She had instinctively lashed out at John, but she knew in her heart it wasn’t his fault. ‘I think we both know what caused this.’
Doctor Lane leaned back and looked at her quizzically.
‘If Jess wasn’t plugged into Portal 24/7 then this never would have happened.’
‘Well, you could be right,’ Doctor Lane said, ‘but I’m not so sure banning her from Portal would result in an overly happy teenager.’
‘Maybe not, but teenagers these days can’t choose whether to use Portal or not. It permeates every facet of their lives, subjecting them to an unrelenting barrage of screencasts, adverts, and celebrity feeds which are practically impossible for them to avoid, even if they wanted to. They’ve embraced it utterly. So much so I think they no longer have any concept of isolation, for want of a better word. They jump at every opportunity to offer up their feelings and dreams, their very essence, with no thought given to the consequences. The irony is that even though they believe they’re constantly in touch with what’s happening around them, they’ve become utterly sequestered from the real world—the world outside of Portal. Sometimes I feel like my kids are inside a glass bubble and I’m stuck on the outside, banging my fists against it, but they can’t see me or hear anything I say. Does it make me sound crazy?’
Doctor Lane smiled. ‘Not at all. I have a teenage son. Jack’s a little older than Jess. Sometimes a whole week might pass without him speaking to me outside of grunts and monosyllabic utterances.’ He shrugged. ‘I have to admit. I was one of the skeptics vehemently opposed the London Project when the Lord Mayor first revealed its proposed scope. It sounded unnecessarily intrusive. And with technology like the sense strips tracking our every move, potentially oppressive, even.’
‘And now?’
‘Overall, speaking as a medical professional, I think it’s been positive. Don’t get me wrong, we could attribute a large proportion of our patient intake to a Portal-related injury if we really wanted to. But consider how much Portal has contributed to the quality of care patients receive in London’s hospitals. Jess’ case has been reviewed by five other doctors besides myself since she was admitted this morning, two of whom were paediatric consultants. Five years ago, that would have been unheard of. Her medical file is centralised on Portal and was immediately available to us upon her admission. We knew her complete medical history and were able to tailor our care to treat her condition. But, don’t you see similar improvements in your line of work? I’d have thought the fall in recorded crime would be welcomed by the MET.’
‘Well, yes, of course,’ Louisa said. She sighed. ‘I don’t know. I just have this feeling. That what we’ve gained is far outweighed by what we’ve surrendered. Something…undefinable. Part of our humanity, perhaps. We’re old enough to miss it, but I’m afraid our children won’t even know it’s absent from their lives.’
‘All done.’ The doctor snipped the thread.
Louisa hopped off the bed. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’
‘Any time. And, I think you’re wrong about one thing, Ms Bennett. Portal is a tool, nothing more. It’s neither good, nor evil. No one can detract from our humanity if we don’t let them. Young people are resilient. I witness their resiliency every day. It never ceases to amaze me what they’re capable of bouncing back from, both physically and emotionally. Don’t give up on them, or on Jess, quite yet.’
*
Louisa’s stomach rumbled as she headed back through the maze of hospital corridors. The doctor was right in one respect. What happened to Jess wasn’t Portal’s fault, as much as it wasn’t John’s or her own. But she felt as though she’d unburdened herself from thoughts she’d been carrying deep inside her for a long time now, even if the doctor didn’t share them. It wasn’t easy to voice criticisms of Portal, the company or the network. Most people looked at you like you were crazy, or became agitated and quickly changed the subject. They felt threatened because they saw Portal as a catalyst for their wellbeing, both socially and financially. It was often said the only Londoners who didn’t have a job now were those who didn’t want one. No-one wanted the good times to end.
Louisa was forced to stop and lean up against the wall of a corridor as she suffered a bout of dizziness. She decided she needed something to eat, and fast, otherwise she would end up in a bed next to Jess. She stopped a nurse to ask where she could get some food. The canteen was shut but the nurse directed her towards Casualty and a few vending machines.
