by Matt Rogers
He found another street cart, and bought another bottle.
Then it was back to the same head-throbbing, heart-pounding blur of motion. He was barely paying attention to street signs, or his surroundings. He knew by instinct where the Upper East Side lay, and he steered himself there using his subconscious alone. He needed to. He could barely think straight through the haze of booze. He had the uncanny ability to mask his inebriation, but he knew how he felt on the inside, and he was by no means ready for an intense debrief with King and Violetta.
When the demographic changed from excited civilians of all socioeconomic backgrounds to frantic businessmen and women in suits and skirts and coats, he knew he’d made it to the Upper East Side.
He wondered what people made of him. He was dressed expensively in designer-wear, including a seven-thousand dollar leather jacket from Dolce & Gabbana, but he was coated in sweat and panting for breath with every step.
It helped that he was still feeling the effects of the booze. He didn’t give a shit what people thought of him.
He didn’t pay much attention to his surroundings. His mind was dull and unfocused, grappling with the change in circumstances. One moment he’d been dancing with a beautiful woman, planning a sleepless night with her at his penthouse, and the next he was running back home on foot, downing bottles of water, perspiring freely, trying his best to return to a coherent state so he could be of use to his country’s government in a time of mass panic.
He drank down the entire third bottle, found his building’s street, and jogged across the road, weaving between stationary cars. The Upper East Side was a more lavish area, but a blackout didn’t discriminate. Streetlights and traffic lights weren’t working here, either. Everyone was just as concerned as they were in Harlem.
Sure enough, his building was illuminated. There were only a smattering of windows glowing up the side of the eighty-storey structure. In normal circumstances, the lack of light would have made it seem desolate. Now, surrounded by total darkness, it was a beacon. A soft glow emanated through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows in the lobby, and Slater peered through to see a handful of the building’s staff milling behind the reception desk, looking mighty uncomfortable.
They’d opted to use as few lights as possible. Slater admired the decision. The less attention drawn to them, the better. The last thing they wanted was angry mobs outside the front door, demanding to be let in. As a result, the lobby had been plunged into shadow.
Slater pulled to a halt on the other side of the street and doubled over to catch his breath. He wanted to appear presentable, even though he was known to the staff. It would be just his luck to be turned away because he looked like a sweating madman. So he wiped the perspiration off his face with the shirt under his leather jacket before straightening up.
He stepped down off the sidewalk.
Something whistled past his ear from behind, fast and hard.
He flinched.
Half a second later the guttural cough of a suppressed gunshot spat from the lip of the alleyway behind him.
He heard it, and threw himself to the sidewalk with reckless abandon, nearly breaking his nose in his haste to flatten to the concrete.
Lucky he took such drastic measures.
More displaced air washed over him.
Thwack, thwack.
Once, twice.
He rolled, tumbling end over end like a man possessed until he reached the safety of a big metal dumpster overflowing with trash. He hurled himself behind it, sacrificing the skin on his hands for greater speed. When he leapt up into a crouch with his heart in his throat, he realised how disoriented he was. His vision tilted to the left as he righted himself. With one hand he seized the edge of the dumpster for support, and the other reached back for the Colt.
You drunk, he thought. You fucking drunk. It’s about time it got you killed. You deserve this.
But there were no follow-up shots.
Just the pitter-patter of footsteps, receding into the distance.
His attacker, fleeing.
A throaty cackle rang out, eerie in the dark.
Slater froze in place. He didn’t often hear laughter in the midst of a firefight.
And after the cackle, a high-pitched male voice.
‘You did this!’ it screamed, the words echoing off the dumpsters. ‘You took everything from us, motherfucker! This is your fault! This—’
The man didn’t finish the last sentence. He devolved into more raucous laughter, this time uncontrolled. Slater didn’t move a muscle. He stayed right behind the dumpster. Mostly because the guy was already running away, and there was no point prolonging a firefight unnecessarily. But partly because of the volatility. The guy sounded certifiably insane. No matter how unskilled he might be combat-wise, you couldn’t predict what a madman would do. There was a chance he was crazy enough to have no regard for his own life.
So Slater stayed put, and a shiver ran down his spine.
Because of the weird setting, and the total absence of streetlights, and the echo of laughter, and the absence of civilians on this particular stretch of sidewalk.
When the laughter faded into nothingness, Slater stood up.
You did this.
Dread enveloped him.
Tentatively, he raced across the street for his building’s lobby.
16
Dark.
All dark.
King was inches away from the floor-to-ceiling windows of his penthouse. Eighty floors up, with an unparalleled view of Manhattan and Central Park.
