Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

The sudden flash of memory only took a few seconds to fully relate itself to Remiel, and long before this time was up, Remiel was running towards the farm, willing his legs, quite successfully, to run faster, and concentrating all his energies on getting to the farm in time. The logical place for a bomb, he thought as he ran, would be the outside office. It's central, it's got access from the road and it's large enough to hold a reasonably sized bomb. Only one problem, it's staffed, which means that the bombers, whoever they are, will have to take out Miguel and Sanchez to plant the thing. Remiel's fast frantic thought was expressed in his movements, as he urged his limbs on to greater and greater excesses. As he approached the fence, Remiel realised that to stop and unlock, or even bother opening, the gate would be wasteful of time, time that he did not believe he had. The only solution was a very unlikely one, which, at first glance seemed very irrational, until you understood Remiel's way of thinking. Remiel's legs pounded towards the fence, then tensed and pushed him into the air, he fosbury-flopped over the gate and landed running, relaxing his leg muscles only long enough to prevent injury. As Remiel approached the main building, his fear was evident in the phase he repeated like a mantra, "Not again, not again!"

The flimsy wooden door snapped off its hinges as the frantic caterpillar shoulder-charged it to get into the building,
"Miguel!" Remiel yelled, "Sanchez! Are you guys OK?"
No answer. Then a noise, like a vessel being emptied. Remiel strained his ears to locate the source of the sound. It occurred to him that the only possible source of the noise was the toilets, and he ran to the two cubicles at the back of the office, breaking the locks off as he kicked the door in. Inside was Sanchez, bound to the porcelain bowl. Remiel carefully removed his gag.
"You OK?" he asked,
The aphid nodded in the affirmative, and continued, "I heard you come in, so I tried to make any noise I could, there wasn't much I could do except try and flush the toilet. I guess you heard me."
"Where's Miguel?"
"I don't know, they dragged him off first, I only came round as one of them dragged me here, the other was fiddling with....."
"What?" Remiel desperately tried to get as much help as he could from the aphid, who had just come to a total stop, as if in shock.
"The Bomb! There's a bomb in the office, it's on a timer. What's the time?"
Remiel quickly glanced at his watch "8:45"
"Shit! the bomb was on a 12 hour programme, they set it off at nine yesterday evening, we were just about to clock off. There's only 15 minute's left!."
"Where's Miguel? Try to remember, we've got to get him out of here."
"I don't know, it's all so hazy."
"Think" Remiel grabbed the aphid bodily, and pulled him forwards, snapping the bonds that tied him to the bowl "You've got to remember, think! Try to remember as much as you can."
"The first thing I saw after I came round, one guy fiddling with the bomb, the other closing the safe."
"The safe?" Remiel frowned "What were they doing with the safe, and how could they open it?"
"Miguel knew the combination, but I have no idea what they could have done with it."
Remiel and Sanchez ran for the large main office where the safe stood in the corner. Remiel crouched down and started to open the safe. His fingers moved the dial at incredible speed, "01", "32", "78", "49", "65". Remiel had chosen the one number he could never forget, Alicia's phone number. The door swung open, and Miguel, who had propped himself against the door, fell to the floor, out cold.
"Is he OK?" Sanchez asked worriedly, craning his head around Remiel's shoulder
"I think so, it was an old safe, not airtight by any stretch of the imagination," Remiel told the young aphid, "In fact, you probably saved his life by forgetting to throw the thing out last year."
Hauling the recumbent aphid over his shoulder, Remiel stood up, "Where's the bomb?" he inquired.
"In the computer room¹⁰, but hurry, we haven't got long."

