The Long Night Box Set

by Kevin Partner

  Janice leaned back a little and they kissed. He ran his hands through her curly hair and hugged her tight, as if he wanted to merge their souls together. He’d had no idea how much he'd missed her until she was here again.

  Suddenly, she jerked away. "Where's Ross? Solly, where is he?"

  Jaxon's face clouded with concern.

  "Don't worry, he's not far from here. He's looking after an old lady in a farm about forty miles away. We couldn't leave her, so I said I'd go back tomorrow with help."

  "He stayed there on his own? Well, I mean, without you?"

  "He's become a man, Janice. You'd be proud of him. Saved my life," Solly said. "But can I come in and have something to eat and drink before I tell you what's happened?"

  "And you can have a bath, too," Janice said, smiling.

  Solly gave a shy shrug. "Sorry, I guess I don’t exactly smell like roses."

  Jaxon gave him a hug as he walked towards the door and Solly shook hands with Landon.

  "Lan here's been a hero," Jaxon said. "Brought some of his friends from the town to help us. Josie, the one who rode with you, she's one of them."

  Solly slapped Landon on the shoulder. "Well done, my friend. And you made a good choice with her, that's for sure."

  A group of young children broke out of the house, sidestepping Miss Prism and ran up to Solly, calling his name and wrapping themselves around his legs.

  "Come now, children, leave Mr. Masters alone. School is still in session."

  "Looks as though a lot has changed while I've been away," Solly said to Janice.

  "Yes, Miss Prism and I have set up a little classroom in the house. It keeps the children occupied and Arnold sometimes teaches them as well," she said. Then she sighed, and her expression hardened a little. "Solly, there is one thing. We have someone here, locked in the basement."

  "Who?"

  "It's probably best you see for yourself," she said, taking him by the hand and leading him into the house. Landon followed, drawing his handgun.

  Janice unlocked the basement door and Landon went down first, Solly following him. He could see that a bed had been brought down and on it sat a slight man who was reading a book. He looked up, and Solly recognized him instantly.

  "Khaled! What are you doing here?"

  "It is you! Please, tell me the device is safe, I beg you. Tell me!" He leaped up, but only got a few feet before falling over his chained feet. "They are hunting me, they will find me! They must not take me back. The end, the end is coming. I have seen them. The Reapers. Nothing can stop them. Nothing but the device. If it is not safe, then we are lost. If they recover it, we are lost. The end of humanity is at hand!"

  As she locked the door again, Janice said, "I'm sorry, Solly. He turned up, wandering in the streets, and I recognized him. I didn't know what to do, so I locked him up. He's mad and he says the most awful things."

  "He may be mad," Solly said, "but if I'm right, we're going to need his help if we're to stop what's coming."

  He stood for a moment, leaning against the door, listening to the raving of the lunatic in the basement. It was the ultimate irony that the future of a world turned to chaos depended on the mind of a madman. But that was for tomorrow. Right now, all he cared about was that he was home. He pulled Janice to him and they held each other until all the pain and all the fear dissolved and Solly Masters was, for that glorious moment, at peace.

  Untitled

  The Long Night – Book 4

  Available Here!

  Reapers

  Book 4

  Prologue

  Two years before the Long Night

  "Don't sulk, Scott, it doesn't suit you," Annabel Lee said. "You've always said we need to know our own limitations."

  Scott Lee slouched on the sofa, scowling at his wife. "I'm not sulking," he said, though he knew it was a lie.

  "You said we shouldn't be afraid to bring in experts. The goals of the project are paramount, are they not?" Annabel continued.

  "I don't like being locked out of my own work."

  She came to sit down beside him, extending her long arm around his shoulder. "I understand, it's your baby."

  His head snapped to look at her as the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. But no, it was just a figure of speech, he was sure of it.

  "But Ho is also protective of his code, and you can't deny he's added some very useful functionality to BonesWare since he joined us."

