Brain Storm (US Edition) (4 page)

When her brain finally
realized what it was she was hearing she set her knife and fork back down, on the bare tabletop her fork still with a small portion of meat stuck to its prongs. But Carla didn't notice. She even put her bare arms on the table so that she could lean forwards closer to the television.

It wasn't the fact that this was a terrorist attack taking place practically on her doorstep that caught her attention. These kinds of things happened all the time, albeit on not so grand a scale. What made her sit up and take note was the
fact that someone she knew could have been inside the statue when the terrorists took it over. She had to know if he was all right.

She stood up immediately and left the dingy hole. No one came after her with a bill, in this part of town you paid up front if you expected to get served. It had already been late when she went to get her food and darkness had descended a couple of hours before that. In this part of the city none of the buildings were all that tall and if Carla tilted her head back she would be able to glimpse the stars between the hazy cloud cover. The streetlights, even when they were working, didn't provide enough illumination to make such sights difficult.

But Carla wouldn't be tilting her head back to take a look. Instead she wrapped her drab cloak around her and pulled the hood up over her head so it hung almost low enough to obscure her vision. She hunched her shoulders and kept her eyes on the rubbish strewn floor. It didn't always work but if you could make yourself look as defeated as everyone else who was forced to live like this you stood a better chance of being able to pass unmolested.

Carla was in a hurry but trying desperately not to let it look as though she was. She passed innumerable rundown buildings. Buildings that had been boarded up when their owners abandoned them and whose boards had been torn free to provide access where people could seek refuge from the cold and wet. There was a group of three buildings that were now nothing more than burnt out shells. Whole walls had been blown apart and bullet holes dotted others. It was said that the damage had been caused by security forces on a raid to root out terrorist insurgents. But it was also said that the security forces had taken it apart to test the battle effectiveness of some of their newer model security and military mechs. The bodies that were discovered after and held up as the bodies of terrorists had just been regular people seeking sanctuary.

People unlucky enough to not have access to one of the abandoned buildings were curled up amid the rubbish in the alleys between them. Junkies and drug pushers congregated openly out on the streets. They had nothing to fear from the local police force, all of their resources were ploughed into keeping the people from areas like this from getting into the better off neighborhoods. On rare occasions you could catch sight of hookers walking the streets, the ones working these streets were the truly desperate any of them who could manage were working in the richer areas where people could actually afford to pay them enough to make it worth their while.

As she pounded the street in a regular rhythm Carla found herself wishing for a car. No one down here had one and there were barriers up on the roads to try and stop them stealing them to bring down here. Carla had had a car once, she had even been driven down here in one that belonged to her friend Karl. But he hadn't driven it beyond the barriers, even if he had managed to find
one of the gaps in the barriers it wouldn't have been worth it. They would have just been a target for one of the gangs or a loner trying his luck.

Carla raised her head slightly at the sound of a scuffle from up ahead. Under the intermittent glow of a half dead streetlight that buzzed as it flickered, she could see a group of five young men with shaved heads and tattoos in place of hair. They were stood surrounding a bundle on the floor that was moaning and whimpering as the gang members took it in turns to deliver kicks to their victim. Carla crossed the cracked street and continued on past not giving the group a second glance. She felt sorry for whoever it was that was on the receiving end of the beating but she knew better than to get involved. A young woman like herself out without any form of protection would have been ripe pickings for another type of treatment at their hands. She fully understood why so many of the women down here would get involved with the gangs and display their tattoos proudly. They were symbols that if anything happened to them there would be a steep price to pay. Their tattoos were promises of retribution.

Carla had never got close to the gangs but everyone who had been living here for anything more than a week new the score. The gangs ran the show, collecting protection money from the few remaining business and generally doing whatever they liked. They controlled the drug distribution throughout the area although it was a mystery where they got their supply from. No one messed with the gangs, not even other gangs. The only exception to the rule was when a new leader would emerge in one of them. The new leader had to assert his authority while the other gangs would push out and test his resolve. Then there would be a gang war until new boundaries were decided upon and there would be relative peace again. The security forces never even bothered to get involved when a gang war erupted unless it looked like it was going to spill out over the boundaries and affect people who mattered.

She turned the corner out of sight of the attack and started up the steps to the old Westfield Hotel. The place was awfully rundown but was still open for business. Instead of being a proper hotel it now functioned more like an apartment building. People who could afford to got their own private room, small and dirty though it was. The entire top floor belonged to a gang that called themselves the Legion of Doom. They were the ones who really ran the hotel, although it was managed by a middle-aged man called simply Joseph. It was the Legion's presence that kept the place running smoothly and prevented the inhabitants being
terrorized on a regular basis by those who couldn't afford to live there. It didn't stop it all the time though, shortly after she had moved in Carla had returned back to find her door off its hinges and her room turned upside down. She had called Karl and he had hurried over so she could spend a good hour crying on his shoulder.

She passed through the double doors, one of which hung permanently open at an angle from one broken hinge, and into a wide empty foyer. Joseph was where he always appeared to be, Carla had yet to pass through without him being there and she was convinced he ate there and slept there, behind his barred screen. The desk, enclosed on all sides by a steel cage that only let out through a door in the back wall, was the only piece of furniture in the foyer. There were bits and pieces from the frames of seating that had been built into the walls and torn out over time remaining but nothing functional.

