Loading the van, Dylan had made every effort to be Mr Grey. His back story was impressive: ID of the air-con engineer who had to fix a quick call-out. He’d hacked the list of approved vendors for the Barclays Center and then hacked the air-con company themselves, picking out a current engineer to be his masquerade, Renato William Sanchez, an air-con lackey who actually was on call that night, should anyone be bothered to check.
Slipping into the trade lane behind the centre, his EMP had been nicely disguised in a Brooklyn Cool packing box, heavy but manageable, and his target was an unguarded fuse spur box, nicely beside an emergency exit that led into the back halls of the venue, not far from the dressing rooms and the stage. Manoeuvring the cool box into position, he opened the lid a half crack and pulled out a long wire. Then, swiftly with his other hand, the screwdriver came out and he was into the panel in seconds, the wire finding a new home where it could deliver its charge to cause the maximum damage possible. Its eventual payload of high voltage pulses would flow through the fuse spur and into everything connected, wireless or otherwise, and make its way to the main grid. The sheer force of the contrasting energy would be enough to shred everything within a certain radius, rendering immobile anything that depended on connectivity or electricity.
‘Evening.’
Dylan’s heart jumped off the tallest building and was in freefall. By his calculations there was to be no one around in this area at this time, least of all another tradesman with a set of tools.
The guy with the lanyard disappeared into the service entrance and Dylan wedged his foot to catch the door as he did a slow half turn to move his head and eyes into a position, any position, in order to see where the intruder had gone.
His heart landed on the softest, most fluffy pillow imaginable as the toolman took a sharp right into the basement corridor. He probably really was an AC rigger coming to check and make sure everything was efficient while the Center was under max people load and full of heat.
Checking his small hand remote, he pulled his cap down, its rim shielding his face, as he moved slowly inside the venue, and took up his position at the left stage door.
It was just past 20.50 now and he reckoned she’d be on stage by 21.00. She was in nearly all of her concerts and was usually done before 23.00 to ensure there was no backlash from the very broad range of fans, especially the parents needing that early finish to make sure their precious little ones were safe and well rested. God forbid anyone might suffer from lack of sleep nowadays!
His analysis of Suki’s concert roll, all 197 live concerts she had performed globally over the last decade, threw up an unusual statistic. There was a near 90 per cent probability that in the first two minutes of her set Suki would be at the left half of the stage. Details were crucial to Dylan. Timing was everything and he’d have less than 5 seconds and 15 paces to grab her and exit the stage, with another 15 seconds and 25 paces to be at the emergency exit, blanket covering Suki so if anyone did clock him, it would look like he was carrying an explosion survivor to safety.
Except the ‘explosion’ was more noise and smoke than anything approaching a real bomb. An EMP took out all of the electrical items in half a block, giving him free rein to leave and pass the traffic lights freely. Well at least for the first 42 seconds before his carefully woven pattern override saw him safely through, every light going in the rest of his gigantic escape route. He’d never be stopped!
BANG!
Dylan was perfectly positioned to escape any possibility of backlash from the blast. Smoke filled the access corridor beneath the stage, and the sound of screams penetrated the night air, which he had been prepared for, his singular focus ignoring totally the panic and pleading of the voices from all directions.
Moving swiftly and silently, he counted out his steps as planned and grabbed his target, thick blanket in place and stun shot administered, just enough for 20–30 minutes of silence.
Turning, his retraced the five long strides to the stage door. Vaulting down the last step and through the door into the rear passageway, his way was illuminated in the darkness by the tracer torch mode on his lead-shielded GGlasses. The rest of the universe was in seeming blackness, save for the neon exit signs running off the newly kicked-in backup generator.
Silently, he is counting out the steps towards his target and the door…. 14, 15, 16. Ignoring the screams and the movement behind him, he could sense that everything was random, and no one was clocking him… yet.
He continued to count…22, 23, 24. He approached the door and swung it open with his right side, his body and that of his charge swerving left to sashay through as it swung wide and then closed again. By this time, he’d repeated the action down the steps towards the Ford, parked just behind the side wall so as to save it from any damage or debris from the EMP blast. Opening the side door, he bundled Suki in through the door, effortlessly pulling the panel in the seat down so he could manoeuvre her into the crawl space, which had been custom built: AC, water spout, pillows and the right level of support so his one true love could be safe while he made the getaway.
The Ford purred softly like the old cat it was, well, a cat with a fake voice box faking the silent immediacy of the launch. He was away, swiftly but not noisily or hurriedly, then he took a hard left to exit the service lane onto the exit slip. No lights. And he smiled.
Joe continued his sprint towards the rear, puzzled as to why none of his colleagues were responding. His first confusion was the bot, which he found sitting on the floor like a doubled-over doll, legs at an impossible angle, jerking motions and squeaks and beeps as it tried to somehow regain… consciousness?
Throwing open the exit door, he found himself in a narrow corridor and headed towards the green neon stage sign, which apart from the red exit was the only thing lit up. Hurdling the side stairs in almost total darkness, all he could hear were screams of people moving wildly like a colony of ants: random, switches of direction, bumping, confusion, panic.
