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66

‘This is Saeed Khalid,' Mohammed said, walking over to the main counter in the café. The young Arab gave Stephanie a blank look.

‘I'm Carmen and this is Jessica,' Frank's wife said, stepping up to shake Steph's hand.

Steph turned to the gathering. ‘Okay, everyone. It seems you are the only survivors above the site of the missile attack.'

‘Is that what happened? A missile?' Frank asked.

‘Yes. It was a terrorist attack. We do not yet know who perpetrated it, or why, but the top floors are cut off. Local emergency services are doing a fantastic job evacuating everyone below the impact site.'

‘But what about us?' Saeed said, a nasty edge to his voice. ‘My father is a major shareholder in the company that owns this damned building. He will already know I'm trapped here. He will do something.'

‘Perhaps he will,' Steph replied diplomatically. ‘But we cannot rely on it.'

‘So what are
you
going to do about it?'

Steph held the young Arab's gaze and Saeed looked away.

‘We are doing all we can. My colleagues are in a rescue vehicle positioned above the roof. One of the team is working her way down through the rubble in a special machine to reach us and that will hopefully open a way up to the . . .'

‘She?' Saeed interrupted.

‘Yes “she”. Do you have a problem with that?'

The man shrugged and walked off, shaking his head.

‘Don't mean to be rude,' Charlotte Emmington said softly, ‘but it does sound a bit of a long shot.'

‘Not really,' Steph responded. ‘We've conducted missions like this before. But the fact is, there's no other way out. I can't take you down and until we clear the path up we can't go higher than this level.' She said nothing about the tower's structural integrity. It would only cause panic and achieve nothing. She glanced at her watch, touched her wrist monitor and tried Chloe. As Charlotte went to ask a question, Steph raised a hand and spoke into her comms. ‘Chloe. Come in, Chloe. Are you receiving me?'

No reply. She tried again. Nothing. She turned to Charlotte.

‘So,' the woman said. ‘What should we do now?'

‘We have to wait for the way to be cleared. In the meantime,' and she turned to the group, ‘does anyone here have medical training?'

Jessica stepped forwards. ‘I'm an intern at MGH.'

‘Massachusetts General?'

‘Yes.'

Carmen looked at Jessica and then turned to her husband with a surprised expression. ‘Why didn't you say?'

‘Complicated,' Jessica replied and gave the older woman a weak smile. Looking back to Steph, she added, ‘How may I help?'

‘Right, well, I have a field med-kit that will get us started.' She turned to the men in the group. ‘Could one or more of you search for some medicines, please? This is a mall after all. Just have to hope there's a pharmacy on this level.'

‘There is,' Abu replied. They all stared at him and he suddenly looked nervous. ‘It's a few doors further on from
Cloud Electrics
. I saw it earlier.'

‘Perfect,' Steph responded and ruffled the boy's hair. ‘What would we do without you, Abu?'

The kid beamed.

‘I'll go,' Mohammed said and Frank stepped forwards with him.

‘Jessica, could you go too? I could get started with the med-kit. You'll know what we need. We could work up a wishlist, yeah?'

The young American nodded. ‘Sure.'

It took only 10 minutes for the group to return with a shopping list of medical supplies. This included several boxes of bandages, antiseptic, antibiotics, painkillers, scissors, sterilising kits, steristrips and an inhaler for Carmen. Steph took off the Hopjet and placed it against the wall at the back of the café, then found her med-kit. Jessica began to set up a makeshift treatment area. Between them the two doctors triaged the survivors and then started patching them up.

There were no critical injuries. One of the women from the new group had a badly lacerated arm, a similar injury to Saeed's. Steph sealed up both the woman and Saeed's wounds with a wonder substance from the E-Force med-kit called SkinGloo. This, as its name implied, healed wounds without the need for stitches or even steristrips.

The other serious injury was a fractured cheekbone sustained by one of the men in the party. Steph injected him with fast-acting painkillers followed by an infusion of nanobots, tiny dedicated machines that would find their way to the wound site and begin to reconstruct tissue, deal with damaged cells and restore proper circulation. Using this system, the injured man's face would be fully repaired within an hour.

The two women had everyone patched up within 15 min- utes and the café fell quiet. It was almost as though they had all agreed by mutual, subconscious consent that nothing could be done immediately and that they might as well get some rest. Steph tried Chloe again but the line was still dead.

