Carcer Ridge, 18 March 2841

Waking up on a desert island with no idea how you got there is something that would unnerve even the most self-assured of people. When it happened to five-year-old Seren Oileán it should come as no surprise that she spent the first few minutes screaming and shouting for her parents before the enormity of her situation sunk into her psyche.

The island was small enough that she could see the other side of it from her position standing on the beach; her brand new, pink-and-white trainers quickly filling with water. She wished she had worn something waterproof, and immediately her running shoes were replaced by pink and white wellington boots.

‘Weird,’ she said, staring down at her feet. Normally things like that did not happen to Seren.

She walked across the tiny desert island, passing the single coconut tree that grew in the middle of what was really little more than a large pile of sand with delusions of grandeur. Two coconuts were hanging from the tree and looked ready to fall if she as much as looked at the tree the wrong way.

When she reached the other side, she found the view was exactly the same as from the other side. The island was surrounded by a vast expanse of flat, blue ocean. Clouds hung in the otherwise empty, deep blue sky. There was no wind and the only sound was the gentle lapping of the sea on the shoreline.

‘Well this sucks,’ said Seren.

‘Mind if I come in?’ asked a man.

Seren spun around and saw a tall man with short, brown hair and a beard made of stubble standing in the ocean a short distance to her left.

‘Where did you come from?’ she asked.

‘It’s difficult to explain right now,’ said the man. ‘I expect you are wondering how you got here?’

‘Where’s my Mum?’

‘Ah, yes. I’m afraid this will come as a bit of a shock. Your mother is in hospital, Seren. I’m sorry to say you were both in a car accident and unfortunately you did not survive.’

‘I want to see my Mummy!’

‘Your mother isn’t here, Seren. I’m here to look after you until you get adjusted to your new life here in Carcer Ridge.’

‘I don’t know where that is but I want to see my Mummy right now!’ said Seren. She did know where it was, however. Her father had explained what it was at length until she got bored and stopped listening. It was a magic place where people went to live when they couldn’t live with Seren and her parents any more. Just like when Freddie, her dog, had been hit by a car and went to heaven.

The man walked slowly out of the ocean and onto the beach. His clothes were bone dry despite walking out of the water, which did not seem to react as if he was there at all. It continued to lap against the shoreline without any ripples as he walked, as if he was not there at all.

The man knelt beside Seren and smiled at her. ‘The doctors are making your Mummy better right now. How about we play a game while we wait for them to finish, then we can talk to her?’

Seren thought about this for a while. She was still not happy but it seemed like the best offer she was going to get.

‘Is my Mummy going to be okay?’ she asked. ‘She’s not going to go and live with Freddie and leave me behind, is she?’

‘Who is Freddie, Seren?’

‘He’s my dog only he got run over by a bad man in a car and now he lives in heaven and I don’t get to play with him any more.’

The man nodded his head slowly. ‘No, she’s not going to live with Freddie. She’s going to be fine, Seren.’

Something clicked inside Seren’s mind. Nervously, she asked ‘Am I going to go and live with Freddie now?’

The man smiled again. ‘Do you want to see Freddie?’

Seren nodded vigorously.

‘Okay then. Close your eyes and think really hard about Freddie.’

Seren scrunched up her eyes as tight as she could and thought about when her Dad had taken her to the big dog shop where Freddie had been left by someone who couldn’t look after him any more. She had picked Freddie out from a pack of other dogs because his ears flopped when he ran and she thought that was really funny.

Something prickled in the back of her mind and then she heard a familiar barking behind her. She turned around and opened her eyes to find Freddie running toward her along the beach.

‘Freddie!’ she shouted and ran to hug him. ‘I missed you so much!’

She hugged the dog tight, the feel of his soft fur bringing back so many memories. He had been gone for almost a year and there was hardly a day that had gone by without her wanting to see him again. Now he was here and she was happy.

But Mummy said he couldn’t come back, said a voice in the back of her mind. Mummy wouldn’t lie. How is he here?

Keeping her arms around the dog, Seren looked up at the man. He had not moved an inch while she was distracted.

‘Where am I?’ she asked. ‘Am I in heaven?’

The man knelt down and stroked Freddie’s head. The dog sniffed him then, as if deciding he was acceptable, went back to staring at the ocean.

‘No, you’re not in heaven,’ said the man. ‘You’re in Carcer Ridge. Do you remember going to the Backup Centre with your parents?’

Seren nodded.

‘Did anyone explain why you were going there?’

