Aoife looked up at the ceiling, at the LED strip that oozed light into the server room. It was right over her head. There was also a camera, pointing towards her. Was it watching her? Could it see where she was?
Aoife didn’t like guns. Any monkey could shoot one. But she took out the tiny semi-automatic that McDonnell had given her, four years before, for concealed protection on that stake-out in Lurgan; the gun she’d brought to Dublin by mistake on the late train from Belfast, having forgotten it was in her bag when she’d gone on the booze there last Christmas – her goodbye drinks, in fact; the gun that – sobering up the next day, realising she was illegally armed in the wrong jurisdiction – she had stashed behind a panel in her parents’ spare bathroom.
It was a long time since she’d been on a gun range, but it took her only one shot to take out the light. The darkness rang in her ears.
Come and look for me now, Barb, she thought.
Michael ran on to the bridge that carried the tramlines over the basin. There, he stopped to get his breath. Afternoon had chased off the clouds, turned spring into premature summer. Kids from the local council flats swarmed around the basin. Some wore cheap wetsuits, others swimsuits or underwear. They jumped from the dockside with knees hugged to chins. A police car, called to suppress this outbreak of free fun, parked a short way off, not intervening. The cops, unlike the office managers who’d complained about the swimmers, knew that, for those who were born here, this was still the docks.
The traffic seemed to Michael to be heavier than ever. Cars idled in the street, trapped by peristaltic lights, moving only two or three car lengths at each phase of green. They were waiting to cross a white cable-rigged bridge, like a giant egg slicer, that spanned Dublin’s river – the Liffey, was it? – at the end of Spencer Dock.
Nothing had changed. The sky was the same colour. So much for the doomsday that he had been promised.
What next? He could call Aoife again, at her parents’ house. But he didn’t think he had the right. He hadn’t been fair to her. He’d accused her of working with Towse, to trick him into coming to Ireland. Turned out, the bad faith was his. And it’s much harder to forgive the ones we have wronged than the ones who have wronged us. How could he face her? Towse thought Michael was in love with her, which was silly enough, but to think she could feel anything for him . . . ?
He would go back and look for Towse at the Cross Guns Bridge, on the off chance that, having got what he wanted from Michael, Towse hadn’t already cleared off. But he’d left her a message. What if Aoife was there too? He felt sick when he thought of her.
There was a taxi over there, idling at the traffic light. Too late. The traffic light turned green and the taxi moved off before Michael could reach it. The next car followed. But the one after stayed put, as if stalled in the road. A horn sounded behind it, then another, then more, and now the space between the buildings blared with angry car horns, venting their rage on the woman who sat, oblivious, at the wheel of her Prius, staring down at her phone, with two precious car-lengths of asphalt in front of her, the light turning orange, holding up the southbound lane.
A policeman got out of the parked squad car and tapped on her window. The woman glanced up at him, startled, then drove off through the red light, looking at her phone, the policeman running after.
Something strange was happening up and down the street. Several cars pulled over to the curb, mounted the pavement. Doors swung open and drivers got out, distracted, staring at their phones. Others, trapped in the gridlock, leaned on their horns, shouted insults, then, as the infection spread, fell silent themselves, picked up phones and turned on radios. People spilled from the doors of offices and apartments – smokers, and non-smokers who were smoking now – staring at phones or tablets or laptops.
The cop stood in the junction, ignoring the stalled traffic. He too was now looking at his phone.
The traffic noise faded, replaced by the ping of push notifications, a murmur of voices, telephones ringing. The loudest sound now was the whooping of the children, splashing in the basin. Their game was much older, and built to endure.
What had he done? He had to ask someone.
That guy – he’d do. Cargo pants and takeaway coffee. Outsize glasses, beard, too-tight shirt, tote bag branded for the tech firm he probably worked for. He stood, rooted to the pavement, staring at his phone. He was wearing a face mask over his beard.
Hey, said Michael, what’s going on?
The guy looked at Michael, then down at his phone again.
Michael tried again.
Is something happening? Everyone on the street is looking at their phones.
This time, the guy didn’t bother to look up.
So look at yours.
I haven’t got one.
Too bad for you.
He continued his scrolling.
Michael felt an unfamiliar urge. Something had changed in him lately. He felt like pissing someone off.
I said, let me see your phone, pal.
Fuck off. This phone cost me twelve hundred euros. I’m not handing it to some rando in the street.
Michael took out a bunch of five-hundred-euro bills, stuffed them into the guy’s shirt pocket, snatched the phone from his hands.
Hey! Give that back! I don’t want your germs on it!
I left you a fucking deposit.
He turned his back on the guy, just to heighten the buzz. It was a dick move, he knew, one he’d learned from the kids who’d bullied him in high school. Go on – I dare you. I’m making it easy.
The phone was open on a news feed. Frantic headlines, updating every few seconds.
Massive sell-off in New York exchanges . . . Dollar in free fall . . . Fed helpless to intervene.
Jesus, said the guy behind him. This is three thousand euros, in cash.
