Promethean Files 2: The Prometheus Gambit

by Andrew Dobell

  Beside the destroyed terminal, Xenox and Brenna were on their knees with their hands up, facing away from Frankie and looking at Clare, Isaac’s wife, who stood holding a gun, pointing it at the doctor and Brenna. Clare was visibly shaking and looked terrified. Between Clare and her two hostages, Angela lay dead on the floor with a gunshot wound to her head.

  ‘Clare, are you all right?’ Frankie said, pointing her own gun at her.

  ‘I… err, yeah, I think so…’ she stammered.

  The door to the lab smashed open again behind Frankie as Isaac caught up with her. He came to a halt just behind Frankie, who held out her hand to stop him going any closer.

  ‘Clare, honey, are you… oh, my God. What happened here?’ Isaac asked in a panicked voice.

  ‘I’m putting my gun away now, Clare, and I’m going to walk over to you so you can give me that gun, all right?’

  Clare nodded, her movements jerky with fear and adrenaline. Frankie holstered her gun on her belt and walked slowly around to Clare’s side. She looked down at Xenox and Brenna as she approached. Xenox had a bloody nose, and all of them looked dirty and like they had been in a struggle.

  Frankie gently took Clare’s gun in her own hand and removed it from the secretary’s grip, pointing it safely away from everyone.

  Clare turned and broke down in tears, pushing herself into Frankie’s arms, her legs nearly giving way beneath her. Xenox and Brenna lowered their arms, looking up at Frankie, clearly in shock as well.

  Frankie beckoned Isaac over. He moved quickly and took hold of his wife, who hugged Isaac as a fresh wave of sobs crashed over her.

  Frankie looked back to Brenna and Xenox. ‘So, anyone care to fill me in?’ she asked as Dion and William entered the room, uttering shocked expletives of their own.

  ‘It was Angela and Xenox,’ Brenna said, clearly eager to talk, giving the doctor a nasty look as she spoke. ‘They were working together to destroy the virus and were holding her hostage,’ Brenna said, pointing to Clare. ‘I came in here, saw them doing it, saw Zhou dead…’ She choked back tears for a moment as she spoke. ‘I lost it; just saw red and ran at Xenox. We fought, things got messy, and the next thing there’s an explosion and a gunshot. Angela’s dead and she had the gun,’ Brenna explained, pointing at Clare again.

  ‘They were destroying the virus?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘I assume… I mean, Angela made no secret of her desire to sabotage all this. I saw Angela with a gun pointed at the minister’s wife…’

  ‘Clare,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Clare, yes. She was being held at gunpoint while Angela was helping Xenox at the terminal, and I saw Zhou dead at his workstation, too,’ Brenna said.

  ‘Dion, can you check that out. See if the virus is still on the network?’ Frankie asked, getting a sinking feeling that all their hard work was now destroyed.

  ‘Sure,’ Dion said as Janus also ran into the room.

  ‘What the hell?’ Janus said.

  ‘Help Dion. He’ll explain it,’ Frankie said to Janus.

  Frankie turned back to Xenox and Brenna as Janus moved to Dion’s side and started to talk in hushed tones.

  ‘Well?’ Frankie said to Xenox.

  ‘Of course I didn’t work with Angela willingly. Come on, I think you know me better than that. She forced me, at gunpoint, to access the system and wipe the files. I’m not going to be killed, or let Clare die, over a virus that can be rewritten,’ he said.

  ‘So, you deny being in on this with Angela?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘Frankie, do I really need to answer that?’ Xenox said.

  Frankie sighed. Angela had been brought here against her will, so it was no surprise that she would try something like this, but how would she do it? How could she manage to pull something like this off without help? Could it have been Xenox? Did she really trust him not to try something like this? She let Xenox and Brenna get to their feet.

  Frankie turned to Clare. ‘Clare, can you shed any light on this?’ she asked her. Clare had calmed down a touch and was looking at Frankie with bloodshot eyes, her mascara running down her cheeks.

