Proxy, page 6
“Doctor Sizemore?”
The muffled voice coming from the other side of the door sounded unfamiliar. Sitting up, Isaac licked dry lips, his body filled with a sudden nervous tension.
It could be Zero in yet another body. Or it could be someone else entirely. Someone sent by Doctor Finch…or, worse, Raphael.
Glancing around the cramped hotel room, which still retained the lingering odour of its previous occupant, Isaac decided that if Finch’s men had tracked him down yet again, there was little he could do about it.
“Who is it?” he asked warily.
“Zero.”
The door opened and a heavily overweight man entirely unfamiliar to Isaac entered, bearing two paper bags above a broad white belly partly exposed by a too-small T-shirt. Isaac studied the man with a pang of distress, wondering with whom he had been proxying when Zero had, by some mechanism that still defied his understanding, taken control of this stranger’s body.
Isaac was still coming to terms with the revelation that Zero could not only hijack control of people’s bodies, at least so long as they were actively proxying with others, but also—incredible as it seemed—occupy more than one body at the same time.
In the process of the first few hours of his escape from Finch’s sanatorium Isaac had encountered four different individuals, all different from each other, but all responding to the name ‘Zero’.
Some of these borrowed bodies almost certainly belonged to proxy addicts—people whose self-loathing spurred them to spend as much of their lives as possible inside someone else’s skin, even for just a few hours. And there was no lack of people willing to rent their bodies out for cash, universal credit chips or untraceable crypt-coin.
When Isaac had asked Zero how many bodies he could control simultaneously, he was both astounded and horrified to learn that Zero couldn’t give him a definite answer. Meaning, potentially, there was no limit.
With that understanding, Isaac had foreseen a terrible future for humanity, should Zero ever fall into the wrong hands.
“I brought you breakfast,” said this particular iteration of Zero, putting one of the paper bags on the bed next to Isaac.
“Thank you,” said Isaac, reaching into the bag and lifting out a coffee and fresh bagels, both contained within edible takeaway boxes. He ate a bagel with one hand and searched around on the floor with his other for the pyjamas he’d worn during his escape from the sanatorium.
“There’s no need to put those back on, Doctor Sizemore.” Zero handed him the other paper bag. “I bought you new clothes.”
Isaac peered inside the proffered bag and found it contained jeans, fresh underwear, several T-shirts and a pair of sneakers, all freshly printed by the smell of them.
“Thank you,” he said, pulling the clothes on. Then he paused, one leg halfway into the jeans, and frowned at the big man. “How did you get all these things?”
“I bought them, Doctor,” the fat skin wheezed.
Isaac’s eyes narrowed. “With what?”
The fat man whose body Zero occupied wheezed again, as if the journey up the steps to the third floor of the motel had been the challenge of a lifetime. “With money.”
Isaac stared at him for a moment, then pulled the jeans the rest of the way on and sat back down. “You don’t have a bank account.” His eyes widened. “Do you? Have a bank account, I mean?”
“No, Doctor. Or at least, not one I can access that wouldn’t draw unwanted attention were I to spend it on such things.” The fat man pressed two fleshy hands against his chest. “I borrowed the money from this man.”
“Oh, Zero.” Isaac pressed one hand against his brow. “You stole from him. You can’t do that!”
The fat skin’s face twisted up in surprise and hurt. “I’m sorry, Doctor Sizemore,” he wheezed, and reached out for the paper bag still sitting on Isaac’s lap. “I’ll take them back. I’m sure they’ll agree to refund me if I—”
“No, wait,” said Isaac, putting a hand out to stop him.
He needed a coffee—several, really—in order to think clearly. He had needed clothes, and Zero had brought them to him in the fastest, easiest, most efficient and—unfortunately—most immoral way possible.
Zero gazed back at him with an expression like a hurt child and Isaac felt a stab of pity. “Does he have any identification? The skin you’re wearing right now? A wallet, perhaps, or anything else?”