Shut up. I’m reading.
High-frequency trading bots run amok . . . New cryptocurrency exposes critical flaw in online financial systems . . .
Hey, I’m sorry, man. I thought you were a local. One of those Irish junkies.
Shut up, can’t you?
Inscape stock worthless . . .
I did this, thought Michael. I know it. We did it. Me and Towse
and Aoife. Whatever this turns out to be, wherever it goes next, we
did it.
Alice. He’d forgotten Alice. But she had done this, more than anyone. This was her day, and she wasn’t here. He blinked.
I can’t believe this, said the guy behind him. I can’t believe Inscape is tanking now, of all times. This new virus would have made us king of the world.
Michael turned and looked at him.
What new virus? What are you talking about?
Don’t you follow the news? Where have you been?
I’ve been travelling. What new virus?
It’s like the flu, but it kills lots more people. They shut the schools here yesterday, because of it. That’s why all these kids are here now, instead of in class. They might even have to shut the pubs.
In Ireland? That sounds awful.
No, it’s great.
What?
This virus sticks to surfaces, so cash could be pretty much banned. If the shops are closed, retail will shift to the big online players. Inscape’s tech would take over the world.
Right . . . Do you by any chance subcontract for Inscape?
We’re a wholly-owned subsidiary. And most of my stock is vested in Inscape . . .
His eyes, which were all that Michael could see of his face over the mask, suddenly widened.
Hey . . . if global stocks have tanked, then my Krugerrands must be worth a lot more now. I might even be ahead . . . Give me my phone back; I want to check the price of gold.
Michael hefted the phone a couple of times, and then he threw it across the grass verge of the bas
in, over the heads of the diving kids. It splashed in the water, went under.
Keep the change, he said, and left.
See the Scotsman, charging down the emergency corridor, reaching the fire door at the end. There, he stops. You can see him on the CCTV, blood caked on his face, considering his next move.
He hasn’t been trained to leap without looking.
With one hand under his jacket, he uses his free hand to open the door, just an inch or two. He looks into the darkened server room, then lets the door shut. The hand comes from under his jacket, holding a gun.
He waits a couple of beats, getting his breath back. Then, in one smooth movement, he opens the door, just wide enough to slip through it, and eases it shut behind him. The corridor is empty at last. There’s no soundtrack on this footage. But you can tell that he goes without making a sound.
*
Aoife squatted with her back against a server stack, the tiny pistol held between her knees. She watched the LEDs dance on the units. For all their sparkles, flutters, they gave her no light for the sights of her gun.
Fire. Leave now.
Aoife parted her knees experimentally, watching lights disappear as her knees eclipsed them, confirming her existence by the transit of her limbs. The same lights would betray her if she dared to move about.
This was a stand-off.
There were three of them in it, she had to assume: Barb, herself, and possibly Michael. The cameras above might be a fourth element, if they could see in the dark.
Barb Collins would definitely shoot on sight. Aoife probably wouldn’t be able to bring herself to do that. But Barb Collins didn’t know that.
Fire. Leave now.
She spotted something new above her head: a thin beam of light, a narrow wedge on the ceiling, revealing colour-coded cables, a red cylinder, pressurised gas for fire control. Daylight, diffused. Someone had cracked a door open. Was it at the front of the room, or the back? She’d lost her bearings in this labyrinth.
Fire. Leave now.
The light returned, the wedge wider this time, then it was gone. Someone had sneaked through a door of the server room. Michael?
Fire. Leave now.
How long had she been in here already? Time slows down when life speeds up. Two minutes? Three?
It had to be Michael. She had to bet on that. He’d found a way out, so now she should move too. If the local police caught her, they would pass her into American hands. Barb Collins hadn’t been lying about that. Aoife had heard of worse places than Guantanamo.
Fire. Leave now.
She put the pistol in her jacket pocket, got on all fours, crawled to the next corner, got lower, put her head around it.
Fireflies. Red eyes blinking, white eyes staring.
Fire. Leave now.
She rounded the corner, crawled along this new reach of the maze. The carpet was thin, overlaying metal floor plates. She had to move slowly, or the sound would betray her.
This was a dead end. She turned, made her way back to the junction she’d come from. This time, she kept straight, reached another row of servers, saw a gap to her right.
How many paths could there be through one rather simple arrangement of cabinets? What were the odds she could sneak out without meeting Barb Collins?
Warning: inert gases will deploy in sixty seconds.
What?
She remembered the bottles she’d seen in the ceiling before she shot out the light. Inert gases, used to smother fires without shorting out electronic components. They would vent automatically, if nobody cancelled the alarm.
Were they poisonous? That wouldn’t make sense – poisonous gas in a crowded building . . . But maybe they would stifle you, block your access to oxygen, the same way, presumably, that they suffocated flames?
Aoife fought the urge to get up and run. She had sixty seconds.
Warning: inert gases will deploy in fifty seconds.
Another dead end. She must have missed a gap. She turned around, went back. Here it was: a space on her left.
