Ella’s mother was upstairs when Ella heard a yowl from their cat Ginger, followed by a scream and a dreadful crash. She shouted for her mother, suddenly afraid, then upon receiving no reply, she went to the stairs to look.
There she saw a dreadful sight, something no-one should ever see, much less a child.
Her mother was lying at the foot of the stairs, her eyes open and vacant, her head twisted at a horrible angle.
It’s better if we skip over the subsequent few minutes. It may be imagined that Ella tried to rouse her mother, and she screamed and cried in terror, instinctively understanding that something was horribly wrong.
Eventually she remembered what her mother had told her, over and over again, and she went to the telephone and dialled 999 for the emergency services.
The woman on the end of the line could hardly understand what Ella was saying, but after a minute she seemed to get the idea. She told Ella to stay on the line, and that help would arrive very soon.
Of course, Ella’s mother was quite dead, having tripped over the cat and fallen all the way down the stairs.
The ambulance arrived surprisingly quickly, although to Ella, the wait seemed like forever.
A man and a woman appeared at the front door.
Unfortunately Ella wasn’t sure how to open the door, but somehow the man and the woman were able to open it from the outside.
“I’m Sam and this is Charlotte.” said the man.
“I think she’s died.” said Ella, sobbing, her face a mask of misery and tears.
“No she’s not dead.” said Charlotte, reassuringly. “She’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
They seemed to know exactly where Ella’s mother lay. They hurried there and the man laid a computer tablet by her side and began pressing buttons on the screen.
Ella’s mother’s neck straightened. Blood splashed on the stairs ran back into cuts on her forehead, and the cuts healed. She sat up.
“What happened?” she said. “Who are you?”
“Paramedics, ma’am.” said the man. “You fell down the stairs. No serious damage done.”
As they were driving away, Sam said, “We can’t keep doing this. They’re going to catch us sooner or later. It’s too dangerous.”
“Sam!” said Charlotte, outraged, “Imagine what would have happened if we hadn’t intercepted that call! That little girl’s life would have been ruined, and her mother would be dead, for a start.”
“I know, I know.” said Sam, gripping the steering while tightly. “But look, tragedies happen all over the world, every day. We can’t fix the vast majority of them. We don’t hold ourselves responsible for them. We can’t. There are only two of us. And anyway, if we were miraculously able to go around fixing every single problem, people would just take more risks.”
“You’re such a cynic.” said Charlotte.
“At any rate, we can’t share it with the world.” said Sam. “It’s too powerful.”
“I’m not suggesting we share it with the world.”
They drove on in silence for a while.
Eventually Sam said, tentatively, “About that idea I had.”
“No.” said Charlotte.
“What, no?”
“It’s too weird. If you do that, I’m never touching you again.”
He glanced at her. Certainly she wasn’t completely serious, but she wasn’t entirely joking either.
“I’m not talking about becoming some kind of transhumanoid cyborg! It’s just an implant, which could be easily removed at any time. Everything would be safer with an implant.”
Charlotte shuddered.
“I’m not discussing it.” she said, and she turned to look out of the window.
“All right, then.” muttered Sam under his breath.
The following day they were sitting in the room they used as a laboratory when Orion intercepted another call. Sam was fiddling with some electrodes immersed in a pool of platinum solution, while Charlotte sat at a terminal chatting with Orion, attempting to teach it advanced moral philosophy.
Orion’s ruthless machine logic made it curiously susceptible to applying moral laws in a way that Charlotte found unsettling.
She swore out loud as Orion once again suggested murdering people in order to prevent a larger hypothetical catastrophe.
“You know what the problem is?” said Sam.
“What’s the problem, Sam?” said Charlotte dryly.
“We human beings don’t have an infinite library of solutions to an infinite set of moral dilemmas, waiting to be taken off the shelf. We figure things out as we go along. Lots of problems have no good solution.”
“You’re no help.” said Charlotte, sighing.
Then the alarm went off, and Orion briefly summarised the situation.
“Child, male, drowned in a swimming pool.” it said. “ETA, seven minutes.”
“Let’s go.” said Charlotte.
They slid down a pole at the side of the room, ran through the tunnel at the bottom and jumped into the fake ambulance.
They watched the dashboard screen anxiously, Sam drumming his fingers on the dashboard, as Orion monitored the traffic outside and carefully analysed the direction of gaze of everyone present near the road.
