Slow Decay - By Andy Lane Page 0,81

in the box. He scooped two of the cards out, replacing them with a thick envelope he’d taken from a pocket in his coat. ‘Nice doing business with you,’ he said. ‘Hope the rest of your life works out OK. Drop me a line, OK?’

Gwen watched him return with an expression of disbelief on her face. ‘Firstly, that was bribery. Secondly, did that envelope really have seven hundred and fifty pounds in it? Thirdly, if it did then how did you know that’s how much it would take?’

‘Funny thing,’ Jack said; ‘it always ends up at seven hundred and fifty pounds with security guards, no matter where we start off. Must be a union thing.’

He tossed a card to Gwen. Choosing a moment when the lift area was momentarily unoccupied, they went through their booths together.

The lift doors opened on the twelfth floor to reveal a hall area with a deep carpet in neutral brown, hessian weave wallpaper and some unthreatening abstract paintings. A door to the left identified the Scotus Clinic in large sans serif letters.

Gwen pushed the door open.

The lobby of the clinic was empty, apart from several comfy chairs in a waiting area, three doors, the right-hand one labelled ‘Doctor Scotus’, and a vacant receptionist’s desk. Jack knew straight away that the place was deserted. There was a feeling, or rather, a lack of feeling to places that weren’t being used. They were missing something: an energy, a vibration, a background hum. It was like the difference between a sleeping person and a corpse; they looked the same, at first glance, but you could always tell them apart.

Sleeping corpses were a problem, of course, but Jack had worked out different methods of identifying them. And they didn’t turn up that often.

‘I think we were expected,’ he said, looking around. ‘This place has been abandoned. And pretty recently.’

Gwen moved across to the right-hand door. ‘Rhys said he talked to Doctor Scotus himself. We ought to start in there.’ She knocked twice on the door. ‘Just in case,’ she murmured.

‘Politeness costs nothing,’ Jack agreed. ‘Unlike security passes, which are quite pricey. I need to start cutting back on the bribes. I’ve almost blown this month’s budget.’

‘No answer,’ Gwen said. She pushed the door. It swung open, revealing a shadowy office. If there were windows in there then they were covered by curtains or blinds. She stepped inside, quickly being swallowed up by the darkness.

‘Can I ask you something?’ Jack said, still looking around the lobby.

‘Mmmm?’

‘Why is it there’s a Scottish pound note, but there’s no Welsh pound note?’

‘Mmmm!’

Gwen came staggering back through the door into the lobby, hands clawing at her neck. Something was wrapped around her throat, something about as thick as Jack’s thumb but with a wildly thrashing tail. Something coloured black, with vivid blue stripes encircling its body.

And it was throttling the life out of Gwen.

FIFTEEN

Toshiko rubbed her eyes for what felt like the thousandth time. They were gritty and hot, and rubbing them just made them feel worse, but she couldn’t stop herself. It was like scratching an itch, or sneezing: a reflex action that couldn’t be suppressed.

‘The problem with this place,’ she muttered, ‘is that I never know whether it’s day or night outside. The world could end, and I’d be completely unaware.’ In fact, she added silently, with Jack out there, the chances that the world could end in the next few hours were probably a lot higher. Things tended to happen when he was on the loose.

Her computer screen was still, infuriatingly, showing patterns of numbers as the processor crunched away at integrating the continuous readings from the hand-held scanner into a single coherent picture. It had been working for several days now, and gave every indication that it might churn away until the end of the world. Whenever that turned out to be.

Bored, she leaned back in her chair and gazed around the Hub. She still remembered the crazy mixture of feelings she had experienced when Jack had brought her in for the first time: terror at the huge responsibility that she had been given; pride that she had been chosen; excitement at the prospect of examining technology that no human had ever seen before; and, bizarrely, distaste at the place she would be spending her working life. The Hub was buried beneath Cardiff’s Millennium Centre area, built in and around the crumbling remains of an old water pumping station, and remnants of the old Victorian architecture were everywhere to be