It was like something out of a dystopian movie. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly why it filled him with tension. In all likelihood, the government would mobilise its resources to fix the issue at the source, and power would be restored before the following evening. Sure, right now there was no running water, no phone coverage, no ability to communicate with anyone through anything other than the radio. But it’d all be okay in the morning.
Right?
‘Right,’ King muttered to himself.
He stood in the dark, too. There was a desk lamp switched on in the corner of the cavernous space, giving just enough illumination to see the silhouettes of his furniture, but it felt wrong to have the overhead lights on when the rest of the city had been plunged into the dark ages.
It certainly made things a touch more ominous.
Someone knocked at the front door.
King stopped twirling the satellite phone between his fingers. He eyed the big slab of oak at the end of the corridor, but he didn’t immediately move to answer it. He found himself rooted to the spot, deep in thought. For the first time in a while, he didn’t want to step out of his comfort zone. It’d either be Slater or Violetta. Neither option enticed excitement.
Ordinarily he was jumping at the bit for combat and pain and suffering and war, but now…
Now, it felt different.
Then the knocking became more urgent.
He shook himself out of his stupor, walked to the door, and opened it.
Slater was standing there, gun in hand. He was sweating freely, his shirt damp, practically soaked all the way through. His leather jacket had drops of perspiration on the sleeve. But he seemed alert enough. His bright green eyes were piercing and unwavering, as usual. King had seen them turn foggy in the midst of a binge drinking session, but that didn’t seem to be the case now. He figured the man had sprinted all the way from Palantir to sweat out the booze.
Smart move.
King would have done the same.
They had a mutual inclination for the fastest solution to the problem, no matter how uncomfortable you had to get in the process.
King looked down at the Colt.
‘Whose is that?’ he said. ‘That’s not yours.’
‘It’s the kid’s from Palantir. Why don’t you have any lights on?’
‘Doesn’t feel right. What kid from Palantir?’
‘The cartel kid. The one I told you about over the phone.�
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King shook his head from side to side. ‘Sorry. I’m out of it. Got a million things on my mind.’
‘I’d have a million things on my mind too if … you know.’
‘You were sober?’
‘I’m getting there.’
‘You look like you’ve been for a swim.’
‘I ran from—’
‘I figured.’
‘You going to let me in?’
‘Right,’ King said, shaking his head for the second time.
An attempt to wrestle himself out of his stupor.
He stepped aside, and Slater strode past. Together they made their way into the living area. Slater placed the Colt on the arm of the Eames chair in the corner of the loft-style space and threw himself down into the chair itself. Then he touched two fingers to the damp shirt material under his jacket and said, ‘You got a spare change of clothes?’
King nodded and went to the bedroom. He came back with a few garments he figured would lend themselves better to athletic endeavours. Dark combat khakis, a long-sleeved compression shirt and a pair of Gore-Tex boots. He threw them over, and Slater stripped down.
King wasn’t fazed. They’d been side-by-side through some of the most hellish circumstances imaginable. They weren’t exactly shy around each other.
As Slater changed, King surveyed the landscape. Nothing had changed. He checked his watch — it had been an hour since New York went dark. He grimaced and turned back to find Slater wearing his clothes like a glove. King was three inches taller, but they both shared the same physique. Athletic specimens, built like pro sprinters with more muscle. It took serious discipline to balance the raw power needed to manhandle people using their bare hands with the cardio necessary to run long distances if required. There was a calculated science to it, and they’d been training for both those eventualities most of their adult lives.
Slater moved to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and came out with a gallon jug half-filled with a pre-made concoction, bright blue in colour. It was a mixture of electrolytes, stimulants, and … a few ingredients usually off-limits to the general population.
You simply couldn’t train like King and Slater without the aid of certain enhancements.
Right now, King could see Slater needed shaking out of his half-drunk, half-hungover state.
He downed half the contents of the jug, then put it back in the fridge and closed his eyes to compose himself.
King could see him feeling the effects of the stimulants almost immediately.
After this many years in the game, they’d nailed their nutrition and supplementation to a tee.
Slater crossed back to the armchair, dumped himself down in it, and let his stomach set to work digesting the cocktail he’d sucked down. King could see his belly distended from sculling so much water.
Then Slater said, ‘Someone shot at me on the way here.’
17
Slater watched King’s face.
The man said, ‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘Where?’
‘In the alleyway across from our building.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. He was in the shadows.’
‘You didn’t hunt him down?’
‘He was insane.’
‘Insane how?’
‘Laughing. Cackling to himself. Probably just a junkie who got his hands on a firearm when the lights went out.’
‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’
‘No,’ Slater said, rubbing his brow. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘Did he know you lived here?’
‘How am I supposed to know that?’
‘I mean, was he following you all the way here, or was he lying in wait?’
