by Kim Curran
I turn and walk back through the doors, not needing to check that Ethan is behind me, or that behind him is my army.
34
‘CORINA SAYS SHE’S WAITING on our signal,’ Ethan says in the weird, dead voice he has when he’s relaying what he’s hearing through the chip. ‘And that we might want to check the news.’
I can see how conflicted he is by having it activated again. How much he missed it and, by the flinch in his eyes whenever a message comes across, how much he misses the silence.
‘When this is all over,’ I tell myself again, not really knowing whether it will ever be over. Or if I’ll be around to see it. I think of the graffiti back in the playground. The adjacked messages at the riots. No future.
It’s been two days since we walked out of T-Raz. Two days of organising and hiding. Without Glaze to spread the word, we had to do it the old fashioned way: by word of mouth. The message and the plan for tonight has been passed from person to person. I have no idea how far it’s spread or even if any of this is going to work. I just have to hope.
I look around for a vidboard. There’s a bus stop across the street showing a flashing message.
IT’S DECISION TIME! VOTE TODAY!
‘There,’ I say, pointing at it.
We walk across the road, not even having to bother check for traffic as the streets were closed hours ago.
Ethan goes through the process of hacking the election advert to access the internet and then he pulls up a news channel. It’s a live report from a street not far from here.
‘I’m here at the town hall,’ the reporter says, ‘where people should be casting their votes, but instead, staff are having to board up the doors and windows as the protest that started peacefully this morning has increased in intensity.’
Boys in black swarm behind her, some carrying bottles with flaming rags coming out of the neck. They launch them at the building. I’m sure I recognise some of the boys from T-Raz.
The reporter flinches at the crash, but continues in her delivery. ‘Some voters have turned up, determined to fulfil their democratic duty. I spoke to some of them this morning.’
The screen cuts to an image that must have been filmed earlier in the day, judging by the brightness of the sun on the horizon.
‘Are you not put off by the protests?’ the reporter asks a young woman.
‘My great, great grandmother was a suffragette,’ the woman says. ‘She threw herself under a horse to get the right to vote. I’m hardly going to be put off by a couple of hoodies.’
It cuts back to the reporter live at the scene.
‘Whether voting can go ahead is yet to be decided. But one thing’s for sure: this has not been democracy’s finest moment.’
The reporter stands, staring into the hovercams flying around her head. And I can read in her smug expression that she’s not thinking about the riot going on behind her but the possibilities of awards she might win thanks to this story.
The feed cuts back to the newsroom, which looks too bright, too white, after the feed from the streets.
‘Thanks, Carol,’ the anchor says. ‘And as the riots spread across the country, the one question everyone is asking; where are the police?’
‘She’s got a point,’ a voice from behind us says.
Startled, I turn around to see Detective Lee. We’re right back to where it all started.
‘I thought I told you to stay out of trouble, Miss Quinn.’
‘I never was very good at listening to authority figures,’ I say.
He shakes his head and sighs.
‘You got my message then?’ I say.
He nods. ‘You took a big risk sending it to me. How did you know I wasn’t on White’s side?’
‘Because you knew, didn’t you? That Max was up to something? That’s why you were so keen to fit the blank? I kept thinking it was an extreme punishment, but I was so busy feeling sorry for myself I couldn’t see that you did it to give me a chance.’
Lee smiles. ‘You’re a good kid, Miss Quinn. I saw that White had his hooks in you. So sure, I did it to help you. But mostly I did it to piss him off. To prove that he wasn’t the one with all the control.’ He looks down at his feet. ‘Seems like I was wrong though.’
‘We were lucky the police’s network system hasn’t been integrated yet. If it had, you’d all be Max’s pawns too.’
Lee shudders at the thought. ‘So it’s true, that stuff you sent me? He’s taking over people’s minds?’
‘He sees it as building a family.’
Lee nods. ‘I looked up that word,’ he says. ‘“Privilege.” It means private law. That’s what Max and people like him want. Their own law.’ He chews on his lip.
‘And unless we can stop him tonight, he’ll get it,’ Ethan says.
‘You and your friends seem to be doing a good job of disrupting the election, though.’ He turns around to where there’s the faint glow of a fire in the distance.
‘Just doing what they do,’ Ethan says.
‘Hmm.’ Lee turns back. ‘Look, I can’t help you—you know that. But what I can do is stay out of your way. As long as your people stick to targeting polling stations, the Met don’t have to get involved.’ He looks up to the sky. ‘Such a shame the government decided to outsource the security for the polling stations to a private firm, or else we could have been of some assistance. As it is, all we can do is keep the peace on the streets.’
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘Thank me when this is all over and you’re not in prison and I’m not dead in a ditch.’ He takes my hand and shakes it. ‘I hope this is the last time I see you, Miss Quinn.’
‘Me too,’ I say.
He sniffs at the air, then turns and walks away from us and into the darkness.
The vidboard has returned to normal, the large zero on the countdown flashing away. Decision time.
I pull out my phone and fire off a text to Corina.
On the strike of 10.
A moment later the reply comes through.
GTG.
Good to go. I look up at the time on the bus display. Nine thirty. There’s no going back now.
