The Hive Construct

by Alexander Maskill

  Zala then opened up a file detailing the login times of the various computer terminals, and looked for his. The file showed that, while Hiroshi’s computer had been turned on – it appeared that all the terminals in the building were turned on every morning by one big switch – no one had logged in on it all day. It was as though the gssmr.auge file had come out of nowhere. And GeniSec suddenly seemed like a less credible potential culprit.

  Zala was so caught up in trying to find a further origin point that it was several minutes before she realized that she had received a message on her own terminal. She opened it up.

  From: ANANSI (EIP: ----.-.------.-------.---.-----.----.-------)

  >Someone’s looking where they’re not supposed to.

  Something sick and horrified gathered in her stomach. She swung round and stared into the darkness, looking for someone watching her. Suddenly her light-amplifying contact lenses seemed ineffectual. She logged out of the network and shut down her portable terminal. Her lenses dimmed and switched off.

  Zala had apparently attracted someone’s attention again.

  She moved slowly and quietly out of the office, crouching behind cubicles as she groped her way back to the stairwell in the dark. Without her contact lenses she felt oddly disorientated in a way that didn’t seem to have anything to do with the darkness.

  Zala kept moving towards the stairs. Someone knew where she was. Every footstep was slower and quieter than the last.

  Somewhere downstairs, glass shattered. Someone else was in the building.

  Apparently these intruders were less concerned about making a mess than Zala was. She crept down the top few steps of the staircase and slowly peered over the side. A beam of torchlight cut through the darkness of the floor below, sweeping along the far wall. She ducked back. Instinctively, she tried to open her portable terminal and take a look at any outgoing connections the new arrivals were jacked into. She suddenly realized what she was doing and hurriedly turned it off; if this ANANSI character could track her, then it wasn’t to her advantage to give him something with which to pinpoint her location. Instead, she steadied herself and strained to listen.

  ‘… upstairs, and try to get into the GeniSec representative’s office. Grab the terminal and we’ll get out of here,’ came a man’s voice below. Thieves, she thought. Affiliated with some other organization or just opportunistic thugs?

  One of them was coming. They appeared not to know that Zala was here, or at least they were here for something other than her. That suited her fine. She slipped behind a cubicle and watched as light flooded the partition in front of her. It then spun towards Kishori Ueno’s office. Footsteps clomped against the ground, softer and softer as the figure moved away from Zala. This sound was quickly eclipsed by a loud crash coming from the floor below. Great metallic clatters followed by the rattling of small loosened parts. They were destroying machinery. With the figure on her own level preoccupied, Zala moved from her hiding place down to the half-landing. There seemed to be three others, each focused on the destruction of the office equipment. Heavy crowbars and pipes rained huge swings down upon the terminals and peripherals in front of them. Errant torchlight gave away angular bulges under their shirts that suggested pistols tucked into their waistbands.

  Zala waited for a moment in which all three had simultaneously found a new object to trash, and crept down the remaining stairs, crouching behind a cubicle at the bottom. She stole a glance over the top. These intruders had broken through a large floor-to-ceiling window ahead and to her left. Having started there, they were now moving away to other areas in search of more potential carnage, clearing a path for her. Zala began to sneak across to the broken window.

  ‘Hey! There’s someone else here!’

  Torchlight washed over her. The one from upstairs reappeared behind her. She’d forgotten about him. She threw herself to the left. A burst of light and sound overwhelmed her momentarily. She clambered to her feet and began to run.

  Another gunshot rang out. A harsh, heavy impact ran up her right arm. Intense pain. She gritted her teeth and ran. Adrenalin dulled the agony to the point where she could concentrate. She spotted the broken window.

