One Life Remaining (Portal Book 2)

by Mark J Maxwell

  Pedestrians blurred along the pavement as the footage lurched forward. Occasionally CADET would highlight a Lifecaster by surrounding them in a green glow. Lifecasters were Portal users who publicly shared out their implant feeds, so the feeds were fair game to MET investigations. If she wanted to she could jack into their feeds and experience what they were seeing and hearing. British celebrities made use of Lifecasting to boost their profile, sharing out artfully crafted excerpts of their day. But other famous Lifecasters were normal Portal users who had gained massive followings purely through sharing their every waking moment.

  ‘Pause.’

  Ben stood in the doorway, dressed in jeans and a black hoodie, frozen in the act of raising the hood. There was a symbol on the front: a red circle with a blue lightning bolt across the center. She recognised it as Ben’s clan badge. Charlie was a member too.

  ‘Play. Normal speed.’

  Ben unrolled a falseface net. Louisa grimaced as his face was replaced by a glowing green skull suspended within the darkness of his hood.

  ‘Tag user and follow.’

  At the end of the road Ben hopped on a bus. Louisa jumped forward to where he alighted, near Charing Cross. It was a busy Saturday afternoon in the city center, crowded with tourists and shoppers. She followed him as he headed toward Piccadilly. Ben’s skull falseface was a popular choice. She noted several other kids in town with the same one. It didn’t confuse CADET though, which maintained a link based on Ben’s height and build. Icons hovered over the heads of those pedestrians who’d shared out feeds. Portal kept the airspace above head-height free of clutter. The only exception to the rule was for large congregations of people who jointly agreed on a message to display. This led to the phenomenon of ghost mobs who met at a prearranged location to carve out their own piece of airspace. Often they came together for a particular cause, usually charitable or political.

  Her tether broke as Ben entered a coffee house at the junction of Regent Street and Shaftsbury Avenue. She lost him for a few minutes, the street level sense strips unable to penetrate deep into the shop. A quick search revealed there were no Lifecasters in the shop she could jack into. She skipped ahead.

  Ben reappeared seconds later with a coffee and took a seat at the window. He’d tucked away the falseface. After a few minutes he raised a hand in greeting and hopped off his stool. The man he approached wore a clan hoodie too. Louisa zoomed in on the symbol. It was roughly circular and composed of a complicated series of interweaving lines, almost Celtic in design. His falseface created the illusion of invisibility for the wearer, the sense strips recording nothing but the inside of his hood.

  Louisa pointed at the clan badge. ‘Identify the symbol on the man’s clothing.’ A window appeared before her. CADET listed the symbol as belonging to a Multiverse clan called the Sons of Babel. A private clan with membership by invitation only.

  Just then the man pulled up his falseface. He wiped perspiration from his brow and replaced the net. He was around Ben’s age, with shaggy sandy hair and a thin, wan face. The brief glimpse was enough for CADET to identify him as Henry Booth, seventeen years old, and unemployed, with a home address near Bethnal Green where he lived with his parents. Louisa was surprised to see he had a record, with a conviction for Portal wallet fraud. He spent three months in a juvenile detention centre when he was fifteen. She tapped on the shop window. ‘Extrapolate audio.’

  There weren’t any sense strips in the coffee house, but the MET had other tricks at their disposal to capture audio from inside buildings. Street-level sense strips could detect minute vibrations in stationary objects caused by sound waves, and windowpanes were especially effective at interpreting audio due to their large surface areas.

  Through the garbled muddle of noise CADET produced she could just about make out Henry’s voice as he held out a hand. ‘Ben, good to finally meet you in person. Are you ready?’

  Ben grinned. ‘Sure.’ He deployed his falseface. ‘Let’s go.’

  Louisa activated the user tail again, then lost them when they descended the stairs to Piccadilly Circus tube station. The station was a dead zone apart from the platforms and the interior of the trains themselves. She kept track of Ben by jumping between the feeds of Lifecasters within the station, then switched back to the sense logs once they boarded a Bakerloo Line train heading south. She ran the train strips’ audio and tried to work out what Ben and Henry were saying. The fragments she picked up were innocuous enough. They talked about a new science fiction screencast called Glimmerworld, and then moved onto discussing clan tactics for Multiverse games.

