by Joe Craig
Then suddenly that whisper was torn apart by a sound at the other end of the phone. It was a muffled thud. Jimmy’s muscles froze. “Saffron?” he whispered, gripping the phone tightly in his fist. Then came more noises – a crash, then shouts. Was that Saffron’s voice?
Jimmy jumped to his feet and dashed towards the platform. Had they found Saffron so quickly? Just then, two huge security guards climbed up out of the hatch and stood on the platform, peering out into the murky hall, their guns held out in front of them. Jimmy spun to run back the other way, but he was too late.
“There!” one of the guards shouted. It was drowned out by the crack of his gun. Jimmy dived for the cover of the kiosks. The bullets pinged off the metal in rapid succession. Jimmy instinctively curled himself up as small as possible behind one of the kiosks and covered his head with his hands, but his programming was burning in his veins. He could already hear the guards descending from the viewing platform to hunt him down. Then the echo of the shots faded, drowned out by a huge creak and a succession of clunks. The conveyor belt Jimmy was crouching on started moving.
Jimmy peered round the side of the kiosk and immediately regretted it. The blast of a guard’s gun lit up the hall. Jimmy leapt backwards just in time. The bullet struck the kiosk close enough to his face for a spark to hit his cheek. Jimmy glanced down the production line, where, one by one, the kiosks filed into the gaping mouth of the first piece of machinery that would decommission them. A curtain of rubber strips meant Jimmy couldn’t see what happened inside, but he could feel an intense heat and it was getting stronger as the conveyor belt took him closer to the machinery.
The kiosk he’d been dismantling was a few metres further down the line, in the direction of the decommissioning mechanism. The hard drive, Jimmy thought. Meanwhile, beneath the cacophony of the production line he could hear the guards descending on him from the other direction.
Another flash lit up the darkness and gunfire peppered the kiosks. The guards were shooting at any change in the shadows. Jimmy felt a throbbing urgency in his chest. He couldn’t stay sheltered behind this kiosk for much longer, and the hard drives he needed so badly were seconds away from entering the decommissioning unit. He knew he had no choice.
Jimmy took a deep breath, set his muscles, then exploded into a sprint down the conveyor belt. Gunfire flashed around him, but Jimmy paused for a fraction of a second behind each kiosk, rolling and ducking to create a totally irregular path. There was no way the guards could hit their target. But perhaps they wouldn’t need to. The last kiosks were entering the machine now. On either side, bright-orange hazard signs burned into Jimmy’s consciousness as intensely as the flashes from the gunfire.
“Saffron!” he shouted into his phone, still clutched in his fist. “Saffron, what’s happening?! Are you there?!” For a split second, Jimmy thought he heard a response, but the voice, if it was a voice, cracked up. And that’s when Jimmy finally ran out of space. He felt the rubber strips pushing on his shoulders. They came with a surge in the noise and the heat. Jimmy frantically tried to work out some way of stopping the conveyor belt, or jumping off it without getting shot. But it was too late. Suddenly he was inside the machine, and everything happened at once.
A burst of high-pressure steam blasted towards Jimmy’s head. He rocked backwards so quickly he didn’t even know what he was reacting to until the steam roared past the end of his nose. It felt like the sweat on his face was so hot it was bubbling. At the same time two metal arms punched towards the kiosks from either side at the level of Jimmy’s knees. He jumped up, ducking his head at the same time so he didn’t knock himself out on the low ceiling.
The arms clamped on to the base of the kiosk in front of him, ripped off the casing, spun it round and slammed it down flat on the conveyor belt. Then, with despair, Jimmy saw the hard drive extracted by another metal arm and flung up into a slot overhead. Where does that slot go? Jimmy cried in his head. There was no time to find out. The conveyor belt moved on, with metal arms swinging out from every direction to continue the dismantling.
Jimmy swivelled and twisted to dodge the mechanical blows and spray bursts of some kind of coolant. All he could feel was heat and the swirling movement of his own limbs, swishing and leaping so quickly that his head spun. His coat wafted around him like the wings of a bat. At first it protected him from the heat, but soon he wanted to rip it off and abandon it. He knew he couldn’t. He could feel the weight in the pockets of objects that could save his life.
