The synapse sequence, p.16
The Synapse Sequence, page 16
Fowler was heading towards her on the other side. ‘There’s still no news,’ he said. ‘And I don’t really get why you’ve come out here.’
‘We’re waiting for N’Golo’s brain patterns to stabilise,’ Anna replied.
‘Yeah, well the agreement was that you were to work the sequencer, and I then check matters after the fact.’
‘And have you spoken with the Haydens?’
‘The confrontation with Durrant happened almost the way you described it,’ Fowler said, starting to head back towards the Hayden house. No doubt they’d be drawing attention from the neighbours, but everyone around here must have heard by now what had happened, and their appearance would be becoming familiar. ‘One or two things were different, of course: Roger Hayden made it sound a lot less heated.’
‘Which you’d expect.’
‘Yeah. So I think between that and the hedge, we’re getting a good enough match.’
‘I still want to have another look at the kitchen.’
Fowler didn’t object, and led the way. The front door was on the latch. Inside, the kitchen was deserted except for the little cat, which had curled itself into a tight ball on top of the oak table. Anna grinned to see the animal apparently so undisturbed by what was going on around it. She looked around for the electronic clock from N’Golo’s memory.
‘I asked Hayden what time he confronted N’Golo,’ Fowler said, noticing where her attention had been drawn. ‘It was pretty close to the time you gave.’
‘What did he say exactly?’
‘Mid-afternoon.’
Which was all they were likely to get, Anna supposed. But at the least it was something. And everything else here was the same as what she’d seen from inside N’Golo’s mind – the same as her first brief visit, when most of her attention had been focused on Roger and Millie rather than on the detail of the kitchen. So although they were working with N’Golo as a solitary witness, it did appear that what they were getting at least approached the truth.
‘And where is Roger Hayden?’
‘He’s gone to work.’
‘Really? With his daughter missing?’
‘He’s doing half-days to stretch out his compassionate entitlement,’ Fowler replied. ‘The mother’s upstairs. Not sure how pleased she’ll be to see you.’ He issued a burst of breath through his teeth. ‘So what time are you going to be able to wire up N’Golo again?’
‘Cody said a few more hours.’ She started heading towards the stairs, hoping to have another look at Beth’s room, when the look on Fowler’s face caused her to hesitate. ‘What is it?’
‘The front door was open,’ he said, looking back towards it.
‘Hadn’t you left it that way?’
‘No. It was locked when I went to the sentry gate to meet you.’
Fowler was already walking back to the front door. He returned a few moments later carrying a cream-coloured padded envelope. ‘Left in the drop-box,’ he said.
From where she was standing, Anna could see the envelope wasn’t addressed. Fowler immediately started to open it, scratching to find an edge on which to pull. From inside, he tugged out a used tissue. It was bunched up, slightly wet. Wrapping something.
Despite her years in the field, Anna winced. ‘Oh my God…’
‘I thought you would have had a stronger constitution,’ Fowler said, his voice grim. He held the tissue up. The dampness it contained was slightly pink. ‘You must’ve seen some pretty horrific things in your time.’
Yes, she’d seen more than her fair share of mangled bodies. A fall from forty thousand feet did awful things to a human body. ‘I’m not in the mood to share stories.’
‘Fine. So what do you make of this?’
At the centre of the tissue was something metallic. Almost like a tooth filling, except a whole lot smaller and with three fine filaments wrapped and tangled around it. Perhaps if they’d had the time, they would have found the filaments extended half a metre or so: the distance from the wrist to the base of the neck.
‘Someone’s cut this out,’ Fowler said, although that much was obvious.
What was sitting in the depths of his tissue was a microchip that should have been embedded inside someone’s arm. Anna peered at it. She couldn’t tell how modern the device was; to her they all looked pretty much the same. But she knew that now this device had been removed, the owner had lost their ability to connect to the boards, make payments and communicate with the grid. All life-logging capabilities had probably been severed too. ‘Please tell me this is one of your props…’
‘No, this is all too real.’
‘Beth Hayden’s?’
‘It must have activated the door when it was delivered.’
Anna was already out of the door, running hard. She’d seen the whole thing. The woman at the sentry gate hadn’t been trying to knock the drone out of the sky – she’d been passing it an envelope, shouting instructions rather than curses, and the drone had delivered it here. She hadn’t been walking fast. They might still have time to catch her.
26
S&P Build 14.226a – Recommendation Module
Situation #GIHHCLTYYEN
Case Updates: Evidence of Physical Injury to Victim. No financial demand received.
Recommendation: Drones and hunter bots dispatched. Extension of biolog and board monitoring to social classes 1–3 requested. Extension denied by Deng under Approval Matrix.
‘YOU OKAY?’
‘Sure,’ Anna replied, sitting across from Fowler in the Haydens’ kitchen. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘You just look a little… I don’t know…’
Anna screamed silently with frustration. She hadn’t found the woman who’d delivered the package. Maybe she’d been picked up and whisked away by her friends in the Workers’ League, but a speedy escape hadn’t really been necessary. Anna’s dash from the Hayden household had unintentionally provided the woman with more than enough time to get away. The estate’s behavioural cams had triggered a security alert – a visitor running from an Amblinside house registering on its systems as a suspicious act. Which meant the security gates had been locked down tight, and Anna had been unable to pursue.
