Lights Out

by Amy Cross

  He waits, but for the next few minutes Milo scrupulously refrains from actually leaving his scent. He continues to examine the spot, before finally wandering away and peeing instead on the wall.

  Sighing, Anders leads him across the grass, taking him toward a bench that's partially in the shade. Both man and dog are limping slightly, and Anders winces slightly as he reaches the bench and takes a seat. Milo tries to pull and go over to some nearby bushes, but his lead isn't long enough and he quickly gives up on the notion; instead, he goes and sniffs a patch of grass that's growing through a crack in the pavement.

  Anders takes his phone from his pocket and brings up a browser window, and then he starts searching for information about pacemakers. For the next few minutes he tries to understand what might happen to a person if their pacemaker stops working for twelve hours, but he finds nothing too conclusive. There's certainly a chance that his friend the Duchess of Cornford will be just fine, although he can't shake a feeling of concern. Finally, realizing that he's never going to get a definitive answer, he puts his phone away and leans back on the seat.

  Glancing toward the distant city, Anders watches the various skyscrapers for a moment before, finally, his gaze falls on one in particular.

  His eyes narrow slightly.

  “Mummy, there's a dog!” a little girl's voice cries out. “Can I say hello?”

  “Be quick, honey. We have to get home soon.”

  Anders turns just as a young girl – no more than ten years old – runs over and stops next to Milo.

  “Can I pet your dog, please?” she asks.

  “Of course,” Anders says, impressed by her politeness, and then he watches as the girl crouches down and tentatively touches the back of Milo's neck. “It's okay, he's friendly. He's just old.”

  “What's his name?”

  “Milo.”

  “Why?”

  “I don't know. He just looks like a Milo. Don't you think so?”

  The girl gently strokes Milo's back, and for a moment she seems lost in thought.

  “I suppose so,” she says finally, as if she's announcing the result of some great deliberation. “He could also be a Fred.”

  “Fred?” Anders leans down and looks at Milo's face for a moment. “You know, now that you mention it, I could almost see that. If he ever has to go undercover and take on an assumed name, I'll let him be called Fred. I don't think anyone would disbelieve that.”

  “Emily, come on!” a woman calls out from further along the pavement. “Daddy's waiting for us!”

  “Mummy, look at this dog!” the girl shouts. “He's so cute!”

  “He knows that,” Anders says with a faint smile. “He's very vain. He's losing his sight a little, which makes him cautious, but he knows he still has his looks. One might say that he's coasted along on his looks for the whole of his life.” He chuckles. “Like me.”

  “He's really pretty,” the girl says, as her mother comes closer.

  “Come on, Emily,” the woman says, reaching a hand toward her daughter before turning to Anders. “I'm sorry, she's very -”

  As soon as she sees Anders' face, she freezes.

  “Hello, Cassandra,” Anders says, smiling at his old friend. “We need to talk.”

  Chapter Eight

  11:15am

  “People are idiots,” Essien says as his armored vehicle thunders along an empty London street. “Worse. They're scum. Ninety-nine per cent of them live meaningless lives that have no real impact upon the world around them. They matter as a mass, but each individual is worthless.”

  The car takes the next left, briefly passing a young man wandering along the street with his face covered by a hoodie.

  “What would happen if he dropped dead?” Essien asks, turning and looking back at the man as the car speeds along toward the garage entrance ahead. “Maybe he has family who would give a shit, but apart from that? Nothing. If a man is not important by the age of thirty, then maybe he should just be thrown into the grinder. People don't realize how important wars are, do they? The modern economy doesn't function without periodic wars. Sure, outsource them to some shit-hole country far away, but we always need a few good wars up and running.”

  He waits until the man is out of view, and then he turns to Randall.

  “We need another big World War,” he continues. “I know we still have wars, we have them more than ever, but everyone's too much of a pussy to give them a proper name. Why not draw all this shit together, all the stuff from the Middle East and Asia, and call it World War Three? Why not be proud of what we've achieved? Or are all our politicians just a bunch of fucking pussies?”

  “An interesting proposition,” Randall replies as the vehicle drives into the darkness of the garage entrance. A moment later, the lights flicker into life. “I'm not sure that your friends in Westminster or Washington would be too keen, though. The phrase World War has yet to come back into fashion. I'm sure it will, though, eventually. They say these things are cyclical.”

  Essien lets out a snort of derision, before glancing back just in time to see that the garage's main concrete door has been lowered into position.

  “I want all safeguards in place for tonight,” he says firmly. “How many men do we have on the property?”

  “Six, including ourselves and the driver.”

  “Six? That's not enough.”

  “Sir -”

  “Get more.”

  “It's more than enough, Sir. Nothing's going to happen tonight, I promise. Do you think your enemies have been sitting around, twiddling their thumbs and waiting for an almost impossible series of freak events to occur? Honestly, you're probably safer here tonight than you've been at any point since your retirement. Who exactly do you think is going to have the time and resources to plan an attack on you while you're in this tower? Besides, they won't have any electronic devices either.”

