Apartment 2

As Martin walked up the stairs he remembered that Edward had had a passcard for the elevator; presumably the security forces here hadn’t managed to get hold of one yet.  Or it was reserved for their Commander’s use, perhaps.  The stairs weren’t too much of an inconvenience, and the public areas of the apartment building were cold enough that he was actually glad to be moving and generating his own warmth.  His breath crystallised in the air in front of him, a soft, opaque cloud of moisture that fell as a tiny quantity of snow.

More men were stood on the first landing, blocking his way.  The one in the lead raised a single eyebrow, and Martin felt a glimmer of anger again with the way they were behaving.  Surely it was obvious, if he was here, that he’d already been allowed up the stairs?

“I’ve been asked to report to Commander Baume,” he said, resisting the urge to say ‘told’.  “They said he was on the first floor.”

A gloved hand was held out, indicating that it wanted papers.  Martin sighed and pulled them out of his jacket again and handed them over.  He tapped his foot while they were reviewed, ignoring the sharp look from the lead guy.  He was wearing a bullet-proof jacket over a fleece-lined coat with a high collar, and what looked like a black polo-neck jumper underneath that.  His trousers and boots were also black, and he looked like he was supposed to stand out and attract attention from conspiracy theorists.

“Go through,” he said after handing the papers back to Martin.  “You would appear to be the reason we’re all here anyway.”

The men moved aside very slightly, and Martin had to step carefully to avoid touching any of them.  His ears burned, despite the cold, at the implication that he was somehow at fault.  At the end of the corridor a man opened a door with one hand, the other one still holding onto the sub-machine gun at his hip.  Martin thought that he probably couldn’t fire with any accuracy like that, but how much accuracy would he need in a tight little space like this?  It would be like fishing from a barrel… or whatever the idiom was.

The door had a brass number 2 on it, and was clearly somebody’s apartment.  There was a beige carpet down in the hallway and pictures on the walls; family photographs and staged portraits.  An older woman seemed to be present in a lot of them, and Martin decided that she probably owned this flat.  The first door he passed was half-open and through it he could see a half-lit bedroom; curtains drawn and a single table lamp turned on.  There were clothes scattered on the floor, and a full pizza box sitting on a dressing table.

The next door was the bathroom, and then after that was the kitchen.  Four cups sat out on a counter next to an electric kettle, and more cups were piled higgledy-piggledy in the sink.  Finally, at the end of the corridor was a living room, and there were three men, all in their fifties, sat around a low coffee table that was covered by a map of some kind.  They all looked up as Martin came in.

“Martin?” asked the man closest to him, who had steel-grey hair and eyes to match.  He looked like he’d been athletic when he was younger, but now there were signs of middle-aged spread and the skin of his face looked wrinkled and slack like he’d spent too much time in the sun.  Martin immediately christened him Steel in his mind.

“You were with Edward when he went rogue, weren’t you?  We’re glad they’ve let you come back.”

Martin stepped back one pace, a little taken aback by people suddenly acknowledging that he had a right to be here.  The guy sat on the same two-seater green couch as Steel noted it.

“The men outside are on alert,” he said.  He had yellowed fingertips and his hair had a sheen to it that made Martin think he dyed it.  He was the only one wearing a uniform jacket, and his shoulders had little stars on, indicating that he was much more senior that the people Martin usually dealt with.  Martin christened him Smoker for now, but knew that he was going to need to find out names.

“They’re very alert,” said Martin.  “I don’t think they really wanted to let me in.”

“Other than you, there’s only two other people they would let in,” said Steel.  “And we like to be sure that we know who you are.  While there was a problem with Edward that wasn’t your problem, and we’d like to keep it that way.  What we want from you, why you’re here, is so that we can recreate what happened and get a better understanding of Edward had time to do, and what he might not have had time to do.”

“That doesn’t make much sense to me,” said Martin.

“That doesn’t matter either,” said Steel.  “But it’s what’s going to happen.”

