Helix Nexus Read online

  ‘Me too.’ Gabrielle laughed, pulling a cover over them. ‘What did you mean, “Not now”?’

  ‘Helix clamped his hand over his eyes. ‘It was Sofi.’

  Gabrielle propped herself up on her elbow. ‘What about her?’

  ‘Um, you know how Ethan was, is, able to follow what I’m seeing, hearing, etcetera.’

  Gabrielle snapped her hand over her mouth. ‘She wasn’t. When we were—’

  ‘Only the first minute or so. I switched it off. Nothing to see. Anyway, it’s a bloody machine not a person.’

  ‘She looks pretty real to me,’ she said, laying her head on his chest. ‘Where did Ethan get her from? Is she one of those mail order models?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘What’s with the big sigh, big man?’ she said.

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘Can it wait? You know, until after we’ve…’

  He stroked her hair from her face. ‘I might need a few minutes.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, a lop-sided grin on her face. ‘Maybe now would be a good time for you to taste my squirrel.’

  Helix pulled on his poncho and checked in with Sofi for the delayed fifteen-minute update. The AI told him of news reports suggesting fresh developments in the death of Valerian Lytkin. Was this Ormandy’s opening salvo hinting at Gabrielle’s involvement in his death? If there was political capital to be made, he was sure Ormandy would be the first to exploit it. At a local level, Sofi reported that the weather had cured the kids of their curiosity and sent them off to the their beds. She was ensconced on a ridge with a good view over the camp and its approaches. They’d agreed she would report only if there was anything of note.

  In between mouthfuls of food, he told Gabrielle about Yawlander’s and Blackburn’s murders, his and Ethan’s abductions, Lytkin’s threats and Ormandy’s intention to have Gabrielle arrested for murder. ‘Up shit creek without a paddle as Ethan would put it,’ he said, taking a sip of the fiery clear spirit the villagers distilled from foraged botanicals. ‘I can take a walk if you want to fetch Lauren and tell her about Yawlander.’

  Gabrielle shook her head and took a sip from the glass they were sharing. ‘She didn’t know him. Not as a father. She doesn’t need this now. I don’t need this now.’

  ‘Do you think Valerian Lytkin knew his sister was still alive?’

  ‘I don’t know. In all the time we were together, he always referred to her and his mother in the past tense. He didn’t say much and would quickly change the subject.’ She wiped her hand across her mouth. ‘No. I don’t think he knew. What about Sofi? Has she been able to find anything?’

  Helix pushed his plate away. ‘Zip. As you know, there was a lot of confusion around the pandemic, particularly towards the end. Like everything else, record keeping fell apart, people just vanished, literally, and with none of the normal audit trails. The sister wasn’t exactly forthcoming with any additional information. I have no idea what she actually looks like or what name she uses.’

  ‘What about Valerian’s estate? There must be lawyers dealing with all of that, if she’s making a claim.’

  ‘Given time, Ethan might have unearthed something, but if someone vanishes and then remains invisible for that long, there’s not going to be any breadcrumbs to follow.’

  ‘So, you’re saying that you think it was deliberate?’ Gabrielle said, pulling her knees up under her poncho. ‘Her abduction and disappearance?’ She topped up the glass and handed it to him.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s possible, but it doesn’t make a lot of difference.’ He ran his hand over the stubble on his chin. Ulyana Lytkin was back from the dead. She had Ethan and that was his priority. He studied Gabrielle over the lip of the glass. Her or Ethan? It wasn’t a choice. He would go to his grave fighting for both of them. The rustic chair groaned under his weight as he got up and paced across the room to the wood burner. Unlatching the door, he put in another log and watched it catch, the smell of hot wood smoke filling his nose. The burner purred as the flames licked around the wood.

  ‘And what about Julia Ormandy?’ Gabrielle said.

  Helix brushed sawdust and bark from his hands. ‘According to her, we’re all implicated in the deaths of Valerian Lytkin, Yawlander and Blackburn.’

  ‘Because of the letter.’ She pushed the cork back into the bottle. ‘A letter that nobody was ever meant to see except you.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ he said, closing the door of the stove. ‘That this is my fault?’ He pressed his hands to his hips and straightened his back. ‘We did everything we could to make sure that there was no forensic evidence placing you in Lytkin’s apartment, at considerable risk, I might add. For all anyone knew, he’d killed himself with the pathogen. What I didn’t bargain for was that you would write and sign a confession to his murder.’

