The Forbidden City

by John McNally

  Baptiste slapped his hand over it. “Got him!”

  Grandma had been escorted back to her room and told her ‘girls’ she would take a bath now. While it was running, she took a magnifying glass (she’d asked for one for helping to unpick stitches) and examined the nPhone. It seemed to be charged and, using a pin, she typed out a text message via the tiny number pad. She didn’t know where she was, just that she was in the middle of nowhere and didn’t have any signal. The only solution was to put it to sea.

  She made a tiny plastic packet from the corner of a bag, put the nPhone inside, and then made a watertight seal by heating the pin over a scented candle and melting the plastic.

  Then, with no other option for launch, she simply flushed it down the lavatory with a little prayer and hoped for the best.

  After all, she thought, that sort of thing had to go somewhere.

  DAY FOUR 12:00 (Local GMT+8). The Forbidden City, Shanghai.

  Blinding blue sparks lit the track rushing beneath, as the metro train’s contact-shoe rode the live rail, surfing the current.

  Just reach the Forbidden City, Finn told himself as he rode the carriage. Reach the Forbidden City and you’ll show up on the G&T’s nano-radar and they’ll come and find you.

  Splitting up with Carla in the Metro hadn’t been easy. He was her wingman, her shotgun. They’d been through a lot in a few short hours, their friendship tempered by events. But they were also in the race of their lives and he figured they doubled their chances of winning if they split up.

  “Beat me to it. Winner takes all.”

  “All what?”

  “All the grief your sister and my uncle are going to give us for abandoning each other.”

  He’d emptied the extra fuel into the Bug and given her the empty cans to take with her. “Any kind of nano-material will show up on nano-radar. Take it. If they catch you, it may help us find you.”

  Beneath the metro train the blue sparks died and brakes bit against the wheels. Light whooshed in as they pulled into the station, signs whipping by –

  The Forbidden City.

  DAY FOUR 12:01 (Local GMT+8). Song Island, Taiwan (disputed).

  It wasn’t a decision he wanted to make. It wasn’t even a decision he had to make. But it was a decision he made in a split second. Because it was for the best, and he always knew what was for the best.

  Drake was not with the girl. They’d been fooled by a couple of empty fuel cans. It meant he was likely to make contact now with the G&T.

  And The Forbidden City was shutting down. Some kind of evacuation was underway.

  So it seemed that once again the boy and his uncle had forced his hand.

  They must die.

  Slowly.

  “Order the open dispersal,” he said. “Then blind them. Destroy the nano-radar.”

  The boy could run but he couldn’t hide. Just like his uncle. Just like his grandmother. Soon there would be no more secrets, no more hiding places. Not from Kaparis. He would soon be inside every machine in the world.

  What’s more he would be inside Hook Hall.

  Inside Boldklub itself. The code would be revealed. Complete.

  And then he, Kaparis, would be complete. Time would begin again. And he would rise.

  Impatience made his cheek twitch.

  “Give me as many bot-feeds as possible.”

  Scratchy in-flight bot-video started to pop open on his screen array. This wasn’t just any old take down. This was a wonder of the world that was to come.

  “I want to see this.”

  DAY FOUR 12:01 (Local GMT+8). The Forbidden City. Nano-Botmass:*6,784,375...

  The PRIME XE.CUTE was on the assembly line of Sony Plant 9, a 220,000m2 games console facility in Sector 5 of the Forbidden City, when the emergency order came through.

  >>KAPCOMMS>>XE.CUTE: RISE – DESTROY RADAR AND COMMS 23429784 2398308 78087907 65870568 856787348 3493497 945973649 98400 …

  Of the 6,784,398 bots produced to that point 1,560,104 were packed and dormant within 30,002 completed consumer products, ready to be shipped. 189,454 were engaged as scout bots, harvesting carbon from multiple sources to feed the 1,173,952 bots engaged in production in 22,576 Vector Suites hidden in plants throughout the Forbidden City. The remainder were concealed awaiting assignment.

  The PRIME XE.CUTE nano-bot halted production and gave the executive order:

  KAPCOMM SAY RISE = VECTOR RISE

  Immediately it began. In ninety-four factories and research facilities across the city, Vector Suites began to break up as bots took to the air. Rising.

