When the train had safely passed, Jack pulled a torch from his pocket and they hurried across the tracks and went through a rusty metal door.
On the other side was a narrow service corridor with a concertina door at the far end. Jack slid it aside and they stepped into a wooden lift.
He enjoyed going the Badbury platform way to the bunker, but had to confess he’d never get used to the rotting lift.
He quickly hit a large green button on the wall and the lift shuddered and descended.
He let out a breath when it finally stopped with a reassuring thud, before Charlie pulled the door open and they walked through a brick archway.
A tunnel stretched before them.
Down here the air was cold and damp. Moss hugged the stone walls and dim cone-shaped lights hung every few metres or so, barely glowing in the darkness.
Their footfalls echoed off the cobbled floor until they stopped in front of a thick steel door that looked like the entrance to a bank vault.
Jack went to grab the handle, but Charlie stopped him. He turned to face her. ‘What’s up?’
‘What’s up? What’s up with you? What has got in to you lately?’
‘Huh? Nothing. Why?’
‘Right.’ Charlie leant against the wall. ‘Spill it.’
‘Charlie, this isn’t exactly the right time to –’
She crossed her arms. ‘We’re not going anywhere until you tell me what’s bothering you. All that business with Cloud. All these risks you’re taking. Not to mention your thinking is slower than normal. It’s unlike you, Jack.’
Jack sighed. He knew it was useless to argue with her. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Look –’ he kept his voice low – ‘I’m just really tired and . . . well . . . I miss us being Urban Outlaws, that’s all.’
Charlie frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘All this Hector rubbish. The way we have to keep chasing after him.’
‘If we didn’t,’ Charlie said, ‘Hector would be making a lot of people miserable right about now. Imagine what would’ve happened if he’d got away with all his hacking plans. What then? Could you have lived with yourself?’
‘I know all that. I just . . . ’ Jack shook his head and looked at his feet.
‘You just want us to go back to doing normal missions,’ Charlie said. ‘Taking money from bad guys and giving it to people who need it, right?’
‘Yeah,’ Jack muttered. ‘Exactly.’
He also missed having time to plan missions properly. Normally they took weeks to scope places out and prepare, not days.
Charlie straightened up. ‘If Cloud is telling the truth, we’ll sort Hector out once and for all, then we go back to the way things were. We have fun again, OK?’
Jack shrugged. ‘OK.’
Charlie smiled and squeezed his arm.
Jack forced a smile back at her, then swung down the vault handle and the two of them walked into the airlock corridor.
A camera pointed down from the corner and a glowing blue keypad was mounted next to the door.
Jack entered the code and the door hissed open.
He gestured Charlie through and they went into the main bunker.
The bunker itself was a vast space divided into four areas – a kitchen–dining area, the lounge, the games area and lastly the ‘Obi Zone’. Several flat monitors hung from brackets, surrounding a modified dentist’s chair.
Obi waved at Jack and Charlie.
Charlie walked to the fridge. ‘Drink, Jack?’
‘No, thanks.’
Whenever Jack stepped inside the bunker, he felt himself relax. This was their home. Somewhere that very few people knew about. Somewhere they were safe. His eyes moved back to the lounge area and the wall above the TV.
Stencilled in foot-high letters were the words ‘URBAN OUTLAWS’.
‘Here they come,’ Obi said.
Jack looked at the screens in front of him. One of them showed a view of another tunnel that led to the bunker. They’d fitted extra cameras when they’d gone to America.
Slink and Wren, carrying several bags each, entered the airlock corridor, typed in the code and the door hissed open.
They strode across the bunker and dropped the bags to the kitchen floor.
‘Did you guys remember to get Obi’s salad?’ Charlie asked them.
‘Yeah,’ Slink said, emptying one of the bags on to the breakfast bar. ‘We got it.’
Wren turned her back on Charlie and mouthed to Obi, ‘And doughnuts.’
He grinned and gave her a thumbs-up.
