The Girl in the Machine (Leah King Book 3)

by Philip Harris

  Leah looked at Alice. She didn’t think she’d kill him, but Alice’s lips were pressed tight together. Da Silva was a different matter. She was watching Leroy, too, and doing nothing to hide the anger bubbling inside her.

  Alice retrieved a roll of duct tape from her backpack and told Leroy to hold his hands out. He did, and Alice wrapped tape around them, sealing them together. She did the same with his ankles. Then she tore off another strip of tape before throwing it to Hobbs. He did the same with the officer he’d stripped. The man moaned and shifted slightly as Hobbs bound his feet, but he didn’t come round.

  When the two men were secured, Alice called Da Silva and Hobbs over. “Okay, change of plan.”

  Alice handed Hobbs her pistol. “Deal with Stefan’s body, then rendezvous with Wichita.”

  Hobbs nodded, but he was clearly unhappy. Whether it was with Doukas’s death, the task he’d been given, or because he was being left behind, Leah wasn’t sure.

  “Da Silva, Leah, you’re with me.”

  The three of them left Hobbs in the clearing and walked back to the SUV. As soon as they were out of earshot of the Transport officers, Da Silva said, “Who gets the uniforms?”

  “We do. Leah, you’re going to be our prisoner. All you need to do is sit in the back and look scared.”

  That won’t be difficult, thought Leah, but she just nodded.

  When they reached the SUV, Da Silva and Alice changed into the Transport uniforms. Three minutes later, Alice was driving them along the road, toward Adderbury and the police station.

  8

  Leah’s nerves intensified as the SUV swept past the trees and fields. The journey took less than ten minutes, but by the time Adderbury came into view, Leah felt sweat gluing her shirt to her back. Her stomach was churning, and at one point she thought she might actually pass out. Despite her mounting fear, she thought this might actually work. Certainly, it would be obvious to any Transport officers they met that she was terrified.

  Adderbury was a small town, just a couple hundred houses and a few businesses to service the people living there. Alice slowed as they turned into the town, letting the SUV roll along the dusty road, past a general store and hairdresser, a narrow, single-screen cinema, and a restaurant offering “the best eats” in Adderbury. They reached a junction, and Alice turned right, onto the main street.

  Da Silva turned around in her seat. She was holding a pair of black handcuffs. “You’d better put these on.”

  Leah didn’t like the idea, but she offered up her wrists anyway. Da Silva clamped the cuffs around them. The metal was cool against Leah’s skin.

  There were more shops in this part of the town, including a hardware store. A circle of grass with a large tree in the middle was marked with a sign declaring it to be the town green. They drove around it, and what were probably the two grandest buildings in the town came into view. The first, a solid whitewashed structure with stone columns flanking a short staircase, was the town hall. The second was the police station.

  Two Transport cars stood outside the station, both of them quite old. They were empty, but four Transport officers, presumably the drivers and their partners, stood talking nearby. As Alice drove past the station, one of the officers looked across at them. Leah caught her eye, just for a moment. Suddenly terrified she’d given the game away already, Leah looked down. She could almost feel the woman’s gaze burning into her through the SUV’s window.

  Alice swung the car right, heading down a street that would take them to the back of the station. The road was narrow, and Leah wondered if they were actually taking the right route until another of the blue Transport cars rounded the corner and drove toward them. She managed not to look at the car as it passed, but she saw Alice acknowledge the driver. It was all Leah could do not to look to see if the car was turning to come after them.

  They reached the end of the road and took another right. A high concrete wall ran the length of the block. Two gaps marked the entrance and exit to the parking area itself. Alice drove slowly toward the entrance.

  A pair of high chain-link gates blocked the way in. There was no sign of a guard post, but two rectangular boxes sat atop the gate’s supports—security cameras. Two bulbous red warning lights were mounted to the wall. They were dark now, but Leah imagined they’d spring to life the moment whoever was monitoring the cameras spotted anything unusual.

