CHAPTER TEN | NEO BRITANNIA

  38 hours until Contact, 27 days until Convergence

  ‘Chaos is not random. It is the endpoint that must be reached, the threshold that must be crossed. For what is the ultimate will of order, but the fullness of chaos?’

  – from ‘Catechisms of the Dyad’ by Dr Mujahid Shah

  ‘This is the last time, Laithan. This... this just can’t happen anymore.’

  ‘Fine,’ Laithan muttered, his eyes fixed upon the scene unfolding within Room Six of the British Museum’s Assyrian exhibition.

  ‘I’m serious,’ the director continued. ‘One more time—I’ll file a restraining order.’

  ‘I get it. Just... lemme talk to ‘im.’

  Stepping away from the flustered group of museum officials, Laithan moved toward the alcove tucked into the eastern flank of Room Six.

  ‘Laithan!’ His father’s voice cut through the crowd, captivated not by the treasures of human history, but by the old man clearly unravelling before them. ‘Thank goodness you’re here! I was just about to tell them the legend of Anzu and Ninurta!’

  ‘That’s great, Dad,’ Laithan said, brushing past content vultures and petty reporters, their barely concealed smirks illuminated by pap-cams and pre-Wall smarties. ‘Let’s head home and you can tell me all about it.’

  But Dr Mujahid Shah remained fixated on the bas-relief looming behind him. ‘Half lion—half eagle,’ he began, reaching to run a reverent hand over the monstrous creature carved into the relief’s left panel. ‘His breath was fire and water. When he unfurled his great wings, the southern winds hastened to his whim. When he roared, his voice was like thunder upon the heavens. Commending his might, the chief god Enlil tasked the fearsome Anzu with guarding his sanctuary and the Tablet of Destinies stored within. But Anzu, covetous of Enlil’s power, stole the tablet for himself and carried it to his mountain.’

  ‘Dad—’

  ‘Enraged by the storm-bird’s betrayal, the gods turned to Ninurta’—Mujahid looked to the heroic figure on the right panel, carved within a warrior’s stance—'the young hunter. With his mighty bow, Ninurta shot three arrows toward Anzu’s Mountain. But Anzu, now imbued with the tablet’s magic, reversed time itself, causing Ninurta’s arrows to dismantle and revert to their original parts: the shafts turning to reeds of the river, the fletching to fluttering birds, the arrowheads to flints of the quarry. But Ninurta pressed on, undeterred. Calling upon the might of the southern winds, he commanded that Anzu’s wings be stripped from his body, and as the demon fell from his mountain, broken and shamed, Ninurta slit the monster’s throat.’

  ‘But what does it mean, moon bat?’ a voice sniped from the crowd, cynical, goading.

  ‘It is Truth!’ Mujahid declared, his rheumy eyes gleaming with conviction. ‘Truth—Hidden in plain sight!’

  Having squeezed the scene dry of all its “viral-filler”, the click-hounds snickered as they peeled away, noses already twitching at word of some neo-woke protest up in Islington. Laithan watched, hollow, as his father lingered by the relief, fingers trembling as they hovered over Anzu’s lion-headed visage, as if seeking benedictions from a god long dead.

  ‘“It was by the will of the Father that they came into being,’ murmured the former curator, his expression blissful, distant—wholly somewhere else. ‘So that the sum of chaos might be attained.”’

  ‘Dad.’

  Mujahid turned eagerly to his son. ‘“All the heavens of chaos... became full of their multitudes.”’

  Laithan attempted to smile. ‘“Then they will be free of blind thought,’ he answered in kind. ‘They will trample on death.”’

  ‘Yes,’ Mujahid beamed, his every wrinkle a story he could no longer recall. ‘“And they will ascend...”’

  Laithan took his father by the arm. ‘“... into the limitless light.”’

  ‘Stone... Spire... Spire... Spire...’

  ‘Laithan?’

  Laithan glanced back at the relief—winged Anzu and blessed Ninurta, fixed in stone, yet somehow watching, their silent judgment raking his spine. A torrefied shadow, embered and flaking, had begun to materialise, emerging—as it always did—with an exsiccated whisper.

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  The relief loomed, indifferent. ‘Stone... Stone... Spire... Stone...’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Laithan rasped—a prayer, a curse, a plea—the entity’s seething pile of blackened ash taking on a human form, clawing itself across the blood-marbled floor, veined—mycelial—as flayed skin. ‘Leave me the fuck alone!’

  ‘Laithan?’

  And then the world flipped, heaving him through the folds, until all he could do was cling to her voice—a drowning man straining for air. ‘Uainin?’

  ‘Are you all right? We—uh... lost you for a moment there.’

  Laithan blinked, the white-walled galleries of the British Museum yielding to a glaring Koreaboo WokStop—kaleidoscopic, fractal, hazed with loops of AMV. Uainin watched as he scrambled for his medicine jar, fingers stumbling as they dislodged a tablet: TranquivaTM—the city’s go-to for keeping the mind... quiet.

  More or less.

  ‘How many of those have you had?’ she asked.

  Laithan chased down the cap with a swig of tequila-spiked boucha. ‘Since when do you care?’

  She let the hurt of it show on her face.

  Laithan ran a hand through his silver-brown hair. ‘Fuck—no. Sorry. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Uainin said, turning to chopstick a pinch of algaefied chicken to her mouth. ‘You’re right. I never cared.’

