Interface: A Techno Thriller

by Tony Batton

  "I know why you selected me as your little back-up plan. And I know about the original Project Tantalus. I know I was your side-project that time too. I know about the chip, Marron."

  Holm looked up. "What?"

  Marron frowned. "Finish your tests, Ed. Alex, I need to speak to you." He beckoned her from the room.

  Tom watched them leave then lowered his voice. "Look at the base of my head. I have a very faint, very old scar. I'm sure you have scanning equipment. Check it out."

  Holm smiled. "Tom, I can understand your confusion and, under the circumstances, a bit of paranoia is really quite natural but whatever the case with your recent, er, co-option to our efforts, I can assure you that all the original Tantalus Project subjects were adults."

  "Not all of them," Tom said. "It was hushed up."

  Holm shook his head distractedly. "I should probably X-ray you anyway, for our records. Over here."

  Tom walked over and sat in a chair under a blocky X-ray unit.

  "If there was more time we could run a full CAT scan but this should suffice. Now hold still." Holm stepped away and jabbed a button. The equipment hummed and there was a loud click. The result displayed almost immediately on a nearby screen.

  Tom watched Holm and waited for the discovery.

  But it did not happen.

  Holm stood back from the equipment, rubbing his palms together. "All perfectly normal. No chip or other unexplained object."

  Tom stared at him, incredulous. "Don't be ridiculous. I had a scan only days ago. Of course it's there."

  "Must have been a glitch," said Holm. "See for yourself." He turned the display screen to face Tom. "Anything metallic would be a bright white point."

  Tom blinked. "What about the node itself?"

  "That's not likely to show up as it's non-metallic. But it's definitely there. How else would the interface be working?"

  "You people have no idea what is going on. You don't know whether your project has gone spectacularly right or spectacularly wrong."

  Marron strode back into the room. "What's going on?"

  "I did a quick X-ray," Holm replied. "Is that a problem?"

  Marron stared at the image and a half smile crossed his face. "Not at all."

  Holm switched off the screen. "Then I'm done here, Peter. We're looking good."

  "Why don't you get up to Level 90? Apparently that's where all the action is going to be. I'll follow with Tom in a few minutes."

  ◇ ◇ ◇

  Marron closed the door after Holm. "I want, Tom, to make sure that you conduct yourself appropriately in our imminent meeting."

  "Why would I help you?"

  "Because it's in your own interests. Our buyer is not someone you want to disappoint."

  "It would seem that I have what we lawyers call 'leverage'."

  Marron snorted. "Viktor Leskov is a man of considerable means who knows what he wants and expects to get it. We have to deliver him a working interface or he is very likely to kill us all. Thankfully, he is also a man of his word: if we give him what he wants, he will pay us and leave. You could come out of this a very wealthy man."

  "You think I care? You killed my best friend."

  Marron sighed. "You're going to need to make a choice, Tom. You can either die in some misguided attempt to honour her memory. Or you can try to salvage something from the situation. Live to exact your revenge another day."

  "Even if I were willing, how do you know it will work to his requirements?"

  "When you've needed to do things, you've found a way. And believe me, you will need to do it."

  Tom ground his teeth. "What do I have to do?"

  "We've implanted the codecs in you: instructions for Leskov's new helicopter. All you need to do is make it work. It'll be like when you controlled the building – and that was something you weren't even designed to control. I'm also going to need some of your blood for Leskov's team to analyse."

  Alex removed a case from a drawer and flipped it open. Inside was a syringe, with a needle over five centimetres long.

  Tom blanched. "Are you taking the blood direct from my heart or something?"

  "From near the base of your skull. We have to go deep."

  "You'll paralyse me."

  Marron smiled. "Not if you don't move."

  Tom shook his head. "Why are you doing all this?"

  "I believe this technology is a gift. I'd trade places with you in an instant to have what's inside your head."

  "If you actually had it in your head, you might be saying something different."