  They got off at Elephant and Castle station and headed south. The neighbourhood was quiet, the office blocks and local businesses they passed were shut for the weekend. After five minutes they turned off onto Wansey Street, a residential road that terminated in a tall wire mesh fence. On the other side an unkempt patch of grass led up to a two-storey block of flats that looked derelict, the ground floor windows and entrances boarded up. A faded sign beside the entrance named the flats as Brandon Parade.

  Ben scaled the fence. It took Henry took a few tries, but eventually he hauled himself over. They approached the flats’ boarded up entrance and Henry rapped on the plywood. The board shifted across and Louisa caught a brief glimpse of a hallway and some stairs before Henry and Ben entered and the board slid back.

  Louisa paused the playback. So now she knew where Ben ended up on the Saturday he went missing, but she had no idea if he was still there. She accelerated the playback speed of the footage to see if Ben came back out. Two men entered the flats while another three men left. All wore Sons of Babel clan hoodies and falsefaces, but none of the three who left looked to be a match for Ben’s height and build.

  Louisa brought up a street map. The flats backed onto Wansey Street, with the main entrance on Brandon Street. It would take her an age to scan through the sense strip footage for the next week, especially if she needed to cover both entrances. A sense perimeter would be ideal, but then she’d need to involve SIU. She doubted an SIU supervisor would assign an officer to her. Not for a missing persons case.

  Louisa decided to head down to Brandon Parade herself. The clan appeared to be using the flats as a hang out. Ben could still be there, and if not, Henry Booth or one of the other clan members might know where he was. She was just about to kill the simulation when a light turned on in a second storey window. A second later a hand pulled down the blind. She floated up to the window and wound the footage back. The light flicked on once more. A man appeared. He wasn’t wearing a falseface.

  ‘Pause playback.’

  Louisa stared at the man’s face for a long time. She didn’t need CADET’s ID scan. The last time she laid eyes on him he’d been spread eagle on the floor of SCD7’s custody, his brain matter a bloody spray across the wall.

  Killian Baker.

  The blind snapped down.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The kids were tucking into a Thai takeaway when Louisa arrived home. She left them with dire warnings as to the consequences if she returned and found their homework unfinished, then went to the garden shed and retrieved a battery powered torch and a crowbar. She carried them now as she stood before the fence in front of Brandon Parade.

  A search on Portal produced a property sales feed indicating the flats had been repossessed from a bankrupt developer and were due to be auctioned off in two weeks. Helpfully the auctioneer attached a set of building plans to the feed. The building contained fifteen one and ten two-bedroom flats in total on each of the first two floors. The top floor had been divided into five three-bed flats and a single four-bed penthouse.

  No lights were on in the upper floor this time, or anywhere else in the night-shrouded building. She slotted the crowbar through the fence. As she hauled herself over, the wire sagged against the metal posts and rattled loudly. She retrieved the crowbar and padded around to the side of the building. Now hidden from view, she crouched beneath a boarded-up window and wai
ted to see if anyone would come to investigate the racket.

  When she’d seen Baker in the sense footage she’d tried to extrapolate the room’s audio from the window. It proved fruitless. The room blind dampened the audio CADET extracted; any voices she could hear sounded like they were under water. Considering her next move, her first instinct had been to call Drew. Then she recalled the psychiatric evaluation she’d ordered on Baker. Dr Maria Peterson, a MET psychiatrist, had sent the report link directly to DS Bolton upon finding the case file locked. Bolton forwarded it to Drew and sent Louisa a copy.