The smoke was starting to thin out now. It was metallic and very sharp, and it was clear there was no fire per se. Turning his head frantically in all directions as he kept his cap over his mouth to filter the air, he was almost rugby tackled by a distraught Kelly.
‘Have you seen her? Suki. She’s gone. Where is she?’ he repeated when Joe struggled at first to comprehend what was being said.
‘Calm down, sir. I’m trying to assess the situation. Who are you and what do you mean ‘she’s gone’?’
‘I’m Kelly, her fiancé,’ he said indignantly. ‘The explosion happened, the power just went out and she’s… she’s gone!’
‘Follow me, sir,’ said Joe with all the politeness of his Level 3 status, coupled with just a hint of panic that this clear Level 1 situation demanded.
All around them people staggered to their feet, trying desperately to regain their senses and their hearing as the large electrical pulse had rendered a huge shock through the building.
No comms. Radio silence.
‘Stokes, over here.’ Joe spotted his friend and boss scrambling to his feet down near the lower exit door, helping to hold open the door as the ants escaped from the colony and headed towards whatever their mission was.
‘Joe! Thank God you’re alright. What’s happened? Are you OK?’
‘Never mind him, where is Suki?’ interrupted Kelly as the three of them instinctively followed the rest of the ants towards the light, their senses and hearing coming back slowly to normal levels.
‘Let’s meet at the e-vac point, GCab pick-up zone 1, over there.’
Stokes led the way with an athletic push from his thighs, his Level 1 training kicking in as he took charge—as he should—Joe grabbing Kelly and pushing him through the throng in the same direction. There were others already there.
Kelly again was hysterical. ‘Where is she?’
‘Cut it out,’ commanded Joe as he took human charge of someone clearly not used to trauma or incidents or even basic separation. ‘Now, what did you see?’
‘I didn’t see anything. I saw her on stage, I heard the bang and I just kind of hit the floor. When I looked up, she was gone.’
‘Jones, Davis, rear stage door. Keep a line-of-sight chain. Go! Now! Report back in 60 seconds.’
Stokes was in full-on Level 1 mode now, moving other units to the front door to help with the exit flow. ‘What did you see, Joe?’
‘Nothing, sir. I heard the bang as I was out front and saw the smoke coming from the rear, so I ran around into the service corridor and onto the stage. That’s when I ran into… this guy.’ He gestured to Kelly as if he was unsure what he was: part over-the-top styled hair and metallic clothing, part faux celebrity, who just seemed a little… pathetic.
‘The bots are down, sir. Shaken up real bad. Looks like they have some auxiliary power, but it’s not coordinating in their movements. And grid power is out. Repeat, no power. Can’t see anything up in the immediate vicinity, sir.’
‘Stokes! What’s going on?’ The unmistakable figure of General Adams came rushing towards the GCab stand, his sidekick Robinson in tow a half step behind.
‘Unknown, sir. Explosion that doesn’t seem to have caused physical damage. No electricity anywhere. Possible missing person. Sir, who is the VIP—?’
‘She’s GONE!’ interrupted Kelly, who was met by a raised hand as Adams moved closer to Stokes to continue the debrief.
Joe calmly moved him a half step out of the way, all the while wondering how and why Adams had got there so quickly in the first place. Conspiracy theories had started the wild journey of running riot in his head and he was incapable of rational thought in a linear way due to the chaos.
‘We need some comms, Stokes. I want eyes on. Where are they? They should have us up by now,’ boomed Adams, as Robinson nervously circled, unsure of whether to contribute or to stay silent and let her boss handle things.
‘Yes, sir. Jones, head to the cross-section and see if you can find the e-comms team. They should be here any—’
Before he could finish his sentence, Joe had turned and moved, instinct kicking in to know what was needed. A formal wave of the arm from Kelly to Robinson told her that she had charge of this guy now.
The e-comms guy was unmistakable, the van screeching to a halt with the visible red logo, part Red Cross, part huge mobile device. One thing that was unacceptable in a battlefield these days was comms being down, so these guys had all the kit needed to make a pretty powerful hotspot mobile just about anywhere. Mobile power: G6 low latency comms fields allowing long-range hook-ups to secure systems all over the planet, tablets being dished out to the soldiers to get them back on line and talking to each other.
The professionalism of movement was stunning to watch. Joe was doing his bit to merely connect person a with person b and guide the e-comms guys to the e-vac zone, Flashing lights were coming back online in the GCab shelter and a myriad voices were booming around the comms channels as everyone established the normal chain of command.
The bot stood up, looked down at it legs as if it were about to exclaim ‘sheesh’ and ran its hands down its body as if it was dusting itself off, only it didn’t, but you could tell that metaphorically it was.
Just then Kelly made a dash, shrugging off Robinson’s pathetic attempt to grab his arm and restrain him, due to her distraction at trying to work out the rest of the events, all the while alert for any command from Adams.
The band!
You could tell it was the band, because who else would dress like that! Joe watched as Kelly sank into the six arms like a bereaved widow being told her only child was dead. He could see panic on the other three faces as they all confirmed that no, none of them had seen Suki.