by Kim Curran
‘Of course. But make sure everyone in the company is comfortable first.’
‘Yes, Max. Thank you.’ The medic takes a quizzical look at me.
‘I’ll look after her, Dave,’ Max says, placing a hand on the man’s dark blue shoulder. ‘You do your job.’
I always thought he knew everyone’s names simply because he could match them to the database. But now I realise, with Glaze down, it was him all along. Does he know the name of everyone who works for him?
Max closes the door after Dave and a moment later the ambulance’s engine whirrs and red and blue lights flash through the frosted glass of the front door.
Heart attacks. People have died. All because I gave Logan the access. I wish that my heart would stop right now.
‘Max?’ the female assistant appears at the bottom of the stairs, her male counterpart a step behind her. ‘Your appointment with the mayor is in 30 minutes.’
‘Tell him I’ll be late,’ Max says.
‘But… ’ Jonathan says.
‘But nothing,’ Max snaps.
They flinch at his harsh words. Max’s reputation for treating all of his staff like family is cracking.
‘Tea?’ I say, my voice choked, because, again, it’s what’s expected, isn’t it? Tea. And I have to do something because if I sit here and keep thinking about how it’s my fault, I’ll never get up again.
I wander into the kitchen, not checking if Max is following me. I press the button on the kettle and listen to it ticking and hissing as the water begins to get angry.
‘What now?’ I look back at him from the open fridge. Jonathan and the woman are in the hallway, busy trying to make mobile phones work. With Glaze down, they’re having to go back to old ways.
‘We wait.’
‘Max,’ the woman says, covering the earpiece of the phone with her hand rather than the mouthpiece.
Max grips the bridge of his nose with two fingers. ‘Yes, Natalie?’
‘The team have found the source of the virus and tracked down the people who released it.’
Max eases onto a stool and a disturbing smile takes over his face. ‘Good.’
My hand holding a bottle of milk goes limp and the bottle smashes to the floor.
I grab a tea towel off the sideboard and start mopping it up, glad to have the excuse to hide my face.
They’ve found Logan. And that means they’ve probably found Ethan too. Because I sent him there. Sent him straight to where he is going to get caught. I have to do something.
‘You found them?’ I say, shaking white liquid and broken glass out of the tea towel into the sink, careful to keep my back to both him and Natalie.
‘The team are there now.’
‘Good,’ says Max again. ‘Once we know what we’re dealing with we can get Glaze back up and...’
I’m starting to get annoyed with his habit of leaving his sentences unfinished. I used to think it was because his mind was so full of thoughts that he couldn’t stay on one track for long, but now it seems solely manufactured to irritate the hell out of me. I know it used to drive Zizi nuts.
‘Will you send the police to arrest them?’
‘The police? And have them make a hash of the whole thing like they did the riot? No, the police are irrelevant now. We’ll handle this ourselves.’
‘How?’
‘By making them pay.’
I start at the ice in his voice, like he’s slapped me again. He’s so casual, so ruthless, I don’t know who he is any more. I’m not sure I ever did. I don’t know what he’s going to do to me if he finds out that I was responsible for this, or to Ethan if he finds him. If only I could send him a message, but I have absolutely no idea how to. I never did.
The last shards of glass ring in the metal basin.
There’s nothing I can do. I turn back to the kettle and pour hot water into two mugs, then I realise I’ve not even put the tea bags in.
The chime of the door makes me flinch.
‘I’ll get it,’ I shout, as Jonathan reaches out to open the door.
He and I cross paths as I head to the door and he throws me an evil side eye, as if it’s my fault that he’s here. If only he knew how right he was.
Through the frosted glass of the front door I make out a lone figure on our doorstep. I wave my hand over the sensor and the door slides open, revealing a woman wrapped in a long cardigan with grey hair, unkempt hair. It’s not till she steps into the light of the doorway that I recognise her.
‘Mrs Roufail.’
