The Hive Construct

by Alexander Maskill

  ‘Freeze!’ yelled the one nearest to her, behind the van to her left.

  Zala stood completely still.

  ‘Drop your portable terminal, kick it towards us, and then get down on the ground with your hands behind your head!’ the agent nearest to her yelled again.

  She released the straps holding her terminal to her wrist and kicked it away from her, and then she crouched down on the pavement. Behind her, she could hear workers from the processing plant emerging to see what was happening. As one of the agents picked up her terminal, Zala saw a message appear on her contact lenses.

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

  >Never think that there is nothing more I can do to hurt you, Zala Ulora.

  Chapter 23

  PLEADING, DROWNED OUT by gunfire.

  The next thing Ryan knew, he was awake in his own bed, at home. The room was bright, and Babirye was leaning over him. She looked scared.

  ‘Oh thank god, you’re awake! Are you okay? Is your leg hurting?’

  Ryan took a while to process her words through the haze of fading sleep, then shook his head and sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. ‘It was just a nightmare. I’m fine. Look.’ Pushing up with his arms, he managed to stand upright for the first time in days. His injured leg strained, the scarred muscle mass working to support his weight, but finally held. He turned to face her. ‘Ta-da.’

  ‘Don’t give me that. You were groaning and thrashing about in your sleep, you sounded like you were going to start screaming at any moment.’

  ‘Yes, I was having a nightmare,’ said Ryan. ‘I’ve come out the other side of a traumatic experience, and I’ve got a lot left to work through. But I’m fine. I’m awake, it’s all gone away.’ He climbed back into bed.

  ‘Is it all going to come back when you go back to sleep?’ Babirye asked. Ryan looked uncomfortable.

  ‘I don’t know, maybe.’ He looked over at her. ‘The doctors say there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to be having a lot of nightmares for a while. If you’d prefer, I can go sleep in the other room. I don’t want to keep you awake or anything.’

  Babirye wrapped her arms around Ryan and pulled him towards her. ‘No, don’t go. Just let me know if your leg starts hurting.’

  Ryan held his wife tight. He hoped that it would be enough to keep the nightmares at bay. In the back of his mind, he knew that it wouldn’t.

  Of all the things that followed him out of that building in Naj-Pur, the one which Ryan found to be the most insidious was the boredom. His psychological state precluded him from going outside unless absolutely necessary, which confined him to his house. During the day, his family were gone: the children were in school and his wife was checking what legal avenues were available to them against his captors. He lay in bed, unable to decide what to do.

  After hours of inactivity, he mustered the resolve to get up and shower. He didn’t regret it; the gentle massage of the jets of hot water soothed his aching leg muscles and the feeling of the grease and grime and dried blood lifting from his skin made it worth it. By the time he got out, his skin had begun to shrivel.

  He wrapped a towel around his waist and walked over to the basin. Above it, the mirror showed him a strange sight. All he’d seen of himself for two weeks was his reflection where the paint over the blacked-out windows of the NCLC base had chipped away, leaving small slivers of clear glass. He’d assumed he’d return to the public eye looking like a wild man. Instead, he simply had the scraggly beginnings of a beard and a few contusions, as well as slightly longer hair than he usually wore. It was almost a shame, he thought. A real physical change, removing a full beard and watching a swollen face heal, that could have helped him distance his life from his period of containment. As it was, he shaved and made a mental note to call in a barber.

  Ryan dried and dressed himself and, with nothing else immediately pressing him, logged into his personal terminal and opened up a newscast. Headlines loomed up at him, stark and foreboding.

  COUNCILLOR GRANIER RESCUED

  ELEVATORS SHUT DOWN BY EXECUTIVE ORDER

  ESCAPED KILLER RETURNS TO CITY

  17 KILLED IN REBEL MASSACRE

  He made his way through each story, coverage both of his own ordeal and of events beyond the walls of the abandoned bank. The further in he got, the more he felt a sense of despair. The financial news struck a blow that was somehow even more personal.

  GENISEC SHARES LIFT AFTER RECORD PLUMMET

  IS IT TOO LATE TO SAVE THE GRANIER DYNASTY?