Seren nodded again.

‘What did they tell you?’

‘That it was in case something bad happened. If I got hurt I could go on like nothing had happened.’

‘Well, Seren, something bad did happen. You got hit by a car, just like Freddie here, but now you’re all right again.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I know. It will take a bit of time to get used to. Let’s play a game with Freddie, shall we?’

‘He likes to play fetch.’

Freddie wagged his tail vigorously at the mention of the word ‘fetch’. The man smiled and patted his pockets.

‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘I don’t seem to have a ball with me. Do you have a ball, Seren?’

Seren shook her head.

‘Not to worry. Maybe if we both close our eyes and concentrate really hard, we can make a ball appear.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Seren. ‘You can’t really do that. That just works in playing.’

‘I think it works here, too. Watch.’

The man closed his eyes and held out his hand, palm up. He made a face that looked like he was concentrating really hard.

With an audible poof, a ball appeared in his hand. It was small, red and made of rubber. He held it out for Seren to see.

Seren laughed and clapped her hands vigorously.

‘Now you try,’ he said.

Seren closed her eyes and thought of the miniature football Freddie had used to chase around the garden. She held out her hands and wanted the ball to appear. After a minute of nothing seeming to happen, she opened her eyes.

Her hands were empty.

She started to cry. Freddie whined and pawed at her in concern.

‘Hey, it’s okay,’ said the man. ‘There’s no need to cry. It can take a bit of time to learn how to do it. Try again. This time, try to feel the ball in your hand while you wish for it.’

Still unhappy, she closed her eyes and held out her hands again. She thought about the ball and tried to remember how it had felt when she threw it for Freddie. This time she felt something in her hands. She opened her eyes and laughed with delight. The ball was there, real as day.

‘I did it!’ she shouted. ‘Look Freddie, I did it!’

The dog barked and wagged his tail.

She threw the ball across the island. The dog raced after it, almost tripping over himself as he grabbed it in his mouth. He brought it back and dropped it at her feet, his tail still wagging. She picked it up and threw it again.

‘Well done,’ said the man. ‘You’re really getting the hang of this.’

Seren looked up at the man. ‘Who are you?’

The man smiled. ‘Can’t you tell?’

Seren shook her head.

‘Look at me closely,’ he said. ‘You should be able to see who I am.’

Seren stared at the man with the kind of intensity only a child can manage. He was right, she could see who he was. There was information floating around him. Not visible information, not like his suit was visible, but it was still there, floating around him like a cloud she could only see because she was looking for it.

The information that surrounded the man told her a lot about him. His name, where he was from, the fact that he was over three hundred years old and where he lived, amongst many other things. She had never met anyone that old before and she was surprised to find he looked so young. She decided age must go back and forth, like a swing. You’re young when you’re born then you grow old and when you get to the end of growing old, you grow young again. That seemed the only way to explain how the man could be older than her grandmother but look younger than her father.

‘Joseph,’ she said. ‘You’re called Joseph.’

The man smiled again. He smiled a lot, Seren thought. He must be really happy here.

‘Well done,’ said Joseph.

‘Can I see my Mummy now?’ asked Seren.

Joseph looked off into the distance for a moment, then turned his attention back to her. ‘She’s out of surgery now. Shall we call her?’

Seren grinned and clapped her hands with glee.

2

Joseph drew an outline of a rectangle in the air with his fingertip. Seren stared in amazement. The line not only formed in the air despite everything she knew about the world suggesting that was impossible but also looked like Joseph was cutting the air, revealing a dense black void behind the world she could see and feel.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing to the thin expanse of dead, black space inside the line.

‘That’s the Void,’ said Joseph. ‘The world of Carcer Ridge is only as real as you want it to be. If you crumple it up and throw it away, the Void is what is left over.’

‘The Void…,’ said Seren, rolling the concept around in her mind. She did not understand what it was but she knew it was important.

Joseph could see the young girl was having trouble with the concept of the void and stopped what he was doing. He knelt beside her and drew a rectangle in the sand.

‘See this rectangle? That is the Void.’ He drew a circle inside the rectangle, and two stick figures inside the circle. ‘This is the island we are standing on right now, and those are us. Now if we decide to throw away the island…’

He brushed out the circle from the sand as he spoke.

‘…Then we are left standing in the Void. It is all around us. We can walk on it just like we can walk on the sand.’

‘Is it like a carpet?’ Seren asked.