  “How confident are you that this transponder thing will work?” said Da Silva. Her hand was already resting on one of her pistols.

  Alice took a deep breath. “Fifty-fifty.”

  Da Silva smiled humorlessly.

  The SUV edged closer to the gate until Alice was forced to stop. Leah stared at the dashboard, but she could see the security cameras out of the corners of her eyes. Small green LEDs flashed on top of each one.

  “Errrr, Sarge,” whispered Da Silva.

  “Give it a minute.”

  Seconds dragged by.

  Leah saw Alice’s hand twitch toward the gearstick as though she was going to put the vehicle into reverse. Then there was a dull metallic clunk, and the gates rolled open, juddering as their rubber wheels moved across the road’s broken asphalt.

  Alice let the gates open almost completely before moving forward. The parking area wasn’t particularly big, but there was room for thirty or forty cars—five rows of five plus a handful of spaces slotted in where they’d fit. There were more vehicles parked there than Leah had expected—two more of the blue Transport cars, a bulky, angular riot truck, three bland civilian vehicles, and a pickup truck.

  The entrance to the building was directly ahead. Two large parking spaces were marked out in faded yellow paint on either side of the door. Both of them were empty. Large red signs attached to the building designated the spaces as prisoner transfer bays one and two.

  Alice drove along the lane, passed the riot truck, and pulled up into the right-hand transfer bay. A set of double metal doors led into the building. Another of the boxy security cameras was attached to the wall above them.

  Alice killed the engine, but as she turned to say something to Leah, one of the doors opened and a Transport officer came out. He walked directly toward them, and he was frowning.

  9

  As the officer walked toward them, Da Silva tightened the grip on her pistol.

  “Stay calm,” said Alice.

  She opened her door and got out. Da Silva did the same and came around to the passenger door and opened it for Leah. Da Silva let her climb out then grabbed ahold of the cuffs and led her around the SUV.

  The officer’s hand was hovering near his gun. He looked at Leah and Da Silva, taking in the cuffs. “I wasn’t expecting any more prisoners.”

  Alice feigned surprise. “You sure? Control told us they were going to call ahead.”

  The man shook his head slowly. He had a name badge pinned to his chest that read Johnston.

  Alice held her arms out, palms up as though to say “What can you do?”

  “Who is she?” said Johnston.

  “Just a refugee from New Leighton. We think she’s got some information on a TRACE camp that was nearby.”

  Johnston’s eyes widened. “New Leighton?”

  Alice nodded.

  “So why ya bringing her to Adderbury?”

  “It’s just for a couple of hours, until the higher-ups decide what to do with her. They said you’ve already got some of those scum bags here, so she might as well cool her heels with them.”

  Johnston sneered as though the mere thought of the prisoners made him sick, but Leah caught him glancing at the SUV. If it was one of theirs and he recognized it…

  A radio on Johnston’s belt squawked. He raised a hand to Alice in an apology and unclipped the radio. “Johnston.”

  “Sarge, we got some trouble over on the east side of town.”

  A sudden sick feeling hit Leah. They’d come from the east.

  Johnston rolled his eyes. “I told ya, Wilkins, just slap ’em with a
fine again. They’ll learn.”

  “But Sarge, the old man is here, and he’s got that damned antique rifle.”

  Johnston pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed wearily. “Okay, I’m on my way. Out.”

  Johnston looked at Leah, and his eyes flicked up and down as though he was sizing her up. Then he sniffed. He lifted his radio again. “Pourteau?”

  “Yes, Captain,” came a crackling voice.

  “There’s a couple of officers out here with a prisoner. Get in touch with Control, work out why she’s here, and get her checked in, will ya?”

  “Got it.”

  The captain clipped the radio back onto his belt. “I’ve got to go and deal with an idiot old man before he blows his own foot off, but I’ll let you inside. Pourteau will get your prisoner logged in.”

  “Thank you,” said Alice.

