Greg moves down the corridor noiselessly, a maroon carpet silencing his footsteps. There’s a sort of luxurious hush that Joanna can feel even through the Vades™. This level is for the executive suites, the largest rooms available at the Hilton. Whoever Eanga Tepaki is, he’s got some serious money. Huh. The bootleg server business must be booming.
He stops outside a dark brown door marked 12C. “Okay,” she says. “Try the lockbreaker.”
Of all the field equipment available at Global Investigations (UK) Ltd, about a quarter of it relates to getting through locked doors. Joanna has used a dozen different types over the years. Knowing that their target was based at a Hilton hotel made it simple to check what sort of security they’d be dealing with. Card and keypad. Pah. Easy!
She watches as Greg pulls a plastic card from his jacket pocket and slots it into the door lock. It’s built to resemble the master passcard that senior members of staff have. There’s a pause as it electronically reads the lock’s memory, finding its unique cryptographic pattern. Inside Greg’s Vades™ and on Joanna’s screen appears a list of all the four-digit codes ever entered onto the keypad. All random numbers, except: “Nine nine three three. That must be the master reset code, it’s been used several times. Punch that in.”
Tap tap tap tap. Clunk. The door edges open.
Joanna leans forward again, her whole body tense. It feels like they’re moving past some kind of threshold, as Greg slips inside the room and eases the door shut behind him. They’re breaking the law now.
His head whips back and forth as he scans the executive suite, and Joanna has to tell him to slow down so she can see what he sees. The hotel room is as enormous as it is comfortable. You could fit most of her flat in here. The smartscreen on the wall is two metres across, and there’s a three-piece sofa in front of it. One of two interior doors is open, revealing a deluxe bathroom carved out of shiny marble. There’s a wide rectangular window, smartglass set to transparent, through which the towers of Canary Wharf sparkle beneath a cold blue sky.
Greg: “Blimey. I’m in the wrong job. Every time my place sends me anywhere I have to stay in some pokey little bed and breakfast...”
“File a complaint form later. Stick the bug under the sofa.”
From his jacket’s other pocket, Greg produces a hemisphere of black metal about three centimetres across. He pulls out two thin aerials on either side, and peels the protective covering from its base. Then he kneels down and affixes it beneath the sofa. Of all the gadgets she’s trained in, Joanna loves these the most: digital infinity transmitters. A 5G-enabled bug that will intercept all wi-fi in the vicinity and reroute it to her.
This is the ‘phase two’ they had discussed – actually getting into Eanga Tepaki’s hotel room and intercepting his communications. Joanna doubted they’d get the opportunity, but it was too juicy an idea not to prepare for. Greg’s right: the police will definitely take her more seriously if she can provide hard evidence.
Greg: “Okay. Is it working?”
“Yep, I’m getting the test signal. It’s scanning local networks. Okay, get out of there, Greg.”
Greg: “Quick look in the bedroom?”
Joanna hesitates. There’s no real need to go searching. Not much point rummaging through Tepaki’s underwear drawer, when it’s his digital comms they’re interested in. But the closed door on her monitor is obviously just as inviting for Greg as it is to her. “Quick look,” she agrees.
He twists the handle and steps inside. The window is set to opaque, but the lights automatically fade up as he enters. More luxury: a king-size bed, walk-in wardrobe, soft furnishings. But Greg’s eyes – and therefore Joanna’s – are instantly drawn to one corner of the room, to the...
The monitors on the wall.
The portable hard drives.
The hand-held tablets.
The rectangular block of metal encased in hard plastic, lights flashing across its front panel as it sits on a coffee table at the heart of a small spider-web of wires.
Greg: “Holy shit.”
Joanna inhales sharply as what Greg’s looking at fills her smartscreen. “That’s... is that a...”
The Vades™ zoom in on the front. BBX4001 SG986.
