Interface: A Techno Thriller (29 page)

At first, his brain did not register what he was seeing.
 

A woman's body. Slumped face down on the ground. There was blood. Lots of blood - a gunshot wound in her chest.
 

His heart pounding, he brushed her hair aside and stared at her face.

Celia.

He took a step back, trying to digest what he was seeing. He had never seen a dead body before. He stood motionless for a long time, finally realising he was holding his breath. He let it go with a painful gasp and stepped away from the body, stumbling out into the corridor. He closed the door, though the lock was broken and it didn't shut properly, then he ran for the nearest stairwell and pounded up the metal treads. Reaching the ground floor, breathing hard, he pulled out his mobile phone and called a number on speed dial. But, as he held it to his ear, it beeped in error. Confused, he looked at the display.

No signal
. There was no cellular network available: Marron's lock-down protocol. Muttering, Bradley reached into another pocket and removed a second, larger phone: an encrypted satellite phone. There was only one number programmed.

"What is it?" replied Leskov immediately.

"I've just found Celia Bern. She's been murdered. I think it was Marron. It
had
to have been him."

"Interesting. Perhaps Bern was also his handiwork."

"Do you still want to come here?"

"I need to be certain I'm getting what I'm paying for."

"What about Marron?"

"I'm more than ready to deal with him."

NINETY-TWO

TOM WAS PLACED IN STEEL handcuffs then escorted by a large group of guards to Marron's office on Level 88. Waiting there was a man he vaguely recognised and someone clad in a familiar black combat suit: the woman who had started everything.

"Alex. It's always you. Don't you have anything better to do?"

She smiled. "It's been quite a dance, Tom."

"Whatever they're paying you, you're not going to have long to enjoy it."

"You think this is about money?"

"That was exactly what I--"

Marron raised a hand and beckoned the man over. "Ed, do what you need to do."

The bespectacled man walked over to Tom. "I need to run a few quick checks on you before I run the installation. You're getting the final interface code. The codecs for the helicopter." Holm held a scanner near Tom's head. "I have a connection! And it's stable. Now please hold still."

Tom felt a tingle under his scalp and leaned away. "Or maybe I won't."

Marron coughed. "I have two friends of yours suspended in a lift more than two hundred metres up a lift shaft. Would you like me to lower them at a speed considerably in excess of the recommended maximum?"

Holm tapped something on the scanner. "OK, commencing transfer."

Tom felt as if someone had dunked his head in a cold bucket of water. The cold intensified, becoming like shards of ice. Then suddenly it was gone.

Holm nodded. "It's complete. I'm getting bidirectional data transfer. No conscious instructions at this point, but it should be enough for Leskov."

"Excellent," Marron said. "How do you feel, Tom?"

"Like killing you all."

Holm removed a blood pressure kit from a case and slid it up Tom's arm.

"Now you're concerned for my health?" Tom looked at Marron.
 

"Circumstances change. Now you're our main attraction."

"And you're going to use me to demonstrate the technology to your buyer. Then what?"

"That's all Leskov wants from you. Proof that the technology works. What
we
want is you to come back to work – only in a slightly different capacity. You'll find staying with us far more comfortable than GCHQ or Moscow."

"Moscow?"

"
Chez
Leskov."

Holm pumped up the blood pressure cuff and then let it deflate, making notes of the readings.
 

"Does he know the truth about me? That I'm
not
evidence that the project is replicable?"

Marron coughed. "I'll leave that kind of statement to the scientists."

"I know why you selected me as your little back-up plan. And I know about the original Project Tantalus. I know I was your side-project that time too. I know about the chip, Marron."

Holm looked up. "What?"

Marron frowned. "Finish your tests, Ed. Alex, I need to speak to you." He beckoned her from the room.

Tom watched them leave then lowered his voice. "Look at the base of my head. I have a very faint, very old scar. I'm sure you have scanning equipment. Check it out."

