You can do this.
He reached for a bottle of rehydrating eye drops and pulled down his bottom lid, reminding himself once again that he had nothing more to worry about. Beowulf Caesar had been adamant – the pest was dead, and Kent had the only recording. Yet as he blinked out the excess saline solution, a niggling thought bothered him. That he wasn’t being told the full story.
He stood and made final adjustments to his hair, spraying a mist of hairspray to fix it in place. Marcy had wanted to hire professional hair and make-up people, but he’d told her no. Kent had always gotten himself ready and that wasn’t going to change because they were going global. The last thing he needed was some limp-wristed moron shoving blusher in his face while he psyched himself up for what would be – by anyone’s terms – a career-defining speech.
Besides, with other people around he couldn’t complete the final stage of his pre-game ritual. Chiefly, a half gram of the finest cocaine that he now hoovered up his left nostril, assisted by good old Benjamin Franklin.
“Now we’re talking.” He sat back and sniffed violently, ensuring not one grain was lost. Pinching both nostrils, he grinned manically at his reflection. Then he stood and placed his headset mic over his ear. Now he was ready. “Apple-fucking-who? Micro-fucking-what? Come on, Kenty-boy! Let’s do this.”
He could already hear the excited crowd echoing through the backstage area as he left the dressing room behind and made his way down the corridor that led to the auditorium. Three large men met him at the far end – his armed security detail. He nodded sagely at them as he walked past, and they did the same. They hadn’t been cheap, but he felt safer with them here.
As he turned down the final corridor that led to the stage, he halted, listening to the noise of the crowd as they chanted.
Kent-Kent-Kent.
Chanting his name. Real fans. Waiting for him. Waiting to hear him announce the final stage of Cerberix’s master plan – a free laptop in every home, followed by total monopoly on the app market once in place. Kent snuffled back the last dregs of finest Colombian, tasting the reassuring bitterness in his throat.
Showtime.
“There you are,” Sinclair Whitman bellowed, as Kent appeared by his side. “You all set?”
Kent patted his old friend on the shoulder and took the bottle of mineral water offered. “All set.”
Then he was onstage, the bright lights hot on his face as he peered through the glare at the vast room full to bursting with ecstatic fans and eager journalists.
“Greetings, friends,” he intoned, raising his arms in a not-unselfconscious Christ-pose. “Welcome – to the new world…”
The crowd calmed as Kent settled into his well-rehearsed speech. Telling those watching – here in the venue, and the millions on live-stream – that today they were witness to the birth of something truly remarkable. A day they would tell their grandchildren about. But more than that, Kent assured them, they were a part of this just as much as he was. This was about them, he said, “…about all of us.”
He detailed his mission of free laptops for all. And not just any laptops – the brand-new Cerberix Gen-Z system with the soon-to-be released Hadez 3.0 installed as standard.
When they heard this, the crowd went wild, and the cheers sent intense rushes of elation surging through Kent’s veins. It wasn’t just the cocaine. His mind raced with what this next phase would mean. Total control of the market, sure, but more than that. Once the AI was fully implemented and at work, they’d know exactly what people wanted, when they wanted it. They’d know everything about everyone. If knowledge was power, which it most certainly was, Cerberix would soon be the most powerful company on the globe.
Welcome to the new world, indeed.
Kent looked over at Whitman, still in the wings, and gestured for him to join him onstage. “Let’s get him up here,” Kent yelled. “Can you please give a warm welcome to our eminent CFO, and co-founder of Cerberix Inc. My friend and mentor. Mr Sinclair Whitman.”
It was a carefully rehearsed moment, done to appear off-the-cuff, but it worked. The crowds lapped it up as Sinclair joined Kent in the centre of the vast stage – empty except for a small black table. There were no airs or graces or obvious affectations for the Cerberix team. This said: We are you. You are us. We are the same. Though, as they’d laughed about when coming up with the idea, basing themselves in plain black t-shirts and jeans when the rest of the time it was Armani suits was maybe the biggest affectation of them all.
