Helix Nexus Page 7

  He feinted to her right. Darted his eyes at the door. She tensed. Took the bait. Looked over her shoulder. Gathering what energy he had, he exploded from the seat and drove his left fist forward with the full 240 pound weight of his body behind it. She dodged the blow, grasping his sleeve with one hand and the back of his jacket with the other. Exploiting his momentum, she stepped in and rotated her hips. By the time, his cloudy brain had processed his mistake, his view was of the coffee shop cart-wheeling before him as she executed a text book Ogoshi. Abandoned cutlery and cups rattled on the tables as he crashed onto the slate effect tiling.

  He winced through the pain from the floor, his arm extended upwards, wrist bent back at the joint.

  ‘Your right arm’s already bust,’ she spat. ‘Want me to break this one too, or maybe the other leg?’

  Her accent was Latin American but her attitude and turn of phrase were pure Ethan. He weighed his options. He wasn’t in a position to beat a confession out of her, so he used the same ID challenge he’d used with his brother earlier that morning. ‘Androids,’ he said.

  ‘Dream.’ She tossed his arm aside. ‘Do androids dream of electric sheep? Dick! Philip, K. Happy now?’

  Her knowledge of his physical predicaments, the confirmation of the second pair of words from the ID phrase known only to him and Ethan, satisfied him she wasn’t a threat. ‘Sofi?’

  ‘Weird to meet you,’ she said, extending her hand.

  He raised his right hand and found himself pulled effortlessly to his feet. ‘How much do you weigh?’

  ‘Nice chat up line,’ she said, pulling out a chair. ‘One hundred and thirty kilos.’

  ‘No offence, but I’m not in the habit of forming intimate bonds with machines,’ he said.

  ‘None taken,’ she replied, dragging a menu from a neighbouring table.

  ‘Hungry? Perhaps a glass of hydraulic fluid while you look through the menu wondering what it might be like to actually have a digestive system.’ He took off his jacket, tossed it on the seat next to him. ‘Is that what you were drinking back at the Observatory, a nice bottle of Château Petronas 2037, or was it part of Ethan’s socialisation programming?’

  ‘Ethan’s taught me many things about human relations. How did you know I was there?’

  ‘I saw the glasses in the kitchen.’ Helix raised his eyebrows. ‘Plus, the kitchen was way too tidy. Has he been teaching you to clean up after him too?’ He tapped out his order and dismissed the menu. ‘Anyway, where the hell did he get you from?’

  She brushed the menu aside. ‘Terry McGill.’

  ‘Come again?’

  She slipped off her jacket. Helix smiled to himself. Of course. Sofi was all of Ethan’s wet dreams rolled into a petite, toned, fit and very well-proportioned body. The inspiration could only have come from Ethan’s favourite character out of some dated sci-fi series they used to watch while he was recovering in hospital. He had to concede that she may have got a second glance from him too, if she were human.

  ‘The shrink-wrap McGill used in the park when he tried to abduct Gabrielle.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Ethan borrowed it from the evidence vault once the dust had settled and Wheeler’s guilty verdict was handed down. He repaired, enhanced and remodelled it to his own specification.’

  ‘But it needs a remote human pilot with a synapse interface array to operate. Those things are next to bloody useless when operating autonomously.’

  ‘I’m operating it,’ she said. ‘Ethan created an application programming interface that connected my neural network with the synapse array. I have all of my normal functions and sub-routines augmented with more human characteristics that he installed in me or that I have studied and absorbed. My looking at the menu, as a shared social ritual, was designed to make it easier for you to bond with me.’

  ‘I don’t want to bond with you,’ he said, stepping over to the counter to collect his breakfast. ‘Fucking AI. It’s bad enough having to deal with them virtually, now they’re wandering around.’

  ‘So, what’s the plan, Nate?’

  Helix stopped the bacon roll halfway to his mouth. ‘Don’t ever call me that!’ He took a bite. ‘And there is no plan. Well, not one that you’ll be a part of.’

  ‘Judging by how easy it was for me to put you on your back, I’m guessing you’ve lost your PCM and those antiques you call weapons.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, taking a sip of coffee. It was like talking to Ethan. ‘Tell me what happened at the Observatory.’