  ‘Which you kept as evidence. Which now threatens to put both of us into halo-confinement. Or which Ulyana Lytkin is using to justify her revenge. Take your pick. Why didn’t you just destroy it?’

  Her question hung in the air, like autumn mist over a lake.

  ‘Because it was from you. It was all I had.’

  She closed her eyes and folded her hands in front of her face. ‘You’re right. None of this is helping. What are we going to do?’ She emptied the glass. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but I do know that I’m not prepared to lose you or Ethan.’

  Gabrielle slipped from her seat and met him in the middle of the room. ‘If Ulyana Lytkin had you and Ethan, why didn’t she just send someone else for me?’ she said, wrapping her arms around him.

  ‘I think she would have. But that letter gave her another way to stay invisible. By sending it to Ormandy, she gets the Government to do her dirty work. Look at it her way. The Home Secretary has a signed confession from the woman who murdered Valerian Lytkin, a crime that Ethan and I helped cover up. The Government will do the right thing and bring us all to justice. Ulyana Lytkin doesn’t have the same influence in Parliament that her brother enjoyed, so I can’t see how she can get to us if we’re arrested and that’s the wrinkle. At some point she’s going to have to show herself if she wants to finish what Valerian started.’

  ‘But she still didn’t need to release you. That’s the angle I don’t understand. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re here, but—’

  ‘It’s a win-win for her. Either way she gets what she wants.’ Helix sighed. ‘She knows there’s no way I’m going to let Ormandy arrest you and if I manage to prevent that and we get away, all she has to do is reel us in. If we fall into Ormandy’s hands, Lytkin has to show her cards.’

  ‘But in order to save Ethan, you need to deliver me.’

  ‘There is no quid pro quo.’ He pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head. ‘I will get him back, but not at the expense of losing you.’ Sensing a minute change in the air pressure in his ear, he opened his eyes.

  Sofi spoke into his ear. ‘Update.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ he replied, relaxing his embrace.

  ‘The BBC has announced a special programme promising fresh revelations in the Justin Wheeler, Valerian Lytkin case.’

  ‘OK. Can you relay it to my jacket comms? I want Gabrielle to see it too.’

  ‘Roger that. It starts in 12 minutes.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Nothing of note. A couple of villagers wandering about. Nothing on the approaches.’

  ‘Is everything OK?’ Gabrielle said, taking his hand.

  ‘Ormandy’s making her move by the sound of it.’ He moved over to where he’d dropped his clothes before taking a shower. ‘There’s a news special. We can watch it on—’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘My jacket and weapons are missing.’

  17

  36 Hours

  Fifteen minutes later, Helix turned towards the door as Sofi came in. ‘You took your bloody time.’

  ‘I have eight nano-cams covering the approaches,’
she said. ‘Yours can cover points throughout the village.’

  Helix stepped behind her and closed the door. ‘And you can monitor 16 cameras simultaneously, can you?’

  ‘I have an upper threshold of 1024,’ she replied, dropping her bergen to the ground.

  ‘Well if you’d thought of using the nano-cams earlier, Einstein, we might have some idea of knowing who nicked my jacket and weapons.’

  ‘Mine were deployed. Yours weren’t.’ She pulled a Glock 19 from her shoulder holster and handed it to him.

  ‘So I have to think of—’

  ‘I hate to interrupt,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Shouldn’t we be watching the broadcast?’

  Helix glowered at Sofi as he checked the magazine of the weapon. ‘Well?’ he said, stalking across the room and pulling a chair from under the table.

  Sofi turned her palms out and upwards. A blue-edge holographic screen materialised, Anastasia Sachman’s monologue could be heard with the opening credits of the broadcast rolling across the screen.

  Silence filled the room as the broadcast ended. Closing his eyes, Helix ran his fingers over his chin, listening to the rasp of stubble beneath the carbon fibre tips. ‘It’s no more than I would have expected,’ he concluded. ‘It’s an opening shot. The Home Secretary taking command or at least trying to look like she is.’