  The car pulls to a halt outside the elevators, and Essien immediately climbs out. He glances around, still worried that a figure might at any moment appear from the shadows. Years of living in fear have taught him to remain vigilant at all times, and he knows that – while his enemies are spread all around the world – there must definitely be more than a few creeping through the streets of London. Despite all the assurances he's being given by Randall, he still feels a simmering sense of worry in his gut. There's a fear he can't dislodge.

  “The sooner we get you upstairs,” Randall tells him after a moment, “the better.”

  “Who's the guard at the entrance?”

  “A young guy named Vips,” Randall explains. “I told you about him when he first came aboard. He's ex-SAS. The man could kill someone just by thinking about them for too long.”

  “I don't want him leaving his post,” Essien says as he looks toward the distant entrance and spots a figure holding a machine gun. “Tell him to piss where he is. Hell, he can shit there if he has to. Make sure he's got food and water to last the night. What kind of light will he be using?”

  “We're going to have to resort to candles.”

  “He's not to move, do you understand?” Essien replies. “Even if he farts, he has to stay there and smell it. And make sure he's got plenty of ammunition. Tell him to shoot if he's in any doubt. Hell, tell him I'll break his neck in the morning if he hasn't discharged at least half of whatever you give him. If he doesn't shoot a few times, it shows he's not paying attention.”

  “Of course, Sir,” Randall says as the elevator door opens. “Now can we please get upstairs? It's not even midday yet, we still have more than six hours before the disruption begins. There's still a lot that we need to get done.”

  “Fine,” Essien mutters, before heading into the elevator with Randall right behind him. “I want to know exactly how we're going to secure the building,” he adds as the door slides shut and the chamber starts to rise. “If all the sensors are offline, how will we know if someone tries to tunnel through one of the walls?”

  “And how would they do t
hat, Sir?”

  “With a drill, you fucking idiot.”

  “And how would that drill work without electricity, Sir?”

  Essien turns and glares at him.

  “With unlimited resources, a great deal of time and some electricity, such things are possible,” Randall continues, “but this time in twentyfour hours, the solar storm will already be over and the world will still be turning.”

  “I need to -”

  “And a lot of people will have made a lot of money,” Randall adds.

  This, finally, attracts Essien's attention. As the chamber rockets up the spine of the tower, he stands for a moment in thoughtful contemplation.

  “There are plenty of idiots out there who'll make stupid decisions before 6pm,” Randall points out. “It would seem almost cruel if you didn't take advantage. It might also be worth looking into the kinds of industry that might benefit in the days immediately following this event. Governments around the world will be looking to pump money into anything that can help prevent this kind of thing happening again.”

  “You raise some interesting ideas,” Essien murmurs. “I could make billions.”

  “Someone has to. Why not you?”

  “We need to hit the ground running,” Essien continues. “While everyone else is out there panicking, we need to have everything primed to start tomorrow morning. By the time the power's back on, we need to have projects in place that can reap the benefits of all the panic. Global projects.”

  “Starting, I'd suggest,” Randall says, “with key strategic investments.”

  “Exactly. But in what?”

  “Aerospace companies. Space flight technology. Anything that could be pitched as a means of avoiding this sort of thing happening again.”

  “I need to identify some targets.”

  “I've drawn up a preliminary list of a hundred for you to look at.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Essien asks as the chamber stops and the door slides open. “We've only got a few hours to get this all set up before the blackout.”

  They step out of the chamber and back into the penthouse suite.

  “I'll get the list transferred to your phone, Sir,” Randall replies.

  “I'm going to make billions,” Essien whispers as he grabs the remote control and switches the television back on. “Trillions, maybe.”

  “And we are getting reports of incidents across the country,” the news anchor says, speaking over shots of people smashing shop windows. “Shops are being looted, people are ignoring official advice to avoid panic buying, and it seems that police numbers are inadequate to deal with what appears to be a growing problem in the hours before the blackout begins.”

  “You see?” Essien says with a smile as he watches the chaos on the screen. “This is why I'm the fucking boss of everything. When shit hits the fan, I'm the one who keeps a cool head and spots a good opportunity.”

  Chapter Nine

  11:20am

  “Do you remember the last day we were in Syria?” Anders asks as he and Cassie sit on the park bench, watching Emily play with Milo. “We'd been given our orders to pull out, right after we got free. Everyone told us the regime was coming down, that we weren't needed there anymore. And I said we should stay, I said we should issue a red notice and insist on staying. Think if we had. Think how history would be different.”

  Emily giggles as she plays with Milo.

  “We could have saved the world,” Anders continues. “That decision, right there and then, could have changed everything. We knew what needed doing. At least, I knew, and I think you did too. We could have been heroes. Not that I would have wanted any glory, you understand, but a little light recognition wouldn't have gone amiss. A medal or two more.”

  He watches Emily for a moment longer, before turning to Cassie.

  “Or don't you remember?” he asks. “Have you put it all out of your mind?”

