The Passengers

by John Marrs

  Her biggest adjustment would be growing acclimatised to being on-camera twenty-four hours a day for the next week. Just minutes into it, she was already slipping, so she switched from her regular resting face and into a broad smile. She speculated as to how she looked on-screen, as she no longer saw herself on the dashboard monitor. The only people to benefit from ultra-high-definition 8K television were viewers and plastic surgeons, certainly not actors over a certain age like her.

  Her focus returned to her competition, the other celebrity contestants. Try as she might, she was unable to put names to their faces. She assumed they either worked on soaps she didn’t watch or had been created on other reality TV shows—a genre whose bubble just wouldn’t burst, no matter how sharp the pin.

  Sofia listened intently as they begged to be set free from their cars, and shook her head. She doubted any of them had paid their dues like she had, or even knew their Pinters from their Pirandellos. “They’re appalling,” she whispered to Oscar. “I don’t know where they were trained, but they should be asking for refunds on their term fees.”

  She glanced outside as her vehicle travelled along the motorway, unable to keep up with a high-speed supertrain on a track close to the road. She thought back to the last time she had journeyed by train herself, and settled on the 1970s, when she and her sister Peggy made their way to Newcastle to see a Richard Burton play. Sofia had maintained a huge crush on him since her teenage years, and he didn’t disappoint when she met him backstage afterwards. She had not told another living soul what had happened in that dressing room, not even Peggy. Even now, the memory brought about a guilty smile.

  Without her glasses, she struggled to make out the destination on her GPS map but could just about see it would take an estimated two more hours to reach. She wondered where the studios were located, and recalled how it was all so much easier when London was the centre of the British television industry. In the name of diversity, studios were now scattered around the country, making some areas harder to reach. She hoped that Oscar would last the car journey without needing a toilet break. Or her, for that matter.

  Sofia felt her resting face had slipped back into place. She removed lip gloss from her handbag, applied another coat, looked into the camera once again, and gave it an actress’s smile. Using her little finger, she pushed her hearing aids deeper into each ear in the hope that when she was given further instruction, she could pick up more of what was being said.

  She also hoped that upon her arrival at the studio, she might find that her agent, Rupert, had acquired her a new wardrobe. He knew the designers she favoured, even if they no longer favoured her. Once upon a time, they’d be falling over themselves to clothe her for red carpet events. But as she fell from the pages of the newspapers in favour of prettier, slimmer, and younger versions of herself, they weren’t as willing to part with their designs when she couldn’t guarantee them coverage.

  Sofia last attended a premiere with her husband, Patrick, in February. The film title escaped her, but Patrick’s face lingered. She assumed that by now Rupert had informed him where she was going and that she was uncontactable. Or perhaps he’d been in on the secret since the beginning. She knew all too well just how practised he was at holding a secret, and as a result, so was she. For forty years, he had made her complicit.

  Now she would gain a much-needed break from him while filming for Celebs Against the Odds. The downside was he was free to do what he wanted without her watching over him. She prayed he was being careful. Over the years his mistakes had cost her a lot of money.

  CHAPTER 18

  JUDE HARRISON

  Jesus Christ!” gasped Jude as Victor Patterson’s death unfolded before him.

  The terror felt by the other Passengers came through his car’s speakers alongside the uproar from the inquest room. His stomach muscles clenched as a wave of nausea rushed through his body. Having failed to eat for the best part of twenty-four hours, there was little left inside him to make a reappearance.

  Jude couldn’t tear his eyes away from the screen. Live footage continued from an unidentified second vehicle behind Victor’s burning taxi. It braked and attempted to swerve the fireball ahead. But of all the potential hazards it had been programmed to react to, a car bomb was not one. It smashed into the rear, its bonnet crumpling like a concertina. Jude could hear more screaming, this time from inside that second car, then the car doors opened and its Passengers scrambled to safety. Moments later, a second fireball engulfed that car too, and the footage came to a swift end.

  He briefly forgot about Libby as his attention was drawn to the other Passengers, trapped like him, all with no means of escape. In particular, he was concerned about the visibly distressed Claire. Hers was the first voice he’d heard in his car after the Hacker’s. He watched as she held one hand over her mouth, the other protecting her unborn child. When faced with death, her maternal instinct was to shield something she loved unconditionally. He admired her selflessness. Amongst the other terrified voices, he could just about make hers out. “Please . . . I’m begging you,” she sobbed. “Please.”

  Jude was filled with a need to try to reassure her that help was imminent and that they mustn’t give up hope. There was very little he could say to reassure her or anyone else held in their vehicles against their will. But he had to try.

  “Claire,” he began, attempting to make his voice heard above the others. “Claire. It’s Jude Harrison.” He waited for her to acknowledge his waving at her. “Are you okay?”

  Her hand moved from her mouth to her eyes to brush away the tears. “I can’t die,” she said, her voice barely audible above the others. “I can’t die now. Not like this.”

