The London Project (Portal Book 1)

by Mark J Maxwell

  She had parked around the corner from the tower block and prayed it would be okay when she got back. It was unlikely that it would be stolen as the engine couldn’t be started without a terminal. The Portal systems were too well integrated to be easily bypassed. But it didn’t mean it would still be in one piece. She felt a twinge of guilt then. She’d always tried to ensure Jess and Charlie were brought up to never pre-judge people based on their social position. Now here she was, doing exactly that. John paid for the kids to attend public school but that’s as far as his financial contribution went. The kids were often teased about being poor just because they couldn’t keep up with the latest fashions or profile extensions. Louisa had thought about moving them to a state school but it was hard to argue with the quality of education they were receiving. It was much better than she received growing up.

  She’d not had a chance to speak to Charlie about Jess yet. She called Abigail to speak to him but he had already gone to bed. Abigail said he wasn’t too upset. He knew Jess was sick and she’d be home soon. Louisa hoped the last part was right. She was still convinced telling Charlie why Jess was in hospital was the right thing to do. She wanted him prepared for the possibility he might be teased about Jess in school. Young children had an uncanny ability to sense and target the most vulnerable amongst them. That, and they possessed a natural propensity for cruelty that belied their innocence.

  Louisa called a halt to their climb on the sixth floor. ‘Ed, I’m not sure how much further I can go.’ Her hip was becoming progressively worse. At the second floor needles of fire had stabbed into the joint with every step. By the fifth floor the needles had transformed into darts of pain that shot all the way down her leg and now her toes were numb.

  ‘It’s only two more floors.’

  ‘I can’t manage it by myself.’

  Ed stared at her blankly.

  Louisa sighed. ‘Can you help me up the rest of the way please, Ed?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ He bent and she put an arm around his shoulders. He half-lifted, half-carried her up the remaining four flights. They both paused for breath at the eighth floor.

  Some pair we make—the unfit and the infirm.

  The corridor before them was unlit and shrouded in darkness. Louisa grimaced and followed closely behind Ed. She couldn’t see the floor underneath her feet. It felt solid and unobstructed but that didn’t stop her imagination providing unwelcome images of refuse littering the ground crawling with vermin.

  ‘This is it.’ Ed stopped before a door. Louisa could just about make out the recessed entry.

  Ed touched something on the wall. There was a loud click and the door opened. Inside four feet of hallway ended in another closed door. This one was reinforced with inch-wide criss-crossing metal bands. The door was set into a frame that looked to be constructed from the same metal. Louisa tapped the frame with her knuckle and it rang dully. Solid steel. Someone doesn’t want any unwelcome visitors. Attached to the wall beside the door was a small wastebasket.

  Ed closed the outer door. ‘You need to leave your terminal here.’ He dropped his into the basket. ‘Ken has a thing about letting Portal technology inside his flat.’

  Louisa dropped hers in too. ‘How does he know we don’t have something else on us? The latest sense strips are tiny, microscopic almost.’

  Ed waved a finger towards the door. ‘There’s a small but extremely powerful magnetic field generator built into the doorframe. It’ll fry anything passing through, Portal tech included. Basically anything with an electrical current running through it.’ He paused. ‘You don’t have a pacemaker or anything, do you, because it’ll go haywire?’

  Geez, what am I getting myself into here? She shook her head.

  ‘Okay, then.’ Ed banged on the door with his fist. There was a heavy clunk and the door swung open.

  Ken, Louisa presumed, stood before them with his arms folded. In his mid-fifties, he was easily six foot two and wretchedly skinny with bulging eyes ringed by dark circles. Under his right eye was an impressive bruise, exhibiting a rainbow of hues from yellow to purple. A plaster was stretched across the bridge of his nose. His long greying hair was tied back in a ponytail and he sported an equally greying goatee. He reminded Louisa of a praying mantis she’d seen on holiday in Thailand once. He was wearing a pair of three quarter length khaki shorts and a faded Jimi Hendrix t-shirt.