  Marron flexed his shoulders. "I saw what you did with this building. The interface works, even if the nanites have diverged from their original programming."

  "The fact that they're operating outside their remit doesn't worry you?"

  "We never could work out how to program them fully. In the end we just gave them an approach and a series of guidelines because no one could foresee all the challenges they would face."

  Tom shook his head. "Just tell me one thing. Why me? And I don't mean 'now'. Why me originally?"

  Marron shrugged. "Your mother was a... contact of Bern's.

  "What? Are you saying she gave consent?"

  "You'll..." He coughed. "You'd have to ask Bern. And of course it's too late for that. Besides, whatever the risks, it has worked. Look at how you turned out."

  "You're acting like this has been a success. Eighty percent of your subjects have died."

  "But not you." Marron shook his head. "You're not grasping what this means, Tom: how important this project is."

  "You keep saying that, but I doubt you would have volunteered your own child."

  Marron smiled a curious smile. "It was all rendered moot when Bern agreed to close us down."

  "Because he saw sense?"

  "Because of pressure from the government. It's taken so long to get back to where we were, but now... now we've finally reached our goal."

  "And you feel that justifies the body count?"

  "There's a lot about this you don't understand; Bern is fond of saying this project is bigger than any one person."

  "Was fond," Alex said.

  Marron nodded. "Yes, that. Now, sit still while we get our blood sample."

  "You keep saying 'we'. Are you and Alex more than a team? Are you an item?"

  Marron glanced at Alex. "Clever. But not that clever."

  And in a flash Tom knew. "She's your daughter." He swallowed. "And she has a chip as well."

  Alex moved up to Marron and put her hand on his shoulder. "Nearly that clever."

  "And you're OK with what he did to you?"

  "He's my father."

  Marron grunted. "It's needle time. Are you ready?"

  "Just get it over with."

  They laid him flat, face down, and lifted the back of his shirt. Alex leaned close and whispered, "Hold still now."

  Tom felt the needle go in: a brief white-hot pain. Then the sensation repeated.

  "All done," said Marron, holding up the two syringes, full and red. "A proportion of the nanites are programmed to make their way to a specific location at the base of your neck so we can harvest them, analyse the instructions: see what worked and what didn't."

  Tom stood, adjusting his shirt. He watched as Marron eyed the vials of blood then looked at his daughter. And suddenly it became clear. "You want to use this on Alex. You still want the interface for her. Getting me was always about testing it for Alex."

  Marron turned away. "We need to get upstairs."

  "If this is all so amazing, why give it to anyone else?"

  "Further development of the project will require significant funding. Given our path to this point, that is unlikely to be available through traditional channels. We'd obviously rather get the money and not hand the files over to Leskov, but I haven't worked out a way to persuade him to accept that yet. Help us and we get the money; help us and your journalist friend goes free."

  "And Lentz?"

  Ma
rron shrugged. "We can discuss it later."

  Tom ground his teeth. He tried to feel the electronics around him, tried to reach for the network. But without the collar and the hub nothing happened.

  Marron cleared his throat. "Do we have a deal?"

  Tom closed his eyes. "Let's just get this over with."

  NINETY-THREE

  LENTZ AND KATE SAT CROSS-legged on the floor of the lift. Lentz placed her phone in between them with a sigh. "If I tinker with it to boost the signal, I can get a message past the screening, but it will have to be very short."

  "How short?"

  "Just a few words. Maybe five."

  Kate gave a snort. "You're joking? Surely you can send more than that in a fraction of a second?"

  "Normally, yes, but I'm piggy-backing on old cell towers, using undisclosed back channels, so there's very little bandwidth available. The jamming system will react almost instantly. Now, we could try to use another form of compression, but there's no guarantee the recipient would be able to interpret it. So five words it is. Any more than that and we risk the whole data-packet being blocked."

  "How am I supposed to convey the situation and location in five words?"

  "You're the journalist. Come up with a headline."