The casualty unit was relatively quiet. It was just after nine—not late enough yet for all the drunken injuries to roll in. She bought a bar of chocolate and a Coke from a machine and found a seat in the corner of the waiting area, well away from anyone else. After a few sips and a square of chocolate the fuzzy-headedness faded and she started to feel more herself again.
She looked around the area at the people waiting to be seen. A few were clutching broken or sprained limbs. One man held a wad of tissue to a bleeding cut on his bottom lip. The rest were wearing more or less identical expressions combining equal amounts of weariness and boredom.
A man sat a few seats in front of her and, like her, was apart from the others. She could only see the back of his head but he looked somehow familiar. Then he turned his head. It was Ed Cooley.
Louisa got up and walked over to him. ‘Ed?’
Ed raised a hand in greeting, like meeting her in the hospital was the most normal thing in the world.
She shook her head in disbelief. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Ahh…things got a bit crazy earlier after I tried to run a history graph against the guy from the accident. He was Red Flagged.’
Suddenly Claire’s case file being referred to the DPS made perfect sense. If Kane Shepherd was Red Flagged then any attempt to run his history graph would trigger an instant case file lock-down. Ed had told her once about a new-start in SIU who decided for fun to try out a history graph lookup on the Prime Minister. A bunch of Special Branch had the poor sod in an interrogation room in ten minutes flat. Ed’s request must have created a real shit-storm in the office.
‘Geez, sorry Ed,’ Louisa said. ‘I hope you told them it was me who requested it. Did any of the trouble blow back onto you?’
‘Well, I did get shouted at by the SIU chief. Then the DPS talked to me for a while. I just played dumb. You know—’ Ed adopted a goofy, slack-jawed expression. He looked so absurd that Louisa giggled.
Ed grinned. ‘It’s easy to play dumb if everyone thinks you’re a weirdo.’
Louisa felt ashamed to her core. Ed’s lack of social graces often led to him causing any amount of offence to his colleagues. As a result they considered him a little, well, stupid. She’d bought into it as well, she realised. Not as much as everyone else, but still, she’d underestimated him. ‘I’m sorry about all of this, Ed. They didn’t suspend you, did they?’
‘Nah. We’re run off our feet in SIU after all the riots. They can’t afford to do without me and they know it.’
Louisa was relieved. Hopefully she hadn’t managed screw up Ed’s career along with her own. ‘How did you end up in here?’
Ed adopted a hang-dog expression. ‘I was feeling pretty bad after the interviews. My pulse was racing and I started having palpitations. Then I got really dizzy and my new extension’s alarms started going off. One of the guys called an ambulance and I had to get carted off the floor in a stretcher. It was pretty embarrassing.’
‘But, you’re all right now though, aren’t you? Did you see a doctor?’
‘Yeah, I saw someone.’ Ed grimaced. ‘He remembered me from a few of the other times I’ve been here. He gave me an ECG but it came back fine.’
‘What about the review panel? Did the other doctors come to a consensus on what happened to you?’
‘Well…I would define what happened to me as a personal quantification feedback loop. A neural imbalance caused by behavioural signal resonance.’
‘Uh-huh. And what did the panel say?’
; Ed coloured. ‘A panic attack. Too strung out from all the caffeine and lack of sleep.’
‘Oh, Ed. Delete the medical extension, would you? It’s not good for you.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ Ed winced and looked away.
Louisa recognised that particular mannerism from when his mother was telling him to do something he didn’t want to. He had no intention of deleting the extension. He was just telling her what she wanted to hear.
‘I heard about your daughter,’ Ed said. ‘How’s she doing?’
‘She’s stable. They say they’ll know more tomorrow.’
Ed nodded. ‘It’s all connected, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Portal breach, Claire Harris, the professor. Maybe even the Red Flagged bloke. I was thinking about your profile being hacked and the Portal breach. Neither of them would have been trivial to pull off. Someone hacked into Portal’s network from the global web, something that’s nigh on impossible, and what did they do? Stream a personal feed from a Portal research facility to your profile. Doesn’t it seem weird to you?’
