‘If all the satellites aren’t working, then neither will SkyCall. Surely its function is to collect data from the other satellites?’
The scientist shook his head, a brief irritated action, as if he was talking to a child who wasn’t listening properly, and slowed his speech in a way Fletcher found deeply annoying. ‘You are misunderstanding what it is I am telling you. It’s not that the satellites aren’t working, exactly. We started picking up some strange deep-space activity, and that was when the satellites started to stop transmitting their usual information. In the past few minutes, the satellite TV signal in the United States stopped working. Ours should be gone shortly, if the satellites are going down in the same order that they started to malfunction. It’ll be on the news soon. We’ll say it’s some kind of space-storm issue, that’ll stall them for a while, but that isn’t what’s really happening.’ He paused, looking very uncomfortable. ‘The satellites aren’t malfunctioning; all their systems are fine. They’re just stopping their normal activities and then turning outwards – towards space. It’s as if—’ He hesitated, and Fletcher wondered why he was looking so nervous. After a moment, the scientist said a little shakily, ‘It’s as if they’re all waiting to start a new command program. All of them.’
‘But that can’t be,’ Fletcher said, frowning. ‘These satellites, surely they all belong to different countries? And they all have different operating systems – they’re not linked. So how can they be functioning as one unit?’
‘But they are linked now,’ the scientist said. ‘We linked them with SkyCall 1.’
‘You think SkyCall is doing this?’ He tried not to let his fear sound in his voice, but he wasn’t doing a great job.
‘I don’t know!’ The man’s voice had dropped to a harsh whisper. ‘I didn’t program the virus it uploaded – he did –I didn’t even understand it properly. What if—’ He stopped and peered around him, to make sure they were not being overheard, then continued, ‘What if there was a secondary virus under it? And we don’t know what it does?’
Fletcher stood silently for a second, letting the technogeek’s words sink in, before turning and heading out into the quiet corridor.
He flipped open his phone and called the last number listed.
‘Ramsey?’ he said, when the voice answered, ‘I don’t have a Jarrod Pretorius, but I do have a Jed Praetorian. He might not be your man, but the names are close and my gut is saying yes. He’s at the Harwell Institute, the Science and Innovation facility. We’ve tried to call him back here, because there’re some problems with a satellite program he installed for us, but thus far we haven’t got hold of him.’ He paused. ‘Tell Jones. And then pick me up on the way.’
Chapter Forty-One
The old man’s recovery had been short-lived, and they’d had to stop twice on their journey as he coughed up clumps of bloody matter and vomited loudly and violently into dirty service station toilets. Gabbi stroked his thin hair and spoke soothingly to him, but there was no doubt that he was dying. The First was getting more impatient at every stop; although he claimed it was simply his eagerness to get them all home, she could sense his irritation and it made her sad.
The old man had been so excited to see his friend again, but it felt like that excitement was only one way. Perhaps it would be different when they were home; perhaps the First would be more relaxed, more like himself. She couldn’t quite adjust to seeing him in this strange child’s body – maybe that was affecting her judgement? He had been happy when they’d arrived at the poor priest’s house, and as she dispatched the two men so ineptly guarding him he had giggled and smiled and called them the Angel Gabriel and the Holy Ghost, and that had made him laugh more, and hug them tightly.
Then he’d told them what he wanted to do to the priest, and all the laughing had stopped. When it was done, they had washed and left, and she had avoided his eyes, as had the old man. It had been so unnecessarily cruel. She wondered when he’d become cruel – or had it always been there and they just hadn’t noticed?
Beside her the First was sweating, his skin shining with damp, and she worried that he was stretching himself too far, especially given his recent weakened state. Where was he getting his strength from, the old man? It felt too much of a coincidence, that the old man was fading so fast while the First was getting stronger.