Eventually the attack paused and Jimmy found himself lying flat on his front, on top of two sheets of metal from the casing of one of the kiosks. The clanking and crunching of the mechanical arms was left behind. Jimmy looked up, searching for the hard drives. Was there any chance they hadn’t all already been wiped or destroyed? That moment, a few metres ahead, a huge iron press slammed down like the fist of a giant squashing a beetle. It was crushing the kiosk casing into totally flat sheets of blue metal, and Jimmy was next.
He threw himself forward and pulled his legs up into his chest just as he hit the conveyor belt. The iron press thumped into the rubber behind him. The conveyor belt took him past the first stage of machinery, but there was another tunnel coming up and another rubber curtain. He snatched one of the flat sheets of blue metal just before it was sucked through the rubber curtain. Then he jumped down off the conveyor belt and ran.
It was a couple of seconds before the guards realised what was happening. They hadn’t expected Jimmy to emerge from the decommissioning tunnel in one piece. When they finally spotted him, all they saw was the flash of metal. Jimmy blazed through the darkness, holding the metal sheet ahead of him with one hand while with the other he hauled himself up the outside of the decommissioning machine he’d just been through. Despite the bullets, the heat and the strain on his muscles, he was totally focused on leaving Chisley Hall with the hard drive from one of the kiosks.
At the top of the machine were dozens of chutes where the inner components of the kiosks were sorted and zipped away to the next stage in the process. The hard drives were small black boxes being spat out of the machine so fast they may as well have been giant bullets. So that’s what Jimmy used them for.
He heaved his whole body up and swung round, landing a double-footed kick against the chutes on top of the machine. The force of one blow was enough to dislodge the chutes. The mechanism screeched and clanked, but the kiosk components kept firing, a shower of metal blocks, circuit boards and electrical tubing.
The guards were bombarded by the parts being spat out across the hall. They ran for cover, while Jimmy jumped down, shielding himself with his metal sheet. Before the guards could start shooting again, Jimmy reached into his coat. He gripped a cardboard tube strapped by elastic bands to a mobile phone: one explosive device that Jimmy had kept with him instead of sending on the rubbish truck for Saffron to distribute around the grounds.
Immediately Jimmy lobbed the device over his head like a grenade. The arc of his arm was perfectly steady despite the speed he was running. The explosive device soared through the falling debris, over the heads of more guards who’d appeared on the viewing platform. It dropped perfectly – right down the hatch that led back to the control room.
Jimmy’s fist was already clenched round his mobile phone, his thumb pressing the call button so hard the handset was about to crack. Where’s the explosion? Jimmy thought, frantically. The delay seemed to last forever. Had his phone lost reception? He had to keep moving, sprinting between the machinery from shadow to shadow, dodging the bullets or shielding himself with his metal sheet, all the time running towards the platform where the guards loomed over him, towards the guns, but also towards his only possible escape.
Finally the floor rocked. A massive white flash blasted round the hall. Then came the noise – a thunderous crack that echoed off the machinery and resounded in Jimmy’s skull. A shaft of black smoke rushed up from the hatch, pouring into the hall. Jimmy powered through it, skipping
over the guards, who’d been blown off their feet or fallen from the platform. On his way he snatched a stray hard drive from the floor and stuffed it into his pocket.
In seconds, he was through the hatch. He was choking on the black smoke as he locked the hatch behind him, but he was buzzing with new focus. Get what you came for, he told himself. Getting in and out of Chisley Hall was useless unless he could somehow salvage all the data he needed. Unfortunately, the blast hadn’t just allowed Jimmy to evade the security force. It had also ripped apart the network of computers in the control room.
Jimmy peered through the smoke, covering his mouth and spluttering with every other breath. The monitors were smashed. The keyboards were nothing but melted plastic. How could he have been so stupid? He’d assumed that Saffron hadn’t been in the room, but he hadn’t thought about the damage to the computers. Desperately trying to keep himself calm, he wafted the smoke away from the work station to get a better look at the equipment. Had any of it survived?
