around the landing pad, and then a glowing path that they followed to the same door as last time - no bug now, no neon pink yet, everything waiting to be turned on.
“I’ll show you!” Krivas shouted over the howl of the wind as they crossed the pad. “The men will be boxed below by eleven, and then we turn it all on!”
“Miss all the excitement, do they?”
“We keep them well-supplied - they have nothing to complain about.” He pulled the door open, turned and looked knowingly at Bodie. “I believe they have planned their own session tonight - the Game is still a popular pastime.”
Bodie didn’t doubt it - not with the kind of men who hired themselves out to who ever was paying the most. He knew. He’d been one of them.
Then again, he’d left.
There was more activity inside, a calm bustle along the corridors as Krivas showed Bodie where this lighting system turned on, that security fence. Eventually they made their way to the bar, and Krivas gestured the servemecha for drinks, led him to a table beside the long window. As they watched, the lighting outside rose, until Bodie could practically make out the freckles on the face of a young trainee jogging quickly back to his own level.
Krivas glanced at his watch. “He’ll be locked out if he’s not careful. Still, a youth like that will quickly find himself part of things. If not quite the way they sometimes hope.”
“They hope?” Bodie supped his beer, eyeing a flurry of activity by the landing pad, saw the boy slip through a door in the corner.
“Every now and then one of them decided they’d rather take part in our side of the operation than theirs,” Krivas said. “They go awol, hide themselves somewhere - and so we oblige them.”
“Give them a free ride?” Bodie suggested, but he could feel his heart heavy in his chest. He’d been a kid like that once, run away from a lousy situation and found himself in one that was only marginally better - but it had been better.
“Oh, they’re ridden alright,” Krivas said, and smirked over his moustaches. “Although I’ve had complaints that it’s a loss to their own Game.” He shrugged. “You cannot keep everyone happy.”
Bodie grunted, trying to remind himself that he’d save more people by staying calm now, no matter what he saw tonight. They would get these bastards - eventually they would get them.
Movement in the sky caught his attention, and he watched as a dark transport ship flew heavily in, hovering over the pad as it made minor adjustments, and then lurched to a touchdown.
“You should get new pilots,” he suggested. “That one couldn’t land his mother a kiss.”
Krivas snorted. “The one thing I’m short of - good pilots. We’re having to train our own.”
The transport was opening, side sliding away to reveal the passengers inside.
“Mechas?” he asked, surprised. So Krivas didn’t keep them here between sessions after all. “What was wrong with the ones you ‘ad the other day?”
“They wear out,” Krivas said carelessly. “We always require new stock.”
A flyer had followed the transport in, waited for it to land, and was now slipping into its own space, a discreet spot in the far corner. One of the bugs whizzed out to greet the arrivals, so that their feet would barely touch the outside deck, passing the mechas who were being herded towards cargo doors on the opposite side.
“Early customers?”
Krivas swallowed the last of his brandy, gestured for another, barely glancing at the flyer. “That one is always eager. They will join us in a moment. He is a lucrative contact, so we permit it.”
Bodie nodded. A politico, perhaps? Another government minister, or some tycoon business type who worked for one of the corporations, controlled half the city with their products?
“Renton! How wonderful to see you again - I am looking forward to the show tonight!”
Bodie’s heart thumped hard in his chest, and he wondered that no one could feel the pull between himself and Doyle, the desperate urge he had to leap to his feet, grab Doyle’s arm, and get them both out of there. Why he hadn’t expected Newbolt he didn’t know, but he hadn’t. He’d cocked up, and Doyle would pay for it.
“You are here for your ring-side seat, I see,” Krivas said, waving them to the table and gesturing to the servemecha. “And you brought your own… companion?”
“A new participant,” Newbolt replied, looking incuriously at Bodie. “He is most interested in the proceedings - what do you say, Ray?”
“I say thank you, Minister,” Doyle said, not looking in Bodie’s direction. “I am looking forward to the night’s pleasures.”
“Ah - and here they come!” The Minister’s shout broke across Bodie’s thoughts, and he looked up to see another transport arriving on the pad. It landed somewhat more smoothly than the last one, and Newbolt stepped close to the window, watching avidly. “You will give me first pick, I hope?” he called back to Krivas. “I need…” He turned to eye Doyle up and down, and then back to watching the transport doors open again. “…two tonight, I think. To start with.”
Krivas shrugged, but he got up to stand beside Newbolt, and so Bodie stood forward too, for a clearer view. The doors slid back, and the passengers again emerged.
Bodie swallowed. They were humans.
o0o
Newbolt chose two of the new arrivals even as they were being marched across the landing pad - no snug bug for these young things, Doyle thought - and they may not have been children, but they weren’t far from it. It was all he could do not to turn on Newbolt then, trusting Bodie to take care of Krivas, to drop the pair of them over the side of the rig and into the unforgiving depths. But Newbolt and Krivas weren’t the only two people involved here - and they weren’t the only other people on the rig. No, he had to get as much on record as possible, make sure Cowley could sink everyone involved with it.
Although he deferred prettily enough to him, it was clear that Newbolt saw Krivas as no more than the help, and he didn’t seem to take in Bodie’s presence at all. Doyle took it in alright, appalled, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Bodie was watching him play this role, glad that Bodie was here at all. It was all coming together, and the end was in sight - as long as it wasn’t their end.
Newbolt sat down at last and drank the brandy served to him, leaving Doyle standing behind him, asking about the minutiae of the night ahead - whether there would be public as well as private play, how many of the orga had been broken to mecha, who the chef was. There would be a meal, and staged entertainment before the customers retired to their own rooms for the night, and Doyle’s eyes met Bodie’s before he could stop himself. It might be their best chance - but it would all depend on what Newbolt decided to do with him.
Other flyers began to arrive as they talked, bugs dispatched to collect their occupants, but not bringing them directly to the bar, as they had been. To settle into their rooms, perhaps, to change for dinner, as if this was somewhere civilised, just another weekend party? Eventually Newbolt stood up, and held out his hand for something - a scan key, Doyle saw with an inward frown, as Krivas handed it over. Old-fashioned security that was less centralised, more difficult to override from outside the system with phone tech. He hoped the selection of Cowley’s apps that they’d been given hidden access to were up to it.
“Come, Ray - time to go and get ready for the fun. I promised you something special, didn’t I?”
“You always keep your promises,” Doyle responded, as they swept past Bodie and out the door. Newbolt clearly knew his way around, paused now and then to greet someone they passed in the opposite direction - people in evening wear, in very expensive evening wear, some of whom Doyle recognised from the news, or from police intelligence, on either side of the security ratings. They turned into a long, carpeted corridor, and Doyle counted twenty rooms before they reached what was presumably their own, second from the other end. He noted the exits - another door like the one they’d come in, and a lift whose doors and lights remained dark and unmoving. Not working, or not required this evening?
“Home sweet home!” Newbolt said, scanning the door open and making an extravagant gesture around the room. The wall was a single, continuous curve, a circle of a room, and there was a large, sunken bed in the centre. Various benches and pieces of equipment lined the wall, and it was scattered with clips and bars and restraints. Most of the wall was a mirror.
Lovely.
Newbolt had obviously been here before too - either he’d had luggage with him that had been unpacked, or he kept a wardrobe here, because he slid open a door and began to change into fresh clothes - a variation on the white suit that Doyle had first seen him wear, this one form-fitting, the jacket less twentieth-century, a mere suggestion of fashion attached to the body. He ignored Doyle, but every now and then he would pause and turn to look at one piece of equipment or another, and smile.
Doyle wanted to rage with impatience, but at last Newbolt was finished, turned to him. “Come.”
The others had been gathering - surely he would go and join them, surely he would leave Doyle, set him to sleep mode…
He didn’t. He pushed him back to a mirrored section of the wall, turned him to face it, and secured his arms above his head, clipped into thick cuffs, then did the same for his ankles, and stood looking at him consideringly, running a hand up and down his back. It felt like some dreadful parody of what Bodie did, trapping, not freeing, threatening. After a moment Newbolt smiled, reached around to the front of Doyle’s trousers, and undid first his belt, and then the fastenings, peeling the fabric back and sliding it down just below his arse, so that Doyle was exposed to the air. His cock, ever half-hard from the Skin, pressed against the mirror.
Doyle breathed shallowly, watched as Newbolt selected a crop from a nearby shelf of equipment, came and stood behind him, crowding him close.
“Oh Ray - what we will do tonight, you and me… I am going to dinner, and when I come back I will find you here waiting for me, waiting for me to fuck your sweet hole, and do such things as you never thought of. I will bring help, and we will have one last night.” He moved away slightly, stroked the crop across Doyle’s bared skin. “Nothing is made to last, mecha,” he said, and brought the crop down hard suddenly, so that Doyle felt it as a sharp bruising blow through the Skin. “And especially not mechas.”
Another blow, then Newbolt’s hands on him, punishingly hard, and then he was freed, and he heard the door slide open, and then he was alone.
He took a deep breath, settled to wait, and tried not to think of the vision he would make for Bodie when he came.
o0o
It took Bodie almost half an hour to find the updated room list and work out how to access individual rooms, and by then the customers were milling around the bar in a glittering spectacle. They were mostly men, although there were a few women, and eventually Bodie realised that mechas were being allowed in as well, love mechas in every guise and disguise, from the obvious to the outwardly prim and respectable. He circulated unobtrusively, released by Krivas to do as he would. Krivas would expect two things - that he would enjoy himself, but that above all he would be learning the patterns of such gatherings, the demands and security of them. It gave him the freedom to work his way through every customer room - and the cell rooms.
