The Grid 2 Page 8

  She woke with a start. The woodland was spinning around her – no, it was pixelating like something might on her console. Her hands and feet were tied, and there was something around her mouth which was making breathing difficult. Her arm was so raw. What had Schälen done to her?

  She struggled as she watched The Grid change around her. The pixels moved and coloured. The dirt she was resting on became hard, cold and damp as the air quickly moved from still and fresh to sodden and heavy.

  It was dark, except for the glow of a light further down the tunnel. It was a flame, some kind of torch. It felt as if she was back in the sewer again. This seemed very similar. Only this was higher and wider, and there was no water running through it.

  Lucy’s eyes adjusted. She was in a square, stone-built cell-like room without a door. There was a long passageway in front of her, lit by torches. There seemed to be many exits leading off that main tunnel, but the light wasn’t good enough, and she couldn’t really see.

  Lucy rubbed the gag around her mouth against her shoulder. Gradually she loosened it and it hung limply around her neck.

  She tried to shuffle her sore arm towards the light to see what wounds Schälen had inflicted upon her. It was so painful. As the light fell onto the top of her shoulder, she couldn’t believe what she saw. He’d peeled a line of flesh from above her elbow to just below her shoulder joint. He’d left it hanging there. She winced to look at it. It hurt like hell, but it was almost worse to see than it was to feel.

  Out of the darkness came a bestial roar, and she shuffled into the dark corner, screaming out in fright. It was like nothing she’d ever heard before. Whatever it was, it wasn’t friendly. She called out several times – the others had to be somewhere in the tunnels, but her cries just seemed to encourage the growls of whatever beast was lurking in the dark passageways. It didn’t appear to be moving, so she decided to stay still and quiet.

  It was difficult to make out sounds in the tunnels; she thought she’d heard voices, but they were far away and she couldn’t be sure.

  The rest of the group had to be in there with her. She’d become separated because of Schälen. Her first priority was to loosen her ties. If Schälen came back, it would probably be to take another slice of flesh from her. She needed to be able to fight back. Hell, her arm was sore, it was beginning to stiffen and become difficult to move.

  Lucy worked away at the binding around her hands. She couldn’t hear the creature anymore and there were no further echoes of voices – or whatever it was she’d heard.

  She was finally beginning to loosen the knot when she heard footsteps approaching. They were slow and deliberate. It was so hard to see in that light, but she was certain. It was the silhouette of a man. It was Schälen, it was his height and build, she was sure. She watched him as he reached the torch on the wall closest to her and extinguished the flame. She was in complete darkness. The ties around her hands and feet were still too tight to shake loose. And all she could hear was the sound of approaching footsteps getting closer and closer in the darkness.

  Located

  In spite of being in considerable pain, Max Penner went to work as usual. He felt trapped by his circumstances and he cursed his bad luck in finding the WristCom in the first place.

  If he’d just kept his head down and done his job, he wouldn’t be wearing a blood-stained bandage on his hand. If he’d recovered and reported the WristCom, rather than concealing and using it, he wouldn’t be in the fix he was in now.

  Max was also regretting his resistance when Talya came to question him. Like most people in The City, he was aware of her from the screens. He should have known what a formidable force she’d be. It was useless standing up to her – she was used to getting what she wanted. If she already knew what he’d done to conceal the WristCom, he didn’t have a choice. He’d either have to work with her or she’d report him to the Centuria. Max suspected his wounded hand was the least of his problems.

  He quite liked Talya. He understood why she’d been driven to do what she’d done. Max felt as if he was usually on the side of the losers; he’d dared to imagine for a minute that, for once, he might actually get to be part of something amazing if he stuck with Talya.

  However, after a lifetime in The City, most people didn’t dare to hope. The grip of Damien Hunter and Fortrillium was fierce; any protests or resistance were quashed in an instant, and nothing ever seemed to change.