  “Please, try not to panic. I know it’s easier said than done, but we can’t give in, okay? My instinct rarely lets me down, and it’s telling me that you’re a strong woman. You need to hold on to that for both of your sakes. You hear me? Don’t give up. None of us should give up. We will find a way out of this.”

  “How?” she asked. “That Hacker, he said we are all going to die like that poor old man. How can we stop that happening?”

  “I don’t know yet and it’s going to be difficult, but try and keep faith until we’ve exhausted every avenue. Okay? Will you promise me that?”

  Claire sniffed much of the snot running from her nostrils and wiped away the rest with the back of her hand. Jude watched as her response came in short, sharp nods.

  His eyes returned to the screen and, in particular, to Libby. In an instant he noticed that something wasn’t right with her.

  CHAPTER 19

  DigitalMailNews.co.uk

  BREAKING NEWS: TERROR attacks on our roads as FALKLANDS HERO is blown up by hacker WAGING WAR on BRITAIN.

  Millions watching live are left reeling as pensioner and DOUBLE AMPUTEE is killed when his car is detonated.

  Hacker warns more will follow as all hijacked cars set to COLLIDE.

  Lid blown on notoriously TOP SECRET inquest as jurors’ FACES are BEAMED LIVE to the world.

  Royal family and government officials warned to AVOID travelling until attack brought to an end.

  Almost a year had passed since Libby last suffered a panic attack.

  They’d plagued her through her early twenties before gradually tapering off as her thirties loomed. When they reappeared and limited her tasks as an in-patient mental health nurse, her ex-fiancé, William, insisted she tell Occupational Health, who matched her with a counsellor. Dr. Goodwin suggested what Libby already suspected, that they were a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. Now, witnessing Victor Patterson’s murder brought to the surface memories of both Monroe Street and her brother Nicky’s death.

  The counselling sessions taught her mechanisms for when she sensed an attack looming. So soon after her heart palpitations began in the inquest room, she pushed her chair ba
ck from the table, ignoring the commotion surrounding her, and tried to keep herself steady despite the disorientation. Next came the dizziness and underarm and chest sweats. She picked a blank wall to stare at and clear her mind.

  Ride it out, she told herself, don’t run away from it, confront it head-on, it’s not going to kill you.

  Libby had been advised that having someone with her during an episode might help to reassure her. But there was no one she placed her trust in inside that room. The only person she had any faith in was just an image on a screen and was facing much more life-threatening problems than hers. Gradually, Libby’s eyes left the blank wall and returned to Jude’s screen until the anxiety slowly drained from her body and her escalated heart rate decreased.

  Six of the remaining Passengers appeared afraid. If the Hacker could kill a disabled pensioner and war hero so casually, he could do the same to any of them.

  There was so much shouting and talking over one another that Libby struggled to take in complete sentences and could only pick up on a few random words and phrases. Sam kept repeating to his wife Heidi that he loved her and that they would be okay, but neither looked convinced. Bilquis, the woman wearing the colourful hijab, wouldn’t give up hope that her telephone might just work, and kept pushing at buttons and trying to summon her operating system. Meanwhile, Shabana didn’t appear to understand much of what happening, only that it wasn’t good. Only Sofia was taking it all in her stride and kept smiling to camera.

  Jude was more concerned with putting someone else’s well-being above his own. Libby watched Jude reassure Claire, who was clearly distressed. Listening to him trying to persuade her not to lose hope was proof her instinct about him the night they’d met was the right one. He was a good man, a man who cared for others. And in Libby’s experience, they were few and far between.

  The Hacker’s voice cut through the chatter. “Now, Jack,” he continued. “Do I have your attention?” But before he answered, Libby jumped in.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” she began, and rose from her chair. She steadied herself against the rim of the table, her legs still weak from the panic attack. “Victor didn’t deserve that; he was innocent.”

  “Well, someone has truly found their voice, haven’t they?” the Hacker replied. “I have to disagree with you though. He wasn’t innocent. None of us are innocent.”

  “Why did you kill him? He’s done nothing to you.”

  “Miss Dixon, hush, please,” snapped Jack, glaring at her. “You are only making this worse.”

  “Worse? I’ve just watched a man blown to bits because you wouldn’t follow the Hacker’s instructions when you were told to! How could this get any worse?”

  “Let her speak. You’re not in charge of your kangaroo court now, Jack,” the Hacker continued. “What’s on your mind, Libby?”

  “Victor was a war hero and had terminal cancer. What you did to him was completely unjust.”

  “I think the families of those men and women he killed in combat would disagree with you on both the ‘innocent’ and ‘unjust’ parts of your argument.”

  “Is that your best defence?”

  “I don’t have to defend myself, Libby. May I call you Libby? Now we are getting to know one another, it feels much less formal than Miss Dixon. Victor died for precisely the reason you have said—because Jack didn’t listen to me.”

  “Even if he had listened, you’d have found an excuse to kill one of them. You just wanted to prove a point.”

  “And what do you think that point is?”

  “That you are in charge.”

