The Priest’s eyes picked out a small gathering beside the opening to a nondescript warehouse—standing beside some battered SmutCars and a large, black, battered van. The men and women were holding sub-machine guns and looking around warily. Muzzles trained on the Volvo as it lurched to a stop and The Priest killed the ignition. He stepped free, his sandals flapping on concrete, and for a few moments the engine burbled and gurgled, stuttering on a rich cocktail of excessive petrol, until it finally—and thankfully—died.
The Priest met Mongrel’s gaze, moving forward and nodding a greeting to Simmo, Rogowski and Bob Bob. ‘Is he here?’
‘Da,
it
is here,’ coughed Mongrel, scowling at The Priest. ‘Mo and Roxi are inside, keeping it covered. We just waiting for you. You fashionably fucking late, Priest.’
‘Ahh! The work of the Lord is always at hand.’
‘Yeah, but you’d think a servant of God be on bloody time for once!’
The Priest strode forward towards the mammoth gaping galvanised doors. His gold-flecked brown eyes caught the distant glint of Spiral covering snipers. He grinned a malevolent grin.
Simmo and Mongrel followed, leaving Rogowski and Bob Bob by the doors, covering their mates’ progress with Heckler & Koch MP5s. Operating on the reflexes of shared experience rather than by any spoken communication, the men disappeared into the gloom.
The warehouse was ancient. The concrete floor was black from years of spilled diesel and engine oil, and high overhead were H-section girders. The huge rectangular interior space was a vast and echoing emptiness. Tiny doors set in the distant walls seemed like those in a doll’s house, and high above sat a few grime-smeared grey windows, most smashed and several blocked with blackened stumps of wood.
The Priest led the way, sandals flapping across the vast deserted floor. Against the far wall, seated on a chair, was the Nex. Mo stood to one side; the huge Pakistani with his shaved head and neat goatee beard was not quite pointing his TK50 at the Nex’s head. Roxi stood to the other side, slim, athletic, shoulder-length brown hair and piercing green eyes. She, too, was not quite pointing her H&K at the Nex’s chest.
The Priest came to a halt, flanked by Simmo and Mongrel. His stare fixed on the Nex—a small male with pale white skin, bristling black hair and the trade-mark copper eyes. The Nex had a gentle smile on its face; its hands were folded neatly in its lap and it offered no promise of violence. And yet—
Yet I not help but point my gun at it, thought Mongrel sourly. Too many battles, too long a war. Old betrayals fade hard. Old wounds do not heal, however efficient the medicine.
Mongrel shuffled to one side to get a better overview of the situation. He glanced nervously over his shoulder, towards the distant light of the outside world and the silhouettes of Bob Bob and Rogowski. Both men had lit cigarettes and Mongrel made out two lazy curls of smoke. Then he transferred his gaze back to the immediate area. The different body language of the group’s individual members spoke volumes about their different attitudes. Simmo wanted to kill. The Priest wanted to negotiate. Mo was nervous, waiting for the Nex to attack ... and Roxi? Roxi was smooth, calm, the taciturn professional—as she always was.
‘We are confused,’ rumbled The Priest finally, one hand holding his rosary beads as if for reassurance. ‘You say you come to help us; you say you are willing to betray the other Nex. Why so?’
The Nex sighed, a gentle exhalation, and rubbed one hand over its face. ‘I am tired. Tired of the lies. Tired of the killing. And we were lied to—this is supposed to be an evolution.’ The Nex stood then—swift, fluid motion. It peeled up its thin black jumper to show a scattering of scales and short spiky bristles across its belly that led up to a narrow V of armoured chitin over its heart. ‘It
hurts,’
it said simply. ‘Here.’ It touched its breast. ‘And here.’ It tapped the side of its head.
‘It’s lying,’ growled Simmo. ‘Let’s kill the fucking little maggot now before the others come.’
‘I have not been followed,’ said the Nex carefully, its stare shifting between each member of the small group. ‘I have been extremely wary of that, because the instant that other Nex turn up with guns and bombs you will merely kill me. You would fight your way free, and the elusive Spiral would disappear once more into the underground.’