Kiara’s mother half smiles at the mention of her name, an in-built reaction, then she catches herself and the smile freezes on her face, her mouth lopsided like a stroke victim.
‘It’s Kiara,’ she manages to say. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to her. She won’t get up.’
‘No!’ I say, the knife in my stomach twists harder.
‘I thought Zizi might know how to help?’
I shake my head.
‘No. Please. Not her too?’ Mrs Roufail says.
‘They’ve taken her away in an ambulance,’ I say, taking her by the elbow and leading her inside. Her arms are bony beneath her cardigan.
‘Oh, Petri. What are we going to do?’
‘Hello, Grace.’
Mrs Roufail stiffens when she sees Max behind me and the fear on her face is replaced with rage, contorting her skin into taut lines.
I bite my lip and look from one to the other. I knew she hadn’t taken getting fired from the company well.
‘You,’ she spits. ‘This is your fault. I warned you—’
Max closes the space between them in three easy strides and grabs her by the elbow. ‘Grace, I know this has been hard on you,’ he says, pressing her back towards the open door. ‘But this is not the time.’
‘If you have hurt my daughter I swear to god, I will, I will...’
Max laughs, he actually laughs, as he steps back, leaving her standing on the door step. ‘Grace, go home, be with your daughter, I’ll send a WhiteHealth doctor over to look after her and she’ll get the best possible care.’ He clicks his finger at Natalie but she’s already on the phone, sorting it. ‘Once a member of the company, always a member of the company, isn’t that what I’ve always said? And no need to punish your daughter for your, well...’ He purses his lips and then smiles.
Mrs Roufail stares at him, stunned and enraged and scared all at once.
‘Go home, Grace.’ He waves his hand across the sensor and the door closes, leaving Mrs Roufail and whatever she wanted to say on the other side.
He turns to me and smiles, that big toothy smile seen on the cover of every newspaper and e-mag.
‘Don’t look so worried, Petri. It will all be over as soon as…’
‘Um, Max,’ Natalie says. And the smile slides off Max’s face like leftovers into a bin.
‘What now?’
‘The location the team tracked the signal to, it appears to be an abandoned office building. There’s no one there. But… ’ she says quickly, before Max has a chance to respond, ‘they’ve found a second signal and they’re on their way. They’re certain they’ve got them this time.’
Max’s smiles and it terrifies me. It’s so twisted and vicious, I don’t recognise him. He taps his shoe on the floorboards, then looks down at it, as if he’s surprised that it belongs to him.
‘I think I’m going to get some sleep,’ I say, turning away. I can’t look at him.
‘Yes, we should probably go. I’ll leave Jonathan here to watch you.’
‘No,’ I snap, spinning around. It’s clear Jonathan is as thrilled by the idea as I am. ‘No, that won’t be needed. I just really want to be on my own, you know, to, um...’
Max smiles softly, almost proudly, and unhooks his coat from the door.
‘Everything will be OK, Petri,’ he says, without turning to face me. Without looking me in the eye. And I know he’s lying and nothing will ever be OK again.
20
THE
DOOR CLOSES and I race to it and look through the peephole. I know I could look through the monitor, but I don’t know if I trust any technology any more.
Max pauses at the steps and looks up to the sky, stretching out his limbs like he was going for his morning walk. Then a black car slides into view. Natalie opens the door for him and he gets in, followed by his assistants.
Twenty minutes. Probably seventeen left now. I don’t know if it’s enough time.
I dig around my bag, which is still by the door where I dropped it, and pull out my phone.
Logan was the last number I called. I press redial.
‘Hi, this is Logan. I’m out saving the world. Leave a message.’
‘Logan, it’s Petri. Get out of the lab. Get out.’
I hang up and press my face against the cloudy surface of the door, the cold glass cooling the heat from Max’s slap. If Max really has tracked Logan down then trying to warn him could get me caught too. But how else can I get in touch with Ethan? After everything that’s happened tonight, I can’t take anything happening to him.