  Johnston led them to the doors. He pulled a well-worn pass card from his pocket and pressed it against a gray metal box mounted to the wall. There was a ratcheting noise and a soft clunk. Johnston pulled the door open. Alice thanked Johnston again, and they went inside.

  The door led to a narrow corridor with walls that had been painted gray years ago and were showing their age. Stark LED lighting strips ran along the ceiling, but there were outlines of older, boxier fittings around them. A door, this one a dismal beige, sat at the opposite end of the corridor.

  As soon as the door closed behind them, Da Silva let go of Leah’s cuffs. “What happens when he comes back?”

  “We’ll deal with that when it happens,” said Alice. “Come on. The control room’s on the other side of that door.”

  They walked down the corridor with Alice in front, Leah in the middle, and Da Silva following in the rear. Now that they were making progress, Leah’s nervousness was being replaced by the same excitement she’d felt on the scavenging runs she’d gone on when her father was alive.

  The beige door was unlocked, and Alice led them through. She moved purposefully, her face confident.

  The room beyond was brightly lit and looked like a waiting room. It came complete with a cluster of seats and a raised wooden counter, presumably for the Transport officers. The furniture was old. The wooden top of the U-shaped counter was heavily scarred, and the gray paint on the walls was scuffed and peeling in multiple places. The row of four chairs that ran along one wall was just as old. There was no one in the room or behind the counter.

  Alice led them through a door marked Transport Authority Only and into a small open area behind the counter. There was another door, but six massive filing cabinets took up most of the space, leaving just enough room for a couple of mismatched stools so that officers could sit at the counter.

  There was no sign of a lock on the door, and when Alice turned the handle, it opened. She leaped forward in an explosion of motion. Leah followed close behind. She barely had time to register the Transport officer who’d been sitting at a desk opposite the door, and then Alice had him in a chokehold, the crook of her arm pressed tight across his throat.

  The man gasped and struggled. He clutched at Alice’s arm and raked his fingers across her sleeve. Alice jerked backward, tightening her grip. The man let out a wheezing, rattling breath and then slumped in the chair. Alice removed her arm and pressed the tips of her fingers against the man’s throat. After a few seconds, she nodded to Da Silva, who freed Leah and transferred the cuffs to the man, presumably Pourteau.

  Four screens were embedded in the wall in front of Pourteau’s desk. They showed blurry images captured from security cameras from around the station. Three of them cycled through different shots, but the fourth was locked on to a view of a heavy door marked Detention Wing.

  Alice handed Leah her pistol, then pointed at the screen. “That’s where we need to go. Da Silva, you’re with me. Leah, find a way to shut down the security systems as we reach them. Bring them back up again as soon as we’re past, or Transport will know something’s up. Keep the headset chatter to a minimum.”

  Leah put the pistol on the desk and sat down. A screen set into the desktop displayed a grid of six icons. Leah was about to pick one when she spotted a metal object sitting on a shelf beneath the desk. She reached down and pulled out a VRI. It was lighter than the ones Leah was used to. Instead of the bulky, spiderlike contraption, the interface’s spike protruded from a flat plastic disk attached to the end of a flexible metal tube that fed into the black box of a VR computer.

  “Shouldn’t I use this?”

  Alice shook her head. “That could be connected to Transport’s network. If it is, Transport will have daemons running. They’ll be on you before you know it.” Alice handed Leah her tablet. “Any access codes you need will be on there.”

  Leah took the tablet and brought up the list of pass codes she’d retrieved from the Transport data center. Assuming their mysterious benefactor had given them the right codes, she should be able to use them to bypass any security she ran into.

  “We should go,” said Da Silva.

  Alice gave Leah a smile then turned and left the room with Da Silva close behind. A few seconds later, the image on one of the screens changed to show Alice and Da Silva walking slowly down a corridor, guns raised.

  10

  Leah looked at the screen set into the control desk and tapped a picture of a security camera marked TA-SEC. The screen flipped over to reveal a numeric keypad and an empty input box. Above the box was some text—BLUE ECHO.