‘So?’ Slink said, looking between Jack and Charlie. ‘What happened with Cloud?’
Charlie brought the others up to speed. She told them about Medusa – the secret weapon Hector was planning to steal – and how Cloud was supposedly trying to help the Outlaws stop him by getting to it first.
Slink looked at Jack. ‘You trust her?’
‘I don’t,’ Charlie said, before he had time to respond.
‘Me neither,’ Wren said.
‘Nor me,’ Obi agreed. ‘She’s one of the bad guys.’
‘We don’t have to trust her.’ Jack pulled the USB stick from his pocket. ‘We’ll have a look at this. That’s all. We won’t decide anything yet.’
‘We always say that,’ Charlie mumbled as they gathered around Obi’s chair.
‘Cut all lines to the net,’ Jack said to Obi. ‘I’m going to put this in computer three, just in case it has malware or anything dodgy.’
That computer was also isolated from the bunker’s controls.
He wasn’t going to make that mistake ever again.
After a few seconds of typing and clicking, Obi nodded at Jack. ‘Do it.’
Jack slid the USB drive into the port.
‘Scanning,’ Obi said.
The virus scanner checked the drive, but after a minute it returned no results.
‘Looks clean to me.’ Obi brought up a window and examined the drive’s contents.
There were only three files.
The first looked like a normal text document and had a series of numbers as the file name.
‘Open it, please,’ Jack said.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Charlie said.
He nodded. ‘It’ll be fine.’ Though he couldn’t be one hundred per cent certain.
Obi opened the file, revealing just a few lines of text:
Clark Jones. Access codes.
Lift 67910318
Airlock M18TH1976PD
‘Airlock?’ Wren said. ‘What airlock?’ She looked at Jack.
‘I’m guessing it’s something to do with the place where the weapon is hidden.’
‘Do you think it’s like the bunker’s airlock?’
Jack stared at the name and number. ‘I don’t think so.’ He had a feeling that this airlock was likely to be a lot more sophisticated.
Obi highlighted the second file. ‘Shall I open this one next?’
It was an HTML document entitled ‘ABRAMS’.
Jack nodded.
Obi clicked on it and a web page flashed up.
Everyone leant in.
The page showed a satellite map of London. A red marker hovered over an area on the outskirts.
Obi zoomed the map in.
‘What is that place?’ Wren said, frowning.
There were several roads snaking in and out of buildings that were connected by hundreds of pipes, all different sizes and thicknesses.
‘Looks like a giant climbing frame,’ Slink said. He grinned. ‘Challenge accepted.’
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ Jack said. ‘Obi, what is that place?’
Obi clicked his trackerball and typed a quick search on another screen. ‘Apparently Abrams is an oil refinery.’
‘Hmm. So we’ve got a name, an access code for an airlock and a location that’s an oil refinery.’ Jack straightened up. ‘Let’s look at the last file.’
Obi returned to the USB drive’s folder and highlight
ed it. ‘What is that?’ he said. ‘I don’t recognise the extension.’
The file was called ‘The Facility’.
Obi opened the file, revealing pages of letters and numbers.
Jack’s eyes scanned the code. Finally he stepped back. ‘Right.’
‘What is it?’ Charlie said, looking between Jack and the screen.
He turned to face her. ‘Have you taken apart those virtual reality goggles we used for the Nexus?’
‘No. I still have them. Why?’
‘Please go and grab them. We’re gonna need them for this next part.’
As Charlie disappeared down the corridor towards her workshop, Jack handed the keyboard back to Obi. ‘It’s time to fire up Outlaw World.’
CHAPTER THREE
It took Obi a few minutes to link a couple more of the bunker’s computers together and bring them up to full speed. Outlaw World and the file from Cloud needed a lot of processing power, but Jack still didn’t want to risk connecting all the bunker’s systems to it, especially not the internet, just in case something went wrong.
Outlaw World was a virtual environment. Jack and Obi had worked on it together and their intention had been to use it to test different mission scenarios, but so far that had never happened. In fact, the first time they’d used Outlaw World was when they’d tried to hack into the Nexus.
