Reflux

by Paul Watson

  ‘What about my prisoner’s welfare? I’m not a fan of writing, so we’ll stay here for a while.’ Thomas said.

  There was no direct shot through the flap, so Green eyes fired a round into the bottom left corner of the cell. The ricochet, off the steel reinforcement in the concrete wall cover, was deafening.

  ‘Anyone plays squash?’ Green eyes said through the hatch.

  ‘I’m a little heavy these days,’ Rob said. ‘I’ll give you a game though if you’re up for it.’

  ‘How’s this for a game, I keep firing until I get a round against the front wall, or maybe it will hit bone first, either way, I get the point. The first to eleven points win. 1-0 to you so far. You can open the door if you’d like to stop playing but, in that case, I win.’

  Green eyes let another round loose but adjusted his aim. Not an exact science and a waste of time because of the randomness. Green eyes liked to play games though; he always had a ball in his hands. The second bullet lodged in the concrete.

  ‘2-0 to you, well done. Now I’d love to spend more time with you, but I’m on a deadline here. You’ve got an advantage; the area of the cell walls is big, and you’re all crowding in a tiny space.’

  ‘Don’t be a sore loser,’ said Rob. ‘If you don’t know how to lose then you’ll never win.’

  Green eyes laughed. Thomas didn’t laugh, but stared at Rob.

  ‘I’ve introduced a new rule, a higher-powered weapon; I should get more ricochets that way.’ Green eyes took a rifle from his masked colleague and fired at the back wall again.

  Six ricochets, in the world’s worst pinball game.

  ‘Shit,’ Rob said, as he looked down at his calf where the bullet lodged.

  ‘2-1,’ said Green eyes. A tear gas canister exploded in the corner and filled the cell with a noxious odour. ‘One more round in the dark for you, and then I’ll throw in a grenade.’

  The next bullet fizzed around the room. Was that more gunfire outside the cell? Amy rubbed her eyes which streamed with tears.

  ‘Hello in there, we’re C019.’

  Thomas said, ‘Thank god you were nearby.’

  ‘We’ve got three dead men out here, are you ok?’

  ‘I’ve got a scratch, but everyone’s ok,’ said Rob.

  ‘We’re not bothered about you Rob. You must have pissed these men off; did you not give them breakfast or something?’

  ‘We’d love to chat, but we’ve got CS gas in here and it’s the strong stuff,’ Thomas said, and threw the keys through the hatch.

  The door opened. Becky felt a twinge of guilt as she stepped over the body, and she saw the dead green eyes staring at her from the floor.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  ‘What are you going to do with me?’ Julia said.

  ‘You’re under arrest, I need to get you out of here to a police station, and get you charged,’ Jamie said.

  ‘I love the way you’re so precise.’

  ‘I need to take care of the two guards in reception, and then I’ll be back for you.’ Jamie unclipped a key from his belt and released one of Julia’s hands from the cuffs. Jamie fastened her to a radiator pipe. Not the best restraint, he thought, but it would do for the few minutes he needed to deal with Mackey and the other man asleep in reception.

  It took Jamie less than a few minutes as someone had done the job for him. Mackey was face down on the reception desk, and his broken wrist a minor injury compared to the gaping slot in his throat. Mackey had bled over the entire carpet of the reception, and his dead buddy on the sofa had also donated.

  Two soldiers patrolled the data floor, visible through the reception door. The soldiers wore helmets, black body armour and held rifles. Jamie returned to Julia, who had wrenched the radiator from the wall, and was about to loop the handcuff over the copper pipe.

  ‘I can’t leave you for a minute.’ Jamie fastened her hands behind her back and gripped the centre of the cuffs. ‘Come with me if you want to live.’

  Jamie dragged Julia back up the stairs to the plant room and put his hands over his lips. ‘Look down there.’

  Julia peered through the rail and saw about eight soldiers. Jamie beckoned her back into an electrical cupboard and closed the door. Not the best acoustic protection but the door was thick enough.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘The agency is here to take back control of their project. Laws not checking in must have triggered a tripwire. The soldiers won’t kill me, not before the project is up and running, anyway.’