Glaze will be back up soon and when it does, I’ll be next to useless. Even more reason to find Logan: he might be the only one who can help me get the chip out. And I know now I never want to be on Glaze again.
I bang my fist against the door.
I have to take a chance that Logan and his team were good enough and Max will have tracked down another of their proxies. But I don’t know if he’ll be at his flat or the lab. If he’s at the flat, he has a better chance of defending himself. I wouldn’t want to go into that place without some serious back up. But then he has the panic room at the lab.
I take a chance and head to the lab, praying to a God I don’t believe in that Ethan won’t have listened to me and gone home.
The door is open when I finally get to Logan’s lab after making my way through the chaos on the street. With Glaze down most of the security systems are down too and people have started looting. The bonds that have been tying people together these past few years have been discarded in a single night.
I force my legs to walk up the steps towards the door of the old house. There’s no noise from inside, which is a good thing, I guess. It means either Max’s men have been and gone, or they’ve not arrived yet. I hope it’s the latter.
I step inside and over the pile of junk mail splayed across the floor. The hallway echoes with silence. Maybe even if they did get here they’d never have made it downstairs.
The door to the stairwell is shut tight and I have to use both hands to tug on the handle. The rusted hinges creak when it finally opens. Even the steps complain loudly as I walk down them, as if the whole house has had too much of my presence. The lights in the corridor are on, flickering slightly, but on. The strips of plastic that cover the doorway ahead lie still with no breeze down here to disturb them.
There’s a bundle of what looks like rags lying in front of the curtain. As I step closer I realise what it is and what little food I had earlier lurches into my mouth. I double up and gag, spewing my lunch onto the tiled floor.
I close my eyes but the image has burned into my brain. The shattered, bloody remains of Proxy. Her small legs splayed out at unnatural angles. Her tail a bloody smear. I can even see the ridged imprint of the boot that crushed her skull. She was just a dog. A stupid, annoying incontinent dog, but she didn’t deserve that.
My whole body starts to shake. If this is what Max’s men will do to a dog, what the hell will they have done to the rest of Logan’s team? My only hope is that they weren’t here.
Not wanting to see, but being unable to bear not knowing, I push aside the plastic sheeting and step inside.
The twins lie in the middle of the floor, curled into each other, their bodies making a yin and yang symbol: I don’t know where one ends and the other begins. Their white blonde hair is dyed pink from their blood.
I look around the room, frantically searching, terrified that I will find Ethan.
A cough echoes through the room. I race towards the back. To the panic room hidden behind the camocloth. Maybe he is safe after all.
It’s Logan. It doesn’t look like he made it to the metal security door in time. He’s leaning up against the inside wall of the panic room, clutching his stomach. Dark liquid seeps through his fingers.
I walk towards him, and can’t help but check in the room behind him to see if anyone else is in there. When I realise it’s empty, I’m relieved and then angry with myself for caring so little for Logan. Or is it because I care so much for Ethan?
I squat next to him, not knowing where to look or what to do.
‘Hey,’ he says.
‘Hey,’ I say back.
He tries to smile, but it looks like the effort is too much. I look down as his pooling blood inches towards my trainers.
‘It was only a dumb horror video meant to scare everyone.’ His eyes burn into mine, and as angry as I am with him and at what he’s done, I know he’s looking to me for some kind of redemption. For forgiveness. I shouldn’t be the one to give it to him.
‘I know,’ I say.
‘But they said we’d killed people. Turned them into vegetables. But it wasn’t us. It wasn’t us. When it all went to shit, Mila started digging into the code, working out who it had affected... and that’s why they did this, Petri. They couldn’t let it get out.’ Coughing takes over him and he collapses forward. I kneel forward and grab him by his shoulders, sitting him upright. I try to ignore the warm dampness seeping through my jeans and the stupid selfish thought that’s niggling in my brain: another pair of jeans ruined.