  ‘Ethan was busy working with you while you were at Blackburn’s apartment. The whole situation was completely innocuous. The gate intercom rang. He asked me to get it. It was a delivery.’ She glanced over her shoulder to check no one could overhear. ‘I opened the door and…’ She pulled her t-shirt up over her bruised and punctured breasts, revealing six bullet entry wounds. ‘The skin takes longer to repair itself than the smart-fabric.’

  Helix almost choked on his second bacon roll. ‘Alright, alright, you could have just explained.’

  She pulled down her shirt and tucked it into her trousers. ‘In spite of the injuries, I remained functional, until they deployed a high-powered microwave device that knocked out all of the Observatory’s electronics, a bit like the Electro Magnetic Pulse generated by—’

  ‘I know how they work. Did it take you out?’

  ‘My architecture is designed to withstand a full nuclear EMP but it required me to run diagnostics before returning to full operations.’

  ‘And by the time you’d rebooted, he was gone.’

  ‘I had no access to any feeds in or out of the Observatory, only what I was able to observe through this platform. There was no location data stream issuing from his trackers. They must have removed them before placing the charges that destroyed the building. I haven’t been able to locate him since.’

  ‘So, they basically walked in the front door.’ He shook his head. ‘Fuck! Ethan said he felt exposed there.’ Helix rolled his paper napkin into a ball and threw it at the autonomous attendant clearing the tables. ‘Friend of yours?’ he said, jabbing his thumb towards the device. ‘How did you find me?’

  She nodded towards his jacket. ‘The comms interface is standard commercial off-the-shelf equipment. Because you left your tracking module at the Observatory we had no way of following you. Your PCM overrides the standard kit’s protocols with military grade multi-layered encryption. Whoever took you, removed it and must have either destroyed it or it was inside some kind of Faraday cage to shield it.’

  ‘But the standard commercial kit kicks in when the PCM is removed, right?’

  ‘Yes. But my hypothesis is that the same shielding was also inhibiting the commercial network transmissions from the standard kit. Until they freed you.’

  ‘So where’d you pick me up? We changed vehicles at least three times. Until the last change I was blindfolded. Then I was bundled into a cab.’

  ‘Greenford?’

  It was right, but he wasn’t about to provide any validation. ‘Dunno. I was still groggy but I remember passing Wormwood Scrubs on the A40.’

  ‘I had tracers running across all of the comms networks waiting for a ping from your jacket. That’s how I tracked you here.’

  Helix liberated a piece of laboratory grown bacon from between his teeth. The coffee was excellent; the caffeine was winning the war with the malaise.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Sofi asked.

  Helix stared into his cup. ‘Were you listening when I spotted the big guy watching me from the alley?’

  ‘Of course,’ she nodded.

  ‘I took my eye off the ball when Ormandy called. The last thing I saw was man mountain looming out of the darkness having shot me in the neck with a dart.’ He ordered a second coffee. ‘Long story short, I woke up in the company of said giant and his boss, Ulyana Lytkin.’

  ‘Lytkin?’

  ‘Valerian Lytkin’s no-longer-lost sister.’ Helix collected his coffee
while Sofi processed the information, given away by the micro movements of her eyes. ‘Except she doesn’t use the name, naturally. But she slithered from whatever rock she’d been hiding under to claim her inheritance following the tragic passing of her brother.’

  ‘She killed General Yawlander and Blackburn.’

  ‘Not her exactly. I’m guessing it was the big guy. I expect she was too busy pulling the legs off spiders in her dungeon.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. She’s holding Ethan.’ He pinched his nose thoughfully. ‘I have to bring Gabrielle to her and I have less than forty-eight hours to do so.’

  ‘And if not?’

  ‘I thought the “I” in AI meant intelligence.’ He sighed. ‘Work it out, or use that other “I” as in imagination.’

  ‘She means to murder all of you in revenge. Given that she commissioned the murder of the general and his pets - a facsimile of his family and Blackburn, his family and pets—’

  ‘Welcome back, Sofi. I doubt it will be a simple case of murder.’

  ‘What are the next steps?’

  ‘Find Gabrielle. Rescue Ethan. Kill that bitch.’