There was a level devoted entirely to supplies, just below the customer rooms. Half was taken up with a refrigeration unit and store rooms - the rest was divided into two, a cage for the mecha and a cage for the orga, divided by a few metres of floor space, and nothing else. He found the security cameras, routed them to his phone and worked in a shut off command, and watched for a few moments as the two groups shouted and taunted each other. The humans were young enough to still be aggressive, the mechas reacted defensively. There were fewer of them - perhaps the same number as currently circulated in the bar.
Only one exit to and from the cages.
A bell chimed in the bar area, and people began wandering out, towards the banquet room next door. Half a dozen dancers had already begun to writhe on the central stage, and servemechas lined the walls, ready to cater to any whim. Krivas was watching them all, directing operations, smirking and joking discreetly with this or that customer.
It had to be now.
Newbolt’s room was at the far end of the customer corridor, and Bodie hacked the security camera to reflect an empty loop, took himself cautiously down. He’d counted all the customers into the bar area, but you never knew. The master scan card opened the door easy as you like, and he slid inside, closed it again, and then just stood there, breath gone from him.
He’d expected Doyle to be tied, had expected him perhaps to be naked - he hadn’t expected to be instantly aroused and hard at the sight of Doyle’s exposed arse, crossed with sharp red marks that stood out against his skin - the Skin, he reminded himself, not Doyle. He swallowed, clenched his hands into fists to avoid the temptation to just have Doyle there and then, bound and helpless and his to do what he wanted.
Christ, he was as bad as Newbolt.
“You took your time,” Doyle said. Bodie forced his gaze upwards, to where Doyle was watching him in the mirror, met his eyes.
“Enjoying the cocktails,” he drawled in reply, because he couldn’t let Doyle see what he was really thinking. “Care to join me?”
“We need to get the humans…” Doyle began, as Bodie scanned the cuffs open with his phone.
“Yeah, I’ve found ‘em. They’re locked up together for now, but they’re scheduled to be distributed during the food - which is just starting. I’ll take you down, then go back and cover - can you get them out?”
“Of course I can get them out.” Doyle sounded almost offended. “Question is, what do I do with them after that?”
“Give me your phone - I’ve got the scan code for the transports.”
Doyle nodded, and Bodie caught respect in his eyes. He transferred the code, led the way to the door and checked the corridor. Empty, and the security still on loop. “I’ll meet you over there as soon as I can. Don’t leave without me.”
They took the stairs to the lower level, pausing to peer around corners. There was no need for a physical guard, not with a security system like this, but it wasn’t a time to take chances - especially because the only thing he could do with the cameras here was to loop them in the same way as the empty corridor, and that wouldn’t hold up to more than a casual glance, if Krivas or his boys decided to make sure all was well.
The voices in the room, orga and mecha, fell to silence as soon as they opened the door. Bodie strode across to the human cage, spoke fast. “We’re getting you out of here. Do exactly what we say when we say it, and you might live long enough to get home. Any questions?”
Wide eyes, but silence still.
“Alright.” He scanned the cage door open, gestured them to go and stand by the entrance. “Doyle… Doyle?”
Doyle was staring at the mecha cage, and Bodie’s heart sank.
“Open the cage, Bodie.”
“There’s not enough room in the transport!”
“We can’t just leave them here!”
“If we let them out, there’ll be a bloodbath.” It would be worse than leaving them where they were. “If they stay quiet long enough for the rest of us to get away.”
“Then you’ll have to take them on the second transport.”
He let out a breath, met hard green eyes.
Fuck.
“Alright - but you can explain it to Cowley.”
Doyle grinned at him suddenly, winked, and turned to the mecha cage. “We’ve gotta do this in two shifts so that we can release the transports without being seen.” He tipped his head in Bodie’s direction. “He’s going to come back for you, and same rules apply - you do what we say, when we say it, right?”
The mechas nodded, as compliant as the humans - but then mechas were supposed to be nothing but compliance.
“Can we go now?” he growled into Doyle’s ear. Doyle nodded, slapped him quickly on the arm, and then led the way through the small crowd of humans to the door. Bodie pushed to the front, checked the corridor again, and ran ahead to the stairwell. All quiet. He found Doyle a final time, looking tense but calm, and then he headed up to the banquet hall, back to join the party and give Doyle time to get them away.
o0o
There were maybe thirty humans behind him, all dressed in black skintights from head to foot, but other than that as different as it was possible to be. Tall, short, slim, voluptuous - some with eyes that gleamed excitement, some who looked terrified, some who looked entirely indifferent, used to doing as they were told, to assuming that any change which didn’t leave them dead might be acceptable. A few of them tried to ask questions every time he came near, and he glowered at them, heart pounding. Didn’t the idiots know they were running for their lives, their potentially short lives?
They were on the opposite side of the flight pad to the transport docks, and there was no way to lead a straggle of thirty humans directly across to the vehicle, but they could follow the outer service corridor, hope to slip out into the light as close as they could, and get on board before they were spotted. He’d tap Bodie a call when they were ready, wait for him to bring his lot over, and they’d be off.
It was almost worse that they didn’t seem to meet a single guard as they traversed the rig. He knew Bodie’d set the security for them all around, knew he’d be heading off anyone who looked like encroaching on their route, and he trusted him - he did trust him, he realised, a kind of cool certainty washing through him - but it made the journey eerily quiet. The engines of the rig were silent, the pounding of the waves against the rig’s feet were muffled inside, he was alone with the thud of his heart and the rustling breath and footsteps of the humans behind him.
He’d reached the final door, had flattened himself against the wall and begun to open it, when everything suddenly seemed to go wrong.
o0o
Bodie was propositioned three times before he’d managed more than a glass of champagne and a handful of canapes in the banquet hall, and found himself making dates with two of them for the sake of his cover - a tall blonde woman, whose green gaze reminded him of Doyle, and a slim man who moved lithely through the crowd, so that Bodie almost wondered if he was mecha rather than orga. He caught Krivas in a corner, managed to keep him talking and answering questions for a good fifteen minutes before releasing him to the attentions of twin women he thought he’d seen in one of the celeb houses online.
He tried to move around the room as if he was enjoying his work, as if this was all he had wanted from a job, as if he wasn’t waiting for Doyle’s call to vibrate through the hand he’d stuck in his pocket, clutching his phone.
Those bloody mechas - if he hadn’t taken Doyle down there, if he’d left him watching the door, gone to get the humans himself… But no, that wouldn’t have worked either, not with Doyle. They were in this together, they had to be together, all the way. He realised he was staring at a redhead on the other side of the room, looked away quickly before she could catch his eye, and saw one of Krivas’s soldiers striding through the crowd, as out of place as a Christmas tree in George Cowley’s office. He garnered his fair share of looks despite that - probably because of it, a tough bit of rough, a suggestion of the real thing that this lot would be playing at later tonight. He reached Krivas, who was suddenly alert, whispered in his ear.
Krivas turned to look at Bodie.
Run, or hide? As if it was a summons, Bodie raised a cool eyebrow, tossed back the rest of his drink, and wandered over.
“Trouble?”
“Visitors from the east,” Krivas said. “They look small, and far away, but there’s something strange about the signal. Go and take a look.”
Bodie frowned. “Everyone here accounted for?”
“Oh yes,” Krivas said, watching him steadily. “You know the protocol for gatecrashers - I hope you’ve not had too many of those.” He tipped his head to the glass in Bodie’s hand, and Bodie reached out and dropped it on a passing servemecha.
“About time something happened around here,” he grinned. “Come on then - let’s go greet your friends.”
He followed the soldier back through the party, counting the customer’s as he went, checking Newbolt’s whereabouts - everyone here was where they should be. Now who the hell was coming to spoil the party? Couldn’t be Doyle in the transport, that would have read loud and clear. He quashed down the small hope in his breast, because there was no such thing as the cavalry without a requisition form, and reached for his phone, drawing it out to hold firmly.
Call, damn you.
As if summoned, his phone buzzed, and then a sudden rising wail of sirens rent the air. The soldier in front of him broke into a run, and Bodie followed, splitting away to burst into the nearest control room, to stare out the window into the floodlit flight deck, where the dark shapes of black flyers were descending like rain, vanguarding a much bigger transport as it landed, warding off all comers with laser shots. The transport had barely touched the deck before it seemed to burst open on both sides, and a storm of operatives flooded out. Bodie had just enough time to register the face of George Cowley, high up in the cockpit of the transport, and then there were footsteps behind him, and a gun at his temple, cold metal pressing hard into his skin.
“You treacherous bastard,” Krivas said.
o0o
There was a shout from outside on the flight deck, and Doyle was sure they’d been discovered, a thunder of booted feet abruptly loud, and then soldiers, two dozen of them, pouring past the gap of the door without even glancing at it, heading away from the transport, towards the bar on the other side of the deck.
It was now or never.
Doyle opened the door all the way, looked around and then gestured the group behind him. “Come on,” he said. “Fast and quiet, but fast.” Two of the girls were crying, one young lad almost hyperventilating, and there was no time to deal with them. “Nearly there,” he managed, hoping it was true. What the hell was going on? Some kind of rebellion? Krivas’s soldiers fed up of being on the outside looking in?
Didn’t matter, not if he could get this lot out. He took a final look around, but all the action was on the other side of the flight pad now, and sprinted for the ramp by the transport, aiming his phone in the general direction of the door controls, and hitting enter as hard as he could, over and over. It began to slide open, and he stopped at the side, starting to push the kids - they were too young for this, his head sang at him, too young for all this - in the direction of the cargo seats, at the same time slamming his thumb down on the call for Bodie.