Finally a light on the dashboard turned green, a bleep sounded, and the ambulance shot upwards. A small crater opened up in the road and the ambulance popped out of it, then the crater resealed itself behind them.
Soon the sirens were blaring as they rounded corners at high speed, traffic pulling over for them, clearing space.
They soon arrived at an old house just outside the town.
“Didn’t this used to be a ruin?” said Charlotte as they ran to the door.
“Looks like someone’s refurbished it.” said Sam.
They pounded at the door, and a man let them in. He wore a thin stubbly beard with black-rimmed spectacles, and light brown hair swept back from his forehead, tied behind his head in a ponytail.
“It’s my son!” he said, frantically “Please hurry!”
The man showed them through a door and into a white unfurnished room. The room contained only two chairs completely covered with painting sheets. At the far side was another door. They yanked it open. Behind it was only a patch of unpainted brick.
They spun around confused. The man was pointing a pistol at them.
“You and I are going to have a little conversation.” he said.
“What is this?” said Sam.
Another two men appeared behind the first. One of them, grey-haired, wore the white coat of a doctor. The other was an enormous tall thickset man, resembling a nightclub bouncer.
“You can call me Zach.” said the man with the ponytail. He motioned to the thickset man and said, “Gaz!”, which was apparently the man’s name.
Gaz marched over to the chairs and removed the painting sheets to reveal two sturdy metal armchairs replete with straps and chains. They would not have been out of place in the execution chamber of an American prison. Gaz proceeded to push Sam and Chalotte into the chairs.
Sam immediately protested as Gaz tried to strap his wrists to the arm rests. Gaz punched him in the stomach while Zach levelled the pistol at him menacingly, and Gaz was able to complete his work.
He then strapped Charlotte into the other chair.
“Why are you doing this?” she said. “Who are you?”
“All will be revealed.” said Zach, and the doctor smiled grimly.
Gaz fetched a black bag, then the three men stood facing the helpless Sam and Charlotte.
“I used to work for the police.” said Zach, assuming the air of a professor giving a lecture to a room of students. “I was assigned to look into the case of a couple who pretended to be paramedics. According to local legend, this dynamic duo mysteriously appeared in an ambulance and effected remarkable cures.
“In the cause of investigating this phenomenon, I had your phone tapped and your house bugged.”
Sam and Charlotte exchanged frightened glances.
“You don’t look like police.” said Sam.
“That’s because I quit.” said Zach. “You see, I realised you had something of astonishing value. Something a mere police force couldn’t possibly understand. You have developed a technology that can individually manipulate atoms, under the control of a powerful computer.
“You can heal dead people. You can make ambulances appear from thin air. God only knows what else you can do.
“Such a technology cannot be entrusted to a pair of idiots like yourselves. No offence. Therefore, I’ve assembled a team of people”—he motioned to Gaz and the doctor—“to assist me in effecting a transfer of knowledge, from you to me.
“You will explain in detail how this technology works, and when we’ve finished, if I’m fully satisfied, I may allow you to live.”
“We’re not going to tell you anything!” said Sam.
“I thought you’d say that.” said Zach.
He nodded at Gaz, who produced a small hand axe from the bag and walked slowly towards Sam.
“We’ll start with your left hand.” said Zach.
“You’re wasting your time! I won’t tell you a thing!” said Sam, his voice shaking.
Gaz brought the axe down on Sam’s wrist, chopping clean through it, and Sam’s hand fell onto the floor.
Sam screamed in pain.
“Tut tut tut.” said Zach. “So unnecessary. Dr. Willthorpe, please keep the subject alive.”
The doctor rushed forwards and began strapping up Sam’s bleeding stump. He administered an injection, then he began to set up an IV drip.
“Will you tell me now,” said Zach, “or shall we proceed?”
“You sick, evil, psychopath.” shouted Sam, groggy from the pain. “You can kill me but you’ll never get what you want!”
“Proceed, please Gaz.” said Zach.
Gaz went over to Charlotte and poised the axe above her left wrist. She screamed and begged Zach not to do it.
“OK!” said Sam hurriedly. “I’ll tell you everything.”
“No, Sam!” said Charlotte. “You can’t!”
“Well?” said Zach.
“I’ll tell you everything.” repeated Sam. “I’ll explain how it works. I’ll need some paper. Don’t hurt her.”
“Take him to the kitchen.” said Zach.
“Sam, don’t!” said Charlotte. “It’s better if we die!”
