London in Black

Chapter One
                                                                                            
 
London, 2029
                                          
 
I just threw a fucking chair through Wilkes’ window.
              Lucy looked down at her shaking hands.  The red tint was fading.  Breathe.  Looked back up, around the squad room.  Six other cops, all men: cheap suits, stubble.  All staring.  She saw six, knew there were more, hidden in the dark edges of her tunnel vision.
              Her thoughts came in bursts.
              I just threw?  A fucking chair?  Through Wilkes’ window?
              She had.
              She could see the chair.  There it was, crumpled in the corridor, covered in bits of frosted glass.  Black letters stood out against the flooring, and for a split second she thought of trying to fix it, trying to glue the thing back together like a giant puzzle.  First, the big letters: LONDON METROPOLITAN POLICE – HOMICIDE COMMAND – MIT 19. Then the small type: Commanding Officer, DCI Marie Wilkes.
              Wilkes.
Wilkes’ brand new window. 
              Fuck me.
             She tried to think, to process what she’d done.  Why?  Why would I…
              A rustle behind her.  She spun around, saw DS Andy Sykes.
              Oh.
Sykes.
She couldn’t remember what he’d done, which button he’d pressed.  Touched my stomach?  No.  Trapped me?  Can’t have.  It was gone, vanished into the red.  But he’d done something to set off an attack.  Must have done.  Sykes knew her triggers.  Pretended not to, but most certainly fucking did.  And now there he stood, shoulders shrugging, acting shocked.  Playing the victim.
Bastard.
A young DC reached out a hand – it’s okay, Lucy – but Lucy was too quick.  She pushed it away, took off.  Out of the bullpen, away from the stares, into the corridor, slamming the metal door behind her.
DI Lucy Stone, the Met’s youngest homicide detective, was on fire. 
Her hands shook as she stomped down the hallway.  She jammed them into the pockets of her baggy black hoodie and focused on her breathing.
Inhale, exhale.  Inhale, exhale.
Fuck me.
Lucy reached the end of the corridor, rounded the corner.  Ahead, she could see the gleaming New Scotland Yard lobby.  It was late, had been dark for hours, but the lobby still bustled.  Two uniforms sauntered down the hall towards her.  She split them, sending coffees flying.
Focus.  Breathe.
Just an attack.  It’s now.  It’s now, not then, stay now…
              Images from two years ago burst into her mind, rapid-fire.  Heaps of bodies, skin blackened, sloughing off.  Green hazmat suits.  A shrieking child, running naked.  Drones.
The Scourge.
And then, she saw – It.
The Thing That Happened.
She held back a scream and willed herself forward, towards the exit.
Inhale, exhale.
Lucy wiped away a tear as she shot into the night.
 