Greg: “Yes! It’s a BBX server! Jo, this is where he’s programming them. Oh man, this means – ”
“We’ve got him!” Joanna can’t stop the rush of glee. “This is the jackpot! This is definitely the man behind it all, this is the proof we need! We’ve got him, Greg, we’ve got the bastard!”
And for a moment, she thinks of Derek Thorpe. Of the BBX4001 server sitting in the middle of the old boxing ring, running the sim-auto of AB Foster. A server that probably came from here – that came from Eanga Tepaki.
You hear that, Mr Thorpe? We’ve got the bastard. I’m bringing him down for you.
As Greg moves closer, she focuses on the paper-thin monitors that have been unrolled and stuck to the bedroom wall. Two of them are full of unreadable code, streaming down at lightning speed, but the third is displaying something static. Something simple, outlined in electric blue.
Greg: “Hang on, I’ve seen that before. That’s like the thing on the laptop we got from what’s-her-name, Amy Pearce.”
“It’s not like it,” realises Joanna, “it’s exactly the same.”
Auto-Mate™ v0.977.
Auto-Mate core system main
menu
Full install
Custom install
Repair
Uninstall
Settings
“He’s got an Auto-Mate™. He’s got the same thing Amy has, a beta-test prototype.”
Greg: “But what for? Wait. Bloody hell. This is where – am I right? – this is where he’s getting the CORECODE from!”
Joanna listens to her own voice, saying it aloud before she can properly think it. “That’s it, you’re right, this is like a kind of laboratory, he’s extracting the original CORECODE from the prototype and putting it on these BBX servers, onto their operating systems. This is where he’s getting it from in the first place!”
As he swears in amazement, Greg leans close to the monitors, which fill Joanna’s own screen. The numbers flickering across them are rapid and meaningless. This must be what the encrypted CORECODE folders are full of. Program code, taken from the granddaddy of all autos.
Joanna’s mind is still racing. Connecting the dots. Making the leaps.
If...
Then...
Oh my God.
Greg: “But how did this guy get hold of it? I mean, Amy had one because her mother ran the project team, but otherwise it was hush-hush stuff, right?”
Joanna brings up Eanga Tepaki’s profile. His unsmiling picture. The broad dark face with curling tribal tattoos across his jaw and chin.
Greg: “Do you think Eanga Tepaki stole it? Or someone at Global Investigations tracked it down for him somehow?”
She types a name into her auto’s search field. Thousands of results. Tens of thousands. She points to one image and enlarges it beside Tepaki’s profile. A photo of another man.
Greg: “Or... maybe he used to work for Macroverse, like Amy’s mother did?”
A black man in his thirties, wearing narrow silver-rimmed glasses.
Greg: “He might even have known her – Amanda Pearce, I mean? That could be how he got hold of this prototype.”
A man with the same shaped face.
Greg: “He could have got a copy from her, years ago.”
A man with the same dark eyes.
Greg: “Yeah, I bet he’s from Macroverse! If he knows how to do all this single-handed then he must be a professional auto developer, right? He must be a genius.”
Joanna looks back and forth between the two faces on her screen. No, they’re not identical: Eanga Tepaki’s jaw is stronger, his cheekbones are softer, his nose is flatter. Facial recognition software wouldn’t find a match.
And of course, he has those dark tattoos spiralling ac
ross his skin. To hide the… oh God.
To hide the facial surgery scars.
Every single bone in her body has frozen. The oxygen in her lungs feels crystallised. But she has to speak. Force the words through. She doesn’t want to scare Greg or freak him out, but she has to say something, anything.
“Greg... listen...”
Suddenly Greg’s face is on her screen. He’s turned to look into the full-length mirror on the bedroom wardrobe. Behind the transparent lenses of the Vades™, his eyes are wider than she’s ever seen them.
Greg: “This is Michael fucking Walker, isn’t it?”
“Get out,” she snaps, “get out get out get out!”
He doesn’t move. Frozen stiff, like she was.
“GET OUT!”
