Please, said Aoife, trying to catch her breath. I’m looking for a friend of mine. Michael – is he here?
The two women stared back at her. The older one spoke:
How did you get into this office? That door is meant to be locked.
It doesn’t matter. Is he here?
The women looked at each other, then at the door of the server room.
He doesn’t want to be disturbed.
I need to talk to him right now.
A security guard appeared, unhooking his radio.
You can’t come running in here, miss. You must show me ID or I’ll call the police.
Please, said Aoife, appealing to the women. Can’t you just tell him I’m here? . . . I’m his girlfriend. There’s a problem.
The two women looked at each other again.
What’s your name?
Aoife.
The older one picked up a phone.
I’ll tell him you’re here. But we can’t let you in there.
She identified a button, pressed it. Aoife saw a red light flutter on the phone. Pick up, please, Michael, she thought, attempting telepathy.
The lady listened a while, put the phone down.
He’s not answering.
Come on, said the security guard. You must go.
He touched her elbow to steer her away.
That’s OK, said a woman’s voice behind them. She can stay.
Barb Collins stood in the hallway. She wore her Stanford hoodie, and a company tote bag hung from a shoulder. In one hand, she held the handle of a suitcase. In the other was her Inscape ID. It was gold. The guard looked at it, stepped away.
You two ladies can go back to work, she said. You too, guard. I’ll take it from here.
She put her head to one side, smiled at Aoife.
And you, honey, don’t make a fuss now. Come over to this couch and we’ll have a little chat. Girl to girl.
Michael watched the light on the phone, mesmerised, until it stopped flashing. Someone was looking for him, someone other than the women in the office outside. Someone who knew he was here.
What if they were already outside that door? What if they tried to come in here?
He looked about him. The lights in the servers – were they blinking a little faster, in sync with his pulse? Had more eyes opened behind him, to stare at his back while he was distracted by the phone? Were forces gathering against him, inside the door as well as outside it?
That second camera up there – had it swivelled towards him? It was pointing right at him now, more or less.
For the first time in his life, Michael was trapped. He had no way to run and nowhere to hide. You never know what someone will do, until they are cornered. After that, you know who they are.
The computer screen showed him the time. Two twenty-five. In only five minutes, OmniCent would go live.
This machine kills fascists. A dirt track in the mountains. All the stories Towse had told him. All the books he’d had to read, for want of anything better to do, since he’d gone on the run without a laptop or a phone . . .
He remembered Shevek in The Dispossessed, and his mission of light to the profiteer planet. Well, you have me . . . You have your anarchist . . .
Or Red in Roadside Picnic, the cynical survivor, throwing off his despair, in the crunch, to petition the Zone for his fading daughter, his dead father, his tired wife, his lost fellow stalkers. Happiness, free, for everyone, and let no one be forgotten.
Absurd.
Alice.
For the second time that afternoon, Michael took out the thumb drive. This time, he removed the cap.
Barb Collins put her ID back in her tote bag, left her hand inside it.
Let’s sit on that couch, honey. You go first. In the corner. Against the wall.
Barb Collins, much larger than Aoife, seemed to block any hope of escape. She settled her bag on the couch, away from Aoife, her hand still inside it.
Well, here we are, she said contentedly. Just two working girls, passing the time.
Aoife smiled tightly.
What will we talk about, so? Boys?
Barb Collins shook her head.
Guns.
Aoife nodded at the tote bag.
What you got there, then?
Browning Hi-Power, nine millimetre. The gun’s a bit meh, but the bullets are hollow point.
Aoife looked at Barb Collins’s wheelie case.
I don’t think so. I think you just got off a plane. How would you get a gun through airport security?
I came on Fess’s private jet, honey. People with Gulfstreams bring what they want.
Fair enough . . . I have a gun too.
Barb Collins put her head back and laughed.
Oh honey, that’s a good one!
I really do. It’s a .25 Beretta.
A purse gun? That’s adorable. Where did you get that, girlfriend?
I was in the police here.
The so-called police in this country aren’t trusted with firearms. Nice bluff, though.
With a name like Collins, you should know more about the partition of Ireland.
Barb Collins stopped smiling.
You know my name, then. That’s not good.
Aoife decided to change tack.
How did you know I’d be here?
I didn’t. I came here for your boss. Atarian. He waltzed in through the lobby half an hour ago, bold as brass, in front of all the cameras. Our facial-recognition systems lit up like a Christmas tree. Palo Alto called me straight away. And, by coincidence, I’d just landed in Dublin, to have a little word with you, honey. Turns out, I’m getting a twofer from this trip.
You believe in coincidence, do you?
I believe that I’m here, and so are you, and so is Atarian.
They must have known I’d be coming to Ireland, thought Aoife, even before I turned up at my parents’ flat. They would have got my mailbox number from my parents. They would have hacked into it, found out that I’d called it. They’d know where I called from, and when, in Paris. They’d had time to get ready, move Barb Collins to Europe. She would have done most of the hurting . . . But that didn’t matter now. The Scotsman would be here soon, and then Aoife would have no chance at all. Neither would Michael. She had to move Barb Collins around, try to work herself an opening before it was too late.
