Movement rejuvenating her a little, Myra made her way past the others and into the chamber. Katherine followed her around the courtesy shield and over to the bank of monitors that adorned the left-hand wall. She stopped, seeing for the first time the empty podium upon which HEX should have sat.
‘Look,’ said Myra, indicating the traces representing HEX’s temperature, internal pressure, output channels and a hundred other parameters. ‘They’re still reading. They fluctuate occasionally, which is normal, and the traces are still recording. It’s bizarre, but it’s why no alarm was triggered when HEX was disconnected.’
They watched as one of the traces labelled ‘P REG PWM’ gently rose and fell, settling at a value of 22 per cent. ‘What’s that?’ asked O’Brien.
‘It’s HEX’s input power regulation. She draws what she needs from the supply and this channel monitors her demand. But as you can see…’ Myra looked over her shoulder at the mass of disconnected cables, one of which was clearly marked ‘Power’.
‘But what’s really odd is that the channels, like room temperature and pressure, aren’t responding to what is actually going on. If you look at ambient room temperature, it hasn’t risen since we entered.’
Katherine looked at the trace Myra was pointing to. Perplexed, she looked back at HEX’s podium again. O’Brien and Olson hung back, watching the two women but not interfering. Katherine noticed the icy condition of the podium and reached out to touch it.
‘Better not,’ said O’Brien firmly.
‘It won’t be that cold,’ retorted Katherine, with some assurance. ‘I was an expedition crew driver in Ayon. I know what ‘cold’ looks like.’
O’Brien gave her a superior, withering look and said, ‘Forensics.’ Reaching into his pocket he retrieved a pair of latex gloves and offered them to her.
Katherine withdrew her hand, nodding her understanding. Taking the gloves, she turned back to Myra. ‘Could you scroll back to when the alarm went off? I want to see what the room temperature did when the coolant blast happened. We should be able to see a huge dive in temperature when the Freon jet fired – room temperature, Core temperature… everything.’
‘There is nothing,’ said Myra, baffled. ‘It’s as if it never happened.’
Katherine looked at O’Brien who, for the first time since they had met, was exercising a degree of patience as she explained what Myra meant. ‘It’s like it’s a recording, but it’s being fed live.’
‘You’re saying what’s appearing on your equipment isn’t real?’
‘It may be real, but it’s not happening here. I’ll show you.’ Katherine pulled on the latex gloves, which snapped against her wrists. ‘Myra, that channel you mentioned earlier, ‘P REG PWM’, can you bring that up on the screen as live? I need a small piece of wire or something metal. Some links, maybe, if anyone’s got loose change?’
Reluctantly, O’Brien unclipped a ring of links from his wrist. ‘These had better not get damaged, they’ll be paying for dinner later,’ he said with forced humour.
Katherine took the bracelet and separated off two of the least valuable copper links, returning the rest to O’Brien.
She took the power cable in one hand and the links in the other. ‘I’m going to short two of the pins in the power supply. That should drive the PWM demand to zero because…’
O’Brien cut her off, ‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘Ready?’ Katherine touched the links to the pins in the connector. There was a momentary flash, a crackle and the unmistakable smell of ozone.
‘It didn’t move,’ said Myra, looking at the trace. ‘It didn’t move at all.’
‘So where is the signal coming from?’ asked Katherine rhetorically. She handed the two slightly charred links back to O’Brien, who scowled.
‘That’s something we can look into,’ he said. ‘It’s a lead. We’ll need some technical assistance though.’
‘I’m sure Myra could help you,’ suggested Katherine.
‘She’s a witness,’ said O’Brien firmly. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, she’s also in shock.’
To Katherine’s surprise, Olson spoke up softly but persuasively. ‘As she’s responsible for us all being down here, I think it’s obvious that Miss Cena wasn’t involved. Her fingerprints will be everywhere anyway. Wouldn’t she be the ideal person to look into it, Vincent?’
Myra could only look on as her immediate future was decided.