  Scott shrugged. He knew he was coming across as a spoiled brat, but he wondered how she would feel if someone took one of her inventions and refused to let her see what they were doing. He didn't have the guts to make that point, however, so he let it be.

  "And anyway," she continued in a more mollifying tone, "you've got enough on your plate with the AI. How's that coming along?"

  He could recognize fake interest when he saw it. She didn't want him sniffing around Ho's work, that much was obvious, and it made him all the more determined to find a way in. Khaled would help.

  "It's progressing," he said. "I can't say it's a barrel of laughs creating an artificial version of you, given the circumstances."

  "Would you prefer to swap places?" she snapped. "I'm the one with the disease, Scott, not you. But I want this place run efficiently when my organic self is no longer here to do it. And who better to run the Lee Corporation than an expertly crafted version of me?"

  Scott smiled, though with little humor. "Well, I think we'll have a first prototype in a month or two."

  "Good, I look forward to talking to myself. I spent long enough on those psychological tests, after all." Her eyes narrowed. "Just be sure to make it an accurate rendition of me. Warts and all."

  "Why wouldn't you want your avatar to be the best possible version of Annabel Lee?" Scott asked. He had, in fact, smoothed some of the rough edges because the prospect of a clone of the real Annabel's mind being let loose within the wiring of the Lee Corporation's three main buildings filled him with horror.

  She shook her head. "Oh no, I think our faults make us who we are. Without those aspects of my personality you find so annoying, my dear, I wouldn't be the world's leading medical entrepreneur and millions would have suffered. So your sacrifice isn't that great, is it? I make one person's life a misery in order to save millions."

  Scott ignored that. In truth, he wasn't the only target of her ire, particularly since she'd become ill. She seemed to relish being unpleasant, as if it were a necessary part of being successful.

  "Well," he said, disentangling himself from her and getting up from the couch, "code doesn't write itself. It seems I have some warts to add."

  Annabel sat beside Shi Chin Ho, pretending to listen to him drone on about his programming work. She nodded when it seemed appropriate but he wasn't really paying much attention to her—he seemed happy to have an audience, even an inattentive one. The fact that neither of them spoke perfect Mandarin made communication challenging at the best of times, but she couldn't spare the effort needed to follow the minutiae of his cleverness.

  "Yes, well, that's all amazing, Ho, but how close are we to being able to deploy version 2.0?"

  Ho stopped mid sentence and blinked, as if only just remembering that she was there. "We have not yet received our final orders, honorable Annabel. The package is ready, once they transmit the payload."

  Annabel ground her teeth in frustration. She was used to being entirely her own boss and being at the beck and call of the Chinese did not sit well with her ego or need for control. But they had injected huge amounts of money into the project, hiring an entire team of coders working in the newly built Lee Building in Shenzhen. Shi Chin Ho was the figurehead though he, like Annabel herself, was not Chinese. He'd been offered to China by North Korea after a stellar career spent disrupting the West. The North Koreans, it seemed, were keen to learn about this implant technology so they could create their own while also seeming to support their allies and benefactors in Beijing.

  The two of them had begun th
eir working relationship in suspicion but over time this had become grudging respect and then, after six months or so, something approaching friendship. Or, perhaps, comradeship would be a better word. They shared with their Chinese masters an ambition to bring the western world to its knees, but Annabel's desire went so much further than that.

  "Did you speak to the esteemed Scott?"

  "I did, but his answer was the same," Annabel said.

  Ho shook his head. He was only in his mid-twenties so his double-chins hadn't had time to become jowls, but thousands of hours spent at a keyboard had not produced an athletic physique. That, and the polio he'd suffered as a child in some backward farm commune in North Korea. It had been his mind that had saved him then—that and the doctor who'd noticed it.

  Was it ironic that the two people most closely involved in the forthcoming upgrade had been crippled by disease? Or was it fate?