On Joanna’s screen, the hotel room whips past as Greg turns and bolts, spins back, pulls the bedroom door shut after him, spins again, bounds across the suite towards the entrance, fumbles with the door handle like it’s covered in butter, wrenches it open –
“AAAH!”
As she yelps, Joanna jumps clean out of the chair.
Eanga Tepaki’s tattooed face fills her monitor.
Greg: “Hah – right – okay – look – ”
Then Greg’s point of view jerks downwards, and there in Tepaki’s hand is a steel-grey gun, aimed directly at him.
The hotel room appears on the screen again as Greg backs into it quickly. Eanga Tepaki follows him in, pushes the door shut and flicks the security bolt, all without taking his glaring eyes off Greg.
The gun comes up and Joanna’s heart hurls right into her throat, expecting to see lightning and hear thunder – but instead he waggles the pistol to one side. Greg stumbles until his back thumps against the window. His upheld hands are bobbing around on either side of Joanna’s view.
Greg: “All right – all right – look – okay – take it easy – okay – ”
He’s babbling. He sounds scared. He thinks he’s about to get shot dead.
Joanna can’t think, can’t process, it’s all happening too fast, oh Jesus Christ no, please no, Greg, oh God – !
Eanga Tepaki keeps the gun steady in one hand while his other reaches out, moving quickly over Greg’s body. Patting him down for weapons. Then he steps back.
“Take off the Vades™.”
That’s not Eanga Tepaki’s voice, even though she can see him speaking. But it doesn’t fit. That accent they’d overheard before has vanished. The dark-skinned Cook Islander in the luminous yellow shirt now talks with the flat, hard-edged tone of a Londoner.
The handgun comes up again. “Take them off!”
“No – !” cries Joanna, reaching a hand out like she could push it through the smartscreen and stop Greg from… but the image on her monitor suddenly swivels until all she can see is the deep brown carpet of the floor, and a glimpse of Greg’s navy blue trousers.
She hears that voice again: “Put them on the table.” The view shifts downwards and goes still, displaying part of the luxurious hotel room. There’s movement. A sudden metallic crunch.
Joanna’s screen goes black.
“No no no!”
She’s back in the chair, gripping the armrests and breathing like a locomotive. He smashed the Vades™! Probably with the butt of the pistol. She’s cut off, she’s blind!
For a moment, it feels like the entire world has ended. And then from her smartscreen’s speakers she hears:
“Get on your knees. Hands on your head.”
That flat London voice. She can still hear it!
“You’ve got five seconds to tell me who you are and who sent you.”
There’s the chick-chack of a 9mm semi-automatic’s slide being pulled back and released. Ready to fire.
The harsh sound kickstarts Joanna’s thoughts. She can still hear what’s going on – because she followed fieldwork protocol. Greg is wearing the same concealed radio pickups that she always wears, the ones that came in handy when she visited Nick Brady. No visuals, now the Vades™ have gone, but she can hear everything Greg can.
Greg: “I’m...”
And he can hear her. But her voice is locked inside her chest and her mind has gone blank and she’s so scared and can’t think what to say and doesn’t believe this is happening and –
Greg: “I’m from Global Investigations.”
...What? What’s he doing?!
Greg: “They sent me to find you.”
His voice is actually calm and level. Not panicked. He doesn’t sound terrified of the man with the gun at all.
The voice asks “Who are Global Investigations?”
Greg: “You know who we are. You’ve been working with us. Well, a few of us anyway.”
Joanna’s hands slap across her mouth. What’s he saying! This is a gigantic risk, they don’t know any of this for certain, and if it’s not true then Greg is about to get shot through the head –
Greg: “I’m here to help you, Mr Walker.”
There’s a long, long moment of silence that weighs tons.
“If you know who I am, then you’re either undercover police, or... you work for us.”
Joanna exhales with a moan. “Oh Jesus Jesus Jesus...”
So it’s true. All true. The man pretending to be Eanga Tepaki is Michael Walker.
The man who invented the auto.
The man who tried to kill the internet.
