Maladapted

by Richard Kurti

  She reached out and turned his face back towards her. “We need to get into Gilgamesh. We need to find out what’s really going on in there.”

  “Herzog said it’s impossible—”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Should I?”

  Tess smiled. “Good answer.”

  But Cillian hadn’t meant it as a joke.

  “Let me make a few calls,” Tess said.

  “To who?”

  “Just let me do what I’m good at. You should get some rest.” She brushed Cillian’s eyelids closed with her fingers and rested her hand gently on his forehead. “I’ll sort everything.”

  There were so many conflicting patterns in Cillian’s mind, it was exhausting trying to hold it together. He had lost all fixed points, which made it impossible to know who to believe. Right now the only comfort was Tess’s cool hand on his head. Maybe she was right. Maybe if he could just rest for a while, everything would start to resolve…

  Tess watched quietly as Cillian’s breathing became slow and steady, then in one eerie moment, all the muscles in his body seemed to lose their tension … and he was in a deep sleep.

  Quietly Tess went into the bathroom, closed the door and entered the security codes on her smartCell to contact Revelation.

  Stored messages from Blackwood scrolled across her screen: Checking you’re safe. Confirm … Do you want me to prep an extraction team? … Comms check. Please verify … Tess, are you OK? He’d been pinging her every couple of hours.

  Tess knew she’d broken protocol by not replying. In fast-moving situations Blackwood liked to keep a close eye on his operatives, but this was the first chance she’d had to respond.

  She started to type, then hesitated.

  Tess opened the bathroom door and looked at Cillian sleeping on the bed. He seemed so isolated and vulnerable.

  She swiped her smartCell and shut the messaging app down. No need to contact Revelation, not just yet. Right now everyone wanted the same thing. Cillian needed answers and Revelation needed answers. Beyond that…

  No need to think beyond that.

  Not just yet.

  36

  Silently Tess left the bedroom and went downstairs to the diner. A couple of people were sitting at the bar, but they weren’t paying attention to anything except the burbling WallScreen. On the far side of the room was a line of booths like the payphones you saw in old movies.

  Tess picked the corner one, out of sight of the bar, and locked the door behind her. The interactive display sparked to life. “The world at your fingertips,” it chirped. “You want it, we print it!”

  Tess hit Mute.

  The booth flipped to visual menus, scrolling through options, but Tess had other ideas.

  All printed goods were logged for tax and to prevent illegal downloads, so she typed a line of hack code into the search bar and a few moments later was into the operating system. Placing her smartCell screen-to-screen with the printer, she uploaded the masking software and slipped onto the Darknet.

  Now she could work without being traced.

  She went straight to the Revelation servers and logged on to the weapons database, a formidable virtual armoury with everything for the assassin on the move – hunting knives, motor-driven garrottes, wrist blades, retractable batons.

  And guns.

  Dozens of guns.

  She flicked through the menus, searching for the Doc Holliday, an assault pistol with burst capability that was small enough to be hidden under clothing and could be burnt after use.

  Tess double-clicked to download. Seconds later a box under the screen lit up and the printer whirred into action. Grimly she watched the arms dance back and forth, spraying polymers with micro-precision, building the gun layer by layer. The sweet candyfloss smell of molten plastic filled the booth. It was so unlike the smell of death.

  37

  Herzog woke with a start to find the barrel of a gun pressed hard into his temple.

  “Do exactly as I say, or I’ll kill you,” Tess said coldly.

  “For God’s sake—”

  “Last warning.”

  “OK, OK.” Herzog glanced at her finger poised on the trigger as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “You’re Revelation, aren’t you?” He rubbed his hands over his face, trying to think clearly. “They warned us. They said someone like you would be coming. Sooner or later.”

  “Because P8 is wrong. And you know it.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “You know it!”

  “It was different in the beginning. But they went further…”

  “And you never had the guts to do anything about it.”

  “You can’t just press the stop button.”

  “But you didn’t even try!”

  “Please, it’s not my battle.”

  “That is exactly where you’ve failed,” Tess said with conviction. “If something is wrong, you have to act.”

  “I’m just trying to get by—”

  “You did nothing. That’s a sin. And sin gets punished.”

  “I don’t deserve this. Please … I’m just a tiny part of it.”

  Tess despised Herzog’s cowardice, but she knew better than to make this personal. “I’m going to give you one chance to atone. Atone and you can live.”

  “What about Cillian?” Herzog asked.

  “Worry about yourself.”

  “What’ll happen to him?”

  Tess hesitated.

  “He’s one of them, isn’t he?”

  “He’s the most important lead we have,” Tess said evasively. “We can help him find out what he needs to know.”

  “And when he gets the answers? What then?”

  “Where is the weakness in P8’s security?”

  “There isn’t a weakness.”

  “Think!” She lashed out, cracking the pistol across his head.

  “You can’t get in—”

  She grabbed him and forced him to the ground. “We can. And we will.”

  Herzog looked up into the barrel of the gun. He could see that this girl had been trained by killers.