  ‘The odds of mission success are—’

  ‘Don’t even—’ He folded back the flap covering the graphene comms screen in the arm of his jacket. ‘Fucking hell, here we go again,’ he muttered, answering the call. ‘Home Secretary.’

  ‘I hope you can explain Gabrielle Stepper’s letter in which she admits to murdering a prominent industrialist and to her apparent romantic feelings toward you, Major Helix.’

  Helix tilted his head onto the wall behind him. ‘Where—’

  ‘A scanned copy of it arrived anonymously this morning, Major. We’ve already verified the handwriting as Stepper’s. You’re looking at a court martial with a dishonourable discharge if you’re lucky, halo-confinement if I have my way.’

  ‘Stop talking, Home Secretary.’

  ‘I beg your—’

  ‘Shut up!’ His hand tightened around his cup. ‘The explosion at the Observatory.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘You haven’t found Ethan.’

  ‘Our search of the site is ongoing.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time. Ethan’s been kidnapped. They’re going to kill him unless I bring Gabrielle Stepper in.’

  ‘How convenient, Maj—’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You’re AWOL, your brother has disappeared into the wind after General Yawlander was murdered along with Blackburn. Who’s next?’

  ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

  ‘Who, apart from you and your brother, knew of Gabrielle Stepper’s plans for Valerian Lytkin?’

  ‘If she had a plan at all, it wasn’t something she shared with us in advance. The first I knew about what had happened was when I received that letter.’

  ‘The same letter you chose not to disclose as part of the investigation into Lytkin’s links to the Government.’

  ‘As I told you. Ethan’s been taken hostage. I’m going to find Gabrielle Stepper and get him released.’

  ‘If you intend to continue with your charade, I can make it easy for you, Major.’

  He moved his cup to his mouth. ‘How’s that?’ He took a sip.

  ‘I have resources mobilising with orders to detain Stepper and return her to London.’

  ‘What resources? You don’t even know where she is.’ He got to his feet. How many people had Gabrielle told about her plan? Did anyone apart from him and Ethan know where she was heading?

  ‘As for you, Major,’ Ormandy continued. ‘I have convened a disciplinary panel. I want you in the MoHD building within the hour.’

  ‘Sorry, Home Secretary, other plans,’ Helix said, looking over Sofi’s head toward the two police officers approaching the door. He ended the call. Ormandy had sent a couple of chaperones. He picked up his jacket. ‘Can you take care of those?’ he said, nodding towards the door.

  Sofi pushed her chair back. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Down Street. Meet me at my gaff.’

  Sofi turned towards the door as the two officers stepped inside. Helix took the exit via the kitchen, tossing his jacket into a recycling container before pushing through the emergency door into the alley.

  11

  46 Hours

  The intensifying snow cloaked the deserted Thames memorial garden. Snow carpeted the grass, ornamental borders and benches and clung to naked tree boughs and bushes. Covering the meandering river, the normally verdant gardens stretched for ten miles from Hammersmith in the west to Greenwich in the east. Built in honour of the lost and those who whose service brought an end to the Ebola pandemic of 2019 – 2021, it sprawled before Helix in a winter postcard panorama.

  Although interrupted, breakfast had cleared his head. Sticking to alleys and underpasses to avoid the crowds, he sheltered beneath Blackfriars Bridge, next to one of the access points for the 15-mile-long Thames Tideway tunnel, built to augment London’s Victorian sewage network. It was being built in response to what was London’s growing population that had reached 7.5 million. Post pandemic that number plummeted to 1.5 million on account of the high mortality rate and the stampede out of the major cities by everyone apart from the wealthy and well connected.

  Clumsy footprints in the snow-covered grass stretched back in the direction he’d come from. He rubbed at his jacketless arms. Pressing his thumb to a scanner on the wall next to the tunnel’s entrance, visible only to those in the know, he counted the three seconds before a weak green glow bloomed beneath it. Glancing back again, he leaned into the iris scanner long enough for the door to yield and grant him access.

  Progress down the sixty metre deep spiral staircase was slower than he would have liked. If he was to stand any chance of overcoming the odds he needed to get back to his old self. Three shorter flights of stairs later he stood outside another nondescript door. The stifling colourless void echoed in response to the knock-knock-knock, knock-knock he beat out on the black metal door.