Holm smiled. "Tom, I can understand your confusion and, under the circumstances, a bit of paranoia is really quite natural but whatever the case with your recent, er, co-option to our efforts, I can assure you that all the original Tantalus Project subjects were adults."

"Not all of them," Tom said. "It was hushed up."

Holm shook his head distractedly. "I should probably X-ray you anyway, for our records. Over here."

Tom walked over and sat in a chair under a blocky X-ray unit.

"If there was more time we could run a full CAT scan but this should suffice. Now hold still." Holm stepped away and jabbed a button. The equipment hummed and there was a loud click. The result displayed almost immediately on a nearby screen.

Tom watched Holm and waited for the discovery.

But it did not happen.

Holm stood back from the equipment, rubbing his palms together. "All perfectly normal. No chip or other unexplained object."

Tom stared at him, incredulous. "Don't be ridiculous. I had a scan only days ago. Of course it's there."

"Must have been a glitch," said Holm. "See for yourself." He turned the display screen to face Tom. "Anything metallic would be a bright white point."

Tom blinked. "What about the node itself?"

"That's not likely to show up as it's non-metallic. But it's definitely there. How else would the interface be working?"

"You people have no idea what is going on. You don't know whether your project has gone spectacularly right or spectacularly wrong."

Marron strode back into the room. "What's going on?"

"I did a quick X-ray," Holm replied. "Is that a problem?"

Marron stared at the image and a half smile crossed his face. "Not at all."

Holm switched off the screen. "Then I'm done here, Peter. We're looking good."
 

"Why don't you get up to Level 90? Apparently that's where all the action is going to be. I'll follow with Tom in a few minutes."

◇
◇
◇

Marron closed the door after Holm. "I want, Tom, to make sure that you conduct yourself appropriately in our imminent meeting."
 

"Why would I help you?"

"Because it's in your own interests. Our buyer is not someone you want to disappoint."

"It would seem that I have what we lawyers call 'leverage'."

Marron snorted. "Viktor Leskov is a man of considerable means who knows what he wants and expects to get it. We have to deliver him a working interface or he is very likely to kill us all. Thankfully, he is also a man of his word: if we give him what he wants, he will pay us and leave. You could come out of this a very wealthy man."

"You think I care? You killed my best friend."

Marron sighed. "You're going to need to make a choice, Tom. You can either die in some misguided attempt to honour her memory. Or you can try to salvage something from the situation. Live to exact your revenge another day."

"Even if I were willing, how do you know it will work to his requirements?"

"When you've needed to do things, you've found a way. And believe me, you
will
need to do it."

Tom ground his teeth. "What do I have to do?"

"We've implanted the codecs in you: instructions for Leskov's new helicopter. All you need to do is make it work. It'll be like when you controlled the building – and that was something you weren't even designed to control. I'm also going to need some of your blood for Leskov's team to analyse."

Alex removed a case from a drawer and flipped it open. Inside was a syringe, with a needle over five centimetres long.

Tom blanched. "Are you taking the blood direct from my heart or something?"

"From near the base of your skull. We have to go deep."

"You'll paralyse me."

Marron smiled. "Not if you don't move."

Tom shook his head. "Why are you doing all this?"

"I believe this technology is a gift. I'd trade places with you in an instant to have what's inside your head."

"If you actually had it in your head, you might be saying something different."

Marron flexed his shoulders. "I saw what you did with this building. The interface works, even if the nanites have diverged from their original programming."

"The fact that they're operating outside their remit doesn't worry you?"

"We never could work out how to program them fully. In the end we just gave them an approach and a series of guidelines because no one could foresee all the challenges they would face."

Tom shook his head. "Just tell me one thing. Why me? And I don't mean 'now'. Why me originally?"

Marron shrugged. "Your mother was a...
contact
of Bern's.

"What? Are you saying she gave consent?"

