Darkmatters
by Matt Adcock
‘Our glorious leader, in whom we pledge our trust, the great political instigator who has united the diverse peoples of London2. Only in Marcus Razour have we finally found our true leader – and it is he that will take us to the new dawn of man.’
“Who writes this crap?” said Cleric after reading the latest GOV infovert – “And just when exactly did our political leader start on this messianic ‘I’m going to save the world’ drive? It’s absolute bollocks…”
Cleric’s Social Rating™ blinked “* * * * Pissed Off and Dangerously Anarchistic.”
GIX kick in with a verse: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world…”
“Leave it GIX, I’m not in the mood, I thought you’d had your biblical messages of doom wiped anyway?”
As fate would have it, miles across the city president Marcus Razour was thinking about Cleric at that very moment. Deep in the parliament battle fortress, in his luxury GOV office overlooking neoTowerbridge he is in council with his head of security Andious Fal.
“Tell me about this ‘Cleric’, I want to know why he’s being classified as potential terrorist threat?”
“Well sir, he showed up in a general sweep – he’s ex I.F. and then crossed reference as you requested with anyone who has links with the church of the True God, he showed up there again – not a practising believer we believe but his parents were both heavily involved – might explain his freaky name too? And we believe he has a decommissioned Faithbot mk7 with him, you remember the mk7’s I take it?”
“Yes yes, so, I see...”
“Andious, perhaps we might arrange for him to be brought in for an informal interview – I have a strange feeling about him and I don’t like having feelings because they often end in my having to kill lots of people.”
“Yes sir.”
Andious made his way to the elevator, he preferred whenever possible to travel by conventional methods – he was still somewhat dubious about the STREAM technology and only used it when it would look bad not to. Things were moving ahead nicely with the Victim Marker programme and now that there had been a breakthrough with the Dark Matter Collaboration too it seemed that both of Razour’s pet projects were going to succeed. Andious liked to be on the winning team, always had. The feeling of being able to operate above the law, of having unfettered command of the L2 GOV military response units and all security services – even the battle mage commanders reported to him which added to his sense of invulnerability. Razour was the man, there was no point in denying it and whilst he wouldn’t ever want to question his own sexuality – he certainly had uncomfortable feelings for his boss that went some way beyond loyalty.
He didn’t want to think about his love life though – that was the one area that Andious had just never succeeded, he was a damn fool and he knew it. Rachell had been the one, he knew it now – that had been the only relationship that ever had any potential - years ago now, he’d been stupid thinking he could move on by finding another girl. He was still haunted about how they had lost their innocence together…Still having flashbacks of his first time…which couldn’t be normal. He felt sick inside, not then, but now – now when he found himself obsessively tracking her – seeing her happier than she ever had been with him. And these days what good would he be to her anyway? He was so damn impotent he could barely raise a smile. Regret was his solitary companion in the dark these days and it didn’t matter how many under age hookers he took home – he knew that he had blown his chance for ‘lifelong love’ and he just had to get over it somehow.
Marcus watched Andious leave – poor bastard that he was –a shame that the only thing he was useful for was his vicious ‘bully boy’ mentality that went down well with the troops. At least he was loyal and easily controlled which were the key traits Razour favoured. But he was entirely expendable and that suited him just fine. He turned and looked out on the bright lights of the city and sipped his single malt, still thinking about Cleric…
Other extracts from Darkmatters the novel by Matt Adcock:
Film Gunfight
Fear of Death
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