It Looks Like You're Writing a Letter

Stilson and Doherty had been driving for six hours straight. Doherty had been navigating using the car's inbuilt GPS system, mirroring his arm piece's view onto the windscreen's heads up display. The vehicle was fast, much faster than Griffen's, so they were able to make good progress on their plan to cut him off on his journey eastward.

The car's windows had auto-dimmed, but the readout on the windscreen told them it was sunny and hot out there.

"Five miles," said Doherty, pointing ahead. "At the next junction we'll hit Route 40, he's about twenty miles west of there so we should be able to sit and wait for him."

"Easy," intoned Stilson.

The junction appeared as a speck in the distance. The landscape was barren, almost featureless, like anything of interest had been burned away by the sun over decades. Doherty craned his neck to peer west - nothing on the horizon yet. No telltale cloud of thin dust following another car. As they approached the junction, Stilson slowed the vehicle.

"Okay Doherty, let's set a few ground rules for when we meet Mr Griffen."

"Okay?"

"This guy is going to be armed, he's on the run for a double murder, and he definitely knows we'll be waiting for him. I don't plan on dying today - do you?"

"No sir."

"Alright. At the slightest sign of aggression, we shoot him. We can't be sure what armour he's going to be wearing or what personal defence systems he'll have in place, so aim for the head, and don't let him get too close. If he's got a bomb or something similar, we could get taken out with him."

Doherty nodded. "What about if he gives himself up?"

Stilson shook his head. "He won't do that. Not in his MO. He would have disappeared entirely if he didn't want to be caught. I believe he wants a firefight, he wants to go down in a blaze of glory and he wants to take us with him."

Doherty nodded again, mutely. Stilson looked sideways at him. "You okay?"

Doherty snapped out of it and resumed his usual attitude. "Sure, yeah! If it's a shootout he's looking for, I'll go full wild west if that's what the little fucker wants." He unholstered his weapon from the small of his back, checked it for ammunition, switched it to lethal mode and ran some diagnostics. They scrolled up the windscreen. The weapon was in full working order.

"Alright, here we are," said Stilson.

They pulled up to the junction and into the middle of the road. Stilson shut off the engine and the windscreen went blank.

"Ten miles, same speed." Said Doherty, not taking his eyes off his arm piece.

"Come on," said Stilson, releasing both doors with the press of a button. The doors whispered open and the Security officers stepped out blinking into the bleaching sun. Stilson unholstered his own weapon and efficiently ran some simple checks. He was wearing sunglasses now, which were black and completely opaque. Doherty couldn't make out his mood, couldn't read any worry or fear in the light lines in his forehead or around his tight, thin-lipped mouth. Doherty hadn't thought to bring his sunglasses, so he resigned himself to squinting westward, scanning the horizon.

Both men leant against the hot car. A weak, symbolic roadblock for a crazed homicidal madman.

"Should we call for backup?" asked Doherty without looking at his partner.

"No."

"It would take them hours to get here, wouldn't it?"

"Yes."

They stood in silence for a moment. A breeze had come from nowhere and it wisped dust swirls around their polished leather shoes. There was virtually no sound, save for the wind and the cries of occasional high flying birds.

The two men stared at the horizon until it ceased to have any meaning. Neither spoke. Perhaps the other man was reflecting on his career, or his family, or how their deaths would be reported in the news - and how long it would be before they were relegated to the archives. Probably hours. A day, maybe, if there were some grisly accompanying photographs.

One of the men decided he would shoot first, and hoped the other would follow his lead and put some more bullets into Griffen's body to make doubly sure they would be getting back into the glossy blue car again, and could go back to the office and file a report and wake up and do the same thing again and again. The other decided that this would be his last job for Security and that he would leave and get a new career and spend more time with his new wife, and that no matter what he was getting paid it simply wasn't enough to be a thirty second snippet on the nightly news and another scratch mark on the handle of a criminal's gun.

"Five miles."