‘Logan, hold on,’ I say, realising how stupid I sound.
‘I have to show you something.’ He grabs hold of my shirt with his blood-soaked hand and pulls me towards him, pressing his head into my neck. ‘I’m sliding it to you now,’ he whispers into my ear, his breath hot on my skin. I try to move away from the stench of rotting meat coming from his breath, but his grip is too tight. ‘It’s the secret,’ he says. ‘What they’ve been doing. And we would have eaten it all up.’
He coughs and I can feel a wet splattering on my skin. I finally pull away and wipe what I think is spittle from my face. There’s blood on my hand.
Logan slumps against the wall. ‘Have you got it? Can you see it?’ The panic in his voice is crushing. He probably doesn’t realise Glaze is down, or that my hacked chip never worked and most likely never will, and whatever he’s sent me is lost in the mist of noise.
‘Sure, I got it, Logan.’
‘You got it?’
‘Yeah. I’m reading it now.’
‘Good. It will destroy them. You’ll know what to do with it. You’re smart, Petri. Smarter than—’ His jaw falls open.
‘Don’t you dare!’ I scream. I slap him around the face, harder than I’ve ever hit anyone in my life. Logan’s lifeless body slides to the floor. I thump him on the chest. Again and again. Screaming at him to come back. That I don’t want his stupid secret. Hisses of air escape his lungs with every thump and blood bubbles up from his lips.
I stop pounding and sit back, staring at the blood on my hands.
I did this, I think, I killed him. And the twins. And that man on the street and Zizi. It’s all down to me. I gave Logan what he needed to release the virus and brought all of this down on them. My body is shaking and I’m gasping for breath.
No. I think. And then I shout it, pouring all of my rage and guilt into the one word. ‘No!’
I didn’t do it. I didn’t fire a bullet into Logan’s stomach. I didn’t crush a small dog under my boot. That was WhiteShield. The army of the man I wished was my father, the man I loved. He did this. Not me.
A crunch sounds from overhead. Boots on floorboards. WhiteShield coming back to finish the job?
I push Logan into the tiny metal room, kicking his legs clear of the door, and drag it closed. The bolts clunk, sealing me in. At first everything is dark, but one by one, pale blue lights flicker on and s
creens glow into life.
They cover every wall of the panic room, showing live feed of what’s going on outside. Not only in the house, but across the country: news footage of the attack; reports on what’s been happening. There’s no noise, but I can follow what’s happening from the ticker tape titles running across the bottom of the screens. Riots all across the city. How will it affect the election. WhiteInc struggling to get Glaze back up. Reports that the people who carried out the attack have been found and taken into custody by WhiteShield. I look at Logan’s body next to me.
‘You were right, Logan,’ I say. ‘He is a liar. He’s always been a liar.’
The clock above the door counts down from 60 minutes. The time lock Logan changed from ten minutes to 60, just to screw with Ryan, Corina and the twins, has trapped me in here. But it appears that I have more important things to worry about for the moment.
I turn my attention to the screens showing what’s happening around the house. Police—normal police, not WhiteShield—swarm into the hallway above. Ten, maybe twenty of them, wearing helmets, armour and carrying guns, spread out. Half take the stairs, making sure the upper floors are clear. The other half stay on the ground floor. They throw open doors, pull aside pictures. It’s not long before they find the door to the cellar and make their way down the tight stairs. I hold my breath as they enter the lab, as if they could hear me inside the airtight panic room.
One of the officers examines the bodies of the twins, while the rest fan out into the room. After a moment, they seem to relax. Guns are dropped, fingers rise to throat mics.
I hear the repeated word, played over the speakers in the panic room. ‘Clear.’
A man enters the room. I press my hand against the screen as I recognise his face. Detective Lee.
What is he doing here? Was the eCrime Unit on Logan’s trail too? Or are WhiteShield and the Met working together after all?