Skyfall (21 page)

‘Where do you think you're going?'

He looked up to find his way blocked by a security officer, just one in a long line who were working their way across the common, moving systematically from person to person.

‘To DGAP. To find my—'

‘You deaf? Didn't you hear the instructions?'

‘But—'

‘Go and find somewhere to sit and we'll get to you when we get to you.'

‘But I'm okay, really. I don't need any help. I just want to get back to my dad and let him know that—'

The officer fixed him with a steady glare. ‘Listen, kid, everyone on this common wants to get back to someone, right? And nobody's going anywhere until they've been checked out by an i.d. team, okay? So turn around, find somewhere to sit, and wait your turn.'

‘Can't you just check me out now?'

‘I don't have a scanner. You'll have to wait.'

Sighing, Lari moved back through the crowd until he found an empty patch of ground where he flopped down and tried to ignore the wailing of a baby a few metres away. He watched the officers making their slow, systematic way across the common, using portable scanners to check everyone's wristbands. Once scanned, people were allowed to go, most trudging wearily towards one of the buildings or a maglift hub. Finally, the mother and her crying baby were scanned and sent on their way. Then a pair of officers turned to Lari.

‘Your turn, mate. Up you get.'

Lari hauled himself to his feet and held out his wrist. The scanning device emitted a soft chime and the officer holding it peered at the readout.

‘Hang on, Bern.' His partner, who'd already moved across to the next group of people, stopped.

‘What?'

‘Look.' The first officer passed the scanner across and the second man glanced at it before nodding.

‘You take him across to process. I'll keep on here.'

‘What's going on?' Lari asked. The men ignored him.

‘This way, please.'

‘Where are we going?'

‘To the process station.'

‘Why?'

‘Because the reader told us to, okay?' The officer's tone left no room for argument. ‘Now, if you don't mind …'

Sighing, Lari followed him to where a table had been dragged out from a nearby restaurant and a com terminal set up on top of it. Behind this, in a roped-off area, stood a group of perhaps twenty people. Judging by the look of them, they were mainly shifties or lower-level workers, their faces bored and suspicious. The officer led Lari across to the portable setup, which was being manned by a female officer.

‘Name?' she snapped.

‘Larinan Mann.'

‘Wrist!' She held out a hand.

‘What?'

‘Give me your band.' The woman's grey eyes regarded him coldly.

‘Listen, what's going on? I want…' The officer grabbed his wrist in a pincer grip, digging his fingers into a nerve bundle on the side of Lari's arm so that a bolt of pain shot all the way from the tops of his fingers to his shoulder. ‘Hey!'

‘Do as you're told, son.'

His arm throbbing, Lari silently offered it up to the woman at the desk, who scanned his wristband without another word. This time there was a lot more information on the readout than there had been on the small hand-held one.

The female officer nodded at Lari's escort. ‘Good work. I'll take it from here.'

‘Sure.' The man marched away, while the woman came around the desk, her hand resting lightly on her stunner, which she wore attached to a hip-clip.

‘I don't want any trouble from you, okay? Do the right thing and there'll be no problems.'

‘Can I contact my father, please? He's the—'

She shook her head. ‘There'll be no contacting anyone until after we've had time to question you.'

‘About what?'

‘Some discrepancies in your readout.'

‘What discrepancies?'

‘It's not for me to say. Somebody will be along to begin interviewing when things calm down. In the meantime, you're to step into the enclosure and remain there calmly until you're called.'

‘This is insane.'

The woman offered no further comment, but pointed him towards the roped-off area. With a last glance back across the common, Lari did as he was told.

‘Ride the skyfire

She's been trying, but she doesn't know how.

Every time she pushes into it, it pushes back, harder and more forcefully than she would have thought possible.

‘DON'T!' it seems to be telling her.

But she has to. She knows she does. So she tries again, and again, and again.

And every time, the skyfire sears her mind and blinds her thoughts with cold.

It doesn't hate her.

It doesn't love her.

It doesn't care.

‘Ride the skyfire.'

Ride it where? she wonders …

The room was windowless, the only light coming from a small portalamp on a makeshift table in the centre. Three figures sat hunched and silent around it.

‘It should have happened by now.' The speaker sounded young, but his face was a mass of scars which made his age difficult to judge.

‘Patience.' Gregor leaned back and stretched his arms, stifling a yawn. ‘It will take some time for word to get down to us. I imagine security will lock out the maglift and coms from Port North Central as soon as they realise what's going on.'

‘And so we just sit here and wait?'

‘Can you think of something better to do?' Gregor rose and paced slowly around the table. ‘Just be confident in your own abilities and in our planning, lads. They weren't expecting this, so they won't be looking out for it. The worst that can happen is that some of our own people might have been accidentally caught up in the business end of things, but assuming everyone did their jobs properly

A masked figure appeared in the narrow doorway. ‘Dad?'

‘Come in, Jem. Any news?'

The girl almost skipped into the room.

‘You should have seen it, Dad! It was incredible! The explosion …'

Before she could finish her sentence, the two youths at the table were on their feet, whooping and slapping each other's backs.