‘In a way. It’s also like the sky. It’s all around you whether you can see it or not. You can use it to build things, like the balls we made. They come from the Void and when you want to throw them away, they go back into the Void and you can make them again later, if you want.’

Seren thought this concept over for a few minutes before saying: ‘I think I understand. It’s like my toy box, only bigger and we can climb in it.’

‘That’s right,’ said Joseph. ‘Now would you like to see your mother?’

‘Yes!’ shouted Seren, bursting with excitement.

‘Okay,’ said Joseph. He pointed at the lines floating in the sky. ‘Look at the rectangle I drew here and concentrate really hard for me. Try to turn the rectangle into a phone.’

Seren scrunched up her face as she concentrated. The lines in the sky began to glow a faint yellow, then a bright yellow, then turned white. Inside the rectangle, a two-dimensional screen flickered into existence.

‘Yaaay!’ shouted Seren. ‘This is easy now!’

She half walked, half skipped over to the screen and put her hands on her hips. ‘Phone my Mummy, please!’ she commanded.

The screen flickered with mock static. A bleep-bleep rung out from it. It took three more rings before a heavily bruised woman with barely focussed eyes and a bandage around her head appeared. The name “Matsumoto Riko” appeared in the bottom-left corner of the screen, along with the woman’s location.

‘Mummy!’ shouted Seren, jumping up and down with delight. ‘Ogenki desu ka?’

The woman on the screen looked surprised but managed a smile nevertheless. ‘Okagesama de, Seren-chan. But you should speak English in front of your friend.’

‘Sorry, Mummy. Sorry, Mr Joseph.’

Joseph smiled. ‘There is no need to apologise, Matsumoto-san,’ he said, in perfect Japanese. ‘I understand what you are saying. We can translate all languages here.’

‘Ah, of course,’ said Riko. ‘I forget that you all operate differently over there. How is she settling in?’

Joseph looked down at Seren, who was stroking Freddie and appeared to only be giving the barest attention to the screen now she knew her mother was alive and as close to being well as she could be under the circumstances.

‘I think she’s going to be fine but it will of course take a little while to adjust.’

‘How are you feeling, Seren?’ Riko asked.

‘I’m okay, I guess,’ said Seren. ‘When can I come and see you?’

‘I’ll come and visit you soon, darling. Just as soon as I get out of hospital, okay?’

‘Okay. You have to get well soon, Mummy. I miss you.’

‘I miss you too, sweetheart.’

Joseph stepped away from the conversation and turned his attention to Freddie while mother and daughter chatted for a while. He lost track of time while playing fetch with the dog, who never seemed to tire of chasing a ball across the tiny island.

It was only when Seren started to scream that he snapped back to the task at hand. He ran up to the young girl and dropped to one knee beside her.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

Seren pointed at the screen. ‘Mummy! They’re hurting mummy!’

Joseph looked up at the screen. It was blank but he could hear sounds of a struggle coming through it.

‘Matsumoto-san! Can you hear me?’ he cried. The sounds from the screen did not change.

Joseph turned back to Seren, who was staring at the screen and crying. ‘Seren? Seren!’ He shook the girl to get her attention. ‘I need you to show me what you saw. Look at me, Seren. Try to picture sending me a video of what you saw.’

‘I don’t understand,’ the girl said between tears.

Joseph put together a brief information dump about what he needed her to learn.

‘Look at me, Seren. Concentrate on me.’

He pushed the information into her mind. She stepped back in shock.

‘Do you understand now?’ he asked.

She nodded.

‘Then show me what you saw.’

The images hit him like a wall of terror. It was all he could do not to scream in transferred dread. While Matsumoto-san had been telling Seren about the zoo they would go to when she came to visit, three hideous figures appeared on the screen. They did not walk in, nor were they simply not there one moment and there the next. They seemed to melt into view, taking shape as if they were being moulded from hot wax.

The figures descended on the stricken woman without a word, tearing into her flesh and rummaging around in her insides as if they were searching for something. Matsumoto-san shrieked and tried to fend the creatures off as best she could but the three of them easily overpowered her. She kicked and bucked, catching the video screen with her foot and sending it tumbling to the ground. The screen went blank and Joseph pulled himself back out of the vision.

Seren stood in the sand in front of him, shaking in fear and blubbing the largest tears Joseph had ever seen. He hugged the girl tight and tried to shush her. She ignored him and continued to cry on his shoulder.

Joseph willed a connection to the French embassy to Carcer Ridge. Now running at his own preferred speed rather than the standard time he had adopted to interact with Seren, it felt like eons before anyone answered.

