by Oisin McGann
“It wasn’t Sol!” Cleo hissed. “It could have been anybody! He would never—”
The engineer held up his hand to silence her. Somebody was on the other side of the bookcase. On the screen, they could see the cops examining the shelves, but there was no sign that they were looking for the door. Clumsy hands rifled through the books. The door could not be opened from the outside once it had been locked from the inside, but Cleo still watched with dread for the first crack of light from the doorway.
Eventually, the noise of the search passed. They waited another two hours after the last sound, and then carefully emerged from their hideout. The whole building was empty of people.
“They’ve taken everyone in for questioning,” Smith said finally. “We’re not safe here anymore, but there’s a chance they could be watching the exits.”
“So what do we do?” Cleo asked.
“I don’t know. We’re in a bit of a pickle here.”
“It wasn’t Sol—”
“I know. If it was, they’d have known about the safe room. A daylighter maybe—it doesn’t matter. We can’t trust anybody now.”
Cleo sank to the floor, putting her face in her hands. “Jesus, is this ever going to end?”
The door to the staircase burst open, and Sol staggered in, supporting Maslow. The Clockworker collapsed to the floor, barely conscious, blood soaking through his trousers and jacket around his hip. Sol dropped onto his hands and knees, exhausted. He slid a heavy burlap roll off his shoulder and looked up at Smith and Cleo.
“What’s new?” he asked.
“The police raided the place,” Cleo replied. “We have to get out of here. And they might still be watching the building.”
“Don’t think there’s anybody downstairs.” Sol heaved in big breaths. “But I’m not going down those freakin’ steps again until I’ve had a rest.”
While Sol and Maslow rested, they all talked. An idea had been forming in Cleo’s head, one she had tried to discuss with Sol before he took off. To her surprise, he asked her what she had been trying to tell him, and discovered he had been thinking along the same lines. Like her, he could see there was no future in running. But before they could put their plan into action, they had to get out of this building in case the police came back.
“This is as far as I go,” Maslow said to them in a strained voice. “You need to go; you’ve got what you need from me. Get on with the job.” He paused to draw a shuddering breath. “If you start thinking too much, you might chicken out…and the longer you’re hanging around, the more likely you are to get caught before you can get it done.”
“We’ll be fine,” Smith agreed, taking charge. “There isn’t much security—this kind of attack just hasn’t been anticipated. We’ll be done before the police even start rolling.”
“It’s not the police you need to worry about.” Maslow shook his head. “Not the normal ones, anyway. They’ll just arrest you. Schaeffer will want you rubbed out or taken and interrogated in private. Years ago, we put plans in place for assaulting the Hub, in case we needed to take control of the media…. Once the alarm is raised, the first move will be to seal it off—there aren’t many exits—and cut off all means of communication with the outside, including the police lines. My guys—the…the Clockworkers—will want to handle this their own way: quietly. You don’t want to get caught by them.”
“So we want the cops to get there, but not too early,” Cleo concluded.
“And the right cops,” Sol added. “Not the Clockwork ones.”
“Right.” Maslow winced, and tried to shift his hip to a more comfortable position. “After that…Well, I don’t know what’s goin’ to happen after that.”
They all crouched in a morose silence, daunted by the task ahead of them. Each secretly nursed some hope that everything would work itself out before they had to act. A stupid, naïve, and deluding wish that things would change for the better all on their own.
Maslow finally gasped in exasperation. “Get off your asses and get on with it!”
And so they did.
Inspector Mercier was completing a report on the shoot-out at the Third Quadrant Hospital. There were a lot of unanswered questions, not least the possible connection to the riot at the Schaeffer building. And the possible connection with Solomon Wheat. And the man who was running with him, who seemed to be nothing less than a rogue Clockworker. And then there was the tragedy of what had happened to Wheat’s teacher, Ana Kiroa.
His screen chimed, interrupting his thoughts. “Call for you, Inspector,” the police operator’s bored voice informed him.