“I’m sorry.” muttered Sam, as Gaz unstrapped him and dragged him out off the chair.
There was blood absolutely everywhere, although Dr. Willthorpe’s ministrations had reduced the flow a great deal.
“Get rid of the hand, Doctor.” said Zach. “It’s making me queasy.”
Dr. Willthorpe took Zach’s hand by the thumb. In the kitchen, he threw it carelessly into the bin.
Soon Sam was drawing diagrams with his one remaining hand, Willthorpe giving him injections for the pain and stimulants to keep him conscious and alert.
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to do it in a day.” said Sam. “There’s too much to explain.”
“Dr. Willthorpe has an excellent understanding of physics.” said Zach.
Willthorpe smiled.
“We’ve discovered physical principles far outside of the mainstream.” said Sam. “I’ll have to explain all of it.”
“Take all the time you need.” said Zach. “We’ll take a break every hour. Would you like tea? Coffee?”
“What about Charlotte?”
“We’ll take care of her.” said Zach. “Tell us everything we need to know, and tomorrow perhaps you can both be on your way. You’ll get used to missing a hand.”
That night, all three men slept on cheap mattresses on the floor of an upstairs room, while Sam and Charlotte remained locked in the room downstairs, lying on the floor. The floor was still covered in Sam’s blood. Willthorpe had made cursory attempts to clean some of it up, but he had been greatly hindered by the lack of an functioning water supply to the house.
“Oh, Sam!” Charlotte exclaimed, “I’m so sorry. We have to get out of here, Sam. There must be a way we can get out of here.”
“I think it’s best we stay here.” said Sam. “I’m afraid.”
“You musn’t be afraid of them, Sam!” said Charlotte. “We have to think!”
“I’m not afraid of them.” said Sam. “I’m afraid of what it might do.”
“It? What do you mean?”
But Sam, exhausted from loss of blood and having spent hours feeding nonsense to the three men, fell into unconsciousness. Charlotte decided to let him sleep.
In the early hours of the morning, Gaz suddenly awakened, for reasons that he couldn’t fathom. He had heard something, he thought, or perhaps he had only dreamed he’d heard something.
He reached for his bedside lamp, then quietly cursed when he realised it wasn’t there. He was still at the house. Then he remembered all the money Zach had promised him, and he smiled and closed his eyes.
He opened his eyes again quiet suddenly. He had heard something. A scuttling sound, as if a small creature was loose in the room.
He activated the light on his phone and scanned the room. He could see nothing. Zach and Willthorpe were sleeping peacefully.
He turned it off and lay down again.
“Stinking rats.” he murmured to himself.
He had always had a pronounced phobia of rats, which he kept to himself, for fear of damage to his reputation as a ruthless thug.
Slowly his breathing deepened and he fell back into the first stages of a deep sleep.
The alarm on Zach’s phone went off at 7 o’clock the following morning. Zach opened his eyes and stretched. Willthorpe sat up, rubbing his eyes.
“Wake up, Gaz!” said Zach. “We’ve got work to do.”
Gaz’s eyes opened, but he said nothing.
“Willthorpe, go and make some coffee.” said Zach.
“Yes, master.” said Willthorpe sarcastically.
“Screw you.” said Zach.
When Willthorpe returned with three mugs of black coffee on a tray, Zach was sitting up, reading something on his phone.
“I don’t know about you,” said Zach, taking a mug, “but I absolutely can’t function without my coffee in the morning.”
He took a sip.
“Tastes like sewage but it’ll do.” he said.
Then Gaz caught his eye again.
“What the hell is up with that lazy freak?” he said, irritably. “Wake him up.”
Willthorpe was looking curiously at Gaz, while drinking his coffee. He put the coffee down and slapped Gaz’s face.
“Wake up, bozo!” he said.
Gaz’s eyes opened again, but still he said nothing.
“What’s up with you?” said Willthorpe.
Gaz opened his mouth, as if about to say something, but instead emitted a drawn-out inhuman groan.
“I’m sick of this.” said Zach, suddenly snapping. He leapt out of bed and seized Gaz by the collar of his black sweater, yanking him to a sitting position with some difficulty. Gaz’s head lolled atonically to one side.
“Something’s seriously wrong.” said Willthorpe.
Zach let go of Gaz and Gaz fell back heavily onto the bed.
Willthorpe began to conduct an examination of Gaz.
“I think he’s had a stroke.” said Willthorpe, taking Gaz’s pulse. “His reflexes are virtually absent but his heart’s still strong.”