“Yes.” The fat skin dug around inside his pockets and produced a chip-phone. Isaac took it from him: it was probably voice- or retina-locked which, given Zero was already occupying its owner’s body, wouldn’t have presented any challenge to an entity such as he.
“All right,” said Isaac, passing the phone back. “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to write a note—” he paused and studied the fat man as a sudden thought occurred to him. “I know this might sound stupid, but you do know how to write? I mean, using a pen?”
“I can write by hand, yes,” Zero agreed. “I don’t find it easy, however.” He flexed the fat man’s hands. “It never looks quite the same from proxy to proxy.”
It hardly surprised Isaac. Handwriting was one of the surest ways of detecting whether the person you were talking to was in fact the owner of that body, and not someone controlling it remotely via proxy.
“Write a note,” Isaac instructed him, “explaining that you borrowed the money in an emergency and that we will pay it back. Don’t sign it or provide any other form of identification, but place it in one of the proxy’s pockets. Include an apology for taking control of his body, however temporarily, without his permission. Then search the rest of his pockets for any other signs of identification. If you find them, make a second note for ourselves, so we know where to send him the money.”
“Yes, Doctor Sizemore,” Zero agreed. “What about the others?”
“Other what? Other bodies you borrowed?” He hadn’t thought of that. “How many of them are there?”
“Approximately forty-three at this moment, Doctor Sizemore.”
“Oh, for…” At least the AI was of the benevolent child-like variety. If Zero had been anything like the ones that featured in the violent action films of Isaac’s long-distant youth, God only knew what horrors he might have perpetrated by now. Not that Isaac would have allowed any such artificial intelligence to come into existence.
“There’s something else, Doctor Sizemore. I discovered Stacy’s whereabouts, but I’m afraid she’s been hurt.”
Isaac stared at the fat man with a mixture of fear and hope. He’d been stuck in this shitty little hotel room for the best part of two days, his terror growing exponentially for every second that passed without word from Stacy.
“How bad?” he asked, his voice betraying a slight tremble.
Zero stepped towards a wall-panel TV and turned it on. He selected a news channel and Isaac saw a scrolling summary running along the bottom of the screen with Stacy’s name: WOMAN INJURED DURING POSSIBLE PROXY SUICIDE ATTEMPT IN NORTH LONDON IDENTIFIED AS ESTRANGED DAUGHTER OF BILLIONAIRE RAPHAEL MARKOV.
Other scrolling headlines replaced the words and Isaac felt something lurch deep inside his chest.
“She’s in a hospital,” Zero explained. “One owned by a Telop Industries subsidiary.”
“How did it happen?” Isaac croaked, staring at the screen in horror.
“The initial reports said she tried to commit suicide by jumping from the roof of an arcology, Doctor Sizemore, but only fell a short distance before landing on a balcony and injuring herself. Some news feeds are speculating about whether she’d gone back to proxying illegally, only to have one of her clients try to kill her.”
A suicide junkie, in the current parlance: the very words sent a chill deep into Isaac’s bones. There were people out there who got a sadistic kick out of murdering anyone foolish enough to proxy with them, so they could experience the thrill of violent death without actually dying.
“Well,” said Isaac, “we know now that’s not true.” Finch had even known they were meeting with a journalist. “Where is this hospital?”
“Kensal Green,” Zero replied.
Isaac nodded with determination. “I don’t know what Raphael has planned for her, but we have to get her out of there somehow.”
“Of course, Doctor Sizemore.”
“Zero?”
“Yes, Doctor Sizemore?”
“Remember to call me Isaac, won’t you?”
The fat man hesitated, then complied. “Yes, Isaac.”
Isaac stood. “You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? If I know Raphael, whatever intentions he has towards her, they won’t be good. He’ll have her under tight security. We’re going to have to figure out some way to get her out of there. And do it without harming anyone.”
Long seconds ticked by before Zero finally responded. “That could be difficult, Isaac. People might get hurt regardless.”