  ‘Gotcha!’ a man growled to her right. She turned and instinctively raised her wounded arm. A small, skinny figure with a patchy beard brought down a crowbar onto it. There was a damp snapping sound, like a large branch breaking. More pain, greater this time. The gunshot wound had torn through the muscle, taking plenty of meat with it, but compared to this new agony, it was nothing. Zala felt her bone contort, each movement sending shockwaves through her musculature. She screamed and kicked hard. Her foot drove into her assailant’s stomach and he doubled over, groaning.

  Zala pushed herself up and sprinted, holding her maimed arm against her body. Every excruciating step sent a new paroxysm through her body, but she kept moving. Out of the building’s courtyard, into the street …

  Another gunshot. This time, the blow struck just below her right shoulder blade. Ribs splintered, lung and back muscle tore. She tried to suck in air to scream, but her ribcage felt as though something was crushing it, compressing it inwards. She couldn’t breathe.

  Zala collapsed against the window of the café and slid down onto the pavement.

  Chapter 14

  FOR ALL THE talk of Naj-Pur being NCLC territory, it didn’t take the Security Force long at all to make their presence felt after the fire-fight. During the battle, the SecForce troops’ communications network had been taken down, but word got back anyway. Within half an hour of the last shot being fired, the entire street in which the battle had taken place was crawling with investigators. Dozens of armed, angry police and SecForce troops combed the street for clues or informants.

  The people in the NCLC main base hid in the windowless sleeping area until the police went home. They were, after all, right next to the crime scene and attracting any attention to themselves whatsoever could have been disastrous. For two days after the incident, they locked their doors, shut their windows, closed down their networks and lay low. Only Maalik left the building, in the dead of night, and only for stretches of a few hours.

  By the time the authorities decided they had spent enough time in Naj-Pur, it was three in the morning on the third day. The inhabitants of the NCLC main base began to pack. Home terminals were detached from their stations, clothes and personal effects were put into bags and new plans were made. The two dozen people at the base would split into two groups; Alice, Ria, Zeno and nine others would go with Maalik to a base in an abandoned bank two or three miles to the east; while Kahleed and Tal would go with the rest of the group to another safe house in an old tenement building that lay within walking distance.

  There was something demoralizing about stripping down the base. Alice had her desk, her bed and her routine. They weren’t good or bad, but they were hers. That had been comforting. That was what she feared: the distraction and the comfort which had allowed her to function being taken away from her. The illusion of stability, after everything that had happened to her, was something she had grown to depend upon. That fear was added to the long list of reasons she had to hate the tyrant Tau Granier.

  It took a while to convince Juri to disassemble her camera network. She argued for a long time that it was the only reason they’d won so successfully, but the fact was that she didn’t want to see her work taken apart. Eventually, she agreed, permanently corrupting every security camera she had access to and giving her allies the cover of darkness. Once they were packed, three hours had passed and it was time to go.

  Alice used her terminal to turn off the limiter on Ria and Zeno’s cochlear implants and went over to her daughter’s bed to shake her awake. For a moment, she hesitated. Ria looked so peaceful, and there were so many terrible things for her to wake up to again.

  Alice remembered two weeks before, when Jacob had told her that he and his associates had engineered the riots. She had spent the day huddled up with Ria and Zeno, watchi
ng the riot coverage on the TV, terrified that the mob would course up their street, smash in the windows of their house. Jacob was out there somewhere, with his advocacy group, working overtime to try to find an end to the carnage. That was what he’d told her, at any rate. As the sun began to sink and the police and Security Force troops had begun employing harsher and harsher repressive measures, the crowd dissipated, leaving images of a shattered, burning Downtown area. Safe in the knowledge that the riots were over for the moment, Alice had sent Ria off to bed and carried Zeno up to his cot. As she came back downstairs, she’d heard a noise coming from somewhere below.

  She had crept downstairs, trying to locate the person who’d broken in, and walked into the hallway. In the kitchen, washing a cut on his head, she had found a filthy, grinning Jacob.

  He was a handsome man, even with his face bloodied, but there was something jarring about the smile on his face and his dishevelled appearance that Alice hadn’t noticed at the time. Her immediate response had been one of panicked concern.