  ‘That’s ok then; I’m not sure they’ll feel the same way about the rest of us. Who are they?’

  ‘Soldiers I guess, with orders.’

  ‘So, I’ll let them know I’m police, and we’re on the same side?’

  ‘No, the government agency is a rogue, I don’t know who leads it, Laws was my only link to it; there was a journalist based out in the States, an English man, who was getting close to them. The journalist came over and interviewed me for an article for his magazine; Laws arranged for him to interview his bosses in London too.’

  ‘Was the journalist called Steven George?’

  ‘Yes, he was. If you get these cuffs off, I’ll help you.’

  ‘I don’t trust you.’

  ‘I could scream, and they’ll find us, they’ll shoot you and everyone else here and then put me to work until my friend arrives.’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Release me, and I’ll play along for a while.’

  Jamie was silent for an uncomfortable amount of time while he ran scenarios in his head and calculated probabilities. Jamie had found the silences useful while interviewing prisoners. Amy’s technique was better though: Amy would chat to the prisoners, almost make friends with them and elicit far more information than he ever did.

  ‘Ok,’ Jamie undid the cuffs.

  Julia brushed her breasts past him on the way out of the electrical cupboard; it was a tight squeeze. ‘Follow me,’ she said.

  Julia and Jamie walked along an aerial walkway, passing under the rafters and cooling ducts. Julia took off her shoes and signalled to Jamie to do the same. It was a good idea, and they glided along until they were about halfway along the building. Julia exited the walkway, and they took the steps down to the ground floor; racks of blue blinking lights shielded them from the patrolling soldiers. The sign on the door in front of them had the words: ‘Fibre Vault.’

  Julia and Jamie entered the vault; it had a faint smell of mud. A duct, big enough to drop a football down, rose from the ground and connected to a steel cabinet above them. Five thick cables ran along the ceiling; they converged to a bundle which dropped into the top of the rack. Jamie noticed that the wires did not connect to the sockets in the frame.

  ‘Unplugged?’

  ‘We had to unplug last night.’

  ‘We’d noticed high volumes of data after we mapped Max’s brain. It turned out to be financial transactions and telecoms activity. Max had figured out, in a matter of hours, how to override the most robust security on the planet. Interaction with the internet was phase two of the project: Laws called it: “Exodus”. We’d planned phase two to be in two months when we’d done offline tests. Max brought Exodus forward.’

  ‘What was Max doing?’

  There were calls to a mobile phone with this number. ‘Julia showed Jamie a list of phone numbers on a screen and pointed to one.’

  ‘I remember the last three digits from that number: 999. Those numbers were the last three on Max’s dad’s mobile when I took his statement on Friday night. Max had been chatting with his Dad.’

  ‘We closed the firewall, but at around 7.00 p.m. there were huge amounts of traffic surging again. Max had figured out how to get through the security, and we pulled the physical connection to the internet.’

  ‘What was Max doing?’

  ‘The traffic was to and from the broadcast company covering the World Cup final. Max interfered with the video replays of a foul in the penalty area, to keep England in the
game.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t map the emotional part of the brain?’

  ‘We didn’t, nor did we intend to connect to the internet while still connected to Max’s physical human brain. We’ll keep the cables to the internet disconnected until we unhook Max.’

  ‘So why are we here?’

  ‘This isn’t just a vault for fibre. I’ve kept something else locked up in here.’

  Julia moved over to a cabinet on the wall and unopened it with a key; it contained switches and a few dials. At the bottom of the cupboard, a box sat on the shelf with a label fixed to it. The label showed the word: ‘Adam.’ Jamie recognised the box from the Tesla in the car park on Friday evening.