  "Fine." Kate took the phone and typed rapidly then handed it back.

  Lentz frowned down at it then laughed. "Prisoner at CERUS Tower. Help." Lentz held her own phone over Kate's and launched an app. She tapped a sequence. The message vanished from the screen. "Well, I've done everything I can. I really hope this Croft isn't playing you."

  "Look at it this way: could we be any worse off?"

  "I find it best not to tempt fate with that kind of language."

  Kate started to reply but the lift lurched and began moving upwards. Kate's phone beeped angrily.

  Lentz looked at it and scowled. "I was afraid of that."

  "Afraid of what?"

  "The message didn't send. And they know we tried. If you have any other ideas, now would be the time to mention them."

  Kate scowled. "I think I'm out. Unless..." Kate started running her hands over her clothes. "What if you're right and we can't trust him. Maybe he bugged me."

  "Something that Marron's people didn't detect?"

  Lentz tapped an icon on her phone then began running it over Kate's body. As she reached Kate's neck, there was an angry squeal. Lentz narrowed her eyes and ran her fingertips over Kate's coat, stopping with a smile as they brushed a metal pin jammed into a thick collar-seam. "It has to be a passive device, but if I overload it enough I think we can send your message."

  NINETY-FOUR

  THE CONCEALED DOOR SLID OPEN and Marron, Alex and Tom walked out of Marron's secret room into his office.

  Alex frowned down at her phone. "Lentz has been trying her hand at escapology."

  "What did she do?" Marron asked.

  "She had a go at hot-wiring the lift controls. It didn't work. Then she tried to send a short text message from her phone before the adaptive firewall blocked the frequency. That didn't work either." Alex held up her tablet to show Marron the message.

  Marron snorted. "How subtle. Who did she try and send it to?"

  "I'm running a trace. Maybe it's someone the journalist knows. Do you want me to get them in here so we can ask them?"

  "Send them up to the roof. Have a team waiting to secure them."

  "Understood." She looked up from her screen. "Also we have a visitor."

  The door handle turned and Neil Bradley strode into the room. He stopped, staring at Tom. "You? What are you doing here?"

  Marron walked over and patted him on the shoulder. "Allow me to introduce Subject Zero."

  "You're kidding? Did you hire him to use him or the other way round?"

  "Now's not really the time to talk about the details, Neil. Leskov will be here soon and I see there's been a change. He's flying in?"

  Bradley nodded. "ETA five minutes."

  "It would have been nice to have more notice. I need to arrange security." He took a slow breath. "We need everything to be perfect. Speaking of which, is everything OK? You seem tense."

  "I don't want there to be any mistakes." Bradley paused. "Celia said she was coming here, but she didn't arrive."

  "I'm sure she'll turn up," Marron said. "We need to focus on Leskov for now. And I'm starting to question whether we can trust him."

  Bradley's eyes narrowed. "Why do you say that?"

  "Could he have been behind Chatsworth's death? And Armstrong's?"

  "I'm not sure that makes sense. Do you have any proof?"

  "No. He's simply a very wealthy, very suspicious man."

  "Then we just need to be careful. I'm sure everything will unfold correctly."

  Marron nodded. "You know what, Neil, you make a good point. And if we're going to be careful, I think you should be armed."

  "What?"

  "I'd rather we can all defend ourselves, if necessary." Marron pulled an automatic pistol from a holster inside his jacket. "You know how to handle a gun?"

  "I've been to a shooting range a few times. Rifles mostly."

  "Good." Marron placed it in his hand. "Just point the dangerous end at anyone you don't trust. This model has special lightweight ammunition so it's virtually recoilless. Now let's not keep our guest of honour waiting. There are a couple of things I need to take care of, so I'll let you escort Tom to the roof."

  ◇ ◇ ◇

  Marron waited until his office door had closed again then turned to his daughter. "I don't like this."

  "Leskov?" Alex asked.

  "I meant Bradley." He rubbed his fingers over his temples. "Something is wrong. Call up the logs."