  Dr Peterson had given Baker the all-clear, at least on the basis that he possessed the mental capacity to make reasonable adult choices. However the doctor described Baker as someone who possessed an unquestioning trust in the man he referred to as the Prophet, Spencer Harrow. Baker waxed lyrical on Harrow’s teachings, which Dr Peterson equated to a stereotypical transcendence belief system. Harrow apparently preached purity of mind and believed Portal corrupted its users. The network negatively impacted on what he considered to be mankind’s true raison d’être, ascendency to a higher form of being. Any attempt on Dr Peterson’s part to question these beliefs produced a hostile reaction from Baker. She concluded that the man wasn’t clinically insane, although his ability to reason had been compromised, with Harrow being the likely cause.

  Louisa tried to tell herself it was a coincidence, Baker being in the flats with the Sons of Babel. He could be a member too. There was nothing unsavoury about Multiverse clans. Most players joined a clan, some more than one. But the explanation didn’t fly with her. With Ben involved, she had to assume the worst, that both Harrow and Baker were members of the Sons of Babel, and the clan members, Henry included, were under Harrow’s influence. If she told Drew about Baker the NCA would come looking for Harrow, tooled up and ready for a firefight. She needed to get Ben out. Then she could call Drew.

  The plywood was nailed to the window frame, however one of the nails wasn’t flush with the board and she used the crowbar to pry it loose. She slipped the bar’s flat end under the board and levered it back and forth, gradually working her way around the edges until a finger’s width separated the board from the frame. She hooked the crowbar into a belt loop in her jeans and yanked the board free. The window had been smashed; the jagged edges of the pane were still in the frame. She shrugged off her jacket and laid it over the broken glass, then swung a leg over and hopped into the room.

  Louisa flicked on the torch and swung the beam around. The room had originally been a kitchen. Some of the cabinets remained attached to the walls. Everything else, sink included, had been gutted. Graffiti marred every available surface.

  Louisa rested her hand on the pistol holstered at her side. Its presence reassured her. She activated a private recording session on her optical and cochlear implants. First person footage would be better than any personal statement if she needed to use her weapon. A red dot flashed, indicting her implants were streaming to her profile.

  A quick search of the flat revealed it to be in a similar condition. She headed for the flat’s entrance and found the door missing. She swung the beam up and down the hallway. The rest of the flats also lay open. Louisa accessed the auctioneer’s plans. They’d been made implant-compatible, so potential buyers could virtually wander around a three-dimensional shell of the building without visiting the premises. According to the map, Baker had been in the penthouse on the second floor. She set the apartment as her destination and a green arrow appeared on the floor.

  The arrow led to the main entrance of the flats. A lift opposite the Brandon Street entrance had a sign stating DO NOT USE. She took the stairs.

  The building must have acted as a magnet for kids before being secured. A place to hide from parents, drink, take drugs, and generally let loose. She was surprised a few kids weren’t there right now. Getting in hadn’t been hard. At the top of the stairs Louisa found the first Sons of Babel clan badge, sprayed on the wall in red paint. It looked like a boundary indicator. A sign to denote the clan’s territory inside the building. Or a warning to proceed no further? She unholstered her Glock and nudged open the swing door.

  In the first flat, her torch illuminated writing daubed along the hallway in red paint. Consciousness is the path to ascension. She was about to continue on when a rustling noise froze her in place. Was someone still inside the flat? It happened again. She stepped into the hallway and paused by an open doorway. The windows were uncovered. Mattresses lay on the floor alongside discarded chocolate wrappers and Ramen noodle pots. People had been living here, and up until fairly recently. The flat was empty. So where did the noise come from?

  The noodle pot moved. Louisa frowned at it. A small, brown furry head popped out, whiskers twitching, sniffing the air. Ugh, disgusting.

  Further along the corridor she encountered her first closed door. The green arrow directed her inside. She gave the door a press. Locked. Louisa felt a sudden urge to knock, then quickly dismissed it as ridiculous. She wedged the crowbar between the door and the frame adjacent to the keyhole, and heaved. The door popped open with a crunch of splitting wood. Hooking the crowbar back onto her belt, she raised the Glock and entered.

  Louisa nearly gagged at the smell. Rubbish lay strewn on the floor. To the right was a bathroom. The building’s water supply must have been cut off and it had seen regular use. She stopped before another closed door at the end of the hallway. The green arrow winked out. The door wasn’t locked and opened with a creak. The blinds still covered the window. She swept the torch to the right.