‘Bon soir. Français Ambassade. Je vous aidez?’ said the man on the other end of the connection.

‘This is Introducer Joseph Dexter of Carcer Ridge. You have an incident at Hôpital privé La Louvière in Lille. A woman has been attacked.’

‘We will send police to investigate. Please transmit any corroborating information you may have on the incident.’

Joseph packaged the vision he had received from Seren and sent it across to the Embassy. After giving his contact details, he closed the connection.

‘It’s going to be all right, Seren.’

‘What’s happening to my Mummy?’ Seren sobbed.

‘I don’t know,’ said Joseph. ‘But I know how to take the pain away.’

He looked Seren in the eyes and explained how to delete parts of her own memory.

Chapter Two

Manchester, 24 September 3124 

Tom Carter turned up the collar on his jacket and braced himself against the biting cold of the late autumn rain. The sky was dark but the streets were lit up as if it was daytime by the combined efforts of street lights, shop window displays and the massive video screens that hung from the walls of the ancient buildings surrounding Picadilly Gardens.

He turned around and headed into the block of flats above Rixxy’s Bar and Grill, a name that instantly conjured up visions of a seedy dive if ever Tom had seen one. He hated to be prejudiced but when your home was a run down, student-infested cesspit above a spit and sawdust, slabhead bar then trouble was never going to be far away. Hell, a brutal murder was practically natural causes for people like the late John Edward Collins.

Tom trudged up the steps, feeling every one of his forty-six misspent years by the time he reached the top floor, where an open door and a group of black uniformed police officers was waiting to greet him. Eric Ross, his long time friend and partner, stepped out into the hall and smiled grimly.

‘Lovely night for it,’ said Eric.

‘I don’t think any night is good for a murder, Eric.’

‘Well no, not when you put it like that.’

‘What have we got here anyway?’

‘White male, mid twenties, with multiple stab wounds to the back, chest and abdomen. I’ve got uniform searching for the murder weapon but so far, nothing.’

Eric’s heavy footsteps echoed on the fake wood floor as he walked back into the victim’s flat and lead the way to the body. Tom shook the rain off his coat and trudged behind, taking mental snapshots of the scene as he passed them. A dusty photo frame here, a notebook there; anything that might present a clue once he had more information.

The body was slumped over the side rail of an immersion chamber that looked as if it was custom built. The tank was full of a mixture of blood, water and some weird gunk Tom recognised from his time in physical therapy after he had broken his back on a skiing holiday when he was twenty-six. He hated the smell of that stuff. It was too medical for its own good; and it brought back painful memories to boot.

‘So this is Mister Collins,’ said Tom. ‘He’s older than I expected.’

The victim was in his mid thirties, slightly overweight, and showed signs of a recent leg re-attachment; the scars on his right leg were too fresh to have been more than a few weeks old. Explained the need for an immersion chamber, Tom decided, and if he was living in this area it was likely the custom-built unit was for cost reasons rather than an interest in medical engineering.

Tom took more mental snapshots of the body, noting the pained expression on the face, the broken fingernails on the left hand, and the victim’s lack of body hair. Mister Collins had one blue eye and one brown eye, and a small, round scar on his upper left arm.

‘What do you make of this?’ said Tom, pointing to the scar.

‘Burn mark, maybe?’ Eric replied. ‘Actually, no. Could be some medical thing. Maybe something from the immersion chamber?’

‘What, he’s breathing through a tube in his arm, now?’

‘Not necessarily breathing, no. Some sort of fluid line, maybe a bone marrow transfer.’

Tom nodded. ‘Could be. We’ll know more when Medical get their hands on him, I suppose.’

‘If you’re done with the body, there’s something else you need to take a look at.’

The two men walked to the bedroom, where most of the forensics team were congregating. Tom’s eyes widened as he took in the scene. The blood covering the bedsheets. The strange symbols and diagrams scrawled all over the walls. More weird symbols on the floor. Blood and even more symbols on the ceiling.

‘What the hell is this?’ said Tom.

‘The workings of a diseased mind, I’d say,’ Eric muttered. ‘Nothing like a weird freak case to welcome you back from your holidays, is there?’

‘You’ve been back two weeks already.’

‘Maybe it’s time for another holiday, then. The days are merging into one-another already.’

Tom smiled and turned back to the task at hand. The symbols, freakish as they might be, needed closer inspection. He examined each of the larger diagrams in turn, taking a mental snapshot of each one as he went, then took pictures of the symbols that covered the rest of the walls. He was certain that at least some of the symbols were a language of some kind, but if they were they were in a tongue he had never encountered before.