‘How did it make contact?’ asked The Priest, looking at Roxi.
She shifted her stance, a subtle movement. Her green eyes glittered in the dim light. ‘He discovered the identity of one of the REBS, showed up at her flat, and explained the situation. She referred him through the echelons of REB command. They weren’t sure what to do with the little fucker, so they sought our advice. And now he’s here.’
‘Too easy,’ snarled Simmo.
Mongrel eyed the huge sergeant. ‘We give him chance,’ snapped the East European squaddie. ‘He might have intel save all our hides from thrashing. You not behave like bad jail
petuh
taken roughly from behind! This is no Fat Chick Night ... and, by God, you not never look gift horse in mouth!’
‘Yeah, and you don’t buy a gift-horse bullshit when it has a bomb shoved up its arse!’ growled Simmo. ‘God, Mongrel, you is so simple at times! How can you not see ...’
‘And how
you
not understand the opportunity!’
The Priest held up his hand as the Nex said, voice soft and asexual, ‘I did not have to appear to you as a Nex soldier. I could have quite easily disguised myself as human, attempted to infiltrate your group that way. It has been attempted before—sometimes successfully.’
‘Until we smell your fucking insect stink,’ grated Simmo.
‘Simmo!’ hissed The Priest, turning towards the sergeant with his dark eyes flashing. ‘Will you shut up! For the sake of the Lord! Let me handle this, or I’ll have you busted down to cleaning the engine pits in Colly and you won’t get another opportunity to smoke a
cigar
, never mind handle a gun or kill any of the enemy!’
The sergeant’s eyes went wide. His Adam’s apple bobbed, tracing patterns through tattoos on the skin of his throat. Then he caught Mongrel’s eye, and managed to calm himself; his massive temper—the emergent tip of the iceberg—subsided beneath the icy waters of self-control.
‘You have information on Durell?’
The Nex nodded. ‘Considerable data. But—I have come to warn you.’
‘About?’
‘The SpiralGRID. You are about to be compromised.’
‘I would be surprised if Durell has information on the SpiralGRID. It is, shall we say, a very well protected secret. Our levelling factor. The one piece of tech that keeps us alive—keeps us beyond Durell’s grasp.’
‘I know this.’ The Nex’s eyes glittered. ‘I used to work on a team—our aim was to crack your GRID. Your technology is superior in this field—and original. Durell knew nothing of its development, or he would have stolen the plans in the same way that he stole every other type of Spiral technology. But let me put this to you, Priest. If there was any possibility that the GRID would be overrun, contaminated or—even worse—
usurped
, then that would mean the end of Spiral, would it not?’
The Priest nodded.
‘Do you know the name Jahlsen?’
The Priest seemed to pale visibly. ‘I do,’ he whispered. Simmo and Mongrel exchanged a worried glance.
‘If I was then to suggest a phrase, a
technique—
hard-tattooed, for example—would that mean anything to you? I am sure it would. And then if I was to inform you that Durell had sent an assassin to kill Jahlsen, an ex-Spiral man named Carter and that the QIV had been primed to pluck the SpiralGRID map when it was sent spinning back to the Spiral sub-system mainframes—would you begin to believe that it was a plausible plan? An option? A
possibility?’
‘Come on, let’s get moving,’ snapped The Priest. ‘We need to get him to a secure house. Blindfold him—in fact, use one of those rubber Head-Blocks. He won’t be able to hear, see, smell or taste
anything
.’
‘You believe him?’ asked Roxi softly.
‘If what he says is true,’ muttered The Priest, ‘then we could definitely soon be in a whole world of shit. And if it isn’t true? Then he definitely knows the right code words—the right strings to pull to operate
this
marionette. And I’ll be honest with you, Roxi—Jahlsen has been missing for forty-eight hours. He has vanished off the GRID.’
‘Where do you want to take the Nex?’
‘The Grey Church,’ said The Priest softly. ‘And ECube Rekalavich, get him to meet us there.’
‘That crazy Russian?’ spat Mo contemptuously.
