Infected Connection

PART ONE: REVELATIONS

Chapter 1

Imagine — should you not already — that you live alone.

Picture yourself arriving home after a long day. Maybe there's a particular neighbour you do your best to avoid. You kick off your shoes; splash water on your face. Try to solicit affection from the cat. You enter the kitchen as you open your post, and discover nothing of interest. But then, as if following perspective lines in a drawing, your senses converge to a point.

Because there, halfway to the hilt in the kitchen table, juts a blood stained knife.

The coldness you feel spreading into your chest, and the subsidence in your stomach… the danger signals that strum the hairs on your neck, reminding you of all the corners that currently escape your field of vision… the wrench as the security of familiarity is torn away, leaving you with the sense that something, somewhere, is very, very wrong…

That's how Simon Parfitt felt when he saw the creature.

Before it caught fire.

Before the fire destroyed the evidence.

* * * *

For a moment, Simon's sympathetic nervous system forgot he was arachnophobic. The sight of those spindly legs rising, like an ink drawing popping out of paper into three dimensional space, should have caused a surge of adrenaline, a yelp of panic, and at least three feet of involuntary back peddling — but the discovery was simply too alien for Simon's mind to process through its usual channels.

Amanda, the student who lived across the hall from his flat, had arrived home late a few months back and heard his gasp of shock (although she called it a shriek) at discovering a large house spider (barely medium sized, she said) determined to prove its dominance by sitting on the keyboard of his laptop. After a deft manoeuvre with a glass and a piece of cardboard she had removed the intruder, and now reminded him of the incident with humiliating regularity.

The flames tugged Simon's instincts back online. He leapt for the carbon dioxide extinguisher on the lab wall, pulled the pin and sent a gout of freezing powder at the debris. He glanced up at the detectors on the ceiling, grabbed his jacket and flapped it to disperse the smoke. Fortunately, lithium didn't burn like carbon, and the threshold of the detectors was set low, in case of soldering mishaps.

He lowered his jacket and stared at the desk. It looked like someone had popped a bag of flour over the remains.

'Very funny,' he called, looking around, hopeful.

The lab was one of many, low in the bowels of a steel and glass behemoth in west London; corporate headquarters for a world leading telecommunications manufacturer. The innermost sanctums of a technological temple, where the real work got done.

Sure, when pressed, Simon would admit that marketing, customer service and corporate strategy all had their place — but the industry was about technology. Bottom lines and competitive advantage meant nothing to Simon. All that mattered was that the product worked.

If ever there arose a hardware problem in one of the models, it was Simon's job to lead the team that identified it; to find a solution, establish a procedure or work around to prevent recurrence of the issue.

But it had been several hours since his team had left for the day, and he'd thought himself alone.

'Ha,' he said, anyway, imagining himself on webcam, his colleagues watching, laughing around drinks somewhere.

The lab remained silent, so he turned back to the pieces under the dust — the broken shell of a new model 8075 smartphone and its battery.

The 8075 line had a major problem. It was no small flaw; this was the company's flagship product, released just four weeks past with a fanfare a piece of technological innovation hadn't seen for years. Although it was still called a smartphone, telecommunication was the least of its functions. The 8075 was nicknamed the Slob — not merely because that's what the digits spelt when written in a retro seven segment font and flipped upside down — but because it had so much potential functionality that a user might never again need to leave their sofa.

But the 8075s, initially selling so fast retailers couldn't keep up with demand, were returning almost as fast. At first only one or two features stopped working — features only the geeks and bloggers and gadgetophiles would have had reason to test anyway — but then more and more core functions went, and finally the phones just died.

'Sarah?' Simon called out to the empty lab. 'Bob? I hate you guys.'

At one end of his workbench sat a pile of 8075s in various states of disassembly. This was just a foothill; the return statistics were tectonic and in a warehouse somewhere a mountain range was forming.

The software guys had soon established that the problem wasn't with their work. The many millions of lines of code came out clean. Something was wrong with the devices themselves. Digging deep into the internal structure of the circuit boards with powerful microscopes, Simon's team had discovered broken and incorrect connections, electronic dead ends, short circuits, and nonsensical pathways.