There was nothing to do but wait. Stilson stopped leaning on the car. He walked around behind it and steadied his gun hand on the scorching roof. Doherty walked round the car and joined him, kneeling behind the hood of the car and looking over it, trying not to be blinded by the high sun reflecting off the car's paintwork. Up close the car smelled of hot plastic and ozone. He was thirsty, his throat was as dry as the surrounding stubble fields.

"Two miles."

Sweat ran down Doherty's neck, and inside the white collar of his shirt. Stilson was as dry as a bone, composed, stoic. He would be a loss to field work.

"One mile."

They both froze, transfixed. Twenty seconds went past. There was no vehicle approaching. Stilson looked up and scanned the sky. The birds continued to circle.

"What the fuck?" Doherty stood up, stared at his arm piece, then span around and looked down the road behind them. On his device, Tanner Griffen's avatar was travelling at 90mph away from them.

The thick plastic twine bit cruelly into Jeopardy's wrists as she knelt on the filthy rug. The room was still empty save for the guard by the door. She could smell him rather than see him. She sighed. She still had no idea exactly what this conversion process would entail, how long it would take or if they would be allowed to live even after it was completed. She didn't really care.

She had worked for Kruke long enough to know that eventually, she'd get involved with a job that was just too risky - that there would be no coming back from. Previous chaperone duties had just involved escorting fraudulent bankers out of state and setting them up in new locations, or smuggling alimony-dodging unfaithful husbands past bailiffs and bondsmen. This job seemed different - a lot different. When Tanner Griffen had blundered into the church back in Fort Smith, he was chaotic, dangerous, a wild man. Jeopardy hadn't been scared of any living creature for over a decade and she wasn't about to start now, but a young girl out on her own doesn't stay alive and largely unmolested by the world without recognising danger. She saw Tanner Griffen for what he was - the nucleus around which trouble revolved.

Looking back, it was almost quaint the way Griffen had originally tried to rob Kruke with a pocket knife as soon as he got access to the bunker and saw how much expensive computer gear was installed down there. Jeopardy had shot him between the legs with a tranquilliser dart, fired directly from her hip before he had chance to realise what was going on. Once he'd let go of Kruke, she had shot across the room and slapped him in a tight choke, but it took a lot of struggle to put him down. For a thin, unhealthy kid he was tough, and surprisingly strong.

When Griffen had come around from the tranquilliser, they had had a little chat. Jeopardy had explained to Griffen that while he might have been a tough guy out on the streets, in this world she was the queen bee, the black widow, the mother hen. Even despite the fact they were roughly the same age, the power was palpably on her side, and Griffen agreed to toe the line in order for Kruke to help him.

And help him Kruke did. Seeing her employer and his cadre of almost mute whiz kids in action was always breathtaking. In little over a day they had constructed an entire fictional human. There were opinions and feelings and preferences, and a back story that included a scintillating mixture of real life connections and digital patsies - each with a plausible alibi to allow them to become data cul-de-sacs. Something primal stirred within her as she watched the process - perhaps her female instincts were being tricked into a maternal mode by the 'birth' of this new person, this creation of life from nothing? An immaculate conception in which Kruke was both Mary and Joseph, and God was in no way present.

Jeopardy missed her arm pieces. Both arms felt light and insubstantial without the weight of the brushed aluminium and glass devices, like getting a heavy plaster cast removed. She had a pretty basic relationship with the Grid. She wasn't fanatically against it like Freeman, and she wasn't wholly dependent upon it like Griffen, but it did facilitate her career and by extension of that, her life. Jeopardy wasn't her real name, obviously, and she had long ago forgotten what her real name was. Her real name was just something given to her without her permission by a weak, beaten woman and a belligerent drunk of a man. It was no great loss.

The name Jeopardy was granted to her by her second family - the first biker gang she infiltrated. The leader of that gang was a bearded, barrel-shaped man called Curio. He had been kind to her, never tried to take advantage and was amazed that a waif-like young girl with a pretty face had lasted as long as she had out on the run. Hence, he referred to her as 'Jeopardy' as that was her constant state, in his eyes.