Retourné

Snow fell from a gun-metal grey sky and the taxi pulled up at the corner of the street.  The buildings, tall, beige stone constructions from last century narrowed the view of the sky from street level, and the snowflakes seemed to fall more heavily when you looked up.  The street Martin wanted was cordoned off with blue-and-white police tape; a little further along there was black-and-striped yellow tape as well, just to hint that the police might be dealing with something dangerous.  Martin shivered; his coat still wasn’t warm enough for the weather, and though he’d paused at his locker to put a jumper on it wasn’t making as much difference as he’d hoped.  He paid the taxi driver, who frowned at the precision with which Martin counted the money out and then sped away without offering a receipt.  Martin shrugged, dislodging snowflakes from his black jacket, and then he lifted the police tape to step under it.

A police ghosted forward out of a nearby doorway and laid a hand on top of Martin’s head, pressing down gently.  Martin tried to move from under it, but the hand stayed firm on his skull.

“This is a restricted area, Sir,” said the policeman.  His voice was neutral but his grip was like iron.

“I’m aware,” said Martin.  “I’m allowed to be here.”

“No.”  The policeman pushed down harder now, and Martin retreated back under the tape rather than be forced ungracefully to the ground.  Once he was on the other side the policeman let go, and Martin could look him in the eye at last.  The man was younger than Martin, which annoyed him instantly, and looked more muscular too.  He was also wearing a heavy overcoat that looked like wool and definitely looked warm.

Martin smiled thinly, his lips pressed tightly together, and very slowly, telegraphing his moves, unzipped his jacket and opened it out to reveal the inside pocket, then pulled a thin leather document holder, about the size of a passport, from it.  He held it out to the policeman, who took it expressionlessly and opened it. He spent nearly a minute reading it, going through the different papers in there, and at one point lifting his head and scrutinising Martin’s face intently – Martin knew then that the man had reached the physical description and photo-id.  Finally the policeman closed the wallet up and handed it back.  Martin put it away, and lifted the tape again; the policeman made no move to stop him.

“Where do I find your boss?” asked Martin.  The policeman didn’t shift his gaze, but pointed upwards and behind him.  Martin looked up, having now to shade his eyes from the rapidly-falling snow, and saw another policeman standing on a tiny balcony – were they called Juliet balconies, he wondered for a moment – with a peaked cap shading his face, watching.

“Thanks,” said Martin, annoyed that he couldn’t even worry this young man.  He set off down the street towards the black-and-yellow tape and the apartment that he’d been in with Edward.  Beneath his feet the snow squeaked as it compressed, and his footprints blurred in twenty seconds; by the time he’d reached the front door of the apartment block the ones by the policeman’s post were invisible unless you were looking for them.

Two more policemen were stood in the entry hall of the building, and Martin had to hold his wallet up to the window and tap on it before they’d even come to the window to see who he was.  When they opened the door they made him stand outside while they went through his documents even more meticulously, and when they finally let him in he was shivering uncontrollably.

“First floor first,” said one of the policeman, who had a scar on the side of his neck; white lines where the flesh had been slashed apart and only slowly knitted back together.  “You report to Commander Baume; he tells you what you can do and where you can go.”

Martin pressed down the desire to ask the man if he knew what Martin’s job was – he’d read the documents, clearly he did – and reminded himself that this was an action to try and catch the Tailor ultimately.  If they didn’t do things like the book then people like Edward got in.

He swallowed, suddenly feeling obscurely grateful that these men were being so meticulous, and pushed the lift button.

“Stairs only,” said the other policeman, pointing.

Debrief

Cecily looked at the two tattered books on the table and then at Martin.  He had sat, as instructed, on the other lab-stool.  It was flat-topped with no back, and high enough that he had to rest his feet on the footrest of the stool – a simple, slightly flattened metal strut between the legs – rather than on the floor.  He felt like he constantly had to sit upright or risk falling off.

“The books aren’t really a prize,” she said.  Her voice sounded slightly regretful.  “The girl would have been much better.”

The silence lingered, as Martin was unwilling to say anything about the mission.  In his eyes it was a clear failure.  Cecily picked up one of the books and opened it, flipping pages back and forth.