I give up, said Aoife. Let’s go in there now and get him. I’ll make him come quietly.
No thanks, honey. There’s a fire exit at the back of the server room. I’m not making a move until my guy is there to cover it. I don’t want to scare your boss into running away.
Barb Collins’s phone beeped.
That’ll be my guy now.
She reached behind her, not taking her eyes from Aoife, and took her phone from her hip pocket. She glanced at the message. Her expression changed. She swiped at the screen, put the phone to her ear.
Where are you? . . . Change of plan. Don’t wait. As soon as you get here, go in the back way. I’m going in the front, now. Fess just texted me: the timing just went critical. On sight, he said.
Barb Collins killed the call, shouldered her bag, her hand still inside it.
Walk in front of me. Over to that door.
You sure about this? – Aoife kept her voice down – You want to risk making trouble in front of these people?
I’ll shoot everyone in this room, if it suits me.
You’d be on all the cameras.
Honey, we own all the cameras.
Barb Collins stopped by the desk where the older woman sat, pretending to type.
You. Open the door to the server room.
I can’t. The engineer from Palo Alto has the key. He won’t even answer the phone.
Barb Collins turned to the secu
rity guard.
You. Do you have a key?
That isn’t my department.
Then break this door down. That’s an order.
The guard stared back at her, disbelieving.
This is inappropriate. I’m calling my supervisor.
Barb Collins put her head on one side.
Do you know who I am?
It doesn’t matter who you are. I have my job to do. I’m going to have to report this to my control room.
He unhooked his radio.
Say again? said Barb Collins. Come closer. I can’t hear you.
He took another step towards her, put the radio to his ear.
I said, I’m going to report this—
Barb Collins hadn’t been bluffing. The brute steel of her pistol, held flat in her palm, smashed into the bridge of his nose. Blood drooled on the grey nylon carpet. She swung the gun again, into the side of his head. He fell.
She stamped on the walkie-talkie, turned it to fragments. The guard’s mobile phone, charging on the carpet, went the same way.
The gun now menaced Aoife and the horrified women behind their desks.
You two – on the ground. Face down. Cross your ankles. Put your hands behind your heads and lace your fingers. You, what’s your name – break the door down, or I’ll shoot these nice people before I shoot you.
Barb Collins racked the slide on her pistol, stood over the prone figures, aimed at the guard’s head. Unconscious, he snored through the mess of cartilage and blood-froth that used to be his nose. The two women were so stiff with fear that they might as well have been dead already. Barb Collins kicked the younger woman hard in the ribs.
I’ll shoot this one first, if you don’t get that door open.
Aoife backed away a couple of steps, then launched herself at the door with her shoulder. She hit it, bounced off.
The third from last item on Towse’s list of instructions: After you stick in the thumb drive, press the button marked ‘Install’.
Michael had once spent a whole day trying to install a driver for a second-hand printer, only for Alice to point out he’d downloaded the wrong one. Towse, on the other hand, had set up the destruction of online global finance to be a simple matter of plug and play.
Here it was. The little button popping up in the middle of the screen, ringed in blue: Install.
Beady eyes blinked and glared in the half-light. Now or never. His finger hovered over the mouse button. He couldn’t really do this, could he?
This machine kills . . . He could.
Another window popped up.
Enter master password.
Someone started beating at the door.
Aoife recognised the lock. She could have picked it with a paper clip. But this game had just changed. She was the one who was playing for time, now. On sight, Barb Collins had told the Scotsman on the phone. The verb shoot had been silent, but Aoife had heard it . . . Michael was in there. As for herself, she couldn’t see Barb Collins having much use for her, once this door opened . . .
She launched herself at it again, hard, but at a slant. It was a heavy metal door, but designed to contain fires rather than keep out intruders, and it opened inwards. If she hit it too hard, it might actually give.
*
The door thudded again. Michael looked at the instructions. The paper shook in his hand. He had to put it down on the desk so he could read it.
Enter password: 3m0rdn1laP. Press return.
He did as he was told. The button sat there a while, as if thinking it over, and then it blinked out, leaving just the home screen.
Had it worked? Was it really that easy? Even his credit card, when he’d had one, often demanded two-stage authentication.
The door thudded again.
Second-from-last item on the list: Don’t leave the thumb drive in the computer.
Michael snatched at the thumb drive, stuffed it in a pocket. Last item: Get out of there now: there’s a fire door at the back of the room.
The map of the maze had arrows showing the way.
He hurried along, bumping off the sides as he went. The static charge from the servers pulled at his arm hairs, trying to detain him. Cameras watched from the ceiling, passive-aggressive. Red eyes implored him: What have you done?
Was there any change? Had his action had consequence? Did lights still blink in the same sequence, or were they assembling in new constellations?
