by Joe Craig
Jimmy felt Dr Longville’s fear. The man had no way of knowing that Jimmy lived every day with first-hand experience of exactly how good NJ7 were. There was never a break. No relief. They were in Jimmy’s thoughts every second. Every moment of his life he was running from their weapons.
“This could bring them down,” Jimmy whispered, his voice hoarse.
“If there’s anything to find, I’ll find it.” Dr Longville powered up the laptop, which now had six separate cables running between it and the backs of the two hard drives from Chisley Hall.
Jimmy and Felix instinctively moved closer to look at the screen over Dr Longville’s shoulders. The Inspector’s hands floated over the laptop keyboard. His fingers were as long and bony as his nose. They danced across the keys like snow-covered twigs shaking in the wind.
Jimmy watched the screen intently. The software felt unfamiliar to him but as each new grid or number chain flashed up he could feel the shadows of his mind sucking up the figures, manipulating them like children’s toys. The pace was relentless. More and more numbers flew through his brain, crashing against the insides of his skull. Enough, he screamed to himself. He forced himself to close his eyes and staggered back to sit on one of the benches. His head was suddenly searing with pain and he thought another nosebleed might be coming on.
“You OK?” Felix asked. Jimmy nodded, but couldn’t make eye contact.
“I’m past the encryption,” Dr Longville announced without any triumph.
“That was quick,” said Felix.
The doctor smiled. “I wrote the codes.”
“So what have you found?”
“This might take a few minutes.” Dr Longville hit the return key with a flourish and leaned back to button his shirt. “It has to search both hard drives in their entirety and compare them to the outline back-up systems that I have on my laptop. That will tell us whether they’re operating correctly, but then my laptop will compare the two sets of data on the hard drives to each other. That will tell us whether the numbers of votes tally.”
“Then we’ll know.” Jimmy could feel himself growing more and more agitated. His programming was telling him to move. It went against every one of his assassin instincts to stay trapped in this small room for any length of time without being able to see whether anybody was coming up the corridor, or even entering the hotel. He wiped his face and ordered himself to calm down. Saffron was watching the front of the hotel. If anything was wrong she would deal with it. Meanwhile, the three computers whirred and clicked, the search continuing.
Longville impatiently drummed his fingers on the black box of the larger hard drive. “I’ve been waiting for the chance to bring them down,” he whispered, half to himself. “I couldn’t stand them parading me across the media just to show the world how fair their election was. I knew they weren’t playing fair.” He leaned his face so close to the laptop that Jimmy could see the coloured flashes of the search reflecting off his skin.
At last, the laptop emitted a high-pitched ‘ping’. Felix and Jimmy rushed forward, but all they could see on the screen was a black graph with green bars of different sizes. Longville’s eyes darted all over the data.
“What does it mean?” Felix asked, gripping his hair in his fists.
“It means…” Longville rocked backwards. He stared at the laptop, his cheeks quivering as if they were directly connected to the computers in front of him. “It means that you’re right….”
Felix let out a yelp of triumph and punched the air.
“But you’re also wrong.” Longville’s voice was shaking.
Jimmy felt like his head had been knocked sideways.
“What?” he said. “That makes no sense.”
“You’re right, but you’re wrong,” Longville repeated, holding his head in his hands.
“We’re right, but we’re wrong?” Jimmy looked at Felix, who stared back, blankly.
“What are you trying to say?” Felix demanded.
“It means you’re right,” Dr Longville exclaimed suddenly. “Somebody did try to rig the election. But they tried to fix it the other way.”
There was silence. Jimmy and Felix looked at each other, then at Dr Longville.
“Wait,” said Felix, “I don’t understand. What do you mean, the other way?”
“I mean that whoever tried to fix the result of the election,” explained Dr Newton Longville, “was trying to fix it so that the winner would be Christopher Viggo.”
“But he lost!” Felix cried. “How could someone have fixed the election for Chris if he lost? Jimmy?” He turned to his friend and spun the laptop to face him. “It’s a mistake, isn’t it?”