She quelled the thought as she turned the car through the gates of the Science and Innovation facility. There was a guard, but he appeared to be asleep, and the barrier was raised – so no wonder the First was sweating; it had probably been a long time since he’d used any of the skills that belonged to his natural body. This atmosphere made it harder as well – she knew that from the experience of calling for him in the old ways.
Jarrod Pretorius was waiting for them outside the small building that was his research unit, just past the shining metal and glass structure that housed the rest of the Harwell Institute. Her heart thumped: despite his changed form, she would have recognised him anywhere, just from his Glow, which had always been different, not gold, nor silver, but a strange muted silvery-purple. She had always been drawn to him, though so many others had been driven away by whatever it was that was so unusual about him. She liked his quiet; it was peaceful, and she could see beyond it to the strong heart and fearless loyalty.
It took all her will not to run to him, but instead to help the old man from the back seat first.
When they were finally face to face, his eyes rested on her for only a moment before turning to the First, and that broke her heart. She wondered if he even recognised her.
‘I’ve been alone for such a long time,’ he said softly. ‘I waited, just like you told me too. I hid and I concentrated and I kept them locked in my head for such a long time. It was too much – it hurt – but I did it, until I could put the locks somewhere else.’
He had been damaged, Gabbi could see that; it was in his eyes. What exactly had the First made him do – how far had he pushed the loyalty of his gentle, puppy-dog friend?
‘Are the Walkways opening? Have you unlocked them?’ Even in his child’s voice, the First’s words were cold.
‘I need to start the final sequence,’ Pretorius said.
‘Then let’s go and do it.’ The First smiled as more sweat dripped from his dark hair. ‘There’s only so long I can keep this place subdued. It’s hurting me.’ He strode ahead through the doors, and the old man limped along at his side.
‘That family have always been so very selfish,’ she said softly as she slipped her hand into his. The words were treason, but Pretorius had never repeated anything he’d heard; it was why he was so well used, she supposed. The First, who was more powerful than most by birth, had been concentrating for an hour or so at most. The old man was dying from the effort of finding him, and Pretorius had spent millennia keeping the universe locked in a riddle – and that had taken so much from him that he’d had to hide away in the quiet. They inspired so much loyalty, but beneath the surface charm they were cruel, and unutterably selfish.
Beside her, Jarrod Pretorius had started to cry. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him, and then led him inside. Whether for one or the other, she and he had vowed to serve that family. It was time to see their vows through.
‘What the hell?’ The man on the gate was asleep and the barrier was up. Cass had worried about getting access; he certainly hadn’t expected it to be this easy.
‘The First,’ Mr Bright said, ‘flexing his muscles.’
Cass didn’t ask; he didn’t want to know. He’d put his grieving for Father Michael to one side for now – the only way to honour that man was to find the people who’d killed him and deal with them, and to make sure that Christian’s true son was safe. Part of him believed Bright’s story must be crazy; that the little boy he’d stolen was really Luke, but that he’d become the focus of some ridiculous delusion of the Network’s – but another, deeper part of him, the part who had seen the Chaos in the Experiment, who felt the Glow, that part
of him was starting to believe, and what frightened him most about that was that it also meant that he was starting to accept the truth of the other things he’d fought so long against – the Glow, the Network, what Mr Bright and his colleagues really were – and how they resonated inside him. He closed that thought down and drove slowly past the main building. Ramsey, Hask and Fletcher would be on their way. They belonged in the real world – his world, the gritty, brutal world of murder and robbery and too-short lives. He belonged beside them, not standing with Mr Bright. He wondered what he’d dragged them into. He also wondered whom he was trying to convince.
‘The whole place is asleep,’ he muttered.
‘There!’ Mr Bright’s finger shot up, pointing to a small building a couple of hundred feet away. Two figures were just disappearing inside.
Cass drove as close as he could get, his heart pounding, then started to climb out of the car.
‘Wait!’ Mr Bright caught his arm to stop him and pulled a gun from inside his coat. ‘I have my own methods of defence, but you are not yet ready for those. We don’t die easily – you know that now – but bullets will slow us down.’