  “You’ve got 3 seconds,” Tess said, her finger tightening on the trigger.

  “You’ll never get past security. There are cameras, body scanners—”

  “What about the building works? The forest comes right up to the perimeter fence. Can we get in that way?”

  Herzog’s hesitation was the only answer Tess needed. “So it can be done,” she said. “And when we’ve crossed the grounds, there’s a way into the building, isn’t there?”

  No reply.

  “Isn’t there?”

  “Yes.”

  “But we’ll need a security pass and codes. Which you have—”

  “You won’t get more than 100 metres—”

  “And which you’re going to give me.”

  No reply.

  Tess jammed the gun into his forehead. “One way or another, I’ll get what I need.”

  “All right.” Herzog nodded weakly.

  He got to his feet, went to a small safe under the desk and typed in the combination. But as he took out the security pass, he felt a sharp pinprick in his neck. Herzog spun round to see Tess clutching a hypodermic needle.

  “You bitch! I’ve given you everything!” he said, furiously clawing at his neck.

  “It won’t kill you,” Tess said calmly. “But when you wake up, we’ll be long gone.”

  Herzog felt the strength drain from his body as he slumped to his knees. He saw Tess lean over him, felt her breath on the side of his face as she spoke:

  “If you raise the alarm, if you try to act against me, if you even tell anyone I was here, Revelation will find you. And kill you.”

  They were the last words Herzog heard before he blacked out.

  38

  “How the hell did you get it?”

  “Herzog had a change of heart.” Tess handed him the security pass. “Turns out he wants to help after
all.”

  Cillian looked uneasily at the chip-enabled card. “What did you do to him, Tess?”

  “Don’t start panicking.”

  “I’m not panicking!”

  “Good. Because I sorted this as well.” She tossed the gun onto the bed.

  “Are you serious?”

  “We’re off the map now. We have to watch our backs.”

  Cillian picked up the gun and studied it apprehensively. The smell of the polymers was still fresh.

  “Life out here is cheaper.” Tess shrugged.

  “Do you even know how to use it?”

  “Please. I told you I had a difficult childhood.”

  For a few moments Cillian said nothing; this girl obviously had connections to some very dark places. “Who are you really?” he asked softly, almost dreading the answer. “Who do you work for?”

  “Like I told you, I fight for myself. I always have.”

  But Cillian knew there was more to it than that. He handed the gun back. “I’m sorry.”

  “I thought you wanted the truth?”

  “Not if it’s soaked in blood.”

  “Life isn’t some maths problem to be sorted out on a screen.”

  “I didn’t sign up for this.”

  “In the real world things get rough!”

  “So we just throw morality out of the window?”

  “Morality is exactly what we’re fighting for. You and I. Right now.” She brandished the gun. “With this.”

  “I’m not a terrorist. There’s got to be a better way.”

  Tess sat down next to him, close, so that he could feel the warmth of her body. “You know, there was a remote tribe in Assam Province that didn’t believe in violence. They wanted to live in peace and harmony with the whole world. Then one night, a tiger came out of the jungle and ate them all.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. End of story.”

  Cillian looked at her, and couldn’t help a grim smile. “Is that really true?”

  “It’s true every day, in a hundred different ways.” Gently Tess put the gun back in his hands. “What you should be asking is why didn’t I get one for you as well?”

  39

  2 hours later, as dawn broke across the freezing sky, Cillian and Tess were perched in the tree canopy a few metres back from the top of an electrified fence. From here they could see the whole north side of the Gilgamesh complex.

  “They’re certainly in a hurry to get it built,” Cillian said, looking at the army of workmen who had been toiling through the night. “Whatever it is…”

  The grounds rolled down to the cliff edge where they met the dark ocean swell, but in the middle of the space a massive sinkhole had been bored deep into the rock. From this angle it was impossible to see how far down the chasm stretched, but the cranes clustered around the lip seemed to take for ever lowering girders and cable drums into the floodlit depths.

  “I think they’re nearly ready,” Tess said. She was pointing further along the perimeter fence to where a section was about to be removed so that a tunnelling machine could trundle on-site. It meant the power to the electric fence would be cut for a while.

  Suddenly Cillian felt a change in the air. “That’s it,” he said. “It’s off.”

  Tess looked at him sceptically. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Can’t you feel it?” Cillian dropped down from the tree.

  “Be careful,” she warned.

  He strode towards the fence, reached out, grabbed the wire – and suddenly his whole body spasmed violently.

  “Cillian!” She leapt down and ran towards the fence, but he was already laughing.

  “Just kidding.”

  “Don’t!” She whacked him.

  Cillian clambered up the mesh, slid between the barbed wire at the top and dropped down on the other side. “Easy.”

  “Not bad for a university boy.” Tess followed him over, and quickly they made their way to a cluster of temporary cabins 100 metres away. Lights were burning in the first one where foremen were poring over plans. Beyond that were some equipment cabins.

  After a few attempts, they found one stacked with safety helmets and high-vis jackets. When they emerged, Cillian and Tess looked like a couple of workers starting their shift.

