Spiral (20 page)

If only they knew, she thought.

If only they could catch her!

She shivered; half in delight, half in fear.

Yes; she had been the best programmer and systems analyst - probably in the whole of the UK. But there had been something else; a splinter deep in her soul that led her to
hack ...

Her skills had been developed, honed, refined by taking on the largest computing conglomerates and corporations. She cracked their databases for a laugh. She was turned on by smashing their personnel files. She got a heroin high from fucking their finances.

Jessica knew not what drove her; there was something wrong with her soul, but she hated -
loathed
- that part of the world which said, You will know this, you will have access to
this,
but the rest of you... well, you can all fuck off.

Data protection? Ha.

Jessica wanted to give the world everything.

Freedom of information.

Freedom of choice as opposed to electronic prisons, math cells, digital locks and keys.

And the QIII Proto?

Jessica smiled mischievously to herself.

Well, the QIII would become her greatest achievement. Spiral could use it to override military systems; hack world data banks; match terrorist identities from satellite scans; redeploy troops on the battlefield from RI hack based on WorldCode probabilities ...

And WorldCode, again, one of Jessica’s finest moments.

The perfect honing of Artificial Intelligence.

Real Intelligence, the ability for a computer to
think,
to possess
emotions and control the fight for civilisation!
It would be the ultimate weapon against evil, and Spiral would be at the forefront of this awesome new technology, Spiral could conquer the growing terror of gun-runners and bomb-makers, assassins, hijackers, drug smugglers ...

Jessica shivered. She understood that the stakes were high; she had not really understood, never really
considered
before the destruction of the London HQ. But the deaths of so many colleagues had left her chilled to the dark corners of her soul.

Jessica knew; this was no longer a game.

And probably it never had been.

Jessica returned to the lift, and then, on a whim, decided to call on the lab_central, see what the ghostly machines were running at this midnight hour, this graveyard shift. All ops were normally automated during the night and so she had little fear of meeting anybody at this lonely time.

After descending to the lab depths, she padded along the corridor to her own specialised departments. She stopped. She accessed the first of three reinforced glass doors. As the first door closed behind her, leaving her in a cubicle of glass awaiting access to the second door - she saw it.

A figure...

Jessica Rade froze.

The figure was motionless, standing near the QIII deck.

Jessica stared for long, long moments. No movement came from the figure and Jessica tried to meet its dark gaze, sure that she had been seen and yet aware that the figure gave no indication of having spotted her.

Was it a guard? A
real
guard, not some doped-up corridor sentry with nothing to do except clench his toes to stave off cramp and share the odd cigarette with other examples of patrolling boredom?

Or was it a sentinel?

A protector?

Jessica sank slowly to the carpet and sat, wondering what to do. She crawled over to the door that had admitted her, and swiped her pass. The door slid open silently and she crawled for it, down the corridor, across the carpets and tiles, then got to her feet and, with a smile at her incredible luck, ran for it—

A few minutes later, she was sitting on the edge of her bed, a glass of brandy in her shaking fingers, sipping it slowly and wondering what the dark figure had been up to; why had it been there?

Her heart was still hammering as she contemplated the figure she had witnessed; clad in grey, wearing some sort of lower face mask and with dull copper eyes. The hair was non-existent - shaved to the skull. The figure had seemed relaxed and yet—

Threatening.

Very, very threatening.

Jessica shivered, and sipped again at her brandy.

Who was the guard?

Must have been some new kind of security drafted in to watch over the QIII in this late stage of development. But weren’t all the other security measures good enough? Weren’t the electrified fences, the armed guards, the huge concrete walls and steel doors and electronic passes -weren’t these enough to protect this revolutionary new processor?

But of course.

Jessica laughed softly, bitterly, to herself, and stared out over the desert through the monitor. Spiral_H had been hit. Detonated. Wiped from the face of the Earth.

Pondering her strange and very near encounter, Jessica took another drink of the brandy, enjoying the hot fire in her throat. A word crept into the corners of her mind; a word she had once overheard, when barging in during a fit of temper, into Count Feuchter’s office and an ops meeting between Feuchter, Durell and Adams ...

‘The Nex...
’

They had stared at her. She had apologised and retreated.

But now; now the word seemed to come unbidden from Jessica’s forgotten vaults of memory. It seemed to fit. Nex. A Nex. The Nex? Was Nex the name of a person? A guard? A
killer?

She shivered, realising that she had drunk a little too much, and then downed the rest of the brandy in one.

She decided she would ask Adams in the morning.

Yes; a good idea; he would explain the Nex.

Maybe.

C
arter hit the snow with Kade screaming in his brain. Kade’s words were so anger-filled as to be unfathomable; Kade’s hatred was a tangible thing and as his energy fled him so a cold detachment took his soul in its fist and gave him a nasty squeeze ...

‘Fight,’
howled Kade in his brain.

‘Fuck you, Carter, don’t let me die like this! Fight!’

But Carter could not; for the briefest of seconds, he could not; it was as if all the worst moments of his life had been distilled, a potent liquor of horror with the power to drop him instantly. Without knowing it, he changed mags by sense of touch in his pocket as the footsteps came close and his brain seized and the footsteps suddenly increased in pace and—

‘Roll!’
screamed Kade.

Carter rolled, the Browning out and in his hand and pumping bullets up into the night sky—

A kick sent the weapon spinning into the darkness.
‘Let me,’
came the soothing voice of Kade.

‘Fuck you,’ snarled Carter.