“How long have you known Edward?” she asked.  Martin’s mouth fell open, the sudden change of conversation catching him by surprise.

“Well,” he said, thinking.  “I’d not met him until this mission, but his name has signed off various research documents that I’ve used in the past.  Cecily stayed silent.  “And… I’ve heard about him, of course.”

Cecily nodded.  She wasn’t smiling.  “What do you think of his actions during this task?” she asked.

Martin paused before answering, thinking about the scene, the young girl, and then waking up in the shower.  “A bit odd,” he admitted finally.  “The girl was clearly more important than me, so I don’t understand why he dragged me into the bathroom to wake me up.  He should have got her out to the car and then come back for me if necessary.”

“You were a team,” said Cecily.  “Surely he shouldn’t leave him partner behind like that?”

“No.”  Martin shook his head.  “We had every reason to believe that the flat wasn’t a threat and that we had time.  He should have taken the girl and worried about me later.”

“Is that what you would have done?”

Martin paused to think again.  Edward hadn’t done much to be likeable on the mission, but would he really have left him on the carpet, fainted, while he got the girl back to the car?  “Yes,” he said at last.  “But….”

“But what?”

“But I’d have done all the background reading first,” said Martin.  “Edward said that he didn’t know that I was sensitised to Odnose-B and he didn’t know why I’d fainted.  I’d have done the reading and I’d have known that.  So I’d have known that taking the girl would have removed the language, and that he’d have probably woken up and come down to the car after me.”

Cecily closed the book gently, and turned it round so that Martin could read the title; gold embossing on a green paste-board cover.  It said: The House at Pooh Corner.  He read it, and then looked at Cecily, his eyes asking the question.

“The books are useless, in fact,” she said.  “Edward disappeared shortly after you both returned here.  The books that he was supposed to take are definitely missing from the flat, but we don’t know if he left them there, if they were taken with the girl, or if he took them himself.  And he certainly did know that you had been exposed to Odnose-B.  Have you checked the time since you got back?”

Martin looked at his wrist reflexively; his watch was half-hidden under his cuff and he had to slide it back to look at it.

“Two-thirty,” he said.  It was an analogue watch with gold hands and numerals, a little flashy, intended to convey the impression of a salesman or a middle manager trying too hard.  Cecily pointed to the clock on the wall.  It gave the time digitally as 14:50.

“You were out for about twenty minutes,” she said.  “Which is actually quite a short time considering it was Odnose-B you were listening to, but you said you were out for three, and your watch is set to show that too.  We think Edward was doing things in those twenty minutes, but we don’t know what.  We think it’s unlikely that the girl really had her hands torn off, especially now we’ve found a woman two flats below who is dead, and did have her hands torn off.”  Martin blanched slightly, but held Cecily’s gaze.  She continued, “So right now, you’re on special duties.”  She held up a hand as Martin tried to speak.  “You’re hunting for Edward.  We want to know what he’s done, and how long he’s been doing it for.”

Words that hurt

Water was pouring over his face.  Cold water.  Reflexively he tried to breath and got a mouthful of mixed water and air.  He started coughing, and crunched up.  Finding he was free to move he kicked out with both feet, and felt them connect with someone.  There was the noise of something falling over, and then he got his head out from under the water, and his feet underneath.  He crouched, using one hand to wipe his eyes clear and the other ready to strike.

He was in a small bathroom with a peach-coloured bathroom suite.  There was a bath-mat hanging on a towel rail and two toothbrushes in a small ceramic pot stood on the corner of a basin, where the groove for the soap was.  Edward had fallen backwards into the bath and was struggling to get out.  Behind him was a shower cubicle with the water running.  It took him a moment to realise that that must have been where he was a moment ago.  He grabbed Edward’s hand and hauled him out of the bath.

“Where is he?” he said.  The bathroom door was closed.  “Did he run out?”

“Who?” Edward’s voice was slightly choked.

“The guy who was waterboarding me.  And what were you doing while he was doing that?  Practising swimming in the bath?”