"You'll..." He coughed. "
You'd
have to ask Bern. And of course it's too late for that. Besides, whatever the risks, it has worked. Look at how you turned out."

"You're acting like this has been a success. Eighty percent of your subjects have died."

"But not you." Marron shook his head. "You're not grasping what this means, Tom: how important this project is."

"You keep saying that, but I doubt you would have volunteered your own child."

Marron smiled a curious smile. "It was all rendered moot when Bern agreed to close us down."

"Because he saw sense?"

"Because of pressure from the government. It's taken so long to get back to where we were, but now... now we've finally reached our goal."

"And you feel that justifies the body count?"

"There's a lot about this you don't understand; Bern is fond of saying this project is bigger than any one person."

"
Was
fond," Alex said.

Marron nodded. "Yes, that. Now, sit still while we get our blood sample."

"You keep saying 'we'. Are you and Alex more than a team? Are you an item?"

Marron glanced at Alex. "Clever. But not
that
clever."

And in a flash Tom
knew
. "
She
's your daughter." He swallowed. "And she has a chip as well."

Alex moved up to Marron and put her hand on his shoulder. "Nearly that clever."
 

"And you're OK with what he did to you?"

"He's my father."

Marron grunted. "It's needle time. Are you ready?"

"Just get it over with."

They laid him flat, face down, and lifted the back of his shirt. Alex leaned close and whispered, "Hold still now."

Tom felt the needle go in: a brief white-hot pain. Then the sensation repeated.
 

"All done," said Marron, holding up the two syringes, full and red. "A proportion of the nanites are programmed to make their way to a specific location at the base of your neck so we can harvest them, analyse the instructions: see what worked and what didn't."
 

Tom stood, adjusting his shirt. He watched as Marron eyed the vials of blood then looked at his daughter. And suddenly it became clear. "You want to use this on Alex. You still want the interface for her. Getting me was always about testing it for Alex."

Marron turned away. "We need to get upstairs."

"If this is all so amazing, why give it to anyone else?"

"Further development of the project will require significant funding. Given our path to this point, that is unlikely to be available through traditional channels. We'd obviously rather get the money and not hand the files over to Leskov, but I haven't worked out a way to persuade him to accept that yet. Help us and we get the money; help us and your journalist friend goes free."

"And Lentz?"

Marron shrugged. "We can discuss it later."

Tom ground his teeth. He tried to feel the electronics around him, tried to reach for the network. But without the collar and the hub nothing happened.

Marron cleared his throat. "Do we have a deal?"

Tom closed his eyes. "Let's just get this over with."

NINETY-THREE

LENTZ AND KATE SAT CROSS-legged on the floor of the lift. Lentz placed her phone in between them with a sigh. "If I tinker with it to boost the signal, I can get a message past the screening, but it will have to be
very
short."

"How short?"

"Just a few words. Maybe five."

Kate gave a snort. "You're joking? Surely you can send more than that in a fraction of a second?"

"Normally, yes, but I'm piggy-backing on old cell towers, using undisclosed back channels, so there's very little bandwidth available. The jamming system will react almost instantly. Now, we could try to use another form of compression, but there's no guarantee the recipient would be able to interpret it. So five words it is. Any more than that and we risk the whole data-packet being blocked."

"How am I supposed to convey the situation and location in five words?"

"You're the journalist. Come up with a headline."

"Fine." Kate took the phone and typed rapidly then handed it back.

Lentz frowned down at it then laughed. "
Prisoner at CERUS Tower. Help.
" Lentz held her own phone over Kate's and launched an app. She tapped a sequence. The message vanished from the screen. "Well, I've done everything I can. I really hope this Croft isn't playing you."

"Look at it this way: could we be any worse off?"

"I find it best not to tempt fate with that kind of language."

Kate started to reply but the lift lurched and began moving upwards. Kate's phone beeped angrily.

Lentz looked at it and scowled. "I was afraid of that."