‘What’s this about?’ said Mitchell turning in his chair.
Graham’s entrance had made sure that everyone in the room was listening.
‘Chloe Dark will be heading into Manchester town centre this evening. She will arrive at a restaurant for nine and somewhere along the way, before, during, or after, another attempt will be made to abduct her.’
‘And what makes you think that?’ said Mitchell, although there was no doubt in his mind that Graham had somehow managed to engineer this.
‘It really doesn’t matter how I know,’ said Graham. ‘Let’s just say that it’s an absolute certainty.’
Mitchell climbed to his feet slowly and crossed the room to where Graham was standing. ‘Would you mind,’ he said quietly, ‘if we have a private conversation about this?’
The special agent smiled. He glanced at the meeting areas that lined one side of the room; none of them were occupied, so he took the nearest. Mitchell dropped the blinds.
‘What was the meaning of that display?’
‘Are you questioning my methods, Detective Inspector Mitchell?’
‘I am not questioning your methods, because I don’t understand what you’re doing.’
‘Don’t you? I don’t underestimate you, so I think you know exactly what I’m doing.’
Mitchell took a deep breath, grabbed one of the chairs, and sat down. ‘You think there’s a mole in the police department?’
Graham took the chair on the other side. He sat down casually, as if he really didn’t care about anything. ‘There may or may not be a mole,’ he said, ‘but I’m making sure the kidnappers have every opportunity to find out.’
‘And you think that obvious display will be taken seriously?’
‘They can’t afford to ignore it.’
‘Since I don’t agree with your methods, I’m certainly not going to agree this is a good idea. How did you engineer it anyway?’
Graham smiled. ‘Chloe’s Purity teacher invited her to dinner.’
That did surprise Mitchell. The girl had already been attacked once, why would she take the risk?
‘You realise she’s managed to pick up a hat? A good one?’
‘Yes, I’m just as capable of reading a riffy record and police reports as you are. She got it from her attacker at the chippy. Quite resourceful, wouldn’t you say?’
‘So how are you going to track her?’
Graham gave that infuriating grin again. He reached into his jacket, pulled out a card and skimmed it across the desk. Mitchell slammed his hand down on it before it flew off. He examined both sides. It was like a business card but blank. Then he noticed it was thicker at one end. He rubbed his thumb and finger across it. ‘A riffy?’
‘Of course, the original RFID chips were developed to track objects. It doesn’t require any power, so we put one in a card. We give the card to someone and they think nothing of it. Even if they wear a hat, it makes no difference.’
Mitchell frowned. He hadn’t even been aware the pylons could track nonhuman riffies.
‘She might not take it with her.’
‘Well that’s true, of course, but then nothing is certain in this life, is it?’
The team was ready by six-thirty. Fully equipped with weapons and armour and riot gear, 30 men waiting in the car park for their transport. Mitchell came down in the lift.
The doors slid open and Yates was waiting for him.
‘Well, this looks like fun.’
‘Special Agent Graham thinks he’s got it all worked out.’
‘And you don’t?’
Mitchell shook his head. ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy.’
‘So what’s your alternative?’
‘I haven’t got one,’ said Mitchell with a shake of his head. ‘We’ll just go along with it, and as soon as things go sideways we’ll improvise.’
‘Just like always,’ said Yates.
Mitchell headed out into the car park. He nodded occasionally to the officers he recognised, greeting the ones he knew better. Yates followed him and checked his gun.
‘You’re not overly curious about what we’re going to be doing,’ said Mitchell.
Four armoured police riot vans squealed into the car park and headed in their direction.
Yates grinned. ‘Chloe Dark is going to travel into the city centre from Didsbury. She will probably take the tram so we’ll need to shadow it so, if the kidnappers try anything en route, we can be there fast. Once in the centre we follow her to the restaurant. The riot squad will be deployed ready to move while we keep an eye on the area. When they try to grab her, we grab them instead.’
‘You don’t need a briefing then.’
‘Everyone and their mother knows the plan.’
Mitchell frowned. ‘Looks like that part of the plan worked too. He wanted to make sure they try for her.’
‘Do you think they’re so desperate they’ll risk open confrontation?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mitchell. ‘But the abductions of these girls are not random. If they were, they would go after somebody else. But they’ve tried to take the Dark girl twice. They want her specifically. And for that reason this plan might just work.’
‘Do we want it to?’
Mitchell gave Yates a long look.
‘If this works then the Purity wins.’
‘If it doesn’t we lose Chloe Dark as well.’
The four vans slowed and stopped as if they were all connected like a train.
‘But if they really do want her,’ said Yates, ‘and they know how well-equipped this operation is going to be, then it’s going to be a bloody war.’
Mitchell sighed and climbed into the front of the first van with Yates at his side.
‘I know, and that’s what’s bothering me. How the hell are we going to find the other girls if the only result of this is a massacre of our men and theirs. Whoever they are.’
Chapter 18
Mercedes
‘Mercedes, there appears to be something happening.’
