Chapter Twenty-Five
Infiltration
Chantel was thrown into the same office in which she had been subjected to her extraction. She could hear the click of the door locking her in and the android’s footsteps disappear down the corridor. She wondered where Beren was held captive and started calling his name, to no avail. She felt hopeless. She had led Pangaea directly to Beren, despite all his previous warnings against trusting the company so heedlessly. This whole time, she had been oblivious to the fact that Pangaea had been using her. Her mind ached just thinking about it, in addition to the agony caused by her fresh wound. Not being able to bear any more pain from the gash in her head, Chantel found some dressing to bandage her gouge back up, gulped down some painkillers and fell asleep on the chair.
The next morning she awoke to the sound of voices surrounding her. As she groggily opened her eyes she saw the person in the world that she most wanted to see – Beren. He looked ruffled, no doubt from an uncomfortable night trapped in a parliamentary office, but not perturbed, although he must have figured out Pangaea’s intentions by now and knew what it wanted from him. He rolled his wheelchair over to Chantel’s side.
“Nice haircut,” were his first words to Chantel, as she turned her pounding head to see the Chairperson and android also in the room.
Chantel tried to disguise her pleasure at seeing Beren with a scowl as much as she could.
“Fancy seeing you here,” was all she could muster.
Beren then turned his attention to the Chairperson.
“How long are you going to keep us here? You can’t keep us captive. We have rights as global citizens.”
The Chairperson once again delivered a response in a steely composure.
“You, Beren Marley, have been charged with aiding and abetting a murder. Chantel’s footage from the Creator’s laboratory clearly shows you and the rest of your group being complicit in the homicide of a helpless old man at the hand of a psychopath. A subpoena has already been issued to the global police for your arrest.”
Chantel could not believe her ears.
“What? You can’t concoct a charge of accomplice to murder against him. He had nothing to do with that old man’s death.”
“Precisely Chantel, and neither did he try to stop it. We have the evidence at hand and you very well know that it would be enough to convict him.”
Just when Chantel was already feeling as bad as she thought she possibly could for dragging Beren into this whole sordid scheme, she felt worse. This would effectively seal Beren’s fate as a creator for Pangaea, to assist with its grand design of moulding the world.
“What makes you think I’ll work for you?” Beren demanded.
The hint of a snigger passed over the Chairperson’s face.
“Beren, we both know you won’t be able to resist being on the cutting edge of technology. We know what this means to you. You will be a pioneer. You will be breaking new ground. You’ll be able to access technologies that will allow you to do whatever you want. Even you can’t resist the opportunity to be that innovative.”
Beren raised an eyebrow.
“Well I s’pose that could be sort of cool.”
The Chairperson rubbed both hands together in what would be glee if the Chairperson was capable of expressing emotion.
“Now, your first project, Beren, is the implantation and programming of these new hard drive chips using the technology we gathered from the Creator’s laboratory. Are you up for that Beren?”
Beren indicated as much in the affirmative, while Chantel shot Beren a look of pure evil. The Chairperson almost seemed delighted.
“Terrific, now Chantel you’ll be the guinea pig for the first newly improved implant of Pangaea so just lie back in your chair again while my assistant preps you and then gets the materials needed for the implantation.”
Chantel acquiesced reluctantly to the cold steely fingers of the android touching her skin as it shaved her remaining hair from the other side of her head.
‘Godammit Beren,’ thought Chantel as she lay in terrified apprehension. ‘Don’t do this to me.’
Just when she was starting to think that Beren was never going to make his move, she noticed him surreptitiously reach for the laser shooter in his wheelchair as he changed the setting from ‘stun’ to ‘kill’. Chantel had her doubts about whether this would do any harm to the Chairperson, considering that she was convinced now the Chairperson was an android. Chantel tensed in anticipation, waiting for Beren’s signal. The android finished shaving Chantel’s head and left the office to gather the other surgical supplies needed. They waited in the office as the footsteps faded down the corridor. Then Beren attacked. Pling! Pling! Beren shot two quick, targeted laser beams from his wheelchair towards the Chairperson and the Chairperson collapsed in the corner.