That hadn’t worked either and Jack shuddered at the memory of being chased by a crazy virtual clown.
‘Second time lucky,’ he muttered.
Charlie returned to the main bunker carrying a silver briefcase. ‘Are you gonna explain what’s going on, Jack?’
He motioned to the largest monitor, where the third file from Cloud was still open. ‘That looks like a three-dimensional model of some kind.’
‘Model?’ Slink said. ‘What kind of model?’
‘That’s what we need to find out.’
Charlie set the briefcase down on the dining table and opened it. Inside was a set of goggles, gloves, wires and a small box.
She lifted out the box and wires. ‘You want me to connect all this to the bunker’s systems?’
‘No, just to these ones,’ Jack said, pointing at the isolated computers.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Charlie said as she plugged everything in. ‘If that file is a virus or something –’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Jack said. ‘We’ve checked it and it looks safe.’
Charlie raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Where’ve I heard those words before?’
‘If I had to be careful on every mission,’ Slink said, leaning against a pillar, ‘I’d be well bored. I say go for it, Jack.’
Charlie rolled her eyes. ‘Just be careful.’ She handed the goggles and gloves to Jack.
He slipped them on. ‘OK, Obi, fire it up.’
A glowing ball appeared in front of Jack’s eyes and expanded until a wash of light flowed over him.
After a few seconds Jack glanced around. Obi had rendered Outlaw World as an island this time. It had a few scattered palm trees and in the distance he could make out a beach, waves lapping the shore. Apart from that, it was empty. That was until a grey box appeared a few virtual metres ahead.
Jack stared at it.
He’d been expecting something a little more . . . impressive.
‘That’s it?’ Slink said, mirroring his disappointment. The others were watching on the bunker’s main display. ‘I was hoping for dragon at least.’
‘A dragon?’ Wren said, giggling.
Jack frowned. ‘Obi, has this rendered correctly?’
‘As far as I can tell, yeah. The computers have built it exactly to the specs. How can that be it though?’ he continued. ‘The file is massive.’
‘Maybe it turns into something,’ Wren said.
‘Yeah,’ Slink said. ‘A dragon.’
‘You know what my nickname is, don’t ya?’ Charlie asked.
‘It’s Pandora,’ Obi said. ‘So?’
‘Have you ever heard the story of Pandora’s box?’
‘No,’ Wren said. ‘Why?’
‘Let’s just put it this way,’ Charlie said. ‘Bad things can come in small packages. That could be anything in there.’
Jack lifted the goggles and looked at Charlie. ‘We’ve isolated it. It’s got no link to the internet or the rest of the bunker’s systems. I think you’ve cranked your paranoia setting up to max today. It’s usually me who’s over-cautious.’
‘That’s what’s bothering me,’ Charlie said. ‘You’re not yourself at the moment. Maybe it’s the stress or –’
‘I’m fine,’ Jack said, with a look of defiance.
‘Paranoid Pandora,’ Slink said in a robotic voice. ‘Nickname upgraded.’
Charlie huffed.
Jack lowered the goggles back over his eyes. ‘Let’s check it out.’ He twisted his hands, glided towards the box and as he drew near a door appeared and opened.
He moved through and was now in a small room. Opposite him was another plain door, and in a corner of the room was a camera, pointed directly at him.
He edged forward.
‘Wait,’ Obi said.
Jack tensed and glanced round. ‘What? What’s wrong?’
‘Can’t you see that?’
‘See what?’
‘The big blue writing in front of you,’ Slink said.
There was just the wall and the door.
‘No,’ Jack said. ‘What does it say?’
Obi cleared his throat. ‘ “Ground floor. Room 1. Camera with monitors in security office. Door controlled by guard.” ’
‘What happens if you’re not the right person?’ Wren asked. ‘Y’know, someone they don’t recognise?’
That would be a problem, Jack thought. They had to look like someone else if they wanted to get inside. His chest tightened.