Greg: “Well, I’ve been brought in by the people who work with you. I don’t know everything, I’ve just been tasked to come and find you.”
Yes – that’s brilliant! Abruptly the fog in Joanna’s head clears as she realises that Greg is seriously thinking on his feet. He was right, marketing managers do have professional bullshitting skills!
“Greg!” she hisses. “If you can hear me, tell him to check your profile, deep-search your timeline.”
Greg: “I understand you have no reason to trust me, Mr Walker, and you know I’m not going to carry any credentials, so I suggest you do a deep-search on my profile’s timeline.”
“Oh thank God!” Joanna almost wants to cry, knowing that the concealed receiver she forced into his ear before he left the flat is working. “I’m here, baby, I can still hear you, it’s okay, I’m gonna get you out of there!”
Walker: “Run deep-search. Greg Randall.”
Obviously he knows who Greg is – he only has to point an autophone or tablet at him to identify him – but how did Walker know he’d broken into the hotel room in the first place? Some monitoring system? An invisible proximity sensor? Doesn’t matter now.
She hastily summons Greg’s profile, scared that there might be something in it Walker will find, something that will get him killed...
Greg Randall
Gender: Male
Age range: 31-35
Orientation: Straight
Relationship status:
Single/Available.
Current location:
Hilton London Canary
Wharf Hotel, South Quay,F
London E14 9SH
Status update: Business
lunch with some old clients,
maybe new clients if it all
goes well!
“Greg,” she says quickly, “tell him that he’ll find your timeline is blocked, and he should know that only professional encryption can do that. Tell him your marketing job at On Course Consulting is perfect for an undercover private investigator for Global Investigations, and you’re paid a lot of money to keep your mouth shut about whatever you discover, so he can trust you, this is just another job to you.”
She listens as Greg’s voice repeats everything she said, making it sound natural and unforced. My God, he’s really keeping his head. More than Joanna is. She’s so bloody scared, and she’s so far away, and she can’t see a thing and all she can do is listen!
Near-silence follows. Joanna strains to hear anything, but only Greg’s steady breathing sighs out of the speakers. She imagines him, kneeling on the carpeted flo
or with hands interlocked over his head, staring up at the foreign-looking man holding the gun as he operates one of the tablets. Looking for flaws in Greg’s story. Looking for a reason to blow his brains all over the executive suite.
And he will. Joanna has no doubt he’ll pull that trigger.
That’s what terrorists do.
The results of Joanna’s search for the name Michael Walker are still there on one of her monitors. Biographies, news reports, essays, analyses, discussions and more. It’s a name the world will never forget.
Back in 2017, he was the central figure of the protests against the International Internet Regulations. Following all the marches he led and riots he incited, an arrest warrant was issued. He promptly vanished, then posted a series of messages that became the most popular videos on YouTube ever. The most watched, anyway.
In the first, Walker claimed matter-of-factly to have developed an auto-virus that would corrupt every server in the world. Automatically. It would bring the global internet to a halt in a matter of weeks. No firewall would stop it. No anti-virus would touch it. Nowhere in the world would be uninfected. And unless the IIR were abandoned, he would release it.
The authorities claimed this was nonsense. But the public were uneasy. This was the man who invented the auto. His ground-breaking abilities were well-known. Joanna can remember how nervous she’d felt herself back then, wondering if it was true. No internet! Would she have to write letters by hand? Buy products from shops? Watch videos on disc, instead of streaming? How would she share things with all the people she knew? How much messier would life be, how much longer would everything take?
In the second video, he revealed details of the radical groups and anarchist organisations who had offered to buy the auto-virus. Some had publicly offered millions for it. They believed him. They thought he was advertising the most powerful weapon ever invented. And suddenly, that’s what everyone believed too.
In the third and final video, Michael Walker made every news headline by stating that he had already transmitted the auto-virus. It had been out there for days, spreading onto every server and computer in the world. Only he had the counter-virus that would uninstall it from infected systems. Unless the IIR was stopped.
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