dotwav

by Mike A. Lancaster

  For most people that would be no big thing, but Jack was never offline. He lived on the net, and he had gadgets that allowed him access wherever he happened to be.

  So was he just being cautious, spending time offline because he was scared the file had called home?

  That had been her take on it, but then she’d arrived at the flat and found people waiting for her.

  Coincidence?

  She didn’t think so.

  Suddenly Jack’s fears seemed very real indeed.

  Ani hurtled down the stairwell as if the very hounds of hell were snapping at her heels. She felt trapped and afraid, but she had to put those feelings aside and come up with a way to get out of this. Her mind was buzzing with plans that all ended with a question mark. She needed to get out of the building, find a place to hide, and try to figure out what she’d just gotten herself into.

  And, more importantly, how to pull herself out of it.

  Ani heard a voice behind and above her and guessed that the man chasing her was alerting his buddy in the car below to her escape. He’d be moving to apprehend her at the entrance to the building, so suddenly “down” was no longer an option.

  She hit the fourth floor and, through the steel-reinforced glass, she spotted the elevator, with its doors open.

  She had no time to think.

  She grabbed the handle of the stairwell door and was through it before she’d had time to contemplate what she’d do if the man cornered her in the elevator.

  She sprinted for the opening, stabbing the top floor button just as the man appeared on the other side of the stairwell doors. He was young and dressed in a sharp suit, and he had a walkie-talkie in his hand. His dark eyes met hers just as the doors closed. The elevator started to climb.

  Ani wondered if he could outrace it.

  Doubtful.

  Her lungs were burning with the exertion of the chase and she leaned her back up against the wall, hoping that no one pressed the call button before the elevator had completed its climb.

  She checked her pocket for the flash drive and shook her head in disbelief. How could something so small suddenly be the cause of so much trouble?

  The eighth floor light came on and the elevator shuddered to an unhealthy stop. She hit the doors open button five or six times, even though she’d heard that they had no effect and were only put there to give people the illusion that they had some control over the process.

  Eventually, the doors did open.

  She ran out onto the landing and headed for the access door to the roof at the end of the corridor.

  A Yale lock sat square with the door frame.

  She already had her library card in her hand when she reached it, and pushed the card into the crack next to the lock, shoving it left and right until the mechanism clicked open. It wasn’t the first time she’d done the trick—a few of the local kids hung out on the roof at night, doing the kind of things their parents really wouldn’t approve of—but this time was certainly the most urgent.

  She went through the door, closing it quietly behind her, and then took the last few steps up to the roof.

  Another door between her and outside, but this one was never locked and Ani guessed that someone had thought that the first door was enough to do the job.

  She dashed onto the roof and then looked around her. The plan she’d formed in the split second between seeing the elevator and running for it had pretty much ended here: run the opposite direction to the one her pursuer expected.

  Standing here on a windswept roof, she suddenly doubted the wisdom of her choice.

  As it turned out, a roof was the ultimate dead end.

  The only way off it was down.

  And it would use gravity, acceleration, terminal velocity, and impact to turn her into a red stain on the pavement.

  She had read somewhere that a four-story jump was survivable, but only in about fifty percent of cases. Each additional floor made survival even less likely. Sure, there was an outside chance that she’d get lucky (people had survived much greater falls), but you were getting into the realms of millions-to-one odds, and she liked her life far too much to risk it on a leap.

  There were no external fire escapes—just as there were no ladders, ropes, or handily-parked helicopters with the keys in the ignition and a Helicopter Flying for Dummies book on the copilot’s seat.

  She looked around again, desperately, her mind whirring.

  Above the door leading onto the roof was another flat roof. And a slope that led up to it, following the angle of the stairs beneath.

  Suddenly Ani had herself a plan.

  By the far edge of the roof was a cube of brick that acted as some kind of vent. She took off her hoodie, emptied out the pockets, and then placed it on the ground, some of the dark blue material showing around the edge of the cube. She fluffed it up as best she could in an attempt to make it look more substantial.

  Then she made her way back the way she had come in.

  But much faster.

  She ran past the door, to the edge of the building behind it, and clambered onto the sloping part of the roof. Then, as quietly as she could, she edged herself up the incline until she reached the flat part, and lay prone.

  Squashed down, hidden, over the door.

  And waited.

  Of course if one of the men had been outside watching for her, this could all be in vain, but she kind of doubted it. When there was a chance that she was making for the exit, keeping a man outside would have been the sensible play; but when she’d started back up into the building, Ani was gambling that both men would be coming to search for her. It was a matter of strategy: two men could block off more escape attempts than one.

  Lying there, though, she had a moment where she felt like giving in to panic. The molten fire of adrenaline was pumping through her veins; her throat was scorched dry with exertion; her heart was pounding in her chest. She had joked to Kinney about how it was better to feel alive, but right now those words sounded hollow and boasting.

  She was fifteen years old, and already her life was traveling on a course that she no longer felt in control of. Indeed, it felt like it was spiraling into chaos and madness.