Max could have chosen to throw his election-day party anywhere. Any hotel, any museum, any restaurant in the city. He chose to have it in a venue overlooking parliament. I guess he was planning on looking down on the palace of Westminster on the night he made himself king.
People pour down the grey steps of building—men wearing suits, women wearing gowns—all hurriedly rushing into waiting taxis.
‘Like rats,’ Ethan says, watching them.
‘Guess this isn’t the election day Max had planned.’
‘Shall we?’ Ethan gives me his elbow. I take it with a mock curtsey. We walk into the lion’s den like we’re walking on to a dance floor.
There are only a few members of WhiteShield standing guard. The rest are probably all out trying to keep the polling stations open and Max’s plans alive. But when I walk up to them and let my stealthscarf fall open, there are still enough to surround me.
Five men point their guns at Ethan and me, their eyes dark with hatred. They want to shoot me. Do more than that. But I’m counting on Max’s curiosity to save me. He’ll want to know why I’m here. And whether I carry his secret with me.
‘Get down! Get down!’ the guards scream. I get to my knees, my hands held up next to my head. Ethan does the same, although no one seems interested in him.
Guests stop and stare at us, their hands to their mouths, some even clutching at their jewellery as if I was there to steal it.
‘It’s her,’ a woman gasps.
They tense, itching to attack, barely able to hold themselves back. Under all the glamour of their fine clothes and expensive hair-dos, they’re animals. Like bears dancing to Max’s drum.
A guard pats me down and I flinch as his hands linger longer than needed on my breasts and backside. I didn’t bring any weapons. I knew that they’d only take them off me. Beside
s, if my plan works, I won’t need them. If it doesn’t…
The man steps back and joins the rest of the guards. They look confused, caught between instinct and training. Their eyes glass over for a moment. When they’re back, the confusion has gone. They’ve had their orders.
I wait, unable to breathe. Has my gamble paid off? How well do I know Max after all?
‘Get to your feet,’ a guard shouts, nudging me in the back with the barrel of his rifle. ‘Mr White would like to see you.’
I let out the breath I’ve been holding. Seems I know him after all. A guard yanks me to my feet and pushes me forward, through the doors. Ethan follows a few steps behind. We’re walked past a series of curtained booths. People queue outside them, ready to cast their vote with the push of a button. They let us pass with nothing but distasteful looks, like I’m a fly in their caviar.
The room seems too large for the amount of people here. Maybe there were three times as many people invited. Maybe more than that left when the riots began. People should be laughing, drinking, all buzzing with excitement about their oncoming victory. Instead, they’re gathered in corners, keeping their voices low. The sense of unease is tangible. This party is a spectacular failure, like the whole night. I can’t help but smile.
The guard nudges me in the back again and directs me towards a set of stairs up to a raised level where a group of people are gathered. Max is standing with his back to us, looking out the window at the buildings across the river and into the city beyond. Scatterings of fires punctuate the black. My army making their voices heard.
Jonathan stands next to Max, his face pale and sweating. He hisses in Max’s ear. ‘We need to go.’
Max holds up a hand to silence him. When he turns to face me I sense the tension behind his too-tight smile. He can’t hide anything from me anymore.
‘Leave us.’
Jonathan hesitates, then practically runs back down the stairs to join the rest of the party.
‘Petri, how kind of you to join us,’ Max says. ‘Can I get you or your friend a drink?’ He waves at a waiter below carrying a tray of golden glasses.
‘Max,’ I say, fixing him with a stare. ‘Enough.’
He smiles. ‘All right then. Do you have it?’ he says, all pretence dropped.
‘Yes.’ I too have put aside all games.
‘And who else knows? Besides Detective Lee. Getting rid of him will be troublesome.’ We really have no secrets.
He doesn’t seem to care that we’re in earshot of at least ten people. But then, why should he be worried? He’s in control of them after all.
‘A couple of my friends.’
‘And I assume you have an arrangement by which if anything happens to you, that information goes public? To the press perhaps?’
‘Something like that.’
‘It’s useless, you know that? In the seconds it would take your friends to release the message, my people will have spun it into insignificance. As soon as you put it on Glaze, I own it. I own them. They only believe what I want them to believe.’
I look at the guests around us, sipping at their drinks, staring into the room with dead eyes. ‘I know.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘I’m giving you all the files. Everything Logan found.’
As I go to reach into my pocket, the guard flinches. I pull a data card out slowly and hand it over to Max.
He takes it, careful not to touch my skin, and places it on a glass table. Images pour out of the card and on to the screen surface of the table as the data is transferred. Video footage. The medical reports. It’s all there.
He smiles. ‘Why are you giving this to me?’
‘Because I don’t want to fight any more.’ This is the first thing I’ve said that surprises him.
‘So now you have what you want, you can let us go,’ says Ethan.
‘You look familiar.’ Max narrows his eyes and looks at Ethan for the first time. ‘I never forget a face.’
‘Don’t bother trying to match me. I’m not on. Not on this network anyway.’
