The chaos was unbelievable.
Three times Josiah looked around the room, never quite seeing its full extent. It was as if his eyes refused to take in the information, or that his brain rejected the images as obviously false. Such things did not happen to real people. This simply could not have happened.
Josiah closed his eyes, half-expecting that everything would return to normality when he reopened them but nothing changed. It was the stuff of fiction but somehow it had invaded his world. His room had been ransacked, his papers and possessions lay strewn everywhere. Why would anyone steal from him? He had nothing. It was incomprehensible.
It took Josiah a few moments to remember that Amber was beside him, and had an arm around his shoulders. Somehow, he was on the floor amongst the mess, though he had no memory of getting there.
“I just can’t believe this. I don’t have anything worth taking!”
“Calm down,” soothed Amber, “it can’t be that bad.”
Amber was right, of course. It was only stuff, only material things, nothing of any lasting value. His most precious possession he carried with him, anyway. Josiah took a deep breath and fought to still his whirling mind. This was his room, it had been invaded, and he was going to get some answers.
Amber waded into the mess, found an unbroken glass and filled it with water.
“Fancy a drink?” she asked with a smile, as she offered the cup to Josiah.
“Shouldn’t I be offering you?” he retorted, “but thanks, I could do with some water. Then I’d better start tidying up - I always think better when I’m busy.” He smiled devilishly, burying his worry as he downed the water.
“Can I help?” asked Amber.
“Sure, I’ll start with the papers.”
“Then I’ll start with the clothes. Where do the trousers go?”
“Top drawer,” Josiah answered, picking up the black chest and fitting the shelves back in their proper places. “I appreciate the help.”
“Don’t mention it, my pleasure.”
Josiah began to gather the scattered pieces of paper that were lying all over the room. Most of them were filled with strange-looking equations and complicated diagrams of his time machine. The rest were shopping lists, to-do lists, old diaries, odd doodles, vague sketches of designs that had never come to fruition, snatches of sermons and theology, snippets of the Great Machine code and other mundane items. Josiah didn’t like to throw away anything he wrote. Every scrap of paper was saved for possible use in the future. Whoever had taken the room apart seemed to have taken special interest in the papers. Paper clips and staples had been ripped out, as if they had made sure to read every page. Carefully, Josiah piled the papers back inside the wall-safe. One of these days he really ought to sort them out more thoroughly, he thought.
“What do I do with the shirts?” Amber asked, folding the clothes more neatly than Josiah ever had.
“Bottom drawer,” replied Josiah distractedly, watching Amber move as she bent down to pick up clothes from the floor.
Amber suddenly looked up, saw him watching her, and smiled. Embarrassed, Josiah turned away and made a show of gathering up the mattress and sorting out the bedclothes. As he did so, a logic broke into his mind - it was really quite simple.
“Let’s examine the options,” Josiah said, preferring to think out loud.
“Okay, where do we start?” asked Amber.
“Either my room was broken into by someone who knew who I was and wanted something specific, or it was a result of random chance.”
“And the motive behind a random break-in would be theft, right?”
“Most likely, but I think we can rule that out immediately. First, I don’t really have anything valuable, and second, I found some bills on the floor. A petty thief would have taken them if nothing else. Nothing seems to be missing.”
“Okay, so what’s the second option?”
“The second option is that the people who did this were after something in particular. You don’t turn a room upside down like this unless you are looking for something, and since nothing significant seems to be missing, I can only assume that they were looking for something that wasn’t here at all - namely me, or my time machine.”
“Your machine isn’t here?” Amber asked, somewhat surprised.
“No, I keep it somewhere more secure. I thought it best given that there are those in the Circle who would dearly love to see it destroyed.”
“Of course, it could be that they weren’t looking for anything at all, but simply trying to scare you.”
“It’s possible,” Josiah admitted, “we’ll get there in a moment. But between me and my time machine, which seems the more likely target?”
“Well, you were in your room most of the night, right? If they had wanted you, all they had to do was arrive a bit earlier.”
“Exactly!” exclaimed Josiah, getting excited as he worked through the reasoning to its inevitable conclusion. “We were gone between 6 and 9 am. Anyone could leave their house that early. If I were planning a murder or a kidnapping, I would choose a time I knew my target was likely to be home. So if I wasn’t the target, that just leaves...”
“...the time machine,” finished Amber.