  SEE XE.CUTE RISE

  From laptops, tablets and phones; from printers, cameras and servers the size of small cars; from devices of every conceivable kind … the bots rose, heading for the wide open spaces, as natural and inevitable as a great migration, like millions of starlings heading South for the winter.

  SEE BOTS RISE

  Kelly was flying the Skimmer from radar site to radar site, Stubbs beside him as they changed the nano-radar set up in the central zone.

  Beneath them traffic was flowing out of the city.

  They’d completed six sites already when Stubbs began adjusting the Skimmer’s own radar. There seemed to be insects everywhere all of a sudden … in every square foot of air, flying random arcs, up and downing, to-ing and fro-ing, a mad scribble of life.

  “It’s like there’s a storm coming,” Stubbs said aloud, trying to figure it through.

  Carbon bots would have a similar nano-radar signature to an insect. Maybe they had found what they were looking for?

  Then he blinked.

  At the centre of it all, as bright as the Star of Bethlehem, a single darker dot was rising fast.

  Suddenly the faint dots around it moved as one. Like a shoal of fish. Small neat groups formed, then headed off in a dozen directions at once.

  “Something is happening,” stated Stubbs.

  The PRIME XE.CUTE achieved command altitude then gave the signal to start the attack.

  BOT9aBGR.1623 was the first to fire.

  Angle of approach 36.74 degrees west on a flat trajectory, altitude 1600mm, speed 22kmph.

  It discharged 1047ma into its integral rail gun and fired at a range of 600mm. A bolt was successfully discharged and remained coherent during its path to target: a nano-radar dish in Sector 2. Combustion was instantaneous and compounded by strikes from BOT11BGR.772 and BOT26aBGR.199 in the same formation.

  Stubbs watched the dot formations on his radar screen shoot streaks along their trajectories.

  “Do you know … I think… they’re firing?” Stubbs said, but Kelly wasn’t listening, his eyes fixed on two incoming thunderbolts –

  ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH!

  DAY FOUR 12:07 (Local GMT+8). Roof of the World, Shanghai.

  Beep.

  King heard the first fault alarm. An interruption in one of the radar feeds, not a particular cause for concern.

  Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeep …

  But several? Instantaneously?

  Al appeared from the helipad with Bo Zhang and Delta, as Kelly yelled over the radio. “The nano-bots – they’re everywhere! Thousands of them! We’re under attack!”

  Technicians hurried to keyboards as screen after screen feeding in data from the Forbidden City was suddenly wiped out.

  “Kelly, give us numbers, patterns, what can you see – talk to me!” shouted Al. “Kelly!”

  Nothing.

  “They must have taken out the nano-comms as well,” said King.

  “A breakout …” said Al, digesting the implications. “We need to stall this or we’re going to be overrun.”

  “Signals! Surely the nano-bots must be communicating with each other?”

  A technician looked up from a screen. “Nothing.”

  “Never mind the signals! Let me out!” yelled Delta from the Skimmer.

  She shot towards the sealed doors, waiting for them to open them.

  Al
jumped across the table to stop her.

  “If the guys survived, they’ll already be on their way back. Your sister has enough on her plate without losing you in a suicide mission!”

  Delta dipped the Skimmer and – DRRRRT – fired nano-50mm rounds at his feet, full of impotent rage. Al duly danced back as the tiny rounds thudded into the carpet.

  “Doctor Allenby! Flight Lieutenant Salazar!” Bo roared. Al and Delta turned, astonished to see his perfect facade had cracked.

  King translated his intended meaning. “We need to grow up. We need options.”

  “There are no options,” said Al. “We need to shut the Forbidden City down. We need to cut the power and put it in quarantine. We need to get some live bots up here so we can take a closer look. But more than anything, we need to get every last person out of there and into the quarantine zone – now!”

  Bo Zhang took a moment.

  Until twenty-four hours ago his entire life had run along neat lines. He took ruthless, rational decisions which he implemented with 100 per cent efficiency. And now a bizarre English eccentric was asking him to believe his country would soon be crawling with microscopic agents of Armageddon … and he was taking him seriously.