Simon had swiftly dispatched a team to the factory in China. They checked the manufacturing process, the equipment used, radiation levels and everything they could think of, but were still drawing a blank. Phones fresh out of the factory displayed no symptoms. The warehouses were checked, shipping and distribution channels too. Nothing came to light.

And then the problem worsened. Flaws started showing up in other components of the phone — fault lines in the fibreglass of the circuit board itself, deformations in the plastic casing, signs of corrosion in the antenna.

This seemed to be a clue. The cause had to be radiation, or something similar, and Simon had spent the last few sleep deprived days trying to figure out the nature of the source, and where and when the phones were being exposed. Meanwhile, the barometer in the labs rose, executive level eyes and accusative index fingers turned in his direction.

And finally, after yet another dead end, he'd vented his frustration with a litany of foul language and a flurry of blows with a ball peen hammer.

The unfortunate 8075 hadn't survived his assault, splintering apart, fragments of its casing skittering across the bench. The battery within had split along its plane, revealing something as out of place as a missile in a bathtub.

'Very funny,' Simon said again. 'But… how did you know I would break it open?'

The lab, of course, said nothing.

A shudder crawled between Simon's shoulders as he stared at the remains, and took its time leaving. He decided it was probably time to accept this wasn't a practical joke, and sent the parts tumbling into the beyond help bin with a dusty swoop of his arm.

As a man of science, he really only had one option: repeat the experiment; verify his findings.

He reached for another phone and opened the casing. There was no battery within. He checked another, and another. The 8075 batteries were not integrated into the devices themselves, and when phones were returned for any reason, the batteries were supposed to be removed. This was a health and safety requirement; returned phones could remain in storage for a long time, and there was always a potential fire hazard. One phone, however, had obviously escaped this fate, and Simon searched his pile of 8075s until he found another.

Rather than striking this phone, he removed the battery first. It was a small flat slab; lithium polymer. He placed it on end in a vice and used a small chisel and the dusty ball peen hammer to split it along its plane, quick and easy.

Unscrewing the vice, Simon kept the halves of the battery pinched together between his fingers, wrapped in anti static gloves. He set it down on the dusty surface and inserted the chisel between them, using the sharp corner to slice apart the layers within. Then he shuffled back until he was posed like a fencer, lunging on one foot to thrust at his opponent. He took a breath, and flipped the top half away.

A cowl of dread draped itself around Simon's shoulders and he snatched his hand back.

Multi jointed legs. Exoskeletal structure. It was definitely arachnoid, but seemed more like a harvestman than a spider, with a thorax, but no abdomen behind the central body.

It lay in the exposed electrode sheet like a bug somebody had stepped on and pushed into soft mud. This specimen was less distinct than the first, less three dimensional, and surrounded by the malformed films of the cells. It spanned them, yet the cells themselves remained separate — so its presence would not stop the battery from operating.

Simon edged left, and reached again with the chisel. He arched his arm so every part of his body was as distant as possible, and hooked the top half of the battery towards him.

It displayed the inverse imprint of the creature. Simon took it in his fingers and dropped it back onto the lower half, jumping back as he did. When there came no movement, no sign that the thing was alive, he pressed the two halves together, glad of his awkward gloves, and clamped the halves back into the jaws of the vice.

He drew up a chair and slumped into it. Cold tremors clambered up his sides, stroking the hairs to attention.

'Guys?' he muttered. 'You can jump out and laugh now.'

His desire for this to be a joke was quickly replaced by a desire for whiskey.

There was no reason for anything that looked even vaguely organic to be in the battery of a phone. Something was terribly wrong. If not with his colleagues' collective sense of humour, then with the batteries themselves.

He had to tell someone; show them what he had found. Find somebody who could be more responsible for it than he.

One of the executives demanding answers from him, calling every couple of hours and clogging his inbox with pointless emails reminding him of the importance of the 8075s, was named Michael Odessa. He was a number of pay grades above Simon, and had a lengthy title — Executive Vice President for Corporate Strategy and Services. Something like that. A big shot.

