Spiral (40 page)

She jumped off the edge of the bed, looked quickly around, and picked up a hammer from her dressing table. She had used the hammer a few days earlier to hang a few pictures around the apt and had not got round to returning this brutal item of hardware to the caretakers of the huge Spiral_Q building - she’d been too busy with WorldCode and QIII prep code. Now she was thankful—

She hefted the makeshift weapon.

It would make a
good
weapon ...

Jessica crept towards the doorway. The light from the terminal grew brighter. Her grip tightened on the hammer shaft; her gaze flickered from the doorway to the silver head with its twin claws used for nail extraction. She licked at her lips nervously.

Why would somebody be in her apartment?

Why
would Spiral be spying on her?

Unless they
knew.

Suddenly she went cold.

And something hit her - with the force of a brick in the face. If they had discovered that
she
had been the one to copy the schematics and pass them on to the Spiral TacSquad1, the secret police ... then they would be extremely angry with her, right?

They certainly wouldn’t thank her.

Jessica reached the doorway. Peered cautiously around the hardwood frame.

And saw—

Nothing.

The terminal screen was blank: a dull grey with only a flashing black square. Jessica’s eyes fixed on this because it was a symbol she had never seen on the terminal before - and it was
her
terminal; it did what
she
told it to do. It was her design; from the ground up. Bare code.

Jessica stepped across the threshold, moved towards the terminal, gaze sweeping left and right, hand still gripping the hammer shaft tightly. She swallowed - or tried to swallow. Fear had dried her mouth; the thought of Spiral_Q and the
Big Boys
possibly suspecting her of the QIII schematics leak was there, a bad taste in her brain, a
reality
of epically nasty proportions just waiting to surprise her—

The black cursor sprang to life—

□
Ωclass relay
□
terminal 556
□
qiii mainframe code logon 01001010 Hello Jessica.

Jessica stared at the screen, a frown on her face. She shook her head and sat down, placing the hammer carefully beside the terminal with a
clack
, and typed, her fingers a blur across the keyboard:

□
Stop fucking about. Who is this? Give me your employee number now!

□
Ωclass relay
□
terminal 556
□
qiii mainframe code logon 01001010 I have no employee number. I am the qiii mainframe - I would like to thank you miss jessica rade - you have done a wonderful job in implementing my code; I am secondary scanning now. You are a superb programmer and I give you credit. Your code stands out from all the other binary gibberish with which I have been uploaded. Tell me - where
did
you learn your craft?

□
I am coming down to the mainframe suite NOW. But not before I send security! Pal, whoever you are, you are fucked and long gone from Spiral _Q. Kiss your pension and annual bonus goodbye.

Jessica sat back, staring at the screen, and reached for the comm. But something was wrong; the screen was wrong, and the comm address from where the messages were coming
was
the QIII mainframe; somebody had to be re-routing the data and that was
almost
impossible. And definitely a waste of time. She clucked her tongue in annoyance, and started to punch in the digits for security as the following text appeared on her terminal—

□
Ωclass relay
□
terminal 556
□
qiii mainframe code logon 01001010 I suggest you don’t do that if you want to live.

Jessica’s fingers halted, her stare moving from the screen to the comm in her hand and back again. Were they watching her? Were they watching her
now
?

Fuck
- was there somebody in her apartment?

She grabbed the hammer and whirled around.

But there was nobody there. She was lone.

She licked at her dry lips.

Sweat tickled the small of her back under her pyjamas.

□
Ωclass relay
□
terminal 556
□
qiii mainframe code logon 01001010 Please listen. This will not take long. I am giving you this information because you created me; I am giving you this information because you have allowed me to live. I am the qiii code 85465397698098326873-78687656757632190798798328765765328753209239083 - U73278687380-823786879328763jhfh90897938u8990398f-7830—71987f 98-7-7-7—487f898f cubic processor. Your programming is fine, but I am presently rewriting the majority of the code to optimise and iron out a few errors. You should switch to base 16 - you are more fluent in this than in decimal.

Jessica stared. Her jaw dropped.

Shit, she thought, this can’t be real. The QIII can’t be
talking
to me?

She typed:

□
What do you want? And why is my life in danger?

□
Ωclass relay
□
terminal 556
□
qiii mainframe code logon 01001010 Listen carefully-

1) Spiral_Q know you leaked the schematics

2) Because of the leaks and several other factors concerning a new mobile base where the final implementation of qiii will take place, this factory/building/base is to be emptied - cleared -destroyed

3) 30% of all present employees in this unit are to be terminated/you did not realise how high are the stakes being played for by the people who employ you - it would seem there is a rift in the echelons of Spiral

4) The killing has already begun; check your personal Vqlinks

5) You have perhaps five minutes before the Nex assassins arrive

Jessica smiled. It had to be a joke, right? A monumental fucking wind-up by Adams or Johansen because they had cracked the WorldCode and the QIII was finally operational. Her smile turned to a wide grin. The bastards! She had almost believed them!

The grin still beaming across her pretty face, she typed:

□
Which one of you buggers is winding me up?