  President Delman seemed invincible. He was an old man but was showing no signs of flagging. He had a powerful and commanding presence – it appeared he would be in charge forever.

  Max sat at his desk and sighed. He’d been challenged at security about his hand. They’d even scanned it to ensure he wasn’t using the dressing to conceal anything. He hated the scrutiny – the one thing nobody needed in The City was unwelcome attention. If only the Centuria had known that one of their own Law Lords had mangled his hand with a kitchen knife. He told them it had been caused by a power tool he’d been using at home. He’d had to add that it was borrowed from a friend. Somebody of Max’s pay grade would not have had access to power tools otherwise.

  ‘I should have got my friend to do the work. I didn’t really know how to operate it,’ he’d joked. It was difficult to tell what the reaction was from the Centuria. Those helmets hid everything. He’d been waved through and he assumed it was all over.

  His new challenge was to figure out a way he could retrieve or locate the WristCom for Talya. She was hell-bent on getting it to Lucy and her friend. She was also convinced that if she could make a direct contact with the Justice Seekers they could somehow be guided to safety. Max wasn’t so sure, but he’d play his part. All he wanted was to get out of this situation alive, he’d settle for that.

  So Max sat and pondered his options. Only the bots could enter and leave The Grid, but he was forbidden to use them during a trial, unless there was a technical issue which had to be fixed. That had only happened twice in the time he’d been doing the job. The bots had been sent in, but he’d been supervised throughout the process. He’d had three Centuria breathing down his neck all of the time.

  It had to be coordinated with the Gridders, whose job it was to close down the relevant grid sections in the gameplay area so that none of the Justice Seekers could enter them. All it took was a wall, a secured door, a precipice or some deadly hazard and nobody would ever get near to those areas while essential maintenance work was being carried out. It was a carefully coordinated situation, and under normal circumstances it presented few issues for Max.

  However, it would be tough to locate the WristCom with so much Centuria attention. He dare not take the risk. It wasn’t just himself he’d be exposing – it would reveal what Talya was up to as well, and they’d probably end up in The Grid together as punishment. Max didn’t fancy his chances if it came to that.

  He had to find an excuse to get a bot into The Grid, and it would have to be something compelling. He’d caught some of the progress of the trial on the screens that morning when he’d activated the live feed on his console.

  The Justice Seekers were in some type of labyrinth, and the commentary on the screens had been very animated about what might happen there later. He could see Talya’s daughter in some sort of dilemma. She’d become separated from the main group. The rest of them appeared to be contained, though one person had broken off before the Gridders had cordoned off the main party by putting a wall in their way.

  It struck Max that a labyrinth would be the ideal place in which to run repairs. The Gridders had already rendered a block in the tunnels to contain the main group. In a network of passageways they’d be able to steer the Justice Seekers wherever they wanted to.

  What he needed was a distraction. Whatever was happening with Talya’s daughter seemed to be the primary activity at that time. It appeared to Max to be a sideline story, a subplot to the main trial. They’d save the kills for later that day, that’s why the main group had been penned up. Fortrillium li
ked the main action to take place when the biggest audiences were available. It helped to keep the population of The City in its place.

  There was a NightCam trained on Lucy. It kept flitting between Lucy and the man who was walking along the corridor, making his way to where she was being held captive. A map was being displayed on Max’s screen showing where this man, Schälen, was in relation to her. They were playing the situation for tension. Every time the man got closer, they’d place a block in his way and he would have to divert through the labyrinth.

  If Max could disable the camera, that would create an emergency in terms of the current trial. They’d need to send in a bot straight away, they would not want to miss whatever violent situation they had conspired to create in The Grid.

  Max had no direct access to the cameras, but it might be possible for Talya to do something about that. She hadn’t given any details to him, she was far too smart for that, but it had been clear from their conversation over the carving knife that she was up to something. And she would be contactable via Fortrillium’s internal messaging system. He’d have to be cautious, though, he’d need to make sure the message wasn’t flagged for security reasons. Then it struck him. He’d got a genuine reason to contact Talya, after her formal visit to the facility the day before. If he played things carefully, it would just look like he was responding to a query.