Since Odessa clearly had no qualms about harassing Simon, Simon decided Odessa should be his first stop. In times of change or crisis the executives often stayed late, so he figured there was a good chance Odessa would still be in his office. He picked up the vice, holding it far from his body, and left the lab.

The lift took its time to arrive, and Simon's thoughts wandered away from the phones. When he caught her in his thoughts, he realised he was kidding himself about his reasons for choosing Odessa.

Natalie Lister was Odessa's personal assistant, and just about the finest looking woman Simon had ever seen. It was as if she had been torn from the media vetted, air brushed world of the entertainment industry and made flesh, an avatar of unattainability. Nobody in real life was supposed to look that good, but her reality for Simon manifested itself in her complete, utter and absolute indifference to his existence.

Simon sighed as he entered the lift and punched for the ninth floor.

On the few occasions he'd been summoned to Odessa's office, Natalie had been professional, efficient, and icy towards any attempt at conversation. The scope of her radar swept an unfathomable distance over his head.

The things he wanted to do to her.

But Natalie wasn't at her desk when the lift arrived and he entered the outer office. Simon felt strangely relieved. It had been a long shot anyway, this late in the day. But maybe Odessa was still around.

He imagined Natalie's long nails tapping away at her keyboard, dark eyes reflecting the screen. Probably ignoring him. He wondered what phone she had. Maybe one day she would drop it in the bath. She probably bathed with bubbles, and candles. Red wine. Long legs emerging from the foam, crossed at the knee.

She worked for a smartphone manufacturer, and he was senior among the technical staff. Who else would she come to if her phone suffered water damage?

He would save the phone; the contents of her address book. Her photos would not be lost. She wouldn't lose her MP3s, apps and video clips. He'd fix the phone. Maybe tweak the hardware. Maybe she had a poor signal at home. He'd work around that, boost the reception.

She would be grateful. She'd smile at him. Maybe next time she had a malware problem she wouldn't call the IT department; she'd call him instead. When she had troubles with her laptop, take his number, give him hers. Call him round one evening. He'd bring red wine, something classy, maybe a pinot noir. They'd chat, joke, laugh. Open a second bottle. Get close on the sofa.

And then? Well.

A noise inside Odessa's office broke Simon's reverie, and he remembered where he was. He cleared his throat and sighed and looked down at the vice in his hands.

The battery jutted out from the jaws. Whatever was inside was unnatural, and thinking of it froze his desire in his veins. This was important. He stepped away from Natalie's desk, over to Odessa's door, and knocked rapidly.

Thinking he heard a response, he went right in. Two aghast faces looked up from Odessa's desk.

Odessa and Natalie. One above the other. Flushed. Sweating. Natalie pressed against the surface; Odessa to her back.

Simon felt like someone had pushed his face into a pre heated oven.

'Oh, shit,' Natalie said.

'You,' Odessa said, and his fingers dug into the skin of Natalie's hips. 'Didn't anyone ever teach you to knock?'

Simon's mouth opened and closed. Opened and closed.

'Get out,' Odessa snapped, emphasising the order in a manner which made Natalie grunt.

'But...' Simon began, the vice heavy in his hands, his legs dense and reluctant. 'I found... something...' he said.

Odessa slammed his palm down on the desk. The sound ricocheted in Simon's ears. 'Dammit! Can't you see I'm in the middle of something?'

Natalie let out an indignant squeak.

'Someone,' Odessa corrected.

'Michael!' she gasped.

Simon tore his eyes away, forcing himself to turn around.

'It's the 8075s, isn't it?' Odessa said. 'Can it wait five minutes?'

'Oh, fuck this,' Natalie spat.

Simon pulled the door closed behind him. Through the wood he could hear Natalie's voice, its pitch rising.

'He's going to tell everyone — you know what people are like! What about your wife? What about my career? What about...'

Simon stopped listening and ran for the lift, but someone had called it away. He took the stairs instead.

