Glow, p.1
Glow, page 1
ANGRY ROBOT
An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd
Unit 11, Shepperton House
89–93 Shepperton Road
London N1 3DF
UK
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Glowworms grow worms
An Angry Robot paperback original, 2021
Copyright © Tim Jordan 2021
Edited by Paul Simpson and Gemma Creffield
Cover by Glen Wilkins
All rights reserved. Tim Jordan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
Angry Robot and the Angry Robot icon are registered trademarks of Watkins Media Ltd.
ISBN 978 0 85766 843 1
Ebook ISBN 978 0 85766 887 5
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Mum and Dad, and for Joanna
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1
Rex
Rex woke and looked straight into the eyes of a dead man.
He screamed through clenched teeth, swallowing the sound, muffling it with his tongue so it exploded safe and silent inside the barrel of his chest. The mantra he’d lived by for years clattered through his skull: Act dead, act crazy, run like hell… fight!
He ran.
Peeling his head off the pavement, Rex rolled and stumbled upright, but something held him down. The corpse! It loomed from the gutter, hand clamped to Rex’s elbow, head slapping against his ankles as if devouring him feet-first. His scream came louder, harder, seeping through his conditioned restraint like steam from a blown engine.
His feet found traction in the mud and suddenly he was running, the corpse grinding along on its knees as they blundered from wall to wall like drunks in a storm, until his foot caught on a downpipe and he tumbled backwards into the mud, hauling the corpse across his chest.
Act dead.
He lay still, reading the sounds of rain and flowing water, heart pounding, eyes scanning the starlit alleyway, brick walls and barred windows, the slick, wet pavement of vitrified-pumice tiles that cobbled the streets of Coriolis City.
In that sodden stillness, he glanced down at the dead man’s head. Who are you? He asked using one of his inner voices. The man looked familiar, but death did strange things to people, stripping away identity leaving just bones, fur and meat.
The dead hand remained attached to Rex’s elbow with the ratchet-grip of rigor mortis. Plastic zip-ties wound around the hand, looping through the fingers securing it to the crook of Rex’s elbow. Right in the dead area… where the needles go.
His free hand took on its own life, caressing his head, tracing jutting cheekbones through days of stubble growth. Scar lines splintered out from his eye sockets. The same lines he saw reflected on that dead face: the lines of an addict, a user, a junkie, a man whose good times and luck had all been washed away. His hand touched his ear and he jumped – larger than expected.
“Stop that!” he yelled. The hand dropped away, limp by his side.
He remembered sleeping, probably for days judging by the weight of his headache. He never slept until he had to, until he was dead on his feet. Sleeping was terrible: a single long nightmare of falling through concentric rings of darkness as things grabbed at him. Fingers and spikes and words like barbs ripped away at his flesh as he fell until there was nothing left. But something always kept falling, some essence remained after everything was shredded and gone.
No, he never slept unless he had to, or something made him. He checked his head for unfamiliar bumps. Nothing; just raging pain like a hangover of a hundred days. He cupped his hand and sniffed his breath: vomit and some toxic mixture of flammable spirits. He spat at the dead man. Drinking buddy?
He eased up off the wet pavement, kneeling, pushing the corpse off to the side. Rain pattered his head. A gentle sound in the night. He tilted his face up and embraced the cool water as the mud washed from his face.
A knife hilt jutted from the dead man’s temple. My knife! His heart thudded. I’m a murderer? No. No. Couldn’t be. He shook his head, imagining his bad thoughts flying away with the clods of mud.
The knife made a sucking noise as he eased it free, wiping the blood on the man’s tattered jacket. He frisked the body for something, anything… drugs, booze, money… nothing. No one out here had anything. The dead eyes were sunken, wide, and deeply sad. Wisps of beard dotted the cheeks and strands of muddy gray hair slicked the pale scalp. His teeth were stumps, tombstones in a fetid swamp.
A dog howled in the distance. A tremble passed up Rex’s spine, meeting the warm trickle of rain running down it. He rapped his knuckles on his skull. How did I get here? His head felt like a bottle, drunk dry and smashed against a wall. His memories were just hopeful fragments, impossible to make whole.
He gripped the knife and jabbed at the zip-ties, pricking his wrist and drawing blood. Shit! Even tiny wounds killed out here.
A flash of movement dropped him flat next to the body. A cloaked figure moved into the alley and stood silhouetted against the dull light of encroaching dawn.
Everyone inside his head knew that look: A stinking lich. A drug-crazed cyborg that drained bodies dry, living or dead, harvesting whatever blood and drugs were available, then leaving the husks lined along the gutters like sacks of bones awaiting the militia’s trash collection trucks.
Act dead, act crazy, run like hell, fight!
