Spiral

by Andy Remic

  And now?

  Now she was in the firing line.

  Jessica Rade shivered again, and started to weep into her hands.

  It was nearing dawn.

  Feuchter stood in the sand next to one of the huge desert-camouflaged trucks, smoking a Vegas Robaina cigar and enjoying the experience immensely.

  A gentle breeze stirred, and sand blew over his shoes.

  He watched idly as more Nex appeared, carrying and dragging bodies that they flung into the rear of the trucks. Some of the huge vehicles had already left, several driving up ramps into the CH-47s, which had lifted, creating screaming sandstorms, and carried the evidence away. A couple of decoy trucks had set off across the desert to a designated rendezvous.

  The comm buzzed.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You nearly done? You got everything of worth out of the place?’

  ‘All technical items and QIII-related machinery have been shipped to the mobile division. Just got the HighJ to plant - I’ll set the Nex on it right away.’ Tombstone teeth smiled in the gloom of the fluorescent lights.

  ‘Good. We don’t want to leave Spiral with anything to allow replication of our wondrous baby, eh, Feuchter? I assume you’re bringing the bodies with you ... we are running low on subjects to, ahh, experiment with. My nanobiologists are getting touchy.’ There was a long pause. ‘Are there any problems?’

  ‘One employee is missing; if the Nex don’t find her, the fucking explosion will.’

  ‘OK, Feuchter - make sure it finds her, yeah?’

  ‘I think the Saudi government might be pissed off when we blow this place. It was considered a great compliment when Spiral chose to build such an innovative technology and development centre here.’

  ‘Fuck them.’

  ‘Have you had any word on Carter?’

  ‘Yes. By all accounts, you were right, he has taken the High Road to Rub al’Khali. He’s definitely on our tail, although we have no idea of his exact location. Maybe he’s come to find you, Feuchter? Maybe he didn’t like you pulling that gun on him in Schwalenberg? Maybe he wants to find out why you didn’t die? That would make for in interesting conversation, don’t you think?’ There was twisted humour in Durell’s voice.

  ‘I thought you said you would take care of him?’

  ‘I’m working on it.’

  The comm cut. Feuchter spat out the cigar and stamped it into the sand. All of a sudden it didn’t taste so good. ‘You!’ he shouted to two Nex. They turned towards him, emotionless copper eyes glinting dull. ‘Go and fetch the black HighJ cases from the cab of truck 15G.’ The Nex moved off, silently, economically, and Feuchter looked nervously around, gaze tracing the contours of the and leading away from the Rub al’Khali HQ.

  Why are you worried? teased his paranoia. You are surrounded by armed Nex. Carter wouldn’t get near you. This was followed by laughter, deep hollow mocking laughter.

  The Nex returned with the leather cases. Feuchter snatched one and, followed by the Nex, headed for the building, stopping a guard by the entrance.

  ‘You find her yet?’

  ‘No, sir,’ came the soft smooth voice.

  ‘Well, fucking look!’ He failed to hide the tinge of panic that had crept into his tone. He breathed deeply. The cigar was making him - now - feel sick and he spat in the sand. ‘I thought you were supposed to be the fucking best?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Feuchter entered the cool depths of the building, heart hammering. Fuck you Carter, he thought.

  Fuck you.

  Jessica Rade squatted in the air-con tunnel, a bundle of wires dangling above her, a tiny monitor in her hands. The tears had gone; her brain was working hard now.

  She knew Spiral_Q’s surveillance systems like the back of her hand; after all, she had helped program them. And, like all hackers, she had built in her own little fail-safes - polymorphic code that had escaped the searches of fellow programmers and allowed her access to ... everything.

  On the monitor, she looked out over the trucks and Chinooks. She saw Feuchter throw down his cigar and snatch up a black case. She watched with bleary, red-rimmed eyes as he disappeared back inside the building. The tension was eating her. The tension in her heart, in her chest, in her soul: it was consuming her. And she knew: knew that she was waiting to die and there was no way on Earth she would be able to escape them - after all, where would she go? What would she do?

