by Ian Williams
Ignoring the nasty thoughts clearly bubbling up through his best friend, Graham turned his attention to his young daughter instead. “Alex, go wait over there please. And do not watch any of this, OK?”
She nodded before wandering away. The tension in the room had made her weary of back-chatting thankfully. With her out of the way, Graham could watch and at least know she was not about to witness something horrific.
The video now showed a wall of people racing away from the entrance of the shopping centre. They were still to reach the safety of the police line. To give them the greatest chance it was obvious the three maniac’s charging at them, guns in hand, had to be killed. Yet this knowledge had not stopped one of them from waving his gun in the air like a crazed animal. Was he trying to say something? His injured hand did not help if he was. It only made him look more dangerous.
“It’s unclear how many terrorists are still inside. The three trying to escape appear to have done so without the others. Oh my, that’s one down.” The reporter hardly reacted at all to the sudden sniper shot. The impact quickly removed one of the terrorist’s heads at the neck. Except it failed to entirely detached and instead hung around the back as the body fell to the floor. Yet the news feed continued, regardless of such a gory scene. They rarely edited anything out anymore.
With one of the terrorists already dead the other two soon became even more erratic. The one with the hand injury was, for some strange reason, now rubbing his gun against his mouth. While the other had decided to stop altogether. Then another shot broke through the noise of the screaming crowd and took out the second terrorist with little fuss or spectacle. His body flew back as the bullet penetrated his chest, sending him sliding a couple of feet along the ground before stopping.
Only one terrorist now remained and he seemed to have realised it was too late for him. He froze the moment the second terrorist was killed, again from a distance. The police had no interest in stopping until every threat had been neutralised. So rather than continuing to run, he again tried to do something to his balaclava.
“What the hell’s he doing?” Phoenix said.
“He’s gonna get what he deserves. Just like the rest of you.” Elliot hardly even bothered to look at her this time.
“Shut up. I mean, why is he trying to take his mask off?” Phoenix replied.
The terrorist had managed to work his balaclava up far enough to say something. Yet he stayed silent. It was only when the mask reached his nose that everyone could see why. A thick line of black tape covered his mouth, although a tiny part of it had been worked loose.
“Oh fuck!” Phoenix shouted. She was the first to work it out.
Before the boiler suit wearing man on screen could speak the sniper’s shot echoed out. It punctured his throat, which began to release a high pressured spray of blood out in front of him. He fell to his knees as he clamped his hand tightly around the hole. Unfortunately those at the scene had failed to notice the signs in time, that he was not a terrorist. The orders had not changed either. Because of this another shot had already been fired at his head, which ended him immediately this time.
The news feed became silent as the hostages reached safety unharmed. It was less than the happy ending to the report that Graham and his group were expecting. Something felt wrong. Something that Phoenix had figured out straight away. It was clear the news team were finding out by now too, because their video feed had been left hanging with no audio from the scene.
When the reporter returned, her tone was much more serious than before. “I don’t quite know how to tell you at home. It now sounds as though a mistake has been made. I’m hearing that the three terrorists may in fact have been hostages themselves. We’re going back over the footage to see if this is true.” The reporter’s face then dropped and she had to hold her hand to her mouth as the news sank in. She began to continue her report despite obviously holding back her shock. “We’ve confirmed that at least one of them wasn’t a terrorist. The last to be shot had been gagged before coming out and his gun appears to have been attached to his hand with adhesive tape. This is dreadful news. It seems that the whole release of hostages was a ploy of some kind.”
Luke suddenly raced over to the rest of the group and wandered straight through Elliot’s body to reach the screens in front.
“Hey,” Elliot said as Luke appeared right before him.
“I apologise, Elliot,” he replied. “Where are the rest of the terrorists?”
“They haven’t said yet, why?” Graham had already sensed something was wrong with Luke. This only made his concerns more urgent.
“Because I’ve been struggling to understand some things. I do not believe this Anthony and those he works with would give up so easily. There is something missing. I just can’t think of what.”
“I’d definitely agree with you there,” Phoenix said. “There’s only one reason Anthony would send innocent people out dressed as them. He’s found a way out of there.”
This sent a shockwave of panic throughout the group, expressed through sighs and grunts. Jane pulled Alex close to her and kissed her head. The others were left looking to Luke and Phoenix for an explanation.
“Why would he bother?” Graham asked. “He can’t stop us. Once we’ve collected the rest of the MARCs there won’t be anything he can do about it. The other terrorist groups will probably be giving up soon too. Why not just hand himself in?”
“That is what is worrying me.” Luke walked to the large cube in the middle of the room and peered inside to the swirling mass of glowing shapes, each a MARC forced into captivity. “Phoenix, can you tell me more about this process you saw Anthony performing on the MARCs he caught.”
“Sure,” she replied.
Graham let them talk by the cube; he had not finished watching the news feed. It continued to focus on the three men the police had shot. It was now becoming clear that two were actually police officers themselves. Anthony was a cold hearted man to have done such a thing to three innocent people. It was something not easily forgotten for Graham. He had witnessed more violence in one day than he had ever seen before.