Xec’s voice crept quietly into her consciousness. She was meditating on her yoga mat. She had only taken it up recently as a way of dispelling some of the stress. Some people said that as you got older, the stress of life became less important. It was not something she had noticed.
She opened her eyes, and stared at the grey window. Outside shreds of clouds streaked across the sky, driven by the high winds.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I have noticed some orders from Paul Banner. He is mobilising forces.’
Mercedes unwound herself and stood up on the mat. She glanced at the clock. It was still early in the morning.
‘When you say mobilising forces, what exactly do you mean?’
‘It would appear he has received some intelligence, and is spreading the word among the criminal classes that our currently targeted asset will be at a certain restaurant this evening.’
Mercedes did an abrupt turn and headed towards the bedroom. ‘Tell him I want to see him and Alistair McCormack in my office in an hour.’
‘Already done.’
Mercedes Smith was not one to play executive power games, at least not with her staff. She was sitting waiting for them when Banner and McCormack were shown into her room. They sat in the two chairs provided without being asked. From behind her large, impressive oak desk Mercedes steepled her fingers and looked at Paul Banner.
‘We know where she is going to be,’ he said. ‘We also know the police will be there in force, to protect her, and to apprehend us.’
Mercedes let her gaze slide from him across to McCormack. She waited.
‘We can’t let her get away, Mercedes,’ he said. ‘We know from the others that they develop very fast once they start. It wouldn’t surprise me if the people around her have already noticed.’
Mercedes sat back. ‘And this is the best idea that you could come up with? All-out war?’
Banner leaned forward. ‘We don�
�t have any choice. You said yourself, we have to pick her up before she becomes the object of interest. If the Purity get their hands on her, and they realise just what they’ve got...’
‘Have you considered the consequences?’
Banner nodded. ‘Of course I have. You don’t think I like this, do you? We are going to have to get in there and get her out while our shock troops distract the police.’
‘Yes, but it’s not just the police is it? It’s the Purity as well.’
‘May be true, but the Special Agent can only operate through the police. He’s from London, he has no connections here.’
Mercedes raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re saying that? You, a trusted member of the Purity?’
‘You know where my loyalties lie, Mercedes.’
She turned back to McCormack. ‘How important is this asset? No bullshit, Alistair.’
‘You worked with the doctor back at the clinic, Mercedes. He was a genius; it wasn’t just that he could get foreign DNA to merge perfectly with the existing DNA. It was the fact that he could trigger it at certain times and some of his experiments using multiple DNA sources—’
‘Yes, I know, he was an artist.’ He was also a lech and a misogynist with a very nasty sense of humour. He played games with the cells; each time he worked on a new one he was trying to outdo his previous work. If there was ever a real evil genius in the world, he was it. ‘But if we were, instead, to just blow that restaurant up with her inside it? What if we were to wipe out all traces of her?’
‘Well, that would work, of course, but each asset helps us understand what needs to be done to reproduce it. This might be the one that holds the key.’
Mercedes sighed. ‘Yes, all right. Fix us a drink, will you, Alistair?’
McCormack got up and went to the drinks cabinet alongside wall. Mercedes turned her attention back to the security chief. ‘So how exactly is this plan going to work?’
‘Xec,’ said Mercedes. She studied the window, staring out across the Manchester landscape, windswept and grey with cold and frost. The cold seemed to radiate from the glass she stood so close to it.
‘Yes, Mercedes?’
‘This plan of Paul’s. It could go wrong so many different ways.’
‘That’s true of any plan.’
‘You heard what I said to Alistair?’
‘About blowing the place up?’
‘Do you think we could arrange that?’
Xec hesitated. Mercedes glanced up; Xec never hesitated. ‘There would be a considerable amount of collateral damage. Could be a lot of important people, with important friends.’
‘And if it can’t be traced back to us then it’s not an issue.’
‘If you say so.’
Mercedes glanced at the nearest screen, even though Xec never showed himself. Cold feet? From a wirehead? ‘You have a problem with that?’
‘My primary concern is your protection, Mercedes. This alternative would put you at risk.’
‘Let’s have it as a backup, because I really don’t like Paul’s plan. Too many moving parts.’
‘Under the circumstances it’s the best option—if you want the asset alive.’
‘I know. And Alistair is completely right, we have to get this girl off the streets as soon as we can.’ She turned round and looked at her office. She didn’t belong here. When she had been a trainee nurse before the fall, all she wanted to do was help people. But she hadn’t been able to qualify, there was something about exams. She just couldn’t do them. So her grades were insufficient and she got booted from the course. The best she could do with her limited medical training was to be an assistant at a facility. Someone who could understand the words, even if they couldn’t do anything useful.
So she had worked in the clinic, and she knew enough to be aware that what was going on there was neither legal nor ethically sanctionable. Unfortunately, she had not been able to apply the blackmail which she had so carefully planned before everything went crazy. But again, because of her medical training, she had been one of the ones to establish help for people, advice on how not to get infected. She may not have been able to handle the medical exams, but she knew how to manipulate people. And she had built this. But, on the inside, she still felt like that girl who been told she had failed the nurse’s training.