“Come on!” he roared, as the last half-dozen hesitated. He swung back onto the ramp to see what they were looking at, blinked himself as black flyers seemed to fall suddenly from the darkness onto the glare of the deck. The kids rushed past him, and he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
The flyers seemed to have left a huge gap between themselves, and it was being filled now by another transport - bigger than the two already on the deck - which was being guarded from all comers. Laser shots bounced from the flyers to the deck in blinding flashes of light, and Krivas’s soldiers were returning fire.
Where the fuck was Bodie?
“Wait here!” he shouted into the transport, and set the door to close and lock. He had a glimpse of frightened faces, of kids jumping back up from their seats, and then they were gone.
Who the hell would be attacking the rig? There were no markings on the transport, the operatives pouring out were blackclad and unidentifiable. Any enemy of Krivas had to be his friend, but he knew from bitter experience that friends couldn’t always be trusted to watch your back.
He paused, indecisive. If Bodie was on his way, he’d aim for the exit beside the second transport, but in all this chaos god knew what he’d run into on the way. A stray laser shot smacked into the deck in front of the transport, and he jumped. Then again, better in than out in this kind of firefight. The Skin might stop bullets, Patricks hadn’t said anything about laserburn.
He sprinted back the way he’d come, through the still-open door and into the outer corridor, and had turned towards the bar before he stopped, took a deep breath, and then headed back into the depths of the rig instead. If the mechas were gone, he’d know Bodie had got that far - and if they weren’t gone, then they at least needed the chance to save themselves from whatever new chaos had come to claim them.
They were still there, mostly pressed against the bars, and when they saw him they shouted, clamouring for release.
“Get to the transport!” he shouted. “The D-class! If anyone can pilot it, then get yourselves away.” He scanned the cage open, pressed himself back against the wall as they pushed and jostled each other to get out, to get away. It was anyone’s guess whether they’d do what they’d been told. The last mecha to leave, though, slowed at the doorway, and turned back. She was a variation on Just Jane, the same tall, voluptuous shape, but hair a shining copper, pale skin, and bright blue eyes. She held out a hand to stop him going past.
“You are not one of us,” she said. “Although you look like one of us.”
Doyle shook his head, impatient to be gone. “No.”
“You are orga,” she said, and then she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, orga. Good luck.”
Doyle looked at her in surprise, watched her as she stepped away to follow her companions towards the flight deck, and then took a breath and followed her back to the corridor, turning in the opposite direction, away towards the bar. If anyone saw him he was just one of many love mechas running to save themselves, but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to see anyone. He paused at each deck exit he came to, most still closed but a few wide open, scanning the rig desperately for Bodie. If he hadn’t made it this far, then…
There.
His hands clasped on his head, Bodie was being pushed and shoved along the deck by Krivas, a gun trained hard on him. Before Doyle could so much as shout out, Krivas pulled open the door of a flyer, and gestured Bodie towards it with the gun. As Bodie turned to clamber in, Krivas hit him hard across the back of his head with the butt of the gun, pushed him the rest of the way on board, and then scrambled after him and into the cockpit.
Doyle didn’t wait to see more, he looked around at the warring soldiers and black ops, took a deep breath, and made a run for the next flyer in line. Krivas launched away as he ran, and he threw himself into the vehicle, scrambling into the cockpit and desperately punching in a flight override through one of Cowley’s apps. The dashboard lights flared into life, and he throttled up hard and fast, a manual chase after the receding red flashes of Krivas’s flyer.
The rig vanished behind him, swallowed by the night, and by a fog of cloud that had gathered since their arrival, barely hours ago. He managed to lock onto Krivas’s flyer, tried to work out where he might be trying to escape to. There were parts of Scandinavia above the waterline, but at this time of year it would be madness. Back to Scotland then, and probably further.
The miles vanished beneath them and around them and above them, one hundred, two hundred, three… Doyle settled into the pursuit, sure he’d been seen, knowing only that Krivas had to make the next move. The flyer didn’t have weapons, but in that case neither did Krivas - except for that gun. As long as he was out of range, there was nothing either of them could do but this dogged chase. Doyle took comfort in the thought that if Krivas hadn’t wanted Bodie alive, he would have shot him before they’d even left the rig.
They were approaching Colchester Drift when the comm channel suddenly whined into life.
“Whoever you are, you must want him very badly.”
“Check your course to the nearest land coordinates,” Doyle replied, the words coming back as if he’d spoken them to some villain or other just the day before. “You’re in violation, and you need to report for correction. This is your one warning.”
“The police?” Krivas sounded surprised. “How very boring. I suppose you don’t want him very much at all, then. You know the nearest land is the Drift.”
It was his one chance to surprise the man, Doyle knew, while he was feeling cocksure of himself, while he thought Doyle was a harmless copper. He began to recite speed restrictions to distract him, took the flyer up in a sudden lift, and then used the additional push to accelerate back down again, diagonally towards the other flyer. He stopped talking, needing to concentrate, locked the course, and slid open the door of the vehicle. He’d done this once before, but it had been many years ago, he’d been just a kid - and he’d been on a horse, not a speeding flyer. If he got the timing wrong…
Doyle locked his phone snatch to the code for the door of the other flyer when they were in range, waited a second more, and then made the jump.
He landed with a thud on the roof of Krivas flyer, which dipped its course under the sudden assault, but kept going. He dropped to his stomach and grabbed at the luggage rails, held on tight in case Krivas tried to throw him. Ahead of them, his own flyer continued its course, just far enough away and fast enough to cross Krivas without hitting him.
His timing had been good - but Krivas’s timing was better. Even as Doyle tensed to swing himself down through the open door, something dark and heavy appeared in the gap, hung for a moment, and then fell, a sudden pale blur as it tumbled face up, and then down again.
“Bo-die!”
There was a vague splash over the purr of the flyer engine, as Bodie hit the water, and then Doyle was moving, even faster than he’d planned it, urgent and desperate. He saw Krivas, surprised, raise his gun, but he had his own phone out, the taser set high. Its white crackle of electricity was shockingly bright in the dim cockpit, and then Krivas was crying out and slumping against the door. Doyle stretched across him to the manual release, pulled it open, and kicked him hard out the door and into the waves breaking on Colchester Drift down below.
It took a moment for Cowley’s app to hack into the system mid-flight, and every second was a harsh heartbeat against Doyle’s chest, in his breath, a pounding against hope. He swung the flyer around, and dropped low to the waves, turning the heat-seek on and the searchlight, and peering desperately down to the sea. From up here he could see the direction of the tide, flooding towards the scraps of land that had built up to become Colchester Drift, a long thin stretch that was little more than sand and scraggy grasses.
There! A dark mound showing dim on the heat-seek, levels reading dangerously low. Doyle swooped down, landed with a clumsiness that he didn’t care about, and pushed himself outside to fall to his knees by the body.
It was Bodie.
The surf loud in his ears, Doyle turned him over, working automatically, as he'd been taught as a child, as he'd been trained over and again since then. Clear the airway, tilt the head, and breathe... and breathe... and breathe... Bodie's skin was cold, clammy to the touch, and he couldn't make his chest work and...
And Doyle didn't want him to die.
He thought of hotels across the city, of Bodie naked against him, and laughing, and of making him laugh. It wasn't right that Bodie's lips were so still beneath his, that they didn't tease and provoke and kiss him in this darkness... Compression to the chest, and breathe, and breathe... The wind whipped around them, salted and hard. Come on, Bodie!
Cowley and CI-bloody-5. Where were his dreams now, eh? Good lives laid down after bad, and pain and punishment and... and breathe... and breathe... and breathe... He'd joined the force to make a difference, and George Cowley made an even bigger difference so he’d wanted CI5, but Bodie couldn't die.
Breathe.
And then Bodie did. Doyle felt the air taken away from him, was too cold, too surprised to move away fast enough, so that Bodie coughed it back into him, convulsed under his hands, turned his head and retched seawater over them both, spluttering and gasping desperately, and trying to sit up, so that Doyle reached his arms around him to support him, and then to hold him as he shuddered to quietness again, breathing more solidly, breathing evenly.
Bodie was alive.
He took a shaking breath, turned his face into Bodie's neck, and kissed him just there, on the cold of his skin, the cold life of his skin.
"You stupid..." he began, pulling away so that he could see that Bodie really was alright, and had to stop to catch his breath again. "That how they teach you to blow your cover in the army, is it?"
Bodie looked dazed, surprised maybe, to be still alive. He leaned up to take his own weight, then shook his head, sending flicks of salt water into Doyle's face, and stared at him. "You look terrible,” he said. He looked around. “Where the hell’s Krivas?"
o0o
Cowley’s office was high up in the building, and the sun could be seen rising in the east, over the old town, over the waters and somewhere, further away, over the ocean. The sky was a wash of blue, pale but fresh, promising a cold but clear day ahead.
Bodie and Doyle stood side by side in front of Cowley’s desk, as he looked down at hard copies of their reports, turning a page now and then, occasionally frowning, once with a twist of a smile on his face. Finally, just as Doyle was about to crack, he looked up.
“Well then, you didn’t do a bad job, either of you.” He watched them exchange glances.
“No, sir.” That was Bodie, of course.
“If you look in that cabinet by the wall, Doyle, you’ll find a bottle and glasses. I think we could all do with a wee dram.”
Doyle turned his head, slightly puzzled, but he moved obediently to the cabinet, found the whisky and poured three measures. Three large measures, Cowley noted.