“But who would want my time machine? Who even knew I was building one? Who also knew where I lived and would be able to come and take it? Come to that, who might want to scare me into submission?”
“Are you implying that this was the work of the Circle?”
“It seems more than possible. They have all the knowledge - they know about the machine, they know where I live, using security cameras they could have easily known when I left the room.”
“Okay,” Amber interrupted, “but if they wanted your time machine, why didn’t they simply take it from you before they cast you out?”
“Maybe they didn’t want to be seen to handle ‘blasphemous’ technology. I was warned to perform no acts of science but they never told me to destroy my work. I have since wondered why that was - perhaps now I know. The Circle wants the machine for themselves.”
“But if they were after the time machine, why not at least take your papers?”
Josiah thought for a moment. “I’m not sure. Maybe they didn’t realise what they were reading. My work was quite specialised - most wouldn’t understand it. Or maybe they need the machine in a hurry, too soon to try to replicate my work.”
“And if the purpose was to scare you, my third question is why would the Circle do that? If they knew you were involved with the Square, they would arrest you, and if not, wouldn’t they simply ignore you?”
Amber was correct, the tactics were unusual coming from the Circle. Circle Security was more of a blunt instrument - sent to kill not create a mess.
“It wouldn’t be standard procedure,” Josiah admitted, “but it wouldn’t be impossible. The Circle still seem the most likely suspects.”
Amber stopped suddenly, and picked up a small object that had just fallen out of a shirt she was folding. “Maybe not anymore,” she said, “if this was done by the Circle, what is this doing here?”
She handed the object to Josiah. It was a wide ring, made of silver. The device was a demonic face, grinning madly, with two small, red gemstones embedded in the eye sockets. This wasn’t the ring of a Scientist, it belonged firmly in the Deep.
“I take it then that this ring isn’t yours?” Amber asked playfully.
“I’ve seen this marking before,” said Josiah, trying to recall the situation. “It was in the market, emblazoned across someone’s shirt. He watched us for a while, maybe five or six minutes.”
“It’s a Piranha mark, one of the King’s Cross gangs, but I’m not sure which one.”
Josiah shuddered involuntarily at the mention of the word Piranha.
“It could have been planted,” Josiah offered, without much conviction.
“Or it could have slipped off while they were searching your room.”
“But apart from the Circle, the only people who knew about my time machine were Duke, Theano and Lovecraft. You and I excluded, of course. How could the Piranhas know about the machine? Wait, maybe I’ve been looking at this the wrong way. Technology is power - maybe they were just looking for some Square gizmos. But still, how would they know where I lived?”
“Have you been followed?” Amber asked.
“I don’t think so.”
Josiah thought for a moment but they seemed to have reached something of a dead-end. “What we need now is some hard evidence,” said Josiah, as he put away the last of his clothes. Some degree of order had now been reinstated, though it was far from tidy.
“No,” Amber said with a smile, “what we need now is some coffee.”
On reflection, Josiah could not agree more.
* * *
Strictly speaking, Josiah was not supposed to be able to access the cameras that kept a watchful eye on his building. Of course, when he had been the block’s minister, it had been part of his responsibilities to care for the eyes of the Great Machine. But no one seemed to care what the eyes saw, and no one ever seemed to come here besides Josiah. He still had the key to the security room - despite his excommunication, the Circle had not yet appointed a new minister for the block. Now seemed as good a time as any to start abusing that fact.
Josiah inserted the key in the lock and turned it, but nothing happened. He tried the handle, and found that it was already open. The last time he had been here, Josiah had definitely locked the door behind him.
“Someone’s been here before us,” he warned Amber, as he gently pushed the door open.
The room was cramped and dark, lit only by the flickering monitors that lined each wall, and it was a pale, sickly light they shed. Each of the screens was identical besides their unique point of view. The eyes watched every corridor, every elevator. They were hidden in the stairwells and stood guard over each exit. It was impossible to move inside the building without your image being captured dozens of times.
Josiah sat in the black swivel-chair, that occupied most of the space in the room, and turned to look at the screens. Amber stood beside him, not knowing which screen to look at.
“This screen here,” Josiah said, pointing to a screen in the upper right corner, “shows the corridor outside my room. There’s my door, see? I’ll rewind it to this morning.”
On a small desk in front of Josiah was a keyboard with a bewildering array of tiny buttons, dials and switches, none of which gave any indication of their function. Josiah pressed a few, moving across them with comfortable dexterity, and the picture flickered violently as time wound backwards. The clock reached the right moment and Josiah ran it forward at normal speed.
