by John McNally
Almost the very last hunter bot to leave the Shen Yu Hall hit Stubbs hard in the midriff and, before he could begin to breathe again, half a dozen more bots, responding to the signal of the first, flew back to assist it …
“Follow the scent, Yo-yo! Find her!” said Delta in the nDen.
Yap! barked Yo-yo, full of the new smell.
Nose to the ground he began to pick along the floor, following the trail back out of the Shen Yu Hall the way they’d come.
DAY FIVE 11:29 (Local GMT+8). Tian Zi Fang District, Shanghai.
Outside the Green Dream Coffee Shop in the heart of the city’s groovy arts quarter, young hipsters were confusedly trying to reconnect their phones and tablets.
In the corner an odd-looking girl who had walked in off the street and taken a seat without making any order, continued to be ignored. The sickly look of her – was she some kind of addict? – meant people kept clear. Now one of the baristas behind the counter noticed she had slumped into a lying position.
“Hey! Hey, miss! You can’t sleep in here!” he called in Mandarin.
In a daze, Scar got up and walked out. She must endure until the end of the mission. Until the final hour. That was her vow. She stumbled out of the cafe and crossed the street, failing to see a van speeding past on the blind side of a truck.
There was a terrible screech of brakes then a sickening thud as it hit her.
DAY FIVE 11:29 (Local GMT+8). Highway G60, Shanghai-Hangzhou.
Spike slept on the coach, her head against the window. She was sat near the back and had covered herself in a jacket to hide the rashes mottling her skin.
The National Highway Lines coach #635KD was heading west, approaching the city of Hangzhou. She had bought an open ticket. She would travel as far as she could. She must complete the mission.
Only the vibrations travelling through her skull reminded her she was alive.
DAY FIVE 11:29 (Local GMT+8). The Forbidden City, Shanghai. Nano-Botmass: *10,000,266
On the command of Kaparis the last bots anchoring the Exodus Hive 3 cluster to the roof of the Greenharbour Inc. building let go, and with much straining and flapping a three-metre stack of sixteen box-kites – a high-and-low tech confection of nano-bots and photovoltaic wafers – lifted into the air.
A new thing became itself, was born, rising in a ripple, in a gust, up and off the roof, the bots pulling together as one to alter each and every polycrystalline wafer to precisely the right angle to achieve maximum lift, the main bot cluster near its base acting as ballast less the wind tear it apart.
And how it tried to tear it apart, mad turbulent gusts at the edge of the incoming storm.
But the kite stack flipped and curled and danced as it rose, as elegant as it was alive, the wind driving it relentlessly north and west.
A Chinese dragon of a kite. Visible on radar, and visible for miles and miles around.
High over the Forbidden City it soared, the last remaining bots rushing up to meet it.
And trailing behind, falling behind, dragged by the very last bots of all, a small blue balloon.
DAY FIVE 11:31 (Local GMT+8). The Forbidden City, Shanghai.
Baptiste stopped.
The storm of confusion that had raged within his brain had begun to abate.
He didn’t know why he’d been walking, or for how long, or why he was holding so tight to the girl, dragging her along. He just had the ghost of a memory that he should. He wanted to know why, but somehow his thoughts were disobeying him, his own thoughts hiding. So he stopped trying and just concentrated on the pretty kite, flying away.
He started to follow the kite as he had nothing else to do …
“Report, Baptiste. Status?”
EVE. was buried deep in his cerebral cortex. She had penetrated Baptiste’s skull and shot into his brain. Damage had been done as she ploughed her way through the grey cellular mass, but a catastrophic bleed had been avoided and not enough nerve tissue had been destroyed to render him unconscious.
She found the signalling system between the nerve cells simple to tap into. Through observation and analysis she determined the rudiments of thought and information processing, then, by reducing the strength of her own signal to almost nothing, she established an interface.
“I repeat, report, Baptiste. Status?”