“Without Krivas to testify, the responsibility - and the complicity - falls entirely on Newbolt,” he said. “Krivas’s death was unfortunate.”
“It broke up the syndicate,” Bodie protested. “There’s no one will take that over from him.”
“No one else has the sheer brass,” Cowley agreed. “And Newbolt and Johnson will be locked into correction for a very long time. As I said, you’ve not done badly.”
“No sign of the mechas, I suppose?”
“No Doyle, no sign. But there’s been no death-signal reported from the transport either, which suggests it was powered down on purpose. You’ve left work there for the mecha recovery unit.”
“Yes, sir.”
Yes, sir his old grandmother. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you to tell them to stay put?”
“I didn’t know what was going on!” Another protest. “For all I knew it was the fourth war starting out there. Not fair to just leave them.”
“No.” He glared at them disapprovingly, but all in all, they - well, they hadn’t done badly.
“I’ve put an advice on the system to your former employers,” he said, watching with interest for their reactions. They wouldn’t object, he knew, not either of them, but as it had throughout the case, it was the human factor that interested him most. “You’ve been seconded for employment within CI5. The code-numbers from this operation will remain yours, as will your access to the security applications and equipment. You will work together as the 3-7/4-5 unit henceforth.”
“Permanently?” Bodie asked, one eyebrow raised, and there it was again, the exchange of looks between them. Aye, he’d done well here.
“For as long as I say so, Bodie!” He stared up at them still. “Well? Do you have any questions?”
“No, sir!”
“No, sir.” That was Doyle - maybe a wee bit reluctant, but he could see the spark of interest there, aye, even eagerness.
“Well then - return the Skin to Patricks upstairs before you go, Doyle, along with your field test report, and then you’d better both have the rest of the day off - I’d suggest you use it to organise your affairs. You will be moved into CI5 secure accommodation sometime this week.”
“Er… yes, sir.”
“Then I will see you at seven tomorrow morning.”
"Seven... ouch!" Doyle flashed a frown in Bodie’s direction, but Bodie smiled innocently back at him, then took hold of his sleeve and pulled him towards the door, away, Cowley suspected, not only from this office, and CI5, but from the rest of the outside world, for at least a few hours. Yes, very interesting.
"Seven o'clock!" Bodie said, one hand raised in cheery farewell, the other settling palm down somewhere on Doyle's lower back. "Running all the way, sir!"
o0o
Title: The Waters and the Wild
Author: Slantedlight
Slash - B/D
Archives - Not yet, I need to have a double-check that everything's right (it was a bit of a rush in the end...)
Disclaimer: Bodie, Doyle, George Cowley and CI5, nor anyone or thing from the Artificial Intelligence world are mine, I'm borrowing the worlds purely for pleasure, my son...
Notes: Believe it or not, this all stemmed from that picture of Gigolo Joe being picked up by the authorities in the amphibicopter. I suddenly thought what if it was Bodie and Doyle doing the pick-up...? *g*
The sun burned bright and hot above the cloud as they headed back. It shone across the waves, a straight path for them to aim for, ever east.
“We fuck it all up, don’t we?” Doyle said beside him.
“You what?” Bodie glanced through the dim light of the cockpit at him. Doyle had been melancholy since they’d picked up Joe, when he should have been celebrating. “All what?”
“Everything…” Doyle swept an all encompassing hand towards the world outside the plexiglass. “Did you know people walked on the moon, once?”
“Every kid knows that. What about it?”
“My teacher said it was a myth, like Icarus flying to the sun - but I looked it up in the Histories, and it’s true. We got all the way up there, and we walked on the moon, and then we just stopped going.”
“Money,” Bodie said, knowingly.
“Money,” Doyle confirmed. “And jealousy and greed and fighting. And then we flooded the world and now we’re stuck down here. Serves us right.”
“Ah come on, it’s not so bad here, is it?” He locked the stick - the copter’d fly just as straight on autopilot - and looked properly at Doyle, willing him to look back. After a moment Doyle did, and Bodie raised an eyebrow at him. They’d have the op wrapped up in a day or two - maybe Cowley had already raided the rig, and they could interrogate Joe about Newbolt and then go home, work out where they’d go from here. Life was suddenly pretty good.
“What about him?” Doyle pointed a thumb back at Gigolo Joe as if he’d read Bodie’s mind. “Wanna bet he’s in for some bad times?”
“He isn’t in for anything, Doyle. He’s a mecha, just bits of metal and fibre and plastic. And yeah - datachips, lots of datachips.”
Doyle shook his head. “I don’t believe that. He’s not just anything - not any more he’s not. You heard ‘im. We made them too well, we set them going and made them to learn, and now we’re scared of what they’ve learned and we tear ‘em apart at flesh fairs under the moon.”
“Look, they’re mecha, we’re orga…”
“We might be orga, but the flesh fairs aren’t human - you tell me they’re more human than one mecha looking after another one!” Doyle’s eyes were hard and hurt at the same time, flashing at some injustice that he was seeing. “They are us, Bodie! The things we do to them, the way we treat them - that’s what makes them the same as us. We use them - we use each other. If we tear them apart and throw them away when we’re done with them, then what..?” His voice cracked, and he looked away from Bodie, out at the stretch of cloud below them. “I’m telling you, Bodie, it frightens me to death.”
Bodie took a breath, and after a moment he turned back to the controls. He unlocked the stick, but he kept them above the cloud, away from the leaden, colourless world below. The one thing he’d always liked about the Afric states, was the way the sun shone every day, through clear skies. It was light or it was dark, sun or shadow. Straightforward, even when you were fighting for your life. Even when you were praying for rain.
…because they’ll be here when we’re gone… He wasn’t wrong about mechas, he knew he wasn’t. But in this grey world, maybe Doyle wasn’t wrong either. “Maybe, but…” He paused.
“But what?”
“Yeah, well, Cowley’s got a job for us.”
“Losing battle. An’ what’s the end result? We catch this lot, the flesh fairs just bring up new monsters.”
He shook his head. “Then Cowley’ll have another job for us. Look…” He hated this. If Doyle had been a bird he would have reached out, touched him, but he didn’t think he quite dared. He didn’t want to fuck this thing up, whatever it was, that had grown between them. He could almost feel it, a physical thing, as if their veins and vessels were stretching between them, electric, so that they were joined, right down to the singularities. “What we do is fight it, that’s what’s important.” He looked back over his shoulder at Joe, caught Doyle’s eye again. “And we’re not losing all the battles.”
Doyle didn’t say anything this time, but he glanced back at Joe, tipped his head to one side in a shrug, and looked away again. Maybe…
The air prickled between again, not just electricity this time, something deeper, pulling them closer together, always closer together.
The interrogation room that they took him to was not what Joe had been led to expect. It was an ordinary room, an office, and there were no deconstructed mechas pinned to the walls, no piles of pieces and spare parts. His captors weren’t ordinary police either - no uniforms, they didn’t seem to care about his missing tag, and they looked serious, but not unkind. The one with curly hair who was not a mecha, although he’d looked like one at first, had even offered him a seat, and they’d introduced themselves. Usually the only people who introduced themselves had made a booking.
"Right metal man," the one called Bodie said grimly, "What do you know?"
"Joe," he said with a strange dignity, "My name is not metal and it is not man, it is Joe."
"Alright," Doyle interrupted, before Bodie could advance more than a step towards him. "What do you know, Joe?"
Now that was more like it - now they were getting somewhere. Joe turned his head to look at Doyle, moved his eyes to range across his body.
"I know what you like," he offered. He leaned forward, filtered his sensors to take in the essence of the man more purely. Very strong pheromones, and nearly 90% ready-to-active. He turned down his volume, turned up the variability so that his voice was low and husky - promising. "I could take you home and we could do something about all that pent-up sexual..."
Doyle withdrew from him sharply, and Joe frowned, watching him. He didn't think he'd read the situation that badly...
"About the case, Joe. What do you know about the case?" Doyle asked him.
Bodie was grinning broadly. "What were you doing all the way out at Hobby's?"
"Looking for Blue Fairy."
"Blue Fairy?"
"So that I could make her a real woman, and she would make David a real boy, and then all would be right with the world."
"David the mecha?"
Joe nodded. "He has found her, and we will just have to trust that she will be able to do her work without my attentions."
The men looked at each other, and Bodie rolled his eyes. They didn't believe him? "I am very good at..."
"What about Johnson?"
Saul Johnson. "I'm in bad trouble..." He would be shut down. Of course, there were men and women across the British Islands and as far away as Rouge City and the Scattered States who would remember him. Gigolo Joe, what do you know..? Maybe some would weep when he did not return, and he’d asked David to remember him. He was.
"Well that depends on whether you can help us," Doyle was saying, and it took a moment for his synapses to catch up with each other. There was a way out, a way to stay am...
"What do you need me to do?"
"We know that Johnson murdered Samantha Bevins, but we need to know why. What happened, Joe?"
"I didn't arrive until after he had committed the murder.""How do you know it was Johnson who killed her?"
Was this a trap? "Because he told her so."
"He told you so."
"No." Joe could remember it clearly. "He leaned over her still body and he said - " He paused to modulate his voice to Johnson's. "Goodbye Sam, and never forget, you killed me first and then he left the room." He switched his voice back. "I'm in bad trouble. But she shouldn’t have tried to blackmail him about the blackmail. She was also in bad trouble."
“Wait - blackmail him about the blackmail? She was blackmailing Johnson?”
“What did she know?” Bodie cut in. “Why didn’t you report this?”
