by Ian Williams
“Thanks,” Luke said as he faded away once again. Seconds later the door clicked open, giving a beep noise in return. It might as well have been a thank you as the keypad flashed green without any hesitation, letting them in like a welcomed guest.
When Luke reappeared, they both stepped through the door and were met by a rush of warm and stale air. This was followed by the sound of hundreds – if not thousands – of tiny fans, all working their asses off trying to cool the equipment inside. These computers were using a lot of power. Graham had not ever considered what they were for, apart from carrying a huge amount of data of course.
“We need to intercept the data going through this system,” Luke said with a quick look around.
Graham closed the door gently behind them and joined his friend in investigating the area. “What exactly are we looking for then? I mean, which one will let you do that?”
“It doesn’t really matter, they’re all connected. The data flowing through these computers is coming from everyone in the city. There’s one of these sites in every city in the UK. Any request a device makes has to be sent through one of these hubs to Simova’s main site. But after Isaac was shutdown they switched their operations to a second site, with a more basic and controllable AI. I need to communicate with the other site to control all of the relays.” Luke suddenly stopped by a computer stack and studied it. “This one,” he said turning to Graham.
This particular computer was no different than any other to Graham, just a wall of multi-coloured and flashing lights that put him in mind of Christmas tree lights. For some reason it matched Luke’s requirements more so than any other. “What do I need to do then?”
“Attach the holo-projector to this computer,” Luke replied, pointing straight at the one he had chosen. “I will enter the system and find a route that goes to the second sight, where I will then upload a new subroutine and –”
“I’ve got enough to go on thanks,” Graham replied. “So, once you’ve gained control of the relays, what then?”
“Stephen will activate Sanctuary’s hidden systems and send out what we call the Recall code. It’s like a beacon that calls to all of the MARCs within the system, forcing them to head toward it. This is what Isaac intended someone to do. Except when we turn it on we will draw every remaining piece of Isaac’s code to Sanctuary, from anywhere in the UK. Whether in the form of a MARC or not. The only way we can stop these terrorists from collecting Isaac’s code is to beat them to it.”
“What about the ones they’ve already collected? There’s people in every city doing this. They must have a plan in place to recombine all of these MARCs.”
“We assumed they would have to physically take them somewhere to meet with the other groups doing the same. If we collect them all first, then they won’t have the chance. We just don’t know how powerful Sanctuary’s system is. We’ve never tested it. I can’t guarantee all of the country’s power relays will survive what we do. It’s still better than allowing Isaac to return and enslave your people – and mine.”
Graham could not argue with that. He disliked the sound of what would happen if they failed. He also disliked hearing that an entire country’s worth of MARCs could soon be descending upon Sanctuary, the very place he had asked to have his family taken to. If their intervention could keep this Isaac in bits and pieces, then he was happy enough to go along with it. He trusted Luke. “If I get any trouble, what do I do with you?” he asked as he tore the device away from the Velcro on his arm again.
“That is what the weapon is for. I understand you will not wish to hurt your work friends, but still, you must keep them away from me while I work. Otherwise we will fail. I advise you aim for their legs if you absolutely have to fire,” Luke said.
“Fine, just don’t take long, OK?”
Without replying, Luke disappeared into thin air, leaving Graham suddenly alone in an uncomfortably quiet room. All he had in the way of company was the constant humming of the machinery around him. He held the gun out in front of himself and practiced pulling the trigger again. It was not a nice feeling for him, knowing he could have to shoot someone if discovered. It was even worse to know that the pistol he held was not a Taser weapon, but an old fashioned projectile handgun. For all he knew the thing would just blow up in his hands the moment he pulled the trigger. He had no faith in it at all.
Standing by the machine Luke had vanished into, Graham began to look around with a building tension in the back of his neck. He rubbed the affected area with his free hand and moved his head from side to side. Nothing eased the strain. Stress was as ever a mitigating element in his body’s pain sensations. After this he knew he needed a long rest.
He tapped the gun against his leg – and immediately stopped when he realised what he was doing. Thankfully the gun did not go off. Though when he saw someone walk past the glass panel at the far end of his row, he nearly pulled the trigger in an instant panic. Someone was coming. He dipped without considering that the person could not possibly see him behind the computer stack. While still crouching unnecessarily, he shuffled to the end of the row and peeked round.
All he could see from his position was a woman leaning against a concrete pillar. She did the same as him and veered around the corner. Although something about her look and style brought a flash of a memory to his mind. She wore scruffy clothing with most of it showing wear and tear in some form, and flattened red hair. He knew her from somewhere.
When she left her hiding place and headed out into the corridor, Graham followed, staying just out of sight behind another row of computers. He still had glass between him and the woman. From there he could see she was looking for something. She stopped at a door and discreetly peeked inside. He then saw the face that went with the striking red hair, and recognised her straight away. The same woman he had seen in the video feed from the night before, as Elliot had been taken, was now in the building with him.