  A large cloth banner hung on the wall. Across it the Sons of Babel clan symbol was daubed in red. A figure stood against the banner, watching her.

  ‘Armed police! Don’t move!’

  The man froze. Louisa played the torch over him, and nearly dropped it in shock. He wasn’t leaning against the wall. He’d been nailed to it, cruciform. A black hood covered his head, tied at the neck. His chest was bare and streaked with blood. Someone had attempted to carve an approximation of the clan’s badge into it. Blood soaked his jeans.

  Louisa’s hands shook, a horrible suspicion forming in her mind. God please, please don’t let it be Ben. She holstered the Glock and set the torch on the floor. Her fingers trembled as she attempted to untie the cord around the man’s neck. She thought the knot had been glued at first, then noticed her fingertips were red—gummy with dried blood.

  The knot finally slipped loose and she pulled off the hood. Louisa stood stock-still for a long moment, then gasped and exhaled, a long shaky breath.

  It took around thirty seconds before Drew answered her call. ‘Louisa, I’m in the middle of something. Can it wait?’

  ‘When did you release Worrell?’

  A long pause. ‘How did you know we released him?’

  ‘Because I’m looking at him, right now. He’s dead, Drew. Worrell’s been murdered.’

  *

  A black Audi saloon turned sharply onto Wansey Street, swiftly followed by two black panel vans. They screeched to a halt before the fence where Louisa stood waiting. Doors slid open on the sides of the vans. Two squads of armed men disgorged, five from each, all carrying Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine guns. They fanned out along Wansey Street. At the far end, two more cars formed a barrier where it joined Walworth Road.

  Drew got out of the Audi, followed by three other men, all in plain clothes, dark jeans, and white shirts. ‘Where is he?’ Drew asked.

  Louisa pointed at the flats. ‘The second floor.’

  An NCA officer stood ready with a pair of wire cutters. Drew nodded to him. The man went to work on the fence, snipping a link at a time. Most of the street’s residents were probably in their beds, although Louisa did notice curtains twitching as curiosity got the better of some. One man opened his front door and peeked out. An officer shouted at him to get back inside.

  Drew turned to the squad, arrayed in a semicircle around him. ‘I want the building secured floor by floor fr
om the ground up.’

  The officer had finished cutting the fence. He gave it a boot. A three-foot square section punched out. The squad took turns climbing through. Drew motioned her toward the car.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, once they were inside, ‘what are you doing here?’

  There was no need for him to enquire about Worrell. She’d already shared a copy of her implant footage with him.

  ‘First I want answers,’ Louisa said. ‘I want to know why you highjacked my investigation.’

  ‘I didn’t highjack anything. The NCA taking charge of a Red Flagged case file is entirely routine.’

  ‘That’s crap. As soon as I ran the history graph against Spencer Harrow you took over. It was preplanned.’

  ‘Not by me,’ Drew said vehemently. ‘I didn’t know about Harrow’s Red Flag and I don’t know who assigned it to his profile.’

  Louisa didn’t know how to respond. If Drew was telling the truth and the NCA didn’t Red Flag Spencer’s profile, then one of the intelligence services must have been responsible. The NCA not sharing intelligence might be a bone of contention within the MET, but she never considered the NCA might be in the same position. Whatever the case, another agency being involved made her even more reluctant to tell Drew about Ben.

  ‘Then where did the intel on Fletcher and Worrell come from?’ Louisa asked. ‘You must know that much at least.’

  Drew considered the question for a moment. ‘All I know is that it originated from GCHQ, via an established communications pipeline with the Agency. By the time my boss received the intel it had passed from GCHQ to NCA Intelligence to NCA Operations. It was marked high priority, meaning it warranted immediate attention.’

  ‘I never thought of you as the just following orders type, Drew. Aren’t you the least bit interested in finding out who instigated this?’

  Drew’s mouth dropped open. ‘You think I don’t care about what’s happening here?’