  “Hitch up that trailer. The one with the drainage pipes,” Tess said, as she climbed onto a construction quad bike. “As long as we look busy, no-one’ll ask questions.”

  A few minutes later, theirs was just one of dozens of vehicles churning up the slushy mud around the gaping mouth of the sinkhole.

  They followed one of the main tracks to get closer to the old buildings, then veered off and headed down to the boiler rooms built into the lowest level of the Gothic fortress.

  When they were out of sight of the main works, Tess slowed the quad and gazed up at the sheer granite walls. “Looks more like a prison than a hospital.”

  “I think that’s our best hope for getting in,” Cillian said, pointing to some service doors leading off the yard.

  “Let’s spin the quad around. We might need a fast getaway.”

  As they walked towards the buildings, a set of doors burst open, startling them, but it was only a group of kitchen porters hauling boxes of food on pallets.

  “All right?” Tess smiled. “Just got to tap into the main feeds.”

  “Sure.” The disinterested porters nodded and held the doors open, allowing them both inside.

  “What feeds?” Cillian whispered as they hurried away.

  “I don’t know. But nor did they.”

  They made their way deeper into the kitchen complex, past stores and prep areas and rooms that seemed to have been forgotten altogether, until finally they came up against a formidable steel security door. Beyond it was the old heart of Gilgamesh.

  Restricted Access.

  They hid their high-vis jackets behind some shelving, then Tess took out the stolen security pass and swiped it across the sensor.

  Nothing happened.

  Had Herzog somehow raised the alarm? Had he cancelled his pass? Were they walking into a trap?

  “Do it slower,” Cillian suggested.

  She tried again. There was a beep, then a prompt asked for the access code.

  “I knew that,” Tess said, typing in the code.

  Bolts clunked back, there was a breath of compressed air…

  Cillian and Tess braced themselves.

  But as the door opened they were engulfed by a wave of heat and the strangely reassuring smell of clean laundry.

  40

  It was a different world on this side of the security doors. There was no trace of forbidding grey granite; in here everything was bright and polished and high-tech. The white walls were infused with information screens and a soft light emanated from the smooth floor. The sense of peace was overwhelming.

  They heard a whirring approach along the gently curving corridor and instinctively pulled back into an alcove. But as the sound came closer, Tess relaxed. “I know that whirr.”

  She peered around the corner and saw a Maintenance-Bot diligently polishing the floor. It was the same brand as those that lived on the SkyWay – same servos, same whirr. “Nothing to worry about from him.”

  Cillian took the security pass, swiped it across a display screen and pulled up an interactive diagram mapping the labyrinth of old buildings.

  The scale of the complex was overwhelming. The Gothic castle was just a shell that covered a vast network of laboratories and wards; some tunnelled deep into the ground, 10 levels down, others stretched up, boring right through the centre of the old buildings.

  “Where the hell do we begin?” Tess said, paging through map after map, but Cillian’s eyes had already locked onto the ward halls. He zoomed in on a series of concentric circles with ominous labels—

  Bestiary

  Glass-Cribs

  Speculative

  Sub-Prime

  High-Grade

  The names bet
rayed a ruthless logic to whatever was being done in Gilgamesh.

  “Let’s start there,” Cillian said apprehensively, touching the closest ward hall on the display: Sub-Prime.

  “We’re not going to get far just walking around,” Tess said.

  “Maybe there’s a way through the service corridors.” Cillian searched the map for the most obscure route, and noticed an area labelled Maintenance-Bots: Charging.

  “How about that?”

  Tess immediately understood. “Perfect. No-one looks twice at a broken bot.”

  10 minutes later they wheeled a de-powered Cleaning-Bot into the Sub-Prime ward as if doing a routine replacement. None of the medical staff even glanced at them.

  Cillian looked up into the hall. It was a massive circular cavern with a ramp spiralling up the outside wall to a domed skylight at the top. But there were no beds here. There were cells. Countless individual cells lining the entire length of the ramp, like a high-tech prison.

  As they started to wheel the bot up the slope they realized that each cell contained only one patient, and all the rooms were glass-fronted, giving medical staff the power of total observation 24/7. BioDisplays scrolled on the glass walls, relaying information from a battery of instruments inside, and a host of cameras deprived the patients of any last shred of privacy.

  The first cell they passed contained a teenage girl, gazing at a WallScreen that played high-speed images of clouds tumbling across a mountain range.

  Her skin was hanging half-off.

  Not from a wound, but because she was shedding it like a snake. The old skin hung around her waist, revealing a new one glistening down her back.

  As they approached, the girl flicked her head around, locking eyes with Cillian.

  For a moment he faltered under her intense gaze.

  “Don’t stop,” Tess whispered urgently.

  Cillian forced himself to look away. “Who’s done this to them?”

  “Just keep moving.”

  Fearfully they continued up the ramp, past some more skin-shedders, until they came to a boy who could have been no more than 12, prowling around his cell on all fours. Not on hands and feet, but on 4 identical limbs that were neither arms nor legs, but something in between. Something new.