His in-built translation software was throwing up no clues about what any of the text meant, which unnerved Tom. He was used to having a translation slip into the back of his mind whenever he encountered a foreign language. The sudden lack of translation, conspicuous by its absence, defied his expectations and knocked him out of his routine. Detective Inspector Tom Carter was a man who liked his routine.

‘Any idea what this stuff is?’ asked Eric.

Tom shook his head. ’Not a clue.’

‘Forensics say it’s some cult thing. I’m thinking we need to make a visit to the university library, talk to their theology department.’

‘Sounds like a plan. We’ll do that after the walk around.’

Eric nodded. ‘You done here?’

‘Yeah. Let’s go talk to the neighbours.’

The two men stepped out of the victim’s flat and stood in the hallway for a moment, processing what they had seen. Tom stroked the two day stubble on his chin while he thought about the writing on the wall of the victim’s bedroom. There was something about the way it was scrawled; like it was done in a hurry.

Who scrawls gibberish all over their bedroom in a hurry? Why would you need to do something like that – and do it quickly, too? Was speed important?

There were too many unknowns at that point. If he was going to understand any of this, he would have to learn more about Mister Collins.

The two men walked down the stairs toward the exit onto Picadilly Gardens. Tom could see there was still a crowd outside, eager to see what the police were up to despite the cold late autumn rain drenching them. Some people would put up with anything if it meant they got a free bit of gossip, Tom decided.

Eric fastened his trench coat over his perfectly formed robotic abdomen and stepped out of the doorway into the street. He turned back to his partner and nodded.

‘I’ll take the people out here. You want to talk to the people inside?’

‘Won’t the rain do you more harm than good?’ asked Tom.

Eric snorted. ‘I won’t rust, you know.’

‘Whatever you say.’

Tom looked to his left sighed. It was the first of eighteen doors he had to knock on tonight. He rapped his usual knock-knock-knock-knock and waited for an answer.

An elderly woman in a neat blue suit and a tasteful gold necklace opened the door a crack. Tom held up his ID.

‘Detective Inspector Tom Carter, Ma’am. Manchester Police. I’d like to ask you a few questions about the events of earlier tonight. May I come in?’

2

Of all the people who had been in the slabhead flats that night, four of them were so drunk they were practically unconscious on their feet, two were asleep and the rest were the regular crowd of “deaf, dumb and blind”; although Tom Carter would never actually use that term in front of them, of course. The risk to his career if he was branded an ableist was too great. Nevertheless, that was what everyone on the street called the kind of person who saw nothing, heard nothing and wouldn’t tell you about it even if they did.

So it seemed from the face of it that John Collins was a man who died as he lived: alone. That at least was consistent with the evidence in the flat. The door was locked and bolted with keys still in the lock. The windows were all closed and locked. There were no signs of a struggle.

Tom pulled a packet of liquorice whirls from his coat pocket and popped one in his mouth as he approached the car. It was an old, red pile of junk that was signed out from the department vehicle pool and he hated it. It smelled, it had cheap plastic fittings and if he had his way, he would rather have walked.

He climbed into the passenger seat and offered the packet of sweets to Eric.

‘No, thanks,’ said Eric.

‘What, you don’t eat as well, now?’

‘I can eat, I just choose not to. It’s less messy that way.’

‘No eating and no sex. You’ve making conversion sound wonderful, you know that?’

‘I can have sex, I just-‘

‘-choose not to. I know.’

‘So what did you find out?’

‘Bugger all. It seems the people in these flats don’t talk to each other. Can’t say I blame them, I hardly say two words to my neighbours and I live somewhere people don’t stab you for looking at them funny.’

‘I had a little more luck. The people outside were mainly from the bar under the flats. Apparently our man Collins was in there earlier today, talking to “a guy with a funny accent”. I pulled the security camera footage and came up with two possible men.’

‘We know either of them?’

Eric smiled. ‘Oh yes. One is your old friend Carlos García Arroyo.’

‘Aww come on. He’s supposed to be inside for another twenty years.’

‘Apparently some hero decided to let him out early for good behaviour.’

‘Where is he staying?’

‘His probation worker has him registered to 17 Dudley Street over in Cheetham Hill. Want to start with him?’

‘Damn straight. That little bastard has been nothing but trouble. You can fill me in on our other guy on the way.’