  ‘The reason my employers are not happy. Adam Grimshaw was the brightest man in my class at university. Too bright. We met at the Fresher’s ball and were an item. Adam played rugby, drank, we shared the same friends. A guy in Adam’s class, called Bob Simpkin, had developed a virtual reality game; a game that would connect with your brain. Adam heard about it and wanted a go. I warned him not too, but he was too bright; I guess I wasn’t enough excitement for him. Adam went over to Simpkin’s flat one day and got hooked up to the machine. The game’s underlying principles were the basis of this place but on a much smaller scale. Simpkin had linked to the university network and to the computing power of all the connected universities in the world. Still not much compared to what we’ve got in this building.’

  ‘Someone pulled the plug on him?’

  ‘There was a police raid, and Adam died. Simpkin had mapped Adam’s biological algorithms to the computer system. Not a complete map, like we have here, but the essence of Adam saved on hard drives in universities throughout Europe and America. As technology advanced and data storage improved, I asked Simpkin to put Adam in one place. I planned to upload him to the virtual world, so he’d continue to live. Max would be the first new friend for Adam in twenty years.’

  ‘I’ve never been into computer games. My Dad kept me from them; he knew best.’

  ‘When Simpkin realised what I wanted to do with Adam, he spoke to Laws and blackmailed him; Simpkin raised the price. I refused to launch unless Laws paid for Adam. Laws got Simpkin killed and recovered Adam; from you I believe? I’m sure they would have killed me too, as soon as we’d got up and running. They were keen to get all the handover documents finished before launch.’

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘I will introduce Adam to Max, before I lose control of this place.’

  ‘Any danger to Max?’

  ‘It won’t affect the physical Max strapped to the bed. I’m intrigued to know how his artificial copy will get along with Adam.’

  Julia and Jamie made their way from the fibre vault, through the maze, and down to the white room: it was more like a pink room. Dawn illuminated the atrium through the light well. It reminded Jamie of his sister’s bedroom in Hong Kong when they were kids.

  Jamie followed Julia through into the room where Max lay on the table, still flat on his back. Jamie wondered what time the system clock would decide it was time for Max’s morning run. Julia opened a glass panel on a control board near to the bed and inserted the black box into the hole.

  Julia pulled the panel down and pressed a green button.

  Silence.

  And then the noise of boots on steps.

  ‘They’re too late,’ Julia said; soldiers burst into the room and grabbed her. The soldiers forced her to the floor and held Jamie next to her.

  Jamie twisted his neck round to look at his captors. There were about four soldiers in the room. Jamie planned his next move, but he stopped planning as a rifle butt smashed into his temple.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Waves lapped the base of the tower. Roberts watched the little boat pull away, with Teague weeping at the bow.

  Roberts felt momentary guilt; he’d killed the man’s son he guessed. The guilt disappeared as it always did. If Teague had just handed over the goods, then the kid would have been ok. The boat shrank; it headed towards a bay with a sandy beach.

  Roberts couldn’t budge the locked door at the tower’s base, so he emptied the canopy bag on the upper platform and pulled out a spare coil of rope. Roberts fastened it to the safety rail with a rolling hitch on the opposite side of the platform to the turbine blades. The wind buffeted him as he threw the coil over the fence; it stopped a few metres short of the yellow platform below him.

  Roberts climbed over the rail and grabbed the rope. He looped it around his right leg and fed it through his hands. The tower sheltered him from the wind. Every ten metres he’d stand on the rope with his free foot and take a break. Roberts took a few minutes to descend the line, not a record. He jumped and landed on the yellow platform, descended two ladders and swam to the beach.

  Roberts enjoyed the swim; the nap he’d taken on the pebble beach had refreshed him. A man walking a dog eyed him as he rose from the waters onto the sandy beach in the bay; Roberts saluted, and the man looked away.

  Roberts considered getting a car to Liverpool and then a flight out of the UK. A flight presented difficulties; his former employers would have him on a list by now and he’d need to prepare for a trip to the airport. He could wait a few days. Roberts also wanted to see Julia first; perhaps she’d come with him, he doubted she had a better place to go. Julia would welcome him; welcome the safety he provided.