It felt like she was working her way deeper into the maze, rather than out of it.
There was something else here. Light. A square of blue, a lit computer screen. It showed her a table, a keyboard and a mouse. A dead-end chamber at the heart of the maze.
Its light would also show Aoife to anyone who came around that corner.
She heard the creak of a floor plate, relieved of a stealthy weight.
Warning: inert gases will deploy in forty seconds.
Aoife dived under the table, desperately pulling out plugs. When the last one came out, the monitor died. She was back in the darkness. But now she was under a table, the worst place to hide . . .
She waited.
Warning: inert gases will deploy in thirty seconds.
There really were more lights now, dancing along the fronts of the servers. She was sure of it. More of them were blinking, and most of these were red. Was something wrong with the computers? Had Michael done whatever he came for?
Warning: inert gases will deploy in twenty-five seconds.
The lights had changed again. They were shimmering, pulsing on and off in geometric patterns, murmurations of stars.
The lights now switched on all at once, then off again, then on, then off. And she saw, moving stealthily across their pulsing field of light, the silhouette of a person, and the shape of a gun.
Warning: inert gases will deploy in twenty seconds.
Aoife felt her heart beat in her ears.
The lights came on, went off again. The figure moved past them, its motion captured and heightened by the flickering glow, as if by the strobe at a rave. Aoife watched Barb Collins creep past the table, deeper into the blind central chamber.
When she was sure she had passed, Aoife slid out from under the table, crawling silently away in the opposite direction.
She turned a corner, got up, ran.
Warning: inert gases will deploy in fifteen seconds.
A dead end. She turned back, tried another way. Her feet drummed on the floor. Somewhere behind her, Barb Collins was running too.
Which way to go?
The lights had changed pattern again, shimmering from left to right, left to right.
As good a way as any. Aoife moved right.
Heavy breathing behind her.
Warning: inert gases will deploy in ten seconds.
She turned another corner. Another new pattern – iridescent gauzy veils, the aurora borealis, waving and dancing, right to left, right to left.
Aoife went left.
She could see a dim light at the end of this aisle.
Fire Exit, it said.
Inert gases will deploy in five seconds. Warning: deployment will cause severe overpressure. Open your mouth and cover your ears.
She reached the door, pushed against it.
A bullet hit the wall, inches from her shoulder.
She was through the door, running.
Gases deploying. All fire doors will be locked for the next fifteen minutes.
She reached the street exit, looked back. The Scotsman was standing in the fire door, holding it open, aiming a pistol at her.
An invisible giant kicked Aoife, hard, in the sinuses and ears. The door to the street blew out on its hinges. She shot through it on to the pavement, and lay there, stunned.
Cut to the CCTV footage. The fire door – blown outward by the gases vented into the server room – strikes the wall, bounces back into the Scotsman, smashing his nose. You can slow it right down, if you want to see clearly.
White mist swirls from the darkened room into the corridor. The Scotsman, a ghost in this chemical fog, is swaying in the fire door, somehow still standing and holding it open. He is no doubt disoriented, probably concussed. But we see him steady himself, a
im the gun again, lower this time, to where Aoife lies in the exit, half in, half out of the door to the street. Then his body jerks several times, as if struck from behind. He falls back into the server room. The door, now unobstructed, swings shut behind him, locks automatically. End of scene.
Aoife, lying on the pavement, saw the Scotsman take aim at her. She saw him fall. And unlike the CCTV system, which had no microphones, she also heard the gunshots from inside the server room. Then she was up and running, and she didn’t look back.
Michael spotted a taxi for hire, a blue Skoda Octavia estate. It cruised north off the egg-slicer bridge, past the people glued to their phones and car radios, the splashing, joyful kids. The driver stopped when Michael hailed him.
Where to?
He was a big guy, early fifties, with messy brown hair.
Michael got in the back.
You know the Cross Guns Bridge?
Everybody knows the Cross Guns Bridge, my friend. Sooner or later, we all have to cross it.
Michael looked at the driver, suspicious. He could see his eyes in the rear-view mirror.
What do you mean by that? That sounds like an old saying, or something.
Nah. It’s a statement of fact. The Cross Guns Bridge is a terrible bottleneck. It’s a nightmare at rush hour.
Well, the traffic seems pretty light right now.
Yeah. It’s funny, that. This is normally peak rush hour, Fridays. Must be this new virus. Apparently, they’ve just found the first confirmed case in Ireland. Some kid in a school near my house . . .
They had turned west, away from Spencer Dock. Council housing on one side, on the other a stone-built Victorian railway, its arches, glassed in, home to boxing clubs and car repair shops. Kids in cheap wetsuits trotted in groups down the pavements, or pulled wheelies on their bicycles, rushing to join the fun at Spencer Dock, ground zero of global financial Armageddon. So this was how wars felt, thought Michael. There’s always someone having fun.
To be honest, said the driver, I’ve been too busy with my own stuff to follow the news much. I only drive part-time, to help feed the family. And to get out of the house a bit. The real thing I do is, I write.
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