  ‘Are you all right? What happened? Are you hurt?’ She grabbed his arm, turning him to examine him properly.

  He shook her away, no longer smiling. ‘I’m fine. But I’ve got something to tell you, and I need you to hear me out.’

  He pressed a wet washcloth against the cut and strode into the living room. Alice followed. There, they sat down on the couch and Jacob turned to face her.

  ‘I was there at the protests today,’ he said.

  Alice had been dreading that sentence ever since she saw him. ‘What the hell were you doing at the riots?’

  ‘Protests,’ he said, ‘and I was helping to coordinate the protestors, and keep them safe from the SecForce.’

  ‘People were shooting at the SecForce.’

  His face had appeared strangely calm. ‘The protestors were safer once the SecForce knew they couldn’t just be bullied.’

  There was a bulge under his jacket. Alice lifted the jacket to reveal an empty holster.

  They sat there for a while, not speaking.

  ‘I want you out,’ said Alice.

  Jacob seemed to have expected that. He nodded and got up to leave. Alice hated him for that. She had so much more to say. She wanted to tell him that she couldn’t believe that he’d get involved with something like this, and endanger his own life when he had a family who needed him. That she couldn’t believe he’d run the risk of getting her or the children involved in his nonsense. That she felt shocked, sickened that he had the capacity for that kind of behaviour in him. And that she was hurt, deeply hurt, that he made no attempt to promise her that it would never happen again, that he was done, that this was a one-off. He made no attempt to hide that, right then, what he did at those riots and what he intended to continue to do up until his death was more important to him than his family. She let him leave without saying another word.

  The next morning she’d had to tell the children that Daddy would be gone for a while. Now, in this cold, damp factory basement she had to wake them and tell them they must go because they were in danger.

  And then there was that bigger secret, but that was for some other day.

  Ria’s eyes opened and Alice told her it was time to get dressed. The two of them packed their possessions and went into the main room. Alice thought of her children being uprooted from a safe place again. Her fists clenched.

  The escape plan had been discussed many times. Everyone knew where they were going and the best routes to get there. Of course, there was now no security camera network, no top-down map and none of the wealth of information and intelligence the NCLC had become so adept at gathering. They were going in blind.

  Kahleed and Tal’s group would be leaving first. They’d exit, in groups of two or three, taking different routes to their destination, hopefully avoiding suspicion. Kahleed was, of course, already a major target but his massive, bushy beard and wild hair stopped him looking anything like the clean-cut business magnate he had once been, so as long as no one scanned him, he’d be fine.

  As his group picked up their luggage and prepared to move, Kahleed pulled Alice aside. ‘I just want to say, thank you for everything. I know you’re reluctant about this whole thing, but you’re incredibly talented and it’s been a real blessing to us.’

  Alice blushed. ‘Thanks, I guess … I just found that after a while, keeping myself busy helped push the bad things away.’

  Kahleed nodded. ‘You’re one of our best people, and if you’d be up for it I’d like you and Maalik to take over command of the other safe house. I’ve been giving them orders from here but it’s not really as good as having some trusted people running the show.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Alice surprised herself with how quickly she made the decision. It seemed like what Jacob would do. Kahleed nodded and walked back over to the huddled team he would be leading to their new home. He and Tal led their group up the set of stairs to the main factory and out of sight.

  ‘Give it a quarter of an hour,’ said a voice behind her. She turned round to see Maalik standing there, several large bags over his shoulder. ‘If there’s a trap we need to know whether or not they’ve fallen into it before we make a move.’

