Ciphers

by Matt Rogers

  ‘You think I can’t take care of myself?’

  Slater swept a hand across the space. ‘You seemed to manage okay.’

  ‘Not really. When you got here, I had a gun to my head.’

  ‘Like I said,’ King said, ‘don’t beat yourself up.’

  ‘Hard not to. I’d be dead if you were a minute slower.’

  ‘Probably not.’

  She raised an eyebrow.

  King said, ‘He seemed intent on using you as a hostage. They were here for us. Not for you.’

  ‘Oh, well, I feel miles better.’

  ‘You’re our handler. Not an operative. And you still killed three of them.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she mumbled, and turned to survey the scene.

  It didn’t seem real to her.

  Slater said, ‘Have you killed anyone before?’

  King threw a quick glance in Slater’s direction, and gave a subtle nod.

  Then he raised his hand and drew it once across his throat. Not now.

  Slater nodded back. Understood.

  Violetta looked up and said, ‘I’m not a spring chicken.’

  ‘Let’s not get into that,’ King said.

  ‘Probably a good idea. You two, come with me.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Away from here.’

  Slater scanned the bodies, noting their body armour and the casual-wear underneath. This had been planned. A strategy had been formulated and executed by parties unknown. He and King were targets, just like they’d been targets many months ago in this very same building. They weren’t nearly as beaten and battered as they had been at the end of that particular skirmish, but the same principle applied. Someone wanted them dead, and it coincided with a blackout.

  Coincidence? he thought.

  As Violetta fetched her Glock from behind one of the overturned chairs, Slater said, ‘Is this about us?’

  She checked the magazine was full, slammed it back home, then looked up. ‘What?’

  He jerked a thumb toward the street. ‘Everything happening out there. Are we the reason?’

  Violetta stared at him. ‘Are you being serious?’

  ‘The timing adds up.’

  ‘If this was just about you two, you think they’d take out all of New York City?’

  King stiffened. ‘Is that what happened?’

  ‘Didn’t you know? Everyone got the same emergency alert. There’s more than eight million people affected.’

  ‘How?’

  She looked at King. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The networks are down. How’d you get that alert out? I didn’t even think about that.’

  ‘We got it out before they went down. It was close. Whoever’s behind this killed the cell towers half an hour after they killed the lights.’

  ‘Why are the networks down?’ King said, disgruntled. ‘Aren’t there backup generators in place to keep the cell towers operational? I thought all that was put into place after one of the hurricanes.’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ she said. ‘We don’t entirely understand it. Right now, the phone companies can’t communicate with critical cell towers. It’s like they were targeted, too. Like this was one giant cluster bomb of disorientation designed to go off at once, to sow the seeds of panic.’

  ‘What’s happening here, Violetta?’

  Silence.

  King said, ‘What is this?’

  ‘Nothing good. I’m not about to brief you here. There could be more of them on the way.’

  ‘Do you know why they’re coming for us?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have an idea?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Are we testing your patience?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Slater said, ‘Let’s go, then.’

  ‘Drop the rifles and get handguns,’ she said. ‘We need to move on foot. I don’t want the pair of you causing a mass panic by openly wielding fully automatic assault rifles in plain view.’

  ‘It’s dark,’ King said. ‘We’ll be discreet.’

  She stared daggers at him.

  He dropped the G36C.

  ‘Understood,’ he said. ‘You’re the boss.’

  Slater didn’t like it. ‘Have you looked around? You think whoever wants us out of the equation is going to stop at one wave? Do you remember what happened before Nepal?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Please don’t start this here, Will.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘You have a problem with authority. And you might have a personal problem with me, too. You think I favour King because we’re together. Right now, none of that matters. We only need to cover a few blocks, and I’m not about to have you parading through the streets with HK rifles. People are on edge enough as it is. And the streets are clogged. In those circumstances you’re both a better shot with a handgun that with a rifle. Now pick up a pistol and follow me.’

  Slater mulled it over, but by now he was almost completely sober, and common sense took over.

  He said, ‘Okay.’

  Violetta blinked. ‘Really?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re complying.’

  ‘You don’t think people can mature?’

  ‘Maybe some people,’ she said. ‘You? Not so much.’

  King half-smirked.

  Slater gave him a death stare.

  King wiped it off his face immediately.

  ‘Where are we going?’ King said.

  ‘We have a temporary HQ, not far from here. A covert set-up in an empty office building. Fully discreet. No-one knows of its existence. The pair of you can treat it like a safe house until we get this sorted.’

  ‘Was it created for a reason?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Slater said, ‘He means — did you know this blackout was coming?’

  ‘Not the blackout, specifically.’

  ‘But you knew something was wrong.’

  She looked at them both. The silence was ominous.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Then she put the hand holding the Glock inside her coat, shielding it from view, and set off for the building’s entrance.

  As if on cue, the dim light in the lobby spluttered out.

  In the darkness, King and Slater exchanged a look.

  It said everything that needed to be said.

  Then they followed.