Remiel raced to the computer room, Miguel across one shoulder, Sanchez in tow. The main computer unit, a genial old AI nicknamed Albert, dominated the room, but something didn't look right. Albert's plastic casing always shone, it was a point of pride for him, inasmuch as a low level AI could have pride. The unit now looked dingy, scruffy, almost... defiled.
"Albert?"
Remiel approached the silent computer unit
"Albert, there's a bomb in here, are you all right?"
Still no answer.
"Albert, if you can hear me, I'm just taking a look inside you. I'm just finding out what's wrong"
Remiel placed his hands on the rigid plastic access panel. Even this looked terribly, terribly wrong. The panel had been levered open and then forced back into position, the plastic was buckled and swollen, and the bottom of the door was stained with unnerving green splashes. Removing the panel, Remiel was immediately confronted by a mass of damaged, useless organic matter, within which was the unnerving sight of a large blue plastic barrel with a detonator attached, the LED display beginning the 2 minute countdown. Albert was dead or almost dead, a large chunk of Albert's higher brain functions had been torn away to make room for the bomb. Even if Albert wasn't dead, there wasn't much that could be done.
"Shit." Remiel said under his breath before saying out loud, "Albert, if you can hear me, I'm sorry."
He turned and faced Sanchez,
"I think we should leave," Remiel announced, fireman's-lifting the other aphid and running like hell towards the nearest door. As Remiel ran, burdened by two sizeable aphids, the fatigue of his frantic activity and the severe hangover inserting an icepick in his skull, he knew that he could not keep up this level of activity for much longer. Sooner or later he was going to collapse, his only hope was that he could get outside the blast radius before the shutoff signal his muscles were broadcasting reached his aching brain.
Halfway to the fence, Remiel remembered that the gate was locked, and he had less than a minute to get out. Taking this in his stride, having little other choice, Remiel shifted his weight slightly, manoeuvring Miguel so that he rested on Remiel's shoulder, with one large hand behind him. As they reached the gate, Remiel pushed hard and shot-putted Miguel over the fence, following him seconds later with Sanchez. The two aphids cleared the fence and landed rolling. Remiel had no viable way of leaving in the remaining 5 seconds so he shouted at Sanchez to grab Miguel and run while he could, and pushed himself as far up against the fence as possible. As the first explosion ripped through the air and lit up the sky behind him, Remiel shielded his eyes and hoped that if he did die, it wouldn't hurt too much.

The timer flicked to zero, and the electronic detonator dropped a shot of sulphuric acid into the barrel of sugar and weedkiller, blowing it up with enough force to level the computer room, killing the computer instantly, and start major fires in the rest of the farm. The sprinkler system did not go off, that had been dealt with, the bulbs in the heat detectors being replaced with plugs of foam. The fires spread at high speed, burning plant matter, paper and anything else in their path before reaching the shed that contained Remiel's complicated distillation equipment. As the fire caught the concentrated alcohol in the tall vessels, it also ate through the foundations of the wooden walls. Secured to the ground no more, the walls toppled inwards, crushing the huge, ponderous distillation plants and causing a flood of burning, free flowing alcohol throughout the farm buildings. The farm itself, like most caterpillar farms was around halfway between being agricultural and industrial, so crops and chemicals burnt alike, and within a few minutes the entire farm was ablaze.

After the first explosion, Remiel had managed to negotiate his way through a hole in the fence, and was trying to catch his breath as the first fire engine screamed into view. The team of six caterpillars required in these engines jumped out, and were beginning to unwind the hose, as the driver approached Remiel. The driver was a school-friend of Remiel's, who had decided that serving the caterpillar community was more important than becoming a butterfly, and so had joined the fire brigade instead of going to college. As he approached Remiel, it took him a few moments to be sure of who it was, the battered and scorched figure standing in front of him was not like his memories of his friend at all.
"Remiel? Is that you?" he asked, shocked at the battered sight of the barely standing caterpillar, "You look like you've just had a building collapse on you."
"Funny you should mention that," Remiel replied, as his vision grew fuzzy, "As in actual fact I..."
The speech trailed off as the fuzz in Remiel's vision faded to black and red cart-wheeling circles, obscuring everything in sight. Remiel's last observation was that the ground was becoming over-friendly, it was rising up to hug him. Then it all went dark.

After a period of time that could have been thirty seconds, and could have been over a day, a crack of light intruded into the blackness behind Remiel's eyes. Through this tiny crack, Remiel made out the details of a long, vertical metal pole, with struts at the bottom supporting it. To his addled state of mind, this was one of the most beautiful things in the entire world. On top of this pole was an intricate arrangement of pieces, holding aloft a transparent pouch of clear liquid, which glistened in shades of light blue. From this a tube shot out snakelike and attached to something green at the bottom of his field of vision. Remiel lay there for several rapt minutes, gazing at his personal work of art, wondering if he was not catching a glimpse of a small personal heaven. Remiel's view slowly widened and he realised that he was lying in a bed in a large room, filled with beds, and the green object that the tube was in contact with was his arm. Remiel suddenly realised that for the last five minutes he had been gazing with rapt astonishment at a drip-stand. He started to laugh, and fell asleep chuckling gently.

