Cleansing: The City Electric - Book One

By Michael Cairns

Dancy waits...
Sometimes, she waits all night. Rain or snow, she sits atop the city, watching for him.
For Never Man.
Some nights, he doesn’t show. Other nights...
Five years ago, Dancy was rescued by Never Man. He didn’t say why. He didn’t say much of anything. But since then, she’s lived every day in the hope of meeting him again, of understanding him and the choice he made.
A mystery in a city filled with rules. Like the ones that make her relationship with Mina illegal, yet allow the Dark Net to flourish, or the one that turned her illegal hacking into one of the highest paid jobs in London.
Right now, the Dark Net is filled with conspiracy theories about something called the Cleansing. Dancy’s too busy planning a holiday to worry about silly things like that, but her dream is about to come true and, when it does, the Cleansing will no longer seem like a crazy theory...
The City Electric welcomes you into a world where the line between super hero and villain is blurred, a world similar to our own, yet subtly different, a world in which you need to choose your questions carefully, because you might not like the answers...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Cairns
• Release date: May 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781909699755

Michael Cairns

Michael Cairns was born at a young age and could write even before he could play the drums, but that was long ago, in the glory days - when he actually had hair. He loves chocolate, pineapple, playing gigs and outwitting his young daughter (the scores are about level but she's getting smarter every day). Michael is currently working hard on writing, getting enough sleep and keeping his hair. The first is going well, the other two...not so much. His current novels include: > Young adult, science fiction adventure series, 'A Game of War' 1. Childhood dreams 2. The end of innocence 3. Playing God 4. Breathing in space 5. Escape 6. Gateway to earth > Urban fantasy super-hero series, 'The Planets' 1. The spirit room 2. The story of Erie 3. The long way home >Paranormal horror post apocalyptic zombie series, 'Thirteen Roses' 1. Before (Books 2-6 due for release in spring)

Book preview

I’m 19, going on 70. That’s what Mina says anyway. She’s wrong, but I can see why she’d think that. I think too much and say too little and people don’t like it.

I haven’t always been like that. My mother says I was a loud mouth when I was a kid. I was the one who’d shout things out at the dinner table, cause a ruckus. At least, I was until dad went. Everything changed then, and not all for the better.

But it’s useful at times like this. Times when the wind yanks at my hair and reminds me how stupid it is to be up here. Times when the night is my only friend and the lights of the city, my carpet.

The stone’s cold tonight. Like that’s different from any other night. Maybe my gloves are getting thin. I release my handhold to peer at my fingers. In the dark it’s all the same. It doesn’t matter, though, I’d be up here without gloves at all if that’s what it took.

The wind’s strong, though, and that is different from normal. The clouds barrel across the sky like they’re desperate to get somewhere. Maybe they are. Maybe they’ve an appointment to rain all over Wales by tomorrow morning and London’s keeping them here. I could do without rain.

Getting up here always takes too long, but once I’m here, I’m fine. I can see everything, from the Thames, murky and slow, up to the hills north of the city. I see everything, which means I see stuff others don’t. Like right now, for instance, I can see the police moving on a house. It’s a flat, really, one of the high rises in Notting Hill.

I only spotted them because of the high-vis jackets. My binoculars are good, but without the flashes of yellow, I wouldn’t have had a hope. Now, though, they’re a beacon in the darkness. I’ve counted seven officers so far, and four cars, all creeping in towards one block.

I’ve tweeted it, obviously. Tweeted, Facebooked, and stuck it on the Dark net, too. Everyone who cares knows that someone in Notting Hill is about to go down. Anyone who watches these things.

Like Never Man.

My knuckles tighten against the brick.

He’ll be here. He’s always here. I shift position. I could climb up onto the roof, settle more comfortably, but some nights I don’t get more than a brief glimpse. Imagine missing him because I wanted to be more comfortable.

So I shift to stop my legs going dead and wrap my arm tighter around the pipe. The wind’s making my trousers flap like a sail, but I ignore them. He’ll be here soon.