“Well it took you bloody long enough,” Chantel said with relief as she jumped out of the surgical chair.
“I had to wait until they fixed that damn awful haircut that you had before,” was Beren’s excuse.
Chantel made her way towards the Chairperson with trepidation, explaining to Beren at the same time.
“Beren I think the Chairperson might be an android because…”
She stopped there. Blood was oozing from the Chairperson’s body.
“B-beren…” Chantel stammered. “The Chairperson…you’ve killed the Chairperson.”
Beren seemed surprised.
“Well that was my plan after all.”
“But Beren, if the Chairperson was a real person…this is an assassination. This is treason. You’ll be put in jail for good for this. Beren…what have you done?”
Beren started moving towards the door.
“C’mon Chantel. There’s no time to think about this now. We have to get out of here before—”
Pling! Pling! Pling! Beren fired a few shots at the returning assistant.
“—the assistant gets back. C’mon, run!”
Beren raced down the corridor rolling his wheelchair backwards and firing laser beams at the unrelenting android. Chantel raced after him.
“I was going to mention before,” she screamed above the sound of the volley of shots. “But the assistant is an android.”
Beren continued firing unremittingly while the android chased them, impervious to the attacking laser beams.
“I think I’ve figured that out now,” he screamed back. “Turn left at the end of this corridor.”
Chantel obeyed his commands only to see Beren turn in the other direction.
“Oops, I mean right if you’re facing this direction,” he corrected himself, as he swung his wheelchair to face forward again while turning the corner and slamming the door shut behind them.
“Where to now?” Chantel yelled.
“Quick, to the automobile-pad,” Beren directed, leading the way.
They turned down another corridor, passed through a door and found themselves outside, on the roof of Parliament tower. The Chairperson’s automobile was sitting in the centre of the landing pad. They raced towards it.
“Get on board, quickly,” Beren shouted as Chantel helped to pull him into the cockpit.
“Do you even know how to drive this thing?” Chantel screamed, panicking as the door to the landing burst open and the android started to run towards them.
“Do I?” Beren shouted with glee as he fired up the automobile so that it hovered briefly above the top of the building, before diving tauntingly towards the android then soaring off into the buzzing lights of Shanghai metropolis’ night sky.
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Chantel wrung her hands nervously as she sat next to Beren in the passenger side of the automobile. She didn’t enjoy Beren’s driving at the best of times but she knew that soon the global police would be after them. They had to find somewhere to hide soon.
“Watch out for that. And try not to hit that over there. Not so close to the side Beren.”
Chantel’s misplace
d advice was getting on Beren’s nerves.
“Okay, enough of the backseat driver talk Chantel. Don’t worry, I know how to handle one of these things…”
He trailed off, remembering how his last automobile accident had ended.
“We have to get back to the Saharan. We have to find Julie and make sure she’s okay. They weren’t interested in her when they took me from the boat. They simply drove this baby up to the dock, launched their ministerial representatives upon me, bundled me and my wheelchair on board and flew away before Julie even had time to scream. I hope she’s alright.”
Chantel was touched by Beren’s heartfelt concern about Julie’s safety.
“But Beren, do you realise what you’ve done? You just killed the most powerful person in the world. The government will order an emergency lockdown as soon as they find out. They will stop at nothing to bring you to justice. You are a global security threat now.”
“I know Chantel, which is why I need to make sure the world knows what the Chairperson wanted to do before they get me.”
“What are you planning to do Beren?”
“Remember the hologram recording the guards took from me in the Creator’s laboratory? I need that as evidence that Utopia was breaching the Human Integrity Act and that Pangaea planned to do the same. I’ll have to stream it to the world.”
Chantel considered the ramifications that this would have on the people.
“But Beren…if the whole world knows about this, the people aren’t going to stand for it. There’ll be massive uprisings…it will be a global revolution.”
“Exactly!” Beren shouted with glee. “We’ll get just what this world needs to shake off the power of the global five – a rebellion of the people that will lead to--”
“Anarchy,” Chantel interrupted. “You are going to throw this world into anarchy. There’ll be no global regime. The people won’t respect the global five. Beren, this will change the whole world order.”