‘Yes, that crazy Russian who helped design the SpiralGRID in the first damned place. Let us see if what Mr Nex here says is plausible.’
They moved swiftly across the warehouse floor and towards the dull late-autumn light. Mongrel and Simmo trailed behind, once again exchanging glances.
‘He mentioned Carter,’ said Mongrel.
‘Hmm.’
‘Carter not do that. Carter not assassinate one of Spiral’s own.’
‘Carter is no longer one of us,’ said Simmo gently.
‘Yes, he is. In his head. In his heart.’
‘We shall see,’ said Simmo, and followed The Priest out into the light.
The SpiralGRID journey was a blur of silver, a buzzing of high energy, a shift into another realm. And then it was done. With felt-filled heads, sour tongues and feelings of nausea they stepped warily and with cocked guns from the stone archway and into the rich wood surroundings of The Grey Church.
Behind them the SpiralGRID fizzled with crackles of voltage and then suddenly extinguished, leaving everybody feeling slightly chilled. As if they were playing games with a mechanism they did not—and could never—truly understand.
The Grey Church was old; worn grooves ran across the intricately sculpted wooden bricks which made up the floor, signifying the passing of feet for hundreds of years. The walls were cold sandstone, now blackened with age, testament to a long and turbulent history. Worn wooden pews still stood at either side of the nave leading up to an intricate hardwood and black iron pulpit. The windows—all of which were smashed—had once been fine examples of stained glass. Now only shattered coloured shards remained.
The Priest loved this place. It had been he who had insisted on The Grey Church being added to the ever-growing list of SpiralGRID locators, back when the GRID had been in its infancy—an inspiration, a technological marvel. Little had the Spiral engineers, technicians and scientists realised that the GRID would become the one thing keeping Spiral from its rendezvous with extinction.
The GRID.
The Priest glanced back to where the portal.exit had squatted, a high-energy snout sneezing forth its precious cargo. He had once been asked how the SpiralGRID worked and had thought long and hard about the technological complexities. He had told the questioner to imagine a spider’s-web labyrinth with designated coordinate points, set up at first on a country-wide basis but then growing, with longer strands reaching across oceans and continents. The pathways, or strands, of the GRID were not set in stone or concrete—they were not roads that could be travelled in a car or on foot—they were formed by the passage of high-energy under the ground. The SpiralGRID pathway was not a constant. That way, a direct path could never be plotted: only start and end destinations could be described—initiated—and then the GRID’s sentient brain would work out pseudo-random routes between the two points. No midway intersection could ever be set up because there were billions of possibilities for the route during travel ...
A person wanting to travel the GRID stepped into a SpiderCAR, selected start and end locators, and the GRID’s brain did the rest. The SpiderCAR allowed the human body a sideways shift into the energy spectrum; then travel was incredibly fast and painless, but ultimately led to feelings of nausea. The human body was not designed for such high-speed and high-energy disjointed travel.
There was one problem, however.
Nature was, by definition, random. Computer-generated data was not; pseudo-random generators allowed the
appearance
of a random construct, but in reality it was based on variables, on millions of possible factors, and on equations. But it was still
traceable.
Which was where the GRID map came into effect; it was a sequence of equations used by the GRID’s brain to plot a course, and it carried the data which allowed the GRID to operate. Without the map it was just another example of useless high-tech gleaming technology: all engine and no balls. And if one of these controlling maps was to fall into the wrong hands?
Well, with enough computing power it would be possible to decode the equations, the data, the
pathways
that the SpiralGRID used—and for the full energy contours of this device to be revealed. Its polymorphic spine would be laid bare. Its HighJ-powered injectors. Its energy-fusion sink motors. Its injector-fed portal.entrance and portal.exit chambers which allowed absorption of the human shell into the high-energy fission of the sideways shift.
The SpiralGRID was an impossibility made real. An energy pathway that could be
sideways
travelled at will. A labyrinth, a gridwork, a web of ever-changing strands that could be used to bypass not just the boundaries of an unleashed biological abomination named HATE but also the dictatorial constraints of a world crushed into submission.