What Curio, Kruke and the others couldn't see, and couldn't ever hope to know - was how Jeopardy did keep going. If they had looked deep into her eyes, past the square pixel of an iris and beyond the implants into her soul, they would have seen there was nothing there. And that was her secret. She had long ago vacated this body. Nothing that happened to it, or her, was of much consequence and staying alive another day was just a way to get paid and get to the day after that. The Grid didn't matter, her privacy didn't matter, and her data wasn't hers anyway as she just piggybacked on other people's profiles. She had no history, was accumulating no memories to speak of and held no opinions. This was perfectly fine.

She scanned the room for exits. Just the door that the stinking youth was barricading with his leathery flesh and handguns that looked too big for him. Windows on two of the walls were closed, but still fully glazed. Other than a few indistinct paintings hanging lop-sided on the inner walls, the room was devoid of furniture and decoration.

She turned her attention to Thorner. He was kneeling next to her with his head bowed. Despite this, she didn't sense any desperation in the older man. His temple was bruised and cut, blood had spread into the grey flanks of his hair. He was handsome, she thought, in a used-up, rugged kind of way. She noted with some distant amusement that the soles of his shoes were held on with duct tape. A faded gentleman, fallen on hard times, a relic of an earlier era that might not have even existed. He had every indication of a man who lacked, but once had, the love of a good woman. Someone who ironed his shirts and cooked him hot meals and pecked him on the cheek as she handed him his briefcase as he left for work. Thorner was a good man, but good men don't last too long in the company they were presently keeping.

David whispered to her. "What's the plan?"

She looked at him. The Freeman behind her hissed at them. "Boss gonna be here soon, you shut the fuck up and be grateful he's gonna save you."

Jeopardy couldn't turn her head to look at the guard, so just looked straight ahead and ignored David's question. Thorner turned his head slightly to look at her, as if expecting an answer also.

David suddenly slumped forward and started convulsing, rolling to his back and thrashing violently. Jeopardy and Thorner recoiled from his whipping, scrawny legs. He continued to spin and wail loudly. The guard looked panicked and ran over, hopping from foot to foot.

"What's wrong with him?" the guard looked no older than sixteen years old.

"I don't know, hold him down, he's having some kind of fit," said Jeopardy curtly, shrugging her shoulders to indicate to the guard that she couldn't help if she wanted to due to her hands being tied.

The guard holstered his revolvers and bent down to take David by the shoulders. In one swift movement, David's eyes refocused and became steely, his right hand emerged from behind his back and it had his pocketknife in it. With his left hand he grabbed the back of the young boy's head as he plunged the short knife deep into his neck. Blood gobbed out of the gaping wound, and the boy gargled and tried to grab at David's wrists. David's teeth were gritted tightly together and he twisted and dug away at the Freeman's trachea while blood sprayed and rained down onto him. He flipped the guard over and mounted him, the knife still lodged deep in the ragged neck. The boy was dead.

Thorner and Jeopardy had shuffled away as soon as the attack started and were huddled against the wall beneath a window. They stared, wordless and open mouthed as the blood-spattered figure turned to them with a wry grin on his face.

"Fuck this motherfucker. Fuck them all," said Tanner Griffen.

They were sure the noise would have alerted the rest of the gang so for the next few seconds they moved quickly. Griffen cut Thorner and Jeopardy free, relieved the dead guard of his pistols and gave them one each. A sharp machete hung on the guard's belt so he took that for himself. His crisp white cotton shirt was now saturated with blood and thin chunks of flesh, so he took it off and used the back of it to wipe his torso down.

"We need to move. I need my weapons," said Jeopardy.

"I need my shitty old arm piece," said Griffen.

"I need a drink," deadpanned Thorner.

They crawled under the windows and peered carefully outside. One of the grimy panes looked out over the garden area and Dankar Freeman's throne of twisted metal. He was sat in it, proudly holding service to his flock, who were sat cross-legged on the ground before him, in rapt attention as he proselytised about the evils of the digital age.

"What a bunch of fucking morons," spat Griffen.

"We don't have time for this, come on," hissed Jeopardy, moving swift and low towards the door. Thorner and Griffen followed. The door was unlocked, so Jeopardy opened it gingerly and peered through. The coast was clear so she led the other two forward and into the hallway. The front door wasn't an option as they would be spotted, so they doubled back on themselves and made their way through the filthy kitchen to the back door.