  BANACH-TARSKI CAPITALIZE ON GENISEC WEAKNESSES

  IMPORT AND EXPORT RATES HIT NEW LOW

  It appeared that, in the short time he had been held, shares in GeniSec had become next to worthless, even by the standards of conglomerates based in cities that were apparently crashing and burning. Banach-Tarski, on the other hand, had benefited from excellent timing and their share value had shot through the roof.

  Ryan delved into the financial news, hoping to learn more about the Banach-Tarski Corporation’s sudden rise to dominance. The day after Ryan’s kidnapping, with no apparent lead-up, they had launched a large number of new software products. There were complaints and fears of redundancy from software developers working at Banach-Tarski’s software divisions, most of which seemed to state that these products – mostly encryption methods and security protocols for finance transfers – had come out of nowhere and they had no idea who had coded them. Despite Banach-Tarski’s developers fearing for their jobs, they almost doubled their share price within hours. At the same time, amid fears of instability on the part of GeniSec’s figurehead, Tau Granier, shareholders had flooded the stock exchange with GeniSec shares and by the time their stock had been withdrawn its value had plummeted.

  The more Ryan read, the stranger it seemed. The general consensus was that the software had been bought from an independent developer Banach-Tarski had hired and they simply cynically used the opportunity afforded by Ryan’s kidnapping to make what was, admittedly, a sharp business decision. Yet there were no names available and no reporter had been able to identify whatever coding genius had created new industry-standard security protocols, apparently on their own.

  Software turning up out of nowhere seemed to be happening a lot these days.

  Ryan logged into the Council intranet and opened up the police files on the recent rebel arrests. Eventually he found a series of inventories, revealing what had been taken from captured members of the NCLC. There were, with exceptions that were probably regular civilian purchases, seven companies whose products showed up in bulk on the inventories. All their products were military-grade, unavailable to the public, yet the NCLC, it seemed, had had their orders supplied in full. Ryan traced the companies back. They were all owned by the same three corporations. Two belonged to FanaSoCo. Three were fully owned by New Delhi Lifestyle Technologies. Two were controlled by GeniSec. The conspicuous absence was of Banach-Tarski.

  It felt strange to be driving through the Alexandria district again. The openness was oddly oppressive and the almost monochromatic black and white skin colours of the people on the streets seemed especially artificial after the myriad shades of brown of Ryan’s former captors. Ryan knew he should have waited for a security detail but he didn’t need more people knowing what he was up to than was absolutely necessary. He threw on a hat, a visor and some baggy clothes and tried as hard as possible to look, if not nondescript, then as unlike Councillor Ryan Granier as he could. Inside his car, at least, he felt he could get away without attracting attention.

  Reaching Downtown quickly, he pulled up outside the New Cairo Council Rehabilitation Facility. It sat in such a way as to form a triangle with the New Cairo Democratic Council building and the GeniSec Tower. It seemed from the outside to be a relatively small concrete skyscraper, in a city of much more impressive specimens. This view was deceptive; most of it lay underground, and in terms of actual floor space it dwarfed any other building in th
e city.

  Ryan parked near the back entrance and entered using his Council certification. Inside, a large police officer sat at a desk, busy on his terminal.

  ‘Hello there, I’m Councillor Granier. I’d like to visit one of the prisoners.’

  The police officer raised his eyebrows at the sight of the scruffy, scarred man in front of him and reached for a biometric scanner with one hand. ‘I’m going to need to give you a proper scan before I let a supposedly bedridden man in to see a prisoner, Councillor.’

  Ryan nodded and the police officer ran the scanner across his face. He then stood back and ran the beam of the scanner down the full length of Ryan’s body. His eyes widened as the scan rang out a positive result.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Councillor, I didn’t recognize you! I’ll let you through, sir!’ he blustered, skin reddening.

  The officer stood up from his desk and punched a code into a holographic keypad. The projected keys beeped with contact and the wall next to it slid aside, revealing a thick, armoured door. The door swung open on a long corridor lined with security cameras, and beyond that, a second armoured door.