‘Okay,’ agreed O’Brien, relenting. ‘But she’s not to interfere with the forensic work and she’s to report to me.’
‘Is that okay, Myra?’ asked Katherine sincerely.
Myra looked at Katherine. She didn’t know her superior well, they were only acquainted at all because Katherine spent a lot of time with ROOT. But that someone of the Councillor’s importance had asked her if it was okay was an act that bought a lifetime of loyalty.
‘I’d be happy to help,’ said Myra, trying to still a quiver in her voice.
‘Then let’s get to it,’ said O’Brien with a curt nod. A moment later he had turned and gone, Olson and the two women filing out behind him.
002: Leaving the Vault
Ayon Research Facility, Eastern District, Skala City
In the shift or so that had passed, Katherine had begun to grapple with some implications. ROOT had advanced humanity’s understanding of both science and engineering threefold during Katherine’s professional career. After the more recent integration of HEX, that pace had accelerated again, but there was a catch. The engineers, both Council-funded and from private enterprise, were building new technology faster than the scientists could understand the underlying principles. Millions of links were being invested on trust, with the Intercessors key to making any given technology work.
Partial planetary tidal lock meant the rising sun necessitated the move from Skala to Aya. With HEX’s disappearance, reliance on the IDCs in the design of the new city was thrown into sharp relief. Until now, meeting the critical deadlines was considered by most to be difficult; with HEX missing, those deadlines looked meaningless. The fact was that Ayon Research simply did not understand how the infrastructure worked and, for expediency, there was only limited overlap between ROOT’s and HEX’s input. In hindsight, that now looked like a monumental mistake on Katherine’s part, and gave her much to consider.
O’Brien had radioed his department and demanded as many agents as CID could muster. Somehow he had commandeered the use of four airborne camera platforms to scour the city for signs of HEX or her captors. It was an optimistic effort over such a wide, built-up area but it demonstrated a serious commitment. After some deliberation he had also notified the closer Seeding Settlements that scattered the Divide. These were few, limited in number by the genetically driven difficulties the population faced in producing children.
Katherine’s initial impression was that O’Brien saw this case as the one that would make him, but as time passed she began to realise that he was well drilled in the protocol he was executing. This, she supposed, was how he operated most, if not all of, the time.
Somewhere in the background Tyler Olson was hovering. On the few occasions she caught sight of him he seemed to be drinking in the detail of the place. In the increasing chaos, Katherine found it hard to pay him much attention but it had not passed her by that the older man was not only looking, but seeing. O’Brien on the other hand was marshalling his resources and paying scant attention to his surroundings. The younger man reminded Katherine of the engineering project managers she occasionally worked with. Undoubtedly they were efficient administrators but they were overseers and not versed in the engineering itself. They preferred to rely on others to give them simplified information, on which they based sometimes questionable decisions. That was fine up to a point, but when things went wrong Katherine had witnessed again and again the failings of the administrators blamed on their subordinates. ‘I was not properly briefed,’ was a phrase she heard with sickening regularity.
K
atherine was a woman who made damn sure she briefed herself. Most of the time she came out on top but she feared that in the event of something going wrong she lacked the mental safety net of being able to remorselessly pass the blame on to others.
By the time the Vault corridors were overrun with agents scanning and spraying fingerprint detection fluid, Katherine felt distinctly like a fifth wheel. She had to wait an age before she could interrupt O’Brien, but when she made her case for her dismissal, he waved her off without hesitation. Unsure if her presence had done any good at all, she made her way back to the Cannula. Entering the elevator, she was surprised to see Tyler Olson step in beside her.
‘You don’t have more to do?’ she asked, as the doors hissed towards each other and sealed.
‘Not here, and I retire soon so I’m more of an observer right now,’ he said, and smiled kindly. ‘Vincent has his side of things under control and he lets me follow my own leads. You might not think so right away, but we’ve worked well together.’
Katherine didn’t say anything, but gave Olson a doubtful frown.