On the other side of a fence, they could see the roof of the pickup truck into which their arm pieces had been thrown. The fence was too high to climb and with no other way through, they had no choice but to track around the side of the house. They stuck to the weather beaten walls as they made their way to the corner of the building, ducking under each window as they went.

Jeopardy reached the end of the wall first and motioned with her hand for Thorner and Griffen to stop. She turned to them.

"We can get around the fence, but there's no way of doing it without being seen. We're screwed."

"I've got an idea," said Griffen with an evil smirk. Thorner felt a chill, he suspected this would involve someone getting hurt or killed.

Before Jeopardy had a chance to ask Griffen what the plan was, he'd scurried back the way they'd came, and they saw him disappear into the kitchen. They sat, huddled against the rotting wall for what seemed like hours, but it could only have been minutes. They could hear Dankar Freeman droning and occasionally bellowing in the garden only fifty meters away. It would only take one of his followers to come around the corner and they would certainly be recaptured and most likely killed. Sweat beaded on Thorner's brow. Jeopardy displayed no fear or tension, just boredom at having to wait and perhaps some slight frustration at having been supplanted as the leader of the little group.

Presently, Griffen came hurtling out of the kitchen and threw himself down on the ground next to them. His face had a maniacal, unhinged quality to it. "Better get down and cover your ears, assholes!" he giggled. Thorner and Jeopardy instinctively did so.

Four seconds later, there was a huge explosion and the back half of the old building was ripped away and thrown through itself. The ground under them shook with the violence of it, and looking back Jeopardy could see a billowing blue-orange fireball blossom from the wrecked windows and doors at the back of the house. She looked at Griffen.

"Gas bottle in the kitchen! Slow burn fuse! Ha ha!" laughed Griffen.

The clamour from the Freemen was instantaneous, like a fast-spreading bushfire of chaos. Peering around the edge of the building Jeopardy saw some of them dart into the front of the house to rescue what meagre possessions they had inside. Others were paralysed in shock and fear and all were distracted. Even Dankar himself had jumped up from his throne and was barking orders that fell on deaf ears.

"Now!" commanded Jeopardy. They kept low and ran the few meters between the building and the surrounding fence, then through it at the nearest gap. They doubled back on themselves, staying low and tight to the outer edge of the fence until they came to the collected rabble of vehicles. They darted between them, peering into the cabins and flatbeds until Thorner waved the other two over frantically. He climbed into the flatbed and handed Jeopardy her arm pieces, and Griffen his.

"Where's my belt?" hissed Jeopardy.

"Not here, I don't know," replied Thorner, scanning around him.

"Fuck," said Jeopardy, to herself as much as anything. There was tens of thousands of credits worth of gear on that belt. At least she wasn't completely unarmed, clutching as she was the tarnished revolver stolen from the dead guard.

They spotted the Volvo at the edge of the herd of vehicles and made a beeline for it. Thorner was relieved to see the keys glinting in the ignition and jumped into the driver's seat. Jeopardy resumed her place in the passenger seat and Griffen threw himself bodily into the back. "Let's fucking go, man!" he urged Thorner. The mayhem in the house had become a more focussed anger - they'd discovered the body of their fallen comrade, and realised that their converts-to-be had fled.

Thorner turned the keys with sweat-soaked fingers and gunned the old engine. He peeled out and pointed the rust red nose of the vehicle in what he thought was the direction of the road they had been on before their ambush.

"They're going to chase us," said Jeopardy, matter of factly. She checked the revolver in her hand - it was in poor condition but fully loaded. Griffen started laughing hysterically in the back seat.

"You're welcome, by the way!" he called up from the faded upholstery. Jeopardy ignored him.

"You're a piece of work, Griffen," said Thorner just above the noise of the engine and the tortured suspension as it bounced and ricocheted off the uneven ground. Griffen seemed to take this as a compliment.