  22

  Rico was halfway through a mugging when gunshots exploded into earshot, just down the street.

  He nearly leapt out of his skin.

  He’d stumbled all the way to the Upper East Side from Palantir, wired to the eyeballs from the cocaine, barely noticing the frantic crowds all around him. He thought he noticed passersby getting slightly more perturbed by the blackout, but he chalked it up to his adrenaline firing on all cylinders and forced it out of his mind. He couldn’t care less if the whole goddamn city started freaking out. It didn’t affect him one iota.

  He’d spent a considerable amount of time searching for the perfect location to cause some trouble, and found it in a quiet street just off Second Avenue, home to a smattering of luxury residential buildings. It hadn’t taken him long to find a target.

  He’d cornered a couple in their sixties not long after arrival, shepherding them into the shadows with sharp jerky movements. They were old and unaccustomed to the harsher side of life, and they’d obeyed like sheep. She was in a fur coat and he was in a three-piece suit that barely hid his gut. Rico figured they’d been on the way home from the theatre or an expensive dinner when the lights went out. They were pathetic, in his opinion. Dinosaurs stuck in their ways, moving through life on autopilot. He hadn’t even pretended to own a weapon. He’d just stuck his chest out and acted unhinged — which, frankly, didn’t take much effort given the amount of substances in his system — and demanded their wallets.

  They’d been in the process of handing them over, both of them on the verge of breakdowns, when the gunshots went off like fireworks in the distance.
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  Rico flinched so hard he gave himself a heart palpitation. He felt the organ lurch and jerk in his chest, which added to the sudden shock. He gave thanks that it was dark, and that the elderly couple didn’t see him go pale. He touched a hand reflexively to the left side of his chest to make sure he wasn’t about to have a heart attack, but everything returned to normal within seconds.

  Recovered from the jarring sensation, he snatched the two wallets and shooed the couple away. They hurried off down the street, in the opposite direction to the gunshots. Rico thought he heard a sniffle from the wife, and maybe from the husband, too.

  It put a smile on his face.

  He tucked the wallets into his pockets without going through them. He had all the time in the world for that later. Right now, he was fixated on the firefight playing out a hundred yards down the street. Men with rifles flooded toward a building with floor-to-ceiling glass windows and shot them out, shattering the panes with deafening rounds. He couldn’t make out their features. They were dark silhouettes against a dark backdrop, and they bled inside like creatures of the night.

  Then something struck a dumpster a dozen feet to his left, and a moment later the muzzle flare emanated from within the lobby itself.

  He’d been shot at.

  Rico’s heart spiked again.

  This time, it palpitated longer.

  Seized by sudden terror, he threw himself behind the dumpster, clutching his chest. Sweat broke out under the collar of his shirt, but he didn’t notice. He was fixated on the space ahead, his eyes glazing over. Fear unlike anything he’d ever felt before struck him, turning him cold. His heart zigged and zagged in his chest. He gripped his pectoral muscle tighter. His eyes went wide.

  Really? he thought. This is where it all comes to an end?

  He thought his life flashing before his eyes was a cliché, but it happened.

  Well, not all of it. Only some parts. Only the parts that mattered, the parts that had contributed to his current predicament.

  Like every time he’d stumbled into a bathroom and snorted lines, or taken ecstasy and ignored the tightness in his chest. Each memory flashed across his vision in a rapid-fire montage, and he realised, Yeah, I probably deserve this. He’d been pretending the warning signs weren’t there for far too long.

  But it subsided. It took some time, and when his heartbeat finally returned to normal he became aware of other sensations. Like the sheet of perspiration he was coated in, and the clamminess of his hands, and the paralysing fear gripping him tight. Then, one by one, those sensations faded too, and he found himself seated behind the dumpster panting and fighting the urge to vomit.

  No more, he told himself. No more drugs. At least, not for a while.

  He realised he very well could have been sitting there for an hour. Pure fear is a fugue state. It feels like an eternity, and it also feels like the blink of an eye.

  Fighting to keep all the alcohol down, Rico crawled on all fours out of cover, wondering if the gunshots had been some crazed hallucination induced by a vital organ on the verge of shutdown. But he stumbled his way to the mouth of the alley and saw the glass windows still shattered. He hadn’t been dreaming it. But the street was silent. His ears weren’t ringing, so perhaps the violence was over…

  Then a couple more shots rang out, and Rico froze up. A few minutes later, a trio of individuals stepped out of the lobby and set off down the street. There was no artificial light whatsoever, and he could only make out their silhouettes, but something about the way one of them moved seemed familiar—

  Then they were gone.

  Rico stayed on all fours, barely moving a muscle. The sweat was drying on his skin, turning cold. His pulse was steady, but hard, thrumming in his neck and chest.

  He tried to figure out what to do next.

  Then a voice only inches behind him whispered, ‘Hello.’

  He jolted so hard he nearly induced another episode.

  He turned to see a guy roughly his age staring at him, with a shaved head and wide, unblinking eyes. The kid looked like a skeleton. He was gaunt and his skull seemed hollow.