“I can send you a report,” Joe said brightly. If these orga caught Johnson then perhaps he could go back to his life. It had felt strange to wander without bumping into Jane or Dan or any of the other love mechas he knew. “I can send you data about the original blackmail if it would help.”
“It would help,” Bodie said.
"Do you know who this man is?" Doyle flashed an image from his phone to the table top, waited while Joe looked at it.
He scanned it carefully. "This is Sir John Newbolt, current Minister for Overseas Intervention. Born in Southampton on the twenty sixth of January, twenty-"
"That's right. Have you seen him before? In person?"
Joe scanned his files. "At ten-fifty-five on the fifteenth of October this year, at twelve-oh-three on the 17th of October this year, at..."
"Alright, alright," Doyle looked impatient, "Have you ever seen him with Saul Johnson?"
"At five-twenty-one on the twentieth of October this year, at seven-ten on the twenty-fifth of October this year, on..."
"Stop!” Doyle had looked at Bodie, and Joe could tell that they said something to each other with their eyes, but he didn’t know what it was. “Have you ever seen them talking together?"
They were looking excited in the way that orga pretended they weren’t excited, so Joe decided it might be worth anticipating a true desire. It was always risky, requiring a short-cut between synapses, but it was usually worth it for the reactions of... But these men weren't new lovers. He collated the relevant files, started to replay them. "You're early tonight - I'm busy tonight - That makes two of us. You've heard from your contacts then? - They're agreed. - The shipments will route through Plymouth on the tenth. Full operation in Russia by the thirtieth. - I thought we said five o'clock, you're late! - Trouble in the House. - Tell me that in a year's time and I'll celebrate. - What does Krivas have to - "
"Stop!" Bodie said again, "Krivas?"
"Enrico Krivas. Born seventeenth June..."
"We've got him!" Bodie was looking at Doyle, and there was a gleam in his eye. "Krivas and Johnson and bloody Newbolt, all three connected!"
"Yeah, but testimony from a mecha? It won’t hold in court on its own.”
“It will if we can back it up."
"The Session - the Minister won't miss that, and if either Krivas or Johnson is there… We arrange a bust in."
"Tricky - he's got good surveillance."
"Cowley's gotta have the pull. We can get them."
They smiled at each other - not nicely - and turned for the door.
"Gentlemen!" Joe stood up to follow them. "You'll be needing my further assistance?"
"Not just now."
"Then I am allowed to leave?"
They looked at each other again, and then back at him. "Not just now." Doyle repeated, although he’d modulated his voice, made it softer.
"You wait here," Bodie suggested, "Nice and safe for us."
"You do not require..."
"Standby-mode zero-one," Doyle said, "Background data dump. Over-ride code Herbie until further notice."
This time they did leave, and the last thing Joe saw as his optics faded to black, was Bodie's hand on Doyle's back, the way their eyes shone, and the way they smiled at each other.
One more booking, Doyle kept telling himself - just one more. He could do this again because even now Cowley was gearing up CI5 to raid the rig, and because Bodie would be waiting for him after, and he’d never have to wear the bloody Skin again. If Cowley thought otherwise then he could shove it where…
“Ah, Ray. Right on time - it’s a shame, I was hoping you’d be unpunctual.” Newbolt was sitting, relaxed, on the sleek white sofa in his current city flat, and he was stroking a riding crop back and forth across his thighs. Doyle’s eyes were drawn to it, an automatic reaction that Newbolt no doubt thought the mecha had done on purpose, to show obedience.
He reminded himself again why CI5 was worth this.
“You don’t like me to be late,” he said, almost by rote after weeks of it. “You would think I was very bad if I was late.”
“Don’t you want to be bad for me? What do you say, Ray?” The Minister gestured to his crotch.
Doyle swallowed, took the three steps between them because he had to, and dropped to his knees. Thinking about it, that was worse than doing it. “I say…”
Newbolt smiled, stopped him with a flick of his hand. “You say what I want you to say, don’t you Ray? You’re a much more obedient mecha than you pretend to be - all those synapses, sparking away, clickety-click… clickety-click, Ray! Not a single misfire yet, not one…”
“My synapses are guaranteed for…” Doyle began, cataloguing the room in his peripheral vision. If he had to he could knock Newbolt out, but the game would be up. They needed more on him than just a vague connection to Renton - he wanted more.
“Too long,” Newbolt purred. “We’ll have to see what we can do about that. Come on!” He jumped to his feet, his groin momentarily in Doyle’s face, and then away, almost dancing to the door.
“Come on, where?”
“Come on, come on - I have a special treat for you! And a special treat for me - but first we have to get there.”
“Where are we going? I have a booking at…”
“Cancelled.” Newbolt smiled at him, wide and gleaming and unpleasant. “All of them cancelled! Come on, come on! You can fly us.”
“Fly us where?” Doyle repeated, trying to keep his voice even and uncurious beyond what a mecha would always ask for practicalities. All of them cancelled? He needed a destination for Cowley - the sooner he had it, the sooner rescue would find him. He had a bad feeling about this.
“Fly us to the moon…” Newbolt crooned for a moment. “To a special moon, Ray, just for us. We’ve got a session booked - a special session, and far away! Come on, come on, come on!” He lowered his voice, held out one hand for Doyle to join him, with the other he slapped the riding crop hard against the door. “It will make up for all the interruptions - I promise.”
He reached out, and found the spot behind Doyle’s ear that was a pressure pad, switched him into blind mode.
A crescent moon was rising to the east, a dim glow that barely shone on the matte finish of Krivas’s flyer, barely lit their way. While they were on the main paths, they met and crossed other flyers now and then, shining their own lights, reminding him that there were people out there who were getting on with their ordinary lives - were going home for the night, or to bars or parties or gigs. They would have sex and sleep with people who would still be alive in the morning.
“I promised I’d take you to the next one,” Krivas had said. “You should participate once before you begin work. Use it to assess the strengths and weaknesses of those you see. Use it to impress me, Bodie.”
He’d laughed it off, pretended excitement, pretended glee, wanted to hit the man, and keep hitting him. There’d been no time to warn Cowley that the session was now, was scheduled so soon after they’d got the information about it. He’d never get there in time, and they’d have to wait two more weeks for another opportunity. Two more weeks when Cowley might decide he needed Doyle right where he was, to allay suspicion.
There was no one else with them tonight, the customers would come later, by separate transport, once everything was in place. And everyone, thought Bodie - or were they there already, the street kids and frightened young things who were never going to leave again?
The flight felt endless.
Eventually the rig came into view, from a distance nothing more than a dark mass above the heaving waters of the North Sea, but as they came closer it resolved into a ring of dim lights around the landing pad, and then a glowing path that they followed to the same door as last time - no bug now, no neon pink yet, everything waiting to be turned on.
“I’ll show you!” Krivas shouted over the howl of the wind as they crossed the pad. “The men will be boxed below by eleven, and then we turn it all on!”
“Miss all the excitement, do they?”
“We keep them well-supplied - they have nothing to complain about.” He pulled the door open, turned and looked knowingly at Bodie. “I believe they have planned their own session tonight - the Game is still a popular pastime.”
Bodie didn’t doubt it - not with the kind of men who hired themselves out to who ever was paying the most. He knew. He’d been one of them.
Then again, he’d left.
There was more activity inside, a calm bustle along the corridors as Krivas showed Bodie where this lighting system turned on, that security fence. Eventually they made their way to the bar, and Krivas gestured the servemecha for drinks, led him to a table beside the long window. As they watched, the lighting outside rose, until Bodie could practically make out the freckles on the face of a young trainee jogging quickly back to his own level.
Krivas glanced at his watch. “He’ll be locked out if he’s not careful. Still, a youth like that will quickly find himself part of things. If not quite the way they sometimes hope.”
“They hope?” Bodie supped his beer, eyeing a flurry of activity by the landing pad, saw the boy slip through a door in the corner.
“Every now and then one of them decided they’d rather take part in our side of the operation than theirs,” Krivas said. “They go awol, hide themselves somewhere - and so we oblige them.”
“Give them a free ride?” Bodie suggested, but he could feel his heart heavy in his chest. He’d been a kid like that once, run away from a lousy situation and found himself in one that was only marginally better - but it had been better.
“Oh, they’re ridden alright,” Krivas said, and smirked over his moustaches. “Although I’ve had complaints that it’s a loss to their own Game.” He shrugged. “You cannot keep everyone happy.”
Bodie grunted, trying to remind himself that he’d save more people by staying calm now, no matter what he saw tonight. They would get these bastards - eventually they would get them.
Movement in the sky caught his attention, and he watched as a dark transport ship flew heavily in, hovering over the pad as it made minor adjustments, and then lurched to a touchdown.
“You should get new pilots,” he suggested. “That one couldn’t land his mother a kiss.”
Krivas snorted. “The one thing I’m short of - good pilots. We’re having to train our own.”
The transport was opening, side sliding away to reveal the passengers inside.
“Mechas?” he asked, surprised. So Krivas didn’t keep them here between sessions after all. “What was wrong with the ones you ‘ad the other day?”
“They wear out,” Krivas said carelessly. “We always require new stock.”
A flyer had followed the transport in, waited for it to land, and was now slipping into its own space, a discreet spot in the far corner. One of the bugs whizzed out to greet the arrivals, so that their feet would barely touch the outside deck, passing the mechas who were being herded towards cargo doors on the opposite side.
“Early customers?”
Krivas swallowed the last of his brandy, gestured for another, barely glancing at the flyer. “That one is always eager. They will join us in a moment. He is a lucrative contact, so we permit it.”
Bodie nodded. A politico, perhaps? Another government minister, or some tycoon business type who worked for one of the corporations, controlled half the city with their products?