Jimmy could hardly think for all the horror and confusion swirling around in his head. Felix’s face had faded into even more of a fuzzy mess than usual and the laptop screen was a brightly coloured blur.
“I don’t…” he began. “I can’t…” He didn’t finish his sentence. He wanted to say that he was as much in the dark as Felix. For all he knew Dr Longville could be making a mistake – or even lying. But Jimmy felt something more in the back of his mind, forcing its way to the front. He looked from Felix’s wide eyes back to the laptop, and suddenly the colours seemed even brighter, the shapes more distinct. Each digit carried new meaning, the connections obvious.
“It’s true,” Jimmy croaked. His head was clearing, but at the same time, despair crept up in his throat. “I can understand all this.” He waved his hand at the laptop. “Sort of. I think. It’s my…” He rubbed his eyes with his palms. “The numbers aren’t right. They’re different on each hard drive.” He looked again at the screen. “And there’s a new string of programming in the hard drive from the main computer that isn’t in the laptop’s outline of what the system should be.”
“That’s right,” Dr Longville gasped. “How can you…?”
“The new code is simple,” Jimmy continued, ignoring the UN Inspector. “It changes the numbers as they come in from the voting kiosk. It’s an instruction to duplicate votes for any candidate representing a party whose leader has a name that comes in the second half of the alphabet.” Jimmy dropped his head into his hands.
“But ‘Chris’ begins with…” Felix stopped himself. “Oh. Viggo. I get it.” He slumped against the lockers.
“The only serious candidates,” explained Dr Longville, “were representing Ian Coates or Christopher Viggo. Two choices. Different halves of the alphabet. And the system was hacked to give one of them an advantage.”
Jimmy couldn’t hold his anger in any more. When he heard his father’s name he felt like he was back in the sauna, his skin simmering with the heat. He jumped up and landed a kick against the bottom row of lockers.
“Coates!” he grunted as the wood split. “Viggo!” He slammed his other foot through the door of the next locker. “Coates! Viggo! Coates! Viggo!” With alternate feet he reduced a whole row of lockers to splinters.
“Jimmy!” Felix yelled to bring his friend back. Jimmy froze, breathing hard, and realised his nose was bleeding again. He wiped it with the back of his sleeve. Just then, the door of the locker room burst open.
“There’s a woman here,” said the guard posted outside. “She says—”
“We have to go.” It was Saffron. She forced her way past the guard. “Now.” Her eyes caught the chaos that Jimmy had made of the lockers. “What happened?”
“I lost my locker key,” said Felix. He leapt to his feet, thrust the laptop into Dr Longville’s hands and grabbed the two black boxes from Chisley Hall. “Let’s go!” He swept to the door, bringing Jimmy and Longville with him.
Jimmy moved automatically, almost in a trance. He felt calmer now, but everything seemed edged with blackness.
“What’s happening?” he asked, his voice low and stern. They filed out of the locker room and ran up the corridor, the security guards at the front and rear of the column.
“I got a call from Jimmy’s mum,” Saffron explained, jogging just ahead of
Jimmy and Felix, half-turning to talk over her shoulder. “From where she and Georgie are posted, they can see the traffic heading for this hotel in both directions.”
“They’re coming?” Jimmy said. He was so certain that it hardly sounded like a question.
“But only from one direction,” Saffron confirmed. “We’ve got a chance if we leave now. Before air support arrives to cover the other exit route.”
“NJ7?” gasped Dr Longville. “Already?” He was second in line, just behind his own guard, but now he stumbled and looked back.
“Come on,” Saffron insisted, catching the old man and pushing past him to keep up the pace. They charged through the hotel, heading for the lobby.
“You knew this would happen,” Jimmy called out to Dr Longville, who was just ahead of him now. “You warned us.”
“But that was before we found out…” Longville panted.
“What did you find out?” Saffron asked over her shoulder. Jimmy and Felix exchanged a glance. Before they could say anything, Dr Longville stopped, reached past Jimmy and snatched the larger computer hard drive from Felix. Immediately he started clawing at the screws that held the casing together.
“Give me a screwdriver!” he ordered the guard who’s been leading the way. The huge lump of a man was swinging Longville’s laptop case as he ran. He’d continued a short way up the corridor, either not realising the others behind him had stopped, or not wanting to wait for them. He turned back now and reached into the laptop case. Instead of producing a screwdriver, he pulled out a gun.
“What are you doing?” Longville gasped. The other two guards reached for their weapons, but found their holsters empty. In shock, they stared at their colleague, whose face expanded into a wide smile, a dozen rounded, yellow teeth clearly visible. He advanced cautiously, sweeping the barrel of the gun from side to side to keep all of them in his sights.
“If you’re armed…” he began, addressing Saffron. The guard was edging closer all the time, but Jimmy and the others were backing away.
“Stay put!” ordered the guard. His voice was as solid as his shoulders, with a thick South London accent. I took him down outside the steam room, Jimmy thought. Twice is easy.
“He can’t shoot,” Jimmy announced, ice-cool in his tone. “If he does, he might have time to hit one of us, but it’ll give the rest of us the chance to get away – or fight back.”
The guard didn’t react, but kept approaching, one step at a time. He slid his back against the wall of the corridor, trying to get a better angle so he could cover all of his targets at once.
“Jimmy,” whispered Dr Longville, still twisting frantically at the screws of the hard-drive casing. “That’s your name, right?” Jimmy nodded, flicking his eyes between Longville and the barrel of the guard’s revolver.
“This has to be destroyed,” Longville went on. His fingers were raw from the metal. Blood spread over the screws, but he kept on trying to loosen them. It wasn’t working. Jimmy’s programming was keeping his attention fixed on the immediate danger – the gun. But his senses were pricked by Longville’s desperation. What did he want?
“Viggo is the only opposition this Government has,” Dr Longville explained, his voice quaking. “If the evidence on this gets out, he’s finished. NJ7 mustn’t get it. Nobody must ever see it. I never saw it! Do you understand? Help me destroy this!”
“But…” Jimmy wanted to protest, but he instantly knew the old man was right. Whatever Viggo had done wrong to lead to this situation, whatever he was involved with – all that was still a mystery that Jimmy had to uncover. But he had to uncover it himself, and not allow NJ7 any chance to prove that Chris had cheated.
“Give me that box,” grunted the guard, taking an extra step closer. “And the other one.” He pointed at Felix.
“You want this?” said Felix, waving the smaller hard drive. He held it out, then immediately pulled it back. “Oh, sorry, just a twitch in my shoulder. Try again.” Once more, he slowly extended his arm, but the guard knew he couldn’t grab it without losing his position on the others.
While Felix was infuriating the guard, Longville slowly leaned down to whisper straight into Jimmy’s ear. “I don’t know who you are,” he said, “but if you can break into Chisley Hall, you can obviously do amazing things.” He thrust the larger box into Jimmy’s arms. “Destroy this. Then keep fighting. Fight until Britain is free.”
Suddenly he twisted his wiry limbs and leaped towards the guard, a bloodcurdling scream exploding from his lips. The crack of the gun exploded up and down the corridor. Dr Longville crumpled in two and staggered forward, reaching out for the guard’s gun. At the same moment, Saffron launched her own attack. Longville tried to fill the space in the corridor to shield the others, but the guard ducked to one side and aimed through the space under Longville’s lurching body.
Saffron darted forward to strike, but the guard had a clear shot. Jimmy felt his muscles firing up like the engine of a fighter jet. In a split second, his brain buzzed with a million calculations – the angle of the guard’s body, the calibre of the gun, the trajectory of the bullet. Before he was aware of his own movement, he realised he was diving for Saffron. He bulldozed her out of the way. The guard’s bullet tore towards the centre of Jimmy’s chest. The hard drive made the perfect shield.
The bullet struck the metal casing. Jimmy felt the black box rattle against his ribs, but the bullet didn’t penetrate. He tumbled to the floor on top of Saffron. He got up straight away, ready to fight. All he could hear was the blood in his ears and the rapid breath in his throat. It took a second before he realised the guard was face down on the carpet. Longville’s body was slumped over him like a snake across a mole hill. The doctor was wheezing for breath, blood frothing through the wound in his chest. Meanwhile, the guard’s neck was oozing a black pool into the carpet, a liquid shadow that spread around him like the soul escaping his body.