Chapter 2

Two police cars were parked on the kerb outside Simon's building when he arrived home, and he spent an unnecessary amount of time navigating around them, over cautiously checking his mirrors to ensure he didn't bump them as he parked.

He rented a one bedroom flat in a block of eight, in a suburb that wasn't so much leafy as littery. Every few months he thought about getting a mortgage elsewhere, but the tracks under that train of thought led to mortgage advisers and rates and fees, insurance and everything else, and he always came to the conclusion that renting wasn't so bad after all.

It had been three years, and the area felt like home. Crime was low; his parking spot was under the security camera. The guys in the corner shop recognised him. The central heating had broken only once — albeit on the coldest day of the year.

Simon arrived at the main door to discover it open. He checked the frame and lock but couldn't see any sign of force, so reasoned the police weren't investigating a burglary. He struggled to summon concern over anything else — not after the kind of day he'd had.

He trudged his way up the stairs, laptop case in hand, step after step after step. The door closest to the stairs on the first floor was open. A police officer glanced his way, jotting something down in her notepad.

'Anything serious?' Simon asked. The flat was occupied by a single mother and her teenage daughter. He knew their surname was Silvers from misdirected mail; they had never exchanged anything more than greetings.

'You live here?'

He nodded. 'Second floor. Just home from work.'

'Nothing to worry about. Just a false alarm.' She glanced upward. 'Your neighbour will probably fill you in. She seems like the type.'

'Ah,' Simon said. He knew exactly what that meant. He thanked the officer and continued on his way. Up on the second floor, sure enough, Amanda was leaning in the doorway to her flat, typing away on her phone.

'Hey,' she said, glancing up through shower damp forelocks. 'You missed all the excitement.'

'Hello,' he said, eyeing her warily. She was barefoot, but dressed in jeans and a blouse, and he hoped that meant she was going out. He just wanted peace, to go online for a while, lose himself in the web. 'Fancy meeting you here.'

He found his keys and unlocked his door, and she immediately stepped up behind him and somehow managed to crowd him inside. He tried to protest but she held a finger to his lips.

'I can't tell you what happened in the hall,' she said. 'They'll hear me, and think I'm a right nosy bitch.'

'Oh,' Simon said, walking to the sofa and setting his case down. 'Well, come in, then. Since you're already in.'

'Thanks.' She put her phone away and stepped past him, throwing herself down and patting the seat beside her.

'One moment,' Simon said, unbuttoning his collar, and went into the kitchen. He stood before the counter, thinking of the half bottle of whiskey in the cupboard overhead. If he got it out, Amanda would take it as an invitation to drink with him. Instead he leaned forward, closed his eyes, and stood with his head pressed to the cool wood while the hands of the wall clock ticked behind him.

Amanda had leased the flat across the hall a couple of months after he'd moved in. She was studying for a Ph.D. in some sub field of Health and Social Care, and Simon found himself pitying her future clients.

From the day of her arrival, she'd made it her mission to get to know him. She introduced herself three times in the first few hours alone; showed up with a bottle of wine to assist him in welcoming her to the building, made sure she knew when his birthday was, his religious leanings and dietary preferences — even his recommended plumbers and electricians.

When he arrived home, she said hi. When he left, she said bye. No matter how silently he put his key in the lock, sometimes she just knew he was there. Her door would open, and she would snare him in small talk and gossip, a cataract of words without content.

It became a perverse kind of game. He would act disinterested. She would hint and allude at things, until he made the mistake of showing some small sign of interest, and then she would explode into detail. Eventually he would just walk away, or close the door in her face. She never took it badly, never learned, and never stopped.

And those were just the times she didn't have an agenda. When Amanda wanted something she kept coming, and coming, like the sea coming to claim the land, human designs be damned.

'What's your password?' he heard her call from the other room.

Simon groaned and walked back out of the kitchen. She had taken his laptop out of its case and was already typing in guesses.

'Internet on my phone is playing up,' she explained.

Simon took the laptop from her, closed it, and set it on the coffee table.