A spot of rain catches me unawares, tears a groan from me. I’ve waited through hailstorms and hurricanes to see him so a few drops of rain won’t make a blind bit of difference. But it’d be nice if it stayed dry. I don’t have much of an excuse for Mina if I get soaked. The walk home from the pub is all of two minutes.

The rain stays as spots and I shift again. It’s funny how she thinks I’m so old. She says it affectionately, normally whilst she’s rubbing my ears, so I don’t mind so much. But if she could see me now… if she could see the box I keep behind the picture in the study…

A rare smile makes my cheeks ache so I rein it in and keep watching.

And he’s there.

A shadow, nothing more. If I hadn’t spent the last five years watching him, I’d have missed it. There are people down there on the street who miss it, people who see photos of him in the papers but still don’t believe.

I believe.

How can I not, he saved my life.

He slips from an alleyway and crosses the street before racing down the side of the flats. The police have gone in the front way, so he doesn’t have long. Not that it makes any difference to Never Man. I spot a flash of dark blue, his boots as he goes up the outside of the flat. I imagine the sound of breaking glass as he enters through the window.

Then I wait, heart in my mouth, for something, anything to happen. But it’s the usual tonight. He emerges a few moments later and slips down the way he came. What’s he left inside? The papers will tell me tomorrow, but I hate having to wait. If I had just a fraction of his power I could…

I shake my head. Stupid thinking. I’ve been there before, at least in research, and it never ends well. The bodies of the Experimentalists make the remains Never Man leaves behind look peaceful. He reaches the floor and slips into the darkness.

I’m about to clamber back onto the rooftop when he reemerges into the light, and stares at me. I don’t know how I know, because I’m miles away, but they say he can see in the dark and further than the binoculars shaking in my hand. He’s looking straight at me.

He knows it’s me. He remembers me. He must do, I’m his only one. He chose me, I know he did, I kn—

He’s gone. Back into the shadows and out of my life. Same as every night. I clamber onto the roof and trudge to the fire escape. It’s a long way down, but I saw him. Every second up here was worth it, because I saw him.

It doesn’t rain on the way home, but Mina’s asleep by the time I sneak down our hallway to the bedroom, so no awkward questions anyway. I pause in the doorway, look at her.

She’s had her hair cut again and it reminds me of Winona Ryder in Dracula, when she was young. She tells me the only reason she reminds me of her is because the character’s called Mina Harker, but it’s more than that. She has the same high cheekbones and narrow chin, the same pale skin. She’d always look pale compared to me, but she’s pale compared to milk. And she has the smile. Mina’s smile is prettier than Winona’s, wider and easier, but it’s got the same impish quality.

She looks troubled when she sleeps. She’s got these two worry lines that form on her forehead, like she’s thinking about something really hard in her dreams. I used to try to smooth them out, but it’s impossible to do much of anything without waking her up.

I ease the door closed and amble into the study. It’s early for me, so I settle into my chair and pull the box out from behind the picture. I pause a moment, admiring the art. It’s a piece of original comic art, Batman brooding atop a gargoyle. It reminds me of me, if I wore a cape and fancied myself a vigilante. But London already has one of those.

I settle the box reverentially on the desk, open it, and pull out this year’s notepad. The other five are hidden elsewhere. On the off chance that someone finds this, I can probably remember most of my sightings from the last seven months. But last year would be a struggle and the years before, even more so.

I turn to today’s date and fill in the details. Maps tells me the name of the block of flats and some more obscure sites tell me who the police were after. It was drugs, as it so often is. Some small time dealer who’s been doing it for years, but finally come up for arrest.

I write it all in, neat and tidy, then place the book back in the box. I’ll find out what Never Man left for the police in a couple of hours, but it pays to be cautious, so I never leave the box out any longer than I have to. Imagine if the police found it.

They say they’re tracking him. Every time one of the news sites calls them on it, they say they have him under surveillance. But they don’t. They don’t know anything about him, except that he keeps the jails free of wrongdoers and keeps cleaning firms in business. The official line is that he’s a terrible criminal and psychopath.

