by Paul Teague
She didn’t know it at the time, but they were both seconds away from being blown up. If the explosives expert that Magnus had put in charge down there had had less presence of mind, he’d have detonated them the minute they saw the trooper. As it was, it was the fact that he was not wearing a helmet that had caused hesitation. With no helmet on, the trooper became humanized. It was, after all, a human being in there, underneath the robotics and technological enhancements.
So Amy did not lose her life that day. The trooper was stunned and not killed, and the transporter remained intact, in readiness for use as the portal which would be used for the final invasion of Quadrant 3. She was vaguely aware of being taken on a hover trolley to the med lab, but she was unable to speak coherently, the force of the trooper’s blows had taken their toll. And so it was that the items in her bag lay undiscovered. Items which could provide two essential pieces of information capable of dramatically changing the course of events.
* * *
Airlock
* * *
Henry Pierce was violent and completely unpredictable. One minute he appeared charming, the next he was exploding into uncontrolled rage.
I’d barely noticed it before, amid all the activity and threats, but there were other people here, besides the troopers. They were diminutive and were keeping their heads down, trying not to bait Pierce in any way. They appeared to be of Asian ethnic origin and looked scared out of their wits, like school children trying to avoid being noticed by the school bully.
One caught my attention in particular. He’d been trying to catch my eye without being noticed. I winced as I saw a scar across his face – barely healed, red and puffy. It looked as if it might be septic. It had been left untreated, that was for sure. This man didn’t look as if he was here of his own free will.
The alien guy was quieter than Pierce, who seemed to have a need to make his presence felt. He just sat there taking it all in. He seemed to be the one in control here, his composure and self-assurance sinister and threatening.
From what I could pick up, they were getting ready to mount their final assault on Magnus’s bunker now that the Quadrants were all locked in. Pierce signalled to one of the troopers to take me away. As he did so, the man who’d been trying to attract my attention pretended to drop a pen, immediately stooping to pick it up. His timing was excellent. He put an object in my hand as I was dragged through the ops area by the trooper. I barely paused as he handed it to me, you’d have to have been looking very carefully to see what had happened. But had Pierce seen what was going on? My heart thudded in my chest as he leaped up and strode across the room straight at the man. He pushed him to the floor, picked up the pen and chucked it at him, shouting at him not to be so careless. He hadn’t spotted our interaction, after all.
I was thrown unceremoniously into the airlock with Nat and Harold Pierce. Pierce was out cold on the floor, while Nat sat dazed in the corner. The area had huge windows looking directly out into space. From here it was easier to get a sense of how the place was laid out. We were in a central, circular area and I could see how the four Quadrants had joined together to create an outer ring. Of course, this room opened directly into space: it was an airlock with little between us and oblivion. I tried not to dwell on how vulnerable that made us right then, especially with that madman just along the corridor in the ops area. Two troopers stood guarding the door to the outside. I’m not sure where they thought we might be going.
I turned to face Nat, as if I was going to speak to her, but I was really concealing my actions from the surveillance camera behind me. Whoever that man was who risked Doctor Pierce’s ferocious temper to pass these two things to me, he was obviously a friend. He’d handed me my comms tab for starters, and that meant we could at least alert Simon and Kate, maybe even Magnus. And there was a crumpled piece of paper with it too. I unfolded it and looked at what was written there. Just a name. It meant nothing to me. It read ‘Dae-Ho’.
* * *
Blood Clue
* * *
Xiang was making good progress in her makeshift laboratory. She was thanking her lucky stars that she was surrounded by techies rather than biologists. She’d posted Dan and Nat’s vital signs on a large screen in the work area – everybody here needed to be mindful of the pressure they were under.
The nano-trackers she’d placed in their bloodstreams sent a steady stream of data to her console. Nat appeared to be at 83 percent through the viral contamination process, Dan was still some way behind at 71 percent. But Xiang had noticed some interesting things happening on the screens, though she wasn’t quite clear yet of their significance. Dan and Nat’s adrenalin levels had soared, and as they did so it seemed to speed up the genetic degeneration that was taking place. That was only to be expected really, adrenalin flow tended to make all the body’s functions run on overdrive.
She wondered what the twins were up to, but knew she mustn’t get distracted, she had to focus on just one thing: finding a solution to Dan and Nat’s impending deaths. But there was something she couldn’t explain. She reckoned the twins had about fifty-five minutes left, maybe less if she’d got her projections wrong. But both Nat and Dan’s viral levels had suddenly gone down. Nat’s had dropped to 69 percent, Dan’s to 51 percent – in an instant they’d bought themselves another thirty to sixty minutes of life. What had just happened there?
Xiang tried to contact the twins via their comms tabs, but worryingly there was no reply. She immediately alerted Magnus, then returned to her analysis work. Focus, Xiang. You know the twins are alive, you can see the data on the screen, she reminded herself. Let Magnus deal with the immediate problem, it’s my job to solve this one.