  Alice nodded. The group she had been assigned to was a capable one. The safe house they were moving to had originally been a shelter and hiding place for families of NCLC operatives, and was now the prison for Councillor Ryan Granier. Kahleed had decided that greater armament and more direct organization was required for it. So, as well as Alice, Ria and Zeno, the group was made up of Maalik, his protégé Serhiy Panossian, Nataliya Kaur, Juri Dajili, Suman Chaudhri and the twins, Thana and Anisa Yu, plus three other operatives. All were armed with small arms hidden on their person; most had pistols, though the twins had sewn their favoured sub-machine guns into the inside of their jacket linings, ready to be torn away in an instant. Alice was having a harder time; though Maalik had given her a pistol, she was going to be holding Zeno in her arms, making a gun hardly practical. She trusted most of the people she was with, but dreaded any opportunity Maalik might be offered to escalate things.

  They checked their gear to make sure they hadn’t left anything behind and prepared the basement for their departure. The twins covered themselves in niqabs to hide their now infamous scarred faces. Most ushered themselves outside, leaving Nataliya to torch the place. It would of course attract attention when the authorities got there, but by then they’d be far away, and they couldn’t afford to leave DNA evidence.

  It was half past six in the morning and if they were lucky the SecForce presence which followed the shoot-out would not be out in any great numbers for another hour or so. The group hurried down the long, thin driveway on the other side of the factory from the street where the battle had been. At every corner they paused, one scouting ahead and signalling to the others when it was clear. As they moved further and further away from the factory, they began to relax slightly, moving as one large group and talking amongst themselves. Maalik in particular seemed eager to raise spirits, conversing and joking with the rest. It did help; after a while, all but the eternally grave Yu twins had calmed.

  They had rounded a corner into an alley less than a mile from the safe house when Thana Yu raised a hand, signalling them to stop. They quickly stepped to the side, pressing themselves up against the alleyway wall, and Maalik whispered to Thana, ‘Did you see something?’

  Thana pointed ahead and rasped, ‘I think I saw a shadow disappearing around the corner. I don’t know for certain, but I don’t like the idea of walking into a trap.’

  Alice at once became more aware of the space around them. The alleyway was long and narrow, with tall brick walls on either side.

  ‘Let’s head back and take another way round,’ said Maalik. The alley felt as though it was shrinking.

  They turned and hurried back the way they’d come. Alice kept glancing over her shoulder, holding Zeno tight to her. Ria was close behind, murmuring, ‘Mum, what’s going on?’<
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  ‘That way’s blocked off, sweetie, we’re going to go around it,’ said Alice, unable to stop her voice quivering.

  Suddenly, in the distance, there was the approach of a roaring engine. Maalik looked back at Alice, eyes wide. ‘We need to go, now.’

  Serhiy scooped Ria up into his arms and the group broke into a sprint, back up the alleyway and then in the opposite direction from the growl piercing the morning silence. They turned left down another street. A SecForce car sped round the corner and screeched to a halt in front of them. The doors opened. Three helmeted SecForce officers leapt out, holding pistols with both hands.

  ‘Names and business!’ shouted one.

  Maalik stepped forward. ‘My daughter just went into labour. We’re heading to the hospital to make sure it’s all going okay.’

  The officer who’d yelled looked across at one of his colleagues, who shrugged. He turned back. ‘We’re looking for terrorists around this area. We’re going to need the women to lower their niqabs so we can see their faces.’

  Anisa brought her hand to her chest in feigned outrage. ‘Do you have any idea how disrespectful that is?’

  The trooper raised his gun again. ‘Lower your niqabs now!’

  ‘It’s because of things like this that you lot can’t maintain a patrol around here!’ said Maalik, stepping in front of the man’s gun and playing up his indignation.

  ‘Lower your niqabs, last warning!’

  Thana and Anisa looked at one another.

  ‘Do you want us to be the terrorists?’

  Everyone looked round. It was Serhiy who had spoken up. The guns turned and were trained on him.

  ‘I mean, if we are the terrorists you’re looking for,’ he continued, ‘we outnumber you nearly four to one, and god only knows what we’re capable of. If we’re not the terrorists, then you have no reason to detain us and should send us on our way, without anything bad happening to anyone.’