Jack edged forward, the door swung open and he glided through.
He was now in a bigger room with a bank of monitors.
‘There’s more writing,’ Obi said. ‘It says, “Guard’s visual check of cars, backed up with number-plate scanner.” ’
OK, Jack thought. So they had to get through the front gate, past the first visual inspection, then the second closer inspection in the next room, before being allowed in.
Awesome.
‘What are you thinking, Jack?’ Charlie said.
‘I’m thinking it’s going to be difficult.’ He faced the other door and walked towards it. ‘I guess the weapon is in the next room.’ As he approached he noticed there were two devices mounted either side. ‘What are these?’
‘More writing,’ Obi said. ‘It says, “Right side: Fingerprints and security card required from personnel. Left side: Security card required from duty guard.” ’
’Jack’s closed his eyes a moment.
It kept getting more difficult, and already it seemed almost impossible.
‘OK,’ he said, taking a breath and opening his eyes again. ‘Let’s see where they keep the weapon.’ He moved forward and the door swung open.
The room beyond was smaller.
‘Wait,’ Slink said. ‘That’s where they keep it? Where are all the lasers, heat sensors, pressure mats . . . ’ He actually sounded disappointed.
‘Hopefully there won’t be any.’ Jack turned around. ‘Oh no.’ His heart sank. On the wall by the door was a button panel. ‘This isn’t a room, it’s a lift.’
‘Well done, Slink,’ Obi said. ‘You jinxed us.’
With the mounting realisation that this mission wasn’t going to be anywhere near as easy as they’d first hoped, Jack pressed the only button and the door slid shut.
After a few seconds it opened again – revealing a corridor. Every couple of metres was a window followed by a door.
‘First basement level,’ Obi said. ‘Section A – offices.’
‘It’s underground,’ Slink said. ‘The Facility is underground? Well, this is gonna be fun.’
Jack glided along the corrido
r until he came to a black door at the end. It swung open and he continued down a second corridor similar to the first.
‘Section B,’ Obi said. ‘Workshops.’
‘Well, at least we know one thing,’ Jack said. ‘We’re gonna have to go at night. A thousand people must work down here.’ He glided through the next black door. ‘What’s this?’ he said, moving past yet more doors and windows.
‘Section C,’ Obi said. ‘Laboratories.’
‘Labs?’ Charlie said. ‘What do you suppose they do in there? Build chemical weapons or something?’
‘Or breed monsters,’ Obi suggested.
Slink snorted. ‘No one actually does that.’
‘They do. There was this leaked document once that said the government were making cats crossed with snakes.’
Slink was now laughing. ‘Sounds like an awesome pet, Obi. Yeah, great, put me down for two.’
‘They are not pets,’ Obi snapped. ‘They’re government-funded, highly trained weapons.’
‘Yeah, of course they are. You can be such an idiot.’
‘I’m not an idiot. It’s true.’
Trying to ignore their bickering, Jack moved through another door. Beyond it was a fourth corridor, but this one was very different – its left wall was made of glass.
‘Jack,’ Charlie said, ‘the note here reckons this part always has at least one employee working at any time. It’s called “The Developer and Data Centre”.’
Jack groaned. With the walls being made of glass, that meant no easy way to sneak past unseen.
Another problem that he would have to overcome.
Tense, he glided forward.
‘Stop,’ Charlie said. ‘Turn to your left.’
Jack did as she asked and faced the glass door. There was a black box mounted next to it.
‘Says, “Krane Electronic Security Lock”.’
‘Can you do something with it?’ asked Jack.
‘Yeah, but not from a distance. We need direct access to it.’
‘Brilliant.’ Jack moved to the next black door at the end of the corridor and stepped into a stairwell.
He paused a moment, looking at the stairs leading down. He felt like giving up here, there was just so much security, but then remembered Hector’s smug face.
Jack clenched his teeth and went down.
At the bottom, he walked into a large room filled with power generators. To the left was a small office.
Counterstrike Page 3