‘That'll show them.'

‘Upper-level Shi!'

‘Cut it out, both of you!' Gregor's voice cracked hard off the bare concrete walls. ‘This is
not
something to celebrate. We just killed a lot of innocent people, quite possibly for no reason at all.'

The two young men fell silent.

Gregor turned back to his daughter. ‘What do you know?'

‘Not a lot. I magged down as soon as the bombs went off, before they shut down the system. It was bad, though.'

‘How bad?'

‘I could see bodies everywhere. The second blast took them out in the alleyway just as we planned. Lots of screaming, lots of panic. Just what you wanted.'

‘Good.' Gregor scratched one of the scars that rippled across his face. ‘Very good. That should get the attention of the Prelature, at least.' He turned to the two youths.

‘You did well. But don't go getting cocky. They know what we're prepared to do now, and you can bet it won't be so easy next time.'

‘There'll be a next time, then?'

‘Of course. But a different sort of target.'

‘What?'

Gregor shook his head. ‘You don't need to know. Not yet, anyway. What you need to do is start getting more materials together.'

‘How much?'

‘More than last time. We'll need at least five times the destructive capacity of today's blasts.'

‘Five times?'
The youth with the scarred face looked shocked. ‘What are you planning to do? Bring down a dome?'

Gregor's voice was hard. ‘Just get the materials.'

‘No way. I … No way in the sky. That's too much.'

‘Garen, you're not going soft on us now, are you?' Gregor's voice was low but calm. ‘You made the same commitment as the rest of us.
Whatever it takes
… Remember? I'd be very upset if you were to go back on your word.'

‘But a whole dome, that's insane.'

‘Whatever it takes, Garen.'

‘I can't. Blowing up a few cloudheads in their restaurant is one thing, but a dome … That'll disrupt the mags, the coms, the recyc …'

‘That's the point.'

‘No.' The youth shook his head. ‘Sorry, but I'm out.'

‘There is no “out”, Garen, you know that. This is the Underground.'

‘I don't care. You can't make me. I'm out of here. I won't talk, but I don't wanna be involved.'

‘Are you certain?'

‘Yeah.'

Gregor sighed and nodded briefly in his daughter's direction.

Jem's fist caught the boy squarely on his temple. He didn't even have time to cry out before his body folded to the floor.

‘A pity.' Gregor shook his head sadly. ‘He had such promise, too.' He turned to the remaining youth. ‘And what about you, Cairn? Do you have any objections you'd like to voice?'

‘No.' The voice was a whisper.

‘Good. Go then. Get to work.'

‘Okay.'

The youth fled.

‘Can we trust him?' Jem asked, once he was out of earshot.

‘We can now.' Gregor nodded at the form lying on the floor. ‘Is he dead?'

‘No.'

‘Good. He's useful. We'll let him wake up with a headache and once we point out how lucky he is, and how generous I'm being, I'm certain we can convince him of the error of his ways.'

Now, for the first time since his daughter's arrival, Gregor allowed himself a small smile.

‘No hitches at all, then?'

‘Nope. Smooth as.'

‘Good. If we're lucky, security will take a while to piece it all together. We can't rely on that, though.'

‘So we move ahead?'

‘Of course. If we really want to have an impact, we should move fast.' He nudged the boy on the floor with his toe. ‘Once Garen wakes up, we'll send him off to get working on the next device.'

‘There
was
one thing …' Jem began.

Gregor regarded her with an even stare. ‘I thought you said there were no hitches.'

‘There weren't. Not with the operation, anyway.'

‘Then what?'

‘Larinan Mann was there.'

Gregor froze. ‘In the ref?'

‘No. But close. The guys we had watching DGAP tailed him as far as the common, just before the first explosion, but they didn't want to follow him any further.'

‘Understandably. Do we know if he was caught up in it?'

‘Not yet.'

Gregor scratched his bare scalp. ‘Why wasn't he safely in DGAP?'

‘Don't know. He left it in a hurry, I'm told. Looked upset.'

‘And he ran straight into our operation. Interesting. I wonder what could have made little Lari run away like that?'

‘Could he have known what was going to happen?'

‘I doubt it. Our organisation is solid. No, him getting tangled up in it was just dumb luck.'

‘Good or bad luck?'

‘That's the question, isn't it?' Gregor crossed over to the table and flicked off the portalamp. The room fell into darkness, only a dull rectangle of light coming through the open doorway. ‘Luck is what we make of it. Find out what's happened to him, if you can. If he survived the blast, find out why he was there in the first place. If we play things right, this could be … useful.'

‘How?'

Gregor smiled into the shadows.

‘Leverage. It's all about leverage, Jem. Something in DGAP spooked that boy, and I'd be interested to know what.'

‘You think he'll tell us?'

‘One way or another. He does owe me a favour, after all. Now go and find out what's happened to him.'

‘What if I can't get to him? Port North Central's gonna be locked down for hours.'

Gregor looked thoughtful.

‘Then bring me his friend. Perhaps she'll be able to help us out.'

Without another word, Jem slipped out into the gloom of the underworld.