‘You look all-in,' she said, watching Jessica slump into a chair.

The girl glanced over to where some makeshift mattresses had been thrown together using tablecloths and cushions from the café's sofas and armchairs. ‘Guess I am. It's not been a typical morning, exactly. Usually by now I'd be onto about my tenth manicure.' She gave Steph a wan smile.

‘So how did you end up doing that for a living?'

‘Oh, it's not a
career
,' Jessica laughed. ‘I'm travelling. Landed in Dubai three weeks ago. I was planning to move on next week.'

‘What about medical school?'

Jessica's expression darkened. ‘I, um . . . decided to take some time off. Needed to sort myself out.'

‘Well, you know, Jessica, medical school has to be the most stressful years of your life. I almost gave up a dozen times.'

‘I had particular problems.'

Steph decided not to probe and just gave the girl a sympathetic look.

‘My, um, my parents were killed in a crash, three months ago.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry.'

Jessica raised her hands. ‘No, I don't mind talking about it. I . . . I've been bottling it up, really. I thought by getting away from Boston, from my old life, I could escape from the memory. But there's nowhere to run to. You can't erase the past.'

‘You can always go back.'

‘Yes, MGH has been great. It's just . . . I don't know whether I want to practise medicine anymore.'

‘Really?'

‘My parents were brought into the ER of the hospital. I was on duty. The Chief Resident wouldn't let me get involved, of course. But when Mum and Dad both died, I dunno, I sort of lost faith I guess. Up to then, I saw doctors as saviours and I wanted to dedicate my life to the profession. But . . .'

‘I understand,' Steph said, placing a hand on Jessica's arm. ‘I think it's a perfectly natural reaction. And if you want my opinion, you did the right thing by getting away from it all. You can't run away from the past but you can give yourself some breathing space, time to analyse, to really question your drives and what it is you want to do next.' She looked up and saw a tear trickling down Jessica's cheek. She was about to say something when her comms sounded.

‘Chloe? Thank God! What's your status?'

‘I've broken through to the mezzanine just above 199. I can see the door ahead.'

‘We're in a café to the north of the emergency stairway.'

‘See you in a few minutes.'

Steph looked back into Jessica's face. ‘That was my colleague. She's coming down to 199 in what we call a Cage. It's a great machine that can shrug off anything you can throw at it.'

Jessica raised her eyebrows. ‘So she's opened up a way to the roof?'

‘Hopefully.' Steph stood up, shuffled around the table and took two steps towards the dozen survivors grouped together on the other side of the café.

BOOM.

The room shook. A shockwave crashed through the café from the mall. A terrible roar rattled the room. Steph shot a glance upwards just as a chunk of concrete about a metre square ripped away from the ceiling. It span through the air and smashed into thousands of pieces on the marble floor.

67

Base One, Tintara

Tom reacted with lightning speed. His reflexes with a computer were a match for any of the team in the field. His fingers flew over the light keyboard, inputting an emergency code sequence to wrench Sybil from the web, isolating the computer from external cyberforces. But he had to move incredibly quickly. Whoever or whatever had taken over the ITAM system in Geneva had spotted Sybil and was now attacking. The holoscreen flashed, then filled with new images and figures replacing the devil's face.

Tom held his breath involuntarily, then he realised what he was doing and started to draw oxygen into his lungs so fast he was almost hyperventilating. ‘Come on,' he hissed. ‘
Come on
.' He moved his fingers even faster, his mind now on overdrive. Invasive tendrils of the Geneva hacker were reaching out as Tom dragged Sybil offline and safe behind the firewall protecting Base One.

‘That's it . . . that's it!' Tom exclaimed as he wrestled back control and shut down all connections between Sybil and the outside world. Keying in a final alphanumeric sequence, he pushed himself back against the pillows and took several more very deep breaths.

‘Sybil,' he panted.

No reply.

He tapped another sequence of keys. ‘Sybil. Answer me, damn you!'

‘Tom.'

‘Oh, thank Christ! Sybil, run a full diagnostic, please.'

Two seconds of silence passed. Then: ‘Integrity 100 per cent. Returning non-core operations back to the web, enab- ling comms and satellite links. These are triple encrypted.'