He joined his wife and daughter by the side of the wall screens. His first thought was of Alex. Had she seen the news feed? Bundling the two together in his arms, he held them for a second or two before speaking. “How are you both doing?”
“I want to go home, Daddy,” Alex said.
“I don’t mind saying I feel exactly the same as Alex. Do we need to stay here, Graham?”
“Where else can we go that’s safe?” he replied. “If we stay here then we’re OK. As soon as this is over we can go home, I promise.”
Jane locked her eyes on his. She was trying to see if he really meant it or not. There was no use hiding his worries from her, she could always see when he did. He preferred to be there rather than out on the streets, where the rioting could still break out. The full extent of the danger to the power relays had been kept from them. Graham saw no reason in adding this to their already stressed minds. She would know there was more to it. He just hoped she would understand why he had not told her. He was not entirely sure about the plan anymore, especially if the people behind it were somehow now out and free to track them down. “We just need to keep calm and let Luke sort things out,” he said.
“Can we really trust him though? I mean, he is a computer after all.” Jane had stepped closer to Graham to say this, just in case Luke could hear.
“Of course we can,” Graham said. “He’s the only reason the terrorists are giving up. I know it’s weird to be talking with an AI, but it makes sense to me now. All the years I’ve spent catching MARCs, I never stopped to consider what I was really doing. Elliot and Ruth had suspected there was more to them all along.”
“OK, just help them finish this so we can all go home together.”
After placing a gentle kiss on his wife’s cheek and flashing a quick smile to Alex, he left them and turned his attention to the conversation between
Phoenix and Luke. He stood by the large cube and watched as the trapped MARCs moved around, swimming into each other and around in a fluid like motion. “How much more is there to capture?” he asked, interrupting Luke’s sentence.
“We are currently at 68%. I suspect this will still take another hour or two,” Luke answered.
“So what do we do when we have it all?” Graham stepped closer to the glass and peered further inside. He tapped it like it were a tank full of fish.
“We free them. Each MARC is just like the ones Stephen first caught. There is no reason why they won’t become as advanced as myself and the others have. I am still worried about a few things however. We’ve been discussing it,” Luke said gesturing to Phoenix beside him.
“Yeah, I saw Anthony take a few of these MARC things apart. He took some of the code from it and destroyed the rest,” Phoenix said.
Graham had never heard of anyone being able to completely destroy a MARC. So how did Anthony manage it? “Is that even possible?”
Luke joined Graham by the glass. He looked inside as he spoke. “It shouldn’t be possible at all. Isaac made sure of it when he disseminated his code throughout the network. Even Simova could not achieve it. So what makes this Anthony and his people different?
“I suspect what Phoenix saw was only for show. Which leaves me wondering exactly how they were planning on recombining Isaac’s code in order to revive him. I cannot see how this was to be done. There is nothing in this complex that is designed for such a task. I am missing something hugely important.”
Graham thought back to his own dealings with MARCs in the past. He and Elliot – and the others employed to do the same job – never knew what happened after they handed in a captured one. They were all led to believe that they were finally and absolutely destroyed, or at least made inert somehow. None of them had ever really believed that at all. His job had usually stopped at having caught a MARC in the Cage tech they were given. It occurred to him that Sanctuary was actually just an enormous version of one of these small pieces of equipment.
“I guess we’ll never know. If we have it all flooding into here, they won’t be able to do a thing anyway,” he said.
“For the time being I agree with you.” Luke stepped away from the glass and turned to Phoenix. “Thank you for bringing this information to us. I must return to the tower and speak with the others. If I’ve missed anything then hopefully they can help me spot it. They should be made aware of how you have all helped us today. You’ve saved a lot of my people. I’ll be back in a little while.” He walked over to Stephen, who smiled in response. “Hello, my friend.”
“Ahoy, Lukey Luke,” Stephen said.
“Please, choose another nickname. That simply won’t do. Anyway, I need you to keep an eye on the situation. The moment anything changes, or when we have all of Isaac’s code, I want you to call me back, OK?”
Stephen nodded. “Can I have a biscuit if I get hungry?”
“Fine, you can share them out with the others. I’ll be back soon.” Luke then shimmered away like he vanished in a rippling pool of water.
With Luke gone the once combined group quickly separated into three smaller ones. Graham, Jane, Alex, Elliot and Ruth stuck together in the seated area they commandeered before the others could. Phoenix and her brother, Sean, sat together by the three doors at the rear of the room. Stephen, on the other hand, remained happily working away on the wall screens. He was again attending to things he could do by himself, chores of sorts.
Within only a few minutes of settling down, Alex had already dozed off and was no doubt dreaming of ponies or pretty fairies – the usual things in her case. The grownups had become quiet to allow the little one to rest. Their conversations were short and to the point, and rarely strayed away from the MARCs trapped in the cube or the group that had taken Elliot. The dormant device still stuck to Elliot’s chest was not helping matters either, none of them could stop looking at it.