  He was on his knees in the middle of the alleyway, watching Rico like a cat watches a bird.

  The scene was indescribable.

  Rico flapped his lips like a dying fish.

  The walking skeleton said, ‘I’m Samuel. What’s your name?’

  23

  King stepped across the threshold before Slater, staying on Violetta’s heels.

  He didn’t think of steering their conversation toward anything personal. They were an item, but whenever work interfered they tucked that side of their relationship firmly aside. No ifs, ands or buts. No exceptions. And this…

  This was definitely work.

  Shards of glass crunched underfoot as he stepped out onto the sidewalk. The giant window panes that had previously constituted the entire lobby wall facing the street were now shattered into thousands of pieces by the mercenaries’ gunfire. King scanned the street, up and down, as soon as he was out in the open. There was no one in sight. Any pedestrians had promptly scattered. There was no pandemonium. Nothing close to what would have happened if the firefight played out on a normal Manhattan evening. These circumstances were different.

  Maybe a few hysterical civilians who’d seen or heard the shootout unfold might have run off screaming bloody murder, but they would have quickly been swallowed by the general hysteria reigning across the city.

  No, it was just quiet.

  Violetta said, ‘This way.’

  She wasn’t looking at them. Her eyes were everywhere at once, scanning every visible window and every dark shadow for signs of hostility. King did the same, and he knew behind him Slater would be following suit. He mirrored Violetta’s stance, keeping his Sig Sauer P320 in his hand and readily accessible, hidden from civilian sight only by the fold of his leather jacket.

  But there were no more reinforcements, and no reason to worry. It had been a once-off invasion, quashed as soon as it had begun. King didn’t bother trying to figure out what that meant.

  He knew almost nothing at this point, and speculation was just wasted time.

  They moved in a tight unit, and they didn’t speak. They covered the length of the street in the darkness. Better to keep things discreet. They reached the end of the street and merged into Second Avenue. It was like transitioning from a ghost town to a major city at peak hour. There were thousands and thousands of people crammed into the long avenue, flowing in several different directions at once, each in various stages of excitement. Some were giddy, some were scared, and some had no visible reaction to the blackout.

  Almost everyone was looking up. That’s where the awe lay.

  King barely noticed. All his brainpower was consumed by risk assessment. He was scanning every face, searching for the slightest hint of hostile intention. He knew it was useless — if the mercenaries truly knew his position, they’d be watching him from one of the blacked-out windows. But it was impossible to follow anyone in a crowd like this, especially one so frantic.

  They trekked south-west, toward Lenox Hill. King noticed someone by his side and looked over to see that Slater had caught up.

  Above the incessant murmur of thousands of civilians, Slater said, ‘No one’s freaking out yet.’

  ‘People are scared.’

  ‘Scared. Not panicked. There’s a big difference.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You said two days.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Are you sticking to that?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘She won’t tell us anything until we’re secure, right?’

  ‘Not yet. She takes protocol seriously.’

  ‘It sounds like malicious code.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m speculating.’

  ‘You mean a deliberate attack on the power grid?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Aren’t there systems in place to prevent that?’<
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  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You seem to know what you’re talking about. Could it be done?’

  ‘We’ll find out, won’t we?’ Slater said.

  Together, they bored holes into Violetta’s back. Desperate for answers. But she didn’t turn around. She was in a hurry, laser-focused on the task at hand. She shouldered pedestrians aside as best she could in her haste to reach their destination. King and Slater almost had to strain themselves to keep up.

  Then, all of a sudden, she veered off Second Avenue, deep in Lenox Hill. They moved away from the crushing throng of pedestrians and found some space to breathe. King followed her carefully as they passed a couple of art galleries and an expensive hotel, all dark. Then they reached a walk-up residential building that seemed barely inhabited, even when the lights were usually on. It looked like tenement housing, with old brick walls and arched windows and dirty glass and a rusting metal fire escape trailing up the exterior.

  There was a visible water tower on the roof.

  King pointed up and it and said, ‘Most residential buildings in New York have those, right?’

  She followed his gaze and said, ‘Most of them should. It used to be a requirement because of the water pressure you’d need to pump water up to the top. Why?’

  ‘That’s good, then,’ he said. ‘The taps might work for more than two days in those buildings.’

  She didn’t respond. Just thought about it, and nodded curtly.

  Slater said, ‘And then?’

  ‘And then they’ll go dry like the rest of them.’

  Violetta didn’t react. But the ramifications seemed to sink in, if only for a moment. She’d clearly been running all systems go ever since the power went out, including flirting with death in the lobby of King’s building. Now, in a rare moment of quiet, with her adrenaline coming down, it seemed she had time to consider the consequences.

  She reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  Then she looked from him, to Slater.

  She said, ‘We need the two of you now more than we ever have. This is going to be a disaster of historic proportions if we don’t fix it.’

  They nodded.

  The gravity of the situation seemed to get heavier.