Ellie Quin - 04 - Ellie Quin in WonderLand by Alex Scarrow Read Free Book Online

from his nose.
    Surprise is the most dangerous weapon of all. Pre-emptive action is the fulcrum against which any desired result can be leveraged
. Deacon smiled at Gemstone Teeth.
And this fool has no idea what his next step should be
.
    It was all over in less than a minute; sudden, fast and precise. Deacon's slim stiletto blade slid effortlessly into Gemstone's chest, and just as easily into the soft spot beneath the jawline of the young man standing right beside him. The third one, put up a half convincing struggle before Deacon slashed horizontally at this throat.
    Twenty-seven seconds was all it took to kill them. If one allowed for the time taken for the third one to flop down to his knees and then fall face down onto the tiled floor, Deacon conceded then it was just over a minute.
    Deacon wiped his stiletto blade on the back of Gemstone's puffa. He stepped over the three bodies. Blood that looked almost as black as ink by the flickering strip light above, was already pooling on the dirty tiled floor and arterial splashes arced across the urinal trough.
    Sensors by the door picked up Deacon’s movement and the door leading to the bar rattled noisily open. He extended a hand towards Leonard. ‘Come on, lad. Let’s go back.’
    Leonard stepped over the bodies, staring down wide-eyed at them. ‘Quite a mess down there. You made a mess, Deacon.’
    ‘Yes, Leonard, I made a mess.’ He led the young man out through the bar. A seedy looking place constructed from several habicube modules that had been welded together and decorated inside with strings of coloured lights and framed 3D holo-prints of famous sports stars. They emerged outside into a press of people; a narrow street flanked on either side with bars almost identical to this one. A shanty town of habicubes and cobbled together corrugate plastic sheeting, fizzing lights and speakers blaring out thumping music; a deafening pounding echoing back off the low plastic domed sky above, a promise from each competing bar that inside was a great time waiting to happen.
    ‘I told you to stay in your room.’
    Leonard nodded sheepishly. ‘I know. I…I wanted to see things.’
    ‘This is not the sort of place for you to go wandering off, exploring.’
    Leonard was a walking target. His childlike naivety, his inability to judge the tone of any social interaction made him as innocent and vulnerable as freshly birthed lamb.
    He’d made a promise to the augment programme's matron that he'd take good care of the boy (she'd also become quite attached to him). A promise he’d made with an outward appearance of sincerity. At the time, of course, he was simply viewing the boy as an extremely useful asset worth procuring. He’d told the matron he was going to tutor and care for him, be a role model, a surrogate father figure.
    He'd told her what she wanted to hear.
    The young man was trembling. Deacon put a protective arm around his narrow shoulders and steered him up the busy street towards the entrance to the neighbouring dome.
    He shook his head. Promises he’d made to the woman that he’d never intended to keep. The boy was an asset…nothing more to him than that.
    And yet look at me now
.
    Leonard glanced up at him. ‘I…I’m sorry, Deacon.’
    ‘That’s all right, Lenny.’ He patted the boy’s shoulder gently. ‘Just don’t wander off like that again. All right?’
    I'm getting too old and sentimental for this job
.

CHAPTER 8
    ‘Construction of WonderLand started decades ago. It was designed to be an exclusive luxury resort for this system’s rich, beautiful and famous people,’ said Shelby.
    ‘Investors decided to build it relatively close to Celestion because they expected most of their customers would be coming from that planet once the terraforming process was well established and stable’ He shrugged. ‘It must have seemed like a rather good idea at the time.’
    Ellie nodded. She was only twelve when the disaster on Celestion happened. The planet