  She was in the middle of the fucking desert.

  More tears came, flowing down her cheeks, and Jessica despised herself for being weak, and her self-loathing turned to pity and she wrapped her fingers in her hair and cried and cried and everything was suddenly mad, everything was suddenly insane and how had this happened? Why had this happened to her?

  Her tears stopped. Quietly, she blew her nose on her pyjama sleeve.

  How long did she have?

  It would take them hours to search all the vents and shafts. After all, the Spiral_Q building was huge. And, looking on the bright side, many of the Nex had already left, some driving the trucks away over the desert, some being lifted in the Chinooks as she watched on the monitor.

  Maybe they would give up the search?

  No, said a small, dark corner of her heart.

  They will never give up.

  They will hunt you until you are extinct...

  Jessica licked at her lips. She had to turn things around. She was a victim; the Nex - Feuchter - Spiral_Q: they were the predators. The hunters. She had to change this scenario; she had to turn her enemies into the victims. But how?

  How?

  And then it dawned in her mind, like a new sun rising.

  Jessica turned. Started to crawl carefully down the shaft.

  She suddenly had a mission.

  She had purpose.

  She needed something to barter with.

  And, if she had copied the QIII schematics once before, she could surely do it again.

  Feuchter moved quickly, economically, his hands experienced with the tiny packages he placed at strategic locations around the building. He moved with care, alert, the several guns he carried a reassurance against the likes of Jessica Rade—

  Where has that little bitch got to? he mused.

  Never mind. Eighteen cubes of HighJ explosive up her backside, soon make her wish she’d left in the back of a truck. A bullet in the skull was an easy way to die; burning, on the other hand, was much more unpleasant...

  Feuchter knelt in the corridor and glanced at the plan in his gloved hands: the complex had been divided between himself and three Nex. He placed a small black box beside the door to what had been Johansen’s office. He stood, checked left and right, then moved to the next location, the leather case in his hand feeling lighter and lighter the more he travelled.

  Finally, Feuchter found himself in the main programming rooms. The power had been cut and all defences were down. The QIII mainframes and sub-mainframes and daughter systems were silent, cold, dead.

  Feuchter sighed.

  The thought of Carter niggled him.

  Let’s blow this fucking place and get the hell out of here, he thought.

  Moving to the core console, Feuchter flicked a few switches. A small shaft opened in a wide alloy unit; there were no markings to show the resting place of the QIII. The processor slid free, was presented to him - a small black cube, dark, dull, completely and totally unimpressive. He lifted the cube gently, noting how it made his skin tingle with its cold heavy weight. He placed it within the folds of his coat.

  Then, moving across the chamber, Feuchter knelt by the mainframe and affixed the final HighJ cube. It locked into place and blinked green at him. He pulled the monitor from the bottom of the case, which he allowed to fall. He punched a series of digits into the monitor; the tiny LED on the High J turned from green to red. It started to blink with more speed; more urgency.

  ‘We all in place?’

  ‘All complete, sir.’

  He punched in the acknowledg
ement for J_linking.

  Across the Spiral_Q complex the HighJ devices blinked in perfect synchronisation.

  Feuchter nodded, placing the monitor into the pocket of his long leather coat and turning his back on the QIII lab, turning his back on the place he had worked and lived and called home for six years.

  You will have a new home, said a dry side of his soul.

  Soon, you will have a new world.

  He met the two Nex outside. Only one truck remained, and one Chinook that would be used as his final transport. All the other Chinooks had gone, and he looked around nervously; his own Land Rover was waiting to mount into the belly of the beast, its panels scarred with dust and sand, the blacked windows gleaming eerily in the weak grey pre-dawn gloom.

  Soon, though—

  Soon the sun would rise.

  And with it, the Spiral_Q building.

  ‘You find her?’

  ‘No. We think she is in the ventilation shafts. Shall we go and search again?’

  ‘Two of you go - have another look. But we don’t have much time left. If you can’t find her, we’ll have to let her fry.’

