Warsuit 1.0

by James Lovegrove

  JAMES LOVEGROVE

  WARSUIT 1.0

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Od got off the minibus and walked up the track, little knowing that in a few minutes’ time his world was to change forever.

  He was carrying his school bag and a load of resentment. Both were heavy and hard to bear. At lunchtime Mrs Pilcher had called him to her office, sat him down and given him another of her “you must try harder” lectures. It was the third this term.

  “You are one of our brightest pupils, Odysseus Fitch,” Mrs Pilcher had said. “You may even be the most gifted boy this school has ever had. At least, judging by your results at your previous school you are. But it hardly shows in your work, beyond the occasional flash of brilliance. Your coursework scores are terrible, and your teachers tell me you don’t pay attention in class and can’t be bothered to answer when asked a question. You may think it’s ‘cool’ to be lazy.”

  She did air-quotes with her fingers around the word cool.

  “But I can assure you,” she went on, “failing educationally is no joke. It’s your own future you’re putting at risk here, and I would be remiss in my duty as head if I allowed you to continue to do so.”

  She planted her fists on her hips, looking sternly at him through her thin rimless glasses.

  “You are on report, Od,” she said. “If there isn’t an immediate, marked uptick in the standard of your work and of your behaviour, you will be in serious trouble. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, Mrs Pilcher.”

  Her expression softened, just a fraction. “Don’t you think it’s been long enough, Od? Three years now? It’s not that I don’t feel sympathy for you, I do, very much so, but… don’t you think it’s time you started getting on with your life again?”

  Od said nothing. The question, like most of the questions his teachers asked, was too dumb to be worth answering.

  Mrs Pilcher sighed. “Very well. If that’s how you want to play it. You may go.”

  Od kicked a stone up the track as he walked. Maybe if the stuff he was studying at school interested him, maybe if the work wasn’t so ridiculously easy…

  No, that wasn’t the problem.

  What it came down to was that Od just didn’t care. There was no point to anything. He was alone. He no longer had a mother. His father was hardly ever home. The two of them lived by themselves in an isolated farmhouse out on the moors, with the nearest village three miles away and the nearest decent-sized town another ten miles beyond that. Od was fed up with school, fed up with his own company, fed up with everything.

  Life had become relentlessly, hopelessly, terminally dull.

  The track rose to the ridge of a low hill. Od paused at the top. Wind from the moors hit him sideways, buffeting him, tearing at his long black hair, sneaking cold fingers inside the collar of his parka. Ominous dark clouds were amassing overhead, promising rain.

  The house waited down in a shallow valley – slate-roofed, grey-walled, bleak. His dad’s battered, ancient Land Rover was parked in the open-fronted barn that served as a car port. Lights shone in several windows. This struck Od as strange. The day was gloomy but not that gloomy. It wasn’t even four o’clock yet. Too early for lights.

  Probably his dad had forgotten to turn them off this morning. That was what you got for having an absent-minded scientist as a father.

  Except, “absent-minded” didn’t really describe Professor Tremaine Fitch. “Obsessed” did. And “laser-focused”. And “impenetrable”.

  More to the point, the Land Rover. Why was the Land Rover still there?

  Od’s father was supposed to have gone to work today. Not likely to be back till six at the earliest, although most nights it was normally eight or nine.

  Od continued towards the house. The downward slope quickened his pace – that and a gathering sense of unease.

  There was nothing wrong, he told himself. There was a reasonable explanation for the lights and the car. There had to be. Maybe his father was sick? But it would have to be some serious illness to keep Tremaine Fitch away from his job.

  The moment Od stepped through the front door, he knew the house was empty. You could just tell. The air inside was like a bated breath.

  He called out “Dad?” nonetheless.

  No reply.

  He began to search, room by room. His father’s bedroom was in the same state as his own, chaos, the bed unmade, clothes all over the floor. Neither Od nor Tremaine Fitch was a naturally tidy person. Living room, bathroom, his father’s study – everything looked much as it had when Od had left eight hours ago.

  Except for the kitchen.

  On the table lay breakfast. The cafetière sat full to the brim with cold coffee. The toast rack carried four slices of toast, all limp and rubbery. A glass of orange juice looked as if it had not been touched.

  Od felt a cold fear grip him then. His stomach flipped. This was not right. Not right at all.

  He fished out his phone and speed-dialled his father. The call went to voicemail, with the message, “Sorry, the person you are calling is unavailable.”

  “Dad, it’s me,” Od said. “Soon as you get this, ring me back. I’m worried. Where the hell are you? What’s happened?”

  Raindrops suddenly lashed the windows, sounding like handfuls of gravel being thrown. Od jumped.

  He told himself to be calm. Think logically. Piece the evidence together.

  When Od left for school at eight, his father had still been fast asleep. That wasn’t unusual. He’d been up late the night before, working at his computer well into the small hours.

  He would definitely have been out of bed by nine, though. He rarely overslept. He had made himself breakfast, and then . . .?

  Then, before he could sit down to eat, something must have interrupted him.

  What?