  Ken did not look happy. For once even Ed managed to pick up on his mood. ‘Ahh…Ken, this is—’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Louisa Bennett,’ Ken said. His voice was high and nasal, as if he was suffering from a bad cold. ‘I know who she is. What I want to know, Ed Cooley, is what the fuck you’ve got me involved in?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Ed gaped at Ken, lost for words at the verbal onslaught.

  ‘Ken,’ Louisa said, ‘how do you know who I am?’

  ‘How do I know who you are?’ Ken’s voice was shrill. ‘Because I was told you were coming to see me.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘I don’t know. But he knows everything about me—things no-one could possibly know!’ He shooed them into the flat and swung shut the heavy inside door. He slammed down a metal bar to lock it in place.

  Ed managed to find his voice. ‘Ken, maybe—’

  ‘You know what,’ Ken said. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to know anything about your lady-friend or whatever the two of you have got yourselves mixed up in. Once I’ve delivered your message I want you out of here.’ He retreated into the flat.

  Louisa looked quizzically at Ed. ‘What message?’

  Ed shrugged and trailed after Ken. Louisa briefly considered turning around right then and heading home, but despite herself Ken had sparked her curiosity. She sighed in exasperation and set off after the pair.

  The hallway was lit by a single dangling low wattage bulb with no shade. The flat was starkly decorated and the dim light did little to detract from the harsh concrete floor and ageing wallpaper. The flat wasn’t dirty as such, but it was in dire need of a lick of paint and some TLC. Louisa resisted the urge to tug at a piece of wallpaper curling away from the wall. A low whirring noise came from somewhere ahead. Louisa hadn’t noticed it before but it was gradually getting louder as she proceeded further into the flat.

  A door was closed on her left. Around the corner the corridor terminated in an open doorway sectioned off by a string-bead curtain. The beads made a soft clacking noise as they swayed gently. She pulled the beads aside and stopped on the threshold of the room. Hundreds of twinkling red and green lights hung before her like a star field. Apart from the lights she couldn’t see a thing; the rest of the room was dark. The whirring sound was really loud now and as Louisa’s eyes adjusted she realised what the sound was: a wall of computer servers stacked from floor to ceiling. The blinking lights were LEDs and the noise must have been coming from scores of cooling fans inside the machines. If Louisa hadn’t stopped she would have walked right into them.

  ‘Ed?’ Louisa called out.

  Ed’s head materialised to her left, sticking out between the servers. ‘This way.’

  Once she took a few steps she saw a narrow gap between the racks of machines. She shuffled after Ed, feeling along the ground with her feet to avoid tripping on any cables or leads that must surely be connecting all the servers. At the end of the row Ed turned to the right and she followed him through a doorway, emerging finally into a much smaller room. Inside Ken was sitting at a desk before a large curved screen.

  Ed peered over Ken’s shoulder at the display. Louisa tried to make sense of what the pair were studying. It was a log of some sort—a computer program’s debug trace. That’s as far as her understanding went.

  Ed let out a low whistle. ‘Creepy.’

  ‘You’re telling me!’ Ken said.

  ‘What is it?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘It’s an excerpt from my entire Portal activity over the last five years,’ Ken said.

  ‘Is that all?’ Lou
isa said. ‘It sounds like a history graph.’

  ‘Ken doesn’t have a profile,’ Ed said. ‘This data shouldn’t exist.’

  Louisa frowned. ‘But how do you connect to Portal’s network then? I thought you needed to have a profile?’

  Ken didn’t respond. Ed stared at him as if looking for permission. After a moment Ken sighed and shrugged.

  ‘This is Kenneth Barry,’ Ed said.

  She waited for Ed to elaborate but after a moment she realised he was waiting for her response. Kenneth Barry? She thought she recognised the name but she couldn’t be sure.

  She mustn’t have looked impressed enough because Ed shook his head sadly. ‘Ken is one of the creators of Portal. He wrote the kernel of what would eventually become the London Project’s operating systems.’

  ‘There were three of us,’ Ken said. ‘Adam, Dietrich, and me. We started it all back in university.’