Beren made a sharp turn in the automobile, just skimming the side of a building.
“If there’s one thing the world needs Chantel, it’s a shake-up.”
Chantel heart jumped into her throat as soon as they came around the corner of the skyscraper. They had just come face-to-face with the global police. Beren slammed the brakes on the automobile before powering up the hyper-drive mode.
“Hang on Chantel,” he yelled over the din of the sirens wailing and commands being issued over the loudspeaker. “We’re gonna have to rise above this all.”
Beren activated the hyper-drive and the automobile shot up like a bullet into the sky while the police looked helplessly on. A short-lived chase ensued but it was pointless for the global police to try to outfly the Chairperson’s automobile. The Chairperson had made sure that it was the most powerful vehicle on the planet and that there would be little chance any other automobiles could catch up to it. Beren and Chantel continued towards the direction of the port leaving behind fuming police in their wake.
As they approached the murky waters of Shanghai harbour, they desperately kept their eyes peeled for any sign of the Saharan.
“Do you think there’s some way of tracking her,” Beren asked, like the way they were able to locate your whereabouts.
“She has a Utopia chip. I don’t know if Pangaea can tap into Utopia’s mainframe. Let me see if I can bring up any information on the Chairperson’s automobile computer.”
Chantel started opening various applications on the computer switchboard in front of her, horrified at what she discovered.
“My god, there are search functions here for everything and everyone. You only need to tell this gizmo who to look for and this app will locate them using satellite imagery. This is incredible.”
Chantel tried to look up Julie Condor, unsure if she would even be searchable on the system and what name she would be stored under. The search was returned with no matches.
“I’m not getting anything,” Chantel told Beren.
“That’s okay, I think I’ve spotted her,” Beren announced.
He pointed towards the stars and there, beaming off into the sky was the symbol of the skull and crossbones – the pirate’s calling. Chantel released a yelp of joy and Beren sent the automobile careening towards the source of the light.
Julie viewed the incoming arrival of the automobile with uncertainty. She had her laser shooter poised for attack, just in case she needed to defend herself. Had she attracted the wrong sort of attention by beaming the pirate symbol into the night sky? She recognised the vessel that had kidnapped Beren and was fearful of its return. As the automobile slid onto the surface of the water near the Saharan, inflatable rafts sprung out from the bottom of the vessel, allowing the vehicle to come to a gentle floating halt. Beren popped the hood of the front before Julie could draw the wrong conclusion.
“Julie, there’s no time to waste. We have to get to the Pangaea mainframe.”
Chantel clambered on board the Saharan to retrieve the hologram recorder from Beren’s cabin. Julie had more questions than she could possibly ask at that point but was too confused to pose any of them.
“Jump in,” Chantel shouted to Julie; an order which she promptly obeyed.
“What’s going on?” Julie cried.
“We have to act quickly,” Chantel explained. “Pangaea…they were using us the whole time. They knew about Utopia and wanted the Creator’s technology. We need to let others know.”
“But, didn’t the Chairperson care about the slaves?”
“The Chairperson is dead,” Beren declared, “which is why we need to get to the mainframe quickly before the global police get to us.”
“Oh,” Julie mused, realising what must have happened. “So now you are going to broadcast the evidence of slavery to the world?”
“Precisely,” Beren said with a glint of rebellion in his eye. “We have to get the message out. Chantel, are you able to locate the coordinates of Pangaea’s mainframe? We can set this baby to autopilot mode and it should be smooth sailing all the way there, if no one interrupts us that is. Julie, can you prepare the hologram recording for release?”
As the automobile headed deep into the direction of Shanghai’s inland technology zone, there was no time for Julie or Chantel to think about the consequences of what they were about to do. All they knew was that Beren’s plan would plunge the world onto an irrevocable path for change. They hurtled onwards, hoping to gain what cover they could from the darkness of night in order to reach Pangaea’s mainframe before sunrise. All the while, the fact escaped none of them that the message they were busily working on would change the fate of the future.
Pangaea Page 25