  Delta flew right up. “You heard him. Make the call.”

  Bo took in the blank screens. He took in the faces turned to him. He took in Delta, 10mm tall on a flying fingernail and in a state of some distress.

  Anything was possible. He turned to his staff.

  “Announce a terror alert. Order a total evacuation. Shut down the Forbidden City.”

  Finn flew high over the main perimeter and got a magnificent perspective view of the great crop circle of the Forbidden City and thought … Yes.

  He was on the home straight.

  He cruised over white factory blocks, vast app-campuses, blue-crystal corporate headquarters and immaculately tended green spaces, heading straight for the dead centre.

  Then he glanced down at his nano-radar.

  At the edge of the screen – not one bright dot, but two! Two flying objects that must be made of nano-material, the two Skimmers. One seemed to be dead still. The other moving fast, first in a straight line, then erratic. He couldn’t believe his luck.

  He grabbed the radio, praying they would be in nano-comms range.

  “Skimmer One – Skimmer Two. Do you read me? This is Infinity Drake – over?”

  He expected, if anything, an expression of surprise, delight, maybe even a swearword. Instead, blitzing out of his speaker Kelly screamed –

  “INCOMING!”

  “Kelly?”

  Stubbs’s voice came on the line as static ripped away at the signal.

  “Control?”

  “This is not Control. It’s Finn!” Finn repeated.

  “WHAT?” said Kelly. More static. Or … firing? Finn could still only see the dot on his screen. He adjusted the frequency to pick out less dense objects and suddenly – there they were. Everywhere. Insects?

  “GET OUT! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!” ordered Kelly.

  DRTRRTRTRTR! DRTRTRTRTRRT!

  Adrenalin shot through every cell in Finn’s body – GO! He checked the ammo clip on the Minimi – still good. “HANG ON! I’M COMING!”

  “NO!”

  Finn ignored him, jabbing the sticks forward, leaning into the harness to resist the Gs as the acceleration tried to rip him from the Bug’s back, making its heart and turbines roar.

  Kaparis glanced at the feed from K-SAT – a personal spy satellite hovering 277 miles above the earth – and watched the Forbidden City change colour. Each bot was mapped as a tiny point of red light and the city looked like a great angry spot, infection spreading outwards, the bots clinging to the hair of 100,000 fleeing workers, or flying free, with scout bots already powering way beyond the perimeter.

  The bots were inevitable now. Unstoppable. You might just as easily try and catch the wind.

  “We have a second craft approaching from the north,” Li Jun reported.

  Kaparis’s eyes flicked back to the radar feed and his life support stats exploded on the ECG monitor.

  “THAT’S HIM!”

  >>KAPCOMMS>>XE.CUTE: PRIORITISE>> Command Capture or Destroy incoming 423874298

  Finn headed straight for the Skimmer – the dodging, active bright spot on his nano-radar. It had to be them. But as he approached, the second, static, bright spot started to move – accelerating straight towards the centre of his screen.

  He looked up. A vicious black dot expanded as it approached, cutting the air with a –TZSSOOOOOOOOO! – a bullet with his name on it, heading straight for him. He pulled the Bug hard right to dodge it like a toreador and saw a flash of ugly silver-steel, flicking whips and dangling knives that flailed and almost ripped into the side of the Bug as it passed.

  Finn instinctively pulled hard on the sticks and the Bug tore the air to turn 180 degree and face it again. This thing was not going to give up. It was speeding back towards him – a flying slug of a robot, an alien mothership of a thing. In pure reflex, Finn hit the fire button on the Minimi then dived – DRRRTRTT!

  PRIME XE.CUTE – HIT HIT HIT SHUTDOWN HIT HIT HIT%&*$()*

  (£(7799SHUTDOWN328576756258889238759285792837592

  875923857923857

  The bot almost scalped him as it whipped over his head at phenomenal speed. Finn wheeled round again, only to find himself facing free air. It was gone, already disappearing off his screen. Hit? Before his brain could process this – ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! – a projectile so powerful it nearly yanked his arm from its socket passed his right side.

  “What the …?”

  ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH!

