Brain Storm (US Edition)

by Nicola Lawson

  She gave herself a mental slap across the face. She wasn't some psychopath who needed to be kept apart from society. She had recognized that she might be starting to have a problem and now she could deal with it. In the end she hadn't killed Jaret. The fact was that she wouldn't have to worry about becoming anything in the future, until they got to the bottom of these plots and conspiracies she couldn't expect to have a future.

  She picked out an ideal mark. He was in his early forties wearing a cheap but smart enough suit. He had just purchased a large cheeseburger from the street vendor Sara was watching and was currently engaged in a one handed struggle to get his change back into his wallet and the wallet back into his inside jacket pocket. Sara let him walk right by her and fell into step several paces behind. She studied the way he walked; his pace, the length of his stride, how he moved his arms and how his clothing moved with his motion. Sara crossed the street and picked up her pace so that she overtook the mark. He continued making his way through the burger and Sara re-crossed so that she was on the same side of the street walking towards him.

  He was down to the last couple of bites of his burger when their paths took them closest to each other and Sara swiped the wallet out of his pocket. She didn't go for the usual collision-and-lift, which was a simple enough process but it could lead to the mark remembering the encounter or even DNA samples being left on their clothes. The method Sara preferred was riskier, it required split-second timing and lightning fast reactions and movements to pull off, but if you could pull it off it was much less noticeable. The man's suit jacket swung back and forth as he walked when it was at its most exposed Sara was at her closest position to the mark. He brought the hand holding the burger up to his mouth to take a bite. An orange mixture of ketchup and mustard leaked out of the bun as his teeth compressed the bread and meat. Sara's hand struck out faster than a snake and came back with his wallet in hand. A movement of her fingers and the wallet disappeared up inside her sleeve. Her hand moved into his pocket and back so swiftly that it wasn't even caught by the falling condiments.

  Sara and the mark passed each other without him even realizing that she had been there let alone stolen his wallet from him. He would go about his day oblivious until the next time he needed something out of his wallet at that point he wouldn't be able to remember back to the slender little redhead who had bumped him on the street and single her out as the thief.

  She kept on going in the direction she had been heading, throwing a couple of random turns into the mix whenever she was presented with a choice. Then she found herself a nice quiet little alley and took a look through the wallet. She collected the cash that was in note form, counted it, folded it in half then made it into a little roll and stuffed it into her jeans pocket. The plastic cards were of no use to her and whatever steps she took to disguise herself she would never be able to pass herself as the guy whose picture was on the ID card. Idly, as she was replacing the cards in the wallet, she triggered the built in display to see what images her victim liked to carry around with him. The interior of the wallet shimmered and then ran through a show-reel of family pictures.

  Sara snapped the wallet closed and tossed it into a nearby rubbish container. The sound of it hitting bottom echoed around inside the empty container. The refuse collection bots must have just been around here. Sara didn't let herself dwell on how urgently she had closed the wallet upon seeing the images of a happy family life. Sara couldn't remember ever being a part of a life like that. The only thing she had ever known that had come close to a family was ECSIS. Now she didn't even have that.

  The street vendor keyed Sara's order into his cart and the unit shifted into action preparing her food. The cart presented two large burgers to the vendor who took Sara's cash and then handed her the burgers in a pair of napkins. The napkins would secrete a cleaning fluid when they were torn in a certain place to clean their hands.

  When Sara presented Carla with the burger the younger woman tucked in like a starving person. Sara ate more slowly. It was only when her stomach rushed to smash the food up inside her and start the digestion process that she realized how hungry she had been. Sara popped the final morsel into her mouth and took a second to savor it as it went down. It could well be the last food she ever tasted.

  "So," Carla said hesitantly yet eagerly at the same time. "Now do we go and get this thing sorted?"

  Sara reached out and used the corner of her napkin to wipe a smudge of bright red sauce from the corner of Carla's mouth. "You're half right."

  Sara had had time to consider their options on her way to and from the burger cart. "I'm going to go and try and get this thing sorted. You are going to hide yourself away until I either clear your name and come and get you or I fail and I'm dead and you try and get out of the Confederation."

  Sara ran through it totally dispassionately. Carla's face fell when Sara mentioned what would happen if she failed. If that was down to mention that it would mean Sara was dead, or that it meant Carla would have to spend the rest of her life either running and looking over her shoulder or try to get beyond the borders of the Confederation and make a life there, Sara didn't know.

  "You can't be serious."

  "I am. This isn't going to be easy, it isn't going to be fun. This is a deadly business."

  Carla set herself with her hands on her hips and regarded Sara with an iron stare. "I understand that."

  Sara fixed Carla with a stare of her own. "Then you know why I can't let you come along."

  "You can't stop me."

  You believe that?"