‘Where did you get it?’ Cass released the safety, feeling better already.
‘I took it from one of the two dead men while you went outside to call Ramsey.’
Cass wasn’t sure what to say; he was glad Mr Bright had had the foresight to take the gun, but it hinted at a coldness that he couldn’t trust. Perhaps it wasn’t coldness, though. Maybe it was just that for a long time Mr Bright had been forced to think of every eventuality.
Rotor blades cut through the quiet and both men looked up.
‘Who the fuck is that?’ Cass shouted, watching the Bell JetRanger. The helicopter was approaching fast, and it was definitely coming down to land, and pretty much right where they were standing. Cass looked back at the door. ‘Fuck it, let’s get inside. Friend or foe, they can find us in there. We’ll lose the others.’
Mr Bright was already ahead of him, and as Cass raced after him, he had a moment to admire how light on his feet the apparently middle-aged man was.
Two men were slumped over the reception desk, and Cass was relieved to find them both unconscious, not dead. After what had happened to Father Michael and the Steves he was expecting a trail of eviscerated bodies.
Mr Bright focused on the various security screens the CCTV cameras were feeling to the reception monitor, his eyes darting from one to the other until figures came into view. ‘Downstairs,’ he said. ‘Lower ground.’
‘And what’s your plan, again?’ Cass asked.
‘Stop them.’
‘I was hoping for a little more detail.’
‘Sometimes, Cassius Jones,’ Mr Bright said with a twinkle, ‘even I just have to wing it, as they say.’
‘I thought you might want a little help.’ A shadow fell across the doorway.
‘Mr Dublin,’ Mr Bright said. ‘This is a surprise.’
Cass automatically raised his gun: this was the fucker who had strapped him into that machine, the bastard who had almost stranded him in the Chaos. He could still feel that stuff sticking to him in the cold, and hear the screams of the lost … And he had so very nearly been one of them—
Mr Bright’s hand gently pushed the nose of the gun down.
‘Let’s put our differences aside for the moment, shall we, gentlemen?’ Mr Bright said with a smile. ‘For my part, Mr Dublin, I am very pleased to see you.’
Cass said nothing, but turned and jogged towards the stairs.
Chapter Forty-Two
‘Can’t you go any faster?’ Fletcher asked, punching more numbers into his mobile and tapping his foot impatiently.
‘Not if you want us to get there alive,’ Ramsey said, never taking his eyes off the road. The siren was wailing on the roof and he was going as fast as he could down the winding country roads. The motorway part of the journey had been fine – everyone got out of the way for a police car on a dual carriageway – but first they’d had to get out of London’s endlessly gridlocked traffic, and now they were having to negotiate narrow lanes and farm vehicles with no sense of urgency. Ramsey could understand Fletcher’s frustration; hell, he was feeling it himself, but he couldn’t risk killing them, let alone any random strangers. He was a London policeman and he normally had a sergeant driving for him. His high-speed didn’t get much practice.
‘I still can’t get hold of Pretorius, and all the receptionists at Harwell are on answerphone, saying lines are busy. Jones isn’t answering either. Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell is going on there?’
‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ Ramsey said, ‘look, we’re nearly there. Just another six miles or so. Couldn’t you have got your people out there? Surely they could have helicopter’d in and be dealing with it by now?’
‘I don’t know what kind of power you think I have,’ Fletcher flipped his phone shut and tossed it, disgusted, onto the dashboard, ‘but I think commanding that kind of manpower on the say-so of a suspected murderer and a policeman just thrown off a case would be likely to get me fired too.’ He sighed and looked out the window. ‘And if Pretorius is a terrorist of some kind then there’s a good chance someone in the ATD or the team he’s been working with at Harwell is a traitor. I can’t believe he’s working alone, and I don’t want him warned off so he’s gone before we get there.’