  Alex's fingers flew over her tablet. "He's mostly been busy in Bern's office. He had three conversations with Leskov. Ran some searches for Celia Bern."

  "When?"

  "Twenty minutes ago. They came back as negative."

  "As they should, for his level of access."

  "Wait, this is strange," said Alex. "He went down to Level Minus 5 about ten minutes ago. He was down there for five minutes."

  "Did he, indeed? I wonder how he knew where to look. I hadn't credited Neil with the technical chops to hack the system."

  Alex shook her head. "That wasn't what happened. It was the reboot. It gave him temporary Administrator Access as he was in Bern's office at the time." She paused. "Why do you think he went down to Level Minus 5? Surely Celia Bern couldn't have been down there... Or did you lock her up?" She quickly started pulling up information on her tablet, but Marron put his hand over hers.

  "Don't worry about her," he said. "Celia's not going anywhere."

  "Are you sure..." She trailed off, eyes widening. "Oh."

  Marron scratched his head. "In the circumstances, it was necessary."

  "But Bradley might be a problem now. And you've just given him a gun."

  "Actually that was on the basis that he had become a problem."

  She frowned. "I don't follow."

  "When you show people you trust them, it throws them off their guard. And who knows when that might come in handy. Now, we'd better get upstairs. Our money will be arriving in a minute."

  NINETY-FIVE

  CROFT WAS DRIVEN ACROSS THE RAF airbase. Through the open doors of a huge hanger, he saw a long row of black helicopters, all gleaming in the spotlights. Each aircraft was swarming with support crew. Croft's jeep pulled up outside a smaller hangar.

  Reems was inside, talking in hushed tones with a heavily-armed black ops team.

  "What's going on?" he asked. "You have an operation under way?"

  She looked up. "Above your level of clearance. What did you want?"

  "A few moments of your time. They've taken the journalist, Kate Turner."

  "You mean CERUS? You have actionable intelligence?"

  "I tagged her. Twenty minutes ago the device, an encrypted passive tracker, sent a message."

  "I don't recall authorising any taggi
ng. And what do you mean, it 'sent a message'? That's not how passive trackers work."

  "There was an enormous signal spike – no way it was a fault: the device has no power source of its own. Somebody worked out how to use its feedback function to send a message." He held out his phone, showing the message: Prisoner at CERUS Tower. Help."

  "That's your evidence? Five unverified words." Reems sucked in her top lip and regarded him carefully. "Come with me." She gave a hand signal to two of the covert team then walked towards the back of the hanger, where a number of portacabins were installed. She opened the door on the smallest one and gestured Croft to precede her. He stepped inside.

  Moving faster than he would have given her credit for, she slammed the door shut.

  Croft spun, grabbing at the handle, just as she locked it. "You won't get away with this," he shouted.

  Reems sighed. "That's the thing, George. I didn't."

  Then she walked away.

  NINETY-SIX

  TOM STOOD ON THE ROOF of CERUS Tower, watching night fall. Bradley had refused to engage in conversation and had simply handcuffed Tom to a pipe, before speaking with Holm. Lentz and Kate had been led away, out of sight. Marron arrived, flanked by four guards - he joined Bradley and Holm, casting wary glances over at Tom. Alex stood next to the service lift, her arms folded.

  The helicopter was so quiet Tom almost missed its arrival. Like a whisper of a breeze, the sleek black craft emerged from the night and touched gently down on the helipad. The rotors stopped almost immediately and four heavily-armed soldiers jumped out.

  "I don't like this," Holm said, shrinking back.

  "Just let me do the talking," Marron said.

  A man wearing dark glasses and an immaculate pale-grey suit emerged from the aircraft and walked towards them. The four soldiers shadowed his every step.

  "Peter Marron, I presume," he said softly. "And Mr Bradley. I trust you have everything ready."

  "We do, Mr Leskov," Marron replied. "To be blunt, do you have our payment?"