Slater shook his head. ‘He wasn’t following me. I ran all the way here. Would have been pretty obvious if a junkie was on my heels the whole time.’
‘So then he knows we’re here.’
‘It’s one guy.’
‘You wouldn’t have brought it up if it didn’t concern you.’
Slater kept rubbing his brow. Didn’t immediately react. Then said, ‘Yeah, I’m concerned.’
‘Did he say anything?’
‘He said we did this.’
‘Did what?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘The blackout?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Like — we’re responsible for it?’
‘He was a junkie,’ Slater said, trying to reassure himself more than King.
King said, ‘A junkie who knew where you were. Who shot at you.’
Slater shivered involuntarily.
King paused, ‘You okay?’
Slater looked up. ‘You’d think I’d be numb to it by now, but I’m not.’
‘Numb to what?’
‘He got close to hitting me.’
‘How close?’
‘Inches.’
‘Christ.’
‘That rattles you. No matter how much experience you have.’
‘I know.’
‘You think he’s going to be the only one to shoot at me tonight?’
‘We don’t know what this is yet. We don’t know how long it’s going to last.’
‘What’s your estimation?’ Slater said.
King raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you mean?’
‘How long until this gets really bad?’
‘Two days.’
‘You think? That soon?’
‘I don’t know enough about it.’
‘When are we going to find out more?’
King held up the phone in his palm.
‘When this phone rings,’ he said.
It rang.
Started shrilling in his hand like he’d planned it all along, and with an ominous scowl on his face he lifted it to his ear and swiped across the touchscreen.
Slater sat perfectly still and watched King’s face. The man stared ahead, listening hard. He muttered a few agreements. Slater spent the time assessing his condition. His vision wasn’t wobbling anymore. He wasn’t detached. He could feel the dried beads of sweat on his forehead, the clamminess of his hands, the chill of the penthouse. When the space was brightly lit and filled with guests, it provided a level of comfort few apartments could match. It inspired awe. But here and now, drenched in shadow with its high ceiling and polished floor and the two of them alone in the cavernous space, it felt far too big.
Far too vulnerable.
King finished up the conversation and hung up.
He said, ‘We can’t stay here.’
‘Why not?’
‘She didn’t go into detail.’
‘Are we really going to get into this again?’
‘What?’
‘We had problems with that in Nepal. And before that, too. She’s consistently sparse on the details and it drives me—’
‘She’s downstairs.’
Slater paused. ‘Oh.’
‘In the lobby.’
‘Right.’
‘She’s going to give us all the details she has in person. She doesn’t trust this line.’
‘It’s encrypted.’
‘So was the power grid. It didn’t stop them losing it.’
Slater didn’t immediately respond. He processed it. Then he said, ‘Are you serious?’
‘Completely.’
‘That’s bad.’
‘That’s why we’re needed.’
‘You don’t seem like you’re losing your mind over it.’
‘I’m trying to compartmentalise. You should too.’
Slater wiped his brow. Gnashed his teeth together, then reached out and gripped the edges of the armchair. Used them to haul himself to his feet, and then he started pacing back and forth in front of the windows, head bowed, mind racing.
King said, ‘There’s nothing we can change by worrying over this. All we can do is act.’
‘I’m not a fucking robot,’ Slater said. ‘You tell me some rogue
entity has seized control of the power grid and you expect me to just nod and ask what’s expected of us next?’
‘Yes,’ King said. ‘That’s exactly what I expect you to do. I expect the same from myself. We’re government operatives. This isn’t play school.’
Slater knew the reason for his stress. It was the fading of the alcohol, the return of clarity, the sudden realisation that shit was about to hit the fan. Deep in his inebriation the whole blackout had seemed like a sick joke. Now it was real, and the consequences were prevalent.
He turned to King and said, ‘Are you sure it’s a cyberattack?’
‘That’s what she said. I expect we’ll get more details when we’re downstairs. We’re wasting time.’
‘Let’s go then.’
They set off toward the door in unison, but halfway there the phone shrilled again.
King answered.
Slater watched his face fall.
18
As the phone rang, King read the contact name: Violetta LaFleur.
She’d been straight to the point before, but that was nothing out of the ordinary when work was the subject of conversation. This was an ominous situation, but it was nothing that couldn’t be resolved by level-headed thinking. His entire career had been a series of impossible tasks resolved time after time through concentrated effort. So he wasn’t panicking yet.
Not until he picked up the phone and heard her rasping for breath.
Before he could speak, she panted, ‘Get downstairs. And arm yourselves.’
His face fell.
He saw Slater notice.
He said, ‘Are you in the building?’
‘Yes. The lobby’s been breached. The staff are dead. I’m taking cover, but there’s—’
No time, King thought.
He said, ‘Stairs?’