‡ ‡ ‡
 
Outside, the chilly November air felt soothing on her face. 
The panic faded as she passed the New Scotland Yard sign and turned down the Embankment.  Big Ben loomed ahead, a giant hypodermic pricking the night sky.  She pulled a hand from her hoodie and held it out as she walked.  Better.  It trembled, but she could at least read the tattooed script curving round the inside of her right wrist: JACK.  She rubbed it and thought of her older brother.
Oh Jack, help me.  I fucked up.
Would Wilkes take it personally?  Hard not to.  Twenty five years on the job, no kids, whole life given to the job.  Finally made up to DCI, finally her name on the window.  Her window.  And then, in an instant: smash.
Lucy’s stomach twisted.
I didn’t mean it, Ma’am.  Truly.
Just, Sykes did something, set me off, an attack.  Fucking Sykes…
The Tube roundel came into view and, next to it, the yellow lights of the Carpenters’ Arms: MIT19’s local.  Lucy slowed, took a breath.  Checked her mobile.  Eleven.  An hour.  Fine.  Plenty of time for a quick one.  She threaded through the punters smoking on the pavement and ducked inside.
The Carpenters’ was a shit pub.  Grim, threadbare carpets.  Whiffy.  A coach party of tourists in matching red anoraks clogged the entrance.  She pushed through them easily, arms strong from years of boxing.  Past the blinking fruities, straight for the empty rear of the bar.  She sat down on a stool.
Harry the bartender came over.
“The usual, Lucy?”
She said nothing, just gave a final exhale.
“Right.”  He poured a Coke from the gun, fiddled with the coffee machine, sunk two shots of espresso into the glass.  Pushed it across to Lucy.  “The usual.”
She took it without looking up.
Good bartender, Harry.  Deserves a better pub.
Across the room, the tourists laughed at something.  Lucy glanced over, saw they had discovered the poppy box.  A cardboard box filled with black paper poppies stood next to the till, and the tourists were taking turns plunking in a pound coin and pinning a poppy to their Gore-Tex.  She caught snippets of the coach guide’s commentary: “…second anniversary…worst terror attacks in…drones, all releasing London Black.  Yes, yes, precisely, a nerve agent, no antidote…”
One of the tourists fished a black rubber wristband from the box.
She squinted.  London Strong was printed in white on one side of the band.  On the other was a number.  It was too far away for her to read the digits, but she knew it all the same: 32,956.  Every Londoner knew that number.
Christ.  A fucking death count band.  What sick fuck –
Her mobile phone began to vibrate.  She pulled it from the pocket of her faded black jeans, glanced at the screen: Incoming call, DCI Marie Wilkes. Lucy mashed the red button and thumped the phone down on the bar.  Not in the mood for a lecture, Ma’am.  She took a sip from her glass.  After a moment, texts began to bubble up.
Suspended.
A pause.
Unofficially.
A longer pause.
Lucy…please.  For me.  Try the Counsellor.  Just once.
More ellipses appeared, but Lucy ignored them.  She shoved the phone back into her jeans pocket and put her head down on her forearms.  Took a deep breath.  Fuck.  Fuck fuck fuck.  Suspended.  She felt like vomiting.  Wilkes can’t.  I need to work.  She knows I need to work.  Else, what am I?  If I can’t work, if I’m not a cop, how can I ever pay the Debt?  How can I –
A squeak, as someone sat down on the stool next to her.
“Long day?”
Man’s voice. Unfamiliar.  She didn’t bother to look up.
“Lot of things flying around,” she said into her bicep.
Do I look like I’m up for it?  Really?
He paused, then tried again.
“Saw you just now as you came in.  Haven’t we met before?”
Christ. Of all the lines to pick. Well, Romeo, let’s see.  She raised her head, sighed, then stared up at his face.  Squinted.  Felt the gears turn, her little Party Trick working its magic. 
And…nope.
“No,” she said.  “No, we’ve never met.”
 Out the corner of her eye, she noticed Harry grin.  Wait.  Harry knows I’m a Super Recogniser?  She filed this away.  Meant to be private, a goddamn medical condition, but some other MIT19 regular must’ve let it slip.  Probably Sykes.  Wanker.
“Oh,” said the man.  “Right.  Course.  Sorry.”
She watched him scan her face.  Inspecting the goods, yeah? Lucy had a broad, square jaw tapering to a pointy chin.  A cute chin, men told her.  Which, fuck that, it’s a strong chin.  Chin that can take an uppercut. Espresso hair, chopped short.  Big almond eyes, bigger purple bags beneath.  Thin nose, hard mouth.  Twenty-nine years old.  Like what you see, buddy?  Too bad.  Not on offer.  Item out of stock.
His eyes lit up.
“Oh, sorry… but it’s just, I think I know…”
She saw where he was headed.  For fuck’s sake.  Not the Actress now.
“I mean,” he continued, “this is awkward, I know, but you aren’t by any chance – ”
“No.  Not her.”
People had made the comparison at least once a week for years.  It annoyed her more and more each time.  Yes, flattering, yes, the Actress is pretty, but how can they not see how different we look?  Apples and oranges, oranges and apples.  And I’m the wormy fucking apple.
She stood, finished her drink, pushed the empty glass back towards Harry.
“Now if you’ll excuse me…”
“Wait, wait.  I didn’t mean…”  He rose from his stool, hands raised, but Lucy was already moving.  She brushed past.  Tried to avoid contact, slip him like a punch, but his arms were too long.
She felt his fingers graze her stomach.
Oh fuck.
Not again.
Images began to flash.
She put her head down and bolted for the door, crashing through the tourists with their poppies and their smiles and their ghastly fucking wristbands.  It was raining now.  Her black trainers squeaked as she fled down the steps into the Tube station.
 
