by Ian Williams
“Of course. He once worked for the same being I do. I own an import company, which he used to bring illegal technology into the country. A real shame, losing him like that. Someone really stuck it to him.”
“Yes, we know about the import company. We found details about it in your personal files; a company called GEL. When we first began looking into you, after evidence of bribing came to our attention, we started to dig deeper. We know you were involved in the terrorist attack last year, we have pages of transactions linking you to it. But you’ve been buying smaller companies up like there’s no tomorrow too, why? What are you planning next?”
“Surely you know all of this already, Derek? To become Mayor I had to follow the Master’s instructions exactly. And as for the attacks last year, I helped finance the entire thing.”
The Master! Conrad had to repeat this inside his head.
“He wanted me in charge of the relay repairs, while he worked on building his army,” Mayor Crawley continued. “You’ll find a clear link between me and countless illegal imports over the last few months. GEL has been incredibly busy of late, what with shipping our supplies to each city. I tell you, it’s amazing what you can do with enough money.”
Conrad stepped forward to ask his own question. “You became Mayor to have access to the relay repairs for New Chelmsford? Why, what good does that do?”
“Do I have to tell you everything? Oh well. You see, the replacement design is all nonsense. It doesn’t make anything faster at all. They will allow my master to claim the city as his own. He designed the new relays himself, quite ingenious really.”
“Tell us what happens when you switch them on, now!” Derek shouted directly into the Mayor’s face. “What happens at Switchover?”
“You can’t stop it, no-one can. When the Switchover clock runs out, the world will finally see. They will meet the Master too.”
Conrad raced around the table and took the Mayor by the scruff of the neck. “Spit it out. Who is the Master?”
After another snort of laughter, Mayor Crawley eventually replied with a single name. “Isaac.”
“Impossible,” Derek said. “He doesn’t exist anymore.”
“I assure you, that is quite incorrect, Derek. He’s here, he has been for a while, plotting and planning out his rise to power. Taking New Chelmsford is just the beginning. Soon the war will reach across the entire country.” Mayor Crawley stopped for a second, then asked, “Is it midnight yet?”
Conrad turned to Derek, who took his wrist computer from the table to check. He nodded to confirm.
“Perfect,” the Mayor said, with a wide smile on his face. “I suggest you all go outside to see this, it’s going to be impressive!”
For a short while, both Conrad and Derek looked at the Mayor. They were stunned by his excitement. Something had started to happen, but only he knew what that was. For the rest of the city, it was going to be a complete and dreadful surprise.
Derek was first to speak again, into his wrist computer this time. “What’s happening up there?”
Jason replied. “Nothing, why?”
“I want everyone outside, right now.”
“I’m coming too,” Conrad said, following Derek out the room soon after.
* * *
12pm, Friday: Switchover
Upon opening her eyes, Phoenix was met with the expectant face of Rhys looking back at her through the glass of her tiny room inside the Conduit device. His presence gave her a feeling of safety that defied the situation. The tiny space she was locked inside suddenly felt even smaller. Yet the fear could not break through another emotion sitting squarely at the forefront. Her first reaction was not to force her way out because of an overwhelming sensation of claustrophobia, but to sit quietly and admire the man staring at her. The relief on his face to see her awake again filled her with the same. She liked that he was worried about her.
He placed his hand on the glass surface and lowered his head to look at the floor. Without him seeing, she copied as though secretly touching his hand. The gesture was one she knew would lead to trouble if he saw. She quickly removed it a moment later. The situation was not right to follow up on anything that had begun to bloom between them. Still, she enjoyed the odd thought or two of what it would be like to fling her arms around his neck and land one on him.
The thought was enough for now, she quickly decided.
“Can we get her out of there already?” Rhys snapped at Luke, who stood at the console to the side.
She looked to him, to see if she could spot any sign of her Sentient friend’s worsening health. Losing his memories had left him as lost as Graham, only in the real world, and surrounded by strange beings he could hardly have understood. It was amazing that he had made it so far. She just hoped he could take a little more.
The hatch popped open after a combination of loud taps at the smooth panel that controlled the device. She wasted no time at all with exiting in style and instead leapt out like a jack-in-a-box at full tension. Rhys almost missed her as she came free of the Conduit.
“Woah! Easy, Phoenix, I’ve got you,” he said, while holding her precariously in his arms.
“Thanks,” she replied.
“It’s weird, I could hear you from out here. You were talking out loud, but you weren’t moving your lips. It was like you’d merged with the device somehow.”
That was not how she experienced it. In her mind, she had held the conversation with Luke, as though she spoke directly to him. But then that was not possible. Somehow her recollection was incorrect. The device had to have altered it. Or maybe her own mind had done that to make it feel ordinary, when in fact she had possibly not even been inside her own body at the time.
She had little time to go into it in any detail, she had a job to do. Her meeting with Graham had been a short one, and a strange one too. There was something going on beyond what she had seen from her halfway-between-state. He was in the middle of a fight or a chase, she failed to tell for sure. What had been abundantly clear was the time restraint. They could not delay uploading Luke back to the Sentient world. It had to be done quickly.