  ‘Honestly, I have no idea what was going on. I had my back to most of it and was scared out my wits. I wasn’t really paying attention to what was happening around me. All I could focus on was that gun pressed against my head and the hope that I would see my children again tonight,’ Clare said.

  Clare wasn’t an operative. She was a secretary and a mother, and was no doubt in shock from whatever had happened here.

  ‘Bloody hell. It’s confirmed. All copies of the virus have been wiped from the network. It’s gone,’ Dion said, hitting the table in frustration.

  This was bad. That was really bad, Frankie thought.

  ‘Shit,’ Janus said from another part of the room.

  Frankie looked over to where Janus stood to see his bag and portable terminal had been destroyed as well. He’d left them in here, and it seemed that Angela had thought to ruin that, too.

  ‘So, we’d need to start over, but with Angela and Zhou dead and the backup’s we had here gone, you’re looking at weeks of work, at least. In fact, this might not be salvageable at all,’ Dion said.

  Anger and frustration rose within Frankie as she listened to Dion. Xenox kicked a table in anger nearby while Janus slumped into a chair. All that work, all those missions, wasted.

  ‘Even if we could rebuild it in a few weeks, which is optimistic, to say the least, it’s likely that the Corporations would have adjusted the programming in the bot’s enough that the virus would be useless anyway,’ Dion continued.

  ‘So, you’re saying we’re screwed,’ Frankie said, summing up.

  ‘Pretty much,’ Dion answered her.

  Frankie wanted to curse and punch something, too, but she resisted, barely, and, instead, sat on the edge of a desk, dropping her head into her hands, feeling a headache coming on.

  ‘Right, okay, let’s not overreact. Can we get Xenox, Brenna, and Clare into separate rooms? We need to speak with them individually about this,’ William said from close by.

  Ω

  ‘The footage we have backs up most of what we know,’ Dion said, sat at the terminal in the security room. Frankie stood to one side and listened. ‘I think something happened to the doll that was guarding Angela as it didn’t stop her from disabling the camera in her room. She then leaves the room with a jury-rigged gun made from the one in the doll’s arm and meets Clare in the corridors, taking her hostage and then walking her to the lab. Angela takes out the cameras outside the lab, and when she gets into the room, she kills Zhou, who was the only one in there before destroying the cameras in there, too. I have footage of Xenox approaching the lab, but once he passes the last live camera, I have nothing. So, you’re relying on witness testimony,’ Dion said.

  ‘Great,’ Frankie muttered. She was hoping that the cameras would show her something, shed some light on what had happened, but she was having no such luck.

  ‘I take it things are no clearer,’ Dion asked.

  ‘Not really. Xenox denies everything, says he was forced into it. Brenna is convinced that Xenox is in on it, and Clare is just a mess and is as good as useless.’

  ‘Do you think Xenox could have done this?’

  ‘Honestly, I’m not sure. I wish I could say no, but a part of me still does not fully trust him. He’s a walking contradiction, that one.’

  ‘But it was his idea in the first place,’ Dion said.

  ‘It was. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t planning this from the start,’ Frankie said.

  ‘That would be messed up,’ Dion said.

  ‘You’re not wrong,’ Frankie said. ‘Keep looking through that footage and going through the network logs. If you find anything else, let me know,’ she said and made her way around to William’s office.

  From what she could put together from the information she had, one thing was quite clear to her: Angela had help. She was a capable woman, clearly. Intelligent, skilled, a compu
ter whiz, and cunning, too, but even with all that, Frankie just couldn’t believe that she did all this alone. She had to have had help. But who? They had focused on the three people alive in that room, Clare, Xenox and Brenna, but it could just as easily have been anyone in this facility, or, and she hoped this was not the case, someone outside of it.

  She knocked on William’s door and entered once he’d invited her in.

  ‘Well, this is one hell of a mess,’ he said to her.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ she said, agreeing with him.

  ‘Are we any closer to the truth?’

  ‘Not really. Everyone agrees that Angela was the one doing the deleting, which makes sense, and she was someone who was clearly capable of doing this, but I just feel that she must have had outside help. But, I’m unsure who.’