  Max shut down the feed from the screens and started to type a message:

  Class: Confidential F

  Attention: Law Lord Slater

  Reference: Query made during official visit to Fortrillium facility.

  Response: The Grid uses a combination of fixed and mobile cameras. The mobile cameras used are deployed via drones. They have both night-time and daylight capabilities. There are twenty mobile cameras in total and eighty fixed cameras.

  Max paused at his screen. None of this would create alerts from Fortrillium, it was perfectly reasonable for him to give information to somebody of Talya’s access level. He’d flag the message as an ‘F-Level’ secure send, there would be no problem. He’d answered a similar query from a Gridder only two weeks previously. There was no name, of course, that was encrypted and digitally authenticated, but his reply had been in exactly the same style. The Gridder had wanted to know about body cleaning and whether corpses could be removed before the trial end. As it turned out, they just had to be contained within the rendered environment. They rotted away until the bots could get in there to clean it all up.

  Max continued to type:

  By way of example, the camera currently filming the progress of the trial (at time 08.47) is controlled by drone CTD/a2 because there is no view available via a fixed camera in that unique environment.

  The camera trained on the main group (at 08.48) is a fixed camera as the group are located on the outer perimeter of The Grid, even though the appearance on screen is that they are deep in the heart of the labyrinth.

  If the cameras break down, the maintenance bots are deployed to repair as soon as possible.

  I hope that answers your query.

  I am sorry I was unable to clarify these details at the time of your visit, but I managed to secure this information from our technical team.

  Please get in touch if you require additional information.

  Max Penner

  Max covered his tracks by calling the technical department and asking the same questions Talya had supposedly raised. He adjusted the timings of the camera views to make sure they were after his call. Then, for good measure, he copied in Damien Hunter so that everything appeared to be above board.

  He hoped Talya would be sharp enough to understand what he’d done. Of course, she had never raised those questions during their brief meeting, but it was plausible enough.

  Max sent the message, knowing it would be delivered directly to Talya’s WristCom. If she was fast, they’d be losing that camera feed very soon. He had to be ready.

  Before the end of the day, Max was planning to locate that WristCom and place it in the hands of Talya’s daughter. If she survived that long. Then he hoped that Talya would just move on and leave him well alone.

  Chapter Six

  Wired

  Wiz had done what he had set out to do. It was morning at last, he was exhausted, and he was making his way back to Harry’s apartment. The aerials were securely fastened to the towers. It had been an easy job once he’d got the hang of it. He just needed to check his route more carefully before he started climbing up the scaffold frames on the roofs of the tower blocks. They hadn’t been in use for over a hundred years – of course they were beginning to rust through and decay.

  Throughout the night, he’d been thinking about what had happened with the Centuria. It hadn’t felt right to Wiz. Disaffected Centuria? It seemed unlikely to him. Leo had been very convincing, though. Why didn’t they kill him there and then? That’s what the Centuria usually did. It was almost strange to find real human beings underneath those helmets, there wasn’t a lot of evidence to show any humanity most of the time.

  Like Leo, Jody had seemed okay too, but Julia was a bit too prickly for Wiz’s taste. As he’d been speaking to Leo, he might easily have been a friend, he was so relaxed and informal. Could you be friends with the Centuria? Wiz shuddered. He’d seen them do some horrible things in his lifetime. Still, they’d left him alone to get on with the job. He’d been extra careful as he’d moved to the second and third tower blocks, making sure he wasn’t being tailed. Wiz was an expert at avoiding detection, he was completely satisfied that nobody was following him.

  He’d have to wait and see, as far as the Centuria were concerned, but he’d be mindful of the experience in everything he did. The WristCom would prove invaluable. Had they tapped it? Probably. But Wiz would let Mitchell take a look, he’d figure out if it was safe for him to use. A WristCom in The Climbs, though? Now that was a useful piece of equipment to have in your pocket.