  Ryan entered the corridor, and the first door closed behind him. The second opened soon after, and he walked through. Once that door had clamped shut the prison itself opened up to him. The hallway inside was white and blue, and brightly lit, an oddly antiseptic environment. Near the entrance, before the cell doors began to line the walls, was a terminal used only to locate specific prisoners. Ryan logged in and typed in a name.

  Hoshi Smolak.

  The terminal spat out the cell number, along with the man’s details. He had been processed yesterday and placed in Cell 73HJ. Ryan’s personal terminal marked this down on his internal map, and his corneal implants led him down several flights of stairs and through a complicated network of corridors. The disorienting layout, combined with the blindingly sterile aesthetic and almost complete silence of the jail’s public areas, soon began to wear him down. He was reminded of a gleeful voice talking about a ‘white room’.

  The almost imperceptibly faint smell of burnt meat wafted around Ryan, but he pushed it out of his mind and focused on the task at hand.

  Eventually, he found the cell. The door itself was an opaque black, giving no view of the person inside. It functioned as a monitor, able to relay information to people both outside and in. If needed, it could become transparent. Ryan turned on the monitor and set it to clear. The black membrane faded, revealing a small cell. One side was taken up by a single bed, the other by a toilet, a small sink, and a desk with various old paper books stacked on top. Sitting at the desk, with one of the books open on his lap, was Hoshi. On his side, the glass door must have still been opaque, leaving him unaware of his visitor. This seemed like an appropriate moment, so Ryan cleared the black screen on Hoshi’s side and knocked twice on the door.

  Hoshi turned in his seat with a start. ‘Oh! Councillor!’ he said, eyes wide. ‘What’re you doing here?’

  ‘I need to ask you something.’

  The accountant shifted back in his seat. ‘Oh … I don’t know, I’m not sure I can talk to anyone yet.’

  Ryan leaned in towards the cell, making sure Hoshi could see his bruised face. ‘Hoshi, it’s about Banach-Tarski.’

  Hoshi Smolak almost fell out of his seat. ‘How did you know about Banach-Tarski?’

  ‘I didn’t until just now.’

  Hoshi was trembling now, drawing breath in heavy, wavering gasps as he realized he’d been tricked. Ryan leaned in further, almost pressed up against the cell door. ‘Hoshi, I can help you. I just need to know in what capacity Banach-Tarski got involved with the NCLC and why.’

  ‘I can’t! It implicates me too much! I become complicit in murder of police, everything goes to shit, I could spend the rest of my life in prison! I could be executed!’

  ‘Hoshi!’ yelled Ryan, shocking the accountant out of his frenzy. ‘There are systems in place for helping people like you, people who help put things right. We’re talking about a conspiracy to arm a rebel group in order to destabilize a government. That’s a bargaining chip that can keep you out of prison.’

  The little man looked up at him. ‘I won’t have to go to prison?’

  Ryan nodded. ‘You won’t if you can help them prove massive corporate wrongdoing. This is your way out.’

  Hoshi slumped forward, seeming to relax a little. ‘Back when we were the New Cairo Labour Commission, and we were running the first few protests, they offered to help fund us, from behind the scenes. They told us they thought the government intrusion represented a dangerous precedent regarding businesses. We knew it was them trying to get one over on your old man’s company but we needed money and so we accepted their support.’

  Hoshi became more and more involved in his story, losing his scared demeanour and gesticulating wildly for emphasis. ‘Then when things got more and more violent, they didn’t stop. They gave us guns. They bought us body armour. Medical supplies. Brought it all right in as surplus with weapons purchases for the police and SecForce. If they hadn’t been arming themselves in case they needed to attack us, we wouldn’t even have guns in the first place. My job was to send supply requirements and then retrieve the money through a number of constantly shifting shell groups and untraceable accounts. It was the most complicated work I’ve ever had to do.’

  Ryan felt his jaw drop. He had been right. His hunch, although biased against the corporation whose status had overtaken GeniSec’s, had somehow paid off.

  ‘Councillor?’