“Bunch of suckers,” Sinclair whispered in Kent’s ear. “They’d buy anything we told them at this point.”
Kent ignored him and continued his speech, giving the rapturous audience the story of Cerberix Inc.’s journey to date. How it all began in a San Fran coffee shop fifteen years ago with a chance encounter. Then how the two mavericks risked everything, giving up their jobs and living on baked beans for a year, before launching Cerberix from a small office above Kent’s brother’s garage. It was a story most Cerberix fans already knew by heart, but they sure did love hearing it again.
It was all bullshit, of course. Most of it, anyway. Spin and hyperbole to give the myth some spice. The truth was Whitman had bankrolled Kent’s vision from the off. But having an endless list of eager backers – whilst situated in a state-of-the-art office space – didn’t fit the legend. We are you. You are us. We are the same.
“So now I want to stop talking for a while,” Kent told the audience. “I know, I know, it’s hard to imagine. But seriously, we’ve got a special VT I want to run for you that explains our plan for what we’re calling: Community Connectivity Through Cerberix.”
“Great work, Kent,” Sinclair whispered as the lights went down.
The two men turned to watch the large cinema screen behind them as the Cerberix Inc. logo flashed in the middle of the screen and Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries boomed out over the sound system. The logo – a lion’s head, with snakes for a mane and the mouth open in a roar, forming the C of Cerberix – changed from white to red to turquoise in time with the music.
“Love it,” Sinclair whispered. “Nothing can stop us now, son. You hear me?”
Then as the music faded a voice-over commenced, announcing the new era of technology in a voice you’d be forgiven for thinking was the rumbling baritone of Sir Ian McKellen. It was actually a much lesser known and cheaper actor named Nathaniel Baker. A sound-a-like. They could have got Sir Ian, of course. Kent had wanted to – and they could easily have afforded him – but Whitman had put his foot down. Why hire some foppish prima donna, he’d said, when you can get someone who sounds exactly the same for a lot less? As he put it, no one would ever know.
No one would ever know.
Those words had been Whitman’s response to most issues these last few months. But they were about to trip him up. With a flash, and a crackle of electricity, the high-definition image of Cerberix’s genre-defining laptop disappeared from the screen. The audience gasped as the auditorium was plunged into darkness, before something new appeared on the video wall. A still photograph of a young woman.
“Sinclair, what’s going on?” Kent asked, looking around.
Sinclair didn’t answer. He was too busy staring at the screen. A name appeared at the bottom – Paula Silva – followed by, Single mother. Sex-worker. Murdered in Sinclair Whitman’s London apartment.
The two men watched on, impotently, as the words and images continued. Next came news footage. Whitman’s private chef being led out of the building in handcuffs, his head pushed down into a waiting police car. More words flashed across the screen. Wrongly Accused! Framed!
Then the footage wiped to black. Silence fell over the auditorium once more, before more footage appeared. This time a video.
Kent looked up through the glare of the stage-lights to the control room and made a violent cutting gesture across his throat. “Switch this off! Now!” Behind him, on the screen, Sinclair Whitman was viciously beating and strangling Paula Silva. �
�Kill the VT, for fuck’s sake!” Kent could only see a dark silhouette in the booth, and the video kept rolling. The audience were becoming more agitated as they collectively realised this wasn’t a joke. Far from it. Some looked away in disgust, some in horror, but most kept watching. Many had taken out their phones and were recording the screen.
Kent’s next thought was to get the hell away from Sinclair. He could spin this. Explain how he was unaware of his CFO’s misdemeanours. He looked around as new images flashed onto the screen. More photos. A leering, red-faced Sinclair in his Paris apartment with a young naked boy on each knee.
“What’re we going to do?” Sinclair growled.
The two men backed into the wings as the audience became more vocal in their disgust.
“We can get ahead of this,” Kent replied. “We’ll say it’s doctored footage. Fake news. A rival trying to fuck with us.”
Yet as he was speaking more photos were appearing on screen. Whitman with young girls, younger boys – all in various stages of undress. Doing unspeakable acts.