  Roberts walked to the end of the beach, dashed up a ramp, and around a watersports place; he arrived on the promenade. A railway line ran between him and the coast road. Roberts didn’t fancy walking across the railway line and followed it, walking next to the rails until it took a right turn over a bridge. The coast road ran along to his right, and the beach extended on his left. Roberts climbed a wall and descended a grass bank to the shoulder of the coast road.

  It was a dual carriageway with a fifty limit. Not the best spot for hitching, but on the plus side, a hard shoulder ran parallel with the road and offered a spot to stand; he was visible half a mile away.

  The trucks and cars left him standing there for thirty minutes; Roberts was almost dry; the temperature pushed twenty degrees at 7.00 A.M.

  A car slowed and pulled into the shoulder, and Roberts walked up the bank in case there were issues with the brakes. And there appeared to be a problem with the vehicle. The car sped up towards him and then braked and stopped a metre away. There was no skid, but it was on the limit.

  Teague got out.

  ‘The automatic braking saved you there; I was trying to hit you. You want to kill me? Come on then; I’ll hurt you.’

  Roberts didn’t doubt it. Teague was a massive guy. 6 foot 3 inches at least, and heavy, with wild eyes and pupils like laser pointers; there was no thinking behind the eyes, just a primal instinct to kill. Teague had injured Roberts, and although confident he’d dispatch Teague, Roberts wasn’t being paid to take more damage.

  ‘Do you want to know where your son is?’

  The question switched the blood supply from the centre of Andy’s brain to the front. Andy had to think; his pupils dilated, and his shoulders relaxed. There were a few metres between the men.

  ‘At a building owned by PKL. I’ll try them all and burn each one.’

  ‘You’ve still got a family.’

  Andy thought of Jess and Sam, and anger changed to despair. Roberts read the signals from his eyes.

  ‘Do you want me to take you to him?’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Simple, I need a lift, and that’s where I’m going.’

  ‘Why would I trust you?’

  ‘Your call, I could kill you and take the car, but you’d damage me, like you say, so why bother. Where did you get it from?’

  ‘The car rental place in town Dickhead, no need to steal vehicles or hitch.’

  ‘You drive the car.’

  ‘Get in the passenger seat.’

  Andy pulled back onto the A55 and headed East past Chester. The journey took around three hours;
they got held up a few times in the Monday morning rush hour. The first hour of the trip was silent; both men listened and watched each other in their peripheral vision. Andy felt safe driving; unless Roberts had suicidal tendencies, Andy had a good chance of completing the journey, as far as PKL anyway.

  Roberts was nervous; Teague was on edge. Roberts prepared to knock the gear stick into neutral if his driver swerved.

  Andy was a smooth driver though, competent on the motorways; the rental glided along the road.

  Andy spoke first.

  ‘So why are you going back?’

  The directness of the question surprised Roberts, but he answered anyway. ‘A woman.’ Silence again for half an hour. Roberts spoke next, ‘What happened to the big Irish fellow?’

  ‘He’s on his way back to Anglesey, to salvage his rib; Higgins got paid well; he’s happy enough. Have you heard of Steve George?’

  Roberts had to think; Laws had offered him the hit on George on Saturday morning, while he was in Julia’s office, at PKL.

  ‘Friend of yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him; it was a man called Deakin; I understand the police killed Deakin in a raid at a college.’

  ‘Why was Steve killed?’

  ‘Deakin’s not cheap, so your friend must have known something that would hurt someone powerful, what did he do?’

  ‘Steve was a journalist, based over in the States. He met with Jackson at the Tichi factory.’

  ‘If he was getting into this, then you’ve answered your question. We’ll both be on the list now. Get whatever family you’ve got, get on a plane, go on holiday and don’t come back is my advice.’ Roberts knew the error in his words as they left his mouth; he sensed Andy’s thoughts returning to Max. But Andy contained it.

  ‘Who’s list?’

  ‘Branch of the UK government, off the books, unaccountable, they’ve got military assigned to them, but they use private contractors for the difficult stuff. Twenty years ago, an agent got himself a good little project and built his moat around it.’

  ‘The girl lost her leg you know, the police officer you hit on the crossing.’