He eyed the zip-ties and the dead body. He assessed its weight and the distance down the alley to what he hoped was a main street. He didn’t even know where he was… Coriolis City somewhere, Welkin District? That warren of nasty side streets that ringed the center of downtown.
The lich paused, its hooded head segueing sideways as if triangulating Rex’s range. It’s seen me. Fuck. Acting dead, crazy or fighting aren’t going to work here.
The lich stepped forward, throwing out an arm that might have held a gun.
Run like hell!
Everyone in his head ran with him, running by consensus, as no one remembered exactly how running worked. Like a sack of offal on legs, sloshing and twisting, defying all attempts to move in a straight line. The corpse dragged behind like an anchor, catching on curbs, downpipes and doorways.
The lich closed in. Rex felt its headwind.
“I got nothing!” he yelled, lurching down another side alley hauling the dead body, wondering whose arm would snap off first.
Fearing the gunsight lining up on his back, he turned again, weaving a winding course through the maze of alleys. He stopped, chest heaving, and retched air and bile into a corner. He eyed the knife in his hand and his reed-thin arm; a cut here, a slash there? No time. Just run.
Another turn, and another, dogs still howling, some of them inside of his head. The rain grew stronger, beating his face, blinding his eyes. Lightning flashed and the lich was only meters behind, hands outstretched, reaching, reaching. Should have played dead… should have–
He skidded to a halt as something unfolded from the wall in front, dropping its brickwork camouflage and unfurling its hidden layers of plastic and metal, shimmering with dangerous energy. It came straight toward him, long, spindly legs grazing the ground as a huge fan whirled on top where its head should have been. The thing lifted off the ground and hovered down the alley like a child’s balloon.
Lich behind him, machine in front, Rex flailed wildly against doors and barred windows, ripping at boards and grilles. A barricade of coiled wire and wooden planks blocked the only side street. With his single, useable hand, he dug out a hole and dove in, jerking the corpse desperately behind him until it jammed, halting his escape.
He could see the lich through the gaps in the barricade as the machine lifted higher
“Come on, come on!” he bellowed, rain still pelting, slime and muck robbing his valuable traction.
Something slipped, something in the mess of wreckage gave a few precious inches. He pulled harder still, free hand slashing at the dead arm with the knife, hoping something would sever. The bonds slipped, rain and mud easing the zip-ties down from his elbow to his wrist and mercifully onto his hand. Suddenly his fingers were wiggling free as the lich clambered over the barricade, its face a luminous, ghostly white.
It reached out its skeletal fingers and Rex heard an arthritic crack as his hand finally jerked free. He rolled backwards turning onto his feet only to find himself staring at a brick wall.
A dead end.
A doorway hung halfway up the wall, way above his head. He leapt at the sill, fingers squeezing into rotten wood, curling over the rim. But he didn’t have the grip, didn’t have the strength. He crashed back into the alley, spinning and slashing his knife in one last desperate act.
Fight!
A buzzing sound came from overhead and the machine dropped down between himself and the lich that eased down from the barricade to face him.
The bot advanced and Rex instinctively cowered behind his hands awaiting the dart, bullet or whatever this machine would use to kill him. The bot paused just inches from his face. A screen flipped outward. Words danced across the display, unreadable in Rex’s addled mind. A metallic voice issued from the robot.
“Are you tired of fear and repression? Do you crave an end to militia rule? The Breakout Alliance is a benevolent, global superpower seeking to take governing control of Coriolis Island. We will revive the economy, bring back security, jobs and prosperity, and make Coriolis Island the hub of ground-to-Earth-halo space travel once again. If you wish to live in a better, safer society, then please register your DNA and facial profile as a vote of consent.”
Rex stared, uncomprehending. Behind the robot, the lich edged closer, poised for ambush, bone-white face peering around the bot, black-hole eyes fixed on its prey.
Repression… that word sounded right. Yes, at this moment Rex definitely felt repressed.
“Ignoring this message will be registered as a no-vote.” The bot chimed. An outline of a hand appeared on the display and it edged nearer.
Maybe it was instinct, or just terror, but it seemed this machine was Rex’s only hope of not becoming a murdered husk. He reached out and pressed his palm to the outline. A camera on the robot flashed and Rex jolted backwards.
“Your vote has been registered along with your DNA profile and facial scan. Do you wish to register a name with this profile?”
“Err… Rex?” he said, eyes glued to the lich.
The bot shuffled on the spot absorbing the information. “Any other names?”
“N-no, just Rex.”
“Thank you, Rex-Nojustrex, for your time and vote.” The bot turned and with a gust of hot air from its fan, moved back down the alley past the lich as if it wasn’t there.
“Wait!” Rex cried, clawing after the bot. “Help me!”