“You’re the supercomputer, Zero. Make sure they don’t.”
“Even so, it will be difficult.”
“But not impossible?”
The fat man shook his head. “No.”
CHAPTER
SIX
RAPHAEL
Far below where Raphael Markov stood looking down from his office window, traffic and pedestrians moved through the city of London like cells in some vast living network.
He stepped back from the floor-to-ceiling window and in response it became semi-opaque, filtering the exterior light. An icon blinked in one corner of his vision and he lightly tapped a silver ring clipped to his right ear, catching sight of his reflection in the window as he did so. The ring, he thought not for the first time, gave him a certain piratical edge.
“Sir?” said a voice in his right ear. “I’m afraid there was another security breach this morning—a journalist. He got as far as the nurse’s station on the second floor of the Peartree before one of our security teams intercepted him.”
“Thank you, Goulding. I’ll handle it from here.”
“Sir.” Goulding cleared his throat. “Should I advise your gym staff regarding whether you’ll be needing them today…?”
“Tell them I’ll be on schedule,” Markov replied. “Send Lovatt through.”
He tapped the ring again, breaking the connection before stepping over to his desk. Holograms of water-lilies span in a slow current beneath its glass surface. He touched the glass and an icon blinked in the simulated depths.
Thirty seconds later the door to his office slid noiselessly open. “Sir,” said the man who entered, his expensive suit doing little to conceal his musculature.
“Lovatt,” said Markov, looking over at him. “I just learned some journalist managed to get inside the Peartree and came very close to speaking with my daughter. Do I need to emphasize how very, very unhappy that makes me?”
Lovatt nodded. “My apologies, sir. We’ve tightened security, but there’s only so much we can do without attracting more press attention. The hospital staff have been complaining about having to present identification every time they leave or enter the building. Plus, they’ve been asking a lot of questions about why so much security is required when—”
“I don’t give a fuck about your excuses!” Markov bellowed. “Make sure nobody gets in or out unless I say otherwise, whoever the hell they are, or you can hand in your resignation here and now. And if they complain, tell them the same thing I just told you. They work for me.”
Lovatt inclined his head once more, betraying no outward sign of emotion. “Understood, sir. Is there anything else?”
Markov fell into the seat behind his desk and smoothed his hands over his face. “My apologies for shouting at you,” he said after another moment. “Circumstances have made me…somewhat tense.”
“That’s understandable, sir.”
Damn Finch! Raphael’s gaze alighted on a framed photograph that sat on a shelf close by his desk. It showed a man in late middle-age clinging to a sheer rock face somewhere in the Ardennes, a seemingly bottomless gulf of air beneath his feet. The man grinned up at whomever had been holding the camera. Raphael’s own features, reflected in the frame’s glass, were nearly identical to the older man’s.
“Any news about Isaac Sizemore?” he asked Lovatt, without shifting his gaze from the photograph.
“We still haven’t been able to track him down. Someone disabled all the security cameras in the Abbey Rush Centre just minutes before he disappeared.”
Raphael nodded, thinking. “In other words, he had outside help.”
Lovatt inclined his head slightly. “We did, however, source CCTV footage from a hotel around the corner from Abbey Rush. It shows a van departing the Centre in the early hours of the morning. A few hours before that, the same van was reported stolen.”
Even if Finch hadn’t drugged him into a stupor, there was no conceivable way Isaac could have organized an escape without someone’s help. But who?
Raphael started at a sudden, terrible thought: was it possible Isaac had offered his services to someone else? Could there be other players in this game apart from Telop Industries, perhaps another corporation or even a government?
No, he decided; if that was the case, Lovatt and his men would never have been able to track Isaac down in the first place while travelling south through Scotland. Isaac would have long since disappeared into some secure lab, most likely with yet another new identity to further obfuscate his trail.
And yet, someone had helped him escape…so who?
“Keep at it,” Raphael told Lovatt. “Report to me the instant you hear anything.”
Lovatt nodded curtly and departed.