What the hell is she doing here? he thought as he struggled to believe his eyes. It made no sense to him. She risked everything to find something inside the Simova building. He guessed it had something to do with the terrorist’s plan, she was one of them after all.
There had to be something he could do to stop her, he decided. A second plan began to form in his mind where he would try to capture one of those responsible. He preferred not to call it revenge. Even if it was exactly that.
Looking back to the row with Luke’s holo-projector left unguarded and totally vulnerable, Graham was stuck. He could not leave it behind, anyone could find it and steal it. But the opportunity to exact his revenge for harming a friend was too good to miss. So he took the chance and broke away from his spying position to reach the exit quickly, before she did anything.
The gun no longer felt unwanted, it had become his prized possession. He readied his grip on it with a flex of his fingers. His forefinger fit snuggly up against the trigger. Retribution was now only a squeeze of his finger away.
The door opened with little noise; he saw to that by tentatively turning the handle. There was no way of seeing the woman from this position, which made him wary about what he planned on getting himself into. He stepped into the hall and let the door pull shut behind him.
At this point he realised how stupid he had been. With the door closed the lock had automatically re-engaged – and a beep had confirmed it. Luke was now trapped inside and there was no way to get to him. Graham had no key or access code to get back in. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” he said quietly, while slapping his head in frustration. He had seriously screwed up this time.
Aware that he had not even a slither of a plan on how to proceed, he decided on getting the red haired woman back in his sights first of all. He could think clearly with her location known – he hoped at least. By the corner of the room was another concrete pillar, giving him a good, and importantly safe, vantage point. There he continued to spy on the last person he thought he would ever come across again.
She waited outside a door for so
me reason. He watched as she knocked once, then twice, but not a third time. Someone had possibly answered from inside the room, he could not tell from where he was. It would have to do, getting any closer without giving himself away was difficult.
Was she there to meet someone the terrorists had on the inside? He quickly began to draw conclusions from the air. A web of co-conspirators within Simova, who helped with the whole operation, began to form in his mind. Though this made little sense in reality. He knew his paranoia was just leading him down a side path of hidden motives and questionable loyalties.
When the woman spoke through the door and pretended to be the receptionist, he knew something else was going on. She was not there to see an unknown overlord working from inside the Simova organisation. He could even imagine, from the way she was acting, that she was in fact working alone on this one.
The door opened and the red haired girl immediately fired, knocking the security guard who answered to the floor. Graham jumped in surprise and instantly regretted his unimaginatively dumb decision to leave the safety of the server room. He chose to leave the girl to whatever plan she had going on and return to the locked door. Revenge would have to wait. Only the door would not open. He was stuck outside while someone else went on a rampage nearby.
He stopped and took a couple of large breaths to clear his mind and stop his hands from shaking. There was no way for him to get back inside the server room, he knew that much now. He still had his gun and the knowledge that they had not seen him. Surely that was enough to work with still? He calmly considered his options and came up with two choices: he could hide, or he could engage the enemy directly.
He had never been one to duck and cover.
In the background he could hear a firefight had broken out between the woman and the guards inside. It sounded like she was winning too, as the gunfire had lessened in a matter of seconds. Each party now returned shots like for like. He approached the noise and stopped by the corner again. The woman had moved inside the room, giving him the opportunity to sneak right up to it without being spotted.
A final shot rang out and then everything went quiet. One of them had beaten the other, he could not tell which – although he found himself hoping the woman had won, so he could deal with her alone. He kept his back against the wall until he reached the entrance, while also listening out for any talking. Whoever remained standing inside was surely going to burst out the door at any moment, he realised. So he raised his gun to chest height and stood ready to fire.
With a quick snap of his head around the door, he caught a glimpse of three people moving around and three others in black lying on the floor. The woman had somehow overcome the brute force of Simova’s security guards, leaving them unconscious or dead – he failed to see which. But it had apparently taken its toll. He was surprised to see the woman in an emotional embrace with one of the men inside, the younger of the two. He was not expecting this. Had she just rescued someone?
He had to find out what was going on, even if he would be fired at when he did. Things did not appear to be how he expected at all. Something else was going on. Luke would be safe for now. He just had to find a way of getting him out after he questioned this mysterious woman. Perhaps he could even get a name too. Calling her the Red Haired Woman was starting to get on his nerves.
Keeping the gun firmly in place and ready to aim as convincingly as he could manage, Graham stepped into the doorway. He nearly bottled it when he saw that the woman was now standing and her friends were each holding a weapon of their own. He overcame this and continued with his objective, though his voice was much raspier than he planned. “Turn around,” he said. “Slowly. And drop the weapons, all of you.”
The two men did as he asked and threw their pistols to the side of the room. The woman did not even flinch. She just stood with her back to Graham. He could not see her face and found her lack of movement was giving nothing away at all.
“I said turn around. You with the red hair, you to,” Graham insisted again.
“You’ve picked the wrong day to be a hero, Mister,” the girl said. Her confidence had Graham unnerved and confused. She had no weapon, it remained on the floor beside her. How was she able to project such an assured opinion in her given situation?