A noise pricked his senses. Boots pounding up the hall. There was no time to analyse the computer system. Jimmy reached to the very back of the desk and snatched the one metal box that looked more intact than any of the others. He ripped it out of the tangle of half-melted leads, tucked it under his arm, then barged out into the corridor to meet the guards.
Jimmy raced through the grounds of Chisley Hall, constantly scanning the surroundings to judge the timing of his explosions. He set off two in quick succession, distracting and dispersing the security force. One of the earlier blasts had sparked a small fire. The flames were just visible, threatening to leap over from outside the wall into the gardens. Chaos, thought Jimmy. Perfect.
He twisted through a walled rose garden, crunching the gravel with confidence and strength. His pre-planned escape route was waiting, and there was nothing to get in his way. If only he could be as certain that Saffron had escaped ahead of him. Where was she?
For Jimmy, getting out of the house had been a relatively simple matter of using the narrow corridors to his advantage. One attacker at a time, he’d fought his way out with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of efficiency. Chisley Hall may have been a fortress, but it wasn’t designed to defend against attackers who were already inside.
He emerged from the rose garden by the perimeter wall, but his pace never relented. He ran through the flowerbeds along the line of the wall, flicking his eyes ahead, searching for his marker. Less than an hour before, he’d found the only corner of the estate that met woodland, not open field, and he’d expertly cut the branches of the trees outside the wall. He’d created a blind tunnel – a passage away from the perimeter wall that was completely masked from the security cameras. As long as he found that spot again, he’d be invisible.
There it was: the white streak down the wall that told him where to climb. Slipped between curls of barbed wire at the top of the wall was the upturned cone of the third Cornetto, the ice-cream filling melted into a clear marker-line down the brickwork.
In seconds Jimmy scaled the wall, one-handed: the box of the computer was held firm under his left arm. The fingers of his right hand dug into the bricks like tunnelling worms, sending tiny cascades of red dust to the ground and gradually accumulating a sticky covering of vanilla ice cream.
At the top, he perched precariously and laid his coat over the barbed wire. He pulled himself over the wall without hesitation, leaving behind the shouts of panic and the sirens. His only obstacle was a fat wood pigeon trying to get to the Cornetto cone. The swivelling security cameras held no threat for him. His preparation with the handsaw had been perfect.
As he scrambled over the bracken, Jimmy pulled his coat back on and awkwardly snatched his phone from the pocket, still careful to keep hold of the computer, and checking that the kiosk hard drive was still in his pocket. The responsibility of carrying people’s votes seemed to make all the equipment heavier.
“Where are you?” he barked as soon as Saffron picked up. He hadn’t expected her to answer. If she was able to answer her phone it meant she wasn’t in danger, and if she wasn’t in danger, why hadn’t she been there to help him?
“I made it out, Jimmy,” she announced, “I’m OK.”
For a second Jimmy was angry that she’d assumed he would be OK. He swallowed the emotion and ran on, batting away branches from his face.
“You need to come back here and pick me up.” Jimmy glanced around him. Something in his body had kept track of his precise position. “I’m halfway across the field a kilometre to the south of Chisley Hall. I can see a road up ahead. What happened to you? Did you get the data?”
“I’m sorry, Jimmy,” said Saffron. “There were too many of them. They dragged me out of the control room and up to a holding cell. But they couldn’t hold me.” Now Jimmy could hear the smile in her voice. “It sounded like there was an explosion in the basement, and they panicked.”
“I’m glad I could help,” Jimmy muttered. “Did it cross your mind that I could have been in trouble?”
“Why would anybody but you be blowing things up in the basement?” Saffron asked with a soft laugh. When Jimmy heard her voice again, it wasn’t through the phone. “And if you’re blowing things up I know you’re OK,” she called out from the window of the Bentley, pulling up on the other side of the road. Jimmy’s face melted into a grin.