“Renton! How wonderful to see you again - I am looking forward to the show tonight!”
Bodie’s heart thumped hard in his chest, and he wondered that no one could feel the pull between himself and Doyle, the desperate urge he had to leap to his feet, grab Doyle’s arm, and get them both out of there. Why he hadn’t expected Newbolt he didn’t know, but he hadn’t. He’d cocked up, and Doyle would pay for it.
“You are here for your ring-side seat, I see,” Krivas said, waving them to the table and gesturing to the servemecha. “And you brought your own… companion?”
“A new participant,” Newbolt replied, looking incuriously at Bodie. “He is most interested in the proceedings - what do you say, Ray?”
“I say thank you, Minister,” Doyle said, not looking in Bodie’s direction. “I am looking forward to the night’s pleasures.”
“Ah - and here they come!” The Minister’s shout broke across Bodie’s thoughts, and he looked up to see another transport arriving on the pad. It landed somewhat more smoothly than the last one, and Newbolt stepped close to the window, watching avidly. “You will give me first pick, I hope?” he called back to Krivas. “I need…” He turned to eye Doyle up and down, and then back to watching the transport doors open again. “…two tonight, I think. To start with.”
Krivas shrugged, but he got up to stand beside Newbolt, and so Bodie stood forward too, for a clearer view. The doors slid back, and the passengers again emerged.
Bodie swallowed. They were humans.
Newbolt chose two of the new arrivals even as they were being marched across the landing pad - no snug bug for these young things, Doyle thought - and they may not have been children, but they weren’t far from it. It was all he could do not to turn on Newbolt then, trusting Bodie to take care of Krivas, to drop the pair of them over the side of the rig and into the unforgiving depths. But Newbolt and Krivas weren’t the only two people involved here - and they weren’t the only other people on the rig. No, he had to get as much on record as possible, make sure Cowley could sink everyone involved with it.
Although he deferred prettily enough to him, it was clear that Newbolt saw Krivas as no more than the help, and he didn’t seem to take in Bodie’s presence at all. Doyle took it in alright, appalled, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Bodie was watching him play this role, glad that Bodie was here at all. It was all coming together, and the end was in sight - as long as it wasn’t their end.
Newbolt sat down at last and drank the brandy served to him, leaving Doyle standing behind him, asking about the minutiae of the night ahead - whether there would be public as well as private play, how many of the orga had been broken to mecha, who the chef was. There would be a meal, and staged entertainment before the customers retired to their own rooms for the night, and Doyle’s eyes met Bodie’s before he could stop himself. It might be their best chance - but it would all depend on what Newbolt decided to do with him.
Other flyers began to arrive as they talked, bugs dispatched to collect their occupants, but not bringing them directly to the bar, as they had been. To settle into their rooms, perhaps, to change for dinner, as if this was somewhere civilised, just another weekend party? Eventually Newbolt stood up, and held out his hand for something - a scan key, Doyle saw with an inward frown, as Krivas handed it over. Old-fashioned security that was less centralised, more difficult to override from outside the system with phone tech. He hoped the selection of Cowley’s apps that they’d been given hidden access to were up to it.
“Come, Ray - time to go and get ready for the fun. I promised you something special, didn’t I?”
“You always keep your promises,” Doyle responded, as they swept past Bodie and out the door. Newbolt clearly knew his way around, paused now and then to greet someone they passed in the opposite direction - people in evening wear, in very expensive evening wear, some of whom Doyle recognised from the news, or from police intelligence, on either side of the security ratings. They turned into a long, carpeted corridor, and Doyle counted twenty rooms before they reached what was presumably their own, second from the other end. He noted the exits - another door like the one they’d come in, and a lift whose doors and lights remained dark and unmoving. Not working, or not required this evening?
“Home sweet home!” Newbolt said, scanning the door open and making an extravagant gesture around the room. The wall was a single, continuous curve, a circle of a room, and there was a large, sunken bed in the centre. Various benches and pieces of equipment lined the wall, and it was scattered with clips and bars and restraints. Most of the wall was a mirror.
Lovely.
Newbolt had obviously been here before too - either he’d had luggage with him that had been unpacked, or he kept a wardrobe here, because he slid open a door and began to change into fresh clothes - a variation on the white suit that Doyle had first seen him wear, this one form-fitting, the jacket less twentieth-century, a mere suggestion of fashion attached to the body. He ignored Doyle, but every now and then he would pause and turn to look at one piece of equipment or another, and smile.
Doyle wanted to rage with impatience, but at last Newbolt was finished, turned to him. “Come.”
The others had been gathering - surely he would go and join them, surely he would leave Doyle, set him to sleep mode…
He didn’t. He pushed him back to a mirrored section of the wall, turned him to face it, and secured his arms above his head, clipped into thick cuffs, then did the same for his ankles, and stood looking at him consideringly, running a hand up and down his back. It felt like some dreadful parody of what Bodie did, trapping, not freeing, threatening. After a moment Newbolt smiled, reached around to the front of Doyle’s trousers, and undid first his belt, and then the fastenings, peeling the fabric back and sliding it down just below his arse, so that Doyle was exposed to the air. His cock, ever half-hard from the Skin, pressed against the mirror.
Doyle breathed shallowly, watched as Newbolt selected a crop from a nearby shelf of equipment, came and stood behind him, crowding him close.
“Oh Ray - what we will do tonight, you and me… I am going to dinner, and when I come back I will find you here waiting for me, waiting for me to fuck your sweet hole, and do such things as you never thought of. I will bring help, and we will have one last night.” He moved away slightly, stroked the crop across Doyle’s bared skin. “Nothing is made to last, mecha,” he said, and brought the crop down hard suddenly, so that Doyle felt it as a sharp bruising blow through the Skin. “And especially not mechas.”
Another blow, then Newbolt’s hands on him, punishingly hard, and then he was freed, and he heard the door slide open, and then he was alone.
He took a deep breath, settled to wait, and tried not to think of the vision he would make for Bodie when he came.
It took Bodie almost half an hour to find the updated room list and work out how to access individual rooms, and by then the customers were milling around the bar in a glittering spectacle. They were mostly men, although there were a few women, and eventually Bodie realised that mechas were being allowed in as well, love mechas in every guise and disguise, from the obvious to the outwardly prim and respectable. He circulated unobtrusively, released by Krivas to do as he would. Krivas would expect two things - that he would enjoy himself, but that above all he would be learning the patterns of such gatherings, the demands and security of them. It gave him the freedom to work his way through every customer room - and the cell rooms.
There was a level devoted entirely to supplies, just below the customer rooms. Half was taken up with a refrigeration unit and store rooms - the rest was divided into two, a cage for the mecha and a cage for the orga, divided by a few metres of floor space, and nothing else. He found the security cameras, routed them to his phone and worked in a shut off command, and watched for a few moments as the two groups shouted and taunted each other. The humans were young enough to still be aggressive, the mechas reacted defensively. There were fewer of them - perhaps the same number as currently circulated in the bar.
Only one exit to and from the cages.
A bell chimed in the bar area, and people began wandering out, towards the banquet room next door. Half a dozen dancers had already begun to writhe on the central stage, and servemechas lined the walls, ready to cater to any whim. Krivas was watching them all, directing operations, smirking and joking discreetly with this or that customer.
It had to be now.
Newbolt’s room was at the far end of the customer corridor, and Bodie hacked the security camera to reflect an empty loop, took himself cautiously down. He’d counted all the customers into the bar area, but you never knew. The master scan card opened the door easy as you like, and he slid inside, closed it again, and then just stood there, breath gone from him.
He’d expected Doyle to be tied, had expected him perhaps to be naked - he hadn’t expected to be instantly aroused and hard at the sight of Doyle’s exposed arse, crossed with sharp red marks that stood out against his skin - the Skin, he reminded himself, not Doyle. He swallowed, clenched his hands into fists to avoid the temptation to just have Doyle there and then, bound and helpless and his to do what he wanted.
Christ, he was as bad as Newbolt.
“You took your time,” Doyle said. Bodie forced his gaze upwards, to where Doyle was watching him in the mirror, met his eyes.
“Enjoying the cocktails,” he drawled in reply, because he couldn’t let Doyle see what he was really thinking. “Care to join me?”
“We need to get the humans…” Doyle began, as Bodie scanned the cuffs open with his phone.
“Yeah, I’ve found ‘em. They’re locked up together for now, but they’re scheduled to be distributed during the food - which is just starting. I’ll take you down, then go back and cover - can you get them out?”
“Of course I can get them out.” Doyle sounded almost offended. “Question is, what do I do with them after that?”
“Give me your phone - I’ve got the scan code for the transports.”
Doyle nodded, and Bodie caught respect in his eyes. He transferred the code, led the way to the door and checked the corridor. Empty, and the security still on loop. “I’ll meet you over there as soon as I can. Don’t leave without me.”
They took the stairs to the lower level, pausing to peer around corners. There was no need for a physical guard, not with a security system like this, but it wasn’t a time to take chances - especially because the only thing he could do with the cameras here was to loop them in the same way as the empty corridor, and that wouldn’t hold up to more than a casual glance, if Krivas or his boys decided to make sure all was well.
The voices in the room, orga and mecha, fell to silence as soon as they opened the door. Bodie strode across to the human cage, spoke fast. “We’re getting you out of here. Do exactly what we say when we say it, and you might live long enough to get home. Any questions?”
Wide eyes, but silence still.
“Alright.” He scanned the cage door open, gestured them to go and stand by the entrance. “Doyle… Doyle?”