  His hands flew up. ‘It’s Helix,’ he said in hasty response to the two ceiling-mounted miniguns that scanned him.

  Where was Mace? Angling his head to one side, Helix peered up beneath one of the guns and pulled an exaggerated smile at the emerald green lens of the weapon’s targeting system. Accuracy of aim wasn’t that important in something with six barrels and a fire rate of between two and four thousand rounds per minute depending on your mood. The trouble with Mason was you never knew what that mood might be.

  The door clicked and edged inwards. Helix pressed his shoulder to it and pushed through to the chorus of the ‘We’re off to see the wizard,’ from the Wizard of Oz.

  He nodded to himself. It was a Judy Garland day. Whatever floats your boat.

  The dying notes of the song echoed in the gloom as it cut out. ‘You’ve been suspended pending disciplinary,’ Mace called from the back of his workshop, his deep Geordie accent giving away his location.

  ‘You can’t believe everything you hear, Mace.’

  ‘Hmm. What brings you to my back passage? I assume this isn’t a social call otherwise you’d have come through the front door,’ the Quartermaster said, smoothing down his pale pink and blue gingham dress as he stepped into the light.

  Helix ran his hand over his stubbled face, trying to stifle the grin. The last thing he needed was to piss off Mace. ‘I need a few bits and—’

  ‘It’s almost ready, pet,’ Mace interrupted, flinging one of his dark brown plaits over his shoulder.

  Helix paused between the floor-to-ceiling racks of equipment. ‘I haven’t told you what I need yet.’

  Mace sighed and danced his fingers over the counter retrieving the order. ‘One PCM, as per attached specification, two Sig Sauer P226s with custom sighting systems plus eight clips of third gen’ smart ammunition.’ He yawned. ‘Lightweight bergen – black, One AX50 sniper rifle – good luck lugging that one
wherever the hell it is you’re going, shall I continue?’

  Helix nodded. ‘No, it’s fine, you’re all over it, as usual.’

  ‘Hmm. Flattery will get you anywhere, sweetheart.’

  The door boomed behind Helix, the same coded knock he’d used. His eyes darted at Mace.

  ‘Nowt to do with me, pet,’ Mace said spinning the monitor around to face Helix. ‘Someone you know?’ His hand hovered over a large red plunger. ‘Say the word.’

  Helix leaned in. ‘It’s OK.’ He sighed. ‘Let it in.’

  ‘It?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s a long story and I’m short on time.’ He looked over his shoulder at the door.

  Sofi pushed through like it was fly-curtain. ‘Nice try, no cigar.’ She smiled at Helix. ‘Biometric payment for the taxi you took to get to Blackfriars Bridge. Hello, Mace.’

  Mace pursed his rouged lips. ‘Do I know you, Miss—’

  ‘Sofi.’

  Mace clutched his hands over his heart. ‘Sophie’s Choice. One of my all-time favourites, 1982, Meryl Streep, thoroughly deserving of her Oscar, do you know it?’

  Helix shrugged at Sofi.

  ‘Err, no. I’m Ethan’s AI. Sofi stands for So Fucking Intelligent,’ she said.

  ‘Sound like something Ethan would come up with.’ Mace frowned. ‘Vulgar. How is the annoying little shit? Word is that he’s blown up the Observatory your girlfriend gave you,’ he said, turning back to Helix.

  Helix narrowed his eyes. ‘Mace. Why don’t you just…’ He relaxed his jaw. ‘He’s… Ethan’s OK. Look, we, I mean I, need to crack on. Where’s the kit?’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Mace pouted. ‘Someone got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning. I’ll fetch it for you. Help yourselves to camomile tea,’ he said, nodding to a drinks machine in the corner next to a small table with two chairs.

  Replacing his discarded jacket with a new one from the rack, Helix checked the interfaces to make sure they were compatible with his PCM and comms.

  ‘That’s a sixth gen’ jacket,’ Mace called out.

  Helix nodded to himself, impressed. He helped himself to some water while Mace flounced between racks, humming to himself, gathering the last of the items.