“They watched Josiah leave his room, putting on his black coat as he went, and locking the door behind him. Then he hurried down the corridor and off screen. There was no other movement for several minutes. Josiah increased the speed. Minutes passed in seconds. Still nothing happened.
“Wait!” cried Amber suddenly. “Rewind it.”
Josiah did so.
“There, now play it at normal speed. Keep your eye on the clock.”
Ignoring the picture, Josiah focussed on the white numbers at the bottom of the display, counting the seconds. It read 06:56:53. He watched the seconds go to 54, 55, 56, and then suddenly the clock jumped to 07:48:28.
“Did you see that?” asked Amber.
“Yes,” frowned Josiah, “it looks as though nearly an hour of footage has been deleted. But to do that you would have to hack into the Great Machine itself. That would take a huge technical ability. I don’t even think I could do it.”
They watched the skip again, this time in slow-motion, hoping to catch a glimpse of something, hoping that whoever had cut the film had slipped up. They were disappointed.
“Whoever did this was thorough, and knew exactly what he was doing. There are no traces.”
“What about the other cameras?”
Josiah tried a few others, but each was missing the same segment of time, and none showed anything before or after that was out of the ordinary.
“This makes the Circle a more likely suspect,” Josiah said, “who else would have this kind of knowledge of the Machine?”
“But isn’t hacking them considered blasphemy?” Amber pointed out. “Maybe the Piranhas have some outcasts working for them. It will take hours to check all these cameras. Why don’t we just look at the exits?”
“Good idea. Let’s start at the bottom and work up.”
The first few screens revealed as little as the previous ones. Each camera skipped at exactly the same moment, and none showed any trace of anything out of the ordinary. By the time they reached the uppermost exit, Josiah was about ready to give up. Then he saw something. He hit the pause and stabbed a finger at the screen.
“What the hell is that!?”
“I have no idea,” Amber said, scrutinising the image.
“Before the jump there’s nothing, see? But afterwards...”
Josiah zoomed in on the black object, and magnified it until it filled the screen. Then he tried to sharpen the image.
“It’s a boot,” said Amber.
“Yes, and unless it is a total coincidence, which I doubt, it belongs to our mystery guest. It is also definitely not a standard issue Church boot.”
“That much is certainly true.”
It was just on the edge of the screen, sticking out from behind a closing door. It was black with silver studs running down the edges. Each stud seemed to have something like skulls, or strange runes engraved on them - it was impossible to tell which at this magnification. But like the ring, boots like this were found only in one place.
“Still think the Circle is the primary suspect?” Amber asked.
“Not any more, though I still have unanswered questions. How did they know where to find me? How did they hack the Machine? It sounds like the Circle are involved in here somewhere, it feels like their work. Remember I told you about my first time in the Deep?”
Amber nodded, it had been one of their first proper conversations.
“I’ve thought for some time now that something about it doesn’t add up. There was no reason at all why I should have been picked for the mission, and yet there I was. An inexperienced Scientist, sent down to the most dangerous part of the city. And then, just when we were most vulnerable, we were attacked by Piranhas who seemed to know exactly how to hit us. They seemed to know our security procedures, our weak-spots. It didn’t take them long to take out almost everyone.”
“But you survived.”
“By chance - I should have died down there. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“So either the Circle is leaking information to the Piranhas...” Amber began.
“...or the Inner Circle wanted me dead but didn’t want to be seen to do it,” Josiah finished. “I don’t see how it all fits together yet. There seems to be a web of conspiracy here - and I am at their centre.”
“I don’t suppose you saw the markings of the gang that was chasing you.”
“I was rather too busy running for my life, I’m afraid, but I would be willing to bet that it was a grinning demonic face.”
“So what’s our next move?” Amber asked.
“We can’t move against the Circle. I no longer have the access codes, and the Cathedral is like a fortress. But the Piranhas are fair game. Trace the symbol, we might find some answers.”
“It could be a trap,” Amber warned.
“Then we’ll be careful,” responded Josiah. “You are coming along, aren’t you?” he asked hopefully.
“Wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
“I’m glad to hear it. If we can find the Piranhas, perhaps we can find out what they want from me.”
Amber’s eyes lit up with mischief: “So, what are we waiting for?”
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