“No-one was waterboarding you!” Edward sounded indignant.  “You passed out when I opened the door, and I dragged you in here to wake you up.   Only then you attacked me and pushed me in the bath.”  He bent down and rubbed his shins.  “That hurts!”

“I passed out?”  Martin paused, and thought back.  There was a hazy in his memories that felt somehow familiar.  The door had been opened, Edward wasn’t being anywhere near cautious enough.  There had been a girl, sitting at a desk… had she said something? Everything fuzzed then.

“Yes!  You just staggered forwards, your hands at your ears, and fell on the carpet.  God knows what you’ve done to the scene out there!”

“There was a girl…,”

“Yes, handcuffed to a desk.  She’s still there, she can’t go anywhere.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Three minutes?”  Edward checked his watch, which Martin noted was a slim Rolex.  “Four minutes and eight seconds now.”

“Right.  Right.  The girl – was she speaking when we came in?  Talking to someone?”

“Reciting,” said Edward.  “I’ve put a sticking plaster over her mouth to stop her.  She was reciting numbers in Odnose B.”  Martin stared at him.

“Didn’t you do your background reading?” he said at last.

“What do you mean?  Of course I did!  I wrote the background reading!”

“On me.”

“What?  No, you’re just another goof-up sent to ‘help’ me with a retrieval job because you messed some other job up.  Why would I care what you did wrong last time?”

“Because my last time would have been surviving five minutes of Odnose B.”

The two men stared at each other across the tiny bathroom, Martin’s gaze fiery and direct; Edward’s cold and piercing.  Neither man broke eye contact, but Edward said,

“That’s longer than I’ve ever heard anything managing.”

“That’s why you should have done your reading.”

They held their stare for another few seconds before Edward looked down.  “Can you take her out to the car?” he said.  “I still need to get the books and we’ve lost a lot of time.”

“So long as she can’t speak now, shouldn’t be a problem,” said Martin.  “Looks like I’ve been sensitised to the language.”

Edward opened the bathroom door, and then stopped.  He sighed.

“What?” Martin considered pushing past him, but then decided that no-one could know that he was in the bathroom at that moment.  That might be an edge.

“She’s gone.”  Edward walked out into the grubby living room and pointed at the desk.  Blood had sprayed all over it, and the handcuffs were still there, still around her wrists, which dripped dark blood onto the carpet.  The torn flesh was ragged and long strips of skin dangled, floating slightly in currents in the air.

“Sweet Mary,” said Martin looking at it.  “Who rips someone’s hands off just to get them out faster?”

“They did it near silently,” said Edward.  Martin snorted.

“The shower is still running,” he said.  “You’ve been listening to it for so long you don’t notice it anymore.  We gave them all the noise-cover they needed.  Where are these books you came for?  Let’s get something out of this mess.”

The numbers station

It was cold in the car; Edward refused to let him turn the heater on in case it drained the battery.  Martin rubbed his gloved hands together and pushed himself further back into the passenger seat, trying to get warm.  His coat was supposedly rated for Arctic conditions but he was rapidly losing faith.  His ears hurt, both the tips from the cold and the insides from the after-effects of listening to Odnose-B.  Next to him, dressed in a parka that Martin had laughed at when he first saw it, wearing thin leather gloves and a pained expression, was Edward Demarche.

Edward was nominally in charge of this situation, but both he and Martin knew that Martin had much more practical experience, while Edward was essentially a theorist who felt like getting his hands dirty now and then.  Even so, Edward had insisted on picking out the rental car, and had gone for something so nondescript that it wasn’t a reliable starter and had dodgy tracking.  Martin, who would have picked something newer, smaller, and more corporate had held his tongue and waited to see what would happen.  What had happened was that they’d driven to this building and then sat outside it, in sub-zero temperatures, for over ninety minutes.

“Where did you get that coat?” asked Edward.  His breath produced a rapidly dispersing white cloud in the air.

“High street,” replied Martin.  It had been a couple of days ago and he’d gone into the first outdoors-and-camping store that he’d seen and asked for a coat for cold conditions.

