Infiltrators

by Alison Ingleby

  Then, their information source came back with the identity of the woman. Maria Ramos. Confirmation that LC100 was planning to meet her at Rose Square in just an hour’s time. A hurried call to the government while troops were already spilling out of the compound, moving to get in place.

  And then Rose Square. The account of the actual event is brutally short. They were in place just a few minutes before Maria Ramos turned up. There was no sign of LC100. She refused to talk and was too badly wounded to bring in for questioning. A search of the surrounding streets and buildings turned up no sign of the man they were after.

  “There’s a ‘lessons learned’ section,” Trey says.

  “Lessons learned?” My voice is tinged with disbelief.

  “Yes. Mainly the need to double check information sources. And to avoid rushed operations. They … they think he may have spotted the Metz approaching. That it scared him off.”

  No shit.

  “Then it just gives some facts about who was involved. The captain who led the operation, the number of casualties, the government official who authorized …” Trey’s voice trails off.

  “Who authorized what? The operation?”

  Whoever ordered it is to blame.

  Isn’t that what I’d said to Giles? It wasn’t the Metz. They were just controlled. It was whoever had ordered the operation to go ahead. There’s a fluttering in my stomach and my mouth goes dry.

  Finally, I will know.

  “Who was it?”

  Trey stares at the screen, not appearing to listen.

  “Trey, who was it?” I walk over to him impatiently.

  But it is Rogue who reads the name from the screen, in his wooden, emotionless voice, as Trey turns to me, his face stricken with horror.

  “Andrew Goldsmith. Junior minister, State Department.”

  16

  Trey

  Andrew Goldsmith.

  The words are emblazoned on my eyeballs. I blink to make them disappear, but they’re still there goading me. My father. The murderer.

  I worked in the department when I was a junior minister. Back then, ministerial authorization was required for any operations of significance.

  Rogue is eyeing me with an odd expression on his face. I want to look at Aleesha, but I can’t.

  “Open the file on LC100,” she says in a tight, brittle voice.

  Rogue obliges, and the operation file is replaced by another. It’s an extended version of the files on the Personax database: a biography of the person and a holo image.

  Aleesha grips the sides of the cabinet and leans forward until her face is just inches from the image of the man.

  This is the man she believes to be her father.

  When she pulls back, I examine him. The holo is of a young man, barely old enough to have a child Aleesha’s age. He’s handsome, with dark hair that curls at the base of his neck and piercing blue eyes, and he wears clothes that might have been fashionable twenty years ago. When we saw the holo of Maria Ramos on the Personax database, I could see at once that she was Aleesha’s mother. Her resemblance to her father – if he is her father – is less clear, though there’s something in the shape of her face – her jawline and nose – that resembles the man hanging in the air. Or perhaps I’m just imagining it.

  I scan the file, trying to memorize everything the Metz know about LC100. His name is Ricus Meyer, but his place of birth and parents are marked as unknown. It mentions an aunt who’s listed as a guardian, with a London address that I recognize as being Inside the Wall.

  The file goes on to state that authorization for his residence in Britannia was given by the Secretary of State. He arrived in London after the death of his parents, when he was thirteen, to live with his aunt. I do a quick calculation in my head. That would make him … forty-one or thereabouts.

  Whereas the section on his education and employment is almost bare, the section on his criminal record more than makes up for it. Arrested for spreading dissent against the government but released without charge. Suspected involvement in an attack against the President. No evidence. A raid on the food factories in Area Six.

  The list goes on. Suspected involvement in a whole host of crimes. But no proof. Why was he never charged? Or dragged off to the Farms? Unless the Metz were more lenient in those days.

  I shake my head. Unlikely. Perhaps this aunt of his intervened to protect him.

  Aleesha’s face is twisted in concentration as she reads. “Does this say he was in charge of a gang?” She points at a section toward the end of the criminal record section.

  “Founder of the London Equality Movement.” I scan the paragraph. “It seems to be a student group set up at the university … campaigning for equal treatment of Insiders and Outsiders. It was shut down by the university due to subversive activity.”

  I read further down. “Look, this is interesting. Under the ‘deceased’ heading it just says ‘contact lost’. ‘Ricus Meyer is believed to be alive but no longer in Britannia.’”

  There’s a pause. “That was just before I was born,” Aleesha whispers. “My mother must have been pregnant at the time.”

  “What do you think ‘contact lost’ means?”

  “I dunno. Perhaps he got rid of his chip?”

  I glance down at my right forearm. It’s covered by the tight material of the suit, but I can picture the pink scar underneath. It still itches sometimes. Abby said the scar would stay with me forever.

  “He’s recorded as coming back to the city twice,” Rogue says. I’d almost forgotten he was there. “The second time was when Operation Nightshade took place.”

  “So, as far as the government are aware, he’s no longer in London. They don’t even know if he’s alive—”

  “He has a scar, just by his left eye,” Aleesha murmurs. She reaches out a hand to touch the man’s face, but when her fingers connect with the display, it flickers and disappears.

  “Get it back!” Her hand hovers in the air uncertainly.

  “We need to move on, Aleesha. There’s no more information on there.” I check the device on my wrist. 19.20. “Time’s running out.”

  Her head whips around. “Why? Are you worried about what else your father has done? Who else he’s murdered?”

  I swallow. Her tone bites, but what hurts even more is that she’s right. What else has he done?

  Rogue has taken over the display. The words in the air blur as he scrolls through file after file, his expression getting grimmer with every passing minute. Suddenly, he pauses.

  “This one mentions you. A raid on Dellom Street a few weeks ago.” Another pause. “Some criminals were rounded up and an illegal girl was shot. The crowd attacked a group of officers.” His finger hovers in the air. “Do you want me to activate the VR?”

  “No!” Aleesha lunges forward, pulling his arm down and holding his hand in both of hers. She takes a deep breath. “I-I don’t want to go through that again.”

  Rogue’s face twists into an odd expression as he looks at the screen then down at his hand.

  I glance at my watch again. 19.31. “Aleesha, we really need to move.” My voice is harsh, though I’m not sure why. I try to soften it. “The device.”

  She drops Rogue’s hand and wipes her eyes with the back of her sleeve. Tear tracks stain her cheeks. Then she straightens and is all business-like again, as if she’s flipped a switch inside.

  “You’ve seen what really happens on Metz raids?” She turns to Rogue. “That wasn’t what they tell you, right?”

  Rogue stands like a statue, staring at the holo display. Lines of text and images appear as he scrolls down. I wonder if he’s even reading the words.

  “They didn’t tell us we would be doing this.” His bottom lip quivers. “We are supposed to protect people. That’s our job!”

  “You should be able to make your own decisions about what’s right or wrong,” Aleesha says quietly.

  “Yes, I mean …” Rogue shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He jab
s at the holo and the display disappears. “The captains make the decisions. We trust them. You’ve seen enough? Let’s go.”

  “There’s one more thing,” I say. “You say captains make the decisions at the moment. We have reason to believe that’s going to change. Are your tech team working on something new?” Aleesha catches my eye and shakes her head a fraction. “Would we be able to talk to them?”

  Aleesha rolls her eyes. But sometimes, being direct is the best way.

  “You could speak to the professor.” Rogue sounds uncertain. “He runs the labs here and oversees the medical program.”

  Aleesha flashes me a quick glance and I nod. Sounds like the right place. “Great. Will he mind us bothering him?”

  “No. He likes visitors.”

  Rogue leads us back out into the large corridor with the eerie green lighting. It’s cooler out here, but I only feel it on my head and hands. The suits are heat regulating, keeping our bodies at an even temperature.

  “This way.” Rogue stops at the next set of doors leading off the corridor and places his palm on a pad.

  Not automatic access then.

  I follow Aleesha through the doors and into a brightly lit corridor. It feels like a medic unit: spotlessly clean and minimally furnished with a lingering smell of antiseptic. Like the training wing, the corridor is a light grey, with a double strip of yellow running along the wall at waist height. A sign hangs from the ceiling, pointing to another set of doors on the right. Emergencies.

  On the opposite side of the corridor, there’s a double door labelled “General Assessment”. Rogue walks straight past this and pauses outside an unmarked door further up the corridor. He presses a button and a buzzer sounds from inside the room.

  There’s a pause, then a voice crackles out from a small speaker. Rogue says something in a low voice, and a moment later there’s a click and he pushes the door open.

  The room inside is large and dimly lit. It looks like a laboratory; large workbenches separated by slim partitions. A large spotlight focuses on one of the nearby benches, which is part holo unit, part workbench. Electronic chips and wires are scattered on the bench next to a soldering iron that’s glowing red.

  An elderly man in a white coat steps back from the bench and comes to greet us. “Come in, come in. It’s not often we get visitors here.” He stops suddenly and runs a hand through his frazzled iron-grey hair.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see us, Professor.” Rogue gives him a formal nod. “These are the recruits I mentioned. They came top of their class in the recent assessments and I’m giving them a tour of the compound as a reward. They were interested in finding out more about your work.”

  “Excellent!” The man beams. “I’ve always said recruits should be told more about the process before they become officers.”

  I find myself staring at his left eye. There’s something odd about it. It takes me a second to put my finger on it: the pupil is strangely dilated compared to the right eye.

  “Oh, sorry, I forgot to switch my magnifier off.” The eyelid closes for a second, and when it reopens the eye looks normal. “It’s an implant. Very handy for detailed work.” He sweeps his arm back toward the bench. “Of course, bots do most of it, but I find tinkering around helps me think.”

  I glance over at Aleesha, who gives me a nod. My lead, then. “What are you working on at the moment?”

  “Have you been taught how the Metz operate yet? How they do their job?”

  My mouth goes dry and I swallow nervously. What are we supposed to know? Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Rogue giving an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “Um, not really.”

  “Well the thing that sets the Metz apart from law enforcement in the pre-Flood era is their ability to work together and instantly – or almost instantly – respond in a coordinated manner to a threat.”

  I sense the professor moving into lecture mode and school my expression into one of interest. Aleesha steps subtly away and walks over to the other side of the lab.

  “So how does that work? Is it something to do with our chips?”

  “Yes, well, sort of. You have just the one implant at the moment – the one you received when you arrived here that replaced your citizens’ chip. When you graduate and join the officer ranks, you will be given a second implant. This implant links each officer to their captain and is only activated when they are wearing their helmet. We call it the master implant. When the captain instructs an officer to take an action, their body interprets that as a direction from the officer’s brain. As there’s no hesitation or thinking time, this means a group of officers can operate precisely as a unit.”

  “Like machines.”

  The professor nods. “Exactly.”

  “But what if the captains think random thoughts? Like that they need to scratch their nose or something?”

  The professor throws back his head and laughs. “They did in the beginning, I believe. Before the process was refined. But not anymore. Part of the captains’ training program is learning to focus their thoughts, so only relevant thoughts are directed to the implant and out to the officers. That’s part of the reason the program is so long, and why only a certain percentage of those who begin it actually graduate.”

  “What happens to those who don’t succeed?”

  Rogue takes this one. “They return to their teams as normal officers. It’s not often that captain vacancies come up, but when they do, the top performing officers are selected for the trials,” he explains. “There are various stages and at each stage, officers are released back to their teams.”

  I consider this for a minute. “But if they want people to respond and act like machines, why don’t they just use bots?”

  “Good question, a very good question.” The professor nods enthusiastically. “The need for the Metz arose at a time when the bot technology wasn’t sufficiently developed. Human instincts and decision-making were vital to their role. The technology used then was just an extension of existing technology being used to equip special forces. Of course, bot technology is much more advanced now, but politically … well politically, they don’t like the idea that an army of bots is marching the streets. They prefer having humans in that role.”

  The corner of Rogue’s mouth twitches. I suspect I know the professor’s views on the matter. Behind him, I catch sight of Aleesha on the other side of the room, waving and pointing at her watch. We’re nearly out of time.

  “So, what are you working on at the moment?” I indicate toward the pile of electronics on the bench.

  The man’s brow furrows and he lets out a deep sigh. “This is a long-running project. But I think we’ve nearly cracked the final part of the problem. Under the current system, captains get their orders before they leave the compound and then transmit them to the officers in their team when they’re out in the field. This generally works well, and it gives the captains some room for improvisation, but a couple of aspects are less than ideal. Firstly, the range of the implants is limited. This isn’t usually a problem in the field, as the team are within a limited distance of each other, but it means that the Commander often isn’t able to directly instruct a captain once they’ve left the compound.”

  He pauses and looks at me. “What do you think the second thing is?”

  I think for a minute. “Everything relies on the captain,” I say slowly. “If you lose the captain, then you’ve lost control of the officers?”

  “That’s right!” The professor looks pleased. “There’s a single point of failure, which is never good in a system. That’s why the captains look identical to every other officer, so they can’t be picked out. And why the top priority of every officer is to protect their captain, whatever the cost. But that’s what this little device is designed to help with.” He picks up a small black box from the bench behind him. It looks like a smaller version of Jameson’s device but with an engraving on the front. A helmet with two yellow flashes on either side.

  “What d
oes it do?” Aleesha pads back over the room toward us.

  “At the moment, the officers in each team are linked to a specific captain. This can be changed here in the compound. For example, if an officer is injured and another needs to take his place, we simply switch them over on the system. That’s one of the beauties of the implant system. The officer doesn’t need to spend time training with the new team. But they have to come back to the compound for the switch to take effect.”

  The professor presses his finger against the black box and a list of codes appears in the air above it. He scrolls down with his finger. “This is a mobile version of the main system. The Commander can use it to reassign officers to a different captain or control individual officers or groups of officers personally.

  “It also contains a booster, extending the range in which the Commander can communicate with the captains. He’d still need to be out in the field to use it, but he could be holed up in a safe environment and control the operation directly, rather than relying on the decisions of his captains. He can even use it to access each captain or officer’s helmet cam.” He places the box down on the table and the display disappears.

  “Of course, for most day-to-day work, this isn’t necessary.” He sighs and looks suddenly sad. “But there have been so many disturbances of late that—”

  I lose the rest of what he says as there’s a crackling in my ear, like a fly buzzing around. My hand moves instinctively to the side of my head before I catch Aleesha’s warning glance and realize what it is.

  A voice comes through, but the words are hard to distinguish through the static. “Com … land … minutes.”

  They’re coming in? Now? How long have we got?

  My hearing clears and I catch the professor looking at me expectantly. “Um, sorry, could you repeat that?”

  He frowns. “I was just asking if you had any further questions.”