Bubble: A Thriller

by Anders de la Motte

  Rebecca straightened up in her chair instinctively. She had been trying not to think about the safe-deposit box and Tage Sammer’s story, hoping to set the whole thing to one side for a few days until Black’s visit was over.

  “A thick shell to protect against attack from outside,” the site manager went on. “Then separate compartments inside, each one isolated from the others to allow entry only to those authorized to access the contents. But here the size of each compartment can be varied with a few simple commands from the control room. In other words we can adapt to our clients’ requirements instantaneously. The compartments become bubbles whose size can be constantly adjusted.

  “Any demand to store ten, one hundred, or even a thousand times more information would be no problem at all, the changes can be made instantly. What server room can compete with that level of capacity?”

  He left another deliberate pause as he let the rhetorical question hang in the air for a few seconds. The projector replaced the bank vault with an image of a spacious underground chamber containing row upon row of identical server cabinets.

  “Everything gathered in one location. Simple, cost-effective, and—above all—secure,” the site manager went on.

  The projector laid a new picture at an angle on top of the current one. An almost identical underground room, then another, and another . . . Rows of shiny server cabinets, so many that she had already lost count. Thousands, millions of secrets, all stored in the same place.

  All of a sudden she felt rather unwell. It must have been the aftereffects of the adrenaline rush. But at least her hands had stopped shaking.

  The site manager resumed his speech as the vaults went on multiplying on the screen, but she was no longer listening.

  Like shiny little bubbles, all of them doomed to burst sooner or later . . .

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Are you awake, HP?”

  For a moment he wondered about carrying on pretending to be unconscious, in the hope of finding out more about what was going on.

  But something in her voice made him open his eyes before he had actually made up his mind.

  It took just a matter of seconds for him to recognize her. Her platinum blonde hair was now dark, but the nose piercing and overblown eye shadow were the same.

  The emo girl with the headphones he had seen in the subway.

  “Good.” She nodded to him. “How are you feeling?”

  He tried to say something, but all that emerged from his lips was a sort of dry croak.

  “Here.” She handed him a bottle of water and he raised himself up on one elbow. Deep, wonderful mouthfuls . . .

  “Your fever’s gone down,” she said, looking at a screen beside him. “But it’ll be a few days before the infection’s disappeared completely. You’ve been dosed up with enough penicillin to treat a horse. Quite literally.”

  He didn’t try to answer and just nodded as he looked around slowly. It looked like a hospital, with the only difference that everything in there was bigger. The bunk he was lying on, the lamps and straps hanging from the ceiling.

  It took him a while to work it out.

  “A vet’s?” he croaked.

  “Yep,” she replied. “Well, at least you’re not totally out of it. My name’s Nora. And you already know Kent over there . . .”

  HP sat up with an effort and glanced over toward the corner where the man was supposed to be sitting.

  And there he was.

  “Hi, HP,” he said. “Or should I call you 128?”

  It took another few seconds for his brain to fit the pieces into place.

  “Hasselqvist with a Q and a V . . .” he muttered, without really being able to take it in.

  “Aka Player 58.” The man grinned. “Last time we met you sprayed teargas in my face out on the Kymlinge Link Road. In case you’re interested, I suffered an allergic reaction and had to spend three days in intensive care . . .”

  He flew up from his chair and sprang over toward HP.

  “Easy now, Kent . . .” the emo girl said, stepping between them.

  She was almost ten centimeters taller than Hasselqvist, and, judging by her posture, considerably more muscular.

  “We haven’t got time for wounded egos . . .”

  Hasselqvist with a Q and a V glowered at her for a few seconds, then threw out his arms.

  “It’s fine . . .” he muttered, stepping back. “Actually, I should probably thank you.” He grinned at HP. “If you hadn’t got in the way, it might have been me sitting there.”

  He nodded at the oversized bunk HP was sitting on.

  HP ignored him.

  “Where are we?” he mumbled at the emo, whose name was evidently Nora.

  “The Life Guards’ veterinary clinic.”

  “What?”

  “Lidingövägen, opposite the Östermalm sports center. The guards’ stables . . . I’ve got a key to the gate so we got in the back way.”

  “Okay . . .”

  He drained the bottle of water and tried to make sense of his thoughts. But it was impossible.

  His head ached and even if he felt a bit brighter than he had over the past few days, his body still felt like it had been dragged through a mangle.

  “So which one of you is going to tell me what the fuck I’m doing here?”

  “Look, HP,” Nora said as she got him a cup of coffee from the large thermos on the camping table. “We’ve been trying to get hold of you for a while, but you’ve been playing hard to get . . . Those notes on your door?” she added when he didn’t seem to get it.

  “Kent and I, and Jeff—you’ll meet him soon—have all been caught up in the Game. Just like you, we all did things we never would have dreamed of doing when we started . . .”

  “But then we got kicked out,” Hasselqvist added. “Or replaced by someone else, someone more suitable. A new favorite . . .” He glared sullenly at HP.