“Huh.  They never sell anything that really keeps the cold out.  You should go to army surplus.  If your soldiers freeze they can’t fight.  The army gets it right.”  This was the longest speech Edward had made since Martin had met him, and he waited to see if he’d continue.  When he didn’t the silence dragged out further and further.

“Movement,” said Edward, his head flicking to the side like a startled bird.

“Third-floor, daughter of the couple in 18,” said Martin, whose head didn’t move.  “Should be going off to see her school-friends at this time.”

Edward shot him a glance, clearly annoyed by Martin’s casual know-it-all attitude.  “She’s carrying a bag,” he said.

“Most likely a change of clothes; she tells her parents that she’s studying and then she goes out with her friends.  To lots of places.”

“You read the background material then.”  It wasn’t a question, just a blunt statement.  Martin nodded still not looking over.  He seemed entranced by the end of the street.  “You wrote it,” he said.

They waited another twenty minutes before a short man wearing a trenchcoat and an oversized fedora left the building.  Edward sat up and leaned forward immediately.

“Good to go!” he said hoarsely.

“Not yet,” said Martin, tapping a tooth with one of his fingers and listening to the slightly hollow sound it made.  “Give him a chance to remember he’s forgotten something and come back.”

“That doesn’t happen,” said Edward, frowning.

“More than you’d think,” said Martin.

Only after another five minutes had passed did Martin agree to leave the car.  He and Edward checked the street and then crossed to the building.  The front doors weren’t locked, and led into a lobby with a set of wooden postboxes, each numbered in brass, and a single pass-card controlled elevator.  Edward produced a pass-card from his pocket, and called the lift.  When it arrived it also needed the card before any of the floor buttons would light up.

“Third floor, second door on the right,” said Edward as the lift ascended.

“Do we have a key?”

“Yes.”

“Booby-traps?”

“As in, do we have any?”

“As in, are we expecting any?”

“Not exactly,” said Edward.  “There’s been no evidence that he has to disarm anything when he comes back.”

“Hah.”  Martin said nothing else until they were stood outside the apartment door: number 13.  Edward produced a key, but Martin held up a hand and listened at the door first.  After a moment he produced a slim rod and pushed it into the lock.  When he was satisfied the lock wasn’t booby trapped he pressed his ear against that and listened again.  His whole head throbbed.

“Voices,” he said.  “Definitely someone talking in there, maybe two or three.”

“You’ve got a gun.”  Not a question, just a flat statement.  Martin stared at him.

“Yes, but we don’t want a shoot-out.  The gun’s insurance, a way of making sure we can get our own way.  We don’t want everyone firing and bringing in the neighbours and police.”

“Then why bring it at all?”

“In case.”  Martin felt the Edward’s reluctance to talk was rubbing off on him.  “What are we expecting in here?  Apart from the guys having a chat?”

“Books,” said Edward.  “Important books.”  He slipped the key in the lock and turned it before Martin could say anything, and then flung the door open.  Straight in front of them was a spacious living room, with a small desk set up in the middle of it.  Sat at the desk, manacled at the wrists and ankles was a young-girl with rat’s-tailed hair and blood from old nosebleeds crusted around her nostrils and across her face.  In front of her was a microphone and a notebook, and with sudden shock Martin realised that what he was hearing wasn’t conversation at all, but numbers being recited in Odnose-B.  The entire room seemed to swim before his eyes, and he collapsed, falling to his knees and then forwards onto his face.  He was dimly aware that Edward was doing something, but the words were ringing in his head and drowning out all conscious thought.

The low form

Cecily picked up the piece of paper using a pair of tweezers, and shook it at Martin.  “Where did you get this?  Exactly?”  She laid it down on her desk again, a large wooden bench with a laptop at one end and a set of labelled petri dishes pushed to the back.  This was her laboratory, which she shared with five other scientists, none of whom had fewer than two Ph.Ds.  Martin, perched on an uncomfortable lab stood, swallowed hard and looked at her.  His hearing was still a little fuzzy and his ears ached in any temperature below 25C.  He was carrying a pair of ear-warmers in his hands, having taken them off when he came into the lab.