Olson acknowledged this with an unperturbed smile. ‘Vincent’s a good man and he knows how to operate. He plays by the rules, has lots of toys and he gets results most of the time.’
Katherine agreed O’Brien had access to a great deal of resources. ‘There are a lot of people down there.’
‘There are,’ said Olson. ‘But I prefer less of a sledgehammer approach, more of a look and see philosophy.’
‘So what do you think?’
‘I don’t know yet. It’s an interesting trick isn’t it? Your data is still coming in from somewhere but who knows where? There’s no evidence of anyone entering or leaving the Vault with your IDC.’
‘If the data has been faked in some way it could be that the CCTV has been as well, although I noticed we appeared in it…’ said Katherine. ‘Either way, someone on the inside had to have been involved. I didn’t want to suggest that to Detective O’Brien back there, I’m sure he can figure it out for himself.’
‘I’m sure he can,’ agreed Olson gently. ‘It’s likely that’s how it was played but it’s too early to jump to conclusions just now, wouldn’t you say?’
Katherine nodded but was saved from commenting further by the arrival of the Cannula at the ground floor. Rational thought was returning to her and she began to grapple with the great many conflicting situations which might occur. There were serious political considerations beyond the technological and logistical ramifications. Many in the Council were against using the Intercessors and they would surely use the situation to lever their positions. The sheer scale of the situation was monstrous.
Katherine strode out across the ornate mosaic floor that depicted the universal sigil of Skala. A circle was itself encircled by nine points and enclosed by a pair of concentric brackets, one representing Hellinar, the other, which was highlighted, representing the frigid wastelands of Ayon.
Reaching the entrance, she paused and looked back at Olson. She had warmed to him considerably and decided to risk a leap of faith.
‘I’m going to find Joss Ratha, she needs to know what’s happened.’ Katherine faltered, as a thought occurred to her. ‘Is that okay? I don’t want to interfere with your work. I really don’t want your friend O’Brien on my back.’
‘You’d like me to tag along?’ asked Olson.
‘Yes, if you don’t mind. I think that would be helpful.’
With Katherine leading the way, the two of them exited the building and descended a flight of stone steps into the heat of the city. It was still well before the work shift, the streets were empty and quiet and only the rumble of an occasional refuse truck or street sweeper could break the spell-like quality. Within a block they crossed the street to take advantage of the narrow shadows cast across the sidewalk. The heat was stifling and, although walking in shadow didn’t help much, it did protect them from the perpetual malevolence of the sun.
Echoing her earlier concerns about Aya, she recalled it had been HEX who came up with the blindly obvious suggestion of orientating the new city’s roads in diagonals relative to the sun. Diagonals guaranteed shadows cast across every street, whereas only Skala’s longitudinal streets benefitted. HEX had proposed this solution, to the total bafflement of the questioner, when asked how society might reduce the strain on the healthcare system. Her rationale was faultless: Skala’s biggest health risk was skin cancer caused by excessive exposure to the sun. She proposed laying Aya out such that exposure was negligible, something that could be done at no recurring cost.
There had, of course, been the obvious panic over modifying longstanding plans but HEX felt confident she could reconfigure any existing work without much effort and the gains were obvious. Even ROOT, who had come to view his processing capability as superior to HEX’s, had grudgingly admitted the idea was a projection further than he would have managed. HEX, for all her prickliness, had an exceptional talent for thinking outside the box.
Crossing a road, they were momentarily exposed to the intensity of the sunlight, then moved back into the relative cool of the shadow. The buildings here were tall relative to the outer suburbs of the city. Most were brick, but a few were still a mix of stone and timber. Passing newer structures, they heard the draw of air rush between double glass panels, providing cooling and a means of powering small roof-mounted turbine generators.
