Punish the System - 5

The Dane had been sitting next to Connor’s bed for sometime, one hand resting lightly on a folder he hadn’t yet opened. In his other was a pen he hadn’t used at all. You didn’t get to the boss’s position in life and do stupid things like actually write stuff down.

“I’m sorry, but can we just go over it all again?” he said, his accent not softened at all by twenty years of His Majesty’s security clearances. “We’ve reviewed the various feeds from Grand Central, Stephenson Street, and the Bullring. We've scraped private security footage, West Midlands traffic cams, and even those God-awful citizen surveillance portals Birmingham’s council keeps pretending are GDPR-compliant.”

He tapped his pen once, sharply, against the edge of Connor’s bed.

“And nothing. Not one frame of our target past the moment he gets into that cab. It’s as if the vehicle disappears two blocks later. It takes no exit. There are no cameras that pick it up again. And, of course, no licence plate hit on the ANPR network.”

Joyful, seated on the opposite side of the bed, cleared his throat. 

“We know it was a silver Prius, but the best we can do is link it to a shell that folds back through five dissolved hire companies. Last one’s in Latvia, and I’d bet a week’s pension the owner’s a fax machine.”

The Dane nodded. 

“We've had SO15 chase the EORI and VAT trails. But it’s all just so much noise. Somehow, that car simply doesn’t exist in any meaningful way.” He finally reopened the folder, flipping to a photo of the man who had shot Connor. It was blurry, slightly angled, and still somehow forgettable. But it was Leather Jacket. With a black rucksack. Even though the photo looked like something a police algorithm would throw out for being too generic.

“The Met has shared what details they’ve got on our target, but it’s barely more than we had ourselves. A fake name, no prints, no DNA, and facial recognition has thrown up more false positives than we’ve ever seen. We’ve tagged him under Watch Index Omega, but there’s simply nothing to go on. No one’s seen him. Ever. Anywhere. He got on that train in Euston, came to Birmingham, shot you and evaporated. There’s simply no evidence he existed before or after that event.”

“He could have come in on the Ukrainian procurement route,” Joyful offered. “Could be FSB. Could be someone further out.” He didn’t sound convinced, though. “I would say that his tradecraft is too good, though, for him to be a complete unknown. And, it goes without saying, unreasonably good for him to just be couriering six kilos of Class A about.”

The Dane looked at Connor for a few seconds, the way he might check an instrument panel in a storm. Not seeking input, just checking he was still working and worth persevering with. Connor stared back at him and, the Dane nodded, obviously reassured by what he saw.

“Our working assumption right now,” he continued, “is that couriering the drugs was not the be-all and end-all of whatever our man was about. We are exploring whether the gear might have been a way to open the door to one of our bigger gangs. A little complimentary ‘hello’, as it were.”

“Christ!” Joyful said. “I feel aggrieved if I have to shell out for a decent bottle of red for a dinner party. A £300k introduction is nice work if you can get it.”

“Indeed. And everyone is in agreement that we do not need a new player on the scene,” the Dane said. “Especially one we don’t know anything about. I should note that we’ve had a bit of luck on the backpack, it is one of about three hundred sold through a dodgy Slovakian wholesaler two years ago. And the leather jacket is actually vintage, which might or might not help. But someone this capable doesn’t just show up in Birmingham to sling heroin on the streets. That’s clearly not the plan. Thus, we need to know what that plan actually is. And quickly.”

“Could be territory testing,” Joyful said. “Could be a show of capability. Could be bait.”

“Bait?” Connor said.

Being stuck in bed when all this was going down was driving him mad. He reckoned he could count on the fingers of one dick the number of days he’d had off since he’d got the tap from the Dane to join this unit. Sure, he recognised that being shot was probably a decent excuse, but still…

“Bait. Sure,” Joyful agreed. “Send in a rucksack full of smack, wait for us to run around like sniffer dogs on a school trip, meanwhile the real payload walks in the side door and does... what? God knows.”

Connor wasn’t wild at the idea that his being shot might not even have been the main event of the day’s action. But it did make sense. With so many eyes now trained looking for Leather Jacket, someone else could have walked a nuke into the Bullring this morning with few worries. 

That was the sort of thought that would fester. 

“As we have discussed, that sort of speculation is unhelpful, Joyful,” said the Dane sharply. “However, it has now been forty-eight hours since one of our own was gunned down in broad daylight and we’re still absolutely chasing shadows. This makes me unhappy. And you both know how much I dislike being unhappy.”