Lightning flashed. Baptiste watched the kite disappear. Then he felt something.
Felt love.
Neuro Retinal Programming already rendered him susceptible to further neurological realignment and allowed EVE. to connect to him in a way he did not comprehend, but that felt profound. He felt absolute unconditional love for her without an idea of who or what or where she was.
The girl prisoner he was dragging beneath him woke and tried to wriggle from his grasp. He held on to her. A new instinct told him to. Just as that new instinct told him to respond to the voice in his ear.
“Report, Baptiste. Status?”
“I … EVE.”
There was a long pause as this was processed.
“Are EVE. and Baptiste as one now?”
“Equals. One now.”
There was another long pause. Eventually the voice asked, “And who is the Master?”
EVE. tapped into the neural net around her. It was dense with thoughts of the Master. The Master was familiar. The Master was simplicity itself. Everything with Adam had been so complicated. She would never forget him, but it was time to move on. She was in another place now.
“Kaparis,” said Baptiste.
“Obey Kaparis. Leave Baptiste. Return to the nano-botmass,” said the voice.
“Nano-botmass unclean. Bad script. Bad log,” said Baptiste.
“What?” said Kaparis.
“Bad algorithm … A virus, maybe …” said Li Jun, terrified of angering him again.
She tapped away and called in some XE. system code. Sure enough, the first thing she noticed was a simple twelve-line Trojan. She put it up on the screen array. To Kaparis it was gobbledygook. To Li Jun it was poetry. A thing of elegance and beauty.
“What does it say?!” demanded Kaparis.
“To short-circuit at noon …” she said.
“Stop it! Cure it! Countermand it!”
“Yes, Master.”
Li Jun’s fingers trembled above her keyboard. Not just because she was weak from fear, but because of the last line of the virus. It was a simple twist on chaos theory and suggested, mathematically, that an infinity of options existed at any and all times. It created a simple, irresistible loop of anti-logic and she had never seen anything so beautiful.
Xn + 1 = ∞Xn (1 – Xn)
She could have broken it a dozen ways, but neurons in her brain that had groped towards each other for many months, and which Grandma had recently nurtured, finally connected and short-circuited her NRP. A dam broke in her mind. A tear formed at the corner of her eye.
She looked at the beautiful equation and thought – “Father.”
Her fingers became very still. And typed nothing.
A thought struck Kaparis.
“Does EVE. have it, the auto-destruct virus?” Kaparis asked.
“EVE.’s mind is free, Master. She is immune.”
Kaparis registered the time.
“Tell her – tell them both – to escape with the girl and make their way inland along the Yangtze River.”
DAY FIVE 11:33 (Local GMT+8). Roof of the World, Shanghai.
Screens were full of images of the bucking dancing extraordinary kite.
The alarm had been raised by Red Army units stationed at the edge of Sector 7. Through long lenses they had watched the cluster rise.
As soon as communications links were re-established, they reported it and patched through live video as it sailed over their heads.
“Is that a kite?” asked Hudson.
Al could barely believe his eyes.
“They’re carrying their own power source …” Al said, appalled.
Noise levels rose as w
orld leaders flickered into being on more screens around the walls and were brought up to speed, noise broken only by approaching thunder.
King decided he was the only one in a fit state to deliver the summary.
“We established communication with a rogue lead bot. It was intercepted by Dr Kaparis himself, then communication was lost.”
Bo Zhang interrupted, calling the video of the kite up on the big screen as it began to descend.
“It’s coming into land!”
DAY FIVE, 11:36 (Local GMT+8). Song Island, Taiwan (disputed).
“Let’s bring back Mrs Allenby for the grand finale,” ordered Kaparis. “I’m sure she wouldn’t want to miss this particular family occasion.”
