Reality Hack Read online

  ‘You want this, Nisa,’ he purred. He was standing again and he was behind her…

  ‘I want this,’ she said and even to her, her voice sounded like she was asleep. No! She tilted her hips back toward him. No?

  And then he was inside her. Thick and long: God he was big! Cool… His skin was cold. That did not seem to matter. There was a weird, burning sensation in the pit of her stomach that seemed to be growing. That did not matter either. She felt him stroking into her, over and over, and that was all that mattered. The burning sensation reached up through her body and she felt her heart stutter, and she thought she heard the door buzzer and a loud bang, but by then she had collapsed onto the counter and there was nothing but darkness.

  Westminster.

  There was a sound. It took Nisa a second or two to figure out what it was. Her brain felt fuzzy, dopy, kind of dim, like the one time she had tried weed and it had gone bad. A rhythmic beeping sound: a heart monitor. She was in a hospital? Why was she in a hospital? As her senses started to return, another question asserted itself with some force: why was she cuffed to the bed?

  She opened her eyes and lifted her head, trying to get some idea of what was going on. The room was blank and white, and did not look exactly like a hospital room. To her right was a bank of equipment which included the beeping monitor as well as a couple of instruments she did not recognise. One of those showed a number, 11, in red numerals. Nothing in red was ever good. The bed was a typical sort of hospital one with a solid frame around it, and the restraints she could feel on her wrists and ankles were presumably attached to that. She could not be sure since she was covered to her neck in a white, cotton sheet with a pretty high thread count. On the other hand, she was fairly sure she was naked under it, which was not standard hospital procedure. And there was the man sitting in a chair beside one of two doors, which looked very solid, she noted, almost like a cell door. The other door was lighter, internal: a bathroom maybe.

  The man in question looked like he was in his mid-twenties, maybe a little older. There was a hint about his face of something older, something a lot older, but she got the impression that that was too much experience rather than years. He was dressed in an open-necked sweater made of some sort of flannel, and dark jeans, and those obscured what looked like a fairly strong, powerful body. He kept himself fit; she could see muscles flexing as he turned the pages of the leather-bound book he was reading. His face was serious, hard, solid. High cheekbones above sunken cheeks and a solid jawline gave him a skull-like appearance softened by the black hair, wisps of which hung at the sides of his face. There was a slight widow’s peak and she thought she could see braids at the back when he turned his head, and she decided that his hair was an affectation designed to deny his basic conformity. He had gorgeous, blue eyes.

  All that was taken in in a second and then the normal flow of time reasserted itself as he looked up at her.

  ‘You’re awake then?’ he said, his voice calm, unconcerned.

  Nisa remembered that she was tied to the bed. ‘Who the fuck are you? Why the fuck am I tied down?’

  He stood up and stepped toward the side of the bed. The light from the overheads caught gold lettering on the cover of his book and she read ‘Decanic Invocation.’ He put the book down beside one of the monitors and peered at her for a second.

  ‘What do you remember?’ he asked.

  She opened her mouth to demand answers, not questions, but then the realisation hit her: her normally near-perfect memory was giving her next to nothing. What could she actually remember…?

  ‘I was at work,’ she said.

  ‘Gun’s Kebabs,’ he said, putting so much disgust into the two words that she felt obliged to defend the place.

  ‘Yeah, Gun’s Kebabs. It’s not that bad and it pays the bills.’

  He stared at her. ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was quiet for a Friday and then… Then this guy walked in. Really attractive.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Uh… Dark. I can’t… I can’t remember much about him. It’s weird because I normally have a really good memory.’

  ‘And what did this man do?’

  ‘I asked if he wanted anything and he said… He said…’ Her brow knitted in concentration. ‘He said he wanted something different, not on the menu… And after that there’s nothing but a blur until I woke up. In bondage. It’s kinky, but I’d like out now.’

  He coughed and then turned for the door. He did have braids, long, thin ones, capped with silver weights. ‘Someone will be in to remove the cuffs. You’re to stay in bed and rest until you’ve recovered fully.’