Doyle was staring at the mecha cage, and Bodie’s heart sank.
“Open the cage, Bodie.”
“There’s not enough room in the transport!”
“We can’t just leave them here!”
“If we let them out, there’ll be a bloodbath.” It would be worse than leaving them where they were. “If they stay quiet long enough for the rest of us to get away.”
“Then you’ll have to take them on the second transport.”
He let out a breath, met hard green eyes.
Fuck.
“Alright - but you can explain it to Cowley.”
Doyle grinned at him suddenly, winked, and turned to the mecha cage. “We’ve gotta do this in two shifts so that we can release the transports without being seen.” He tipped his head in Bodie’s direction. “He’s going to come back for you, and same rules apply - you do what we say, when we say it, right?”
The mechas nodded, as compliant as the humans - but then mechas were supposed to be nothing but compliance.
“Can we go now?” he growled into Doyle’s ear. Doyle nodded, slapped him quickly on the arm, and then led the way through the small crowd of humans to the door. Bodie pushed to the front, checked the corridor again, and ran ahead to the stairwell. All quiet. He found Doyle a final time, looking tense but calm, and then he headed up to the banquet hall, back to join the party and give Doyle time to get them away.
There were maybe thirty humans behind him, all dressed in black skintights from head to foot, but other than that as different as it was possible to be. Tall, short, slim, voluptuous - some with eyes that gleamed excitement, some who looked terrified, some who looked entirely indifferent, used to doing as they were told, to assuming that any change which didn’t leave them dead might be acceptable. A few of them tried to ask questions every time he came near, and he glowered at them, heart pounding. Didn’t the idiots know they were running for their lives, their potentially short lives?
They were on the opposite side of the flight pad to the transport docks, and there was no way to lead a straggle of thirty humans directly across to the vehicle, but they could follow the outer service corridor, hope to slip out into the light as close as they could, and get on board before they were spotted. He’d tap Bodie a call when they were ready, wait for him to bring his lot over, and they’d be off.
It was almost worse that they didn’t seem to meet a single guard as they traversed the rig. He knew Bodie’d set the security for them all around, knew he’d be heading off anyone who looked like encroaching on their route, and he trusted him - he did trust him, he realised, a kind of cool certainty washing through him - but it made the journey eerily quiet. The engines of the rig were silent, the pounding of the waves against the rig’s feet were muffled inside, he was alone with the thud of his heart and the rustling breath and footsteps of the humans behind him.
He’d reached the final door, had flattened himself against the wall and begun to open it, when everything suddenly seemed to go wrong.
Bodie was propositioned three times before he’d managed more than a glass of champagne and a handful of canapes in the banquet hall, and found himself making dates with two of them for the sake of his cover - a tall blonde woman, whose green gaze reminded him of Doyle, and a slim man who moved lithely through the crowd, so that Bodie almost wondered if he was mecha rather than orga. He caught Krivas in a corner, managed to keep him talking and answering questions for a good fifteen minutes before releasing him to the attentions of twin women he thought he’d seen in one of the celeb houses online.
He tried to move around the room as if he was enjoying his work, as if this was all he had wanted from a job, as if he wasn’t waiting for Doyle’s call to vibrate through the hand he’d stuck in his pocket, clutching his phone.
Those bloody mechas - if he hadn’t taken Doyle down there, if he’d left him watching the door, gone to get the humans himself… But no, that wouldn’t have worked either, not with Doyle. They were in this together, they had to be together, all the way. He realised he was staring at a redhead on the other side of the room, looked away quickly before she could catch his eye, and saw one of Krivas’s soldiers striding through the crowd, as out of place as a Christmas tree in George Cowley’s office. He garnered his fair share of looks despite that - probably because of it, a tough bit of rough, a suggestion of the real thing that this lot would be playing at later tonight. He reached Krivas, who was suddenly alert, whispered in his ear.
Krivas turned to look at Bodie.
Run, or hide? As if it was a summons, Bodie raised a cool eyebrow, tossed back the rest of his drink, and wandered over.
“Trouble?”
“Visitors from the east,” Krivas said. “They look small, and far away, but there’s something strange about the signal. Go and take a look.”
Bodie frowned. “Everyone here accounted for?”
“Oh yes,” Krivas said, watching him steadily. “You know the protocol for gatecrashers - I hope you’ve not had too many of those.” He tipped his head to the glass in Bodie’s hand, and Bodie reached out and dropped it on a passing servemecha.
“About time something happened around here,” he grinned. “Come on then - let’s go greet your friends.”
He followed the soldier back through the party, counting the customer’s as he went, checking Newbolt’s whereabouts - everyone here was where they should be. Now who the hell was coming to spoil the party? Couldn’t be Doyle in the transport, that would have read loud and clear. He quashed down the small hope in his breast, because there was no such thing as the cavalry without a requisition form, and reached for his phone, drawing it out to hold firmly.
Call, damn you.
As if summoned, his phone buzzed, and then a sudden rising wail of sirens rent the air. The soldier in front of him broke into a run, and Bodie followed, splitting away to burst into the nearest control room, to stare out the window into the floodlit flight deck, where the dark shapes of black flyers were descending like rain, vanguarding a much bigger transport as it landed, warding off all comers with laser shots. The transport had barely touched the deck before it seemed to burst open on both sides, and a storm of operatives flooded out. Bodie had just enough time to register the face of George Cowley, high up in the cockpit of the transport, and then there were footsteps behind him, and a gun at his temple, cold metal pressing hard into his skin.
“You treacherous bastard,” Krivas said.
There was a shout from outside on the flight deck, and Doyle was sure they’d been discovered, a thunder of booted feet abruptly loud, and then soldiers, two dozen of them, pouring past the gap of the door without even glancing at it, heading away from the transport, towards the bar on the other side of the deck.
It was now or never.
Doyle opened the door all the way, looked around and then gestured the group behind him. “Come on,” he said. “Fast and quiet, but fast.” Two of the girls were crying, one young lad almost hyperventilating, and there was no time to deal with them. “Nearly there,” he managed, hoping it was true. What the hell was going on? Some kind of rebellion? Krivas’s soldiers fed up of being on the outside looking in?
Didn’t matter, not if he could get this lot out. He took a final look around, but all the action was on the other side of the flight pad now, and sprinted for the ramp by the transport, aiming his phone in the general direction of the door controls, and hitting enter as hard as he could, over and over. It began to slide open, and he stopped at the side, starting to push the kids - they were too young for this, his head sang at him, too young for all this - in the direction of the cargo seats, at the same time slamming his thumb down on the call for Bodie.
“Come on!” he roared, as the last half-dozen hesitated. He swung back onto the ramp to see what they were looking at, blinked himself as black flyers seemed to fall suddenly from the darkness onto the glare of the deck. The kids rushed past him, and he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
The flyers seemed to have left a huge gap between themselves, and it was being filled now by another transport - bigger than the two already on the deck - which was being guarded from all comers. Laser shots bounced from the flyers to the deck in blinding flashes of light, and Krivas’s soldiers were returning fire.
Where the fuck was Bodie?
“Wait here!” he shouted into the transport, and set the door to close and lock. He had a glimpse of frightened faces, of kids jumping back up from their seats, and then they were gone.
Who the hell would be attacking the rig? There were no markings on the transport, the operatives pouring out were blackclad and unidentifiable. Any enemy of Krivas had to be his friend, but he knew from bitter experience that friends couldn’t always be trusted to watch your back.
He paused, indecisive. If Bodie was on his way, he’d aim for the exit beside the second transport, but in all this chaos god knew what he’d run into on the way. A stray laser shot smacked into the deck in front of the transport, and he jumped. Then again, better in than out in this kind of firefight. The Skin might stop bullets, Patricks hadn’t said anything about laserburn.
He sprinted back the way he’d come, through the still-open door and into the outer corridor, and had turned towards the bar before he stopped, took a deep breath, and then headed back into the depths of the rig instead. If the mechas were gone, he’d know Bodie had got that far - and if they weren’t gone, then they at least needed the chance to save themselves from whatever new chaos had come to claim them.
They were still there, mostly pressed against the bars, and when they saw him they shouted, clamouring for release.
“Get to the transport!” he shouted. “The D-class! If anyone can pilot it, then get yourselves away.” He scanned the cage open, pressed himself back against the wall as they pushed and jostled each other to get out, to get away. It was anyone’s guess whether they’d do what they’d been told. The last mecha to leave, though, slowed at the doorway, and turned back. She was a variation on Just Jane, the same tall, voluptuous shape, but hair a shining copper, pale skin, and bright blue eyes. She held out a hand to stop him going past.
“You are not one of us,” she said. “Although you look like one of us.”
Doyle shook his head, impatient to be gone. “No.”
“You are orga,” she said, and then she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, orga. Good luck.”
Doyle looked at her in surprise, watched her as she stepped away to follow her companions towards the flight deck, and then took a breath and followed her back to the corridor, turning in the opposite direction, away towards the bar. If anyone saw him he was just one of many love mechas running to save themselves, but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to see anyone. He paused at each deck exit he came to, most still closed but a few wide open, scanning the rig desperately for Bodie. If he hadn’t made it this far, then…
There.
His hands clasped on his head, Bodie was being pushed and shoved along the deck by Krivas, a gun trained hard on him. Before Doyle could so much as shout out, Krivas pulled open the door of a flyer, and gestured Bodie towards it with the gun. As Bodie turned to clamber in, Krivas hit him hard across the back of his head with the butt of the gun, pushed him the rest of the way on board, and then scrambled after him and into the cockpit.