“What are saying?” said Zach. “He’s a vegetable now?”
“It must have been an extremely severe stroke.” said Willthorpe.
He let Gaz’s arm fall back on the bed and turned to face Zach.
“He’s not going to be any use to us now.”
“Is it permanent?” said Zach incredulously.
“Probably.” said Willthorpe. “With medical treatment he may improve somewhat, over a year or two, but probably not, to be perfectly honest. We need an MRI to properly determine how much damage there’s been to his brain.”
“Yeah, well that ain’t happening.” said Zach. “We’ll proceed without him. We don’t need him anyway. We’ve got guns. Finish your coffee and let’s get on with it.”
Willthorpe turned back to Gaz, frowning.
Then Willthorpe noticed something. He peered at the skin on Gaz’s neck.
“What?” said Zach.
“There are marks on his neck.” said Willthorpe. “Exactly at the carotid arteries.”
“So?”
“It’s as if …”
“What? Spit it out, man.”
Willthorpe shook his head in disbelief.
“It’s as if he’s been strangled. But not just strangled. Something has pressed exactly on the main arteries supplying his brain with blood. The blood flow was cut off, doubtless for some minutes. That would explain his condition.”
“No-one’s been in here.” said Zach, glancing at the half-open door. “I’m a light sleeper. I would have noticed, believe me.”
“I must be mistaken.” said Willthorpe, scratching his head. “There ought to be signs of a struggle. If a human being did this, he would have had to have incredible strength.”
“Never mind about it.” said Zach. “We need to go and finish the job. That nerd said he needs another eight hours. You understood everything he said so far?”
“I think so.” said Willthorpe. “I’ve made extensive notes. Of course I’ll have to go over them again.”
“Make sure you get everything you need. This evening I’m garotting him. And his idiot wife.”
Then went downstairs and dragged Sam back to the kitchen, Zach waving the pistol at him threateningly. Sam was ashen-grey.
“I’m in a lot of pain.” he said, as they sat him down at the table.
“Don’t worry about that.” said Willthorpe. “A little injection and you’ll be fine.”
“Where’s the other guy?” said Sam.
“What, do you miss him?” said Zach. “He’s busy. Mind your own business.”
Zach shoved some paper and a pen in front of Sam.
“Continue with the explanation.” he said.
For four hours, Sam continued to explain his theory to Dr. Willthorpe. Finally Willthorpe, rubbing his neck, said, “Let’s break for lunch.”
“Are you kidding me?” said Zach. “It’s not even noon.”
“It’s all right for you.” said Willthorpe. “I’ve got to understand all this stuff. Mental exertion is exertion just the same as physical exercise. Effectively, I’m running a marathon here.”
“Why am I cursed with morons?” said Zach, throwing his hands in the air. “Take a break. Make us a coffee. We’ll have lunch in a couple of hours.”
“Very well.” said Willthorpe stiffly, clearly disgruntled. “I need a bathroom. Be back in a minute.”
Zach sat down in the chair opposite Sam at the little kitchen table.
“You need to hurry it up.” he said.
“I’m going as fast as I can.” said Sam. “The pain …”
Zach took his pistol from a holster under his sweater and placed it in front of him on the table.
“The pain can be a lot worse.” he said. “We can still do a bit of pro-bono amputation on you pretty wife, if you need more motivation. Or I could shoot you in the knee. They say that’s extremely painful.”
“I’ll hurry it up.” said Sam.
“You do that.” said Zach.
Zach stood up and went to the kitchen counter, sticking his gun back into his belt. There, Dr. Willthorpe had set up a coffee machine next to a ten-gallon water tank, plugged into a rechargeable inverter.
“Might as well make my own coffee while we’re waiting for that idiot.” said Zach.
Willthorpe , emerging from the bathroom at the top of the stairs, having made use of the ancient toilet in there which they had no way of flushing since the water supply wasn’t connected, thought he heard the scampering of a rat or a mouse. He shivered and hurried to the stairs.
At the top, he tripped, his foot catching on a wire, and he plummeted head first down the uncarpeted staircase. His head landed briefly on a rotten piece of wood supporting an upturned nail, before he continued his descent to the bottom.
In the kitchen, Zach and Sam heard a shriek followed by the sound of Willthorpe crashing down the staircase.
“What the hell?” said Zach, and he waved the gun at Sam, forcing him to stand up so that they could go together to find out what had happened, Zach knowing full well that Sam would go to Charlotte and escape if he was left alone even for a moment.