  A brainwave, perhaps. Inspiration. Some new breakthrough idea that he had rushed to share with one of his assistants via email or webcam.

  No, that couldn’t be it. He would still have come back afterwards to polish off his meal. He hated food going to waste and didn’t like to go to work on an empty stomach.

  Outside, the sky got darker yet. The rain pelted the house more fiercely.

  The police. That was the next step. Call the police. Report his father as a missing person.

  Od’s phone was out, his finger on the “9” button, when all at once the front door whammed open.

  Men in black coveralls and balaclavas charged into the house, waving pistols.

  “Drop it!” one of them yelled, aiming his gun at Od. “Drop the phone. Now!”

  Od let his phone slip to the floor.

  “Down. Down on your knees,” the man ordered.

  Od did as he was told.

  The man yanked Od’s hands behind his back and fastened his wrists together with a thin strip of plastic. The other men roved through the house, kicking doors open, checking every room.

  “Clear!” one of them called out eventually. “Entire site is clear.”

  “Roger,” said the man holding Od at gunpoint. He tapped the radio mike at his throat. “This is Delta Team to Angel Oversight. Delta Team to Angel Oversight. Premises are secured. You’re OK to ent
er.”

  “Who are you people?” Od asked, voice quivering with panic. “What do you want?”

  “Never you mind,” the man barked, jabbing his gun into the back of Od’s head.

  Od got the message. He shut up.

  A woman strode into the house. She was dressed in a smart pinstriped trouser suit and carrying an umbrella, which she shook the rainwater off and furled. Her blonde hair was held tightly in place with hairgrips, and her cheekbones looked so sharp you could cut yourself on them. She was beautiful, in a very scary way. Crimson lipstick gave her a mouth the colour of blood.

  She stood in front of Od, gazing down.

  “Odysseus Fitch,” she said. It was partly a question, mostly a statement.

  Od nodded.

  “Do you know where your father is?”

  Od shook his head.

  “No idea at all?”

  Od felt he was probably permitted to speak now. “Not the faintest,” he said.

  The woman sighed. “All right.” To the man holding Od at gunpoint she said, “Untie him. Let him up.” Then, to Od again: “My name is Angelica W-K. I work for the government. You and I, young man, need to have a talk.”

  Chapter Two

  “What do you know about your father’s work, Odysseus?” Angelica W-K asked.

  They were sitting at the kitchen table. The untouched breakfast things lay between them like pieces from some bizarre kind of boardgame. Two of the armed, masked men were standing guard in the doorway. The rest had taken up positions around the house, indoors and out, like sentries. They were, Od guessed, secret service men – killer spies – and they were on edge, gloved fingers nervously stroking triggers.

  “I prefer Od,” Od said.

  “OK – Od.”

  “And to answer your question: not a lot. Dad’s employed at Selston Tor, doing research. It’s a nuclear physics installation, yeah? So my guess is he’s trying to solve the energy crisis, working on cold fusion maybe, a safe and endlessly renewable power source. Right? Is that it?”

  Angelica W-K shrugged, her expression blank. If he didn’t know, she certainly wasn’t going to tell him.

  “Dad never talks about it, anyway,” Od went on. “Official Secrets Act or something. And I don’t ask. No point, when I know he’s not allowed to say anything.”

  “How has he been acting lately?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have his patterns of behaviour changed? Has he been more furtive than usual? Done anything to make you suspicious?”

  “Not so’s I’ve noticed,” Od said, thinking. “It’s always the same with him. The way it’s been for the past three years, ever since we moved here. Work, work, work.”

  “Anything he’s said seemed… well, odd? No pun intended.”

  Od grimaced. Like nobody ever made jokes about his name.

  “We don’t exactly chat much,” he said. “Dad’s so wrapped up in himself these days, sometimes I can barely get a sentence out of him. Over dinner it’ll be like ‘pass the ketchup’ and that’s it. Why are you asking me all this stuff? What’s he done? Where’s he gone?”

  Angelica W-K seemed to be making up her mind how much she could reveal to Od.

  “Your father,” she said eventually, “has been engaged on a very important project for the government. A project with far-reaching ramifications. I can’t say any more about it than that, although I will tell you that certain hostile bodies – enemies of Britain – would be very keen to get their hands on what your father has created.”

  “Enemies of…?” said Od, astounded. “As in other countries?”

  “Terrorists.”

  “Oh God,” Od breathed. “But – but he’s my dad. I mean, he’s just a beardy bloke who always forgets to put the cap back on the toothpaste. He’s not – not some ace inventor making high-tech gadgets or whatever. He’s a boffin, that’s all he is. An egghead. A big old nerdy brainiac.”

  “Your father is, I’m assured by experts in his field, a genius,” said Angelica W-K.

  “How do you know him anyway?” Od challenged.

  “Who are you, Miss I Don’t Have A Proper Surname?”

  “I’m his government liaison,” she replied. “The go-between. The one who reports on your father’s progress to the powers-that-be, and keep the powers-that-be off his back so that he can get on with his work uninterrupted.”

  “Oh yeah? Then how come I’ve never heard of you? Surely he’d have mentioned you to me.”