Connor looked around the hospital room. Most of the more serious machinery had been taken away now, leaving just a plastic cannula taped to his hand, with saline ticking slowly through the line. No one had uttered the words ‘insanely miraculous pace of healing’ but everyone was clearly thinking it. Joyful has asked to see the painting of a corpse in Connor’ attic.

“Connor,” the Dane said, snapping his attention back. “I don’t suppose you have anything new to tell us, do you?”

Connor met the stormy grey eyes of the Dane and hesitated. It was a matter of faith for all of them that you did not lie to the boss. There was literally - quite literally - nothing you could say that would shock him, and nothing that would stop him having your back. Joyful had once spread a rumour that Judy, one of their admin assistants, had a spectacular wool bikini fetish and it had been three awkward birthday gifts later before they’d agreed on the need to come clean.

But ‘since I was shot and killed I have a manic pixie girl talking in my head who brought me back to life’ felt like it might be a step too far. Connor thought that was the sort of admission that might get his gun licence revoked.

“Nothing I’m afraid, boss. But I still don’t know how he was fast enough to get the drop on me.”

“Officially, I’ve noted in my report that you’ve always been a bit shit in a gunfight,” Joyful said.

“Cheers. Could well be that,” Connor said.

There wasn’t really much more to say after that. They’d already been through it all so many times already.

Despite it all, the Dane wasn’t one for having a soothing bedside manner. Once he was satisfied that he’d filled Connor in on everything that had happened since the shooting, he stood, straightened his cuffs, and offered a curt nod. 

“No malingering, please. I expect to see you back in the Club before the end of the week. But do please take care.”

And then he was gone, leaving nothing behind but the smell of expensive soap and some exceptionally well-hidden stress in his wake. Joyful, on the other hand, chose to linger.

He didn’t say why, but Connor could guess.

“You know,” Joyful said, propping his feet up on the bed, “Some people get shot and wake up to flowers. Maybe a balloon. Maybe one of those teddy bears with comically oversized eyes. You? Two days in recovery and all you’ve had by your bedside so far is me, the boss, and some horny nurses.”

And a chronically excited voice in my head, Connor didn’t say. Instead, he gave a weak smile. 

“Ours is not a lifestyle which comes with many good options on that front, mate.”

“I’m not too sure about that. I’ve met Serbian warlords with a wider fan club than yours.”

“I like to keep expectations of me low. It precludes any disappointment.”

Joyful whuffled, then leaned back in the chair with a sigh that sounded like it came from his soul. “Lina sends her best, by the way. She wanted to visit, but the twins came down with something sticky and loud, and the baby’s teething again. Actually, do you know what? Every time I compare our lives, I end up feeling you’re getting the better end of the deal. Certainly quieter.”

“I remember you sending me that video of Junior’s birth. I play it every time I’m tempted to go near a dating app.”

“I can actually do one better than that now, if you’d like? I’ll get one of the twins to call you up first thing in the morning and tell you about their day in punishing detail. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll get a vasectomy.”

“Promise?”

“Scout’s honour.”

Connor took in the bags under his friend’s eyes, the weathered skin, the twitch of a clearly sore back he’d never admit to. And the worry, tucked behind the jokes like a loaded gun in a sock drawer. 

No one else had stopped by and seen Connor. 

He had no wife. No surviving parents. And no charming young nieces with homemade cards to present. Just Joyful, an exhausted man with too many miles on the clock and too many people to care about already.

“Go home, Joyful.”

“No bother. I’m fine for a bit.”

“You’re wrecked. And Lina will kill you if you stay here much any longer. And I’d like to be able to be present when she finally flips and that happens.”

Joyful hesitated, but then stood up. 

“You’re a pain in the backside, Connor.”

“I’ve had years of practice. And a good mentor in that most sacred of arts.”

Joyful hovered at the foot of the bed for a moment, unsure of what else to say, then gave Connor a crooked little salute. 

“Try not to die in the night, mate. I’ll stop by at some point tomorrow.”

“Sure. See you then.”

When the door clicked shut, the silence felt heavier. The drip ticked. The monitors beeped. Outside, someone laughed in the corridor. 

And inside the room, Connor was left alone.

Well, as alone as you can be with a chattering Sprite in your head constantly muttering to itself. She hadn’t yet come back to him with whatever her plan was going to be to make him ‘amazing.’

Connor suspected it wouldn’t be long.