Doyle didn’t wait to see more, he looked around at the warring soldiers and black ops, took a deep breath, and made a run for the next flyer in line. Krivas launched away as he ran, and he threw himself into the vehicle, scrambling into the cockpit and desperately punching in a flight override through one of Cowley’s apps. The dashboard lights flared into life, and he throttled up hard and fast, a manual chase after the receding red flashes of Krivas’s flyer.
The rig vanished behind him, swallowed by the night, and by a fog of cloud that had gathered since their arrival, barely hours ago. He managed to lock onto Krivas’s flyer, tried to work out where he might be trying to escape to. There were parts of Scandinavia above the waterline, but at this time of year it would be madness. Back to Scotland then, and probably further.
The miles vanished beneath them and around them and above them, one hundred, two hundred, three… Doyle settled into the pursuit, sure he’d been seen, knowing only that Krivas had to make the next move. The flyer didn’t have weapons, but in that case neither did Krivas - except for that gun. As long as he was out of range, there was nothing either of them could do but this dogged chase. Doyle took comfort in the thought that if Krivas hadn’t wanted Bodie alive, he would have shot him before they’d even left the rig.
They were approaching Colchester Drift when the comm channel suddenly whined into life.
“Whoever you are, you must want him very badly.”
“Check your course to the nearest land coordinates,” Doyle replied, the words coming back as if he’d spoken them to some villain or other just the day before. “You’re in violation, and you need to report for correction. This is your one warning.”
“The police?” Krivas sounded surprised. “How very boring. I suppose you don’t want him very much at all, then. You know the nearest land is the Drift.”
It was his one chance to surprise the man, Doyle knew, while he was feeling cocksure of himself, while he thought Doyle was a harmless copper. He began to recite speed restrictions to distract him, took the flyer up in a sudden lift, and then used the additional push to accelerate back down again, diagonally towards the other flyer. He stopped talking, needing to concentrate, locked the course, and slid open the door of the vehicle. He’d done this once before, but it had been many years ago, he’d been just a kid - and he’d been on a horse, not a speeding flyer. If he got the timing wrong…
Doyle locked his phone snatch to the code for the door of the other flyer when they were in range, waited a second more, and then made the jump.
He landed with a thud on the roof of Krivas flyer, which dipped its course under the sudden assault, but kept going. He dropped to his stomach and grabbed at the luggage rails, held on tight in case Krivas tried to throw him. Ahead of them, his own flyer continued its course, just far enough away and fast enough to cross Krivas without hitting him.
His timing had been good - but Krivas’s timing was better. Even as Doyle tensed to swing himself down through the open door, something dark and heavy appeared in the gap, hung for a moment, and then fell, a sudden pale blur as it tumbled face up, and then down again.
“Bo-die!”
There was a vague splash over the purr of the flyer engine, as Bodie hit the water, and then Doyle was moving, even faster than he’d planned it, urgent and desperate. He saw Krivas, surprised, raise his gun, but he had his own phone out, the taser set high. Its white crackle of electricity was shockingly bright in the dim cockpit, and then Krivas was crying out and slumping against the door. Doyle stretched across him to the manual release, pulled it open, and kicked him hard out the door and into the waves breaking on Colchester Drift down below.
It took a moment for Cowley’s app to hack into the system mid-flight, and every second was a harsh heartbeat against Doyle’s chest, in his breath, a pounding against hope. He swung the flyer around, and dropped low to the waves, turning the heat-seek on and the searchlight, and peering desperately down to the sea. From up here he could see the direction of the tide, flooding towards the scraps of land that had built up to become Colchester Drift, a long thin stretch that was little more than sand and scraggy grasses.
There! A dark mound showing dim on the heat-seek, levels reading dangerously low. Doyle swooped down, landed with a clumsiness that he didn’t care about, and pushed himself outside to fall to his knees by the body.
It was Bodie.
The surf loud in his ears, Doyle turned him over, working automatically, as he'd been taught as a child, as he'd been trained over and again since then. Clear the airway, tilt the head, and breathe... and breathe... and breathe... Bodie's skin was cold, clammy to the touch, and he couldn't make his chest work and...
And Doyle didn't want him to die.
He thought of hotels across the city, of Bodie naked against him, and laughing, and of making him laugh. It wasn't right that Bodie's lips were so still beneath his, that they didn't tease and provoke and kiss him in this darkness... Compression to the chest, and breathe, and breathe... The wind whipped around them, salted and hard. Come on, Bodie!
Cowley and CI-bloody-5. Where were his dreams now, eh? Good lives laid down after bad, and pain and punishment and... and breathe... and breathe... and breathe... He'd joined the force to make a difference, and George Cowley made an even bigger difference so he’d wanted CI5, but Bodie couldn't die.
Breathe.
And then Bodie did. Doyle felt the air taken away from him, was too cold, too surprised to move away fast enough, so that Bodie coughed it back into him, convulsed under his hands, turned his head and retched seawater over them both, spluttering and gasping desperately, and trying to sit up, so that Doyle reached his arms around him to support him, and then to hold him as he shuddered to quietness again, breathing more solidly, breathing evenly.
Bodie was alive.
He took a shaking breath, turned his face into Bodie's neck, and kissed him just there, on the cold of his skin, the cold life of his skin.
"You stupid..." he began, pulling away so that he could see that Bodie really was alright, and had to stop to catch his breath again. "That how they teach you to blow your cover in the army, is it?"
Bodie looked dazed, surprised maybe, to be still alive. He leaned up to take his own weight, then shook his head, sending flicks of salt water into Doyle's face, and stared at him. "You look terrible,” he said. He looked around. “Where the hell’s Krivas?"
Cowley’s office was high up in the building, and the sun could be seen rising in the east, over the old town, over the waters and somewhere, further away, over the ocean. The sky was a wash of blue, pale but fresh, promising a cold but clear day ahead.
Bodie and Doyle stood side by side in front of Cowley’s desk, as he looked down at hard copies of their reports, turning a page now and then, occasionally frowning, once with a twist of a smile on his face. Finally, just as Doyle was about to crack, he looked up.
“Well then, you didn’t do a bad job, either of you.” He watched them exchange glances.
“No, sir.” That was Bodie, of course.
“If you look in that cabinet by the wall, Doyle, you’ll find a bottle and glasses. I think we could all do with a wee dram.”
Doyle turned his head, slightly puzzled, but he moved obediently to the cabinet, found the whisky and poured three measures. Three large measures, Cowley noted.
“Without Krivas to testify, the responsibility - and the complicity - falls entirely on Newbolt,” he said. “Krivas’s death was unfortunate.”
“It broke up the syndicate,” Bodie protested. “There’s no one will take that over from him.”
“No one else has the sheer brass,” Cowley agreed. “And Newbolt and Johnson will be locked into correction for a very long time. As I said, you’ve not done badly.”
“No sign of the mechas, I suppose?”
“No Doyle, no sign. But there’s been no death-signal reported from the transport either, which suggests it was powered down on purpose. You’ve left work there for the mecha recovery unit.”
“Yes, sir.”
Yes, sir his old grandmother. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you to tell them to stay put?”
“I didn’t know what was going on!” Another protest. “For all I knew it was the fourth war starting out there. Not fair to just leave them.”
“No.” He glared at them disapprovingly, but all in all, they - well, they hadn’t done badly.
“I’ve put an advice on the system to your former employers,” he said, watching with interest for their reactions. They wouldn’t object, he knew, not either of them, but as it had throughout the case, it was the human factor that interested him most. “You’ve been seconded for employment within CI5. The code-numbers from this operation will remain yours, as will your access to the security applications and equipment. You will work together as the 3-7/4-5 unit henceforth.”
“Permanently?” Bodie asked, one eyebrow raised, and there it was again, the exchange of looks between them. Aye, he’d done well here.
“For as long as I say so, Bodie!” He stared up at them still. “Well? Do you have any questions?”
“No, sir!”
“No, sir.” That was Doyle - maybe a wee bit reluctant, but he could see the spark of interest there, aye, even eagerness.
“Well then - return the Skin to Patricks upstairs before you go, Doyle, along with your field test report, and then you’d better both have the rest of the day off - I’d suggest you use it to organise your affairs. You will be moved into CI5 secure accommodation sometime this week.”
“Er… yes, sir.”
“Then I will see you at seven tomorrow morning.”
"Seven... ouch!" Doyle flashed a frown in Bodie’s direction, but Bodie smiled innocently back at him, then took hold of his sleeve and pulled him towards the door, away, Cowley suspected, not only from this office, and CI5, but from the rest of the outside world, for at least a few hours. Yes, very interesting.
"Seven o'clock!" Bodie said, one hand raised in cheery farewell, the other settling palm down somewhere on Doyle's lower back. "Running all the way, sir!"
Title: The Waters and the Wild
Author: Slantedlight
Slash - B/D
Archives - Not yet, I need to have a double-check that everything's right (it was a bit of a rush in the end...)
Disclaimer: Bodie, Doyle, George Cowley and CI5, nor anyone or thing from the Artificial Intelligence world are mine, I'm borrowing the worlds purely for pleasure, my son...
Notes: Believe it or not, this all stemmed from that picture of Gigolo Joe being picked up by the authorities in the amphibicopter. I suddenly thought what if it was Bodie and Doyle doing the pick-up...? *g*
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Date: 2017-01-04 08:31 am (UTC)I'm so glad you finally got it all together for our enjoyment, and your satisfaction.
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Date: 2017-01-05 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-10 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-25 06:35 am (UTC)I'm glad you chose to finish the WIP. Great story!