Another heavy thump on the door, the sound of voices, a woman shouting angrily.
The map hadn’t lied to him. He was clear of the maze, had reached the back of the server room. There was another door here, smaller than the office door, sheathed in dull metal. A green plastic sign, dimly lit, said Fire Exit. There was a glass-fronted box on the wall beside it, a hammer mounted on a bracket.
In the event of fire, break glass to open fire door. Warning: door is alarmed.
He pulled the hammer from its bracket and smashed in the glass.
One of the women was weeping. A computer printer, silent until now, chattered and whined, then went quiet again. Why do printers do that? Aoife wondered. Are they talking in their sleep? Coming back to life? Will I? Where is my respawn point?
She was aware of Barb Collins, invisible, in the void behind her, the yawning maw of the gun barrel, waiting to funnel her out of this world, away from this door in front of her, which, right now, was all the world that she had left. Her shoulder was bruising. That was something else to savour.
I think it gave a little that time, she said, not daring to look around.
Last chance, said Barb Collins. If I have to break it myself, you’ll already be dead.
Had Barb cocked her gun already, or would there be one last warning click? Aoife retreated a couple of steps, threw herself at the door.
Michael would have liked to hear the wail of an air raid, or a Stuka’s death dive. Instead, he heard a low, apologetic barp, repeated every few seconds, and a voice from the ceiling, computer generated.
Fire: leave now.
The emergency door clicked open, automatically triggered by the fire-defence system. Michael pushed it, went through. A spring closed it behind him.
He was in a short, bare corridor, lined with other emergency exits. At one end was a glass outer door with daylight beyond it. One by one, the other doors sprang open. People emerged, workers from the building’s other offices, techies and admin, streaming away from the fire alarm. They filled up the space in front of him, pushing their way to the street. Some carried laptops, children rescued from a blaze, but all of them were holding their telephones. A few had raised them over the crowd, framing selfies, updating social media. Michael ducked his face from their periscope eyes.
The crowd carried him along the corridor and into the street. There, blinking in the daylight, he looked about him, getting his bearings. He was in a lane at the back of the building. The other evacuees milled around, talking and complaining. No one seemed to think this alarm was for real.
The day was the same. The world hadn’t changed since he’d gone into the server room.
Screams, the roar of an engine, the crowd parting. People tripping each other in their scramble to escape. A Pajero jeep careened, wrong way, down the lane. Scattered, people turned and swore after it. The jeep lurched to a halt at the fire exit, parked skew in the road. The driver’s door flew open. Michael saw a face that he’d seen only once before, from under a blanket on the back of a Land Rover.
Cursing and shoving, wiping blood from his forehead with a crumpled paper face mask, the Scotsman forced his way in through the fire exit, pushing aside the last evacuees.
Aoife was right about the fire door. One honest shoulder was all that it took. The door collapsed inward and her momentum took her into the room beyond it, whether she liked it or not.
She did like it. Barb Collins
did not. As Aoife pounded across the floor, she heard the other woman shouting after her. A voice from the rafters told her to leave. Something about a fire. An insistent alarm tone. But these weren’t pressing matters for Aoife. She saw rows of steel cabinets, twinkling lights, a gap in the middle, maybe somewhere to hide. She launched herself at it, made it through the dark opening, just as Barb Collins charged into the room.
Aoife banged into one of the cabinets, bruising the other shoulder, then dodged right, down an aisle between the servers. Fairy lights blinked in inscrutable patterns.
She reached the end of a short passage, turned left, left again, flattened herself against a cabinet.
Hey Michael, she shouted, addressing the ceiling. Don’t answer me! Barb Collins is in here too. She has a gun and she’s been told to kill us.
She switched her position, another right and a left, holding her breath, stopping to listen. She could turn a corner and find Michael in hiding. Or walk into a bullet from Barb Collins’s gun.
Would Barb Collins follow her into this maze, or would she wait at the entrance for them to come out?
Fire, reminded the voice in the ceiling. Leave now.
Soon, firefighters would come, building management, maybe the police. Would the women in the office call for help?
Barb Collins must have reached the same conclusion: she didn’t have much time.
You two, she shouted. Come out of there. I’m not going to hurt you. We need to get out of here, quick.
Aoife said nothing.
Come on out. You want the Irish cops to find you? The secret renditions are already signed. Come with me and I’ll get you out of here on the Gulfstream. We’ll make our own deal. You, me and Fess.
Still, Aoife said nothing. Barb Collins spoke again:
Don’t make me come in there after you.
It occurred to Aoife that maybe she would.
Hey, Barb, she called. I’m armed. If you come in here, I’ll shoot.
You’ve got nothing. Irene had you searched.
I got the gun after they searched me. It was hidden in the bathroom of my parents’ flat.
Cut the crap, honey. We’ve all seen The Godfather.
It seemed to Aoife that Barb’s voice had moved since the last time she’d heard it. Barb Collins was triangulating on Aoife’s voice, trying to fix her position. She was already inside the maze.
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