She stared hard at the information streams, trying to fathom the reason for this change. Then, from nowhere, a third stream of data came online. But how? The same genetic breakdown was occurring in a third person – but who was it? To be showing these signs, they would have to be the same genetic make-up as Dan and Nat – human hybrids. Xiang broke into a sweat as she realized the implications of this. There was another like Dan and Nat – and whoever it was had had this nanovirus transferred to them. It was transmissible to those with the correct biology. Human hybrids. It meant they were sharing the nanovirus between the three of them. The third person was showing low infection signs at only 5 percent through the genetic degeneration process. In fact, the figures for this third person were static, remaining at 5 percent, but it had been good for Dan and Nat, effectively it had bought them a little more time.
Xiang was working blind, she didn’t know who the third person was or what had happened to cause this change. But she could extrapolate three pieces of key information from the data. Firstly, this nanovirus could be transferred from one host to another, and in so doing, it might prolong the life of somebody who was already infected. But what was the means of transfer – or transmission? Secondly, the genetic disintegration process was not one way; it could be reversed, speeded up or slowed down. That gave Dan and Nat a better chance – but it had only bought them minutes, not hours or days as she would have preferred.
Finally, and most importantly to Xiang, this data suggested that Dan and Nat were not unique, there was at least one other like them. That meant that she’d have a third subject for a possible transfusion, the process that Magnus’s tech team were working on at that very moment. The nanovirus was man-made, although the carrier was biologically based, but that suggested the solution might be man-made too.
Nanotechnology could be deployed by Xiang to create a reverse process, one of genetic renewal rather than destruction. There was only one problem. This third person would have been perfect for her to deploy the nanotech straight away and thus reverse the genetic degeneration of Nat and Dan. However, this person was useless to her. They had also been affected by the destructive process which would eventually kill the twins. This meant that there was another hybrid at imminent risk from this invasive and deadly genetic virus.
Had
Xiang known that this very hybrid was about to eject somebody who was completely innocent from an airlock, she might have been slightly less concerned about their welfare.
Chapter Thirteen
Recollection
* * *
For a moment it was as if the past eighteen years had never happened. Here they were together once again, in the same place and under great duress and pressure. The simulation exercises had been carried out in space: this ship, the Quadrants, the entire project must have been conceived many years ago.
Simon always knew his work had been part of something big – and very top secret – but he’d never imagined it would be as far reaching as this. Both Kate and Simon had known real fear in this hangar. They’d been sure they were about to die, they’d seen the faces of family members streamed to these very screens and threatened with death. But it was the answer to that nagging question they’d carried with them for all these years that they were most pleased to have answered. The creature that had been in the corner when the simulation ended. It was not human, there was something off-world involved here. That explained a lot – particularly about the twins, and the amazing technology used in this place and in the Quadrants.
Kate looked at Simon. This memory and these strong emotions had helped her to refocus her mind after being under the influence of the neuronic device for so long. As the memories resurfaced, she was once again certain that she was experiencing her own thoughts here and not those of some remote and controlling force.
‘So we’ve been here before,’ said Simon, though he barely needed to say it.
‘It looks exactly the same as it did then,’ Kate picked up. ‘It seems like it’s been put in storage though.’
They’d both recognized immediately the distinctive rows of green grid lines which marked out this virtual reality arena.
‘I wonder if it’s still operational,’ Simon thought aloud, making for the terminal where they’d seen the unusual figure sitting just before they were both shot unconscious. They’d thought it was for real at the time.
The terminal surged immediately to life as he moved deftly around the pads. This was standard Global Consortium navigation and configuration, he could probably figure it out.
Kate walked around the hangar exploring, looking for anything which might be useful. Suddenly she found herself in the middle of a warzone. Weapons were being fired, there were screams and yells, shells were exploding. It was battlefield hell.
Just as quickly it stopped.
‘Whoa, sorry Kate!’ Simon shouted across the hangar. ‘It’s working, it’s programmed with a load of simulation exercises. This place renders immersive virtual reality environments – it’s what happened to us in that exercise they sent us on. It all happened here, Kate. It wasn’t real!’
Kate was severely shaken. It had felt immediately real. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to hold her nerve if it happened again, even if she knew it was a simulation.
‘I’m going to leave this activated,’ Simon continued. ‘It may come in useful later.’
Then Kate noticed something they’d both missed before.
Right along the length of the hangar, between the green grid lines, a narrow strip had been marked out, like a concealed pathway. It was faintly drawn along the floor, but definitely there.
‘I want to try something, Simon.’
She ran to the end of the room and the beginning of the tramlines.
‘Give me any simulation you want!’ she shouted across the hangar.
Simon was in the same position where they’d noticed the alien figure eighteen years ago. It was unnerving for her. She saw him make some hand movements, then he was gone and she was immediately immersed in a new environment, only this time she understood that it was virtual. It was still frightening – the psychological trick was to disorientate, so you thought that one thing was happening, then it all changed in an instant.