  “Why, when he’s clearly so good at keeping secrets? Look, Od, what it boils down to is this. We believe Tremaine Fitch has been kidnapped. We believe we know who by and why. What we’re not sure of is where his kidnappers are holding him and what they want from us, whether this is a simple ransom case or something more complicated. We have a feeling they’re going to get in touch soon and tell us.”

  “Kidnapped.” It seemed absurd to Od, and at the same time horribly plausible. Nothing else would account for his father’s absence. “But if he was taken against his will, wouldn’t there be signs of a struggle? The house was like a museum when I got in. Like Dad just got up and walked away.”

  “I can only speculate,” said Angelica W-K, “but if they came for him with guns, as there’s every chance they did, then he’d surely have co-operated. Maybe, also, they used you as a threat.”

  “Me? How?”

  “Said they’d hurt you, or worse, if he didn’t come quietly. Besides, your father isn’t the sort of man who’d resist, is he? Not the violent sort at all.”

  “No, definitely not. The angriest I’ve ever seen him is when he swears after stubbing his toe, and then it’s not even a proper swear word. It’s just like ‘drat’ or ‘poo’ or something.”

  “There you are, then. The alternative, of course, is that…” Angelica W-K shook her head. “No, I’m not going to go there.”

  “What? What’s the alternative?”

  “That he went willingly,” she said. “That his kidnappers made him a better offer and he accepted.”

  Od pondered on it, but not for long. “No,” he said firmly. “No way. That’s not Dad. Turn his back on his country? Sell out to the highest bidder? I don’t think so.”

  “Your father isn’t quite the pure-hearted do-gooder that you imagine, Od. Nevertheless, I agree. I doubt he’d switch sides. Regrettably, because of who I am, and because of what your father does, I have to consider all the options.”

  “So what happens now?” said Od forlornly.

  “Until his captors contact us, we sit tight and wait.”

  “That’s all?”

  Angelica W-K tried to look compassionate. It wasn’t a facial expression that came naturally to her.

  “Od, I realise how hard this must be for you,” she said. “It’s a lot to process all at once. You’ll have to trust me when I say that we have your father’s best interests at heart. We don’t want to see him harmed. He’s far too valuable to us.”

  “Why didn’t you protect him better then?” Od snapped. “Why haven’t you been keeping him under surveillance twenty-four seven? Then maybe a bunch of terrorists wouldn’t have been able to march right up to the front door and snatch him.”

  “Because he asked us not to. For your sake.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your father specifically requested that we would leave him alone at home,” Angelica W-K said. “He didn’t want somebody watching the house the whole time. He wanted a private life. He wanted you, Od, to be totally unaware of anything out of the ordinary going on. He was shielding you, trying to make life as normal as possible for you. He thought that living in a remote spot like this would be a protection in itself. I tried to tell him it wouldn’t be, but your father wouldn’t listen. For a brilliant man, he could be pigheaded at times.”

  “Can be,” said Od in a quiet voice.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Don’t talk about him in the past tense. Dad’s alive. He’ll be coming back safe and sound. He will. I
know it.”

  Angelica W-K nodded, but a shadow flickering in her eyes suggested she was not so sure.

  Chapter Three

  Od, up in his bedroom, booted up his laptop.

  The secret service men were still patrolling outside. Angelica W-K was downstairs making and taking endless calls on her BlackBerry. Od wanted to get away from it all – the craziness of the situation, the uncertainty of his father’s fate, the feeling of dread that was churning in the pit of his stomach. He thought he might lose himself in an MMORPG for a while, or chase down some obscure tracks for his iPod. Something, anything, for a bit of sanity.

  He had new email. He clicked to open his inbox.

  The first user address that caught his eye belonged to his father. The email had been sent at 12.01PM today.

  After his dad had been kidnapped.

  With an anxious frown, Od opened it.

  There was an embedded video clip which started to play automatically. The face of Tremaine Fitch appeared on the laptop screen.

  “Od, son,” he said. “If you’re viewing this, then things have probably gone a bit pear-shaped for me.”

  The clip had been recorded in his father’s study, using the webcam on his desk. Through the window in the corner of the image Od could see one of the trees at the back of the house. It was in full leaf. The clip therefore must have been recorded this summer, or perhaps the summer before. Either way, months ago.

  “This email is on a timed release,” his father went on. “At midday every day I must postpone sending it for another twenty-four hours, manually. If I fail to do so, if for some reason I can’t, then it goes out to you. Assuming I haven’t missed the deadline – and I am a forgetful old dingleberry as you know – then I’m most likely in trouble. Serious trouble.”

  “You can say that again,” Od murmured at the screen.

  “So pay attention,” Tremaine Fitch said. “This is important. You cannot trust anybody, Od. Least of all a certain rather severely attractive lady who goes by the name of Angelica W-K and is my official handler. She’s allegedly on my side but the only person whose interests she really looks out for is Angelica W-K. She’s ambitious, ruthless, possibly psychotic, and I may be a little bit in love with her, which I must say reflects poorly on me.”