*

Connor was so eager to be discharged that, a day later, he forced a meeting with his consultant, a short, greying man with the quiet panic of someone whose worldview had been thoroughly upended. The doctor flipped through Connor’s notes one last time as if some previously undiscovered bullet hole might leap out and explain everything.

“So, I’m good to go, right, doc? Everything’s okay?” Connor said, perched on the edge of the bed and already half-dressed. The cannula in his arm hung loose, the tape around it mostly symbolic at this point.

“More than okay, actually.” The poor doctor didn’t sound especially reassured. “Your CT scans are practically a teaching model. There’s no sign of any intracranial bleeding, no dislodged bone fragmentation, no… anything, really. Even the bruising around your thoracic cavity, which was considerable yesterday morning, seems to have resolved. Entirely.”

He flipped the chart as if expecting it to correct itself midair. It didn’t. 

“Frankly, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d never been shot in your life.”

“I was. Trust me. Twice.”

“Yes, you keep insisting. And yet…” He held up the final report like it might accuse Connor of lying. “The entry wounds are almost completely closed with minimal scar tissue. There’s no evidence of surgical repair, fever spike or any infection. Not after you’d died, anyway.”

“Maybe I’m just built differently?”

“If you are,” the doctor said, folding the sheet slowly, “Then we’ll need to rewrite several chapters of human anatomy. Possibly starting with the bit where bullets are bad for you.”

“It’s just all my clean living,” Connor said, grinning widely. “Yoga. Cold showers. Avoiding gluten and stuff like that.”

“Indeed,” the doctor said, unimpressed. “Nevertheless, in lieu of any reason not to, and beds in ICU being at a premium, we’ll be discharging you today under the strict condition that you return for multiple follow-ups. In the very likely event that you suddenly develop, say, sepsis or systemic necrosis, I want my name far away from the coroner’s report.”

“Noted,” Connor gave him a double thumbs up. “Can I just say, this is just the sort of care and minute attention to detail for which the NHS is rightly renowned.”

“Quite,” the consultant said, before adding a patronising tone to his voice. “Also, and I can’t believe I have to say this: please don’t get shot again. I’m not sure how any of this has happened, but it is unlikely to repeat itself.”

Connor nodded along.

“Well, I’m all for unpredictability. Can’t promise anything, doc.”

“Yes, well, isn’t that lovely? Before we finish, let me briefly summarise. Your vitals are strong. Your telemetry’s clean. And every Department Head who’s come by has politely, but firmly, expressed a desire for you to become someone else’s fascinating medical mystery.” The doctor looked at him over the rim of his glasses. “Therefore, in the immortal words of the Bard: ‘stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once.’”

He pressed a discharge packet into Connor’s hands like it might explode if left unattended. Inside were his notes, a thin leaflet titled Coping With Psychological Trauma, and a single-use coupon for hospital parking that expired yesterday.

“Oh,” he added, already halfway out the door, “The nurses are taking bets on whether you’re some kind of genetically engineered super soldier. Could you please give Linda on Ward B the exclusive? She runs the staff newsletter. It’s also been mentioned in dispatches that several staff members would quite like your phone number. For professional curiosity reasons, of course.”

“That’s sweet,” Connor said, tucking the packet under one arm. “Tell Linda to make sure she spells ‘cyborg’ with a Y.”

Then the door was firmly closed, which allowed Connor some privacy to finish getting changed.

“I liked him. He was doing his best with very little data. And he had such nice handwriting! Honestly, I’m going to miss this place. The floor patterns. The colour-coded garbage bins. The complete absence of mana filtration protocols.”

Connor slipped on the last of the clothes Joyful had brought for him. He’d whined a little about the loss of his own gear, but it had been bagged up and filed away for evidence. At least his friend had smuggled a gun in for him.

Strapping it on and standing on still slightly wobbly legs, Connor bid the hospital room farewell. 

“Come on then, Izzy. Let me show you around my corner of Earth.”

The walk from his room to the taxi rank was, after everything he’d most recently been through, uneventful. At least, if he didn’t count the three separate nurses who propositioned him an aggressive cheer usually reserved for discount cruises. The first one asked if he wanted to “make a deposit,” and the second just handed him her phone number on a prescription pad. The third was older, wore compression socks, and winked like she’d survived worse than him. 

She probably had. 

Actually, now he thought about it, she might have been a patient, not a nurse.