They’re right. He’s both and more. But he does the things the police can’t, or won’t, do, but really want to. As much as some of them deplore his methods, they won’t get rid of him. Not that they could.

I hesitate with the box halfway into the safe, then place it back on the desk. He looked at me. Why did he look at me?

I open the box, take out the pile of website printouts, and place them carefully to one side. Paper’s expensive enough without printing things you can access any time you like. But I can’t help it. I like having them to look through. If I could fit it into my safe, I’d get a scrap book and stick them in. If I could find anywhere selling scrap books.

Beneath them, the box is empty. I twist the bottom and it comes out, revealing a small compartment beneath. It never hurts to be careful. In here there are only two objects.

The first is a photo taken on a phone. I printed it out the next day and didn’t let go of it for a week. It was taken by me, on my phone, in the seconds before he disappeared. It’s a selfie, of sorts, only you can only see half of my face, my brown skin and black hair rendering me almost invisible. The rest of the photo is filled with his wiry frame and dark grey suit. And his face.

I could describe every line, every tiny patch of stubble revealed below his mask. He needed a shave. His dark eyes are staring straight at the camera, but somehow, he didn’t see it. Unless he wanted me to take a photo.

Unless he chose me.

I set it on the desk and pull out the other item. It’s a small piece of plastic, no larger than a pen lid. It’s smooth and vaguely rubbery, but it’s hard as anything. I know because I’ve tried to break it open.

I raise it to my ear in an action I’ve done a thousand times before, and shake it. The unmistakable sloshing of liquid emerges and shivers run down me. How can it still excite me after five years? But it does. It’s like electricity, just picking it up. But hearing that quiet sloshing sound is magical. There’s something in here, something for me.

I can remember it as though I wasn’t 14 and terrified. I can remember it better than what I ate for dinner today. Did I eat dinner today?

My attackers lay on the floor of the alleyway, covered in blood. I remember him standing before me, how I couldn’t stop staring at the blood on his fists. It was caked in between his clenched fingers, but somehow the rest of his suit was pristine. He’d come down the wall of the alley at 100 miles an hour and landed in a rubbish skip, but somehow his suit was uniformly perfect.

Except for his fists.

He put an arm around my shoulders and squeezed. My phone, the one I was about to give to the muggers, was in my hand so taking a photo was the most natural thing in the world. I put it in my pocket as he turned to face me. Our eyes met and I saw… what?

Sitting in my study, I close my eyes. I can still see his, burning into me, telling me something. Then his hand opens and he gestures for me to take what lies within. A tiny capsule I cannot open, filled with a liquid I can’t get access to.

I examine it whilst trying not to drop it from my shaking hands. When I look up, he’s gone.

I open my eyes and place the vial back into the box. I’ve been here before. I’ve been here so many times before and nothing changes. You’d think I’d be bored of it by now, but it’s quite the opposite. The longer I wait, the more sure I am it’s going to happen.

The box goes back into the safe and I flick on my computers. I should probably earn some money sometime this month or Mina’ll get pissed at me.

I wake around noon most days and, every time I do, it’s from a dream in which he turns and looks at me. And he nods. He didn’t nod the other night. I know he didn’t, but the dream is so vivid I can’t help thinking that maybe he did and I just didn’t see it.

I boost software. Boosting used to be a naughty word. Those of us with the know how would remote access computers and screw with software, making it do things the original programmers didn’t even have the language to describe. Nowadays, my skills are worth millions.

Not that I do the big jobs anymore. They’re too pressured, too long. I take smaller stuff, private mostly. I help companies get the best from their droid staff, but in very specific niches. I’ve been on my current job almost a week, so I’m reaching my tolerance limit.

I get bored easy.

But their droids are interesting, at least. They came off the line last year and have all sorts of circuitry just sitting dormant in them, going to waste. This company, I don’t know the name, I barely remember my contact’s name, make computers. They have droids making computers, so the few humans left in the company sit at the top and hire people like me to make them more efficient and therefore richer.

I hit a snag yesterday, one I haven’t told my current employers about. I discovered some dormant software in their droids. It looks suspiciously like Sentient AI, which throws up a whole bunch of issues I have no intention of going anywhere near.