Kent racked his brain for options. The old man was finished, but that didn’t mean he was. It didn’t mean his dreams for Cerberix were. He’d hire the best spin doctors. Distort the narrative. Paint himself as another unwitting victim of Whitman’s duplicitous evil.
He might have pulled it off, but then the photos faded into a screen grab – an email from Kent’s personal account. Him arranging for a Cerberix employee to be killed. It could have been doctored, but it wasn’t. There were bank transfers, money trails, the lot.
Then it appeared.
The photo Kent prayed he’d never see again.
The one Sinclair had hung over his head these last ten years.
It was a colour Polaroid, showing a young man of around twenty-five reclining on a bed. His cheeks were flushed and he was grinning lasciviously into the camera. The bed was in Sinclair Whitman’s Paris apartment. The young man was Kent Clarkson. He was naked. As were the two thirteen-year-old girls lying on either side of him. Their identities had been pixilated, as had their nudity – but this did nothing to dampen the shocked and disgusted noises coming from the sell-out crowd.
“Ah bullshit,” Kent groaned, as his cool demeanour slipped away. Any semblance of character or composition he’d once held had been shattered into a million tiny shards of guilt and shame. He was done.
And now he had to get out of there. Fast.
Forty-Seven
Spook squirmed excitedly on her chair as she watched the confusion unfold on stage. The video had worked exactly as she’d hoped, and that final photo (stolen from Clement’s private collection) was the icing on the cake. She clicked off the main Cerberix feed and checked the venue’s security footage. A total of eight cameras covered the auditorium and each one showed irate audience members, all of them booing and jeering at the now empty stage. It was the same story in the foyer. People stormed out in disgust, flinging down their souvenir programs and laminated passes. It was working. Spook logged onto Twitter. The hashtag, CerberixMurder, was already trending all over the world. They’d done it. Clarkson and Whitman were finished.
Spook carried on flicking through the venue’s numerous feeds. Her instructions were to stay put until Acid came for her, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the chaos while she waited. Except then she opened the camera feed for the third floor.
“Oh no,” Spook whispered at her laptop. “No, please.” On the screen, armed security guards stormed across the third-floor landing on the main side of the building. “Shit, shit, shit.”
In a second Spook had stuffed the laptop in her rucksack and was at the door. She had the tiny gun on her, but she didn’t fancy its chances against the scary-ass machine guns the men were carrying. She had to get to Acid. She eased open the door and looked both ways before tiptoeing around the corner then running down the next corridor as fast as she could.
She got to the main control room in under a minute and burst through the doors. “We need to move. Now.”
Acid spun around, gun in hand. “I thought I told you to wait.”
“Yes, but there are men coming. They’ve got guns.”
Acid turned back to the two young techies sat quietly with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. “Well, it’s been a blast working with you both,” she purred. “Now remember what I told you, Jeanette? Toby? You tell anyone I was here, and I will find you and I will hurt you. Understood?”
Jeanette and Toby nodded in unison. “Don’t worry,” Jeanette added. “We won’t tell a soul. You ask me, those two deserve everything they get.”
Acid patted her on the shoulder. “Good girl. But I’m still going to leave you tied up. Looks better for you that way.”
“Acid, please,” Spook cried. “We need to get out of here.”
In the auditorium below, the house lights had gone up. Whitman and Clarkson were nowhere to be seen. If Spook’s calculations were correct, they’d already be on their way to the basement-level car park.
The two women left the control room and edged their way towards the service elevator. Spook had jammed the main elevator’s controls, meaning the Cerberix duo’s only access to the basement was down the fire escape. Four flights of stairs. The plan was, Acid and Spook would get down first. Head them off.
“You get eyes on the car park?” Acid whispered, as they got to the end of the corridor.
“Yeah, there’s a black Hummer waiting for them,” Spook replied. “Plus, I found Clarkson’s private jet – parked at a place called Biggin Hill. Probably where they’re heading.”
“Yes. I know it.” Acid peered around the corner and beckoned Spook to follow her. “If they get to that plane they could be in South America in a day.”