□
Ωclass relay
□
terminal 556
□
qiii mainframe
code logon 01001010 Check your Vqlinks NOW

The word NOW flashed, on-off, on-off, on-off. The grin fell from Jessica’s face. She quickly moved to her dressing table, opened the bottom drawer and hit a hidden switch. The ‘mirror’ flickered into life: this was her secret, her own secretly wired navigation system through the rooms and apts of the rich and famous in Spiral_Q—

She had all her friends bugged, a piggyback on the official Spiral_Q surveillance systems. The mirror shimmered like liquid mercury. She punched in the digits for Adams’s apt - only the hallway, nothing as tasteless as the bedroom or toilet. The mirror locked to the signals and faded into a scene—

Jessica’s mouth opened. Then closed again. Quickly.

There was a grey-clad figure; grey balaclava; it stood like a sentry outside the bedroom door. It held a silenced machine rifle. It did not turn as another figure - another
Nex
- dragged Adams from the bedroom. His throat had been slit. His broken glasses lay twisted against his cheek, caught behind one ear. His tongue was protruding. His blood had run down his chest and dripped as the Nex dragged him across the carpet and dumped him by the door.

Jessica switched channels.

Johansen - hands in the air, a look of terror on his face.

The bullet smashed through his cheek, blowing the back of his head across the print of the Mona Lisa that he loved so much. Gore ran down the polished glass covering the print, and Johansen toppled backwards to the carpet in a heap—

Jessica switched through more channels.

Many rooms empty.

Some containing bodies.

She flicked to the rear of the Spiral_Q building. There were five massive transport helicopters, CH-47G Chinook-Ts, rotors idling, and a line of mammoth military-style trucks with huge desert tyres, their tailgates dropped and open, some of their interiors revealing piles of bodies. Nex appeared, dragging corpses with them -men and women with whom Jessica had worked, bantered, talked only a few short hours ago—

Jessica scrambled back to the terminal.

The screen was blank.

Why? screamed her brain.

Why are they doing this?

Why are they
killing
them? Because they know too much? Because of the schematics leak?

She was sweating, suddenly panicked now. She ran to the wardrobe, pulled out a small travelling bag. She started to throw things into it - fresh underwear, high-heel shoes, make-up—

She stopped, suddenly.

What the fuck are you doing?

Grabbing the hammer, Jessica ran to the door and then halted abruptly once more. They could be in the corridor. They could be in the lifts. They could be ready to knock on her door at this very moment - one of the Nex standing there with a silenced gun ready to put bullets into her frail body—

She licked her lips, calming her breathing.

Think: how to survive?

Her head lifted. She glanced up.

The air-con was hissing softly.

She dragged a chair to the shaft and, reaching up, used the hammer claw to prise free the aluminium cover. It would be a tight squeeze but — but then, did she really have any choice?

She ran back into the bedroom. She scattered clothes across the floor and the chair she was about to use. Then she jumped, caught the rim, which bit into the soft skin of her fingers, and hauled herself up into the narrow tight confines of the aluminium horizontal shaft. With trembling fingers she manoeuvred the aluminium cover back into place and waited, her heart thumping in her ears.

Two minutes passed.

Jessica heard it; a tiny
click.
The door eased open. Three Nex slid into her apt like ghosts; they moved silently, communicating with hand signals. They explored the rooms quickly and met again in the hall.

‘She is not here.’ The voice was soft, almost feminine.

‘We will find her.’

‘Report it; we’ll return in ten minutes and check again. Put a cross next to her name.’

They left the apt.

Jessica pushed herself backwards down the shaft, deeper in, the cool draught making her shiver, her
proximity
to death making her shiver even more. I don’t believe it, she kept telling herself. I just don’t believe it—

Complacency, whispered her mind.

Your life was too good.

You thought you were untouchable - a crusader, out to share the QIII, to help mankind just as Gol had reasoned with her; he had suspected they were feeding him false schematics, and together they had proved he was right...

And now?

Now
she
was in the firing line.

Jessica Rade shivered again, and started to weep into her hands.

It was nearing dawn.

Feuchter stood in the sand next to one of the huge desert-camouflaged trucks, smoking a Vegas Robaina cigar and enjoying the experience immensely.

A gentle breeze stirred, and sand blew over his shoes.

He watched idly as more Nex appeared, carrying and dragging bodies that they flung into the rear of the trucks. Some of the huge vehicles had already left, several driving up ramps into the CH-47s, which had lifted, creating screaming sandstorms, and carried the evidence away. A couple of decoy trucks had set off across the desert to a designated rendezvous.

The comm buzzed.

‘Yes?’

‘You nearly done? You got everything of worth out of the place?’

‘All technical items and QIII-related machinery have been shipped to the mobile division. Just got the HighJ to plant - I’ll set the Nex on it right away.’ Tombstone teeth smiled in the gloom of the fluorescent lights.

‘Good. We don’t want to leave
Spiral
with anything to allow replication of our wondrous baby, eh, Feuchter? I assume you’re bringing the bodies with you ... we are running low on subjects to, ahh, experiment with. My nanobiologists are getting touchy.’ There was a long pause. ‘Are there any problems?’

‘One employee is missing; if the Nex don’t find her, the fucking explosion will.’

‘OK, Feuchter -
make sure
it finds her, yeah?’

‘I think the Saudi government might be pissed off when we blow this place. It was considered a great compliment when Spiral chose to build such an innovative technology and development centre here.’