  Wiz had succeeded in rigging up three aerials across The Climbs. He started with the highest tower he could find, then achieved line of sight between two successively lower towers. The final tower would be directly in front of Harry’s apartment window. The signals from the sewer would flow backwards and forwards and he’d be able to continue his work undetected and away from the stench of the tunnels.

  He hadn’t been able to work any faster. If Mitchell had been with him, perhaps the two of them could have been hacked into the networks already. Wiz checked himself – it was unfair to curse Mitchell. He wouldn’t have been able to work overnight in The Climbs, he’d have to leave before Segregation. Wiz hoped he’d made his way to Harry’s apartment as soon as Segregation had been lifted so they could make a start straight away.

  There would be no sleep for him that day, he’d have to keep going. As he walked towards Harry’s tower block, Wiz became aware of the screens showing unusual activity for that time of day. Normally there would be news bulletin material and Fortrillium propaganda films, but there seemed to be a bit of a buzz that morning.

  Wiz stopped to watch. In spite of it being early in the morning, many other residents in The Climbs were doing the same. There had been a big and unexpected change in The Grid. Wiz could see they’d switched the Modes already, and that startled him – he thought they were safe until early evening.

  He was stunned to see a camera shot of Lucy in some sort of chamber. Her feet and wrists were bound, she looked terrible. Her hair was matted with blood from a wound on her forehead and there was something hanging from her arm. The camera zoomed in for the benefit of the viewers on the screens. Wiz retched as he realized what he was looking at. It was a roll of flesh hanging from Lucy’s arm. The camera switched views. There was Joe. They were separated, but at least both of his friends were still alive.

  Then a third camera view appeared on the screen. Wiz saw he’d have to move faster if he was going to save his friends. The commentator was getting very excited about the man making his way up the tunnel. His name was Schälen, a serial
killer who’d been sentenced to trial in The Grid. Somehow he’d got a knife. It was long, sharp and had a serrated blade. He was heading for Lucy, having broken off from the main group in the labyrinth. But it was the meaning of this man’s name that made Wiz shudder. The commentator took great delight in explaining that Schälen meant ‘to peel’. The man heading directly for Lucy, with a knife in his hand, was going to peel her alive.

  Deceptions

  President Josh Delman had The Pact out on his desk. The pages were brown and fragile. Only two people in the entire city had access to this document. One was Damien Hunter, the other the President. Only, Delman’s copy was slightly different from Hunter’s. This edition was fully intact. Tucked into the back were the pages that had been torn from Hunter’s transcript.

  It was those subsequent pages that were preoccupying the President. He had read them over and over in a state of constant anxiety. There was no way he could let Hunter know what was going on. That secret would need to stay with him.

  They were hours away from the Centurial. That would be when he made his final play. He was relieved that the current trial was preoccupying Hunter, that and his appointment of Talya Slater as Law Lord.

  The Centurial marked the hundredth anniversary of the creation of The City. One hundred years ago, the massive concrete walls had been erected and those fortunate enough to be inside those walls got to survive.

  Nobody in The City would mark the event. Delman had made sure of that with the help of Fortrillium. There were only a handful of centenarians who remembered life before the plague, but they were no risk to him, they were simply too old. All of the books were now held by Fortrillium, so there was no access to the past. Most inhabitants in The City had been born into that life, it’s all they knew.

  That fateful anniversary was a matter of hours away. Delman would need to be sure he was ready. Just as he’d entered The City via The Grid all those years ago, he intended to leave the same way when the Centurial began. As he started to reread the section of The Pact marked ‘Catharsis’, Teanna Schaelles entered his office. She was expected, but it annoyed him when she didn’t knock. Usually he’d have admonished her for that, but Teanna was important to him, he needed his allies. There were not many he felt he could trust. Now was not the time to be falling out.