  ‘Brenna is convinced it’s Xenox,’ William said.

  ‘She is, but I feel that’s just bias on her part. She doesn’t like him and thinks the worst of him, so this fits, but I’m not convinced,’ Frankie said.

  ‘So, you think it’s Clare?’

  ‘Again, I’m not convinced. She’s a mess and doesn’t seem like the kind of person to do this. She’s clearly upset. She’d seen Angela kill Zhou in cold blood and then had to kill someone herself as well in self-defence. She’ll be having nightmares for months.’

  ‘So, who?’

  ‘That’s the thing, it could be anyone. I’m getting Dion to go through the security footage, but also to check the data logs to see if anyone hacked in. Someone disabled that doll that was guarding Angela. I can’t see Angela herself managing to do it while under guard, so, my guess is that it’s someone external.’

  ‘Have you checked the doll’s memory?’ William asked.

  ‘Destroyed, melted into slag, so that’s not really possible. What about a deep dive into our three suspects’ cyber brains?’

  ‘It’s on the schedule for tomorrow. We need to bring in a specialist, given that Xenox, who would have done it, is one of the suspects. But we can only dive into Brenna and Xenox’s neural nets. Clare doesn’t have one,’ William said.

  ‘She doesn’t?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘No, and neither does Issac. They were both a part of the Nat movement. It’s where they met before he got into politics.’

  ‘Well, crap, that’s going to leave some gaps in the narrative,’ she grumbled.

  There was a knock on the door, and without being invited to enter, Isaac, the Foreign Minister walked in.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry to barge in, but it’s been hours,’ Isaac said. ‘We have children at home wondering where their mummy and daddy are. Can I please take Clare home?’

  William looked up at Frankie. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I was going to suggest releasing them all, I believe we have everything we can get from them for now,’ Frankie said dejectedly. ‘We know who and where they are, so, if we need them back…’

  ‘Agreed. Okay, Isaac, you can take her home. Sorry for the delay,’ he said.

  ‘It’s fine, I do understand. We need to get to the bottom of this…’ he said, pausing. ‘Do you think it’s the Corporations? Do they know what we’re doing here?’

  ‘They must suspect something by now, that’s for sure,’ William said.

  ‘The A.C.T. was never going to remain a secret forever,’ Isaac agreed.

  ‘No, it wasn’t. Look, go home, get some rest and take Clare with you. I’ll be in touch with any updates. I assume you have informed the PM?’

  ‘I have. Thank you. I’ll catch you later,’ Isaac said to them both and left the room.

  ‘What do you think?’ William asked.

  ‘About all this? Part of me isn’t surprised that it all came crashing down. It was all such a long shot, anyway,’ she said.

  ‘Are we doing the right thing, releasing them?’

  ‘I think so. I don’t think there’s much more we can learn from them. Hopefully, Dion can turn up a lead in the next day or so,’ she said.

  ‘You’re placing a lot of trust in him. He’s still quite new to the group and was on the run from the Corporations. Can you trust him?’

  ‘You think he’s the one who helped Angela?’

  ‘I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll pull him off the hunt and go through it myself once I’ve released Xenox and Brenna, okay?’ Frankie proposed.

  William nodded and let her go. Frankie walked around to the rooms that held Brenna and Xenox and opened Brenna’s door first.

  ‘You’re free to go back to your room, but I’d like to request that you do not leave the premises, okay?’ Frankie asked.

  Brenna nodded. ‘So, have you arrested Xenox?’

  Frankie sighed. ‘No, we’re still hunting for proof, and apart from your supposition that he did it, there’s nothing else that really incriminates him. So, for now, you’re both free to return to quarters. But you need to keep your distance from each other for a while.’

  ‘I ain’t going anywhere near him,’ Brenna said. ‘You have no worries there.’

  ‘Good, off you go, then,’ she said and watched Brenna walk off before moving to the doctor’s door and opening it.