  "I do not understand. Doctor Lee has graciously given me access to all his code, including documentation, except for one series of modules that he had siloed. I cannot determine what those modules do, except that they send and receive data from the main codebase. They cannot be redundant."

  Annabel shrugged. "I don't know what to say, Ho. He is particularly territorial about it." She was lying, but then she was a good liar. Three men were intimately involved in the upgrade, and each of them blamed the others for their frustration. Annabel was a puppet master and they her playthings.

  "Annabel, this is dangerous, really dangerous," Khaled said. "If this got into the wrong hands…well, I dread to think."

  Annabel rested her hand on his shoulder as she stood behind him. She smiled as she felt him tremble a little at her touch. He swung around in his chair to look up at her as she spoke. "The whole point, my dear Khaled, is to make sure that we have the ultimate say in what happens with our creation."

  "We?" he responded. "Don't you mean you?"

  This was an unusual show of defiance from a man she'd considered utterly in her power. "Khaled," she said, affecting a mock simpering that brought an instant smile to his face. "How long have we been working together?"

  "Years," he said.

  "Five years. You see, I remember. You wrote to me because your visa was about to expire and you didn't want to be shipped back to Egypt. You managed to hack into a Bones implant and got it to do some quite interesting things. Scott was most impressed, so we hired you on the spot."

  Abdul nodded. "I remember. It was just a prototype implant—no chance of hacking it now. Even the military's encryption is inferior."

  "Because you developed our algorithms. You gave Bones its shield."

  "And you want me to deliberately weaken it."

  Annabel faked dismay. "Don't be so silly, Khaled, of course not. You've built impenetrable walls around the code--all I want is for you to add a locked side door, and to give me the key."

  "As I said, you want to weaken our defenses?"

  Annabel sighed and sat on the edge of a desk. "Tell me, Khaled, do you trust our Chinese colleagues?"

  The sudden change of subject seemed to catch Khaled off guard. "I'm not sure how to answer that."

  "Oh, don't worry," she said, giving a little chuckle. "I won't inform on you. Between you and me, I regard them as competitors as much as friends. Oh, they've been useful enough. BonesWare 2.0 would not exist without their money and expertise, but I do not wish 2.0 to be the version that sees us give up control entirely. Give me this back door and we will always have the final say."

  She watched the thoughts play across his face. He could sense danger and he'd never been good at the sort of subtle wordplay she found to be second nature.

  "And what about our North Korean friend?" she said, throwing him a lifeline. "How do you feel about him having control over our code?"

  Khaled's face darkened. "Not good. Frankly, it seems crazy to have someone from that country, a sworn enemy of the United States, developing code that is to drive every implant in the country."

  "But that was the price the Chinese set on their help," Annabel said, leaning forward and looking into his eyes. "Give me this way in and it'll be our insurance policy. Build me the back door so I can keep us all safe."

  And so she had them each working on individual aspects of the BonesWare Version 2.0 project. Each with one piece of the puzzle and none, except her, with the full picture. They could not be allowed to know what she had in mind. They would think she was insane when, in fact, she was only mad.

  Chapter 1

  Solly jumped out of the car and ran to join Jaxon. The young man gestured along the road to where an old military transport waited. Beside it stood a man Solly immediately recognized.

  He'd known this day would come eventually, that they'd been living on borrowed time in a little bubble of peace while the world continued to change around them.

  "Scott," he said, holding out his hand. "Did Paulie come with you?"

  Scott Lee grasped Solly's hand and shook it with surprising warmth. "It's good to see you, Solly."

  Another figure emerged from behind the truck. "Hello," Paulie said, stepping forward into a brief embrace. "You look well and rested. Sorry to gatecrash the party, but we brought help."

  "Corporal!" Lee called. They heard the rear door open and booted feet jumping down from the tailgate before a man in fatigues jogged over and saluted.

  "Corporal Jason DiSanto," he said, before shaking hands with a bemused Solly.

  "What's going on?"