“Luke?” she said cautiously.
“That name is familiar, Phoenix, but I still cannot remember much. If I am this Luke being, then we are friends?”
“We are. You were there with Graham, me and the others when we tried to stop Isaac reforming. We need to get you back to your own world. Do you know how to upload a mind from here?”
He looked over the device a few times, trying to figure out the answer. Then after a glance down to the person-sized pit they had dug and the open section of the Conduit, he smiled.
“I have a way of trying,” he said. “It would require a direct connection between myself and the central processing flow in the heart of the Conduit.”
“Great, how do we get to that quickly?”
“Do you still possess the weapon from before?”
She shared a questioning glance with Rhys, before separating.
“Yes, it’s just over there. Why? Wait, you want me to shoot the inside of the device?”
His unspoken answer came in the form of two raised eyebrows, as his head tilted to the side a little. It said ‘why not?’ to her. He was right too, it did not matter if they damaged parts of the Conduit, as long as it did this one last job for them. After that, destroying the thing was going to be her next choice anyway, so they were not too worried about that.
The submachine gun stood leaning against the wall by the emergency exit. She had left it there just in case the driller man had become a nuisance while he worked at the console earlier. After retrieving it and turning on the eye tracking system, she raised it to her face and checked down the sight. She could see the red outlines of all the possible targets within the room as expected, the main of which was Luke, who rested his back against the tower.
“How is that going to help?” Rhys asked. “You’ll destroy half the insides with that thing.”
�
�I understand that the weapon is capable of firing only at selected targets?” Luke said. He waited for a nod from Phoenix before continuing. “A short burst of sustained fire on one position will be as effective as a much longer period with a drill. Unless you have a drill somewhere, this will be the best option.”
“Well, actually–”
“Not now,” Phoenix said. The last thing she wanted was to resort to using the same tool that had bored into her skull not long ago. The gun would be the right tool for this task then. “So, where do you want the hole?”
Luke pointed down into the pit beside the tower. The section they had removed earlier already took them a way inside it. The centre was closer there than anywhere else.
She handed the gun to Rhys then lowered herself into the hole. There she had to pull the collection of wires, left there from before, out of the way to see the semi-transparent circuitry beyond.
“You must not hit any of the glowing wires inside, Phoenix,” Luke said. “Aim between them. I estimate a two second burst on that area should break through to the central chamber.”
“What about shrapnel?”
“Yes, there will be more damage than required, some of which will cause pieces to exit the tower, but that should not stop us proceeding.”
With her back against the far side of her small pit, she took the weapon back from Rhys, then aimed down the sight at a section between the wire clusters. To manually select that area, she blinked at the free space within the device, which assigned a holographic reticule to the correct position. Then she was ready to fire.
“Here goes.”
Pulling the trigger released an automatic barrage, which ricocheted inside the small opening. The first few bullets appeared to skim right off of the glass and fly around the compartment amid a display of sparks and flashes. It was only a short moment of panic before the next few worked an inch sized hole through to another area behind. She let go of the trigger almost as soon as she pulled it. A look inside afterwards revealed a continuously flowing stream of energy, travelling back and forth between the upper regions of the tower.
“What do you see?” Luke asked.
“I think I see it. There’s a lot going on inside here. What’s this thing doing?” she answered.
“The energy you see is carrying information from the main tower, wherever that is within the city. It is a direct link to my world.”
I’m looking into another world? Phoenix thought with awe.
“I will require a space around the size of your arm,” Luke continued. “Please remove what you can of the surrounding structure to make one. The inside is much weaker than the outer casing, so you should be able to do so without any problem.”
“OK,” she replied as the pieces were pulled away without any real effort from her. It fell apart like honeycomb in her hands. A mere minute or so later and she had a hole she could force her entire arm through, if she felt so inclined – which of course she did not.
“Here, you must place this into the data stream,” Luke said, handing her another cluster of his own supply of ordinary wires. While she had opened up access to the central processing flow, he had been busy putting the makeshift connection together. What he gave her looked like a thick arm of wires all tied into one long cable, with the bare ends forming one big and golden tangle.
Before she did anything with this, she checked the other end to see what Luke had planned. She was horrified to see the cable being tied around the glowing wires inside the black box on his head again. The last time he had done the same thing it had only been to communicate with the tower, not to transfer an entire consciousness. The plan had her even more concerned than before.
“Holy shit,” she said, reacting without hesitation. “What the hell are you doing?”
“This is the only way, Phoenix,” Luke replied.
Rhys stood beside him with a slightly guilty look on his face. He saw the danger too, but had understood the need straight away. This was to be a one way trip, so any damage to the black box was irrelevant. Except they had not considered one small detail; Jack, the human whose body it really was.
“What happens if this destroys the box? Will it hurt Jack?” she said.