Kate held her nerve, though all around her was a scene of mayhem, with explosions, bullets being fired and attackers coming at her. She walked a steady route through the hangar, keeping to where she knew the tramlines to be.
‘Simon, turn it off, turn it off!’ she shouted as she reached what she supposed must be near the end of the hangar.
The simulation stopped and the hangar returned. Simon was at the console, he’d seen everything on his monitor.
‘You saw all that, I assume?’ asked Kate. ‘You can walk straight through this thing if you use that pathway, nothing touches you.’
‘And did you notice the device in the ceiling?’ he replied, nodding his agreement. ‘That’s central in every simulation, it’s what they used to stun us in our own simulation exercise eighteen years ago.’
‘This entire room is a psychological trick! This machine is meant to be beaten.’
They didn’t know whether to be angry, amused or amazed at this new information. They certainly felt cheated: when they’d made their decision eighteen years ago, it had been in the heat of the moment, they’d genuinely thought that the lives of their family members were in danger. They hadn’t known it was a simulation. Neither had they known they were in space.
Whatever they felt about the past, they would be thankful for this hangar later on. It would be the place which shielded them just before the end came.
* * *
The President’s Plan
* * *
Mike tried to focus on the matter in hand. He forwarded a summary of the last file to Magnus. There were two Doctor Pierces, they were identical twins. That seemed to explain quite a bit. The man appeared to be everywhere, after all. But they were much more than ordinary twins. Like Dan and Nat, the Pierces were hybrids. That could be good or bad, he wasn’t sure yet.
Mike reconsidered the circulation of the memo to only Magnus – he wondered if Xiang might find the information useful too. He copied her in, highlights only. If there were more hybrids like Dan and Nat it could help her to solve their current problem.
Mike was massively conflicted – he was learning things here that were explosive. He had direct access to inter-governmental secrets of the highest order. If he’d been under any less time pressure, he’d have quite happily sat there for days just reading all this stuff. But he was scanning – and he had to do so at extreme speed. There was no time to dwell on anything, he needed to read, assimilate and move on.
He and his team were sifting through clues which dated back many years. They were hoping to find a fragment which might help them to move forward against the constant threat of troopers launching their final assault on the bunker. It would surely come, it was only a matter of time. He had to get through as much of this data as he could before that happened – before they got trapped in the shoot-out that was heading their way.
Mike nearly skipped a file, thinking it was of no importance, but he jumped back. Its presence there jarred. He’d been a toddler when Ronald Reagan had announced his Star Wars defence programme, but as a teenager and a hacker it had been on his radar because it had moved into hacking folklore. If you could find the Global Defence Matrix and leave the government a little message? Well, that was the Holy Grail for the hacking community. However, nobody ever managed to find a trace of it. In fact, many hackers dismissed the project as propaganda, suspecting that the United States was using it as a tool to worry their political enemies. That was the only reason Mike returned to the file. He was curious. What was it doing there if the defence strategy was just a fiction created by an American president? He scanned the files – it was like a potted history of a famous project. He could see how it had been started by Reagan, renamed by Clinton, then mysteriously disappeared under Bush. During Bush’s first term it had become a Global Consortium matter, taken out of the President’s hands.
That must have been some decision to take. To think that all this stuff was going on and nobody knew. Everybody was blaming Bush for the Gulf War, while really there were far more sinister things going on right under their noses. As h
e read on Mike realized the enormity of what he was seeing. This was a global defence matter. It had moved beyond being just a tool for the United States many years ago. And they had succeeded too, they’d managed to create a complete defensive matrix around the entire planet. It could shoot down any nuke – they all had a detectable signature, and until they could remove that trace, they were all rendered pretty well useless.
Mike felt a moment of anger thinking about how terrifying the prospect of all-out nuclear war had been for his generation. He’d have liked to have known about this, why was it kept from the population? He read on, battling against his every instinct to become distracted. It was worth it – he found the information that he was after. He had to burrow deep down into the data to find it, but it was all there.
The full set of codes to activate the entire Global Defence Matrix were all held in that documentation. God forbid that any of Mike’s old hacker chums would ever have found this.
Magnus would need to know about this straight away. Anything related to defensive or offensive processes was crucial now, especially with Quadrant 3 being the last remaining area to be free from sabotage. Mike sent the codes directly to Magnus, and he copied in Viktor too. The quiet and mysterious Viktor. Mike didn’t know much about him yet, but he had to trust the process. Viktor was a Custodian. He’d been appointed to a leadership role by the Global Consortium – he needed to see this information, along with Xiang.
Time to move on. Mike forced himself away from the defence files and on to the next data-set. All around him, like summarizers on budget day, his tech team were sifting through these files, passing on anything that might be of strategic importance.