  ‘How come you didn’t stick with Portal when they created the London Project?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘Because the London Project was far removed from the ideals of the original proposition,’ Ken said.

  ‘I’m sorry, what proposition?’

  ‘The concept was simple, really,’ Ken sighed as if he was trying to explain something to a child, ‘truly unrestricted, unregulated inter-personal communion. Our work was supposed to flow from that singular premise.’

  ‘Doesn’t Portal work in the same way? Everyone sharing everything about themselves?’

  ‘No. Portal’s nothing like what I envisioned. I wanted a completely open system. No access restrictions to any of the content. Think about it—there’d be no need for secret government departments monitoring your every move. Why should they? Everything you do or say would be publicly available. The more people share, the more they become aware of how their fellow citizens think and the better they come to understand one another. Now, I know what you’re going to say—what about the great separators—race, religion, politics, sexuality, blah, blah, blah.’ He stared at her intently. ‘Those are concepts forced onto us by society. We aren’t born divided. Division is instilled into our minds from birth, whether it comes from your family, your peers, or your education. From the football team you support to the neighbourhood you live in. Even the brand of clothes you wear. It all contributes to a culture of division. The London Project was supposed to be a panacea for all that bullshit.’

  ‘You thought Portal would change the way everyone thinks?’

  Some of Louisa’s skepticism must have leaked through because Ken bristled. ‘Not everyone. As you get older your prejudices become immutable, hard-wired into your subconscious. We were after the young, the teenagers and pre-teens. Kids don’t think or behave like us—they desperately want to belong to something. By melding their thoughts and aspirations with those of their peers they would inevitably come together to form a singular collective, the catalyst for the communion being the London Project itself.’ Ken gesticulated agitatedly. ‘It was supposed to be a grand reawakening of everything good in the human spirit. A real improvement to the collective’s quality of life. Londoners have been fooled into thinking of Portal as a benevolent benefactor, handing out terminals and providing free services. In reality, Portal has committed the greatest fraud in the history of mankind! Those free baubles are little more than parasites feeding on their hosts. Anyone who picks up a terminal has their behaviour analysed and their physical parameters quantified. And what do Portal do with all this data? They monetize it! Portal was supposed to help people with their lives, not digitally rape them in order to rake in huge piles of cash. For the good of mankind—I came up with the premise. And now they employ it as their corporate mantra!’

  Ken paused to catch his breath. ‘Dietrich concurred with the original philosophical ideals. Adam, on the other hand, was happy enough to go along with the concept at the start, then the money and the accolades flooded in and he was gone, swept away on a tide of materialism. He thrived on the adulation of the coder kids who worshiped his every puerile utterance. Dietrich thought he could turn things around from the inside.’ Ken laughed weakly. ‘I got out before it consumed me and everything I stood for. Over the years, watching and witnessing what it had become, I realised I’d made the right decision. I went off the grid, permanently.’ He gestured at the screen before him. ‘But now it looks like I wasn’t as successful as I’d hoped.’

  Ken sank into the seat and closed his eyes. His exuberance during his oration had lent him a youthful energy. Now it had drained away to leave behind a tired old man.

  No matter how much he vented, Louisa didn’t believe for a second he hated Portal. If he did, then why did he continue to delve into the network? And why did he go out of his way to cover his tracks? He’s been exposed. That’s what he’s so angry about. Over the years he may have been able to convince himself he could leave Portal firmly buried in his past, but now the realisation he still cared about his creation had been shoved in his face. It was eating him up inside. The secure little world he’d created for himself outside Portal had come crashing down around his ears.

  A thought occurred to Louisa then. Had Ken’s anger and shame manifested in a desire to take direct action against Portal? He had both the means and the knowhow to damage the company. ‘Ken, what do you know about the Portal leak?’

  ‘Hmm?’ Ken squinted at her. ‘Not much, to be honest. I’ve been preoccupied with a few things recently.’ He absently touched the swelling under his eye.