“So stop moaning and get in,” said Saffron.
Christopher Viggo listened to his own heartbeat, consciously willing it to slow down. He breathed deeply, counting the rhythm of his pulse. He didn’t know exactly what the Capita had injected into his spine, but whatever it was he had to delay its course through his body. He had to stay focused, stay functioning, and reveal nothing about the H Code. His life depended on it, and so did the lives of Jimmy and all the others. If he revealed his secret, they would be killed as soon as they turned up at the rendezvous.
Viggo couldn’t see anything because of the black linen bag tied over his head, so he focused on his other senses. He knew his wrists were bound together behind his back and his ankles were tied to the chair legs. But what had the Capita used for ties? If he could work that out he’d know whether it was worth trying to free himself – and what he would need to do.
Just as he started rubbing his wrists together to test the bindings, he heard the door open.
“Ready for more?” It was the small Capita woman called Miranda by her colleagues. “You should find it very easy to talk to me now. You can’t fight what’s in your bloodstream.” Viggo didn’t respond. Instead he listened. Every piece of information was a vital weapon in his war to stay conscious, to keep his secrets and ultimately, to escape.
“Where is the H Code?” Miranda asked, with a sigh. When there was no reply, she muttered, “You’re a fool.”
“What does that make you?” Viggo rasped. His throat was so dry, but he couldn’t let his weakness show.
Miranda said nothing. Instead, she slammed her fist into Viggo’s stomach. Viggo gasped for air and strained to double over, but the wrist and ankle restraints held him in place. Pain is good, he told himself. Pain will keep you focused.
“How does your precious democracy feel now?” Miranda snorted. “Come on, you had your chance to change the world. You failed. You must be hungry, thirsty… in pain. Give it up,” she insisted. “Give us the H Code and you can go home.”
Viggo heard the clink of glass.
“Tell me now and we can share a lemonade,” said Miranda. Viggo heard her scrape the bottle against the wall to remove the cap. The cool fizz of the drink seemed to rush through Viggo’s blood, spreading pain, desperation. No, he told himself. The others will come. Hold on. Just a little longer. But the noises tormented him: Miranda glugging the liquid down her neck, her satisfied sigh, the metal bottle cap still tinkling on the concrete floor.
“A toast,” Miranda announced. “To democracy!”
Without even waiting for Viggo to respond, she thumped the base of the lemonade bottle into his cheek
so hard that he reeled backwards and toppled to the floor, still attached to the chair.
Rope, Viggo realised at last, crashing on to the concrete. They’ve used rope.
“How long until the meeting with the Capita?” Jimmy asked, as the countryside rushed past at Saffron’s usual sharp pace.
“Long enough,” said Saffron. “We need to get this stuff straight to the UN Inspector first.”
“What if we have… nothing.” He drummed his fingers on the black computer box in his lap, while the smaller hard drive nestled in his coat pocket.
“We have no choice,” Saffron said, not sounding certain. From her face, she was obviously still working things out in her head.
“But what if we give it to the UN guy,” said Jimmy softly, gathering his composure, “tell him everything we know to convince him to have a look at it, then when he does it turns out to be full of, I dunno, the laundry receipts. We’ll be going in to face the Capita with nothing!”
“There must be something on there,” Saffron muttered, sounding like she was trying to convince herself.
Jimmy smoothed his hands across the metal casing, brushing off the dust and debris from his escape from Chisley Hall. They had to take the risk of presenting what they had to the UN Inspector while they could still get to him. If they had nothing, at least they might convince the man to investigate further. We’ll be persuasive, Jimmy thought, in a voice that wasn’t his own. It felt vicious, determined. But it felt so right.
“I’ll text Mum,” he announced suddenly, trying to distract himself from the violence lurking inside. “I’ll tell her we got it.” He pulled out his phone and started texting. “They’ll need to keep the UN guy at the hotel until we get there. How long?”
“Am I driving too slowly for you?” Saffron slammed her foot down and the Bentley smoothly surged forward. It was like sitting in a rocket – a rocket with heated seats and full leather interior.