“Thank you.”
The call was patched through; a girl’s face appeared on-screen.
“Inspector Mercier? My name’s Cleo Matsumura. I’m in Sol Wheat’s class?”
“Yes, I remember you, Miss Matsumura. What can I do for you?”
“Well”—she paused, looking somewhat embarrassed—
“I don’t feel right doing this, y’know, but—”
“Please, carry on.”
“Well, I know you’re looking for Sol, and I just got a call from him.” Her eyes wouldn’t look straight at the camera. Classic guilt complex. “And…and he asked me to bring him some money. Said he was really stuck.”
Mercier was half out of his seat, leaning toward the screen.
“And where did he say he was, Miss Matsumura?”
“He said he’d meet me under the big screen, outside the Communications Hub. Is he in a lot of trouble, Inspector?”
“Not anymore, dear.” Mercier was grabbing his coat.
“You told him you’d meet him, yes?”
“Well, yeah…. I’m on my way there now—I just stopped to make this call.”
“Good girl…good girl. There’ll be no need to show up; I’ll see he’s all right. Thank you very much. We’ll be in touch.”
He switched off the screen and strode out through the door, rushing past the desks of detectives.
“Baiev!” he shouted.
“Sir?” The big sergeant raised his head from his screen.
“With me.”
“Sir.”
As they hurried toward the car pool, Inspector Ponderosa emerged from the toilets ahead of them, only to be barged aside by Baiev.
“Watch where you’re going!” he snapped. “Where you off to in such a hurry, Mercier? You misfile a report or something?”
Mercier shot him a hostile glance but kept walking. Ponderosa gazed after them, chewing the inside of his lip. He watched them until they disappeared around the corner and then pulled out his radio.
Section 22/24: PROPAGANDA
DESPITE ITS NAME, the Communications Hub was located by the city wall in an area known as Silicon Village. It was a twelve-story tower with spiraling windows in blue and silver; its top half bristled with antennae and solar arrays. Its upper floors could be reached by walkways from the wall itself. All the media companies had their headquarters there, but the feed to all the webscreens was still controlled by the city council itself.
The area around the Hub was where most of the city’s technology was manufactured. When it came to providing the computers, screens, smartsuits, and scores of other technological devices essential for life in the city, there was real money to be made for high-tech suppliers, and it was reflected in the standard of the buildings of Silicon Village—and the security measures that protected them. Most of the buildings had dedicated guards, and cameras and bright lights lined the streets. With the dome completely covered by a new blanket of ice and snow, Silicon Village remained one of the brightest places in Ash Harbor.
The city’s main control center took up the top three floors of the Hub. Whenever Smith’s group of campaigners planted a virus in the system—the viruses that forced every public webscreen to display irritating questions about the way the city was run—the entire system could be shut down, scanned, and cleared by the men and women in the control center. None of these displays lasted more than
a minute and a half.
Cleo, Sol, and Smith had a slightly longer broadcast in mind. And to make sure the city got to hear the message, it was essential that nobody in the control center interrupted it.
Smith knew his way around the tower: he had worked there as an electrician in one of his many careers. They entered from the wall at the third-balcony level. This put them only three floors below the control center. It was just before six o’clock, still too early for most of the work crowd. The glass-walled reception on this floor was staffed by a single overweight female security guard, who also watched over the screens for all the cameras on this floor. There was no one else in sight. Sol and Smith were both carrying the larger guns beneath their jackets and bags on their backs. Cleo took the lead, walking straight up to the desk with a beatific smile on her face, her hand reaching for the palm-pad to log herself in.
“Hi,” she chirped. “We’re visiting the twelfth floor. Don’t get up.”
With one hand on the desk, she vaulted over, her feet catching the security guard full in the chest, knocking her backward out of her chair. By the time the guard was on her feet, she found herself looking down the barrels of a shotgun and a submachine gun while Cleo sprayed industrial glue over the alarm button under the desk.
They tied up the woman and gagged her, depositing her in a nearby janitor’s cupboard. She would be discovered before long, but they needed only a few minutes’ head start.
The guard’s key-chip gave them access to the secure elevator and allowed them to open the doors on any floor they wanted. They punched the button for the twelfth. Sol and Smith tucked their guns back under their jackets.
The elevator reached the top floor and chimed cheerfully. They stepped out past two middle-aged men who were waiting to descend, and Smith led his young accomplices to the anteroom that opened into the open-plan office area, with its digitally printed, clay brick walls. Beyond that, they could see the double doors to the control room. This door was made from the same denceramic as the walls, and it was kept locked. Their newly acquired key-chip could not open this door. It was so early, and yet there were already four people at their desks. They looked up at the visitors. New faces were a curiosity here. Smith, Sol, and Cleo sat down on couches in the anteroom as if they were waiting for somebody.
At six o’clock, two men in their thirties, dressed in casual clothes, came out of the elevator and strolled through the anteroom toward the control-room door. This was the shift change, here to take over from those on night duty. As they reached the door, the three intruders rose to their feet and walked nonchalantly into the office area. One of the men at the door turned and raised his eyebrows expectantly as they approached. The door was already reading their key-chips, and the lock clicked open.
“Can we help you?” he asked as his partner stepped into the control room.
Sol pulled the shotgun from his jacket and fired a shot into the floor at the man’s feet, charging forward as he did so. The gunshot caused the man to stagger back, and he fell, blocking his partner from closing the door. Sol ran right over him, slamming his fist into the second man’s sternum, knocking the wind out of him, and then crashing through the door. Inside, another man and a woman were looking up from the instrument panels in shock. Sol fired another shot into the ceiling over their heads, making them jump, and then leveled his weapon at them, trying to hide the tremble in his hands.
“Don’t even freakin’ move!” he roared, his voice shrill with tension.
Go in hard and loud, Maslow had told them. Go for maximum shock. Sound like you’re out of your mind, he’d said. That bit would be easy, at least.
Cleo was in the door, holding it open, a powerful revolver in one hand while Smith kicked and shoved the two day controllers back outside. Once they were out, Cleo slammed the door, letting the lock click back into place. Smith slung the bag off his back and took out a tube of denceramic resin. He squirted some all the way around the edges of the door; within two minutes, it would be sealed tight. It would take an industrial laser to open it. With Cleo keeping her gun on the controllers, Sol crossed the windowless room to the only other way out: the double doors out to the roof, where all the antennae were mounted. He opened it and peered out. If anybody was going to force their way in, it would most likely be through here.
A winding ramp balcony led from the door to the roof above. Keeping below the lip of the balcony, he scurried up the curve of the ramp until he could see both the door of the control room and the floor of the roof. Most of the control room’s transmissions went out over the antennae array. If it was attacked, the broadcast could be stopped. It was his job to protect it for as long as he could.
He hunkered down, pulled his bag off his shoulder, and unzipped it. It was still dark, with a weak glow filtering through from the snow-covered dome. He took a set of goggles from the bag and put them on, pressing a switch on the side. They powered up, and he could see the world clearly, the light enhanced by the goggles’ low-light scope. They were Maslow’s; the Clockworkers would have the same gear. It was cold up here; he could see his breath steam in the chilly air. He pulled up his hood, leaned back into the shadow of a solar panel, and waited.
Smith walked up to the two controllers. He held out a data chip.
“Put this in; download it to every screen,” he told them.
“Loop it and let it run. Don’t try and fake it; I know the system. Don’t reach for any alarms. We don’t need you alive.”
Cleo cocked the hammer on her pistol to punctuate the threat. She fervently hoped they would do as they were told; there was no way she would be able to shoot anybody. But the controller obeyed; faced with crazy people with guns, he was less concerned with calling their bluff and more worried about holding on to the contents of his bladder. He slotted the data chip into the panel in front of him and touched some buttons.
The woman was more defiant. She tried to outstare Cleo. “Anything you do, we’ll undo later. You know that?” she said sourly.
Cleo smirked. “Then you’re going to have your hands full.”
Throughout the city, people were setting out for work, their movement pumping power into the Machine. The full day shift of trams began their clockwise and anticlockwise routes around the streets, their weight and the weight of the crowds on the daily commute pushing down on pumps, pistons, and shock absorbers, turning flywheels that spun generators that converted the kinetic energy to electricity. Transformers in substations transferred the various power feeds into the central circuit that powered the Heart Engine. And the Heart Engine, its generators suspended in friction-free electromagnetic fields, fed all that power back out to the city’s most vital industries: water supplies, food processing, sewage treatment, and ventilation. The Machine drew on this power, awakening to the new day.
All through the city, webscreens started to flicker. And then they went white. A whining buzz announced the speakers were being turned right up, something that only happened for emergency announcements. Everywhere, people conditioned to soak up whatever information the media threw at them turned to watch the screens. A man’s face appeared, his once-dark skin pale from some unspecified pain and from a life spent beyond the dome’s daylight. His face was lined and his eyes hard—he had the look of a weakened and weary predator.
“My name is Sergeant Elijah Osman Maslow, of the Fifth Unit of the Covert Operations Group—a group most of you know as the Clockworkers. On the orders of my commanders, I have murdered fifty-six people, and have killed many more in acts of sabotage designed to look like accidents. All of these operations were ordered by Vincent Schaeffer, of the Schaeffer Corporation, and by men and women like him. Their sole purpose was to maintain absolute control of the Machine, even if it meant risking the life of every person in it.”
While Maslow’s recording played, all the information that Smith had collected over the years on the accidents he had investigated was downloaded to individual hard drives across the city. But this was something for
later, to nurture the seeds of rage that were being planted as Maslow spoke.
As Maslow began to relate the details of operations he had carried out, more and more people stopped to listen. They stopped walking, stopped climbing stairs, using elevators and escalators; they stopped moving. The drivers of the trams rolled to a halt near the huge adscreens to hear what was being said. People in the pedal stations stopped cycling; those in the foot stations stopped pumping on the stair-climbers. Standing motionless in the dark streets and half-lit buildings, the city’s inhabitants ceased feeding power to the Heart Engine.
Sol, who could not see the control room’s monitors, watched the city instead. He had never seen it so still. A noise reached his ears over the quiet murmur from below. A mechanical whirring creaking sound. He looked up to see one of the gantry cranes sliding along the grid of stout girders that hung beneath the dome. He shouted a warning to Cleo and Smith. The Clockworkers were coming.
“Look at them,” Smith said softly, staring at the monitors, which showed various streets in the city center.
“They’re finally listening. We’ve woken them up.”
Sol kept himself hidden beneath the solar panel. A rope dropped from the crane as it glided overhead. First one, followed by a second, then a third man started to slide down the rope. They were all wearing body armor. He took aim with the shotgun. His hands were shaking even worse now. Once he started shooting, they would zero in on him. Maslow had said to expect snipers in the cranes.
“This is it,” Smith was saying. “We’re finally going to turn this thing around.”
Sol steadied the gun, sighted on the first man as he descended toward the roof. He was only ten meters away, silhouetted against the dome. Sol pulled the trigger.
His shot caught the man in the hip, taking a chunk out of the Clockworker’s harness, knocking the rope loose. But the man managed to hold on with his hands and feet. Even as the report from the gunshot was fading from Sol’s ears, bullets started to impact around him. He kept his nerve, aimed and fired at the second man on the rope. The blast caught his target square in the chest. His armor saved him, but his hands released their grip on the rope and he crashed onto the man below him. They both plummeted to the roof and landed with a double crunch. Sol fired two more shots up at the crane itself, to try to deter the sniper, and then made a run for the control-room door.