Fowler reached into his pocket, his little comms device already lit up and buzzing. ‘Roger Hayden is on his way home,’ he said.
A few twinges erupted from Anna’s forearms, but she resisted the temptation to scratch. The police visit had been swift, with a drone coming to bag the implant and its envelope as evidence. Data from the security station was also already likely to have been transmitted to S&P. Beth Hayden’s case notes would have been updated; her score adjusted. What that meant in terms of how many resources were being assigned was anyone’s guess.
‘Huh – Mitchell’s pinged me too,’ Fowler continued.
‘And…?’
‘That woman you saw at the gates has been arrested. She was IDed via face rec.’
Anna shifted in the wooden dining chair. ‘Just some homeless girl, then? Like with the note?’
‘Paid off with a few supplementary food tokens, probably,’ Fowler confirmed, as he continued to read. ‘She’ll be followed for a few days, of course. Huh. Geotagging, biome checks – none of it has identified who she met with. Whoever is behind this is smart.’
‘They know how S&P works?’
‘Forget S&P – they know how digital and biological forensics work.’
‘That means S&P tactics aren’t likely to catch them.’
‘Agreed.’
‘And the implant chip? Anything from that?’
‘Just that it belongs to Beth Hayden.’
‘No DNA?’
‘Too much DNA,’ Fowler replied, grimacing. ‘It’s been peppered. Like I said, these people know their stuff.’
Anna frowned, not trying to hide her confusion. ‘Peppered?’
‘Sprayed with lots of different DNA samples,’ Fowler explained. ‘From a pressurised can. If you’ve visited a cheap hairdresser in the last few months, you might find a bit of yourself in there too. Or at least something made in a lab with the same genetic code.’
‘Great.’
‘Well, what do you expect? It’s just like spoofs. And fake vehicle plates before that, I suppose. Always a way round. It’s one of the reasons why there’s all this pressure at the moment for S&P to be able to push down into more and more people’s private data, not just those classified as high risk.’
With her own forearms itching, Anna thought again about the chip, its tendrils. The chips were designed to rest in a natural gap in the wrist, the wires able to slide through muscle and tendon for easy replacement. But it would have hurt to remove it. Without a medical facility, and some half-decent anaesthetic, it would have hurt a great deal. Fowler must have been thinking the same thing.
‘We need to make some progress,’ he said. ‘We’re running out of time.’
‘I know.’ There’s a girl in danger, for Christ’s sake. ‘If you prefer, I could just blunder around in N’Golo’s memories and terminate our only lead?’
Fowler grunted something.
‘Did you bring the photofits of the Workers’ League people?’
‘They should be in your inbox.’
Anna connected to the boards. Sure enough, a file was waiting for her. She opened it and started to wade through.
‘Well? See anyone you know?’
She remained silent, trying to ignore the pressure. The file contained relatively few faces, most of which didn’t appear anything like the man she’d seen. No, these were stereotypical images of Workers’ League members: working-class men shouting about the loss of jobs and dignity while promoting fantasies from a bygone century. They were nothing like the man she’d seen with N’Golo. ‘Where did you get these from?’
‘I told you, I still have contacts in the department.’
‘And these are the only photofits you have?’
‘They’ve all been positively linked: either they’ve been at demonstrations, or they’ve viewed sites that disseminate Workers’ League material.’
‘Then I have further bad news,’ Anna replied. ‘He’s not here.’
* * *
ANNA LOOKED OUT of Beth’s bedroom window. Downstairs, Roger Hayden was taking out his anger on Fowler. No doubt once he’d got over the shock, he’d want to know what she and Fowler had managed to find from the sequencer. But that could wait.
Anna’s gaze was being drawn again to the hedge line where N’Golo had met the man from the Workers’ League. It was clear what had attracted the boy to the movement, of course. When you have no hope, the person offering the merest glimmer has the most persuasive voice. She remembered that as they’d stood down there chatting, the light from this window had shone like a beacon. Anna ran a hand along the windowsill, noticing the floral curtains were tied back by simple loops of matching fabric.
An incoming message from Cody distracted her attention. She was needed back at the hub. N’Golo was starting to look like he was nearly ready for another submersion. The news would, she hoped, be enough to get her quickly past Roger Hayden before he could turn his vitriol on her, but as she turned to leave she found Millie Hayden watching her from the bedroom doorway.
‘My daughter likes standing at that window,’ she said. ‘Looking at the woods. It’s her favourite view.’
Anna felt something cold clamp across her stomach. She hadn’t been here to witness Millie’s reaction to the contents of the package – she’d been stuck at the Amblinside security post, trying to explain why she’d been leaving in such a hurry – but Fowler had told her he’d been forced to give Beth’s mother a sedative simply to stop her from taking the evidence. The drug didn’t appear to have totally worn off. Just like on Anna’s first visit, Millie’s words appeared detached, her expression almost vacant.