The hospital lights flickered whitely overhead as he walked down the corridor. He passed a hand-sanitiser station that hissed as he passed it, and he tried not to meet the gaze of a therapy dog in a cone of shame.

Initially, his official escort, a broad, shaved-headed lump of muscle named Gareth, followed two steps behind with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball in tactical gear. Losing him, though, had been a breeze. He’d deal with the fallout from the Dane later.

Connor had simply stopped near a coffee machine, said something beneath his breath about a latte, and ducked behind it like a stage magician. When Gareth had circled left to keep his eyes on Connor, he had slipped right and disappeared into a side corridor with a sign that read "Podiatry / Lower Limb Interventions."

He’d picked up the pace, passing two students in oversized lanyards dissecting an argument about neurosurgical ethics, and a man in a paper gown carrying a jar with what might have been his own appendix. If it turned out either of them were a security threat needing a troll with an Uzi traipsing behind him, Connor didn’t want to know about it.

Izzy kept buzzing in his ear. What he wouldn’t give for a mute button right then. 

“You do know, Mr Connor, that by any measure, your current behaviour is quite childish. You’ve just abandoned your personal security detail and, unless I am very much mistaken, deliberately turned off the primary locator device your friends slipped into your communication device.”

Connor hadn’t been absolutely sure Joyful had installed a tracker on his phone, but it was good to be careful. 

“I’m taking some time to myself,” he said. “You ever tried that? It might be restful for you not to be narrating everything that’s happening in my ear.”

“I am simply ensuring your continued survival, Mr Connor. And providing companionship. And, even if I say so myself, being generally delightful.”

“I’m going to walk into traffic. On purpose. And it will be your fault. I’m finding the whole disembodied voice thing a bit tricky to deal with, to tell the truth.”

Connor had reached the sliding glass doors at the front of the hospital. The world beyond looked like it hadn’t yet noticed he was now the bearer of a System. The car park was half-full and there was a slow drizzle making streaks on the windscreen of an ambulance parked up. A kid cried somewhere behind him, in a loud and sticky way he figured Joyful would instantly recognise. 

“I hear you, Mr Connor. If it would be of interest, I do have a visual rendering option.”

“What?”

“I’m just saying, if you are, as you say, finding me just being a voice a challenge, I have a few avatar options I would be happy to show you.”

Connor stopped dead on the threshold, causing an old man with a walker to clatter into the back of his calves. The old man swore at volume, and shuffled past with a look of betrayed disgust. Connor barely noticed.

Because something had just flickered into view.

It was a growing bright light right at the edge of his peripheral vision, which then popped like a bubble and was replaced by a floating, poorly-rendered 3D fox in a waistcoat and monocle. It bowed with a jerky animation loop.

“Option one: classical sophistication meets woodland whimsy.”

The fox then exploded into static and, a second later, was replaced by a whistling, transparent jellyfish with mascara and far too many eyelashes.

“Option two: non-threatening bioluminescent guidance companion.”

“That will be a hard ‘no.’” 

The jellyfish made a little sad noise as it faded and was replaced by a spinning cube with a cartoon face on every side, each of them blinking out of sync. Then something that looked suspiciously like a mood-boarded fire hydrant. Then a half-loaded wizard made entirely of placeholder text.

“Do you have any non-completely mental options?”.

There was a pause.

Then an 8-bit blonde woman popped into place. She wore pixelated sunglasses, a come-hither smile, and pine-striped suit beneath a lurid pink trench coat that flared as she began orbiting his field of view.

“Option final,” Izzy said with pride. “Meet Retro Mode Izzy. Low memory load. High charm value. Approved for fieldwork and basic emotional support.”

The avatar gave him a finger-guns salute, then pirouetted midair in an unnecessarily dramatic flourish. Connor winced.

“You’re circling.”

“I find it encourages attentiveness.”

“I find it encourages migraines. Stop doing that and stay where I can see you.”

Shaking his head, he continued past the hospital’s smoking shelter, dodging a cloud of apple-scented vape. He was just about to ask Izzy how the ‘making him amazing’ plan was coming, when something new flickered at the edge of his vision. Not a full-on shimmer exactly, more like reality buffering. 

It was a softly warping, oval-shaped blob that was about six feet off the ground, just left of a flickering bin fire someone had thoughtfully lit in a wheel hub.

Connor stopped. But the blob kept warping. It was like the air itself was experiencing terminal hiccups. A line of the cracking pavement stretched out from it, weirdly rubbery, then snapped back into place. The longer Connor looked at it, the more he thought it was as if the light was bending entirely wrongly around the blob, like the lens of the world had been cracked and taped over.

