Spider

36

Marine Park, Brooklyn, New York The house stands alone on the corner of a quiet cul-de-sac, heavily shaded from view by large maple trees and thick hawthorn hedges that dominate the front garden and small driveway. In the pre-dawn darkness, Spider walks around it, checking his security system, testing the sensors on the lights, the angles of the surveillance cameras and the electricity feeds that he's put into a variety of other hidden security devices that will do much more than just deter any unwanted intruders.

In the back yard he sits on the edge of a heavily weathered wooden table and gets to thinking about the old days; the time he lived here with his parents, the time before they went to the Better Place and he was taken away to the orphanage. Fifteen years ago he'd bought the house back, paying cash out of the inheritance left in a trust fund for him. The rest of the money he'd invested wisely, managing a strong port-folio of stocks, shares and bonds over the Internet. His father would have been proud of him. Dad had always said 'never take any unnecessary risks' and that had been the key to his success, in whatever he did.

He remembers life in the orphanage: the bullying, the squabbling, the shortage of food, the fetid warm smell of overcrowded and unclean dormitories and, more than anything, the endless noise. It wasn't until he'd moved out that he appreciated just how golden silence can be. Spider knows those years were formative for him. For better or worse, they shaped him into what he is today. He knows that the reason he still eats his food too quickly is because if he hadn't wolfed down his meals as a kid, the bigger boys in the orphanage would simply have taken whatever they wanted from his plate. He understands his comfort with violence stems from the day he could no longer take the ritual abuse and beatings that all new boys endured, and exploded into a rage that led to him fracturing the skull of one of his attackers by repeatedly banging his head on a toilet wall.

The orphanage had been packed with kids from the wrong side of the tracks and it served as a university of crime, teaching him a dozen ways to establish false identities, obtain bogus documents and set up fake companies. Crime was literally child's play for him.

In the cool of his back yard he fires up a dual-core Dell laptop and, through a false identity web account, goes online. He accesses Webmail and finds his way to his own security-coded intranet system. A few seconds later, he's able to pull up picture feeds from any of the cameras inside or outside the house. He toggles between the external views, then shrinks the screen to compress the pixels and increase the night-view quality. Satisfied with the settings, he punches up the internal camera feeds. In the dark of the yard Sugar's prostrate body shows up as an intense, white shape, almost like a white-hot crucifix. Spider ponders the picture. There is something about the girl that unsettles him. He'd felt it the other night, when he'd approached her, and he feels it again now. He somehow senses that, even spreadeagled and dying, she represents a danger to him. He dismisses his feelings as illogical. His planning has been good, and apart from that one bloody moment when she'd bitten him, he'd experienced no real difficulties with her.

Spider switches angles, choosing a close-up of her face. Her eyes are shut and the camera shot is so tight it almost looks as though she's in a peaceful sleep. He knows the truth is far from that. He imagines that by now the woman is in constant mental agony. He feels no compassion or concern for her. In fact, he feels nothing for her. Hookers are not his usual prey, but then this isn't going to be a usual kill. This kill wasn't planned solely for pleasure; this kill has a much bigger prize attached to it.