  ‘Why? What the fuck happened to me?’

  ‘Very apposite,’ he said, but she got nothing else as he opened the door and walked out. The locks which engaged when the door closed sounded very solid.

  June 8th.

  There was no clock in the room, not even on the instruments, so Nisa had no idea how long she had been there. As promised, a woman in a short, white dress had appeared and undone the cuffs holding her to the bed. The woman had introduced herself as Sandra and she had politely, but firmly, told Nisa that she needed rest, and lots of it. There had been pills, and one of them had probably been a sedative because Nisa had gone out like a light, waking up when her stomach was trying to gnaw its way out of her body.

  Sandra was standing beside the bed with a tray of food. ‘I’ve got soup and some crusty bread. You don’t get butter; it’s fattening. If you eat it all, you get dessert.’

  Nisa looked at the food being put down in front of her. There was going to be no major issue with eating everything there. She was more worried about it not being enough. ‘There’s dessert?’ she asked.

  ‘Jelly,’ Sandra told her. ‘Green.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  ‘Yes. It’s chocolate mousse.’ Sandra turned and headed for the door.

  ‘That’s just as stereotyped,’ Nisa called after her, and started ripping up the bread.

  Five minutes later, when she was scraping the last of the soup, a thick broth, up with the last of the bread, the man she had seen earlier walked in holding a folder and a small, plastic cup filled with something brown.

  ‘Aww, you play waiter too,’ Nisa said, grinning.

  ‘I see almost dying hasn’t killed your sense of humour,’ he said. He had an accent. American?

  Nisa’s face straightened. ‘I almost died?!’

  He put down the pot of mousse and then took a newspaper out of the folder, dropping it into her lap, which caused her sheet to shift down a couple of inches; the man seemed oblivious to the sudden display of nipples. It was a copy of the London Evening Standard and she checked the date. ‘It’s tomorrow already? I slept right through the day?’

  ‘You needed the sleep. Page three.’

  She opened the paper and the article popped out at her along with a picture of the front of Gun’s Kebabs, the big front window shattered from some central impact point. Her eyes flicked over the print. ‘Gangland-style drive-by shooting? This isn’t the Lower East Side.’

  ‘That’s the official story. The man who came into your shop had gangland connections. Someone blew out the window and then shot him in the head. A very large calibre bullet, there wasn’t much left to identify him. The first bullet clipped you on the way through; you’re lucky to be alive.’ It was all delivered in a flat tone which gave her the distinct impression that what he was saying was all bull.

  ‘I don’t have a head injury. That’s not what really happened.’

  ‘No. The man you saw was a vampire. He attacked you. I put a forty-four Magnum round in his head while he was busy, but he got close to taking you out. Then I shot out the window and arranged the cover story, and had you transferred here.’

  Nisa opened her mouth, and closed it. She was not going to say the first thing that sprang to mind because that was crazy.

  ‘And here is?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll get to that
. Hanson wants to talk to you later.’

  ‘Okay… You are?’

  ‘You can call me Kellog.’

  ‘Like the breakfast cereal?’

  ‘That has two Gs.’

  ‘Do you ever speak in anything other than a monotone?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied flatly.

  He was obviously waiting for her to ask the obvious question and, feeling self-conscious, she reached up to her throat.

  ‘The term “vampire” is used for any of several different Bugs which live off the energy of other programs. They don’t all bite necks.’

  ‘You aren’t making any sense.’

  ‘Says the girl who spends her time working out how to do magic spells.’

  ‘I–’

  Kellog lifted the file, waving it at her. ‘Please, we’ve been watching you for a while. You and your little… gang of misfits. We got a notification from the States about your friend, Mister Truman. We know he accessed a certain website before it was taken down by the NSA. We know he has been attempting to discover what happened to that site. He’s good, it took effort, but we know.’

  ‘And… and you think that means I’m working magic?’