But I could.

It would be easy to bring it on line. And it would be infinitely interesting to sit back and see what happens once I do. However, it would leave me with no employment and no chance of ever getting any in the future. Mina would be pissed. Very pissed.

I log in and spend an hour or two tooling about. I’ve got them multitasking. It still amazes me, the things the designers make their robots capable of, but don’t use. These guys have got four, fully mobile, limbs. Each lifts a little under a ton, assuming they’re locked down, and manipulates things smaller than a human hand could. Yet they sit on a production line doing the same things humans did before they were replaced.

I’ve nearly doubled their output. Of course, the company won’t realise for a week or two until the numbers come in. I should apply for a bonus. I’ve just saved them more than I’ll get paid my entire life.

It’s near three in the morning and the moon is doing its best to break through the light pollution. It’s pretty much failing, but from where I’m sitting, I can see its pale face. It looks lonely. I should go to bed.

I’m about to log off when I notice the AI tech again. When I say ‘notice’, I mean search for it then drag it to the top of the pile. It sits, looking at me, hovering above my desk in all its glory. It’s a lovely program, very neat and simple. It’s not real AI, even the top guys haven’t got that far yet, but it would give the droids decision making skills and a fairly good basis for abstract thought.

The part of me that still lives in this flat with Mina, that still drinks tea and eats too much lasagna and Skypes mum every other month, shudders at the thought. But the part of me that’s spent the last five years hanging around on top of the tallest buildings in London shivers with delight.

I’m not sure what I’d enjoy most, the initial chaos or the confusion that came after. Where did it start? Who programmed it in the first place? If I got a nice judge, I could probably claim I triggered it by accident. It’s not my fault if someone put it in there without telling me.

But they’d look into my record. They’d know it’s the sort of accident I’d never make. With a long sigh, I slip the program back into the stack and log out. The lights of my holo desk wink out and the room is plunged into darkness.

Where is he? Did he really look at me?

Sleep takes a while and I wake the same way. Mina’s at work, has been for five hours before I crawl out of bed. I always feel normal in the mornings. It’s something I’ve been working hard to avoid for as long as I can remember. My parents are normal. My friends are normal. Normal’s easy.

People say that programming is easy. They think boosters are just hackers that evolved. If they had any idea what I was doing when I was ten, they’d rethink their arrogant, stupid opinions. I’ve been doing this since before I could read and every second I spend at it I get better.

Breakfast tastes like nothing much, but the tea wakes me up and, in a fit of bizarre exuberance, I decide to go for a walk. My sunglasses power up as I open the front door and the world goes dark.

I head for a coffee shop, hood up, doing my best to avoid eye contact. My glasses are boosted, of course, which means they tell me all sorts. I can tell by looking at the gentleman behind the counter that he spent last night having sex. His hormone levels are all over the place. I shouldn’t be able to read hormone levels, same way I shouldn’t be able to detect implants or grafts, but they show up like little flashing beacons on my readouts.

I smile as he hands me my coffee and he smiles back, so I can’t be looking as bad as I feel. All the holo desks are taken, which is probably a good thing this early in the morning, so I settle on a stool at the front of the cafe and watch the world go by.

The world doesn’t have much going for it. People in suits scurrying here and there, like what they do matters. I don’t fool myself. I know what I do is irrelevant. I make other people money and in doing so, earn enough to live as comfortably as I want. In the big scheme of things, I’m utterly meaningless.

Except… I squint into my coffee and slip my glasses down my nose. The light still feels too bright, but that’s a sure sign I’ve been inside too long. I haven’t been upstairs in over a week. Not since he looked at me.

I can feel myself scowling. It aches almost as much as a smile. I wasn’t going to think about him, not yet. I need some time before I go back down that dead end. I’ve been heading the same direction for the last few nights and it’s not a healthy one.

Does he love me? Love’s too strong a word, but maybe he fancies me. I was only 12 when he saved me, but I had hips and tits, sort of, and all the other things boys like. Maybe he’s lonely. I snort into my coffee. He picked the wrong girl.

