Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [100]
The little guy slammed through a swinging door marked ‘Employees Only’ and Mancuso followed. Through a broad room partitioned into office cubicles, chipboard dividers and workstations, then a narrow room with tables and food machines, street clothes and street masks hanging on wall hooks. There was the sound of a crash bar being hit and another door opening. Mancuso got to it just as the door was closing on its pneumatic lever. It led down concrete stairs into darkness. Mancuso hesitated then stepped through.
The steps descended to the loading bay behind the store. Mancuso felt for the pressure pads beside the door that should have controlled the lights. She jabbed at the rubberized indentations. Nothing happened. As she moved down the steps small fragments of broken glass ground under her boots. Someone had smashed the lights. Mancuso stood motionless, holding her gun out in front of her. She realized that she hadn’t been briefed on how to work the infrared on it. Down below her was the loading bay, a wide concrete space opening into darkness. Mancuso began to descend.
The loading bay was a big rectangular area with a sloping ramp that led out to street level. No light came in from the street because the ramp curved sharply as it descended. The street entrance was out of sight from the loading bay itself. But as Mancuso’s eyes adjusted she realized that there was light coming from somewhere. A small patch of milky green glowing in the darkness. Moving in on it she realized it was a splash of graffiti. Fresh. From that spraycan the little guy had grabbed. The landing bay was silent. From the other end of the curving cement tunnel she could hear faint traffic sound. Like sea noises in a shell.
The glowing graffiti grew in the darkness as she moved towards it, assuming shape and scale. It was sprayed on the side of a massive bulky object in the centre of the loading bay floor. Mancuso walked towards the glowing mark, eyes fixed on it, wading through the darkness. Her boot hit something on the floor and she stopped and reached down. Her fingers curled around spokes, brushed across curved rubber, sharp edges of a finned metal block, the smooth bulk of plastic and padding. Mancuso stepped around the motorcycle and kept moving.
The graffiti was sharp and clear now, glowing in spooky Hallowe’en green. Not a word or a tag, just a single symbol. Not a hex sign. A long curved loop ending in a dot: ‘?’
Mancuso studied the glowing question mark on the crest of the big shape in the darkness. The shape was big enough to be a garbage module waiting for collection. Far too big to be a car. The wrong shape for a van or truck. She approached, moving cautiously, and reached up to touch the paint and see if it was still wet. As she reached, before her fingers even made contact, she realized what the thing was.
In the faint glow of the luminous paint she could make out the surface of the surrounding metal. It had a familiar pattern of grooves and hollows in it. Mancuso began to grin in the darkness. She rubbed her hand across the high curved surface until she found the familiar dimple. Her fingers locked around the recessed grab bar and she pulled herself up, her foot lifting in the darkness and finding the rubber step where she knew it would be.
Careful not to make any noise on the metal surface, Mancuso released the grab bar and knelt on the curved top surface of the big metal box. Her fingers traced the fine grooving on the surface that outlined a big square, about half a metre on each side. She touched the lock mechanism lightly, resisting the urge to press down on