Jeopardy strapped her arm pieces on and checked their status. It looked like there were no biometric flags on the profile she was logged into when they were taken. Perhaps with the temperature reading and the static nature of the geolocation, the algorithm had assumed she was sunbathing for an hour or so.

"Put your arm piece back on," she said over her shoulder to Griffen.

He sat up in the back seat and put the machete down beside him. Griffen looked at the clunky, beige device in his hands but did nothing.

"What are you waiting for?"

Griffen looked dejected. "I don't know, man. Back there, I was myself again, you know? Like, it felt good. I don't think I want to be David fucking Dweeberson again."

"We've been through this," shouted Jeopardy over the screaming engine, "you gave up that choice when you went to Kruke. You're David Wilkinson now."

Griffen sat in silence for a few moments. "David Wilkinson wouldn't have gotten us out of there."

Jeopardy didn't say anything. She knew it was true, and hated him for it. "Put it on."

He flopped back in the seat like a stroppy teenager and buckled the leather straps around his left arm. The screen flashed into life with a sickly blue-green glow.

"We need to get you a new shirt," said Jeopardy.

"Where's Griffen now? Have we lost him?" said Thorner.

Jeopardy checked her arm piece and brushed her hair out of her eyes. "Got him. Oh shit!"

"What is it?"

"I think I know where he's going."

"Where?"

"He's heading to Fort Smith. He's going to Kruke."

"What the fuck just happened?" asked Doherty, waving his Security-issue pistol demonstratively.

"Well," said Stilson, "my guess is that Griffen doesn't actually exist anymore. I think what we've been tracking is an AI, a computer simulation of Tanner Griffen."

"Who would create a virtual version of that little asshole?"

Stilson shrugged. "Probably the same person who killed Senator Rigsby. Or the person who ordered him dead."

Doherty slumped against the hot car. "Ahh, what the fuck. Why is nothing ever straightforward these days? Why can't we just chase a guy, capture him, book him and write it up?"

"Chin up Doherty," said Stilson with a wry smile, "it's just getting interesting!"

They got back into the vehicle and Doherty brought up the windscreen display once again. "So we keep chasing?"

"Yes," said Stilson, "we don't have anything else to go on - that AI is going somewhere, it's been programmed to do so by someone. If we find out where it stops, that might be enough to figure out who sent it and why."

"Alright, we've got some catching up to do then."

Stilson buried the accelerator into the real wool carpet, and the navy blue car shot off down the road, following the blinking avatar on the windscreen.

They had gone a few miles when Doherty spotted a dust cloud in the distance, coming from the right towards the road. Stilson noticed it too. "What's that?"

Doherty scrolled right on the map and zoomed in. "We've got a David Wilkinson and a Samantha Enright moving very quickly off-road, heading this way."

"Anything else?"

"Nope."

"Sure?" Stilson motioned further to the right. A much larger dust cloud was following the first, perhaps half a mile behind.

"I've got nothing on that at all. The couple in the front car are going to meet the road a few miles ahead of us very shortly, I guess we'll get a proper visual then."

"Okay."

Just as Doherty had predicted, the long flat landscape allowed them to see a red dot in the distance bounce from the dusty earth onto the blacktop, careening to straighten onto the road without slowing. There was something much more alarming, however. Now they were closer they could see what was pursuing the couple in the red car. A snarling, roiling cluster of ancient vehicles, billowing smoke and fumes, like one chaotic mass, spilled onto the road ahead of them like a jar of nails being knocked over. A couple of the vehicles collided and this caused the whole collection to slow and halt, covering the road like a portable junkyard.

At the speed the Security officers were travelling, they were braking in front of the twisted metal mess before they had chance to think.

"Can we go around?" asked Doherty, still riding the adrenaline of their non-encounter with Griffen only minutes ago.

"They'll shoot us in the back," said Stilson, flatly.

The car stopped a few hundred meters from the impromptu roadblock. Nothing moved, there was no sound. The Security officers could see some heads framed in front and side windows, but they were just looking back, impassively. Doherty wondered if they could see through the smoked front windshield of the Security vehicle. He checked the HUD again.

"Why aren't they showing up?"