‘Okay,' Tom sighed deeply. He knew it would now be virtually impossible for anyone to get into Sybil's systems and they had made progress. They now knew both the power and limitations of the ITAM hacker. Tom was the best in the business and had spent the past 12 months upgrading every aspect of the hardware and programming of the E-Force computer system, paying particular attention to defence. He felt a stab of anger at the fact the hacker had almost breached his system. He hated being taken by surprise. He had let his guard down.

‘That was a close one,' he said, bitterly.

‘It was indeed, Tom. The Geneva hacker is a formidable force. We came within 0.05 seconds of infiltration. But you did a good job.'

‘Gee thanks.'

‘And we have gained an unexpected advantage.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The ITAM hacker had to lower his defences in order to attack us. I was too quick for him. I accessed and copied everything on the company's mainframe . . . and everything in the hacker's system.'

‘You are amazing, Sybil!' Tom said gleefully, hardly able to believe what the computer had told him.

‘Yes, perhaps I am.'

68

‘God, Sybil, you're sounding more like me every day!' Tom laughed. ‘Okay, so what you got?'

‘Almost an exabyte of data, Tom.'

‘A what? A million terabytes? My God! Okay, question one: can we break into the hacker's defences? Can we get control of the ITAM mainframe?'

‘No,' Sybil replied with typical frankness.

‘By that you mean we cannot break through the hacker's defensive shield?'

‘That is correct. His name is Light Touch, by the way, Tom.'

‘Light Touch? You sound as though you almost admire the bastard.'

‘He is an exceptionally proficient hacker.'

Tom bridled, then took a deep breath. ‘Maybe he's good but he's not the best.'

‘That has yet to be verified.'

Tom gave the computer a contemptuous, ‘Yeah, right,' and studied his holoscreen. ‘Okay, we will return to this discussion at a later date, believe me. Question two: is this Light Touch working for the Four Horsemen?'

‘Yes he is.'

‘Why?'

‘They obviously want to destroy ITAM.'

‘Hang on! Back up, Syb. Why on earth would they want to do that?'

‘I suspect because they have a big investment in the company.' There was a momentary pause. ‘Indeed, according to several global finance groups I've just accessed, the Four Horsemen are between 31 per cent and 33 per cent shareholders in ITAM, depending upon whose figures you believe.'

‘But that doesn't make any sense at all! Why would they want to destroy a company that they've invested in? Hang on . . . ITAM are major shareholders in both the Cloud Tower and Eurostar. What the hell is going on here?'

‘It's a principle called “Playing Put Options”.'

‘Which means?'

‘Engaging in a subtle financial game, really, Tom.'

‘Explain, Sybil.'

‘A “Put Option” is a contract giving the buyer the option to sell stocks at a later date. They buy the stocks at a nominal price – let's say, one euro per share – and they are sold in blocks of 100 shares. If exercised, they give the holder the option of selling selected stocks at a future date at a price set when the contract is issued. For example, suppose an investor has a million euros to spend. They could tie up 10,000 shares of, say, British Airways at 100 euros per share. But crucially, they don't actually have to pay the full amount for them. They just pay one euro a share for them. They have simply bought an option and, most importantly, the seller of the option is obligated to buy them back at a pre-agreed price if the buyer says so. Now, suppose the stock falls to 50 euros when the contract matures, the holder of the option can purchase the shares for 50 euros and immediately sell them back for 100 euros – regardless of where the market then stands – because that was stipulated in the original contract.'

‘But why would any seller do this?'

‘Two reasons. First, the markets are so competitive they have to take extraordinary measures to acquire a profitable slice of the global market. But perhaps more importantly, the seller gets capital investment that they can use as the contract plays out. In my example, the buyer pays one euro per share and has the option on 10,000 shares. This means the seller has 10,000 euros to play with for a pre-agreed time.'

‘Very risky.'

‘From what I understand of the stock market, Tom, risk is its essence.'

‘Yes okay. So you're telling me that the Four Horsemen have Put Options on everything linked with Eurostar, the Cloud Tower and ITAM.'

‘Yes.'

‘So they want the companies to collapse because they'll make vast profits from shares.'

‘Precisely.'

‘And they have no compunction in killing thousands of people to meet their ends.'

‘That would seem to be the case. I assumed we had already established the way the Four Horsemen operate. Mammon appears to be their God.'