He checked the bot-feeds and watched the barely conscious body of Infinity Drake, trapped within the cluster, within the kite. Kaparis felt warm inside. He had always had what his father called “a touch of the theatricals”, something he himself regarded as a vital gift for display. Either way, when he saw the stacked roofs of the Nine Harmonies Pagoda loom in the flight path of the kite cluster, he knew at once there was only one place it must land.
A distraction had to be obvious; it had to demand action. The Ming Dynasty pagoda, which stood on Temple Hill in parkland in South Shanghai, was a significant landmark, but the decision to blow it to smithereens would be an easy one for the authorities. It had already been rebuilt three times in its history, it was surrounded only by cemeteries and a museum, and, most importantly of all, it was not a vital global economic asset.
“Absolutely perfect,” Kaparis purred. “Order the cluster to land on the highest point of the pagoda and form a testudofn1.”
“Yes, Master,” said Li Jun.
Violet Allenby was carried into the chamber by Heywood and Hans, still clutching her knitting. As they strapped her into her chair, she asked casually, “How are things going? What’s the score?”
“Several goals in my favour, naturally,” said Kaparis. “Now, if you’re sitting comfortably, we shall begin.”
Kaparis called up the live feed of Finn trapped in the bot cluster.
Grandma saw it and her heart shook in her chest. She put down her knitting.
Kaparis smiled.
DAY FIVE 11:37 (Local GMT+8). Temple Hill, Shanghai.
Finn felt the breeze as the world blinked back to life.
The pain in the side of his head was there, as were the sores on his body where tentacles must have seized him, and there was a taste of blood in his mouth. But there was clarity too. A sense that something had been sorted out. That what was left was simple.
Kelly.
Finn had to get to Kelly before noon. Then they would escape, or die. If they were to die then Kelly had to tell him about his father. He had promised. Then at least Finn would die knowing something.
He came-to fully with a clap of thunder and the sensation of flight.
He lifted himself up.
zssssszssszssszszzssszssssszssszssszszzssszssssszssszssszszzsss …
Fourteen bots had locked around him to form a cell. The interlocking body shells kept out most of the light, but he could see they were joined to others and when he peered down through the cracks he could see rooftops.
They seemed to be descending. Accompanied by a rumble of thunder like a dragon’s roar, the stack of kites tipped their sails and lost the wind, knifing down towards the terracotta rooftops on Temple Hill.
Tendrils of trailing bots held fast to the ancient tiles as the cluster touched down and the kite stack above quickly collapsed, the bots rapidly transforming themselves into a testudo ahead of the oncoming downpour.
With a flurry of clicks and hisses, Finn felt his cell being drawn down into the writhing heart of the cluster.
He wriggled the folded cockroach shell from his back. He’d need it not just as a disguise, but also as a blast shield as he shot his way out – hopefully creating confusion and a hole big enough to crawl through. There was less room than he’d anticipated between him and the side of the cell. When he fired the first shot he would be very close to the resulting blast. He automatically felt his belt for the Magnum pistol, for the five shots that were to save him …
It wasn’t there.
It was in the basket of the balloon.
DAY FIVE 11:38 (Local GMT+8). Roof of the World, Shanghai.
“It’s taking cover. It means to ride out the storm. Strike now and strike hard,” ordered General Mount from London.
“It’s a sitting duck! Hit it!” agreed General Jackman in Washington D.C.
“No! We don’t strike!” cried Al. “It’s eleven thirty-eight.”
He called up the last desperate audio recording they had of Carla before Baptiste choked her – “Stubbs has fixed— Noon— Don’t—”
“That could mean anything,” said the German Chancellor.
“It means, ‘Stubbs has set something up for noon – don’t mess this up.’ Trust me,” insisted Al.
“Trust you?” said General Jackman from his president’s side. “You’ve already missed one great opportunity to finish this. Why are we even listening to this guy?”
Another live feed from a drone showed the testudo cluster forming on the pagoda’s tiled roof.
Al stared. He’d failed, he thought. In so many ways he’d failed … Finn, Ethan, Delta, his mother, King … he failed everyone in the end.