“The Tailor put it in front of me after he turned the radio on,” he said.  The memories were hazy as though someone had spilled acid over them and they’d been partly eaten away.  He could remember the Tailor turning the radio on, and then the next thing he remembered was a smile full of yellowed teeth and the piece of paper.  Then there was a kind of greyness when he knew he was there and hurting, and after that there were people around him again, talking to him in ways that didn’t make him want to curl up and die.  He remembered flashing lights, but he couldn’t remember if there’d been an ambulance or not.  He remembered a fast, bumpy journey while he was lying down, but not where he’d been while he was lying.  His first memories that felt like his again were of waking up in a narrow, hard bed with pristine white sheets and seeing a middle-aged woman with curlers in her hair sat at the end of the bed, watching him.

“Did he say anything to you about it?”

“I couldn’t hear him, the radio was on,” said Martin.  He shuddered; he could remember the first words, if that was really the right word to describe the noise, that had come out of the radio, and he really wished he couldn’t.  No-one should have to vomit a language out of their throat to get rid of it.

“Before he turned the radio on, did he say anything to you about this paper?  About Odnose B?”

Martin flinched so hard he fell off the stool and landed on the floor; the stool caught in his legs as he fell and ended up on top of him.  Cecily raised an eyebrow, and waited to him to untangle himself and get back up.

“You can stand if you wish,” she said.  Martin shook his head, and sat back on the stool, positioning it so he could lean on one arm on her bench.  She frowned but said nothing.

“He said… he said something about the intent of the number station,” he said.  “He said… he said I should ask what the intent of the numbers station was.  I think.  The memories are, I don’t know how to describe it.  Like when you drop a mirror.”

“Crazed,” said Cecily nodding.  “Yes, Odnose B does very strange things to the mind.  It wouldn’t be surprising if your memories were all hazed and cracked like a mirror really.  The agents say you were in there with the radio on for at least six minutes.”

“Was it that short?”  Martin looked astonished when Cecily laughed.  It was a modest chuckle at first that turned into a full roar of laughter as she saw his expression.

“Didn’t anyone–?  Really?  Oh.  Well, in our animal experiments the rabbits and mice die after about 90 seconds, and the primates don’t do a whole lot better.  We’re trying to get hold of a gorilla but it’s not easy.  It might be easier now we can show that human subjects have lasted six minutes without death though.  Six minutes of Odnose B is a fairly accurate description of eternity as I understand it.

Look Martin, did you read this note?  Do you know who wrote it?  It says here that there are high and low forms of Odnose B and that what you were listening to is the low form, and that’s why you’re here.  I really, really want to know everything you know about this note.”

Martin swallowed.  “Look, I think the Tailor wrote it, and I can remember a smile, it might have been his.  I don’t know anything else about it though, he just put the note in front of me and I had to really concentrate to try and read it.”

“The agents said it was clenched so tightly in your hands that they had to give you a muscle relaxant to get it away from you,” said Cecily.  “It sounds like you knew it was important at least; did the Tailor say anything to make you realise that?”

“I don’t think so,” said Martin.  He blinked, his eyes slightly unfocused.  “No, he didn’t say anything about the note being important.  I think he just left.”

“How?”

“Huh?”

“No-one saw him leave the building, Martin.  We don’t know where he went, or how he got out.”

“But we had it surrounded!”

Cecily said nothing, but put the note into a little plastic sleeve using her tweezers.

“We’ve suspected that there’s something odd about Odnose B for a while,” she said.  “The texts we have disagree in places where we think we understand what’s being said, and there are substitutions that aren’t regular or maintained.  If there really are two forms of the language, then that might help us work out which is which.  But, and it’s big but for us, why are there two forms?”

“Two different kinds of speakers?” said Martin.  “I dunno, posh people talking and common people?”

“Speaking a language that kills the speakers and the people who hear it?”

Martin stared at her.

“We can’t even figure out how this language developed,” said Cecily.  “Or rather, our answers so far are almost as disturbing as the wretched language itself.”