Shift (24 page)

He leant in even closer. I smelt stale coffee on his breath. “It’s so weird, because I’ve been trying to get hold of her all day. You know she asked me to do some digging into Heritage? Well I found something. Big.”

“What?” I asked, deciding not to tell him quite yet about Aubrey being locked up and it being all my fault.

“Heritage was involved in a top-secret programme of ARES’ and when I looked into it, Aubrey’s name popped too.”

“What was it?”

“That’s the thing. I can’t find out any more than that. Whatever other files they have aren’t on the standard network. You’ll need access to the private network.”

“How do I get on to that?”

Carl laughed. “You don’t. It can only be accessed by BCI.”

“What’s BCI?”

“Some Shifters can’t be kept out of regular computer networks,” said Jake. “Hacking passwords and whatever are just way too easy. We just Shift till we find the right combo, going through each variation in turn, and bam! We’re in.”

“Exactly,” said Carl. “So we created a different way of storing and accessing information, with an interface that picks up brain signals. Brain Control Interface.”

“You just think ‘open’ and the file opens. It’s pretty cool. We were shown how to use it last week.” Jake was sitting on one of the desk, playing with a mouse shaped like a car.

“Hang on, does it look like a skullcap thing?” I said, remembering the stims Zac used at the casino.

“The old models were. Now, the receptors are implanted into the brain of the operators just under the skull. There’s less interference that way. But you might still be able to use one of the old stim sets to access the network. It wouldn’t be as quick of course.”

“OK, so we just need to get an old BCI thing and we can access the secure network?”

“Whoa!” Carl held up his hands, as if blocking me. “There are only three BCI receptor points in the building. In Sir Richard’s office, but that one’s never been set up as he refused to have the implant…”

“And where are the other two?”

“In Mr Abbott and Commandant Morgan’s offices.”

“Do you have an old model we can use?”

“Well, sure but it won’t do you any good. The network is designed to recognise the operator’s brain waves. So you’d have to get Morgan or Abbott to access it for you. Or at least have them in the room with you.” I turned to Jake. “Do you still have your sister’s bag?”

Five minutes later we were standing outside Morgan’s office.

“You ready?” Jake nodded and I knocked and opened the door without waiting. “Excuse me, Commandant.”

Morgan span around in his chair so fast it almost spat him out. I’d clearly interrupted him in spinning it round and round and he was looking a little flustered. “Well, hello, Scott. No hard feelings about last night’s raid, I hope? All in a good cause.”

“Of course, Commandant. Glad to see those SLF scum where they belong.” I walked in slowly, trying to cover Jake who was crawling in behind me and hoping he hadn’t registered Morgan’s comment. I would have to tell him it had all been my fault soon enough. But first, we had a job to do.

I coughed and carried on. “The Regulators did a great job. Which is what I wanted to talk to you about. I know it’s early to be thinking about what I do after entropy, but I have to look to the future. Like you kept telling us in Integration classes.”

Morgan’s face lit up. “Well, I’m glad to hear it, Scotty. Of course, I knew you had potential when I first met you. But you’re not getting any younger, believe me, and your Shifting days are numbered.” He stood up and gazed out of his large window. “So many Shifters only think about shaping their past. We need to think about shaping our future. Of course, once entropy hits I will move to become head of the Regulators and Mr Abbott can finally retire.”

I decided not to say anything about Abbott only allowing that to happen over his dead body. He sighed. “I remember when I was your age…”

“Wasn’t that like three years ago?” I asked, and Jake hit my leg to shut me up. But Morgan wasn’t listening anyway.

“Tempus fugit. Tempus. Fugit,” he said, just as Jake pounced. Morgan only had the time to squeal as the syringe entered his thigh and the drugs took effect. He slumped into his chair, a huge dopey grin on his face.

“Nice work,’ I said, high-fiving Jake. “Now, let’s see if we can get an answer out of him.”

He was spinning around in his chair, giggling to himself. “Mr Morgan?” I said, trying to get him to focus on me. His eyes were rolling in his head and his tongue was hanging out of his mouth. He was well gone.

“OK, forget him. Do your thing,” I said pointing at Morgan’s monitor. “Carl!’ I shouted.

Carl opened the door an inch, then stepped inside. “What have you done?” he said, staring at the drooling Commandant.