‘Paul is a weak link. I think we need someone stronger in that position.’
‘I thought your primary concern was Mr Upton,’ said Xec.
Mercedes nodded. ‘Yes, he is a concern too. But Paul knows too much, and no matter how many barriers he puts between himself and this plan, a dedicated policeman will be able to track it back to him.’
‘So you wish to remove the link from the chain?’ said Xec.
‘Yes, I think that would be best, after tonight, of course.’ It was a shame. She really quite liked Paul. However, his removal would also put the fear of god into Kingsley, and hopefully that would reduce his outbursts and keep him in line. Yes, all in all this was the best option.
‘Of course, Mercedes.’
Mercedes turned to look out of the window again. She had a gut feeling that this evening was not going to turn out very well for a lot of people. However, as long as it turned out all right for her and the project, that would be fine.
Chapter 19
Chloe
Chloe examined the hat in greater detail. The inner woollen surface was interwoven with an intricate network of metal strands connected to a circuit with a battery. Chloe knew, just like everybody else, the riffy signal was blocked by metal. It hadn’t occurred to her before that there might be levels of blockage, but it was obvious when you thought about it.
The further you were from a riffy pylon, the less likely it was to be able to pick you up, and now that she thought about it, it was clear the protection you got from a layer of metal would vary with all sorts of factors. By the look of this, running some sort of signal through the wires added to its effectiveness.
Chloe’s mother had not even commented when she ate everything she could lay her hands on that evening. Whatever the changes going on in her body, they demanded a lot of nutrition. Chloe could not believe her parents did not now realise she was infected, but they continued to say nothing. She didn’t understand. Why didn’t her father turn her in? After all, he was the head of FreakWatch. If one of them became infected, would she have turned them in? No; not even her father.
She spent half an hour on the phone to her friends. They didn’t say much. Chloe didn’t tell them what she was going to do, but she must have communicated it somehow. When Chloe finally said goodbye, Ashley didn’t joke, she gave her own ‘bye’ and cut off immediately. Kavi said ‘be careful’ before she too cut the line.
Chloe laughed, just like her to say that, and then she cried. She would probably never get to speak to them again.
She desperately wanted to say goodbye to her parents, but if she did they would realise she was planning something and try to stop her. She didn’t want to leave them with that kind of fight unresolved, because there was nothing they could say or do that would stop her.
She got dressed, putting on double layers of clothing, it was going to be cold tonight and the chances were she would be spending most of it awake. There was little chance she would end up back home in her own warm bed any time soon, if ever. She located the card with the restaurant details and slipped it into her jeans.
Even through the window she could hear the distant sound of a drone. They were watching her this time. Whether it was the good guys or the bad guys she had no idea. Were there any good guys in this? Once word got out she was a freak, the good guys became the bad guys—to her anyway.
She laced on her boots, locked her door, opened the window and listened. Turning her head, she located the drone at the front. With deliberate movements, she activated the power in the hat, but didn’t put it on.
After she had closed the window behind her, she threw herself out into the freezing night and pulled on the hat m
id-fall. She leapt the fence at the end of the garden and ran as fast as she could up the alley. Once again, she found it natural to make a noise each time she breathed out, and when she did her surroundings seemed to become clearer.
Following the same route as before she headed north on foot. She had considered taking the tram, but after her previous experience she decided against it. It was not that she was scared, it was just too limiting.
So she ran.
She had not weighed herself since getting back from the hospital, so she had no idea how much more weight she had lost in the last week. All she knew was that in the mirror she appeared exactly the same as before, well, not exactly. Her muscles were better delineated, as if the skin was drawing back around them. Getting tighter. Was she just going to waste away to nothing?
On the positive side, it meant that her strength remained the same as it always had been, so the amount of effective power she could generate increased. With the hat on her head and a cold dry night with the first frost ahead of her, she took to a main road and ran. As her speed increased, she found every pace was so much longer than it ever had been before. It was like bouncing on the moon. Just as she had before, she leaned further forward so her legs thrust her forward rather than up.
The route into Manchester was easy enough; the main roads took her straight to the centre with only the occasional major crossing and junction. It was still early evening so there was a fair amount of traffic, and at the first junction she almost didn’t brake soon enough. One self-drive car swerved off to the side to avoid her and she caught a glimpse of the passenger staring at her in astonishment as she finished crossing the road at high speed.
From then on she took it slightly easier. Still moving fast, but at a more leisurely pace, she realised she wasn’t becoming exhausted. She could feel her heart rate had increased. It held steady while her breathing was only a little faster than usual, but her breaths were deeper. It seemed that whatever creature it was she had been infected with was built for running.
The buildings got higher. The architecture became more modern and the road she was on was carrying her directly to where she wanted to be. As she approached the city centre, she had to slow down until she was doing what appeared to be an ordinary trot. The length of her paces was not much greater than it might otherwise have been. People did not stare. She was just somebody else in the evening bustle.
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