  "I persuaded the colonel to assign a squad to protect the farmhouse. This place needs defending."

  "We've done alright on our own," Jaxon said from behind Solly's shoulder.

  Paulie nodded. "You've done well, but you've been protected by your remote location. The corporal and his squad are here to keep you safe."

  "Being out in the middle of nowhere isn't an accident," Solly said, finding himself sharing Jaxon's annoyance. "And, anyway, this isn't my decision to make. You'll have to stay here while we talk it through back at the farmhouse, Corporal."

  The soldier glanced at Scott then, receiving a brief nod, retreated to the back of the truck and ordered his men to break out their rations.

  "It's a genuine offer, Solly," Lee said. "They're here to help, but you can tell them to leave at any time. You stay in charge."

  Solly allowed a smile to warm his face. "Oh, I haven't been in charge for a long time, Scott. But come on, I'll introduce you to the leaders of the community. We also have someone here you'll want to meet."

  "Khaled!"

  The little Egyptian threw himself into Scott's arms as Lee reached the bottom of the basement stairs. Solly had asked for his shackles to be removed, but had agreed that Khaled should remain where he was partly because he was no more satisfied with the man's explanation for his escape than anyone else, but also in case he had a tracking device.

  Scott pushed him away, the amazement obvious on his face. "How did you get away, my friend? And why are you locked up down here?"

  "It is a long and thrilling story," Khaled said. "As for my incarceration, well, I do not blame the people here. I was a raving lunatic when I arrived, but I have since recovered somewhat, I'm glad to say. It was terrible, Scott. Terrible. They thought they'd broken me, but they were wrong."

  "So, what happened?" Scott said, leading Khaled back to the bed and sitting on the wooden chair beside it.

  "First, may I ask who this lady is?" he responded.

  Scott looked behind Solly. "I'm sorry, I should have introduced her. This is Sheriff Paulina Ramos. She and Solly helped me escape from the Lee Corporation building in Seattle."

  "They captured you?" Khaled gasped.

  "They used me as bait," Scott Lee responded. "They knew that something was being brought to me, though they didn't know what it was exactly. Do you have any idea how they might have learned this?"

  Khaled's eyes widened in fear. "I told them nothing, I swear! They discovered that I was communicating with Neil Buchanan. They to
ok me and tortured me, but I did not reveal what Mr. Masters was carrying. Believe me, I beg of you!"

  "And yet they knew enough to capture Scott," Paulie said. "Good grief, was the assault on Arbroath staged just for that?"

  Scott shook his head. "No. Arbroath had been a target for the militia already and as soon as I was discredited, they went back to their original plan."

  "But the militia is the Lee Corporation, isn't it?"

  "Yes, they are one and the same."

  "Apart from grabbing you, then, why did they attack Arbroath? What's their aim?" Solly said as Khaled watched them open mouthed.

  Scott shrugged. "I can't be sure, but from what I saw while I was in Seattle, I guess they're establishing a power base and for that they need manpower."

  "They're doing the same in New York," Khaled said. "Building an army and setting up a city state."

  "But they can't go giving weapons to the people they've abducted," Paulie said. "How would they keep them from rebelling?"

  Khaled gave a big sigh. "I can tell you. I have seen them. The Reapers."

  Solly sat with Janice, Ross, Jaxon and Arnold at the kitchen table and sipped on his whiskey. Ross had been back to see Gheta Kaplinsky several times since Solly had returned for him the day after his arrival at the farm. The old woman refused to leave her home, still clinging to the hope that her dead husband would knock on the door one day, so they'd helped clean up the place and given her supplies. Ross's presence had helped her to something of a recovery and she was now able to move around the top floor of her house with a walking stick.

  Paulie and Scott were camping in the barn with DiSanto's squad of soldiers. It had been Janice who'd persuaded the others to accept them. To her, the risks associated with having them here were outweighed by the extra security they'd offer if, or when, the farmhouse was discovered.