"How are we today?"
The voice broke Remiel out of his dark, dreamless sleep and his eyes flicked open into the face of a venerable, middle aged aphid, sitting at the side of his bed, and gazing at him with concern, but an air of professionalism. Remiel realised that she was dressed in Miller's Rest Police uniform, with the insignia of Sergeant upon her collar¹¹. Remiel realised that she was waiting for an answer, and so cleared his sandpaper-dry throat and tried to think of a suitable response.
"I could do with a drink." he rasped. The police-aphid went off to the water cooler and got him a paper cup of water, which Remiel gulped down appreciatively.
"Hello, Mr Remiel, I'm Sergeant Hillary Clark. In case you're worried," the police-aphid continued in a reassuring tone, "There's nothing really wrong with you, you're just suffering from nervous exhaustion, they decided you should stay in overnight for observation."
"Any idea who could have done this?" Remiel asked, his mind returning to the events of the previous few hours,
"Strangely enough, I was about to ask you the same question, anyone got a long-term grudge against you?"
"Plenty, but none of them mad enough to resort to terrorism......" Remiel came to a halt mid-speech as he remembered something.
"What?" Sergeant Clark demanded, concerned due to the look of shock on his face, "Who do you think it could be?"
"I was in the Miller's Rest Justice Department, when it was just forming," Remiel told her, "Involved in a case featuring an unpleasant character by the name of Thomson Eldritch, he called himself the Gravedigger," he quickly sketched out the details of his involvement in the Gravedigger's capture, "Reckon he could be involved in this?"
"It's a possibility, and at this moment its one of the few leads we have. If you'll excuse me, I'll have to check with Records about Eldritch's current whereabouts."
The sergeant rose from her seat by Remiel's bed and walked off to the pay-phone in the corner of the room.
As the call was being made, Remiel had time to review recent events. The business with the farm did not disturb him in terms of loss. He was of course hurt by the destruction, but there was little sentimental attachment, he had only been on the farm for the last 2 months, waiting for the results from the college. There would be little or no financial loss from the farm, Remiel had the place insured up to the eyeballs, after discovering the way his father had left it. The only real cloud upon Remiel's horizon was the question of who could have done it. Remiel would be the first to admit that he had made several enemies in his lifetime, he wasn't one to be walked over easily, but the most any of them had done before now was to try and beat him up in an alley. Admittedly upon that occasion he had hospitalised the man, but he didn't know anyone mad enough to do something of this calibre. Remiel suddenly found himself hoping like hell that the Gravedigger was where he belonged, safely behind bars.

Sergeant Clark finished on the phone, and approached the bed, an unusual look on her face.
"What is it?" Remiel inquired, worried about what else might have happened, "What's happened, Eldritch isn't out is he?"
"Mr Remiel," the police-aphid replied, not deliberately ignoring the question, but making it obvious that something way more important had happened, "The station asked me to tell you something. I'm terribly sorry, but I have some very bad news for you."
"What? What's wrong?"
"There was a fight last night downtown, it's your friend Cornelius."
"He's not hurt, is he?"
"It's worse than that, they think he's dead."
Remiel suddenly felt totally devoid of emotion, things were happening too fast, the bombing of the farm hadn't really sunk in, and now he was told that his lifetime best friend was dead. It was a while before he could speak again.
"They think he's dead? They're not sure?"
"No-one has found a body yet."
"You mean he might still be alive, he's just missing?" Remiel relaxed for a second, although he knew it must be more than this, even in severe circumstances it was more than 24 hours before someone is declared missing, presumed dead. Sergeant Clark continued,
"There was...... substantial evidence."
"What kind of evidence?"
"We have reason to believe that a gang attacked Cornelius and a friend in an alleyway, Cornelius died aiding in his friend's escape. The entire incident was captured on security video."
"How-" Remiel coughed nervously to remove the lump rising in his throat, "How do you know it's Cornelius?"
"Partly through the video, partly through - well, it's best if you see for yourself, once you're back to full health."
"I want to see what happened." Remiel rose up from his bed
"The doctors think-" Sergeant Clark began before an arm shot out, and an urgent, threatening, but at the same time pleading voice shot from Remiel's throat.
"I want to see what happened!"
"Well," the Sergeant, who was just beginning to regain her professional tone said, pulling back from Remiel's arm, which had grabbed her to pull Remiel to his feet, "The doctors want you to stay in overnight, but in the end, it's up to you. If you want to see what happened, we can't stop you."
"It's what I want."

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