‡ ‡ ‡
 
She was calm again by the time the train pulled into Barbican Station.
It was fully kitted out for London Strong Week now, Lucy noticed.  Banners, signs, posters of sombre-looking Londoners holding hands.  A programme of events: the Remembrance Wreath Procession, a London-wide moment of silence.  Black poppies everywhere.  As she rode the escalator upwards, she passed a poster with a bright red tag line across the top: CAN YOU SEE ME?  But she couldn’t – the man’s head was completely defaced.  Someone had stuck dozens of round stickers over the top, each with an image of a large, two-barred cross.  At the bottom, she could still make out the poster’s footer: THE SURVIVORS’ RIGHTS ASSOCIATION SUPPORTS LONDON STRONG WEEK.
Heathens.  She tried to peel off a sticker as the escalator carried her past.
At the top, she tapped through the ticket barrier, then stopped at the Cox gate for the London Black scan.  An amber light flashed.  The chem sniffers whirred as they passed over her body.
God bless Flinders Cox.
She tried to remember the last copycat attack.  Up in Harringay, she thought, week ago now, but maybe she’d missed one?  Never know.  No one announces them, no one claims them.  Not the same terrorists as the Scourge, the original attacks two years back.  Couldn’t be, those men were locked up, rotting away in Belmarsh.  But the copycats?  Whoever they are, whatever they want, the attacks just keep fucking coming.  The station clock read 11:40, and she tapped her foot as the scan finished.  A click, then green light.  The Cox gate doors whooshed open.  She walked through and headed out of the station, into the night.
It was raining harder now.  Thick drops soaked her sweatshirt.  Lucy flipped up the hood.  It muffled the street noise, tunnelled her vision.  Like one of her attacks in a way, but there was no red, thank God, and she could still think, sort out the new problem.  So.  Suspension.  Fuck.  But…unofficial.  Which means…what, exactly?
As she moved north on Goswell Road, the neighbourhood grew grittier.  Betting shops, chicken shops.  Metal shutters covered in graffiti.  Teenagers’ tags, mostly, but some bits still left from the Scourge, if you knew where to look.  A few red X’s.  Evac arrows.  And scrawled in silver on the side of a corner shop: We aLL DeaD NoW, WoE, WoE.
Lucy tugged on her hoodie drawstrings.
Reckon it’s just a warning.  Unwritten warning, those are a thing.  Still feel pretty shit about it.  Sorry, Ma’am.  But…might not be so bad, yeah?  If I can still work, still pay the Debt, that’s what counts.
She passed a cash point alcove.  A rough sleeper huddled inside, under a red tarp.  His cardboard sign was soggy and the pen had run, but she could still read the words: I Survived † London Black † God Bless.  She stopped, reached into her jeans pocket, dropped a pound coin into his battered Costa cup.  The man stirred.  A wheeze: “Bless.”  He pulled back the tarp.  Lucy turned away, but not quickly enough.  A thin gauze mask covered the man’s face, but through a slit, she could still see his eyes.
Black.
His eyes were entirely black.
She kept walking.  Sighed.  Felt bad about looking away, knew it was rude and hurtful and cruel, but seeing Survivors’ faces always made the guilt worse somehow.  Made the Debt seem bigger.  As if it wasn’t big enough already.
Five minutes later, Lucy turned off Goswell Road and approached her building, an ugly block of flats.  Barely affordable when she was a student at City; she’d only stopped worrying about making rent once Simon moved in, just before he proposed.  She unlocked the lobby door – hard to call it a lobby, really, just a crap little stairwell landing with a few post cubbies – and climbed three flights to her hallway.  Last door on the left: dented metal, its cherry red paint cracked and flaking.
Lucy stomped three times on the grubby doormat and entered. 
The flat was tiny.  Spartan.  One small bedroom, nearly empty.  She’d painted the walls black.  Ceiling, too.  A battered wooden desk shoved against the far wall was the only piece of proper furniture.  One mirrored cupboard.  Three floor lamps were spaced around the room, and Lucy made a quick circuit, switching them all on.  A free-standing pull-up bar lurked in the corner. 
There was no bed.
              She kicked off her trainers, then removed the hoodie, revealing a black vest.  A clothes hanger dangled from one of the lamps.  She took it down, pulled the hoodie through and hung it back up, smoothing the damp sweatshirt with her hands.  With her finger, she traced the ‘Jack’ embroidered above the right breast.  Thought about Jack.  About Simon.  How strange it was they never met.
              Her phone alarm began to chirp.
              Midnight.  Perf.
              Lucy padded through to the bathroom.  It had no door.  She’d taken it down off the hinges, dragged it to a skip behind the building, left it to rot.  It was her first task two years ago, once everything was over.  Done it even before she’d removed the bed, before she’d painted the walls.  Now she sat down on the toilet seat and pulled the vest over her head.
              Every inch of her torso was covered with bruises.
Big, angry, purple bruises.  Mean-looking, like she’d taken a full fight’s worth of body blows straight on, one after another after another.  In the middle of each one: a tiny needle mark.  To the left of her belly button, a small ceramic disc with a Cox Labs logo was attached to her skin.  She waved her phone in front of the disc, and a number appeared on the mobile screen: 7.4.
Right.  Boost time.
              A white cardboard box sat on the sink, beneath a cobweb-cracked mirror.  Lucy reached inside.  Pulled out a syringe.  It was enormous, needle fit for a horse.  The label running down the spine read, COX LABS – ELEMIDOL © – 30mL.  She rotated it in her fingers.
              God bless Flinders Cox, she thought. 
And then, mechanically: I am thankful for this Boost.
              She dug back into the box.  This time, she pulled out a small white sachet.  Tore it open with her teeth, extracted an alcohol swab and rubbed it on her stomach.  The purple skin glistened.  She removed the black circular cap from the syringe and tucked it into her jeans pocket.  Primed the gigantic needle.  Took a breath.
Now, think.
Think about what you did.