He closed his eyes and then reopened them. Normality had reasserted itself. Almost.

“Uh, Izzy?”

“Yes, Mr Connor?” 

She turned to face him, raising an eyebrow.

“Are things supposed to be… sharper? Like my eyes have had an upgrade no one asked for?”

“Oh, yes indeed,” she said. “That’s all perfectly normal. You’re a bit different now, Mr Connor. Your visual perception’s shifted by approximately 1.7 degrees along three cognitive axes. Which means that you’ll notice greater clarity, increased edge contrast, and mildly enhanced depth resolution in moments of ambient mana distortion. Consider it a part of your recent formalisation into a Candidate.”

“I don’t know what any of that means, but I appear to be seeing stuff I don’t want to be seeing,” he said, gesticulating at the blob.

“That just means you’re becoming more interesting, Mr Connor. And the world’s letting you see it back.”

The warping distorted again, but louder this time, giving off a low, wet suction, like someone opening a window in reverse through a bowl of custard. Connor fully turned then to look at the offending wall against which the blob was resting. It was beige, crumbling, and had the words NADIA 4EVA sprayed in fat black letters beside a rusted drainpipe. 

Which meant it was just a wall, right?

Except it clearly wasn’t.

The blob looked like it was covered with a heat-haze shimmer, with the air bending and shaking above it. It was like breath fogging up a mirror that refused to show a reflection.

“Oi, oi! Dungeon spotted! Let’s goooo!” Izzy beamed, fists on hips and bouncing with pixelated glee.

The shape on the wall blinked again - once, twice - then started flickering hard. There. Not-there. There-too-much. It became an almost violent tear in the fabric of things, like the wall was trying to remember what shape it was supposed to be but was failing appallingly. Then, as if embarrassed, it snapped back to brick and peeling paint.

“Say what?” Connor said, eyes on stalks.

“That, Mr Connor, is a Dungeon,” Izzy said again, chipper as a radio jingle. “A mini one. Baby grade. Trainer complexity with an urban crypt theme. And ooh, seems to be exceptionally twitchy.”

Izzy’s avatar began pacing across his eyeline, hands clasped behind her back like a professor at a crime scene. 

“Something’s definitely trying to come through, which is not ideal at all. No, no. Definitely not ideal. All my readings suggest that this Dungeon’s been left open too long without being properly cleared. Its threshold is fraying, there’s all sorts of feedback leaking through and the local stability’s degrading…”

“Speak human, Izzy!”

She stopped, pixel-hands on her cheeks. 

“Actually… oh dear.”

“I hate it when you say that,” Connor said, eyes locked on the wall as it rippled again. “Talk to me.”

“Well, I only say that when something’s genuinely, profoundly awful? Yes, well. Good instincts, Mr Connor.”

Izzy’s voice became distant, as if she was muttering under her breath.

Connor turned a slow circle, checking that no one was crowding him if things were about to get spicy. All was clear. There was just a man with a pram over the road, a woman on her phone standing by the bus stop, and someone in scrubs wolfing down crisps next to her.

“No one else is seeing this, right? The warping and the blob in front of the wall?”

“What? Oh, no. Only you can see it because you’re bonded to me. No one without a Sprite will be able to see a Dungeon. Even ones that really, really, really shouldn’t be here. Which, in case I’ve not been clear, this one definitely shouldn’t. No Planetary core online, no Dungeon. And yet…”

Connor stared at the glowing shape. It wavered again and he felt pulled toward it, like he was a bunch of iron filings and it was a very strong magnet. 

“What happens if I go into it?”

“Oh, I imagine that you’d absolutely die in seconds, Mr Connor. You’ve got no weapons, no armour, and no Abilities. I know you think you’re all very action-man, but you’re actually very squishy right now. Like… pastry. But tastier. Maybe?”

The blob suddenly increased in brightness and Connor felt sweat roll down his back.

“Pastry? Really?”

“Well, I did say ‘maybe’. Actually, oh dear. Oh dear. Okay. Let’s scratch all that doom and gloom chat,” Izzy said, face becoming somewhat stricken. “Because I think something is about to pop out and say ‘hello’. Please disregard my previous glass-half full comments. You’ve got this, Mr Connor. You’ve absolutely got this. You are, in no way, about to be squashed like a bug.”