Raphael stayed where he was, hands steepled together and his gaze fixed on the virtual water lilies. He’d often wondered over the years whether he was wasting his time, hiring a private security firm to monitor Stacy in the increasingly dim hope Isaac might get in touch with her…until, at last, he had.
After that, it had been a simple matter to uncover Stacy’s plans to travel back home to England in order to meet an investigative journalist named Martin Wilber. When Isaac had suddenly shown up at almost the same time, travelling by ferry and train from Norway to Aberdeen, it was easy to conclude he was on his way to meet both Stacy and Wilber.
And that was something that could never be allowed to happen.
Subsequently, Raphael had ordered that Isaac be captured at the soonest opportunity. The scientist might still have valuable information buried in his demented skull.
The girl, however, was valueless, so he had hired a specialist to take care of her in such a way that her death would draw few questions. Isaac, locked in a ward as he was, would have been none the wiser.
All had seemed to go well until the specialist hired to kill Stacy fucked up spectacularly, leaving him with no choice but to put on a very public show of taking care of her instead.
Maybe, thought Raphael, his gaze still fixed on the water-lilies, some good could come out of this; maybe the girl could be used as leverage to make Isaac come to him.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
ELIJAH
Elijah saw the bunched fist swinging towards him at the last second.
Twisting to one side, he slammed himself up against the wall of the prison workroom. Stobbs let out a guttural snarl and swung at him again, his scarred and battered face twisted up in fury.
Only then did Elijah see the shiv, clenched in the other man’s calloused hand.
Stobbs was the big and muscular type, and brute force was pretty much all he had going for him. Elijah, by contrast, was lighter and faster, and as Stobbs came lumbering forward Elijah brought up one knee, feeling it crunch satisfyingly into the other man’s balls.
A rush of air escaped Stobb’s lungs and the shiv slid from his grasp, clattering to the workroom floor. Pressing his advantage, Elijah wrapped both arms around his attacker’s head and slammed it repeatedly against the side of a machine press.
Then Elijah turned and ran out of the workroom and down a corridor past the laundry rooms, wondering all the while just where the fuck the guards had all disappeared to. They’d been everywhere a moment before, and now it was like they’d all vanished into some nether dimension.
He’d never crossed Stobbs—indeed, he’d barely exchanged a word with the man since starting his sentence. There was no reason, no rhyme to the attack.
But then again, Stobbs was an enforcer for the Cullen firm. And the only reason for Stobbs to try and kill him was that someone, somewhere had ordered a hit.
Well, balls to that.
He crashed past two other inmates, not looking back to see if Stobbs was coming after him, and burst into the kitchens. A fat blob of a man with a shaven head crossed his path, carrying a huge pot of something that bubbled and steamed.
Hearing the commotion, he turned to look Elijah’s way. His eyes grew round as saucers, his gaze focused on something behind Elijah.
Elijah squeezed past the fat man, then turned and shoved him hard in the small of his back. The man stumbled, sloshing boiling water onto the kitchen floor—and onto Stobbs, who’d been in close pursuit.
Stobbs screamed and stumbled backwards, slipping on the wet tiles and hitting the floor with a thud. Knives and pans came clattering down around him, and Elijah could see that his pursuer’s neck and forearms were already turning beetroot-red.
“Tosser,” Elijah muttered, panting hard.
The screws finally put in an appearance, four of them bursting into the kitchens with their batons drawn. When Elijah saw the look on their faces, he knew immediately it wasn’t Stobbs they’d been expecting to have to scrape off the floor.
Elijah stepped up close to the fat kitchen worker, who looked as perplexed as he did terrified.
“It was an accident, right?” Elijah said to him in a low voice, fixing him with a hard stare. “You didn’t see nothing suggesting otherwise.”
“Yeah. Sure.” The fat man’s head jerked up and down. “Accident.”
Elijah breathed hard through his nose and flexed his fists, but didn’t resist when the prison guards grabbed him and cuffed him.