"Some kind of off-Grid gang or group. I'm guessing the Freemen, they've been operating in this area recently."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Very bad."

As they watched, they saw a large black man emerge from the brown metal sculpture ahead of them. He stood on the back of a flatbed truck and addressed them through an old analogue loudhailer.

"Agents of Babylon!" he spat, "You are on our road. You are on the peoples' road! This isn't a digital channel you can control or monitor, you soulless bastards!"

His voice was muffled by the Security vehicles excellent soundproofing, so Stilson increased the gain on the ambient external microphones and Dankar Freeman's voice came through the hi-fi speakers loud and clear.

"You. You people. Are you even people? How can you live, how can you sleep at night being pawns in the evil empire's game? The computer sends you out to do its dirty work, yes? Sends you out on your little missions to chase people like mice out of a kitchen. You should be ashamed! All those years ago we made these machines to serve us! To do our bidding, and be switched off when they were no longer needed. Now look at us, look at you! The machines teach our children, they have taken the place of God in our churches and forced Him out to live here, in the wilderness! Show yourselves, cowards! Come out of your little hutch and face us, be men!"

Stilson looked at Doherty. Doherty looked back at him. They both knew they were sitting ducks if they remained in the car. Doherty still thought there might be a chance to talk their way out of the situation. Stilson was more realistic.

"Come on," said Doherty, and opened the car door.

Stilson sighed and followed suit, and they both stood behind their respective open doors and blinked in the sunlight once again. Doherty accessed the correct pull-down menu on his arm piece's screen and connected its microphone to the crowd-control speakers hidden in the car's front grille.

"Sir, please move aside. We are on official Security business."

Dankar laughed uproariously. "You think I give a shit about Security business? Nah sir, you've reached the end of the line. The road goes no further for you."

"We have no quarrel with you or your people, you won't show up in our reports or our travel logs - just let us through."

"Security dog, I usually give trespassers on the peoples' land two options - but for you and your dog friend, I'm only going to give you one."

"What were the two options?" interjected Doherty quickly.

Dankar looked around at his men, who had started to emerge behind the stationary vehicles around him. He smiled back at Doherty across the expanse of cracked asphalt. "Come back to God. Or meet him."

Doherty looked across the car roof at Stilson. Stilson was already looking at him. They exchanged the kind of wordless, motionless communication that only long-standing partners could do, and simultaneously drew their side arms.

Almost in slow motion, as they turned to target their weapons, the blockade in front of them bristled with weapons, like a porcupine rolling into a ball. Shotguns, handguns, rifles, crossbows and projectiles of all kinds were pointed at them and it was just a case of who was going to fire first. The only person without a weapon in his hand was Dankar Freeman, who still stood proudly atop the flatbed with the loud hailer at his waist and his other hand on his hip, legs spread like a proud, impenetrable statue.

It was Stilson who squeezed the trigger first, his high-powered energy ballistic handgun making a red rose of the forehead of a freeman who had levelled a rocket launcher at the pair. This began a chain reaction of percussive explosions as the blockade erupted in gunfire, all of which was directed at them and their vehicle.

Doherty wasted no time, taking out another three with torso-aimed, laser guided energy projectiles that left freemen bifurcated and smoking, hanging out of or over their vehicles.

The Security car was being punctured in every way by rounds large and small. The Security officers were crouching behind the thick doors but the metal panels were rapidly losing integrity as they were pounded with gunfire. Both front tyres were shot out, and the vehicle suddenly dropped a few inches, causing them to alter their positions.

Doherty could see Stilson across the open car, his teeth gritted, his sunglasses preventing Doherty from knowing if he was as terrified as him. The Freemen were dropping like flies, but there seemed to be no end to them. As each one was killed, another took his place like some cheap AI in a videogame.

Stilson had to reload and changed his position to access the energy cell on his belt. As he rose slightly to facilitate this, a round penetrated the top of his door and smashed him in the chest. He was thrown backwards and blood fanned out from him, spattering the car's interior.