I sip my drink and watch some more. I’ve been working on being less introspective, but sitting here isn’t helping. I can’t help judging the people passing by, which means comparing myself to them. Not that I’m much to compare. Average height, average build, hair so black and straight anyone I actually speak to assumes it’s graft, and a face made to play poker with. Mina likes my eyes. She says they’re the colour of chocolate. I say mud, but who’s arguing?

I can’t remember when I stopped showing my feelings, but it’s only got worse. Mina says she doesn’t mind, that my words, my actions are what counts, but I know she’d like me to smile more.

Why did he look at me?

I stop just short of thumping the narrow bar at which I’m sat and settle for biting the inside of my mouth. Fine, I’ll think about him.

He wants me, for something, but I don’t know what. I’ll go up again tonight. I’ll watch for him. If he’s out, he’ll see me. And if he looks again then, maybe, I’ll know. I don’t know what I’ll know, but I’ll know something, which is better than this.

The drizzle feels fake.

It isn’t, not according to the weather man, but I don’t trust him any more than the smarmy newsreader that was on before telling me everything’s cooled down in China. I know that’s rubbish because the Dark Net’s still getting stuff out of there and it’s in as much trouble as it was this time last year. How long can one country beat itself up for?

It’s too fine and too even. Maybe I’m just so used to the fake stuff I imagine everything feels the same. Doesn’t matter. The fire escape is slippery whichever way you paint it, so I’m going up nice and slow. Which is lucky because it means I notice someone sitting in my place.

I love Centre Point. I’m probably the only person who does. No one wants a massive derelict building in the centre of town, filled with the dregs of society, threatening to fall down at any moment. But it’s my lookout. The scrapers that surround it are far too hard to get to the top of. Maybe if I had a jetpack I could hop up there, but I’ve heard rumours of electrified roofs that make me steer clear.

At some point in the last few years of its active life, someone adorned the roof of Centre Point with a massive modern art sculpture. It’s big enough to see from the ground and makes the building considerably more attractive to people in the scrapers. They still moan about having to look down at the place, but at least the roof’s covered in brightly coloured pipes.

I have a spot, right near the edge, where I can tuck myself in and hold on with one hand. It gives me space to use my binoculars and offers decent views of half the city. Except tonight, there’s someone there. It takes me another second to realise who it is.

I stop dead.

He’s here.

He did look at me.

My hands are shaking again, like he’s right in front of me. I can turn around and leave. The thought I’ve kept buried the entire week bubbles up to surprise me. What if he wants to kill me? What if he’s sick of my constant messaging on every social media known to man, warning him about drug dealers and random crimes probably far below his interests?

I take a step back and he turns. My heart tries to make a break for it out of my chest, but my ribs keep hold, so it thrashes around trying to escape and it’s all I can hear. But I can see his eyes.

He beckons with one, long finger and just like that, the shaking stops. If he’d wanted to kill me, he’d have tossed me off the building. He wouldn’t be making contact, so I’m safe. As safe as I can be up here.

I shimmy up the usual way and within a minute I’m crouched on the pipes, only a few feet away from Never Man. My mouth is as dry as a carpet, so I turn my head upwards and let the rain come in.

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’

‘Why not?’

‘The ‘real’ rain is the stuff they put the suppressant in.’

There’s about five questions I could ask after a statement like that, and I take too long trying to choose the right one.

‘Dancy Visionthief, correct?’ He says.

‘Um, yeah, that’s me.’

‘Catchy name. How much of it is real?’

‘All of it. Now.’

‘Right. What were you born with?’

‘Dancy. They called me Dancy.’

‘They?’

Huh? ‘My parents, who else?’

‘Hmm.’

Silence. This isn’t going quite as I imagined. His voice, for one, is higher pitched than I’d expected. He sounds quite normal. And the ‘right’ carried just enough sarcasm to make me smile. I wasn’t expecting to smile.

‘You saved my life.’

‘I did? I did. 2097, alleyway round the back of Frith Street. What were you doing there at that time, at that age, Dancy?’

I can