  Ryan looked back over at Hoshi. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I got arrested the moment the Security Forces came through the window, and in the back of the van I didn’t see Suman or Ava anywhere. Do you know what happened to them?’

  Ryan stared at Hoshi. The man was already tense, as though he knew what the answer would be, but just needed to have it confirmed.

  ‘Suman tried to run and they opened fire on him. He didn’t make it, to the best of my knowledge. Ava was with me. I tried to protect her, but—’

  ‘But what?’ asked Hoshi, his voice a whisper.

  ‘They must have assumed she was using me as a human shield. They shot her too.’

  Hoshi slumped down in his seat, distraught. ‘Why would they do that? Why would they shoot a nurse and an IT manager?’

  This was the question Ryan had spent the entire previous day asking himself. He hesitated, not sure if he had the answer.

  ‘I guess to some trigger-happy SecForce officer they looked like threats and I look like their bosses.’

  Hoshi gazed up at him, ashen-faced. Ryan felt consumed with guilt. ‘So what now, Councillor?’

  Ryan stood back from the door. ‘You could testify about the Banach-Tarski involvement when this whole NCLC mess finally makes it to court. If you could prove it convincingly, I could get you immunity from prosecution. You could be reclassified as a whistle-blower, sent to some other city. You can get out of here.’ He paused and made a swift survey of the accountant’s cell. ‘To be honest, Hoshi, I don’t see you flourishing in this sort of environment.’

  Hoshi too looked around his room and shuddered.

  ‘What’s more,’ said Ryan, ‘Banach-Tarski have been profiteering from the escalation of violence that got Ava and Suman killed. You think if they hadn’t armed you guys, there would have been any need to shoot Ava or Suman? Banach-Tarski have played a role in enabling civil war in this city.’

  Hoshi looked scared, but nodded. ‘I can do that. I can be a witness.’

  Ryan smiled. ‘Good choice,’ he said. ‘One last thing, though. The new software that Banach-Tarski launched. Do you know where that came from?’

  Hoshi looked confused for a moment, then nodded. ‘I … I remember they had a number of programs they wanted Suman to take a look at and verify. I thought it was weird at the time, that they wouldn’t have internal people on this. The coder was some outsider, apparently. The code was so well done, Suman kept trying to track
them down, learn from them. It was someone called … it was something like Antsy. Named after some old African spider god.’

  Ryan transcribed his words on his portable terminal, then looked back up at Hoshi. ‘I’ll talk to the Police Commissioner, let them know you’re willing to testify. We will get you out of here.’

  ‘Please do it soon!’ the accountant pleaded as Ryan switched off the monitor and the inky black membrane made its way back over the door.

  Ryan turned to go back the way he’d come, to find two police officers standing behind him.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  One of them, a short-haired woman, stepped forward. ‘We were told to assist you with your business today.’

  Ryan shrugged. ‘I’m all done, Officer …?’

  ‘Officer Jalila Karimi, Councillor.’

  ‘Officer Karimi. Did you hear what I was discussing with that prisoner?’ Officer Karimi nodded. ‘Excellent, then can you give him a proper interview and see what you can do for him as an informant?’

  ‘Yes, Councillor!’

  Ryan continued on his way back out. So they had sent police officers to watch him. Did they think he was going to try to break Hoshi out of prison? Well, he supposed, it had been two weeks, long enough for Stockholm Syndrome to set in.

  Suddenly, a deep, gleeful voice rang out from the terminal of Officer Karimi’s scruffy-looking partner.

  ‘We got her. Everyone, we can confirm that Zala Ulora has been taken into custody.’

  The officer looked up and grinned. ‘We did it!’

  Whatever hesitance had taken hold of High Councillor Tau Granier the previous day was gone as he walked into the living room. Ryan was already seated on a large sofa, his leg propped up. As Tau Granier sat down on a chair opposite, he looked his son in the eyes unwaveringly, determined not to look down at the bandaged leg.

  ‘Good news, High Councillor.’

  ‘We’re not in the Council building, Ryan. You can call me Dad.’

  Ryan raised his eyebrows. It was the first time since he was a child that his father had objected to being called by his title. His enforced absence must have left quite an impression.