"Stilson!" cried Doherty, still squeezing off rounds with decreasing accuracy. The Freemen's attack was not letting up in its ferocity. Suddenly, Doherty dove into the passenger footwell and yanked open a compartment under the dashboard. He fumbled with numb fingers and pulled out a thick, snub-nosed handgun with a large warning sticker across it. He ripped off the sticker and primed it for use. This had better work, he thought. It has to work.

He slid back out of the car and steadied his wrist on the shattered doorframe. Aiming the weapon at the centre of the morass of vehicles, he pulled the trigger. There was no recoil, which surprised him. Instead a glowing fireball of high energy screamed across the road, embedded itself in the first truck it hit and in an instant, the entire roadblock was lit up in a blue halo. Seventeen million volts coursed through every single conductive element in the group of vehicles, and easily jumped any material that wasn't. All organic matter it encountered was decimated, the very cells of it fused together and repurposed back to its base carbon, inert, fragmented, all motion and movement within that mass ceased utterly.

Doherty relaxed his grip on the weapon and let it fall to the road. In front of him, the roadblock was black, smoking, sparking and wholly unrecognisable. If there were human bodies in there, they would be indistinguishable from a car stereo, seat, shotgun, machete, leather. All had become as one and no life was permitted within it. His nostrils burned.

He span around the car and came to Stilson, who was laid on the hot black ground, surrounded by debris. The round, whatever it was, had disintegrated on impact with the door and taken large chunks of metal with it on its journey into and through Stilson's chest. What was left was an obscene, rent open ribcage pulsing and breathing and struggling in the hot sun. Doherty knelt beside the still conscious Stilson.

"You're gonna be OK, I'll call in for the medics." Even as he said it he knew it was a futile, stupid thing to say. His eyes tracked against his will down from Stilson's blood streaked face and neck and down the wound, where his eyes froze and his breath stopped. He could see everything, but didn't see what he was expecting. Some of Stilson's ribs were missing from the left hand side of his torso, and where his heart should have been, there was a slick white plastic unit. It bore a barcode and the legend 'ORACORP H-625b HEART UNIT DO NOT PLACE IN FIRE'. From it, instead of arteries led thin steel-coloured pipes that disappeared into the red fleshy mass. A lung could briefly be seen, also matt white plastic, moulding seams at the edge.

Doherty looked at Stilson, tears in his eyes making his partner suddenly soft-focus and all the more distant for it. He opened his mouth, closed it again. Bent his head. "I... I didn't know."

Stilson's sunglasses lay on the road a few feet away, lost in his fall. His eyes were empty, fading. "It's OK, I didn't know either. Alan."

It was the first time Stilson had ever called him by his first name. He wasn't even sure he'd ever known it. Stilson smiled weakly, his hand gripped Doherty's arm. Then he was gone.

David Wilkinson was crouched in the back seat of the Volvo, studying the road behind them. "They're not following! They've just stopped, I think they all crashed and they can't get started again."

Thorner felt his shoulders relax - he hadn't been aware they had been tense and wasn't sure how long they'd been that way. "Good."

Jeopardy was studying both her arm pieces. "Griffen is a few miles ahead of us on this road, we've basically done a big U-Turn, we went to him and he's passed us and is going back the way we came."

Thorner looked sideways at her. "What the hell does that mean?"

"I think it means he's heading to Fort Smith, to Kruke."

"What the f... hell?" cried David from the back seat, "None of this makes sense!"

"Exactly," said Jeopardy, "if we'd known he was coming to us we would never have left. Or, he knows we've left and he's trying to get to Kruke before we can get back."

"Why would he want to get to Kruke?" asked Thorner.

"I have no idea. Kruke made David, and he knows everything about Griffen. I suspect this is whoever Griffen is now, tidying up some loose ends."

"This is so screwed up," moaned David, "the old me, who isn't me, but who's killed some senator guy, is going to kill the guy that made me?"

"Perhaps. Either way, I've alerted Kruke as to the situation and we need to get back there as soon as we can," said Jeopardy.

Thorner motioned to her to suggest that the Volvo simply wouldn't go any faster and she looked annoyed. "Just stay on this road, it leads us straight back to Kruke."