When they came upon Willthorpe’s body, Willthorpe was in the middle of a series of epileptic seizures. As they watched the seizures gradually diminished, and Willthorpe gave one last gasp and died. The nail was still embedded in his skull.
“Get up those stairs.” said Zach. “Whoever did this is dead meat.”
Sam stepped carefully around Willthorpe, supporting himself with his remaining hand against the wall, cradling the stump at the end of his other arm against his chest.
At the top of the stairs they found nothing; the wire had already been removed. At Zach’s insistence they proceeded to search the upper floor with extreme thoroughness.
“It might have been an accident.” said Sam, as they stood together on the landing, Zach still pointing the gun at Sam.
“I should just shoot you now.” said Zach. “Because of all this I’m going to have to find another criminal science guy. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a properly criminal science guy?”
Then the hatch leading to the attic caught Zach’s eye.
“Up there.” he said. “That’s where he’s hiding. Whoever did this.”
“There’s no way to get up there.” said Sam.
Zach thought for a moment, then said, “Into the bedroom. Get the cord from that old lamp.”
Sam was on the verge of passing out. He was shaking and as pale as death, but he staggered into the bedroom. There, was a smashed-up old bedside lamp. Sam began to pull shakily at the cord.
“Never mind.” said Zach. “Lie down flat on your stomach.”
Sam complied, and Zach proceeded to yank out the lamp’s cable and tie Sam’s feet with it. Then he looked around for another cable, which which to tie Sam’s arms together. He found an old curtain cord and forced Sam’s elbows together behind his back. Sam screamed in pain and blood began to emerge again from the stump of his wrist, but Zach managed to complete the task.
Then he took hold of Sam’s feet and dragged him back to the landing, Sam groaning in agony.
“Wait here.” said Zach with a wink.
Zach stuck the gun in his belt then, reaching up towards the hatch that led to the attic, he jumped up, pushing the hatch slightly open with his knuckles. Then he jumped again and clung to the rim of the aperture. He began to pull himself up into the hole.
Sam, meanwhile, had wriggled onto his side so that he could see what was happening.
Zach had lifted his head into the attic when he suddenly screamed, then a moment later he dropped to the floor of the landing.
A half-emptied syringe, presumably taken from Dr. Willthorpe’s supplies, was sticking out of his eye.
Zach tried to rise to a sitting position, feeling for the syringe, but then he collapsed back onto the floor, where he remained, lifeless.
Sam breathed heavily, pleased that Zach was dead, but scared of whoever or whatever had killed him.
As he watched, fingers emerged from the aperture in the ceiling. Slowly, a human hand, Sam’s own, crawled spider-like onto the ceiling, somehow sticking there by its fingertips.
“Oh God!” Sam moaned.
The hand began to crawl down the wall. It hadn’t got very far when it lost its strange adhesion to the flaking paint and fell all the way to the floor. Then it began to crawl towards Sam.
“Please!” whimpered Sam.
When it reached his prostrate body, it paused and then crawled slowly over him and onto his back.
Sam breathed heavily and laboriously, terrified. Then he passed out.
When he awoke, his arms were free. He raised his left arm to inspect the stump, and stared uncomprehendingly at what he saw. The hand had reattached itself to his wrist perfectly, leaving not even a trace of a wound. In shock, he raised his other hand, wondering whether he had somehow, perhaps due to blood loss and infection, become confused about which hand had been chopped off. His other hand was also perfectly fine.
He began to unfasten the cord that held his ankles.
Ten minutes later, Sam unlocked the door to the room where they had left Charlotte.
The terrified expression on her face turned to amazement when she saw Sam standing there, then to shock when he raised his left hand and opened and closed it.
Sam was still pale and looked as though a slight breeze might easily knock him over, but he was managing to stay on his feet.
“You went ahead with it!” she said. “You had Orion implant nanotechnology into the bones of your hand!”
“I’m sorry.” he said. “I know you’re against it. I only did the one hand. I can always remove it again.”
“Remove your hand?” said Charlotte, confused and aghast.
“No, I mean, take the nanotech out again.”
“Where are the men?” she asked.
“Two of them are dead and the other’s upstairs, but he’s more or less vegetative.” he said. “Something’s gone wrong with his brain.”
Charlotte jumped up and ran to him, and wrapped her arms around him, sobbing.
“I love you, Sam.” she said.