  ‘I’d forgotten how smug that bloody woman is. “I’m sure Doctor Stepper can explain,”‘ Gabrielle mimicked. She folded her arms. ‘Well, Julia, it’s like this, I did kill Valerian Lytkin. That’s the only explanation. There’s no talking my way out of it,’ she said, sliding from his lap. ‘And a bounty on our heads for anyone providing information?’

  Helix pushed a squirrel bone around his empty plate. ‘Nobody outside the cities is going to be interested, even in the unlikely event that they saw that broadcast. And even if they did, what use is a 100 grand in cash to them? Besides, the bounty is on my head, not yours.’ He hefted the antique spirit bottle in his palm. ‘We might get a bit of interest from an ambitious city bounty hunter, but they don’t normally get excited until the figure goes north of 200.’ He scratched his head. Gabrielle was right, there was no explaining the video footage of her exchange with Lytkin in his apartment. He turned to Sofi. ‘I thought Ethan said there was no surveillance in Lytkin’s apartment.’

  ‘Correct. We found nothing.’

  ‘Ulyana Lytkin found it. And gave it to Ormandy.’

  ‘That would seem to be the case.’

  Helix scratched the back of his neck. ‘What a fucking shambles.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Gabrielle said, picking up a blanket from the floor and folding it. ‘I can’t see any other option other than to hand myself in. They’re going to come for me anyway.’

  Helix sprung from the chair. ‘Whoa, hang on, your ladyship. Aren’t your forgetting something? A, they don’t know where you are and B, the only thing that will achieve is us in the clink and Ethan in pieces or dead if he’s lucky.’

  Gabrielle hugged her poncho around herself. ‘Unless Lytkin gets to us before Ormandy.’

  ‘If there was a way to get them working against each other, it might give us some options. The problem is, Lytkin told me that if I breathe a word about who’s holding Ethan, she’ll…’ He trailed off. ‘I need some air. Maybe not. No jacket.’ He turned back to Sofi. ‘You said there were a couple of villagers wandering around earlier.’

  Sofi brought up the holo-monitor and replayed the recordings.

  ‘That’s Bo taking the kitchen scraps to the pigs,’ Gabrielle said, leaning in.

  ‘And the other one?’ Helix said, joining her. ‘They all look the bloody same to me.’

  Gabrielle laughed. ‘That’s Walt.’

  ‘Is he usually that clumsy?’

  ‘He is a little special. I expect he’s going down to his boat.’

  ‘In the dark? During a blizzard?’

  ‘He’s out on the river all hours. Quite the fisherman. He might be going to check his nets.’

  ‘So, Bo returned after feeding the pigs, we can see that, but your man Walt didn’t or hasn’t so far.’

  Sofi confirmed with a nod. ‘I’ll go down to the river to see if there’s any sign of him.’

  ‘His cabin’s down there,’ Gabrielle said. ‘He keeps himself to himself. He has a tendency to rub people up the wrong way. If he’s not on the river, that’ll be where you’ll find him.’

  Helix flapped his poncho. ‘These things are bloody roasting.’

  ‘Take it off if you’re hot,’ Gabrielle said, pulling it over his head.

  ‘I’ll give you some privacy,’ Sofi said, turning to the door.

  ‘No. It’s OK. Don’t be embarrassed,’ Gabrielle said, catching her by the wrist. ‘My God, the strength.’

  ‘I can’t imagine embarrassment was on Ethan’s mind when he…’ Helix said, following Sofi’s eyes below his waist. ‘Tell her how much you weigh.’

  She snapped her eyes away. ‘130 kilos.’

  ‘130? That must be more than Helix,’ Gabrielle laughed.

  ‘By approximately 20 kilos,’ the AI replied. ‘What is this obsession with my weight?’

  ‘It’s about the only thing that marks you out as a machine,’ Helix said.

  Sofi arched an eyebrow. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  ‘Listen, getting to know each other is great and everything, but I need to recover my weapons.’

  ‘I love your accent,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Spanish, but not European.’ She sauntered behind Sofi and discarded her own poncho.

  Helix shot her a puzzled look as it fell to floor. What was she up to? He cleared his throat. ‘Mexican.’