  ‘But if someone wanted to hack into Portal and release everyone’s private data. You’d know how, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Actually…no.’ Ken had a wistful look on his face. ‘But I would surely love to speak with whoever pulled it off. I mean, I have no idea how they managed it. It should be impossible. When I get a minute I’m going to have to devote some time to figuring it out.’ He idly stroked his goatee, lost in thought. ‘Some serious time.’

  Louisa was growing impatient. She didn’t know whether Ken was a genius or just plain crazy, but she didn’t plan on hanging around any longer than she had to. ‘Ken, you said there was something you wanted me to see?’

  ‘Huh? Oh, yeah.’ He tapped a few keys. ‘Here you go.’

  A set of numbers came up on the screen. ‘They look like latitude and longitude coordinates,’ Louisa said.

  ‘Yes, exactly. I’ve checked the location. It’s a house in Northumberland, near the Scottish border. A small farm, judging by the satellite imaging.’

  ‘How do you know this was meant for me?’

  ‘I got an email yesterday. It was sent to an account I set up years ago. I kept the address clean. Only a handful of people know it exists. The email had a link to a file storage site where I found the log of every time I’d accessed Portal since it came online. The email said you would be coming and I should give you the coordinates.’

  ‘That’s it? Nothing else?’

  ‘It didn’t need to say anything else. The log was enough, more than enough to make sure I delivered the message to you. If Ed hadn’t called I would have gone looking for you myself.’

  ‘But who sent it? Who could possibly have known I would be coming here?’

  ‘You tell me. You’ve pissed off someone pretty high up in Portal. That’s my guess. No-one else would have the ability to trace me like this.’

  ‘The email must have had an originating address.’

  Ken smiled coldly. ‘Yeah, from someone called White Hat.’ He looked up at Ed. ‘Can you believe this shit?’

  Louisa frowned. ‘Who’s White Hat?’

  ‘It’s a generic term for a hacker who uses their abilities to break into computer systems,’ Ed said. ‘But not for personal gain. They’re normally looking to test and improve a network or site security, not commit a crime. An ethical hacker.’

  ‘Someone from Portal who thinks they are ethical and I’m not?’ Ken sneered. ‘How deluded can you get?’

  Louisa nodded at the screen. ‘The house at the coordin
ates. Is it in the land registry?’

  ‘Let’s see…’ Ken brought up the record. ‘What a surprise, it was sold to Portal Services Limited, four years ago.’

  If White Hat worked for Portal then it might explain how he was able to hack into her profile. And if Ed’s suspicions were correct, then White Hat was also responsible for the Portal breach. But did White Hat really think sending her a set of coordinates would cause her to embark on a wild goose chase? Whoever White Hat was, Louisa was sick of him messing with her life. He had a lot to answer for. Jess was in a coma because of the Portal breach. Never mind the innocent people killed and injured as a direct result of the ensuing violence.

  ‘I’m investigating the death of a fourteen year old girl whose body was discovered on Sunday evening,’ Louisa said. ‘I believe she was participating in a Portal experiment which directly led to her death. Ed brought me here to see if you could help.’

  Ken lowered his gaze and idly scratched at his goatee.

  ‘Well? Can you help me or not?’

  Ken glanced back up at her. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘There’s a man who works for Portal. His name is Kane Shepherd. Finding out who he is would be a start. He’s Red Flagged so we can’t do it ourselves.’

  Ken opened his mouth to reply, then froze. His facial muscles gradually relaxed to form a blank expression and Louisa watched with grim fascination as what little colour the man had in his face literally drained away, leaving behind a ghost-like pallor.

  ‘Ken?’ Louisa was concerned now in case the man was having some sort of medical emergency.

  ‘Oh God,’ Ken whimpered. He spun round and frantically began punching keys on the keyboard.

  A window appeared on the screen. It was a video feed of a group of men running up the tower’s stairwell. The men were casually dressed and each of them had a bulletproof vest strapped on, but it was the submachine guns they carried which captured Louisa’s attention. ‘Is that happening now?’