Iris Carpenter is coming home.
Her instructions were clear and comprehensive, from the token to get her past the unsleeping alien guards to the road directions to Kendal. The train ticket in the wallet took her to Liverpool, and then onwards via a reserved seat on the express to Euston; there’d even been some petty cash for food and drink on the four-hour trip. She’d bought a couple of newspapers at Lime Street Station and spent the journey luxuriating in the unfamiliar sensation of uncensored, unrationed text at her fingertips. Little things kept tripping her up. The simple act of opening a door required a conscious act of will, the recollection that she was allowed to do whatever she wanted. Merely existing in motion was a constant tightrope walk across the infinite chasm of free will. The habits ingrained from six years spent deep in the penumbral constraints of Camp Sunshine would take more than a railway trip to shake off.
En route, Iris gave serious thought to the possibility of fleeing. The Hazard woman frankly scared her. One of the big eldritch beasts of Mahogany Row, she presented a coolly composed cosmetic mask to the world that concealed screaming depths of ruthlessness that dwarfed anything Iris recognized from her own esoteric order. Persephone was capable of anything, that much Iris could see at a glance, like that old creep Angleton. Iris merely saw the agency as a storm cellar against the tornados of the abyss.
If I had any sense I’d have gotten off in Birmingham and gone to ground, Iris tells herself as she looks around the platform, following the milling crowd towards the automatic ticket barriers. But the newspapers have convinced her otherwise, with the rising hysteria and demands that something must be done, the picking over of the wreckage and the postmortem in parliamentary committee. The sum of all fears has come to pass, and her own attempt at furnishing a storm shelter has already failed. If the news out of Leeds is in any way accurate, then it’s only a matter of time before things go from bad to unimaginably worse. And it isn’t just Leeds: the world news pages tell their own story, of things better left undisturbed stirring in unquiet death on all sides, from Chile to Alabama, Kamchatka to South Sudan.
Iris feeds her ticket to the barrier—new since she last passed through this station—and walks up the ramp from the platform’s end into the crowded station concourse. Being able to go so far in a straight line without facing a barbed wire barrier is disorienting and feels unreal, like a dream of walking on the moon. A quick mental audit reminds her that she has precisely ￡19.23 to her name. Not enough to run anywhere in London: buying a one-day Travelcard valid for the three inner zones would eat nearly half her remaining money. They’ve been careful not to leave too much slack in her leash. Proceed to the front of the station, turn right onto Euston Road, go to The Rocket, and await contact. The instructions are explicit and simple and fill her with dread. Await contact.
It’s unseasonably cold on Euston Road, the street clogged with double-decker buses and taxis as night falls. The pub is easy enough to find, but busy: the benches out front are full of smokers, and there is only standing room indoors. Iris pushes wearily through the miasma of dying cigarettes and stale beer that haunts the entrance and walks towards the bar. Almost in spite of herself she feels a frisson of anticipation: it has been years since she last tasted beer. It feels like an indecent luxury. She orders a pint of Younger’s Best and glances around just in time to spot a knot of braying loose-tied office yahoos breaking up, abandoning their empty glasses at a table with a couple of high cast-iron stools. Old reflexes die hard and Iris hastily moves in, then settles down to wait.
In just ten minutes she politely fights off two attempts to join her—not pickup lines at her age, just pushy oafs with no sense of personal space—and manages to refrain from lowering the level of her beer glass by more than a centimeter. (If she finishes it and has to return to the bar she’ll lose her seat.) It’s a hard, personal struggle, for the sharply fruity and somewhat sweet taste of the ale is a revelation, dragging old memories out of storage and marching them across the dusty proscenium of her attention. But there’s no sign of her contact, and she’s debating whether she should in fact be waiting here at all, when someone looms over her shoulder. “Do you mind if I sit here?” he asks.
“Sorry, I’m waiting for—” She swallows the rest of her automatic brush-off. “Oh.”
“Yes.” He smiles faintly and slides his overcoat off his suit jacket, folds it neatly, and places it on the stool beside her. “I shall be back presently.” And then he ghosts across to the bar to order a drink.
Iris stares at Dr. Armstrong’s receding back, blinking furiously, then takes a deep mouthful of beer. As she puts her glass back down she spills a little across the tabletop; her hands are shaking. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, an inner voice chirps inanely. For some reason she’d been expecting Angleton, or maybe someone senior from Field Ops. The presence of an Auditor is deeply disturbing, as if she’s been walking down a staircase in the darkness and her foot has landed where a tread should be and is not. He has the power to bind tongues to silence and to coerce loquacious confession with a word. Worse, he carries the full power of the oath of office. He can make a traitor’s tongue catch fire in their mouth. And even if he has stepped down from the Audit Committee and returned to his previous role within the organization, he cannot be described as anything less than formidable.
Dr. Armstrong somehow manages to be served immediately. He returns from the bar before Iris, still vacillating, can decide whether to stay or go. He’s carrying a beer glass and two tumblers with a tall measure of amber liquid in each.
“Cheers,” he says, sliding a whisky glass in front of her.
“Oh for…” She sniffs the tumbler, wide-eyed. “What’s happening, Mike?”
“I thought you might like a little celebration. Your release, your return to service, or something like that.” Her fingers tense, preparing to throw the drink in his face. “Although I would quite understand if you’d prefer to take early retirement. It’s the least we can do for you.”
She takes a sip of the whisky. It’s a very good Speyside. She puts the glass down with exaggerated care. “What”—her voice is shaky—“is going on?”
Dr. Armstrong shrugs regretfully. “We owe you an apology.”
Suddenly, refraining from throwing her whisky in his face seems like a bad decision. “It’s been six years!”
“Yes, well.” Dr. Armstrong is discomfited. “That mistakes were made only became clear a couple of weeks ago. Along with the nature of the mistakes, I might add. Ends and means, Iris. Ends and means.”