‘Not on? But...’ A memory slots into place. ‘Ah, Ethan Fisher. How nice to meet you at last. I must say, you’ve been causing me a lot of trouble trying to dig all that Tabula Rasa stuff back up. I’m surprised you’re so upset about it all, really. I don’t know if it makes you feel any better to know that I could never have designed Glaze without the data I gathered there.’
Ethan stiffens. ‘No. No, it really doesn’t.’
Max takes a sip from his glass. ‘So, is that it? You’ve come here to confront me over what happened almost five years ago? You know I paid your family handsomely when you entered the programme. Oh.’ Max smiles seeing Ethan’s shocked expression. ‘They didn’t tell you that, did they?’ He doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘What a shame. No one should be alone.’
‘You are,’ I say.
‘You couldn’t be more wrong, Petri dear. I am never alone. I am surrounded by my network. My family.’ He waves at the party guests. They all clap on cue.
‘They’re not your family, Max. We know. We know how the chip really works. We know about how it manipulates people’s feelings, how it controls them.’
A flash of worry passes over his face. But it’s gone so quickly, it could have been the shift in moonlight as a cloud passed overhead. ‘And?’
I’m taken aback for a second. He isn’t even trying to deny it. ‘And it’s... it’s evil!’
‘There’s no good. No evil. There is only people and what makes them happy.’
Another round of applause from the guests. But they’re looking at their hands as if they don’t belong to them.
‘They only think they’re happy.’
He puts his glass down and smiles at me. ‘So tell me, what exactly is the difference between thinking you’re happy and being happy? Let me tell you: none. People like being told what to do, what to think, who to like. It makes life simple for them. No one really wants the weight of all that choice. They only want to get on with their lives without worrying over every little decision. I help them. I help them be happy.’
‘By controlling them?’
He shrugs.
‘So tell me this. If you can control people, why let anyone slip through your net? Why not have everyone in your family? The criminals, the blanks. Why not control them too?’
‘I thought about that, integrating them into Glaze, or maybe on a separate network. The blanks were a test. But then I realised, the strongest families always have those they consider to be outsiders. It’s only in defining yourself against another that you feel like you belong. An enemy to unite against. As long as everyone on Glaze had people like your friend Logan to look down upon, they’d be content.’
‘You really think you’re the good guy, don’t you?’ I sense Ethan moving behind me, like an animal in a cage, pacing back and forth.
‘Ending war. Giving the youth their future back, how is any of that bad?’ Max says, not even bothering to look at Ethan.
‘Don’t you dare talk about the youth like you’re helping us,’ I say. ‘You’re not. You’re moulding us into your idea of the perfect child, who stands up for old ladies on buses, who doesn’t get pregnant. But we’re not supposed to be perfect! We’re supposed to make mistakes and screw up. We can be anything we want to be. Go anywhere, be anyone. Nothing is set. Each new person we meet pushes us in a new direction; every new idea we’re exposed to opens up new possibilities. We’re nothing but pure potential. But you’ve robbed us of all that. You and your filters. It shuts down our potential. Limits our world. Restricts the type of people we meet. The type of ideas we’re exposed to. And for what? To keep us happy? Safe?’
‘The alternative is chaos.’
‘I’d rather risk the chaos of freedom than be denied the choice. Choice is everything.’
He walks in a tight circle, stroking his chin. ‘Where have I seen that before? Ah, yes, in that abortion clinic your friends hid in as they tried
to take my network down. And look what happened to them, Petri.’
I remember the bodies, lying broken on the floor. ‘Are you going to kill me, like you killed Logan and his friends? That’s what you’ve come to? What happened to respect?’
His face becomes ugly as it scrunches up in rage. He throws the glass to the floor and charges towards me, grabbing my jacket. Ethan tries to pull him off but Max shoves him away, sending him crashing into a lady in a short red dress. She squeals as she falls to the floor.
‘I’m so sick of children talking about respect,’ Max spits into my face. ‘“Oh, he disrespected me”. Pathetic! Respect is earned, Petri. And not one of your generation has done a thing to earn it. And so yes, I’ve adjusted the balance a little so that we might have a future and a populace worthy to take over our work. I had thought that would be you, Petri. I wanted to give everything to you. But now...’
‘But now what?’ I choke.
He loosens his grip slightly. Not enough for me to get away, but enough so that I can breathe again. ‘You’re so like your mother, do you know that? She kept digging and digging and asking questions. I had planned to shut her up, but then along came your friend with his convenient virus and I didn’t have to lift a finger.’
‘You’re a monster.’
The guests are starting to close in, their empty looks replaced with expressions of hatred and anger.
‘I’m a god!’ he yells over the chiming of Big Ben.
At that, every light in the building, every light in the city, goes off.
On the stroke of ten Corina pulls the switch, throwing us all into darkness.
Guests scream in panic, knocking into each other and trying to find their way out.
‘Stay calm,’ Max roars, but it doesn’t have any effect.
Because it’s not just the city supply Corina has hacked. It’s WhiteInc’s generator too. Glaze is down. It will only be a matter of minutes—seconds, maybe—before the backup systems kick in to restore power and Glaze reboots. But it might be enough to break Max’s hold over them.