The woman began to turn, she even raised her arms up to show her hands were free. This only made her actions even more worrying. Was she going to do something unexpected? She appeared visibly shocked to see an ordinary clothed man aiming a gun at her. “What are you, the last security guard? Who the fuck are you?”
“It’s him,” the younger man said behind her.
She turned to look back over her shoulder. “Who,” she said.
“Hey, everyone just shut up. Now, you tell me who you are first or I’ll start shooting.” Graham tried to take command, only the woman was totally indifferent to his feeble demonstration of power. She continued to talk to the man behind her, after ignoring the threat entirely.
“Who is he, Sean?” the woman continued.
“I saw him there, when the police murdered Dillon.”
What was he talking about? Graham was flummoxed by the odd accusation. He had no idea who this Dillon was, and at which warehouse? He had been to more than one warehouse in the past 24 hours. Except only one had been where the police had caught people looking just like these three. He quickly began to put two and two together, only to get an ‘oh shit’ back as the answer. Of course it was linked. The man he had tried to talk down was one of theirs!
“Is that true?” the woman asked.
Graham found he could no longer keep up the pretence of a man fully in control of his confidence. He wanted to get to the bottom of the whole thing; who was in charge, who worked for who. More importantly he wanted to know which side the red haired woman was actually on.
“Yes, I was there. But I tried to help that man,” he said, fully expecting the woman to launch herself into him. Thankfully there was no such reaction. Instead she gave him a cautionary once over with her eyes.
“So if you’re not the cops and you’re not security, then who are you?” she said.
“I’m a technician, for Simova. I was at the warehouse to remove MARCs, with my friend Elliot.”
The woman’s expression suddenly changed from that of immense anger to a look of crippling regret. She closed her eyes and lowered her head for a few seconds before replying. “Elliot,” she said. “The Simova guy.”
“I see you remember him well enough. I’m the man you sent to find The Sentient Collector. Oh, and guess what? I found him. Only he’s currently deactivating the device you attached to Elliot. He’s also preparing to end your terrorist group’s plan as well.” Graham thrust the gun forward when the older man moved suddenly in the background.
“Don’t do a thing, Freddy, I’m warning you,” the woman said, holding her arm out to hold him off. She then turned back to face the front. Her reply came only after a moment of quiet. The woman was thinking to herself while her friends stood behind and stared at Graham with highly judgemental eyes. “My name is Phoenix.”
“What the fuck, we can’t let him take us in,” the older man said as he stepped forward.
“Stop moving, dammit!” Graham shouted.
“Freddy, he can get us out of here,” Phoenix said. “I think we all know Anthony is crazy anyway. Me and Sean are leaving with him.”
This was far from the reaction Graham expected. He prepared for an awkward walk back to the server room with three prisoners, before somehow retrieving Luke. Now he had recruited more to his side. He just did not understand how that had happened. The fact Phoenix had called Anthony crazy – who Graham assumed to be the man in charge – was a good omen. Though at least one of the three was particularly unenthusiastic about joining him.
“This is bullshit. We should kill him and leave by ourselves. We need to join the others. And Anthony won’t enjoy hearing what you just called him,” Freddy said as he took yet another step toward Graham.
He was edging dangerously close.
“I’ll shoot if you keep doing that,” Graham said.
He had had enough, and could hear Luke’s advice in his mind as he took aim. The gun was pointing down when he pulled the trigger, so the bullet would hit nothing vital. He covered his face with his arm as the shot forced his hand back from the recoil.
Freddy’s leg flew out from under him, dropping the rest of his body to the floor as he let out a painful wail. His trousers then began to turn red as blood poured out from his left inner thigh. It was far more blood than expected, suggesting the bullet had in fact hit something very important: the Femoral Artery. Graham nearly puked at the sight of so much blood.
“What have you done,” Sean shouted out.
“Give me that,” Phoenix said, snatching the gun away from Graham’s grip.
He could not react in time to stop her and was left shell-shocked, half expecting the next shot to claim him. Instead Phoenix turned the pistol on Freddy as he flailed around in agony, and pulled the trigger. The shot jolted through his chest. Moments later he crumbled backwards and fell a deathly silent.
Graham was stuck staring in horror at the life he helped end. A lump of spit threatened to nearly choke him unless he unclenched his throat.
“He would have bled out anyway. This was more humane, believe me,” Phoenix said calmly, before handing the gun back. “Now, we’ve got to get out of here before security arrive. The sound of these shots will have reached the top floors by now.”
Graham knew she was right about both, he just could not bring himself to move at all. “I killed him,” he said.
“No, I killed him. Your shot would have killed him after maybe ten minutes,” Phoenix replied. “When we get out of here, you’re going to take me and my brother straight to The Sentient Collector. I can help stop Anthony.”
This was like a kick up the arse for Graham. He looked away from the body and met Phoenix’s eyes head on. “Why would you help after what you did to my friend?” he asked. The gun was again in his hand, although he could not imagine using it anymore.