‘She’s good at languages.’ Millie started to cry. ‘She would have made a good translator, if they’d been needed any more. They used to say that AI would destroy the monopoly on knowledge, and bring everyone closer together. We were all sold a lie, weren’t we?’
Anna opened and closed her mouth a few times, flapping to find what to say. ‘We’re making progress,’ she said finally. Even to her ears, it sounded false. But at least it was a distraction from the swearing that continued to punch up from the kitchen below. Millie listened to her husband’s anger for a few moments.
‘You know what happened?’ Millie asked. ‘What was brought to our house today?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what do you know about them?’
‘The Workers’ League?’
‘Yes.’
Anna hesitated. ‘I think it’s more complicated than what we read on the boards.’
Millie made a little squeak. ‘They’re cutting my baby.’
Baby. A girl of fifteen, but still very much her mother’s youngest child. Anna wiped a little moisture from her eyes, not knowing what to say but feeling it all the same.
‘I can’t help but think it’s my fault.’
‘The only people to blame are the ones who took your daughter,’ Anna replied.
‘And N’Golo? Is he to blame too?’
Anna swallowed, unsure. ‘We don’t know enough yet.’
‘She took him to her little group to talk about politics,’ Millie continued. ‘It irritated my husband, but I teased him about it. Back when we were dating, I used to tell him that the AI would come for his profession, just like it came for mine.’ There was sudden amusement in her eyes, but it quickly died. The ginger cat had appeared beside her, another exile from the argument downstairs. It arched its back and rubbed itself against her leg. ‘N’Golo was always going to be more of a labourer, of course, but bots won that battle many years ago. It’s people with skills to sell who now find themselves fighting.’
Anna didn’t want to interrupt Millie – it felt insensitive to brush her off. But she couldn’t help but wish the woman would leave so she could get back to the hub and start prepping for another submersion. That was the only way they were going to find Beth.
‘The police keep talking to us about probabilities,’ Millie said. ‘And likely outcomes. They don’t understand that my girl’s in danger. She’s just an input to them. A number…’
‘Everyone’s determined to find your daughter, Mrs Hayden.’
‘They gave me a contact to call, if I needed to speak with someone. Only after a couple of hours did I realise I was speaking to a chatbot. Daughter gone, and they give me an AI for support.’ She gave a cruel bark of laughter. ‘And to you, she’s just an experiment, isn’t she? Fowler told us that your project is a trial. Something that you’re looking to sell to people like him and the police?’ Millie waited for an answer. None came. ‘You’re not denying it?’
‘I’m doing my best to find Beth.’
‘They won’t tell me what’s happening to her.’
Anna swallowed hard. She could guess. Cutting her arm would just be the start.
‘Roger won’t share what the police are telling him, either,’ Millie said. Downstairs, Roger Hayden was now demanding to know what Fowler was doing for his money, and what they’d found using the sequencer. Fowler’s answers weren’t audible. ‘At first he said she’d be back tomorrow,’ Millie went on. ‘Then he said we’d get a demand for money, and he’d arrange for it to be paid. Now…?’
‘He’s maybe protecting you.’
‘From knowing what’s happening to my girl? I already know what’s happening. They’re mutilating her!’ Millie put a hand to her mouth and stumbled away, still crying.
Anna suddenly felt dizzy. She dropped her head into the gap between her knees and waited for the blood to return to her brain. As she’d told Fowler, she’d seen worse than what they’d found in that stained, pink tissue. She’d walked into the midst of aeroplane crashes and seen the tiniest fragments of what had once been human life. And yet nothing was quite as horrible as what she’d seen today, because the person who it had been taken from was still alive.
All they had to do was find her.
27
I WAS SITTING in my room when he came to me next. Sitting, and waiting to die.
It hadn’t taken long after arriving at the nursing home to realise that’s what I was actually doing here. They’d made a good show of moving me in: letting me choose from a handful of vacant rooms, and then allowing me to populate it with some of my most personal possessions. My former home, an apartment just north of the city, had gotten too big anyway. But it was odd how all the clutter I’d owned could simply be shaken away, just as soon as someone looked me in the eye and asked what was most important to me.
What would I want to be looking at when my eyes started to close?
‘Are you going to start counting again?’ I asked.
N’Golo stayed mute. He was in the corner of my room at the very edge of my vision, just ahead of where everything turned into a grey blur.
‘If you’re waiting for an apology,’ I said, ‘you’re not going to get it.’
N’Golo said nothing. He just stood there. Watching me.
‘You were already in a coma,’ I said, repeating the little whisper of justification I often heard myself saying. ‘We had to try to save Beth.’
We had to save the project. We had to save our jobs.
N’Golo didn’t flicker. He remained standing like a statue, his expression grim. I tried not to look at him, my attention instead on the sound of a clock ticking somewhere in the room. And then I heard him. Not counting, I realised. Not counting at all. Just repeating the same old stream of numbers. I tried to keep track of them, even as they became faster.
The door to my room opened. Grace entered, smiling, before she realised something was the matter and rushed to me. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You’re sure?’
N’Golo had vanished, back into the deeper recesses of my mind. ‘I’d like to be taken down to the conservatory,’ I said. ‘Sean will be here soon.’