“What…?” Felix choked, barely able to speak.
“The bullet,” Jimmy gasped, still unable to even hear his own voice. “It…” He held up the hard drive. There was a huge dent in the casing, but no hole and no bullet. It had ricocheted back in the direction it had come from. And at such short range, it still had enough power to lodge in the neck of the man who’d shot it. Jimmy stared down at the two bodies that formed an ‘X’ across the corridor. I didn’t want this, thought Jimmy. I didn’t mean for this… But how could he have stopped it? Everything had happened too quickly.
He clasped his skull as if he could wrench the horror from his brain. Saffron pulled him towards her and forced him to turn away.
“We have to go,” she commanded. The two other guards pushed their way to the bodies. One of them grabbed the gun from their attacker’s hand while the other rolled Dr Newton Longville on to his back. Jimmy didn’t need to look. He already knew it was too late. Both men were dead.
Jimmy lifted the dented black box above his head, then hurled it crashing to the carpet. The impact did little to damage the hard drive, but Jimmy’s fists pounded down on it. Then he took the smaller hard drive from Felix and knelt down, crunching the metal of both boxes like it was nothing but mashed potato. In no time he’d ruptured the casing. He tore out the guts of the two computers, ripped every wire and snapped every circuit board.
“Jimmy!” Saffron shouted. “Jimmy, that’s enough!”
All Jimmy could see was fury. He slumped forward on the carpet, one hand squelching in the expanding black circle of the guard’s blood. He closed his eyes, half wishing the blackness would wrap him up entirely and take him away forever.
“Come on,” said Felix, grabbing Jimmy by the shoulder. There was a quiver in his voice, but his grip was firm. “We have to get out of here.”
Together they pelted to the hotel lobby. Out of here, thought Jimmy, over and over. Out of the hotel, out of danger… But now escaping from NJ7 didn’t seem enough any more. Because as Jimmy’s feet hammered into the marble floor of the lobby, the truth bega
n to sink in: every vote for Viggo had been doubled. But he’d still lost the election. That meant he’d lost by a huge margin. Almost everybody in the country must have voted for Ian Coates. The madness is everywhere, Jimmy thought. He heard his own desperate plea: out of here… out of London… out of Britain! The more he yearned for relief, the more his pain grew, and then he realised why: how could he ever escape his own mind?
They hurtled through the lobby and on to the forecourt. The motor of the Bentley was already growling. The driver’s door opened and out stepped Helen Coates.
“Go!” she shouted, pointing Saffron towards the wheel. “Get to the rendezvous! Get Chris! We’ll take care of them.”
“Who?” Felix asked. Helen grabbed him and sprinted with him across the forecourt to one of the limousines.
“Them,” she said, nodding up the street. Jimmy turned to see a fleet of long black cars racing towards them, spread out across the whole width of the road. “Go with Saffron!” Helen called to Jimmy. She flashed him a huge smile. It felt like the warmest relief he’d ever had. “You make a good team!”
“But, Mum…” Jimmy cried out. He wanted to tell her everything that had happened: the explosion at Chisley Hall, the data they’d found on the computer, the fight, the bullets… the blood. He felt tears sting the backs of his eyes and his throat went dry. He wanted to pour everything out, but before another breath could reach his lungs, Saffron grabbed him and guided him into the back of the Bentley. They blasted off, and Jimmy pressed his face to the window in time to see his mum giving instructions to the two bemused security guards. They hurried to the second limo, while Helen Coates took off in the first with Felix and Georgie in the back.
NJ7 had obviously cut off the traffic, so with no other cars in the way, there was nothing to hold Saffron back. She thrust the Bentley forward so hard that Jimmy was thrown back in his seat. Finally the full power of the machine was unleashed. It streaked across the tarmac like a comet across the night sky. Jimmy twisted and watched out the back of the car.