  “Something like that.” Nora nodded. “Either way, once we sobered up and got over the worst of the withdrawal symptoms from the Game, we all started to figure out not just that what we’d been involved in was wrong, but that we’d also been manipulated. That we’d been nothing but puppets . . .”

  HP drank a quick gulp. The coffee was unexpectedly hot and burned his tongue, but he forced himself to swallow it.

  “We each started trying to find out more about the Game and the Game Master, but as you know it can be dangerous to break . . .”

  “. . . rule number one,” HP muttered.

  “Exactly . . . We were all warned off, some more than others. But a few months ago we were all brought together by someone else . . .”

  She exchanged glances with Hasselqvist.

  “He used to work for the Game,” Hasselqvist said. “We’re not sure, but we think he—”

  “No matter what we think . . .” Nora interrupted, glaring at Hasselqvist, “this person did bring us all together.”

  “And now you want revenge, to give the Game Master a bit of payback for the shit he fed you? Throw a wrench in the works so you can all sleep a bit easier . . . ?”

  HP shook his head and emptied the cup.

  “Been there, done that . . . Thanks for the coffee, but I’ve got much bigger problems than that . . .”

  “Sit down, HP!” Nora said before he’d even got to his feet. To his own surprise he obeyed her at once.

  “We’re not just some bunch of losers wandering around without a plan. We’ve got a source, an insider. Someone who knows how it all fits together, and maybe even knows what’s going to happen next. And, not least, why!”

  She looked at him, waiting for the words to sink in.

  “With the Source’s help we can put a stop to the whole thing. Not just individual tasks, but the whole of their fucking game plan. You get it?”

  Before he could answer there was a knock at the door.

  “That’ll be Jeff, I’ll get it.”

  Hasselqvist walked over to the door.

  “Who is it?�
��

  He opened the door a crack to look out, but the person on the other side yanked the handle so hard that Hasselqvist almost fell over.

  “Leave it out, Kent, this isn’t some damn spy story . . .” the man chuckled as he came into the room.

  He was wearing jeans and a tight T-shirt that bulged impressively over his swollen muscles.

  “Oh, so Sleeping Beauty’s woken up.” He nodded quickly at HP as he took off his sunglasses. “You managed to mend him then, good work, Doctor!”

  The man—Jeff, evidently—smiled a shiny white smile and winked at Nora, but to HP’s satisfaction she ignored him completely. Not that this seemed to upset Muscleman in the slightest. He pulled a chair over toward HP and sat astride it as he scratched the back of his cropped head a couple of times, revealing a serious tribal tattoo on his lower arm.

  “Is there any coffee?”

  “I’ll get it, Jeff!”

  Hasselqvist got busy with the thermos.

  “So what do we know?” Nora asked.

  Jeff shrugged.

  “I got rid of the revolver and his phone.” He nodded toward HP. “Black’s in position up at the Fortress. They’re busy cutting the inauguration ribbon right now, if I had to guess. The city’s still crawling with police cars, even if they don’t seem to have a clue what they’re looking for . . .”

  Hasselqvist handed him a cup of coffee.

  “You should be fucking grateful I got hold of you, mate.” Jeff held a thick index finger out toward HP. “If it wasn’t for us you’d be dead now. That big bodyguard had you in his sights, another two seconds and bang!”

  He added a cocked thumb to the index finger and demonstrated what he meant.

  “Anyway, how the fuck did you come up with the idea of shooting Black? That wouldn’t have solved a damn thing . . .”

  He grinned and shook his head.

  HP muttered something inaudible into his coffee cup. He had to admit that the mountain of muscle in front of him had a point. As the horse medicine did its thing, he was starting to regain control of his brain. But even though he kept rewinding and playing the tape in his head, he still couldn’t really explain what had happened. It all felt very distant.

  As if nothing he had experienced over the past twenty-four hours had actually happened, and it had just been a dream. Correction—a nightmare . . .

  “Have we heard any more from the Source?” Jeff grunted.

  “We’ve got all the plans—” Hasselqvist began, but Nora cut him off.

  “Not yet. First we have to find out if he wants to work with us.”

  She nodded to HP.

  “Okay, I am actually here, you know,” he said. “Look . . . I’m grateful to you for helping me, but I’ve actually got a shitload of my own prob—”

  “Your sister, you mean?” Nora interrupted. “The one who works for Sentry?”

  “What? No, she works for the Secur—What did you say?”

  He saw them exchange a glance and didn’t like that.

  “Your sister went on leave from the Security Police last winter,” Nora continued, leaning closer to him. “She started work for Sentry Security, where her boyfriend, Micke, was already employed. She started up a bodyguard unit to look after business bigwigs. Sentry was bought up last year by a company called PayTag. And presumably you already know a bit about them, seeing as you just tried to shoot their managing director . . .”

  HP opened his mouth to reply, but Nora didn’t give him the chance.

  “Good, then maybe you also know that PayTag is constructing a number of huge server farms around the world? Well, perhaps server hotels would be a better description. Here in Sweden they’ve built a massive installation in one of the military’s old underground bunkers just outside Uppsala. The place is called the Fortress, and it’ll soon be storing data for pretty much every company and government body across the whole of northern Europe . . .”