  Feuchter swore, rubbing at his lips. His gaze scanned the horizon and he calmed himself, calmed his heart. The bitch was holding him up; he should have been long gone, sipping a fine claret as the Chinook powered him on cooling air currents to Spiral_mobile.

  But no. One little fucking lady was keeping him in the danger zone.

  The Nex disappeared back inside the building.

  The final truck fired up its engine and rumbled away in clouds of sand dust up the road leading to the gates of the Spiral_Q complex. Feuchter watched as it crested the rise and then disappeared. He went to light a cigar, then looked back over his shoulder nervously as he realised that he was alone.

  He climbed into the Land Rover and nodded to the Nex driver.

  ‘We’ll be moving soon. Within -’ he checked his watch ‘—about the next ten minutes, unless they find the bitch sooner.’

  The driver nodded, copper eyes meeting Feuchter’s and then turning to stare straight ahead.

  CHAPTER 18

  SNIPER

  The pain filled Carter and was everything. The ice needle drilled straight through the centre of his skull. It wormed, twisting this way and that, moving, piercing, teasing, taunting. Beads of red light danced across the void of blackness that was his brain; the black and red pained him, made the piercing agony in his head spin and waver and he wanted to scream. Endlessly, eternally, seconds running into minutes, minutes running into hours, hours into days into weeks into years into centuries into millennia and Carter took sanctuary, suddenly found the doorway and fled his pain to the cool calm wasteland that was the mountain plateau.

  Carter stared through dim corridors of awareness. He saw Kade, nothing more than a shadow in the gloom of this dark place. A hand stretched out towards him, a hand that he knew and recognised - for it was his own.

  The pain drilled him, it smashed him against the rocks of insanity, it battered him against a hot anvil of madness.

  Carter took a deep breath. He licked desert-parched lips. His stare lifted to meet the dark bottomless gaze of Kade. And then, slowly, as if against his own volition, his hand lifted.

  Their hands met.

  Kade’s flesh was corpse-cool.

  Kade’s fingers tightened.

  ‘Thank you,’ Kade said softly. ‘You will not regret this.’

  Carter’s eyes opened - to gaze up into Natasha’s worried face. He smiled weakly at her as the sun broke over the horizon, rays filtering like strands of liquid honey across the Rub al’Khali desert.

  ‘I love you,’ he said softly, easing himself into a sitting position and checking in his boots for scorpions.

  Natasha took him, hugged him tight and rested her head against his chest. ‘I love you too, Carter,’ she whispered.

  Carter looked down at the top of her head; stared at the short dark hair, the finely shaped skull, the delicate hands pressed against him. And he could not understand why he felt so cheap; so lame; so bad: as if he had sold his soul to the devil.

  They had been cruising on the BMW desert racer all day, heavy tyres thumping over the rough tracks and twisting winding trails like the hardiest of specialised off-roaders. They passed dried river beds and vistas of drifting sand, journeyed through rocky hills and across an empty barren wilderness.

  Carter’s gaze, behind his sand-rimmed goggles, fixed on the horizon ahead; they were approaching the first of the locations indicated by Langan as possibly the Spiral_Q complex and so he slowed his speed, the thumping noise of the engines dying to a barely heard mutter.

  Carter was rubbing thoughtfully at his stubble.

  ‘What I also want to know is where the fuck do those bastard Nex come into this game? Where were they trained? What nationality are they? And how do they know so much about Spiral?’

  Natasha shrugged. ‘They are killers, that’s for sure. And Spiral knows more about them than it is telling.’

  ‘There’s something about them that is seriously fucked-up.’

  Natasha nodded, running her hands through her sweat-drenched hair. ‘Maybe they were all part of the plan; maybe the Nex - and whoever controls them - were trying to give you that little extra kick. To get you to lead them to my father?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Carter bitterly. Then he saw the tears in her eyes. He reached over and took her hand, then stroked a tear from her cheek. ‘He may still be alive, you know. Nothing is for certain.’