She pouted. 'Bad day, huh?' She patted the seat next to her again. 'Anyway, I didn't call the police. You probably won't believe me, but it really wasn't me. I did hear the screams, but I didn't want to call them in case it turned out to be nothing, and they thought I was interfering.'

Simon frowned and tried to navigate that. 'Screams? What screams? The cop said it wasn't serious.'

'It wasn't. But the screams? Well. That girl has some serious lungs. I'm glad you don't scream like that.'

'Me?' Simon said, opting for the armchair opposite. 'What have I got to do with this?'

She shrugged. 'Well, from what I overheard, there was a rat in their kitchen. It touched Kate's foot. She started screaming and crashing into things, trying to get it away from her. Peter heard it too, and thought Amy was trying to kill her or something, so he called the cops.'

'Who's Peter? Who's Amy? Is that the daughter?'

Amanda rolled her eyes. 'Amy is the mother, Kate is the daughter. Peter is the guy who lives opposite them — the one going through the divorce. I told you a million times. Did you know Rhona's trying to get the flat in the settlement?'

Simon passed his hand over his brow. 'So the police are here because of a rat?'

She nodded. 'Or maybe a mouse. Boring, huh? But I guess this means you aren't the only shrieking phobic in the building.'

Simon's face flushed. The spider incident. Again. 'I don't mind rats,' he said. 'I used to have a pet rat.'

Amanda snorted. 'Call me when you have a tarantula. When you hand feed it crickets. When you let it crawl up your arm and into your shirt and you can feel all its little hairs prickling against y...'

Simon screwed his eyes tight and shoved his fingers in his ears, shuddering. He had no problem with flies or bugs or beetles, even creepy ones like earwigs and cockroaches. When he'd travelled in Ecuador with his ex and encountered ants ten times the size of domestic species, he'd only been wary of them. Six legs were fine, but eight were alien and unnatural.

'The same number of legs as four fully grown serial killers!' he would joke after an arachnoid encounter — usually with the person who had removed the creature from his presence — all the while peering into corners, above doorways and over his shoulder, flinching every time his shirt brushed a body hair in an ambiguous manner.

And now there was the thing in the battery, still clamped firmly between the jaws of the vice back in the lab. He knew there had to be a rational explanation, but the shape triggered only terror.

Hands closed on his wrists and pulled his fingers away from his ears. He opened his eyes.

'Hey, hey, I'm just kidding,' Amanda laughed down at him. 'If you see any more spiders you can always give me a knock.'

'Thanks,' Simon said, wondering if he sounded sarcastic enough.

She squinted at him, then moved her head from side to side, studying him. 'You all right?' she asked. 'You look exhausted.'

He nodded. 'Long day. Long week.'

'Aw. You've only just left work, haven't you? It's nearly eleven.' She tugged on his wrists, pulling him forward in his seat. Before he realised what she was doing, she had swung one denim clad leg behind him and was sliding the other over the arm of the chair, squeezing her body down between his back and the seat itself. 'You work too hard,' she told him, as her thumbs and fingers closed on the muscles of his neck and shoulders.

He tried to get up, but she tightened her grip.

'No,' she said, as if to an overenthusiastic dog about to leap up at a child. She pulled him back against her. 'Tell me about your day. Let off some steam.'

Simon sighed, as her body heat began to radiate into his back. 'I wouldn't know where to begin.'

'Begin anywhere.'

A small grunt escaped him as her fingers dug deep. 'Okay,' he said, deciding it was probably best not to mention the things he'd found in the phone batteries — at least until he had some kind of explanation for them. 'Well, today I walked in on a very senior member of staff with his PA.'

Amanda laughed, causing her thighs to squeeze tight around his waist. 'Boss and secretary. Not very original.'

'I don't think they care,' he shrugged.

'No, I suppose not. Everyone likes a little work place shenanigans. What about you? Have you got a secretary?'

'No.'

'Do you want one?'

'Not really.'

Amanda's thumbs dug deeper, finding a knot above his right hand shoulder blade and working it hard. 'You hesitated,' she accused.