  “I remember,” she says, conspicuously not looking at him. Instead, she continues to watch her daughter. “I just don't think about it very much.”

  “About Syria?”

  “About all of it.”

  Anders studies the side of her face for a moment, watching for any flickers of emotion that might let him understand what his old friend is feeling.

  “Then we went to Novosibirsk,” he says finally. “That was a shit-show from the start. I don't know why they wanted us to go there in the first place, it's not like there was even a properly-defined target. We were just told to sit tight and wait for our next orders. How long did we spend in that place? Sometimes I feel like we were sent there because somebody wanted to keep us off the playing field, they wanted to keep us spinning our wheels while they decided what to do with us. And then two weeks later we were pulled out of the field entirely. It all ended so suddenly. After Tom Dansing and -”

  Suddenly Cassie turns to him.

  “Oh,” he continues, with a calculated smile, “did that name get your attention?”

  “What are you doing here?” she asks, with a hint of fear in her voice.

  “You know what I'm doing here.”

  “I don't.”

  “Really?” He turns and looks at the skyline, in particular at the distant Essien tower many miles away. “That's disappointing. I'd hoped your mind might still be sharp.”

  Now it's her turn to study him, watching the side of his face for a moment before turning and looking toward the exact same spot.

  “You've heard the news, I take it,” Anders says as they both stare forward.

  “A blackout's coming.”

  “Nine hours, more or less. Six tonight until about three in the morning. No power. No electricity. Nothing like that will work.”

  “People are panicking.”

  “Are you panicking?”

  He waits for an answer.

  “I'm worried about stupid people,” she says finally, “but that's not new. I'm worried about idiots.”

  “Idiots?”

  “They're everywhere.”

  “I've never heard of one,” Anders replies, blank-faced. “Never in my life, never heard and never met one. What's an idiot?”

  He waits, and then he grins.

  “A little joke,” he adds, before watching the tower again. “Do you think he's worried?”

  “Who?”

  “You know who. Essien, up there in that tower.”

  “He's probably not even -”

  “The airports are closed, Cassie,” Anders says, interrupting her, “and Essien's jet didn't leave before that cut-off point. He's been in the country for the past six months.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I've been keeping tabs on him.”

  “Why?”

  “In case the bastard makes a mistake.”

  “And has he?”

  “No, not yet. And he probably won't, either. He has an instinct for self-preservation.”

  They sit in silence for a moment, watching the tower. In particular, they're watching the very tip, the location of the penthouse suite.

  “Do you remember the days after Tom died?” Anders asks finally. “We made a vow. We both knew that Essien was too smart for us to get to him. We knew it would be suicide to even try. We both wanted revenge for Tom's death, Cassie, but we put aside our emotions and we were smart about it.” He pauses. “But we promised that if an opportunity ever came up to get to Essien, to kill him for what he did to Tom, then we'd take it. No matter how long we had to wait.”

  Again, they sit in silent contemplation of the distant tower.

  “He's vulnerable tonight,” Anders adds.

  “He's never vulnerable.”

  “He relies on machines and computers to keep himself safe from his many enemies,” Anders points out. “That's smart and it works, and it's always going to work, but tonight there's no power and that means he's vulnerable. It means that if we're smart, we can get to him.”

  “At the top of that tower?”

 
“At the top of that tower.”

  She pauses.

  “No,” she says finally, “it's impossible.”

  “It's not impossible,” he tells her. “It's difficult, it's risky, but it's absolutely possible. It's the exact thing we've been waiting for, ever since Tom died ten years ago.”

  “Anders, I...”

  Her voice trails off for a moment.

  Emily laughs as she continues to play with Milo.

  “A vow is a vow,” Anders reminds Cassie. “We're the same people we were ten years ago, when we made that vow. You made fun of me, you told me that one day I'd be an old man and I wouldn't be able to do anything. Well, sure, I am old now, but I've kept myself in shape. Do you know why I've done that? It's because I always knew there was a chance of getting at Essien. I always thought that the universe might toss us a bone.”

  He waits.

  Cassie doesn't say anything.

  “You have a husband,” Anders adds after a few seconds.

  She nods.

  “And a child.”

  She nods again.

  “You have a life. You've gone deep undercover and -”

  “I'm not undercover,” she says firmly. “I've retired.”

  “Me too.”

  “So why are -”

  “Because we made a vow to make Essien pay for what he did to Tom.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “You're not going to keep your vow?”

  “You can't ask me to go back to that life.”

  “It's one night only.”

  “I'm not that person anymore, Anders.”

  “Bullshit.” Sighing, he gets to his feet. “I'll be on the corner of Bazely Street and Mountague Place at exactly seven o'clock this evening. That's within walking distance of the tower. I'll wait fifteen minutes and then I'll get started whether you're there or not.”

  “I won't be,” she tells him.

  “I never knew you were a coward,” he replies.

  “I am now.”

  “Also, I need your husband to look after my dog,” Anders says. “I'll pick him up tomorrow. If I don't make it, your family has a dog now.”

  “Steve's allergic to dogs,” Cassie replies.