  The Bug shook.

  “THEY’RE ON TO ME!” Finn cried into the comms.

  “Don’t let them get behind you!” cried Kelly.

  Finn drove the Bug into a corkscrewing dive. He could see a cluster of three bots in his rear-view. They lit up as one.

  ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH!

  He jammed his eyes shut as three spikes of ear-popping, eye-popping pure energy shot towards him. A clean hit would turn him to human mush. He flipped the Bug round again.

  Kaparis’s heart rate was erratic and he was grinding his teeth.

  The video feeds were poor and his staff had to work hard to cut from bot-feed to bot-feed, trying to find the optimum point of view. It was almost impossible to determine what was happening, only that hostilities were definitely underway.

  “Take them alive! I want them alive!”

  XE.CUTE0124857209568572385394XE.CUTE742035702………

  ………..XE.CUTE………….IAM………………..XE.CUTE.…Smoke. Heat. Sparks.

  Just a single bullet had hit the PRIME XE.CUTE, but it had penetrated its processing core, creating enough heat to melt much of the circuitry. Electrical current fitted and shorted. Quantum crystals degraded and reformed, the sacred photonic nano-beam laser light within it bounced and distorted and split …

  Only a scrap of old hardwired binary instruction remained intact. It reset and ran the instruction through the remains of its brain.

  XE.CUTE tilted away towards the centre of the city. A fitting, sparking, digital wreck …

  “You’re faster than they are, Finn – but they pack the punch! Evade and outrun!” Kelly yelled over the comms.

  Finn scanned the skies as he turned. He felt his heart thumping, and time running out. On his radar screen the bots were everywhere. To the naked eye they were as elusive as motes of dust, until – BANG! – they attacked. Always in groups of twos or threes, different coloured shells, chasing hard, screaming down out of the sun, or up from the shadows, or – most terrifying of all – approaching head on. Ugly and tentacled, ready to project death at impossible velocity down their jutting rails.

  ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH!

  Finn pulled the Bug around in another incredible spiral, its prehensile tail flipping as if it were a living thing, dodging the fir
e-cracking, ear-splitting formations.

  But at every turn, still more bots – from every angle and no time to aim and fire back. And what use would a few bullets be against such numbers?

  ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH!

  He felt the Bug skitter beneath him as a bolt skimmed its underside, carving a molten metal furrow.

  “WHERE ARE YOU, KID?!” shouted Kelly.

  Finn looked down at his screen. The second big blip was almost upon him as he took a hard right to evade a six-pack of bots.

  “HERE!” he called hopelessly. Then heard –

  D­U­D­R­T­T­D­U­D­R­T­T­D­U­D­R­T­T­D­U­D­R­T­T­D­U­D­R­T­T D­U­D­R­T­T­D­U­D­R­T­T!

  Radar-guided tracer rounds exploded from a nano-44mm cannon somewhere above and behind him, hammering into the pack of bots on his tail, creating bot-shattering, chaotic hell.

  Suddenly the Skimmer was there. Right alongside the Bug, sleek and armed and dangerous, and containing a sight for sore eyes – Stubbs in goggles like a World War One fighter ace and Kelly, teeth gritted in the midst of action. His brothers in arms.

  Finn felt unbounded joy, but in the same wonderful moment he smelt … fuel.

  He looked back. A fine spray was escaping the Skimmer.

  “You’re hit! You’re losing fuel!” Finn yelled.

  Kelly looked back at the spray and cursed.

  ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH!

  Rail-gun shots ripped and tipped the air, a school of bots heading straight at them. The Skimmer and the Bug almost clashed before swinging apart, one up, one down – Finn almost clipping a factory rooftop as he pulled out of his dive.

  As Finn rose again, he spotted Kelly unleashing an arsenal of air-to-air rockets – ZZZOOOOOOTT ZZZOOOOOOTT ZZZOOOOOOT! – that sped from the Skimmer in separate directions, creating blast-clouds of exploded bots.

  “Let’s get out of here!” called Kelly to Finn as he came alongside in the momentary respite. “Run for home!”

  They wheeled around towards Shanghai, but they were miles away and the Skimmer was still issuing a fine spray.