An engine started - the BMW. The Nex’s head snapped left - a sudden-impact movement, so fast that Carter’s eyes could not follow. He leaped, clumsily, arms encircling the attacker, and they both hit the ground. Carter slammed both arms down, the heels of his hands smashing into the Nex’s head. One blow, two, three, four, five. He felt something break within the mask—

The BMW, pluming smoke, accelerated away from the scene.

Carter staggered up.

The assassin’s foot lashed up into Carter’s groin and he stumbled back; the scene flashed red, there was a screech of brakes, tyres crunching snow, brakelights illuminating the snow in a soft red glow. Exhaust fumes jettisoned like dragon smoke.

Carter looked up into the Nex’s face—

Grey-clad. Unreadable—

But the eyes. The eyes were copper, glowing in the BMW’s red lights.

The figure lifted its arms above its head, as if in some martial-art preparatory stance. Carter scrambled up and the figure’s stare fixed on him, eyes boring through him, and he grinned, bloodstained teeth bared through thick strings of saliva. ‘You fucking surprised, motherfucker?’ he snarled.

‘We have danced for long enough,’ came the soft voice.

From hidden arm-sheaths the assassin drew two short black blades and lowered his head. Carter pulled his own darkened blade from his boot and spat blood into the snow.

‘But I like the dance,’ said Carter. ‘It’s just getting interesting. And you want to fight with knives ... I will cut you so fine, my boy ...’

The BMW revved, plumes spitting. Carter could see Natasha looking back over the seat; the white reverse lights came on and Carter understood...

The Nex charged—

They clashed, blades flashing—

Carter came away with blood weeping down his bicep. He felt the pulse of freed muscle within sliced skin and the smile fell from his lips. They circled and Carter edged the Nex closer—

Carter charged - as Natasha floored the BMW’s accelerator and the engine screamed high and loud. The assassin slashed left and right, then turned - Carter dived left.

The high boot of the BMW hammered into the assassin; the body was plucked from the air and tossed away in a tangle of limbs to collide with the wall of the house. The knives fell dark and bloody to the snow. The Nex collapsed in a tightly curled broken heap.

Carter - breathing hard - looked slowly to the left at the tyre merely two inches from his nose. He dragged himself to his feet and glared at Natasha through the smashed window.

‘You trying to kill me?’

‘Get in,’ she hissed, pain lancing lines across her face.

‘I want my gun. And I want to check our friend there—’

‘Get
in!’
screamed Natasha.

Carter turned, and his jaw dropped. The Nex had rolled to his - or her - feet. Those copper eyes met Carter’s gaze and he caught a glimpse of black; the Nex sprinted forward, a blur of motion powering across the snow ... Carter dived, scooping up the battered Browning, then dragged open the door and sprawled full length across the back seat of the BMW as Natasha hit the accelerator. Spitting snow, the car screamed down the track, sliding left and right, bouncing from a fence and then shooting off down the darkened lane with lights suddenly extinguished—

Carter stared out of the back window.

The Nex was close, copper eyes burning into his own. A gloved hand reached out, brushed the boot and Carter swallowed, hard, as the BMW’s engine screamed and Natasha’s foot floored the accelerator pedal with a harsh stab ...

The Nex slowed, then halted and stood, arms limp by its sides, copper eyes watching them flee. The would-be assassin was not panting, nor showing any signs of exertion.

‘I don’t fucking believe that,’ said Carter.

‘Are you hurt?’

‘I’m hurting all right,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

‘I’m bleeding. I think I might...’

The car swerved. Carter clambered into the front seat, and helped Natasha guide the car to the side of the road. They swapped positions, and Natasha held a sterile dressing pad to her reopened shoulder wound as Carter, hands slippery with his own blood, gunned the 4-litre vehicle’s engine and they sped off into the darkness.

Carter drove at high speed, and after thirty minutes left the snowbound highways behind, tyres gripping tarmac once more, the BMW purring in its natural environment. He found a small side road, and drove into the darkness. Finding a secluded copse beyond a fence and a heavy galvanised gate, he jumped out, leaving the engine running. He unlatched the cold metal, then stared around at the silent dark woods, eerie and watching. The silence made him shiver, and the darkness was so complete that it formed an infinite horizontal void; Carter hurried back to the light and warmth of his mobile sanctuary. He eased the BMW over woodland debris and killed the engine, then the headlights.

‘Let’s take a look at you.’

Carter helped Natasha onto the back seat and checked the reopened gunshot wound. It had clotted, the bleeding nothing more than a trickle now. Natasha’s face was grey with pain.

‘I’m sorry, I have no painkillers,’ said Carter, brushing a strand of hair from the woman’s brow.

‘That’s OK,’ she said, smiling. She coughed, and winced. Carter ran his hand through her hair, then eased his own jacket free with difficulty, his broken finger stabbing anger at his every movement, his ribs grinding and biting him inside, clicking within the cavity of his chest. He checked the knife wound across his bicep; this too had clotted and had almost ceased bleeding. He eased the flesh open - could see a muscle part within. Blood started to seep once more and, ripping a strip from his thick woollen shirt, he tied a makeshift bandage around the wound. Blood soaked it immediately.

‘That needs attention,’ said Natasha.

‘I don’t dare risk the hospitals.
They
could be watching.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know so. Come on, we’ll stop at a motorway service station; pick up some provisions. How much cash have you got on you?’

‘None. What about plastic?’

‘No good. It leaves a trail. I’ve only got a couple of hundred - it will have to be enough.’

‘Why don’t we leave a false trail?’ said Natasha. ‘Draw a shitload of cash out of a machine - let them tag us, tag our location - and then switch directions?’