“Dr Allenby,” Bo said to Al, with regret. “The time to strike is now. As a rational man, you must see that.”
“If these things get out that man will be inside the mind of every microprocessor on the planet,” said the French Conseiller Scientifique.
“Al …” Bo said, standing close to him and using his first name a little awkwardly for the first time, “I have come to admire you greatly, but I regret to say we must divorce ourselves from emotion and do our duty. You are both a genius and a man. You know so much and feel so much. But it must be done. The storm will not last. And the stakes are too high.”
Al said nothing. Commander King played his last card.
“Kaparis wants all of Boldklub,” said King, “not just part of it. I bet he designed this whole thing just to get into the Hook Hall computers. He wants to shrink living things, maybe even himself. He wants it quite desperately. It’s his weakness. We could try and trade, buy more time …”
“He can take it!” Al agreed. “Trade me for the hostages! I’ll give him anything he wants!”
“Impossible,” said the US President, “even if we could trust him. If this is what he can do with half the Boldklub technology, imagine what he would do with the whole lot?”
The Chinese President stiffened and spoke. “We cannot be hostage to this man. We are China. We will not bow. The airstrike must go ahead.”
It was an easier decision than destroying the Forbidden City, but the other world leaders saw the logic and admired the sentiment.
“Lock the bombers on to the new target,” said Bo, unable to meet Al’s eye.
Al walked to the edge of the Roof of the World and pressed himself against the glass. He could just make out the tip of the pagoda on the southern edge of the city. It would soon be obscured by the storm rolling in. Desperately he tried to think …
But more news interrupted him – “We have a female casualty from a traffic accident who fits the description of one of the twin Tyros!” said Bo Zhang.
“Have they been searched? Quarantined?” asked King.
“She’s on her way to hospital.”
“Don’t let her touch her headfn2! I want one alive,” King ordered.
If they could capture a Tyro alive, they might eventually follow a trail back to Kaparis, King thought. But it was a desperate last hope.
Al sensed his despair. It matched his own.
Hudson came over to him at the window and whispered, “If you want me to take someone out, y’know? Just
say the word.”
Al couldn’t tell if he was joking, but it reminded him of Finn and how he used to come and make deliberately stupid suggestions to amuse him and in this sense it was a comfort. He gave Hudson a manly fist-bump and looked down on the city.
He had to find a way to delay the strike till after noon if there was any chance of rescuing Finn. Think think think … He thought of a technical solution to an airstrike. He thought of Finn. He thought of his sister dying. Of every disappointment and tragedy and injustice, of Ethan Drake being both alive and dead …
And then he saw the ice-cream van … and the loudspeakers on its roof … and something great occurred to him. And at one and the same moment something greater still hit him like a thunderbolt, and in the electrochemical chaos of his brain a big cartoon light-bulb came on …
“Do you trust me?” Al asked Hudson (as a representative of the world in general).
“Of course,” said Hudson, “you drive a 1969 De Tomaso Mangusta.”
“Good,” said Al, and suddenly he felt a whole universe of possibility opening up. “I resign!” he shouted and ran over to Bo. “You have operational control now.” Al took off his security dongle and presented it to Bo Zhang like a medal.
King raised both eyebrows.
Bo’s facial muscles twitched, and under his breath he pleaded, “You can’t resign. Please! Your expertise—”
“You’re going to be fine. And I really must go. Just one thing,” Al said quietly, “I want a police escort to the airport and I want it to do anything I say.”
DAY FIVE 11:42 (Local GMT+8). The Forbidden City, Shanghai.
Yo-yo whimpered at the open manhole.
“Jump, Yo-yo! Follow! What’s down there?”
Big hole. Dark hole. Yo-yo could hear flowing water. He still had the scent of the shoe and desperately wanted to follow. But there was a crazy mass of other scents too. Badness. What’s more, whatever else was down there, it was a long way down.