  Gabrielle completed her circle around Sofi without a hint of embarrassment, watching the AI’s eyes as they wandered across her own nakedness.

  Helix studied her face as she reached up to him and kissed him on the lips. ‘What are you up?’

  ‘Wondering how realistic she is under all that GI Jane gear.’

  ‘Knowing Ethan, I would say—’

  ‘Ethan based my appearance on a Mexican actress.’ She opened a holo-monitor. ‘Carmen Pacheco-Ramirez.’

  Helix watched Gabrielle’s eyes as she took in the images of the actress in various states of dress and undress displayed on the holo-monitor, her tongue playing across her lips.

  ‘Very impressive. You might say they were twins.’ Gabrielle raised her eyebrows. ‘She’s very compliant, isn’t she? Keen to please.’

  ‘It is very compliant.’ He turned to Sofi. ‘Give us a summary of how Ethan restored you, not so much the software, more the hardware.’

  ‘Hmm, the hardware. I quite like the sound of that,’ Gabrielle whispered, her knee stroking the inside of his thigh.

  ‘We’ll see.’ He nodded at Sofi. ‘Just the facts, no sugar coating and no more images.’

  Gabrielle blew a raspberry. ‘Spoil sport.’

  Sofi dismissed the monitor. ‘Following the incident in the Meridian children’s playground, the remains of the shrink wrap Terry McGill had used were recovered to the evidence vault at the MoHD.’

  Gabrielle stiffened at the mention of the location and McGill. Helix turned his face to hers. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘As soon as the investigation and trial were completed, Ethan requisitioned the remains under the guise of a research scientist working for the Government’s own robotics division.’

  ‘No, stop!’ Gabrielle peeled herself away from Helix. ‘That is the thing that murdered Rachel. I knew it. When you arrived, you said—’

  ‘All I said was that I would vouch for it.’

  ‘My neural network—’

  ‘Shut up.’ Gabrielle clamped her hands to her mouth. ‘And you brought it here, Helix. How could—’

  ‘It’s OK.’ He reached out to her. ‘Let it finish.’

  She swatted his hand away. ‘No. You’re going to tell me it’s completely safe.’

  ‘I think you were working up to a threesome
with it just now,’ he laughed.

  ‘This isn’t bloody funny, Helix.’ She folded her arms across her chest and strutted over to the door. Opening it, she turned to Sofi. ‘Out.’

  Sofi picked up her bergen from the floor and slung it over her shoulder. She paused at the door. ‘FYI, I wasn’t checking you out just now. I was analysing you.’ She winked. ‘You’re not my type. Hasta luego.’

  Gabrielle gasped and slammed the door. Helix hooted with laughter as she ran at him, hammering his chest. ‘You complete bastard,’ she yelled.

  ‘Give me some credit, Gabrielle, for Christ’s sake,’ he said, feigning fear under the onslaught. ‘It is completely safe. Ethan’s not an idiot. He just recycled the hardware, flashed all of the firmware and installed his own neural network.’

  ‘I hate her.’ The blows subsided. ‘It’s far too good looking to be wandering around with you.’

  ‘You’re jealous of a robot?’ He wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘Jesus, it’s boiling in here.’

  Gabrielle sighed. ‘We could always go outside and roll around naked in the snow?’

  ‘Only if I can warm you up after.’

  ‘Bastard,’ she growled, leading him to the door. ‘Still hate you.’

  The wind had dropped. The virgin snow sparkled like tiny diamonds in the moonlight. Dancing back through the snow towards the schoolhouse, Gabrielle laughed out clouds of breath in the chilly air. Helix had found her intoxicating before, but there was something about being out here that had liberated her and given her an extra glow. Guilt tugged at him. She’d shed one weight and now he’d just slung another one around her neck. He sighed as he squared up to a tree. Stopping and starting did nothing to relieve the sharp sting. ‘Like pissing shards of—’

  ‘Told you.’ Sofi said into his ear.

  ‘Err, yes thank you. A bit of privacy wouldn’t go amiss.’

  ‘I’m a machine, remember. I don’t do embarrassment. You told me to deploy the nano-cams.’

  ‘Last word freak,’ he muttered, flexing his knees. ‘Did you find Wandering Walt or better still my kit?’