Carla waved to Joseph as she started up the stairs to her floor and he nodded back to her. There was no point in her going to see if the elevator was working, it never had in all the time she had been living here. When she talked to Joseph about it he had told her to talk to someone from the Legion of Doom about it. She had tried to explain the problem to a couple of the gang members she happened to pass on her way up to her room. At first they had blanked her completely and after a little persistence on her part had explained that since they occupied the top of the building they were the ones who had the furthest to travel and since they were willing to put up with the hassle she should quit her complaining. The stairs turned back on themselves on each floor so Carla had two direction changes before she emerged onto the hallway of the third floor.

The floor of the hall was bare but there were patches where whatever adhesive the original owners had used to bind the carpet to the floor had been too strong and a faint echo of the carpet remained. The wallpaper was in better condition, curling in only a few places but yellowed with age. Most of the light fixtures were working well enough with only an irregular flicker coming from the one just in from the stairs.

Her room was located halfway down the hall. Her room was number twenty. Although the rooms had been turned into permanent residences Carla had a suspicion that number nineteen next door to her own was used in a more traditional hotel manner. If the purposes for renting a room by the hour could be considered traditional. There were four girls who used that room, usually separately but on some occasions Carla had heard two or three of them together. There were too many men using the room for Carla to be able to guess at how many but some members of the Legion of Doom were regular visitors, that was probably how the women paid the rent.

Sure enough as she walked past the door to number nineteen she heard the familiar grunts and moans accompanied by the rhythmic bouncing of bed springs. Ignoring them as usual Carla stopped and opened the door to her own room, being sure to lock it behind her not only with her key but also the pair of heavy dead bolts Karl had insisted on installing for her. Joseph was the only other person who was supposed to have a key to her room but with the Legion of Doom in charge Karl thought it was better for he
r to be safe than to be sorry.

Carla removed her cloak and through it onto the back of the only comfy chair she possessed. She passed quickly through the living room and into the tiny kitchen, little more than an old fashioned gas cooker and a microwave. There was also a small refrigeration unit standing on top of a cracked work surface. She moved the refrigeration unit out a few
centimeters and pulled a portable combined computer terminal and communication unit from behind it. She hid the device, another gift from Karl, in case Joseph or any of the gang upstairs took it upon themselves to have a look through her things. It would be too tantalizing a prospect for any thief, the dinner plate sized device would be worth a great many credits.

She took the leads that came with the unit from their hiding place down the side of her chair and plugged them into the unit and the corresponding ports in the wall. The damage to the hotel was only cosmetic the data cables and electricity cables worked well most of the time except for when there was a sector wide shut down. Occasionally the warm water would stop or the water would come through a rusty brown but Carla could put up with a few cold showers.

She switched the terminal on and opened the lid to reveal a small full color high resolution screen, on the underside of the top, and a keyboard and tracking ball on the corresponding surface. She entered her password when prompted, it was just a four letter name; Karl, and scrolled down to open a connection with the communication unit in Karl's home. His was a full sized wall mounted unit that he could leave in full view because it wasn't out of place in the neighborhood where he lived. After a few moments she was presented with the choice of leaving a message for Karl to access later or for sounding an alert to get his attention for a real time conversation. She chose the latter. After another short wait she was informed that the user wasn't answering and was again given the option of leaving a message or prompting an alert. She chose the latter. After another wait she was told once more that the user wasn't answering and this time was presented only with the option of leaving a message.

Karl had drilled into her time and again that it was dangerous for her to be connected to him in any way and that if she contacted him it had to be in real time not by leaving him messages so she backed up and severed the connection.

Carla sat and stared at the screen waiting for her next instructions and blinked when the screen became dark. The terminal had a ten minute inactivity cut-off and Carla had been inactive for that time without even realizing it. She pulled the leads out of the terminal and closed the lid. She sat there for a further few minutes as the options ran through her head. Just because Karl wasn't answering it didn't mean he had still been at the statue when the terrorist attack took place. He had told her that he had to go there to meet somebody who would be able to help her. Then she could get back to a normal
life
instead of the insane
existence
she was currently trapped in.

Carla reopened the terminal and reconnected one of the leads to the wall socket. She called up the current news sites and scrolled through a number of them, both local, national, Confederation and world-wide, searching for a list of hostages. She had no luck none of the sites even contained information on an approximate number of hostages all they had seemed to be vague indications that there were hostages inside but no actual confirmation of that fact.

Well if she couldn't get the information sitting on her backside here she would go down there and get it for herself. She had no idea who she would be able to approach to find out if Karl was being held but perhaps if she could pass herself off as a concerned relative to the police or other security personnel they would be more open with their information than they had been to the press. It was a terrible risk for her to take given her status but she had no reason to suspect that the police were looking for her so she decided to risk it. It wasn't like she could really be at risk in a crowd as big as the one surrounding the park. Especially one made up of such a large number of so diverse a group of police and security forces.

Retrieving her cloak Carla rushed back out of the door and down the stairs.

Chapter
Four

Sara was standing up on her feet and had moved to a position behind the opening door before it had opened more than three centimeters. She had her combat knife held ready, there wasn't time for her to grab her pistol nor could she take it off the safety catch without a telltale click. She tensed fully ready for action, trying to keep her breathing steady despite the urge to hold her breathe. She needed to have oxygen going to her brain and her muscles if she was going to succeed.