  ‘I think we both don’t believe that.’

  Carter nodded. ‘Come on, Nats,’ he said as gently as he could. ‘You have to focus now. We’ve reached one of the possibilities given to us by Langan. I need you on task.’

  ‘I wish we could have checked these locations from the air,’ she sighed, glancing out across the seemingly endless desert wilderness that stretched before them.

  ‘Would have been fucking quicker,’ grumbled Carter, kicking the BMW into gear and wheelspinning the big bike away up the track.

  The world opened up over the rocky ridge to reveal—

  Desert.

  ‘Nothing,’ spat Carter dryly.

  ‘Come on, we’re not far from the next one.’

  ‘Yeah, just a few kilometers,’ said Carter bitterly.

  ‘It’s down there.’

  Night had long ago fallen across the desert and they had been travelling at this cooler period to avoid heat -and bike - exhaustion. They had stopped once to check the fuel tanks, but the BMW was a desert racer and had massive reserves, extra fuel stores hidden in the frame and within every spare bit of space. It could travel for hundreds of miles without the need for an extra feed.

  There was no hint of breeze, just a still heat; but at least it was better than during the day. Carter ignored the tracts of sweat rolling down his body and concentrated on putting the rifle together. The scope clicked into place and Carter sighted down it experimentally, making a few minor adjustments to the setting dials.

  Natasha squinted through the gloom. Behind them, hidden below a ridge of rock, sat the BMW, engine clicking softly.

  ‘What can you see?’

  Carter was staring through the scope. The Barrett rifle was seated on a steadying bipod. Carter’s hands worked smoothly and efficiently, slotting bullets into the magazine. ‘Nothing much,’ he replied. ‘The building is huge, most of the complex apparently below ground. Very little activity for somewhere so large. I’m just checking for external guards now.’

  ‘You think it will be hard to infiltrate?’

  ‘I’m thinking that the QIII is rumoured to be the most powerful processor in the world; and we are sitting in no man’s land. It can’t be the most lightly fortified building in the history of the universe.’

  Carter slotted the mag into the weapon and returned to the telescopic sight. Natasha handed him the digital aim rectifier, which he checked carefully with the practised eye of a weapons professional. He slid it
into place and screwed home the retainers.

  ‘What are you hoping to see?’

  ‘In an ideal world, Feuchter. But I’m not that optimistic. I’ll settle for a few lame-ass guards; that will give us time and a window into the building. After that ... the hunt begins. We want answers to questions, like who or what are the Nex, and what the fuck is going on with Spiral.’

  There was silence, except for the occasional scuttling of some lizard through the dark sand. Carter scanned the building carefully, moving the scope backwards and forwards with extreme precision so that he would not miss anything; there was nothing he hated more than surprises.

  ‘Well, look at this,’ he said eventually.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lot of movement going on,’ said Carter softly. ‘Listen, you can hear the Chinooks taking to the air; and there are trucks, quite a few of them. They’ve set off in a cloud of dust - heading away from Spiral_Q.’ He waited for a while, still scanning as the sounds of the helicopters faded into silence.

  Natasha peered over the ridge. Spiral_Q spread out below her, modern in an ancient landscape, the single visible storey all steel and aluminium and shining smoked glass. It looked completely out of place in the desert.

  She gazed down from their vantage point. She squinted into the gloom and saw the headlights of the last trucks winding to the perimeter fence and the gate with its armed guards, nothing more than indistinct blobs from this distance. She tried to make out individuals but couldn’t. She scratched at her healing wounds, mainly the one at her shoulder. Most of the pain had gone now, leaving her with dull aches and annoying itches.

  Carter’s voice came again, soft, an almost animal-like purr. ‘Look who just crawled out of the sand dunes.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My old friend Count Feuchter. What a most pleasant surprise.’ Carter wriggled down a little against the sand; Natasha read the body language, understood it from the firing ranges she had attended both during training and active service in Spiral. He was getting comfy. Getting ready. Expecting action. Carter wanted the best aiming position ...