“If you have further questions please visit channel 207 on the Global Broadcast Network or seek out your local Breakout Alliance representative.” The bot wafted over the barricade and vanished around the corner leaving Rex staring down his enemy, knife in hand.
The lich surged forward, and Rex’s back hit the wall.
“I can help you, Rex.” The voice was soft and easy. Wrapped in a black hood, the face hovered only inches from Rex’s knife tip. He paused. The face was more like that of a nun than any lich he’d ever seen. Black lines formed childishly simple features drawn on its porcelain-white plastic face.
“What – who are you?” Rex struggled to breathe, his heart pushing at his lungs as if trying to burst out of his throat.
“Call me Sister-Eleven.” The black lines curled into a smile and the eye-circles grew wider as if luring him inside.
Rex let the knife drop. “I’m – I’m sorry, Sister. I thought – I thought you were a lich. Life’s… pretty hard out here.” He glanced past her to the corpse spilling out from the barricade. He felt it needed an explanation but had nothing.
“Things will be easier now, Rex. Come, follow me.” She turned away from him, gliding back along the alley. A soft, electrical whirring accompanied her motions as she swept aside the barricade with a swish of her arm.
“You know my name?” he said, struggling to his feet, scared but wanting to follow.
“I heard you talking to that voting machine.” She glanced briefly at the corpse, mangled inside the mess of planks and wire, and carried on past.
For a second, Rex was falling again, back into the yammering void full of sharp points and demons. He could run, flee this machine and whatever it promised, back onto the streets, hiding and starving, awaiting the next lich or the next group of thugs or drunken militiamen looking for an amusing kill. He’d done that for so long now, longer than his memories could say. Life on the street was just one long series of “act dead, act crazy, run like hell, fight.”
In the end, his legs decided for him, trudging off down the alley as if tugged along in the Sister’s slipstream. He walked and turned, walked and turned, until they emerged onto a wide street; oily rainwater sloshed along filth-clogged gullies. An old-fashioned gasoline car sat parked on the sidewalk. Its original paint scoured away to rust.
Sister-Eleven opened the rear door and Rex climbed inside–
Into a cage.
He fought back, but tooth and nail ferocity were no match for machine strength, and she flung him back onto the bench seat and slammed the door. With the machine-faced Sister in the front cab, the car drove itself through the deserted streets and crumbling buildings. She looked back, head turning like a gun turret, shoulders and body pointing straight ahead. Her plastic face was blank now. As he stared, the lines reappeared, flickering through micro-expressions as if testing his responses.
He thrashed and squirmed, jamming his head into the seats, trying to break his neck. A slot opened on the Sister’s face where a mouth should have been. A sweet smell filled the air and a chemical calmness washed away his fight.
As the car traversed the matrix of streets through Coriolis City, he began tumbling through the blackness in his mind, shedding the memories and narratives that made him Rex. The fragments whirled away like diamond shards spinning through a void until there was nothing left, nothing but the vaguest sense of ever having existed at all, and that familiar, endless, horrifying feeling… of falling.
CHAPTER 2
Ellayna
35776 kilometers directly above the ragged peak of Coriolis’s Transit Mountain, Ellayna Kalishar stalked the deserted corridors of the Cloud9 geostationary orbital.
The low-energy floor lights followed her on and off as she passed. The thump and click of switch relays sounded like footfalls following unseen in the darkness behind.
Ellayna steadied her breath, lengthened her stride, and refused to look behind.
She had grown up alone, just books, games and imaginary friends. When setting up a board game, she’d play all sides. Soloing, she called it. In those days, being alone was fun, alone was safe. But she’d never, ever, expected to be this alone. Soloing for life. Her bitter laugh reverberated off the metallic walls like a dying cicada.
Once, over a hundred thousand people had lived on Cloud9, part of the all-powerful GFC, Genes and Fullerenes Corporation. But fourteen years ago, the Nova-Insanity had devastated Earth’s economy, ripping apart nations, their infrastructure, and even the space-elevator connecting Earth to the GFC orbital halo. Only two of the GFC’s ten orbitals remained inhabited now, a handful of people on Cloud8 and barely a thousand on Cloud9. The exact number was hard to tell, even in this highly monitored, post Nova-Insanity age. Her definition of living had become muddied, as bodies existed on life-support while minds inhabited virtual worlds.
She turned a corner, foot hesitating, awaiting the lights, heart pounding a little harder as the darkness ahead vanished and revealed… nothing, just the gym door. The light clicked off behind her, making a different noise, more like a sigh or a gentle death rattle. “Hello?” she said into the blackness. The light popped back on as if telling her there was nothing to worry about. It then flickered as if straining to stay illuminated. Something else failing, a tiny part of the great GFC machine dying of neglect.