Crossing into the Central District, Katherine gave her companion a brief summary of her work with HEX, ROOT and Aya. She outlined the political context of her position on the Privy Council, that of Joss Ratha and their respective relationships with the wider Orderly Council and its titular head, the Matriarch. Occasionally he asked questions which Katherine found insightful, seemingly based on intuition and deduction rather than any direct knowledge of her work.
By the time they reached the Western District, Katherine felt distinctly grubby. She was still wearing the previous shift’s clothes and was sweating profusely. She ran her fingers through her blonde hair, finding it displeasingly matted and greasy. She wasn’t particularly vain but she liked to appear presentable, a discipline that helped keep her cluttered mind focused.
This part of the city was distinctly older than the Eastern District, a sign that investment was becoming sparse as its suburbs were slowly swallowed up into the drylands. Sandstorm erosion was starting to show on stonework, rounding off edges that were previously sharp, and turning windows opaque. In the distance she could hear the humming of a camera platform drone passing over the slums that fringed the western edge of the city and wondered what it had found. Almost certainly nothing, she was sure.
The Hellinar Research Facility, once a grand building with an elegant façade, was starting to show signs of age. While standing proud as it had done in Katherine’s youth, it now looked noticeably tired and pockmarked. Katherine had spent much of her happy childhood in this building when her parents had worked there. She still had cause to visit it often but always in the bustle of the work shift. In the quiet, relentless blaze of the sun it struck a lonely figure, ageing and soon to be abandoned.
Forcing back a twinge of sadness, she ascended the steps with Olson following a pace or two behind. She pushed open a heavy wooden door and a familiar rush of cool conditioned air washed over her. Hellinar Research had a prominent security detail, a necessity since the least privileged of Skala’s people occupied this less desirable quarter. Crime was on the up and the occasional disenchanted citizen had been known to enter the building, demonstrating contempt for its occupants by throwing a pipe bomb or scrawling graffiti across the walls.
Katherine made her way across a similar mosaic to the one that adorned the floor of Ayon Research, except this one, in a mirror image, highlighted the semicircle representing Hellinar and was generally more faded.
In front of the Hellinar Cannula stood a glass desk, a recent addition that looked wholly out of place in the ornate, time-worn grandeur of the entrance hall. Approaching a sec
urity guard she recognised, Katherine asked whether Joss Ratha was in the building. Informed that she wasn’t, Katherine asked that the Councillor be contacted urgently. Noticing Katherine’s unusually bedraggled state, the guard hesitated for only a moment before putting through a call.
Moments later they were shown into the Cannula and escorted across the building to Ratha’s anteroom. As Katherine sank into her customary place on a worn sofa, Tyler Olson settled silently next to her to wait.
003: Hydra
Hellinar Research Facility, Western District, Skala City
Across the building from where Katherine Kane and Tyler Olson sat, a second, smaller panic had begun to assert itself. JT Gilbert was confused and had been for several shifts. As the quartermaster responsible for the kit and crew manifests for Hellinar expeditions, he had found a contradiction between his paperwork and the tag-in tag-out system used to track the vehicles in his care.
According to the manifests, a three-vehicle Unit, designation Hydra, was booked in for recall modifications. The work sheets indicated the mods were underway but not yet complete; ‘awaiting parts’ said the note in the live monitor. JT had taken little notice of this at first until he realised the Unit had been tagged in at one facility and out at another with no explanation of how it had travelled between them. Tagging was automatic, tripped by a transponder fixed to the chassis of each vehicle.
He had called the facility the Unit had been booked into, an area designated Transport 7. After a brief and slightly terse exchange, JT convinced a clerk to ignore her paperwork and see whether the Unit was physically on the premises. She was gone a long time before reporting, somewhat exasperated, that she couldn’t see the Unit and would have to check with a colleague if it had been removed by flatbed. JT had enquired whether this would have been reported in the paperwork. It might not be, not yet at least, she’d replied. There was a backlog and a good deal of ‘paperwork pending’ notes stapled to folders at the moment. She had promised to call him back later that shift, but had failed to do so, which did not come as a surprise to JT.
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