  Leah scrolled down the list of access codes on her tablet until she found BLUE ECHO. There was a number beside it. This was the moment of truth. Leah tapped the digits into the keypad, and the screen changed to a new set of icons. There were twenty-five, and Leah had no clue what half of them represented.

  “Leah?”

  Leah started, but it was just Alice’s voice on her headset. She looked up at the security screens. Alice and Da Silva were standing in front of a door, a rectangular metal panel sitting in the wall beside it. A red light above the panel glowed ominously.

  Alice was staring directly into the camera. When she spoke, the movement of her lips was slightly out of sync with the voice on Leah’s headset. “We need you to open the door.”

  Leah’s fingers hovered above the touchscreen as she tried to find the right icon. She tapped one, a padlock, but it brought up a schematic of what looked like a vault filled with safe deposit boxes. She returned to the main screen and scanned the icons again.

  She found what she was looking for right in the middle of the screen—an icon showing a stylized representation of the police building. When she tapped it, the screen changed to show a map of the first floor of the station. Boxes surrounded the doors on the floor plan. Some were red; others were green.

  There were other boxes on the schematic as well. These were rectangular and were placed in the corners of rooms. Leah guessed they were probably the locations of security cameras.

  Up and down arrows sat on the right-hand side of the screen. Leah tapped them, and the map changed, moving between the building’s four floors.

  “Leah, we could do with getting through this door,” said Alice.

  Leah tapped on one of the red boxes over a door, and a dialog opened containing two icons marked LOCK and UNLOCK. Leah dismissed the box. She needed to find the one that would open the door for Alice.

  A movement on one of the other screens caught Leah’s eye. A Transport officer had come into view. He was walking down a featureless gray corridor that looked identical to the one Alice and Da Silva were in. Leah looked between the two screens, trying to work out if it was actually the same corridor. Then the screens flickered, and views of two different corridors appeared. These were empty.

  “No, no, no!” said Leah.

  She tapped the monitor that had been showing Alice and Da Silva, hoping that maybe it, too, was a touchscreen. Nothing happened. A cold sweat trickled down her back as she sat there, frozen. She’d let Alice and Da Silva down already.

  “Leah!”

>   Alice’s voice over the headset snapped her back to reality. She looked at the screen set into the desk. Beneath the map, there was a row of rectangular boxes. They were numbered from 1 to 4. The displays in front of her were also numbered. Leah tapped the box marked 1 and then tapped one of the security cameras on the map.

  The image on the first monitor immediately changed to a shot of a storage room filled with cardboard filing boxes. Leah tried another camera and got an empty corridor.

  She tapped the screen to move the schematic to the first floor and found the control room. There was only one corridor leading deeper into the station. She switched the image on screen 1 to the camera showing that corridor. The image of Alice and Da Silva reappeared.

  Her initial excitement faded when she realized there were dozens of cameras in the station, and she had no idea which one would show her the Transport officer. She didn’t even know which floor he was on.

  Leah rubbed her hand through her hair as the feeling she’d let her friends down returned. She found the door Alice and Da Silva were waiting at on the screen. It was outlined in red.

  She touched the door to bring up the LOCK/UNLOCK dialog. When she tapped the UNLOCK button, another of the entry fields popped up. She looked up the code—BAT FISH—on her tablet and entered the string of numbers. The dialog disappeared, and the red box surrounding the door turned green.

  On the security screen, the red light on the door panel also changed to green. Alice broke into a grin, and she and Da Silva went through the now unlocked door.

  In her haste to follow Alice’s progress to the next corridor, Leah almost forgot to lock the door again. It wasn’t until she’d switched screen one to the next camera that she remembered to go back and tap the door. There was no code requested when she selected the LOCK icon; the rectangle around the door simply turned red.

  The corridor Alice and Da Silva were in was longer than the first, but they were already at the next door. This one led to a set of stairs that would take them down to the lower levels of the station. Leah opened the door for them, and this time she remembered to lock it again as soon as they were through it.