GriffenTanner1384 - hobbies include hacking, petty crime, serious crime, kidnap, extortion, illegal gambling, darknets, phreaking, piracy, pornography. Political affiliations - none. Favourite music - Shovel Bastard, The Creeps, OutZone, Kill Factory. Connections - 3,563,021. Age - 24. Current location - Route 40 heading towards Fort Smith, at 90mph.

He wasn't really sure exactly why he had to get to the Church of the Divine in Fort Smith, or why he had to proceed to the pulpit and down through a trapdoor, but that was what he was going to do. There was really nothing that could stop him from doing so, either - which would have been a reassuring feeling, if he had feelings, which of course he didn't.

He hadn't been alive for very long, so it was all new to him. Nonetheless, there was little for him to learn. He was born into the world already knowing everything he needed to know, and nothing more. As far as he had memories, they had started in a luxury suite in a four-star hotel in Oklahoma City, and he had instantly known what he had to do and how he had to do it. Some unknown, unknowable force had his destiny mapped out and he was merely along for the ride.

He could see, after a fashion, the dry, arid landscape scroll past him. In fact, if he turned his focus left or right, he could see a full 360-degree view of his surroundings. It was quite interesting. He had a lot of information to process, as he had been monitoring the live news feeds to see when the name Tanner Griffen appeared and in what context. He was able to use these local news reports as a crude way of avoiding physical interaction with people, although the incident with the two Security officers was regrettably unavoidable.

He wondered what the two OraCorp employees had made of it. As he had approached them, he could see them only in an abstract manner, the location and physical mass of them and their biometrics, and he mapped their life signs as he got closer and closer. One of them was evidently much more stressed to be in that situation than the other, his sweat glands were working overtime and his heart rate was greatly increased. It was very interesting. The one called Stilson was almost unmoved, which was also quite fascinating. The Stilson user was quite unusual in many respects and he wondered idly why that was. There was insufficient information to draw a conclusion. Checking back along the road later, he noted that the Stilson user's vital signs had stopped completely, why was that? It didn't really matter.

He span his focus forward to look at the road, which was a light blue incandescent strip of activated pathways, and scrolled forward to get a quick preview of where he was going. The church building was reporting two floors only, there were no passwords, encryption or other security measures he could see that would affect his entry. Spinning around the building in a three dimensional wireframe, he noticed there were two exits from the ground floor, and the basement he knew to exist, was not documented here.

There were a few people in the church currently, a young female in the lobby area and a few random idents within the pews, each logged onto something insignificant, doing something on the Grid that didn't interest him. They probably wouldn't notice him enter, most likely wouldn't lift their heads from the screwed-down screens and this was fine.

He brought his view back to his present location. There were only a few miles left to go. He had no cognisance of what was to happen once he had entered the bunker. Information ceased at that point. He had no curiosity about this, just an acknowledgement that this part of the program had been completed and he would be ready to take the next set of instructions, whatever they might be. There might not be any further instructions, if he had served his usefulness, and this was fine too.

Ninety miles per hour was a good speed. It was a realistic speed to travel on this particular road, and he had been informed that time was of the essence on this particular task. He wasn't travelling so fast as to arouse suspicion, and he certainly couldn't just appear at his destination as this profile was under intense scrutiny - which was the whole point, after all. It was important that others could follow.

A few more moments and he was entering the town of Fort Smith. He travelled down the main street, and there in front of him was the hovering address card of the Church of the Divine. He scanned the information, everything tallied with his instructions. Slowing to a stop, then after a brief pause, a walking pace, he approached the building and entered it. He slid past the young girl in the lobby, who didn't offer him any leaflets and started no conversation. He made his way down the centre of the church itself, and as he predicted, the townsfolk in the pews either side of him did not register his presence at all. Their screens would have clearly shown his avatar gliding past them if they had chosen to look at that particular part of their display. He approached the pulpit and looked down. The resolution wasn't very good here. The crowdsourced photographs that made up his view of the world were lacking in this private part of the church, but he knew intellectually that the trap door was there. He was close enough. He stopped, paused, and winked out of existence.