  The detective gave her a sideways look. ‘Never? Not even a little?’

  Uainin paused mid-chew, recalling the heat of his intimacy—fierce, assertive yet... breathtakingly tender.

  ‘Nope.’

  Laithan slouched into his own meal. ‘Jesus, slick. Way to kick a guy while he’s down.’

  The fibres of cyanobacterial “future-protein” turned to ash in Uainin’s mouth.

  Slick.

  It was the second time in three hours he’d called her that—a habitual overhang from sweeter times, a shard of mutual teasing that had once forged their bond.

  Before it started to hurt.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there... for your dad. For you.’

  Laithan flicked away his chopsticks, appetite snuffed. ‘Doesn’t matter. None of it.’

  If only she could believe him.

  Laithan swilled down another peppered gulp of boucha. ‘At least we can put this fuck-ass of a case behind us. Go back to pretendin’ neither one of us exists.’

  ‘Gladly. Right after you tell me how corpos are involved.’

  Laithan scoffed. ‘What you gonna do? Send a strongly worded email?’

  ‘Laithan—’

  ‘All right, fine. He sold it—his suicide.’

  Uainin frowned. ‘What do you mean “sold his suicide”?’

  ‘Think about it; one of his kiddies is in the clink, saddled with a debt so bats she might as well be servin’ life. Wouldn’t be the first time death’s been peddled for entertainment. And since—well... let’s say Gnostics’ve probably become the latest flavour of the month.’

  Uainin shook her head. ‘But to kill yourself...?’

  ‘Why not? He was dyin’ anyway. And if it means some cake-eater can crewmonkey the books—I mean, what wouldn’t you do for family?’

  Uainin didn’t want to think about it—couldn’t think about it. The guilt was already bad enough. ‘I guess that explanation is as good as any—if it weren’t for a single, glaring problem.’

  Laithan frowned. ‘What problem?’

  She looked at him, sharp as glass. ‘You, Laithan. Why the fuck did they send you?’

  It was the ping from her access slate that saved him: a notification. Uainin retrieved the device from her jacket and enlarged the holo with an upward swipe.

  ‘Oh, goddamn...’

  Laithan did his best to peer over her shoulder. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Our witness,’ Uainin said. ‘That fuckknuckle of a security guard, Declan Carmack? His digi-print just dropped offline.’

  Laithan thought back to two hours earlier when she had “bluespooned” her contact details to Mr Carmack’s smartie. ‘You pooned him with a tracer? Dammit, slick—’

  ‘His last sync was just outside the Dartford Dee-Zee,’ Uainin continued. ‘Used all his crypto to rinse a respi-mart of all their filters.’

  ‘Holy shit,’ Laithan said. ‘He’s runnin’?’

  Uainin didn’t answer, focusing instead on wolfing down her WokStop stir-fry.

  ‘Wait,’ Laithan added. ‘You’re not goin’ after him, are you?’

  Uainin stood from her barstool. ‘Why? You gonna stop me?’

  She downed the last of her drink in a single gulp. Laithan couldn’t help but stare, somewhere between anger and disbelief.

  ‘Uainin, it’s a fuckin’ dead zone. It’s not worth—’

  ‘Says the guy who wouldn’t let me close this damn case when I wanted to. Now you want me to drop it? Sorry—not buying it.’

  She tossed her rubbish, serving tray and all, into a nearby recycler before striding for the exit. Laithan lingered, his conscience like a jacket two sizes too small—tight in all the wrong places, impossible to shrug off.

  ‘Fuckin’ hell, Uainin.’

  He necked his own drink—and then followed.

  * * *

  Hooked up to an apheresis machine, Helena felt as if her very essence was being siphoned, one molecule at a time. Across the room, Dr Penelope Song paced the lab, her brow furrowed with something uncharacteristically close to dread.

  ‘So, you learnt nothing—nothing of what we’re supposed to do? Christ Almighty, Helena! People died for this!’

  Helena clenched her fist against the ache of the intravenous catheter in her arm, watching as her blood was cycled through pumps, valves and centrifuges. ‘You think I don’t know that? You think I’m not just as frustrated as you?’

  ‘“Return. Complete Convergence”,’ Song repeated, her voice tight. ‘That’s seriously all you got?’

  Helena shot her an ice-cold look, and for a moment, it felt uncomfortably like one of her father’s. ‘The Deep was never going to be obliging. For all we know, that’s all we need.’

  Song let out a snarl of frustration as she stepped toward the machine. ‘This had better work, Helena,’ she said, tapping the output vial slowly filling with a shimmering liquid—ethereal, humming, swirling with bioluminescence. ‘Things were fine before...’

  She never finished the thought. They both knew how it ended.

  ‘Do you have enough?’ Helena asked.

  The doctor contemplated the vial. ‘Give me another hundred,’ she said, a grimace of sympathy flickering. ‘Can’t risk looking charitable now, can I?’

  Helena sighed and settled for the long haul.

  ‘You’re planning on seeing him again, aren’t you?’ Penelope asked.

  Even now, with so much of her blood outside her body, Helena managed to blush. ‘You disapprove?’

  Penelope gave a dry chuckle. ‘It would be highly hypocritical of me if I did. Besides, if it’s all downhill from here... why not?’

  Helena hesitated, her legs drawing instinctively closer. ‘Does it... hurt?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Penelope said. ‘But does the prospect excite you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then the hurt will be worth it.’

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