  Carla's resolve never faltered. "I do. I also believe that if you attempt this thing alone you will die. If I come along we may still die but the odds are much better with two rather than one." Sara made to speak but Carla carried on without allowing her the time to interrupt. "I have just as much riding on this as you do. I have a vested interest in you surviving and finding out what this is all about. If you fail I'm dead anyway so if I have to go I'd rather it was when I was doing something to help myself rather than just sitting around on my ass."

  Sara regarded the younger woman with a new respect. Carla had shown that she was made of sterner stuff than most during their escape from the prison and beyond but this was something else entirely. Then she had been in immediate danger with no choice other than to cope or to die. Now she was talking about intentionally placing herself in danger. The slight tremor caused by her muscles shaking as she stood in front of Sara and the paleness of her complexion betrayed how scared she was about doing this, but the fire in her eyes and the tone of her voice showed the warrior spirit that burned at her core.

  Sara regarded the younger woman for several heartbeats before finally making her decision and nodding. "All right then. We will do this."

  Chapter Twenty-five

  She had clung to the man the whole time. Her arms were starting to ache with the effort but she daren't let go in case he decided to leave her. She had stopped coughing a while ago. The man who carried her wasn't coughing anymore either but he wasn't breathing normally. She wondered if it was because he was unused to this sort of physical exertion. She had been taught a lot about the human body and about exercise. She didn't get much of a chance to exercise herself. She had regular sessions with physiotherapists where they would test her and make notes on charts that she wasn't allowed to see, but she didn't get to do anything more than that. Maybe that would be too much like play for them to allow her to try it, you didn't get to play in hell.

  She understood now that it wasn't literally hell that she was trapped in. Hell was just a made up place to scare people into being good. In olden days people had set up religions and got other people to do what they wanted by threatening them with hell. Now most people didn't really believe in hell anymore. That was why there were new laws and agencies that hunted down and punished people who broke them. Without religion people needed some other reason to be scared into being good. They had been acting without proper guidance for too lo
ng.

  The man stumbled to a stop and pushed himself up against a wall. The corridors they had been running through all looked identical to her as did the doors that stood open every so often along them. Over the heavy labored breathing of the man whose back she was clinging too she could make out other voices. There was one voice sharp and gruff which spoke for a short time, it sounded like it was giving orders. Other voices chimed in giving one or two word acknowledgements.

  The man shifted so that he could look back down the corridor they had just come by. He glanced back in the direction they had initially been headed, where the voices had now been replaced by footsteps and a quiet whisper of fabric brushing against fabric. He turned back away from the sounds and hurried back over their path.

  She bounced up and down on his back. Her jaw clacked against the back of his head and the ache in her arms grew worse. Now more than ever she was afraid to try and adjust her hold lest she fall and be left behind.

  He came to a halt again. They had taken several seemingly random turns down several more corridors. The first voices had been left behind some time ago. She strained her ears to see if the man had stopped because he heard something again. No sounds other than his breathing came to her. He was looking at a small display built into the surroundings of the door nearest them.

  "You have to get down now," the man said. "You're too heavy, I can't carry you fast enough."

  "No," she said tightening her grip. "If I let go you'll leave me."

  The man hesitated before he answered. "I won't leave you."

  "You will, I know you will."

  "I won't. If we are both running we'll be able to move faster, that must make sense to you."

  It did, so after another moment she released her hold and slid down off his back and onto her own feet. As she touched down the man pushed her backwards and stepped through the doorway. She pushed herself back to her feet but wasn't fast enough to make it before the door closed between them. The man stood on the other side visible through the thick glass reinforced with a metal mesh that made up most of the top half of the door. Tears welled up in his eyes. The girl could see her own reflection in the glass and his tears were mirrored on her own features.

  "I'm sorry." His voice was muffled through the glass.

  "I knew you'd leave me."

  Tears were flowing freely from him. "They know you've gone. This facility is about to go into lock-down. If they catch me with you I'm dead. I can't get you out with the place on alert. Please don't tell them anything about me. I wanted to help you I really did."

  She stared at him through the glass totally expressionless. The man stood there his face twisted with grief. He stared at her for a long moment. "I'm sorry."

  He fled leaving her alone. She remained where she was staring through the glass. Soon, although she had no idea how much time had passed, the corridor was bathed in a flashing red light and alarms sounded. Reflected in the glass with a ruddy glow she watched a solitary tear trace a path down her features.

  She had no knowledge of time passing although she knew that it must have. One moment she was only and the next she was surrounded by a group of large armed men. She blinked and stared into the barrels of a half a dozen automatic weapons.

  "Get down! On the ground now!"

  One of the men barked orders at her. She didn't react. She just stood there in the exact same position that she had watched her would be rescuer abandon her. Taking all hope with him.

  "Get down on the ground!"

  She continued to ignore the orders. So the shouter started giving orders to the other men under his command.

  "Put her down."