'No, I didn't,' he said. 'And anyway, she's not a secretary.'

'Ohh,' she laughed.

'Oh, what?'

'You want that one. What's her name?'

Simon scowled and tried to get up again, but Amanda's fingers became talons, pinning him down. 'Relax,' she ordered. 'I'm just kidding. You and your unavailable women. Are you still pining after that ex of yours?'

Simon tried to thrust himself away from her again, harder, but somehow the leverage was all wrong, and the only place he could put his hands was on Amanda's thighs, and her nails were too sharp... and so he somehow found himself pressed closer against her.

'Shh,' she said, her breath tickling his neck. 'I told you, I'm kidding. You're too stressed; wound too tight. Why are they making you work so late?'

'It won't always be like this,' Simon said, feeling somewhat like a mouse between the paws of a cat. 'We've just got some teething problems with the latest model.'

'You'll solve them,' she said. 'Have faith in yourself. And when there are other problems, you'll solve them too. But you need to draw a line somewhere. You can't bring your work home with you.'

Her fingers continued to kneed, over and over, a rhythm that seemed to synch with her words. She pressed closer against his back.

'You know what they say about all work and no play. It's time to unwind now.'

Simon found himself nodding in agreement, relaxing, just a little, into her warmth.

'I've got a bottle of wine in the fridge,' she continued, her voice lowering ever further in tone. 'I'll bring it over.' Her hands began to roam, further and further from his shoulders, but still she held him firm. 'You remember last time?'

He hesitated, breathed, nodded. He closed his eyes, and images came to mind. First Amanda, but then Natalie. And then Odessa. He tried to push it away, to forget it all. The whole day. The stress in the lab, the thing in the battery, the sweaty imprints of Natalie's breasts on Odessa's desk. Many jointed legs. Fingers digging into sleek white hips. Things that crawled in the dark.

'Yes,' he said. 'I remember.'

'Well?' she whispered. 'You can be my secretary.'

Simon surrendered. 'Okay,' he said.

Amanda's lips closed on his earlobe. 'That's my boy.'

* * * *

04:33.

Simon awoke when Amanda turned in her sleep. Dark shapes scuttled back into the recesses of his subconscious. Whatever the dream had been, it hadn't been pleasant.

Outside were distant voices, a low level blanket of traffic and far off ambulances.

The luminous numbers on his alarm clock changed to 04:34, and Simon stared at it for a moment before he realised they weren't the only source of light in the room. A pale glow illuminated the wall overhead.

He propped himself up on one elbow, his head still thick with the swaddling of alcohol. The glow came from the screen of his phone, behind the clock on his bedside chest of drawers.

He reached for it and stared at the display for a moment, working to comprehend what he was looking at. The phone seemed to be receiving an inbound call — although no number was showing, and there was no name to indicate whether it was someone in his address book. He stared at Amanda's sleeping form, wondering if she'd somehow answered a call in her sleep, a somnatic response to a ringtone. But who would call him at this time of night? And his phone wasn't on a silent setting, so why hadn't it woken him?

He held the phone to his ear, but aside from a faint hiss there came no sound.

'Hello?' he said.

There was no answer.

'Hello, is anybody there?'

The hiss continued unabated. Amanda shifted again, dragging the sheets with her. Simon cut the call. He checked he'd remembered to set his alarm and placed the phone back on the chest.

04:36.

* * * *

When Simon arrived for work, he found Michael Odessa waiting for him in the lab.

He'd risen early and reluctantly, as he'd done every day for the past few weeks. This time, however, his motive for arriving before the general morning influx was to clean up the mess from the fire extinguisher, and retrieve the battery from the vice before anybody got curious.

He was unshaven and tousled, his nerves already on edge. He'd left Amanda in his bed, warm and soft and snoring. The next time he saw her she would act like nothing had happened. She would laugh it off if he tried to mention it. It had happened before.

Outside, the day was grey and blustery, and it didn't improve his mood. Dave, the night shift security guard, told him it was