  ‘Actually, that device over there tells me you’ve been working magic.’ He pointed at the device beside the deactivated heart monitor which was now showing a pulsing, green zero. ‘It detects… aberrations in reality. Creatures like the one that attacked you can sense the same thing and they’re drawn to it. It chose you because you’ve been building up a charge for weeks. You’re lucky. We noticed you and I was there to stop it. Another few seconds and your nervous system would have shut down.’

  Spike had said no one should know, and now she was locked in some weird, X-Files secret facility with people who, clearly, already knew. Had they arrested the others? ‘So what happens now?’ Nisa asked.

  ‘Now, you recover. We want you back at full health and it’s going to take a few days. Then… we tell you your options. I have things to do, so you won’t see me for a while. Sandra will be looking after you, Norbery will be in to run a few tests, and you’ll meet Hanson at some point.’ He turned and started for the door.

  ‘Uh… thanks,’ she said to his retreating back.

  He stopped. ‘For what?’

  ‘Saving my life, I guess.’

  ‘Decide whether you want to thank me when you’ve heard what your choices are,’ he said, and then he walked out.

  June 10th.

  Nisa thought it was her third day in the room. That was based mostly on meals since she had slept through almost all of it. There was nothing to do aside from stare at the walls or ceiling, and by the end of the first day she could have drawn a perfect schematic of the room from memory. At least Sandra had decided that she was allowed solid food, and she was feeling less tired.

  That was when Norbery turned up. She guessed he was in his forties. There was a little grey in his brown hair and there were lines showing, especially around the eyes, but he still kept himself fit and he had a nice smile. He was quick with it too, which was a nice change from the taciturn Kellog and Sandra’s professionalism. He walked into the room pushing a trolley with a scattering of odd items on it, along with a stack of magazines and a clipboard.

  ‘Miss Harper, I presume,’ he said, grinning. ‘Not like there’s anyone else here. I’m Frank Norbery.’

  ‘Hi. Kellog said you’d be here to run some tests?’

  ‘Uh-huh. First test: they’re a bit old, but I brought some magazines for you.’

  ‘They could be printed by Gutenberg,’ Nisa replied.

  Norbery picked up his clipboard and ticked a box. ‘No apparent mental impairment,’ he said, giving her another grin.

  ‘Yesterday I was still pretty tired. Today… I’m going to go postal if I don’t have something to do.’

  He nodded. ‘Tiredness is a common side effect of the feeding process. There’s typically a reduction in serotonin.’

  ‘I still don’t actually remember what happened to me.’

  ‘That’s normal too, though that’s an effect of the hypnosis. If victims don’t remember what happened, the vamp is less likely to get caught.’ He ticked another box on his form as he explained.

  ‘I was hypnotised?’

  ‘It’s more like mind control, a telepathic effect. Hypnosis suggests more of a persuasion technique, yes? This is brute force.’

  ‘I’m, uh, still trying to get my head around the idea that vampires are real.’

  Norbery had picked up some sort of instrument. It looked somewhat anachronistic, maybe a bit steampunk. The case was a dark wood with lots of brass fittings and a silvery mesh port set into one side. There was an old-style electrical dial on the top.

  ‘You work magic, and you have trouble with the idea of vampires? What about ghosts?’

  ‘Jenna, my friend–’

  ‘I’ve read the file.’

  ‘Right. Still getting used to there being a file. Anyway, Jenna believes the ghost of her grandmother is watching over her. Lena’s into all sorts of superstitious stuff. They would say yes to vampires and ghosts.’

  Norbery gave a nod, studying his gadget. ‘How about… fairies? Werewolves? Demons?’

  ‘I guess… I mean, if there are vampires and ghosts, right?’

  ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth–’ Norbery began.

  ‘Than are dreamt of in my philosophy?’ Nisa suggested. Norbery raised an eyebrow. ‘I did go to school, you know?’

  ‘I’m aware. You have a first-class degree in applied mathematics which implies school and university. Why are you working in a kebab shop?’