Louisa sighed. ‘Ed, you’ve been a great help with the Claire Harris case. You really have, but I think we’re going to have to let this one go.’
‘But…no, you’re not listening. I’ve been trying to work out why they would do such a thing. It made no sense. Then the Portal breach happened. It originated from outside the Portal network too, and somehow they managed to rip six seconds worth of data. What if the same person who hacked your profile also caused the Portal breach?’
‘Ed, please—’
Ed was on a roll now and clearly worked up. ‘But it all makes sense. The Claire Harris case. That’s what ties it all together. The leaked data is from 10:27 on Sunday evening. Minutes before Claire’s estimated time of death.’
Louisa had heard enough. ‘Ed, seriously!’ She lowered her voice then, aware people were looking at them.
‘But…’ Ed was wide eyed, still breathing heavily from his outburst. ‘Don’t you want to see what I found in the data from the Portal leak?’
Louisa was sorely tempted to say no, but Ed looked so distraught. ‘Okay, okay, what did you find?’
Ed retrieved a tablet from his pocket. It was an old-style portable computer, not even an early version of a terminal. He activated a media player then handed it to her. The player opened up and a still image filled the screen. It was sense footage. Louisa recognised the location. ‘It’s from the railway tracks near where Claire was found.’
Ed nodded. ‘I ripped the sense footage to a video file.’ He tapped the screen and it started playing.
There was motion at the corner of the screen. An apparition clothed in white stumbled into view. It was a girl. She was only in shot briefly, but just before moving off-screen she turned her head and looked towards the sense strip. It was Claire Harris.
‘Oh my God,’ Louisa whispered. She realised she was trembling. ‘How did we miss this, Ed?’
‘We didn’t. Our sense perimeter around Claire’s crime scene was iron-clad. This wasn’t in the sense data CADET analysed. I’m sure of it.’
‘Then where did this come from?’
‘The leaked Portal data.’
‘So…this was erased from the sense data held on the MET Subnet?’
Ed shrugged. ‘It’s the only explanation.’
No-one should be able to access the MET Subnet data outside of the MET. It pointed once again to a rogue officer inside SIU. Was Ed right? Could it all be connected? Louisa thought about Ben. He’d been so adamant the girl in the sense footage on Oxford Street wasn’t his Claire. ‘What about the sense footage from the entire time she was living in London? Could it have been altered too?’
‘That’s less likely. But still possible, I suppose.’
If only they had more sense data from the leak. They’d be able to track Claire back throughout the whole time she was living in London. ‘Wait, how did you run CADET against the leaked Portal data? Do you have access to it in SIU?’
‘Nah, it’s still officially blocked within the Portal network. I definitely wouldn’t bring it onto the MET Subnet. Most of the mirrors are riddled with viruses now.’
‘How did you find the footage of Claire, then?’
‘Well…I had a little help.’
Louisa frowned. ‘Who?’
Ed wrung his hands. ‘Just a guy—an old friend from before I got the MET job. He’s good at finding out stuff on Portal without being noticed.’
‘Just a guy, who has the ability to run CADET outside of the MET Subnet?’
‘We didn’t use CADET. Not the CADET SIU developed anyway. He has his own proprietary software.’
Louisa didn’t like how vague Ed was being. ‘This all sounds highly illegal, Ed. Why would he have software that works like CADET? What does this guy do, exactly?’
‘Nothing much, really. He keeps to himself. He’s a little paranoid.’
Louisa almost laughed out loud. Ed thought this guy was paranoid? It boggled the mind. ‘How much does he know about me and the Claire Harris case?’
‘Nothing!’ Ed tried his best to look sincere. ‘Really, nothing. Seriously, Louisa, I didn’t tell him what I was looking for or why. But he’s a smart guy. We should get him to help us out. If anyone can work out what’s going on here, he can.’
Louisa wasn’t entirely convinced. She wasn’t sure she wanted to meet someone even Ed considered paranoid. But what was the alternative? Walk away from the investigation? That’s what she should do. Walk away, take time off to look after Jess. But by then the DPS will have swept Claire’s case under the mat.