“Don’t worry about him. Help Jake.”

Carl rubbed his face. “I’m going to get in so much trouble.”

“Do it for Aubrey,” I said, giving his shoulder a squeeze. That seemed to work.

“OK,” Carl said. “Push him in front of the screen and let’s see if this will work.”

I wheeled Morgan under his desk and slapped his hands away as he started stroking my face. Carl placed a skullcap on Jake’s head and stuck the receptors in place. A single wire, ending in an electrode, trailed out of the back and Carl pressed it against Morgan’s temple.

“This should pick up his signal and then you can piggyback it, I think,” Carl said, stepping back.

Jake stared at the screen, his eyes glazed. It blinked into life.

“I’m in. What do you want?” Jake said, sounding distant.

“Look for Aubrey’s file,” I said.

A second later a document popped into existence on the screen and opened with a little whoosh. I scanned it. Aubrey’s birth date, entrance to ARES’ training programme, promotion to Third Class. The last entry said “Volunteered for the Ganymede Programme.”

“What do you think Ganymede is?” Jake asked.

“I don’t know, but I don’t think Aubrey is the volunteering sort,” I said.

“That’s the name of the programme I was telling you about,” said Carl. “Total security blackout. So I couldn’t find any more than that. But now… Try and find anything on Ganymede, Jake.”

Jake blinked and a file called Ganymede whooshed open. Inside were three documents. “Overview”, “Volunteers” and “Candidates.”

He opened the Overview file first.

PROJECT GANYMEDE

CLASS FIVE PERSONNEL EYES ONLY

Inception date:

12/10/86

Project Remit:

Investigation into: The origins of the ability known as “Shifting’; the nature of entropy; the potential to militarise the power.

Project Leader:

Dr Michael Lawrence, MD, PhD, DoR.

TOTAL CLEARANCE:

APPROVED

“Well, that doesn’t tell us much,” I said, reading it for the second time. “Open Volunteers.”

The Volunteers file was a list of names and dates ranging back to the 1980s. Aubrey’s name appeared top of the list.

“Rosalie’s name’s not there,” Jake said, shaking the monitor as if it would reveal its secrets that way.

“Don’t worry, Jake. We find Aubrey, we find your sister. Try Candidates.”

The file was almost identical to the previous: a list of about twenty names and corresponding dates. But next to the names it said either “In active service” or “Retired”.

I scanned the list and the first name that jumped out at me sent a shiver down my spine. “Henry Heritage. Retired,” I whispered. Six names above him was another name I recognised. “Clive Warner. Retired. That was the man from the Tube.”

There were five other names marked Retired.

I rubbed my face and stared out the window, ignoring Morgan’s jabbering next to me. Two men, who ended up with their brains missing, on the same list. Both candidates for some programme that involved experiments into sustaining Shifting. I thumped the glass. Zac had been right. ARES were up to something and Aubrey had got caught up in it.

“Er, Scott,” Jake said pointing at the screen. I looked back and followed his finger to see a third, all-too familiar, name on the candidate list.

“JON CAIN. IN ACTIVE SERVICE.”

“To what do we owe this pleasure, Mr Tyler?” Cain said, smiling as I entered the training room. “It’s not often we have a Bluecoat in our midst.” The group laughed and some of the kids waved. Distracted, I waved back.

“Sir, I need to–”

He held a hand up. “Sergeant Cain now, Scott. I think I have to call you “sir”.”

“Sergeant Cain,” I tried again, more urgent this time. “I need to speak to you.”

Cain hesitated, looking me up and down. “All right. Class, carry on sparring. But don’t think you can slack off. I might not be watching, but I’ll know.” He pointed to his foggy, ‘all-seeing’ eye. Then he led me to a corner of the room.

“Is this about Ms Jones? I heard that you’ve been trying every which way to get in to see her. I’m afraid I can’t help with that.”

I shook my head. “No, sir, I mean, sergeant.” I swallowed hard. I knew that what I was about to reveal could get me in some serious trouble. “It’s about Project Ganymede.”

Cain’s face was totally expressionless, which in itself was a pretty big giveaway. He should at least be looking confused. “Go on,” he prompted. Clearly he wasn’t going to let anything slip till he knew where this was going.