  Here she was, perched on the highest point of her building while men in suits were hunting her down. Playing this scene in a video game would be a lot of fun. Experiencing it for real, she was suddenly asking herself a whole bunch of questions about the direction her life had taken.

  Ever since she and Jack manufactured a virus to affect the cattle on the Facebook version of FarmVille—a piece of malicious code that spread through users’ accounts and had quickly turned into a worldwide epidemic of digital foot-and-mouth disease—she had been living in fear of repercussions. They had concocted the plan out of utter desperation at the way people spent more time looking after digital animals rather than standing up for their real-life counterparts, but if you messed with a corporation like Facebook, it was certain that someone would be working on tracking you down.

  But this incident seemed unconnected to Facebook. This was something else entirely, a .wav file that Jack had downloaded without knowing the kind of storm it would bring down upon his and Ani’s heads. What could be so important about a sound file, for goodness’ sake? Why was it so critical that these men retrieve it?

  And who did she think she was kidding, hiding up here like a common criminal, when she should be in her flat doing her homework, listening to music, surfing the net, and waiting for her dad to get dinner ready?

  It was too much.

  Too … She broke off her train of thought and listened carefully.

  There was a sound of footsteps beneath her, the scuffles and squeaks of someone trying to move quietly, but who ended up making more noise than they would have walking normally.

  Her breath caught in her throat.

  The door beneath her opened.

  “Stay close,” a voice ordered. “Don’t let her reach this door.”

  “I’m not th
e one who let her get away in the first place,” another voice replied. “So you keep your eyes open and fix your own mistake.”

  There was an odd metallic sound—a slide and click—that Ani knew she should recognize.

  “A gun?” the second voice said. “Really? What, you’re going to shoot a teenager now?”

  “If I have to,” the first voice answered.

  “Are you listening to yourself? I mean, overreaction, or what?”

  “Shut up and keep looking.”

  “Jawohl, mein führer.”

  “Are you calling me a Nazi?”

  “No …”

  “Because it sounded like you just implied a similarity between me and Adolf Hitler… .”

  “It’s just something people say …”

  “I’ll have you know, my grandfather died fighting Hitler… .”

  “What, in actual hand-to-hand combat?”

  There was a full five seconds of silence where, it seemed, the exchange could go either way; it could escalate, or fizzle out.

  It fizzled.

  “You … you just look over there,” the first man said harshly, but without real anger. “And keep an eye on this door.”

  As the second man obeyed, moving in the direction his partner had just indicated, Ani heard him say under his breath: “I wasn’t calling you a Nazi. But if the jackboot fits …”

  Ani risked a quick peek over the edge of the roof and saw that the two men were moving left and right and away from her. Still too close for her to make her move, but going in the right directions.

  She saw the exact moment the man with the gun spotted her hoodie.

  He was moving like the guys in TV cop shows, with the gun sweeping side to side in front of him like a divining rod, and then he did an almost comic double take as he saw the material poking around the corner.

  He waved for this partner, motioning for him to approach from the left, while he went right.

  Ani just waited until they were on the other side of the roof, dropped down from her vantage point, doubled back out the door they’d just come through, and bolted it behind her.

  When she made it to the second door she could hear the two men banging in pursuit. She ignored the sound, slamming the door behind her, and promptly collided with someone standing in the corridor.

  Ingy Havel was the kind of kid that the Daily Mail had fun writing about. A third generation immigrant from an Eastern European place Ani couldn’t pronounce for its complete lack of vowels, Ingy was a petty crook, an all-round hard man, and wore his No Fear hoodie like it was a badge of belonging. Two of his lackeys—school bullies without a school—stood on either side of him, their eyes bulging in surprise.

  “Whoa there,” Ingy said, and Ani was relieved to see a smile on his face. “What’s the rush?”

  “Men. Chasing. Me,” Ani said, trying to catch her breath.

  “Police?” Ingy asked her.

  Ani shrugged. “Something. Like. That,” she managed to say.

  “Hate to see a damsel in distress, don’t we, boys?”

  The two gorillas nodded and grunted agreement.

  “We’ll slow them down. You should go.”

  “Thank you,” Ani said. “One of them has a gun.”

  Ingy smiled, wide and toothy, and his blue eyes sparkled.

  “Now it gets fun.” He shooed Ani away down the corridor.

  She reached the elevator, stabbing at the button, and feeling a surge of relief when the doors opened instantly.

  She heard Ingy shout: “We’ll have to go out sometime.” It sounded more like bravado in front of his friends than a genuine offer.

  And then the doors closed and the elevator started moving down.

  She rode it to the ground floor and ran out of the building, her mind racing. She needed to get away, but she had no idea where she could go. She kept thinking about the memory stick in her pocket and the value of the secret that it contained.

  She needed to work out what it was she had, and find a way to get herself out of the mess she had suddenly found herself in.

  She had to find someone who could help her.

  Someone with mad skills.

  Someone she could trust.

  Someone who could tell her what the file meant.

  It took her all of six seconds.