  ‘Didn’t want to be a teacher.’ She frowned. For some reason she felt like being honest with this man. ‘It’s more complicated than that, but my options were limited and I didn’t like any of them.’ And now her options were going to be limited again.

  ‘And you like the kebab shop?’ He had put down the meter-like device and picked up something which looked far from scientific: a length of twisted wood which Nisa could not help but think looked like a wand.

  ‘No, but unemployment is an even less good option. Are you a magician?’

  ‘A witch.’

  ‘Oh…’ His own honesty was a little surprising. ‘I thought male witches were called warlocks.’

  ‘Not since the sixties. Sexual equality and all that. I practise witchcraft, ergo I am a witch.’

  ‘So… what is it you’re actually doing? I mean, that thing, the box, looked like something sort of technological, but…’

  ‘The thing in the box is a small, contained Glitch. Glitches are attracted to people who have been working too much magic. You build up what we call Probrum.’

  ‘Sounds like Latin.’

  Norbery gave her a smile. ‘It is. In this case it’s just jargon. By measuring the Glitch’s attraction to you–’

  ‘I’m sorry… A Glitch?’

  ‘Think of it as… a fault in reality. A defect. A glitch in modern terms. This one is stable and very small. It’s an electrical effect and we can contain it in a magnetic field.’

  ‘So you measure disturbances in the field to measure how hard it’s trying to get to me?’

  The witch gave her another smile. ‘That education wasn’t for nothing. Anyway, that was giving me nothing; you’ve shed much of your accumulated Probrum, so I’m going to cast a spell to measure what I need… Just as soon as you stop asking questions.’

  Nisa blinked at him and she felt her cheeks colouring. Generally embarrassed about nothing, she felt a little abashed to be stopping him working, even if he was, effectively, one of her jailors. She closed her mouth, got another smile, and watched as he raised his wand and began muttering under his breath. None of the words sounded like words, or any words she knew anyway. The chanting continued for about half a minute, and then he shuddered and looked down at her.

  ‘Something didn’t go according to plan there, but I got what I needed,’ he said.

&nbs
p; ‘What went wrong?’ Nisa asked, frowning.

  ‘It’s hard to tell. That’s magic for you. I expect I’ll find out, or perhaps I’ll be lucky and whatever it is won’t find its trigger before it fades. These things are rarely permanent.’

  ‘You know, the more I hear about magic, the less I think I should have started.’

  Norbery put his wand back on the trolley, picked up the stack of magazines, and handed them across to her. ‘Yes, Miss Harper,’ he said, ‘and if you continue studying it, you’ll likely discover that that wish just gets stronger.’

  June 11th.

  Whatever the place was she was being kept in, it had a gym. Not a big one, but it did have weights, a treadmill, and a couple of exercise machines. Sandra had agreed that some light exercise might be good for Nisa’s recovery and had obtained permission for gym access. That had taken a couple of hours. Every door in the place seemed to have code-key locks so Nisa still felt like a prisoner, and the short walk down one, blank, institutional corridor had told her nothing, but at least she was out of the room.

  Sandra had found her some athletic shorts and a T-shirt which was a little tight. She was in bare feet because the only clothes that had survived whatever had happened to her were her clogs and they were not very suitable for exercise. She was feeling fat and lazy after too much bed rest, and she knew she was going to overdo it, especially when Sandra left her alone in the gym, but when she stretched to prep herself for the weight machine, it felt like settling back into her normal routine.

  She did overdo it, all the while vaguely expecting Sandra to appear to tell her that she had to stop. Instead it was Kellog who walked in while Nisa was working on her adductor muscles. He stopped just inside the doorway, allowing it to swing shut behind him. He was dressed in sweats, obviously there to exercise. One eyebrow rose as he looked at her on the bench, thighs prised apart by the machine she was using. She thought, for a second, that he was visually commenting on her posture, or outfit, or both. Then he spoke.