  The butt of the rifle came in at the side of her head. She reacted on instinct slapping the weapon aside before it could connect. She followed it up with a strike at the aggressor’s stomach. She was supposed to strike at the throat, if she had she would have killed him with one blow, but the man was too tall.

  As soon as she connected the other men in the group had time to react. She was hit several times around the head and neck and she went down seeing stars. The assault didn't stop until she was completely out of it and unable to mount even the weakest of defenses.

  "I wouldn't have believed she could mount an escape like this on her own. But after that display. Man, she's fast and she's strong. And she's still just a kid."

  "She isn't a child, she's a weapon. Don't forget that."

  One of the men delivered a final blow to her head that slammed it hard into the cold floor and she finally succumbed to the empty black.

  ***************

  The Omnitech regional headquarters had closed down for the day a few hours ago. Most of the workers had left the building then and the last visitor’s tour had ended an hour or so before that. Sara had decided against joining one of the tours to get a look around the building before trying to infiltrate the building and get the information they were after. If Omnitech were indeed behind everything that had gone on over the last few days they would surely have alerted all of the security staff at all of their facilities to be on the lookout for Carla and herself. It wasn't worth the risk of being identified and apprehended just to see the parts of its operation that Omnitech made available for public viewing. It wasn't like they would be walking along and see a door marked 'top secret' and know that what they wanted was in there.

  It was just starting to get dark. Sara and Carla were watching the side of the Omnitech building. The streets were quite empty with most of the shops and other business closed up for the day. It was still too early for the night life to really start coming out on the streets but there were some eager people wanting to get started early. Along with the stragglers who were late going home from a day at work or out shopping there were enough people so that Sara and Carla didn't stand out too much.

  They stood together as though they were chatting so that it wouldn't be obvious that they were conducting surveillance on the Omnitech building. Carla's eyes went wide and she reached up to rub her left shoulder, the signal that she had seen something behind Sara that could be a problem. Sara turned, making the movement seem casual. She heard the thumping footsteps even as she saw the security mech turn the corner some way down the street and start towards them. She turned back to Carla just as casually.

  "It can't have identified us from that distance. Just turn around and walk along with me. Nice and casual. It will be programmed to come after us if we run."

  Sara led Carla around the first corner they came to. They kept on going up that street, made another couple of turns that took them along the bottom of a glowing advertisement projected almost holographically, and came back up to their previous position just as the security mech turned the opposite way at the end of the street.

  "We should be able to get into the building easily enough," Sara said. "Once we're inside you have to follow my lead. Do exactly what I tell you without questioning it, okay?"

  Carla nodded her understanding. Now that they were about to do this her fear was starting to show.

  Sara put her hand on the younger woman's shoulder and spoke softly, "You don't have to do this. I can go in alone."

  Carla straightened and set her face with her resolve. She looked Sara in the eyes her gaze unwavering as she said, "I'll do it."

  Sara nodded. "Follow me."

  The Omnitech building had surveillance cameras covering every door or window on the lower floor, which was nothing special just basic good practice. This area of the city might be largely off limits for the inhabitants of the poorer sectors but some of them could still get through. And a corporation like Omnitech didn't just have to worry about general theft or vandalism by the disaffected masses. Omnitech had to be alert for attempts at corporate espionage by rival companies. You could only patent something after it was fully completed and had progressed through an often lengthy patenting procedure. Until then it was a race to be the first to complete all the preliminary testing if a rival gained access to your work it could sa
ve them years and end up costing billions if they managed to get the patent before you.

  Sara had been unable to get a close look at any of these access points because of the constant surveillance. She had to keep out of view of those cameras at all costs in case they were linked up to a face recognition system. Because of this Sara had been unable to identify the type of alarms that Omnitech had without doubt rigged up on every possible point of entry. Even though she had never planned on entering through one of these points it would have made her life easier to get a look at more of their security set-up. Whatever system they had in place on the lower doors and windows was likely to be the same as that higher up where Sara did hope to be able to gain access. Knowledge of the alarm type before encountering it would allow her to be better prepared and would help to minimize the risks. But you couldn't have everything.

  Before she could even consider trying to bypass the security on the higher windows, Sara had to get herself and Carla up there. Climbing the building wouldn't pose much of a problem for Sara and Carla would be able to follow her up a rope. The real problem would be in doing it without being seen by people walking past or by the numerous security cameras covering the building.

  The by-passers were the easiest problem to avoid. They were concentrated around three sides of the building. None walked down the alley at the back where the Omnitech building butted up against the combined backs of a department store and a general purpose office building. Both buildings were several stories high but were dwarfed by the towering corporation regional headquarters. The size of the buildings made the alley between them of a sizeable length so that at a position near to the middle a person would be out of sight of passersby as they walked past either end. The security cameras that covered the back of these buildings also only covered the likely entry points and could be easily avoided.