  HP nodded again, more forcefully this time, and suddenly he couldn’t help smiling.

  Becca was Black’s bodyguard.

  Of course!

  She was indirectly working for the Game, which was obviously still bad news. But in his fucked-up state he had misunderstood the whole thing. He’d thought Becca was in a relationship with Black.

  Epic fail!

  Christ, he could be really thick at times . . .

  He shook his head as the relief did a little victory lap around his body.

  Suddenly he realized that the others were staring at him.

  “Well, what do you say?”

  “Er, what?”

  Jeff leaned forward on the chair, making its plastic back creak. Suddenly HP realized that there was something familiar about the man’s angular face. As if they too had met before somewhere . . .

  “Are you going to help us?”

  “To do what?”

  More glances, dubious this time.

  Eventually Nora broke the silence.

  “Shut down the Fortress!”

  14

  ABANDONWARE

  “HELLO?”

  “Good evening, dear friend.”

  “Ah, it’s you, splendid. Is this line secure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “In that case I would be grateful for an explanation of what happened.”

  “I can understand that . . .”

  “I don’t appreciate it when binding agreements are broken. Recent events . . .”

  “Aid our cause in the long run, believe me!”

  “In what way?”

  “In every way . . .”

  “Now listen, I don’t appreciate this sort of prank. You can call yourself the Game Master all you like, but don’t forget who’s paying for your activities.”

  “Naturally, my clients’ interests are always at the top of my priority list, my dear friend.”

  “I should hope so! If we could try for a moment to look beyond this . . . incident. How is everything going with the rest of the plan?”

  “Splendidly. We’re just about to begin. You won’t be disappointed, Mr. Black.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The lift had taken them down to the viewing level. A glassed-in hub with five spokes extending fifty meters straight into the rock on all sides around them. And, if she’d understood correctly, there were a number of similar levels below them.

  The control room that they were looking down on, through the large glass window opposite the lifts, was undeniably impressive.

  She’d been inside a couple of underground bases before, when she was working for the Security Police. The one occupied by the emergency services call center beneath the Johannes Church in Stockholm was probably the most impressive. But that was nothing compared to this.

  Thirty or so workstations were grouped in three semicircular rows above one another, so that everyone had a clear view of the gigantic screens down in the center.

  Every workplace had three connected screens, along with a mouse, keyboard, and a headset neatly hung up alongside. The whole thing looked rather like the Regional Communication Center in Police Headquarters in Stockholm but was obviously much more up-to-date and vastly more expensive.

  The control room was empty and all the screens were switched off.

  “At full capacity we’ll have thirty operators working in three shifts. They’ll all be experts in IT security. If necessary we can reinforce them with a further ten . . .” the site manager bubbled, looking as if he might burst with pride at any moment.

  Maybe that wasn’t so strange . . .

  The invited reporters, local politicians, and members of parliament seemed just as impressed with the setup as Rebecca was. One of them asked something that she didn’t hear, but it must have been funny since they all burst out laughing.

  Black was standing slightly off to one side, flanked by two people from the local management team and a dark-haired woman in her forties whom Rebecca had met in the office a couple of times, one of their new foreign bosses, Anthea Ravel. She did
n’t seem particularly pleasant and spoke that sort of dry, patronizing English that made you feel like a lowly servant. She’d also had such a tight face-lift that almost all of her facial expressions looked the same.

  Some people in the office had taken to calling her the Ice Queen, which was a fairly appropriate nickname.

  “Good question. Naturally, we take the security of the installation very seriously indeed,” the site manager said.

  “Among other things we’ve applied to be classified as a high-security area, which would give our security personnel additional powers. And we’re also planning a big exercise together with the National Rapid-Response Unit. Security is our main priority . . .”

  Black suddenly turned his head and met Rebecca’s gaze. Then he leaned to the side and whispered something to the Ice Queen, which made her look in Rebecca’s direction as well.

  The woman put her hand on Black’s upper arm and leaned forward. She whispered something, so close that her lips were almost touching Black’s ear. She went on whispering for a few seconds before slowly pulling back. Whatever it was the Ice Queen had said, it seemed to amuse both of them, and Rebecca couldn’t shake the feeling that they were obviously talking about her.

  She forced herself to ignore them and shifted her focus back to the site manager.

  “Well, the big moment has arrived,” he suddenly announced in English. “I’d like to invite our managing director, Mark Black, to step forward and press the button.”

  The crowd of spectators parted to let Black through to the observation window.

  One employee handed Black a small box with a large red button, and Black spent a minute or so posing with this overemphatic symbol as the cameras flashed.

  “I hereby declare this installation open,” he then said.

  He pressed the button and down in the control room all the screens suddenly came to life.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  He should have left at once, thanked them for their help, and just toddled off home. Instead he had let them show him the plans, telling him about the electrified fence, the cameras, the guards patrolling the area. He had listened with half an ear. But he noticed one thing very clearly. None of them had said a word about how they were going to get past it all, which could have had two obvious explanations: