Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  * * *

  While the street lights of London faded away under a magnificent dawn sky, Yoyo decided to call Jericho again. During the night, she and Diane had become fast friends. She’d never worked with such excellent search programs or selection parameters.

  ‘I have some news,’ she said. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In Jennifer’s office. We can speak openly. Wait a moment.’ He listened to a soft voice in the background, then said, ‘Look, the best thing to do is call again, direct to her number, okay?’

  ‘You can tell her straight away that—’

  ‘Tell her yourself.’

  He hung up. Yoyo squirmed around impatiently on her chair. She was burning to tell him about the dossiers Norrington had put together on the guests and staff at Gaia. Diane had done a lightning search, comparing Norrington’s supposed findings with publicly available biographies on the net and found no significant discrepancies, except perhaps for the fact that Evelyn Chambers was telling some whopping lies about her age. As for the staff at Gaia, two Germans, an Indian and a Japanese, they had been chosen by the director of the hotel, Dana Lawrence, who in turn had got the job on the strength of a report from Norrington, knocking four other highly qualified candidates out of the running. Norrington hadn’t actually turned any of these other four down flat, quite the opposite, it was rather that Lawrence’s track record put all the others in the shade. Lynn Orley had made the final appointment, and she would have had to have been insane to refuse Lawrence the job, given such excellent references. It was only when you looked closer that you realised that Lawrence’s official CV on the net was strangely different. Certain jobs that she had supposedly held made her just the right woman for the job in Gaia, but online they were missing, or didn’t quite match up. It was certainly the career of a dedicated professional, but if you wanted to assume the worst, you could easily say that Norrington had massaged the facts to help Lynn make her decision. Yoyo saw nothing at all wrong in assuming the worst.

  Eager to know what the others would make of her findings, she typed in Shaw’s name and was just about to let the computer make the call when she heard a noise.

  A lift had stopped outside on the gallery. She heard the doors slide apart.

  Yoyo froze. Nobody was supposed to be in the Big O right now except for the security patrols and the tireless crew down in the situation room. She strained her ears, becoming aware of her surroundings for the first time. She was sitting at somebody’s workplace, an entirely interchangeable, uniform cell; employees kept their personal possessions in the mobile units that let them log in anywhere needed, throughout the building. Diane lay to her left, beneath the holographic display, a slim, shimmering machine, while on her right was a wheeled set of drawers, probably containing all the clutter that a computer still couldn’t replace, even in 2025.

  She opened the top drawer, peered into it, opened the next one down.

  She glanced at the panoramic windows. London’s night was slowly giving way to early morning light, but over in the west it was stubbornly dark. She could see the office interior reflected in outline in the windowpane, the workstations, the door in the wall behind her that led through to the hallway and the gallery.

  She could see a silhouette in the hallway.

  Yoyo ducked. Whoever it was hesitated. A man, judging by the height. He was just standing there, staring.

  * * *

  He had to take her by surprise. It could be that Shaw still didn’t know about the hacking. It would be one thing to overpower Yoyo and get hold of the computer, but then there would be Jericho to deal with. Perhaps there would be a way to lure him upstairs. Assuming that the two of them hadn’t told Tu Tian what they were up to, it might be enough to get rid of them and then the computer as well, then it would be as if none of this had ever happened, nobody would ever suspect that—

  Rubbish! This was wishful thinking from start to finish. How would he explain it once they were both dead? The surveillance system would show everything. Why grab Jericho’s computer, when it didn’t hold anything that wasn’t also stored in the Big O mainframes? Shaw could get at his data any time she liked, which is what she would do if he killed two people up here – not to mention the fact that he’d never manage that, since in stark contrast to people like Xin, Hanna, Lawrence and Gudmundsson, he wasn’t a killer. It wasn’t game over for Hydra yet, but for him it certainly was. Even making a break for it was as good as a confession of guilt, but if he stayed, he might just as well put the cuffs on himself. There wasn’t any point cleaning up his trail now. He had to get out of here, drop out of sight!

  He had enough money for a new life, quite a comfortable one at that.

  The open-plan office lay in twilight.

  How much had she learned? Had Jericho’s computer been able to retrieve his deleted emails and reconstruct them?

  Where was the girl?

  He was torn between the urge to find out more and the need to get away. He looked across the room, then his feet carried him forward as though of their own accord. He stepped into the office. It looked empty. The overhead lights were dimmed. Two workstations away, monitor screens glowed, and he saw the modest little box that Yoyo had left there, the one they called Diane. He should search the office. The workstations offered various hiding-places. Indecisive, he walked a little way into the room, paced this way and that, looked at the clock. Xin must be here by now, he should get out, but the monitors glowed like the lights of some safe refuge.

  He hurried across to the workstation, bent down and had his hands on the little computer when the room burst into life behind him.

  * * *

  Petite though she might have been, Yoyo was also muscular and in good shape, so she had no trouble in picking up a fairly heavy office chair and taking a swing. As Norrington spun round to face her, the back of the chair caught him full-on, slamming into his head and his chest and knocking him backwards onto the desk. He grunted, and scrabbled for a handhold. Yoyo swung at him again, from the side this time, and he fell to the floor. Even as he landed there on his back next to Diane, she flung the chair aside and drew from her belt the scissors she had found in the drawer. She landed hard on his chest with both knees.

  There was an audible crack. Norrington made a choking, hacking sound. His eyes bulged. Yoyo clamped the fingers of her left hand around his throat, leaned down low and shoved the point of the scissors so hard against his balls that he could feel it poised there.

  ‘One false move,’ she hissed, ‘and the Westminster Abbey Boys’ Choir will be glad to make your acquaintance.’

  Norrington stared at her. Suddenly, he swung at her. She saw his clenched fist flying at her, ducked aside and drove the scissors deeper into his crotch. He flinched with his whole body and then froze completely, simply staring at her again.

  ‘What do you want from me, you madwoman?’ he gasped.

  ‘I want a little talk.’

  ‘You’re crazy. I came up here to see whether everything’s okay, whether you need anything, and you—’

  ‘Andrew, hey, Andrew!’ she interrupted. ‘That’s crap. I don’t want to hear any crap.’

  ‘I just wanted—’

  ‘You wanted to swipe the computer. I saw that, thanks. I don’t need any more proof, so get talking. Who are you working with, and what do they want? Were we right about Peary? Who’s pulling the strings?’

  ‘With the best will in the world, I don’t know what you’re—’

  ‘Andrew, you’re being foolish.’

  ‘– talking about.’

  Dark red swamped her vision, glowing and all-consuming. Utterly forgotten was any chance that the man beneath her might have had nothing to do with the deaths of her friends, with the agonies that Chen Hongbing had gone through while Xin had him trapped in front of the automatic rifle. Forgotten any idea that she might be wrong about him, that Norrington might have had nothing to do with any of this. Every cell of her body burned with hatred. She wanted, she neede
d a culprit, here, now, at last, anyone to blame before she lost her mind, a bad guy to stand in for the monsters who had tortured the people she loved, the people whose love she needed. Her loved ones, who had seen things that they couldn’t talk about, things that clamped a mask over their faces. She jerked back her arm and rammed the scissors into Norrington’s thigh, stabbing so hard that skin and flesh parted like butter before the blades, and the point scraped hard against the bone. Norrington screamed like a stuck pig. He raised both hands and tried to shove her away. Still wrapped in her red rage, she yanked the improvised weapon from the wound and set the point against Norrington’s genitals again.

  ‘It hurts, wherever I aim,’ she whispered. ‘But next time the consequences may be rather more permanent. Were we right about Peary?’

  ‘Yes,’ he screamed.

  ‘When? When’s the bomb due to go off?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He twisted and turned, his eyes stark with pain. ‘Sometime. Now. Soon. We’re out of contact.’

  ‘You started the botnet.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you stop it?’

  ‘Yes, let me go, you’re insane!’

  ‘Is your organisation called Hydra? Who’s behind it all?’

  Without warning Norrington’s head jerked up, and Yoyo realised that it had been a mistake to crouch so low above him. There was a noise like two blocks of wood being slammed together as his forehead met hers. She was flung back. By reflex, she stabbed and heard him howl, then felt him grab hold of her and fling her aside. There were spots dancing in front of her eyes. Her head roared and her nose seemed to have swollen to several times its original size. She rolled swiftly out of Norrington’s reach, holding the scissors out in front of her, but instead of launching himself at her, he hobbled away.

  ‘You stay here,’ she gasped.

  Norrington began to run, as much as his wounded leg would allow. Yoyo clambered to her feet, then fell down again straight away and felt at her face. Blood was pouring from her nose. She felt sickeningly dizzy, but finally managed to stand up, staggered from the office out to the gallery and saw Norrington climbing some stairs on the other side of the glass bridge between the Big O’s western and eastern wings.

  The shithead was making for the flight deck.

  A quiet voice inside her warned her not to give way to her hatred, to consider that it might be dangerous up there. She didn’t listen. Just as she could not doubt Norrington’s guilt, right at this moment she couldn’t think of anything but stopping him from getting away. She ran after him, glanced down at the dark glass canyon that yawned below the bridge and felt a wave of nausea climb her throat. She fought it down.

  Norrington was fighting his way up the last steps.

  He was lost to sight.

  She shook herself. She resumed the chase, crossed the bridge at last, hurried up the steps two at a time, in constant danger of losing her balance. She made it to the top and saw one of the glass doors out to the roof gliding shut.

  Norrington was outside.

  Holding the scissors tightly, she went after him, and the glass doors slid open again. The flight deck stretched away before her eyes, with its helicopters and sky-cars. Norrington hobbled towards something without looking round, waving.

  ‘Over here!’ he called.

  She quickened her pace. She was puzzled to note that there were airbikes up here as well, more exactly, one airbike. She hadn’t noticed it the previous morning, and all of a sudden she knew why.

  Because it hadn’t been there.

  She stopped. Her eyes skittered around the flight deck, and she saw two guards lying on the floor, their limbs outflung. A figure dismounted. Norrington staggered, recovered and then dragged himself on towards the bike. The figure pointed a gun at him and he stopped, his hand pressed to his thigh.

  ‘Kenny, what is this?’ he asked, his voice wavering.

  ‘We’ve classed you as a risk,’ Xin said. ‘You’re stupid enough to get caught, and then you’ll tell them what you mustn’t tell anyone.’

  ‘No!’ Norrington screamed. ‘No, I promise—’

  He was flung upward a little into the air, and his body hung there for a moment like a puppet before he flew backwards, his arms spread, and thudded at Yoyo’s feet.

  There was a only a mass of red where his face had been.

  She froze. Sank to her knees, and dropped the scissors. Xin walked towards her and pressed the muzzle of the gun against her forehead.

  ‘How nice,’ he whispered. ‘I had already given up all hope.’

  Yoyo stared dead ahead. She thought that if she ignored him perhaps he might just vanish, but he didn’t, and her eyes filled slowly with tears, because it was over. Finally over. This time nobody would ride to her rescue. There was nobody who could turn up and take Xin by surprise.

  Very softly, her voice hoarse, so that she could barely understand the word she spoke, she said, ‘Please.’

  Xin squatted down in front of her. Yoyo raised her eyes to the handsome, symmetrical mask of his face.

  ‘You’re pleading with me?’

  She nodded. The gun’s mouth pressed harder against her brow, as though boring a hole.

  ‘For what? For your life?’

  ‘For everyone’s lives.’

  ‘How very exorbitant of you.’

  ‘I know.’ Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, and her lower lip began to tremble. And suddenly, curiously, she felt fear washed away with her tears, the fear that had been her constant companion for so long, leaving only a deep, painful sorrow behind. Sorrow that she would never learn now what had happened to Hongbing, why her life had been the way it was, why their lives hadn’t been different. Xin couldn’t scare her now, nor any of his kind. It wouldn’t have taken much for her to fling her arms around his neck to sob on his shoulders. Why not?

  ‘Yoyo?’

  Someone was calling her name in the distance.

  ‘Yoyo! Where are you?’

  Jericho! Was that Owen?

  Xin smiled. ‘Brave little Yoyo. Admirable. It’s a shame, I would have liked the chance for a longer chat with you, but as you see, there’s no rest for the wicked. They’re looking for you, I’m afraid, so now I shall have to leave you.’

  He stood up, the gun still pointing straight at her forehead. Yoyo turned her face towards him. The dawn breeze was pleasant as it dried the tears on her cheeks. Caressing. Forgiving.

  She heard Jericho shout, ‘Yoyo!’

  Xin shook his head.

  ‘I’m sorry about this, Yoyo.’

  Peary Base, North Pole, The Moon

  The evacuated guests took their seats in the Io and buckled themselves in. Kyra Gore was on her way to the cockpit when a call came through from Callisto. Nina Hedegaard’s face appeared on the screen.

  ‘Where are you?’ Gore asked as she warmed up her engines.

  ‘On our way to land soon.’

  ‘Turn around, right now! Orders from Palmer.’

  ‘What about our group?’

  ‘They’re all on board here with me.’ She modified thrust, aimed her jets and lifted the shuttle slowly. ‘Here on Io.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘The only ones left in the base are Palmer and some of our crew. We had a visit from Carl Hanna. The whole place might blow up any moment now, so turn round and cover some ground away out of here!’

  ‘What about Carl?’ Julian Orley broke in. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Dead.’

  She cast her eyes over the control panel, from sheer force of habit. The landing field was dwindling away below the Io, and the whole scattered assembly, factories, pipelines, igloos and corridors, were only toys, a bucket-and-spade set for scientists to muck about in the lunar sand. The roads ran across the regolith like grooves on a toybox lid. In the tiny hangars, little machines assembled other machines, not quite so little. The sunlight gleamed blindingly from the solar panels. Gore curved her flight-path, climbed again and steered Io across the cr
ater wall to the west.

  ‘Dead?’ Orley snapped.

  ‘Miss Lawrence killed him. She’s with me, along with your daughter and your guests. They’re all right.’

  ‘And the bomb? What are Palmer and his crew doing?’

  ‘They’re looking for it.’

  ‘We can’t just leave them to—’

  ‘Yes, we can. Turn around. We’re flying back to the Chinese.’

  DeLucas

  Had only seconds passed? Or hours? DeLucas couldn’t have said, but when she saw the timecode ticking backwards on the bomb, she knew that the worst experience of her life had not even taken a minute. Kicking and screaming, she had finally managed to break free. After a few metres, the bomb wedged against the rock. She had had enough of being afraid, so this time she simply yelled at the mini-nuke as though it were a snot-nosed kid who only heeded harsh words. Wonder of wonders, it actually listened to her, and the low box came free of the wall. A surge of adrenalin carried her along the corridor and past Tommy Wachowski’s body into the airlock, where she hopped from one leg to the other as though the floor were electrified. As the air pumped slowly in, she saw through the viewport Palmer and Jagellovsk coming into the Great Hall, and she slammed her fists against the pane. Palmer spotted her and stopped dead in his tracks. The door glided open. DeLucas stumbled over the threshold and fell full-length on the floor, and the bomb skittered across to stop at the commander’s feet.

  ‘Six o’clock,’ she panted. ‘We have thirty-five minutes.’

  Palmer grabbed the box with both hands and stared at it.

  ‘Let’s get it out of here,’ he said.

  They went up with the lift, left the igloo and ran outside onto the bulldozed plain, out amongst the hangars. The Io was just disappearing off past the crater wall.

  ‘What do we do with it now?’

  ‘Disarm it!’

  ‘Thanks, wise guy! Do you know how to do that?’

  ‘Oh, man, I must have seen it a thousand times in the movies. We just have to—’

  ‘Red wire or green wire? Movies are movies. Are you out of your mind?’