  “And did I get that across to you in an effective and suitable manner?”

  “Effective, yes. Suitable? You must be kidding.”

  “Will you please stop trying to goad him!” said Jack.

  “This might be an opportune moment to mention there are many more details about you that I also know, Jack,” continued the Hacker. “Such as your medical records, home address, your credit card numbers, the call girls you hire, passwords, bank statements, mortgage deficits, the emails you’ve sent, the texts you’ve received, and even where you invest the cash you don’t want HM Revenue and Customs to find. When you scratch beneath the surface, it’s interesting to see where some of your investments have been made. And the best part about being the gatekeeper of all this knowledge? I get to impart it to an audience of millions. If you look carefully at the centre screen on the wall, you will note that everything I know about you, I’m now making public.”

  On cue, Jack’s private information filled the screen along with links to download it.

  “Take that down!” shouted Jack at the technicians around him. All scrambled to their keyboards, hitting buttons and trying to input keystrokes and instructions. Libby noted Jack staring wide-eyed back at the screen as the links remained in place. An anxious half-minute passed before he turned his head again. Libby had never seen anyone so close to exploding as Jack.

  “Well?” he growled. “Why is that link still up?”

  “We can’t access it,” replied one of Jack’s staff. “It’s impossible to triangulate.”

  “Then get the police or the National Cyber Crime Unit to do it!”

  “They’re patched in and they are doing everything they can, but we can’t find the source.”

  “Jesus Fucking Christ!” yelled Jack. “There must be someone who can help me?”

  “He is in our system,” a technician replied. “It’ll take specialised programmers time to find him and recode it all. We don’t have the training or the security clearance.”

  “You’re all fucking useless!” he bellowed, and hurled his tablet towards them. It clipped one man’s shoulder and then spiralled into the wall before landing on the floor, its screen shattering.

  “Someone has quite the temper, don’t they?” mocked the Hacker. “Don’t forget, there are cameras watching your every move.”

  Jack turned to look up at the screens and hesitated, as if weighing the public’s potential perception of him with his need to act out his fury. Reluctantly, he erred on the side of caution.

  “My system tells me that my links have already been downloaded almost fifteen thousand times,” the Hacker added. “Quite incredible the reach we have these days, isn’t it? People as far away as Australia and Hong Kong are now using your credit cards to purchase goods.”

  An on-screen counter revealed the number of shares and reposts rising by dozens each second.

  “It’s not too late to make any of this stop,” Jack said, his tone becoming desperate. “Set the remaining Passengers free and just disappear back to where you came from. If you’re that clever, you’ll have covered your tracks so no one will find you.”

  “I’m sorry but we’ve gone too far for that to happen. Besides, isn’t there a little part of you that wants to see what I have planned next? I am sure that Libby is dying to know.”

  His sudden attention startled her, and she looked up towards Jude’s screen. “No, I’m not,” she replied.

  “I understand. But unfortunately, if you thought witnessing Victor Patterson’s death was difficult, Libby, then I doubt that you are going to like what I’m about to ask you to do next.”

  CHAPTER 20

  HEIDI & SAM COLE

  What the hell have I done to my wife?

  For the last few minutes, Sam’s guilty conscience had been drowning out the multitude of voices coming through his car’s speakers. Suddenly, more than anything else in the world, he needed to hear her.

  “Heidi, are you there?” he yelled. He paused but couldn’t make her out. “Heidi, please, talk and tell me you’re okay.”

  Without warning, he became distracted by his vehicle decelerating. It had been travelling at a steady fifty-seven miles per hour, and now it was approaching the twenty-five mark. Was their nightmare coming to an end? Had whomeve
r he crossed taken this as far as it was going? It was only when he spotted the red traffic lights ahead that he realised why his car was slowing down. His ordeal wasn’t over yet.

  Sam desperately wanted to shout at the top of his voice, “I’ve got what you want, now let us go,” but he refrained. Because there was something about this scenario that felt bigger than him or the lies he’d told.

  When the footage on his screen alternated from Victor Patterson’s burning car to all the other Passengers, he spotted her.

  “Heidi,” he bellowed, determined to be heard above the others. His eyes were locked on her image until, finally, she heard him and spoke. He moved his head towards a speaker to listen carefully until he could make out her voice.

  “Sam!” she replied. “Why’s this happening?”

  He hesitated. He would exhaust all avenues before admitting to how he might have got them into such a mess. “I don’t know, but we have to be strong,” he said. “You and me, we’re in this together.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense. Why is he threatening to kill us?”

  Heidi’s despair matched his own. Sam couldn’t recall a time he had last seen his wife so vulnerable—not after the sudden death of her father or the birth of their two children. She was the solid one in their partnership, the rational one, the clear thinker. Whatever was happening to them had knocked her for six. He would do anything to take her fear away.

  “Did you see what he did to that man’s car?” she continued. “He was just . . . blown up.”

  “We only have the Hacker’s word that he did that. Computer programmes and special effects can make anything look real.”