For the first time in a day, things had become calm. They waited for Luke’s return and all hoped he had good news when he did. The counter was increasing in the background and thankfully the collecting process continued almost entirely silently. It was easy for the others to relax. But not Graham. His past experiences in capturing MARCs were all popping into his head. Never had it ever been this easy to trap them.
He had no particular concern, just a worry at the back of his mind. It almost felt to him like the MARCs wanted to be caught. He understood how the Recall code Luke had sent out across the relay network was attracting them all there. But if Sanctuary really was only a scaled-up version of his Cage tech, then why were they not fighting back? Perhaps there was some validity to Luke’s suspicions after all.
Chapter 19
Best laid plans
Two hours went by without any sign of Luke. Graham had been stuck for the last half an hour with Alex’s head resting on his leg. He was now effectively pinned to the seat by his sleeping daughter. Any movement at all risked waking her, and she never woke well when disturbed. So he had hardly moved an inch. His legs were sorely in need of a stretch.
“Psst.” Graham nudged his wife Jane, sat next to him. She had slept occasionally too. “Jane, wakeup.”
She stirred slightly, but kept her eyes shut. Instead she moved her position to arch her head away from him. “What’s wrong?” she said.
“I need to stand up, maybe take a walk around for a minute.”
“Fine, I’ll help you move Alex.”
The two of them performed a sliding movement as they shifted Alex’s tiny weight with expert precision. They managed it without waking her too. There had been a tense moment when she fought back and then rested her head back down on his leg. Luckily that had been all. Now Graham was free to get some blood supply back into his lower extremities. He straightened out his left leg and shook the numbness away, then repeated this with his right leg.
He looked to Stephen and was impressed to see him still working away without any need for rest. Things had evidently been going smoothly as he had hardly made a sound – other than the constant clicking of his computer keys.
Next he checked on Phoenix and Sean in the corner. They both took the chance to rest a bit too. Sean had been through a lot since the warehouse he had worked at was stormed by the police. Graham could not remember seeing him there, though he could very clearly remember Dillon. He tried to accept that he did all he could to help the man. Unfortunately, at the time he had seen only a dangerous and violent criminal, who had threatened to hurt or even kill on a whim.
His spying had not gone unnoticed by Phoenix. She stared back at him with protective eyes, watching him and making sure he was not a threat. It was exactly what he hoped he projected out himself. All he really cared about was keeping his family safe. He knew she felt the same. He decided it would be worth trying to find out something about Phoenix and her brother. They were stuck there for the next few hours at least before they would be clear of any threat anyway.
The moment he changed his direction to head toward them, Phoenix stood and approached him. Rather than chat in front of her brother it appeared she wanted to parlay in a place of neutrality, like a pair of pirates sizing each other up. Neither family’s would be a factor in their concerns this way, so it suited him perfectly.
“So,” he began, with no real question ready to ask. They arrived to an awkward silence that instantly stifled any attempt at holding a spontaneous conversation. Without meaning to, he was showing his hesitation to talk by staring into the large cube they stood beside.
“Look, I’m sorry for what I did to you all.” Phoenix had decided she would be the one to interrupt the unintended pause, while Graham continued to idly stare. “Me and my brothers were raised in a different world to you and your family. We had none of your advanced tech. Just solar panels and wind turbines. We had to work hard just to survive, so we did whatever came our way. I’m not saying that excuses all of this. It should at least put things into persp
ective for you.”
He was shocked by the honesty. She obviously picked up on his curious nature – though he had not realised it was so obviously painted on his face.
“Thanks,” he said. Nothing else came to mind in time. His attention again drifted to the contents of the cube and the mixing shapes inside. It was easy to mentally lose himself among the MARCs floating around. Out of everything that had happened, this remained the only thing he really understood anymore.
“Once this is all over I promise I will make it right with you all. I should never have allowed Anthony to use me and my brothers.”
“It isn’t all your fault you know. I’ve been working for bad people too. Simova should have told everyone what really happened to Isaac. If they had then something could have been done to permanently remove the MARCs.” He found himself facing difficulty in agreeing with the statement. There was more to it than that, he knew all too well. “Although if they had then Luke and all of the beings living inside that glowing tower thing wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have needed to kidnap Elliot if he wasn’t working for The Sentient Collector either.” He lost himself slightly. While staring into the cube filled with MARCs he became mentally ensnared by their strange behaviour once more.
“I guess this whole thing was going to happen whether we were involved or not,” Phoenix said, with a chuckle that sounded neither comfortable nor natural.
Graham suddenly broke his eyes away from the mesmerising display and moved them first to Phoenix and then to Stephen. He instantly realised that she was right, they were not really changing anything at all. Even with their interference Isaac’s code was still being collated. It was just happening where Isaac had initially intended in the first place. Anthony’s plan was now a complete mess. It had sounded disorganised, even confused from the start according to Phoenix. The question was, were they changing things for the better or worse?
He checked on the counter that had been increasing without interruption. The MARC count had now reached 98% of Isaac’s remaining code. It had been going along all by itself for the past two hours. If they missed something ridiculously simple then there was still time to do something about it.