‘Cass and this Castor Bright are there.’ Hask leaned his large bulk through the gap between the front seats. ‘If Jones isn’t answering his phone then I’m going to presume it’s because he’s too busy dealing with this situation to chat. And as for this Mr Bright … well, if he’s half as Machiavellian as we think he is, we can probably rest assured that he’s not the kind of man to rush into certain death without a well-thought-out plan.’ He smiled. ‘Let’s not rule them out quite yet, shall we?’
The small room filled with computer equipment was hot, even though a fan whirred away somewhere. Lights twinkled on various panels and the air was almost humming with electricity. Gabbi eased the old man into a chair and waited for his coughing fit to end. Bright blood splattered the carpet, and he sighed as he wiped his mouth clean for the hundredth time that afternoon.
‘There’s no lock on the door?’ the First asked as Pretorius settled in behind one of the many consoles.
‘No one else knows how to use this equipment,’ he said haltingly. ‘They think it’s some kind of maths experiment.’ His voice sounded as if he hadn’t had a proper conversation in a long time. ‘Locks make people curious,’ he continued. ‘Everyone wants to know what happens in locked rooms.’ His voice was different here, but it was still a deadened monotone, as if Pretorius couldn’t quite release any of the emotion inside, even in the lilt of his words. ‘Even at home.’ His fingers tapped the keyboard and numbers flashed across a screen just above his head. ‘I learned that from my father, a long time ago.’ He glanced up. ‘Two of the other rooms are locked. Not this one.’
‘Clever.’ The First granted him a small smile and then nodded at the keyboard. ‘Is that it? Have you done it?’
‘Not yet. It takes time. There are four sets of codes to enter and they need two minutes between each to allow the signal to function and the paths to open.’
‘Why didn’t you start it already? Why were you waiting for us outside?’ The venom in the boy’s voice was clear, but Pretorius didn’t appear to notice it. He frowned slightly, as if confused. ‘I needed to be sure it was you. You told me that one day someone might try and trick me. I had to see you to know.’
As much as she wanted to get home quickly, Gabbi smiled. Pretorius had always been so literal: the First had commanded his loyalty, and he’d followed his instructions to the letter, even though it had now slowed them down.
‘You know it’s me now,’ the First said coldly, ‘so get on with it.’
The old man burst into another hacking cough, and as much as she loved Jarrod Pretorius, a part of her wished that he was more like the
rest of them and had just started the sequence earlier. When the old man’s breathing was back to somewhere near the steady wet rattle which was the best he could manage, she left him and joined the boy and Pretorius at the console.
‘Something’s happening,’ she said after the second number sequence appeared on the screen. ‘I can feel it.’ It was true, when she opened her mind to look for a way out, she could see white light in the darkness: the first shining paths. ‘They’re opening!’
Chapter Forty-Three
The door was open a crack, and they approached quietly, their footsteps muffled by the industrial carpet that lined the corridors. Cass wiped his sweaty palm against his thigh, then tightened his grip on the gun. At least there was no one keeping watch. They had that advantage.
Mr Bright gestured for Mr Dublin to stay outside, and then stared at Cass. This was it. Mr Bright slowly pushed open the door and stepped inside.
An old man was sitting in an office chair, his laboured breathing the loudest sound in the room. There was blood on his shirt and the dark, toothless hole of his mouth stood out against his pale skin. It took Cass a moment to recognise him as the violin-playing tramp of only a few months ago. He was so close to death that his body was mocking him with its corpse-like appearance. His smile was lost, and no music danced from him.
‘I knew He would send you two,’ Mr Bright said quietly, ‘and part of me is sorry. I am fond of you.’
The three figures around the console had been so lost in what they were doing that they jumped at Mr Bright’s voice. The sight told Cass all he needed to know. Luke – no, not Luke but the First – was peering intently over one shoulder of the seated man who had to be Jarrod Pretorius. When he turned to face them, his eyes flared with anger. They were old eyes, and any pretence of naïveté was long gone.
The Chosen Seed: The Dog-Faced Gods Book Three Page 30