  Uncle Alex, she thought. If anyone could help her, it was her uncle.

  With her mind made up, she started into town.

  CHAPTER TWO: JOE

  Joe Dyson stood in front of the house and tried to remember why, exactly, he’d agreed to come here. Oh, he knew why he was here, and what he was supposed to do here; he just couldn’t remember precisely how Abernathy had talked him into it.

  The house itself was a beige-fronted terrace—what he’d have called a row house back in the States—with the front door and windows painted in some overpriced heritage shade from one of those “quaint” British companies who thought Mouse Back or Baby’s Breath were reasonable names for types of paint. The bare branches of a twisting wisteria crept from right to left, so it looked like it was scratching at the wall with skeletal fingers.

  It was a nice little piece of high five-figure/low six-figure real estate in an area that had seen a tremendous change in the last forty years.

  Once the poorer, dirtier part of the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Notting Hill had been far removed from the setting for Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts’s romance in the nineties romcom. Big houses, with owners who could no longer afford to employ servants, were sold for dividing up into bedsits and cheap lodging houses, and the area began a downward slide into slumhood. It was only recently that the moneyed classes had moved back in and turned the place into one of the most desirable postal codes in London.

  Joe doubted he could afford an hour on a parking meter around here.

  He rapped at the door and waited.

  And waited.

  Rapped some more. Louder this time.

  And waited some more.

  Nobody in?

  It seemed likely.

  Residents of neighborhoods like this one weren’t the kind of people who let someone knock loudly on their front doors without answering.

  Certainly not twice.

  After all, what would the neighbors think?

  Joe took a look up and down the road. No twitching curtains. No nosy old ladies giving him death-ray glares. So he took a walk down the row of houses, counting them as he did, and found the alleyway that led to their backyards.

  He weighed the risks against the gains and then ducked down the alley. The temperature seemed to drop by a few degrees the moment he left the sidewalk. Pavement. Whatever. It got tiresome: thinking in two versions of the same language had become perfectly natural, but he was acutely aware that whenever he opened his mouth he needed to be sure the right one came out.

  He reached the end of the houses and there was a footpath leading left and right past garden fences. He took the right-hand path that led back parallel to the way he’d come and counted houses again, this time from the back.

  He scanned the area, again keeping an eye out for nosy neighbors, then stopped in front of the house he was looking for.

  What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into, Lennie? he thought.

  Only a couple of hours ago, Joe felt like his life was over.

  He’d been standing by the Thames under one of the bridges that crisscrossed that mighty river, staring out across the water. Boats passed by, gulls wheeled across the sky, but he’d only been vaguely aware of any of it.

  He was focused on his own thoughts, not the scenery.

  The spring sunlight barely reached the shaded spot where he’d stood for twenty minutes, unmoving, and the single tear he’d cried had long since dried on his cheek.

  A siren screamed through the morning air and snapped Joe back to the world with a sudden jolt. He shook his head to clear the dark thoughts that had been consuming him and, as if on a prearranged cue, a blue SUV came int
o view, slowed, and parked a few feet away.

  A man got out and walked toward him, looking immaculate—as always—in his Savile Row suit and improbably expensive shiny shoes. Joe looked down at his own ratty jeans, rattier hoodie, and mud-splashed sneakers and shrugged.

  “Thought I might find you here,” the newcomer said.

  “Don’t you mean you checked the GPS in the chip inside my head and just followed me here?” Joe asked bitterly, making no attempt to hide the rough edges of his accent.

  It was instinctive whenever he spoke to the man, a kind of unconscious Reset to Default.

  Although he was seventeen years old, Joe always felt like he was about twelve whenever he was in the presence of Abernathy. Joe had worked for him for nearly four years and the closest he’d come to discovering a first name for him was “Mister.”

  “Half a million pounds of our government hardware in that head of yours entitles me, I’d think,” Abernathy said.

  “Come to reclaim it?” Joe asked. “I have a Swiss Army knife, and I’m sure it has a tool for removing experimental tech from inside kids’ heads. It has a toothpick, too.”

  “I’ve come to reclaim you,” Abernathy said.

  “Not interested.”

  “You know, I wouldn’t have to resort to digital Where’s Wally? if you answered your phone every now and then.”

  “I’m guessing you mean Where’s Waldo? Anyway, it’s not going to happen.”

  “I need you. Someone’s in trouble.”

  “Someone’s always in trouble.”

  “That used to mean something to you.”

  “Used to,” Joe said coldly. “Past tense.”

  “Two words will change your mind.”

  “No, they won’t.”

  Abernathy looked Joe square in the eye. “Leonard Palgrave.” He turned and walked away.

  Joe waited a full five seconds before following.

  The backyard of the last address for Lennie Palgrave had a high fence with a gate. Joe tried the handle.

  Locked.

  It figured.

  The fence was old with cracks in some of the panels, so Joe put his eye to one and looked through. A large garden that was mostly given over to a lawn; a couple of silver birch trees; a bike propped up against the back wall.