“I know you’re a part of it. One of the candidates.”

He couldn’t hide his feelings this time. Blood rose red in his cheeks and his jaw clenched so hard the tendons fought to escape his skin. For a second I was worried his head was about to explode.

“I don’t think that is any of your business, Mr Tyler,” he said when he’d recovered. “Now, I have a class to get back to.”

“They’re dying.” I said to his turned back. He stopped. “The other men on the project. Seven of them are already dead.”

He spun around, slowly. Blinked twice. And then spoke. “Tell me what you know.”

With a glance at the sparring kids, I pulled Cain to the side. “I found the files on Project Ganymede. Don’t ask how, I just did. And there was a list of candidates. Your name was on it and next to six of the other names it said ‘retired’, and we’re not talking the pottering around in your garden wearing slippers kind of retired. It’s the dead kind of retired. Head exploding dead.”

“What are you on about, Tyler?”

“The explosion on the Tube. The guy they say was the bomber – Clive Warner – he was on the list. Only he wasn’t the bomber. Because I was on the carriage when it blew up and minutes before I watched him have a complete breakdown and then his head exploded. Only after that did the carriage blow up. He had nothing to do with it.”

“They said it was the SLF who were responsible.”

I kicked at the floor with my shoe. I really didn’t want to say what I was about to say, because it meant that I was starting to believe Zac. And that meant that me being responsible for getting them arrested was even worse than I’d first thought. “I don’t think it was them. They’re a bunch of vandals who like to play at being tough guys. But the only brain damage they’re interested in is their own.” Our heads were inches apart now as we struggled to keep our voices unheard. “I think this is bigger than them. Then there’s Heritage.”

“Henry?” Cain said, sounding sad and angry at the same time. “He killed himself.”

“No he didn’t. He was killed. I found his body, but then someone Shifted and… well, anyway. It was no suicide.”

Cain leant away, as if trying to distance himself from the information. He rubbed at the folds of flesh at the back of his neck and took a deep breath. I guess he knew Heritage. Probably from the Project and here I was telling him his friend had been killed. “So what do you want me to do about it?” he said.

“Help me get Aubrey out.”

“Jones? What’s she got to do with this?”

“She’s been volunteered for the programme.”

Cain smiled a little and shook his head. “I think you’re mistaken. Only adults are on the project.”

“No. The adults were listed as the Candidates. There was a second list called Volunteers and all the names on that list were kids.”

His smile slipped away and a look of cold realisation spread over his patchwork face. “They’re using kids? I mean… They wouldn’t.” His jaw clenched. “We have to find her.”

“Yes!” I said, getting excited. “Only…”

“Only what?”

“Only I have no idea where she is. I think it might be in a hospital called Greyfield’s but I don’t know where that is,” I said.

“Leave that to me. Oh, and Tyler, I should warn you. We’ll be up against some serious firepower. Grown men, trained and ruthless.”

I wasn’t worried. “That’s OK. I can Shift.”

“That’s the thing,” Cain said looking me straight in the eye. “So can they.”

“What? But adults can’t Shift.”

“Some of us can,” he said.

I walked after him and then stopped as I replayed what he’d just said over in my head. “Hang on,” I said. “Us?”

Cain stopped and turned back to me. “I thought you knew. That’s what Project Ganymede is,” Cain said. “A secret group of adult Shifters. There are only about twenty of us, as far as I know. But if they’re dying, maybe less now.”

“So there are adults who can Shift?” The weird world I’d found myself in over these past three months tilted and yet again I was totally lost. “Why has no one told us about this?”

“What bit of top secret don’t you understand, Tyler? As far back as the Thirties they’ve been trying to find ways to stop entropy. During World War II they really stepped up the research. An army of Shifting soldiers – you can imagine why they were so keen. Of course there were units of Shifters. The Germans had the Hitler Youth and we had our Scouts. The Nazis got furthest, carrying out sick tests on Jewish Shifters.”

“Did they work?” I asked.

“Not as far as I know. But they learned a lot about how the Shifter brain worked, because they weren’t limited by anything as inconvenient as morals. They put their victims through horrific experiments, just to see what would happen.” Cain’s eyes tightened and his fists clenched. I imagined if there were any Nazis around he’d happily carry out a few experiments of his own on them.