They walked fast, breaking into a sprint as they reached the service elevator and Acid jabbed at the button. They waited, bouncing from foot to foot as the numbers lit up, showing the elevator’s ascent – Ground… One… Two…
“Stop right there. Put your hands in the air.” They were too late. The security guards appeared from around the corner and stopped a few feet away, raising their guns at Acid and Spook. “Identify yourselves.”
Spook stuck her hands in the air. “We’re YouTubers,” she yelped. “We took a wrong turn and we didn’t— Shit!”
She jumped as a loud noise sent her head rattling. In front of her the three security guards’ heads exploded in quick succession. She looked over to see Acid affectedly blowing on the end of her gun.
“Who says I’ve lost it?” She slid the gun in the back of her jeans. “Come on.” The elevator doors slid open and Acid dragged Spook inside, hitting B for the basement. “Listen to me,” she said, leaning in. “It’s not the time to get cocky. Those security guys are tasty. So keep your wits about you.”
An icy blast of dead air hit them in the face when the lift doors opened to reveal the underground car park.
“There, look.” Spook pointed over to where Clarkson and Whitman were clambering in the back of a blacked-out Hummer. There were two men with them, both with shaved heads, both shouldering machine guns. They spotted the women and opened fire.
“Stay down,” Acid yelled, bundling her and Spook behind a concrete pillar as a hail of bullets peppered the metal doors of the elevator. She waited a beat, then fired off a few rounds in retaliation as the men climbed into the front seats.
“They’re getting away,” Spook yelled.
“Yes, I can see that.” Acid moved into the open, shooting as she went. The bullets pinged off the toughened bodywork of the Hummer as it screeched its tyres and disappeared up the ramp to street level.
“What now?” Spook asked. But Acid was already running over to a large black motorcycle parked in the far corner. “Ah, shit.”
“Come on,” Acid yelled back at her. “We can still catch them.”
Acid got to the bike and removed her blazer, followed by the hipster glasses. She tossed them to the ground as Spook got to her and gasped, “Wai
t, I don’t see any helmets.”
“No. Me neither.” Acid traced her fingers down the bike’s handlebar shaft and located a small red box with two wires sticking out the side. “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” She yanked a second set of wires from under the engine and twisted them around the ones coming from the box. Lights flashed on the dashboard.
“Maybe you should go on alone?” Spook offered, as Acid swung her leg over the bike and switched on the ignition. “I don’t want to slow you down or anything.”
“Get on the damn bike,” Acid snapped. “You haven’t come this far to chicken out now.” She glared at Spook as she revved the engine. “They’re getting away, kid. We haven’t got time for this.”
“Fine. But be careful,” Spook said, climbing on behind Acid.
“Lean into me and hold on,” Acid yelled over the engine, as they set off up the ramp and out into daylight. Not that Spook could tell it was daylight. Not with her eyes shut tight and her face pressed into Acid’s back. “Up ahead,” Acid cried as they sped along at a terrifying speed. “We’ve got the bastards.”
Spook’s plan had been to keep her eyes shut for the duration of this hellish journey, but she dropped that plan soon enough as loud gunshots shook her alert. She opened her eyes to see Acid riding one-handed and firing at the Hummer’s tyres. They were on a strip of tarmac by the side of the river – the sort of road used largely by freight trucks and port vehicles. In front of them the Hummer swerved wildly to avoid the shots, but didn’t slow down.
“We’re losing them,” Spook cried, getting into the spirit, as the Hummer took a hard right down the side of an old warehouse.
Acid made to follow but at the last second steered straight past the warehouse. She took a right down the next side road, firing off another flurry of shots, this time pummelling the broad side of the Hummer as it sped by. Taking a sharp corner at the far end, she followed the Cerberix two down the side of the next building. They were closing in on them.
Spook gripped her arms tight around Acid’s waist as she leaned forward on the handlebars. They were almost alongside the Hummer now and Acid raised her gun, readying herself for a decent shot at the tyres. But before she had a chance, the Hummer hit the brakes. It veered into them and clipped the bike’s front tyre.
The Acid Vanilla Series Page 23