  ‘Out you come. You can return to your lab,’ Frankie said.

  Xenox nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he said and rose from the chair he’d been sat in. ‘You don’t think I did it, do you?’ he asked as he stepped out the room.

  ‘Probably not, no, but I can’t rule you out,’ she said.

  He bit his lip. ‘I understand,’ he said and fell into step beside her.

  ‘So, what the hell happened in there,’ Frankie asked.

  ‘I told you. I went to see Dion to get an update on my project. I’d seen Brenna was elsewhere, so I took the opportunity to check in while she was away from the lab. I’ve done it before, so I saw no harm in it. I walked in, and Angela pointed the gun at me. What could I do after that? What would anyone do? I did as Angela asked, logged into the network and deleted the files,’ he said. ‘She’d already deleted the copy on that terminal, but I could see she had been having trouble hacking into the network,’ he said.

  ‘So, Dion’s security measures were holding up to her hacking?’

  ‘And then some,’ he said.

  If she couldn’t break his security, then it would stand to reason that Dion was likely not her contact, she thought. Otherwise, that would not be an issue for her. So, William was probably wrong about Dion as a suspect.

  She walked in silence with the doctor for a bit, before another question occurred to her. ‘How was Clare when you walked in? Was she upset?’

  ‘She didn’t look happy, but she seemed calm… actually, she looked at me when I walked in. Yeah, I remember seeing her face,’ he said.

  ‘So, she got upset later?’

  ‘She killed Angela, Frankie. Killing someone after being kidnapped would upset most people, I think,’ he said.

  Frankie frowned. He was right. ‘Look, I’ll see you later, all right? I need to look into this more myself,’ she said.

  ‘Sure thing,’ the doctor said, and walked off down the corridor towards his personal lab.

  She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something about all this didn’t add up. Something felt wrong. She walked to the security room and found Dion inside, still scrubbing through footage.

  ‘Go get some rest, I’ll take over,’ she said.

  ‘You sure? I don’t mind,’ Dion answered her.

  ‘Yeah, go on,’ she said and closed the door behind him. She dropped herself into the chair and sat back.

  What was she missing here? she thought as she opened up the security camera files and hunted through them. She watched the footage of Angela asleep or just resting on her bed with the doll standing close by, when, without preamble, she rose from the bed, walked over to the camera and smashed it with an ornament. The doll did nothing to stop her, which meant it was compromised by that
point. Minutes later, Angela was outside with the jury-rigged gun from the doll and set off down the corridors. She heard something and stopped, turned and smashed the camera closest to her.

  Frankie wished these cameras recorded sound as well as images.

  A camera further away captured the footage of Angela taking Clare hostage. Clare was quick to raise her hands, and, after a few seconds, Angela marched her off.

  Frankie sat back and thought about that for a moment. Why would Angela need to smash the camera that would show her kidnapping Clare, unless she had something to hide?

  That felt wrong somehow.

  Frankie started to scrub through the other cameras, tracing the path that Angela and Clare took through the facility until they reached the final stretch of corridor where Angela began destroying cameras again.

  She was hiding something else; she must be, Frankie thought. Frankie brought up a map of the A.C.T. base in her vision and marked the location of the cameras on it, changing the destroyed ones to red.

  She then pulled up footage from any others in adjoining corridors that might have a view of them, but which Angela hadn’t thought to smash.

  On reviewing the footage from the fourth such camera, Frankie noticed that she could make out a reflection in a glass partition of the two women entering through the lab door. Frankie ran the footage through some filters and attempted to enhance it. She could get it looking a little better by adjusting the levels, using a de-hazing filter on it and then layering the footage and changing the blending modes to bring out some further detail. She then played it back a few times to figure what just what it was she was seeing.

  What was clear was that it wasn’t Angela who had opened the lab door, which was always locked with a code. It was Clare.

  Frankie sat back and thought about that. That alone wasn’t entirely damning, it was suspicious, but not incriminating. For all she knew, Angela gave her the code and forced her at gunpoint to enter it.