Louisa placed a hand over Ed’s. He jumped at the contact. ‘Call him.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Highgreen Manor wasn’t nearly so grand as its name implied, etched as it was in the mantle above the main entrance to the block of flats. Erected in the 1960s to provide cheap council accommodation for the city’s expanding population, the monolithic fourteen story red brick and concrete tower was now in a sorry state.
Louisa remembered seeing an old TV documentary on tower blocks just like this one. The grainy footage followed the lives of cheery-faced residents extolling the virtues of their new state of the art accommodation. They formed genuine communities—housewives leaning on balconies chatting to neighbours and kids running around playing games on the stairwells. Now it was hard to imagine living in the crumbling edifice would be anything other than utterly soul-destroying. If anyone was still living there. Wooden boards covered the windows of the first six floors. Any windows on the upper floors that weren’t smashed were devoid of any signs of life.
Louisa turned to Ed. ‘Are you sure this is the place?’
‘I’m sure,’ Ed replied. ‘I’ve been here before. It’s not much to look at but Ken likes it. He told me once it suited his needs.’
‘You mean he lives here by choice?’ Louisa found it hard to believe.
Ed motioned around the estate. ‘What do you see when you look around here?’
The tower block they were standing outside was the last one remaining in the neighbourhood, the others having been demolished years ago. They had been replaced by sprawling concrete housing developments limited to two or three stories in height. The one closest to them had a children’s play area. It was depressingly dilapidated and uncared for. Just looking at the rusted and jagged edges of the climbing frame made Louisa itch for a tetanus shot. If she was being brutally honest, the new developments weren’t a massive improvement on the tower. It was eerily quiet as well. As if they were on the set of some post-apocalyptic film where the human population had all been wiped out. They were close to one of the areas that had experienced rioting the previous night so Louisa assumed everyone must have been staying indoors and out of sight. Or they’re all off rioting somewhere else.
‘I don’t know,’ Louisa said, ‘poverty? A sense of hopelessness?’
‘It’s what’s not here that attracted Ken.
You won’t find a strip within a mile of this block. It’s in the center of a huge dead zone.’
That gave Louisa pause. There were dead zones scattered throughout London, of course—the odd alleyway, park, or privately owned open land. But she hadn’t known there was still such a large outdoor space left in London that wasn’t at least partly covered. It should have lifted her spirits, the liberation from constant Portal surveillance. Instead she felt isolated, and oddly vulnerable. Portal had become a security blanket of sorts, she realized then. As much as she hated to admit it, she felt reassured when she knew she was in an area with good coverage.
Louisa’s unease increased as she followed Ed inside. What kind of person would such a large dead zone attract? Not the law-abiding type, surely. She regretted not trying harder to extract more details on the mysterious Ken on the drive over, but Ed had proved reticent. ‘You’ll see’, was all he would say. She eventually gave up and they’d made the rest of the journey in silence. Then there was the speed at which Ken had responded to Ed’s request to meet. Ed had pulled out an old mobile phone in casualty and had sent a SMS, of all things. Ken didn’t use Portal, apparently. Ed’s phone had beeped in response almost immediately. Ken wanted to meet them within the hour.
‘What did you tell him?’ Louisa had asked.
‘A detective I worked with needed his expertise.’
‘He knows you work for the MET?’
‘Of course. Ken and I go way back.’
‘And he agreed to meet with me, just like that? I thought you said he was paranoid?’
‘Yeah, it is a little strange.’
‘The lifts don’t work,’ Ed said, bringing her thoughts back to the present. He headed for a concrete stairwell.
Louisa wrinkled her nose at the smell of rubbish and stale urine. She had no intention of using the lifts. She had a sudden vision of a lift door opening and a biblically sized hoard of rats flooding out. She shuddered and hurried after Ed, keeping her hands in her pockets and vowing not to touch anything while she was in the building.
The London Project (Portal Book 1) Page 22