Both Rhys and Luke stopped suddenly and looked to each other. Neither of them knew the exact chances of anything bad happening to the body, she could tell from their blank expressions.
“I don’t think we have much of a choice,” Rhys answered finally. “If we don’t try this, Jack is still left a prisoner in his own body. Getting Luke out will free him too. I’m sure he’d rather we tried. I mean, you heard him before, he said he’d rather die than stay trapped.”
She conceded quickly. “Fine. But if I see anything going wrong, I’m stopping it.”
“Then why don’t you let me put that thing inside the tower instead. You can stay here and keep an eye on Luke.”
The idea was a good one, which she had only missed through stubbornness. It did not have to be her every time, Rhys had tried to tell her on multiple occasions. She decided he was right, he could help carry the load.
They swapped places with a worried stare as they passed. With the rest of the connections tied loosely around the glowing wires on Luke’s head, they were ready to begin the process. All eyes were on the reactions from both the tower and Luke. If either of them showed signs of becoming overwhelmed, then the whole thing would be brought to an end – and with it the chances of Graham’s escape from the Sentient world too.
“Right,” Rhys said, another concerned look shot straight to Phoenix. “On three. One, two… three!”
“Wait,” Luke called to Rhys. The interruption had Phoenix ready to jump in and stop it already.
“What?” Rhys replied.
Luke stepped around the tower to see him, Phoenix stayed close. “When the cable makes contact it will possibly react by emitting a sudden flash of light. You will need to avert your gaze as you proceed.”
“Jesus, Luke, you could have said sooner. Right, stand back.”
Stepping away and with his eyes barely looking at his own hand, Rhys prepared his throw of the cable with a couple of practice runs. Once he was happy with his judgement, he went for it. He threw the cable into the flickering stream of light inside the centre of the tower. Sparks began to fly soon after, as the cable interrupted the energy flow. At the point of contact, everyone within the surrounding area turned away.
Phoenix closed her eyes for a split second as the entire room came into full view, like someone had pulled off the roof and thrown a small star inside. Its harsh light attacked the corners of the room and finally destroyed the darkness. The war had been won and only now could the lightshow settle down again.
They waited for more.
After the bright flash had faded, it was at first peaceful again. A short delay had left them all wondering whether it had worked at all. Then it started.
“It’s starting to wo–” Luke tried to say.
With all the force of a punch to the face, his head snapped back and the veins in his neck began to throb. The blood raced around his body, making ridges in his skin like snakes traced their way beneath. The energy tensed every single muscle in his body, bringing his arms slightly out to his side as if about to sing out loud. But he did nothing of the sort. Rather he began to froth at the mouth as the power flowed throughout him.
“Shit, this is so fucking stupid,” Phoenix said. The urge to yank the cables free soon took over. Only the moment she touched it, she felt a sudden build-up of electricity travelling up and down her arm. It was too much for her to take. She released her grip and pulled her arm into her chest, where she cradled it.
“Christ, what do we do?” Rhys called out to her.
“I can’t separate him from it. Rhys, get up here and help me try again.”
He scrambled out of the pit and joined her by the shaking form of Luke. They each then took a firm grip of the cable and started to pull at it in a rhythmic motion, like rowing a boat in
tandem. All that moved at the other end was Luke’s head, which cocked to the side each time they tried to remove it. Nothing would free him while the process went on by itself.
“Phoenix, stop, it’s no good.”
“What if it’s killing him?”
“There’s nothing we can do.” Rhys fought the cable out of her hands and threw it to the ground. After releasing it, she fell into his arms. “We’ll just have to hope he’s already uploaded himself.”
They stayed back while Luke flinched and twitched uncontrollably. His eyes were quickly becoming a bloodshot mess, which now looked in opposite directions to each other. All of the energy invading his body was running freely, possibly wreaking an unknown amount of damage along the way too. All that remained was the escape of Luke’s consciousness. The sooner that happened, the sooner they prayed it would end.
The very millisecond it did, a loud pop sound broke through the rest as if Luke had suddenly gone supersonic. Everything then changed in a heartbeat. The tower blinked out, sending the room into blackness; the electrical fizzing noises ceased, and Luke came free. He was released from the energy’s grips and sent tumbling to the hard floor, where he silently came to rest.
Phoenix ran over before falling to her knees and sliding the last metre or so to him. A second sooner and she would have caught him in time. Instead she landed next to him just as his head crashed into the ground.
“Oh no, no, Rhys help!”
“I’m here. Don’t try and move him.”
Sitting either side of the body, Phoenix and Rhys stared into the glazed eyes, waiting for any sign of the remaining mind. For a worrying few moments of absolute terror nothing changed. Then a flick of his right eye.
“Is he?” Rhys said, unable to complete the thought.
“Jack, is it you?”
When the left eye began to roll around too, it was clear the worse had been avoided. The question that remained was whether they were seeing Luke or Jack coming around. Only the eyes were moving at first, until they found their correct calibration. The rest of his body still had not responded before they could see clearly.