All warfare is based on deception.
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
I bite down hard on my cheeks as I type the password into the interface and press enter.
The control unit swallows my letters without a twitch. The monitors come to life. A surge of relief brings me close to collapse; I press my forehead to the desk and breathe Jeremiah’s name.
First rule in warfare: Know where your enemy is.
I click on the world map and locate Svalbard.
While running through the snow, I’d seen no indications of the presence of the BSA on the island. But I can’t believe that. I click “home.” The shortwave infrared satellite imagery flickers to Longyearbyen and the many antennas dotting the snowy hill.
A movement catches my eye — an oversized mosquito, black and light green on white. The aircraft skids to a halt on the small Longyearbyen airstrip.
It shouldn’t surprise me they’ve come so fast. And yet it does. I want to scream, and, all of a sudden, I miss Katvar and wish I’d said farewell.
I zoom out to find our snow cave, but I don’t get far. There he is already, on my sled approaching the Vault from the west, while a team of five men — two with what seem to be sniper rifles, and three with submachine guns — hop out of the aircraft and move towards the Vault from the north.
I wipe my mind clean of fear. We were both dead the moment we stepped onto the ice of the Barents Sea.
I squint and crank up the sharpening filter. The northern lights flicker through the feed and blur the images.
Katvar and the team of five men are still unaware of each other. But not for much longer.
It’s the hardest thing I’ve done in my life, but it needs doing: I zoom out to scan the whole of Svalbard for movements. It takes only a few seconds, but they stretch to a painfully long time. There’s no one else. The next task, the only reason we came here, is to install the program and wreak havoc.
I don’t even…
Fuck.
A quick assessment of Katvar’s position and speed, of the men’s approach, and I turn away from the horrible scene, race from the monitor room through the server room, the corridor, the Seed Vault, and the last corridor, all the while my inner eye is showing me how fast Katvar moves, how fast the armed men are, and when they will meet. I know I’ll be too late.
Heart pounding and fingers tightly wrapped around my rifle, I sprint the last few metres, press against the wall, punch the red PUSH HERE TO OPEN button, and dive outside. I skid over the small platform and land face-first in a pile of snow. Pressing flat against the cold ground, I listen.
All is quiet. The aurora wipes green and purple across the starry sky. There’s nothing pretty or peaceful in this. To me, northern lights always come with danger.
Clouds burst from my mouth. Shit, my breathing will give me away. I pull the scarf up over my face, adjust the white fabric concealing my rifle and myself, scan my surroundings with my scope’s night-eye, and then move away from the concrete block, crouching forward, down the slope and gradually pushing into view of the airstrip and the stretch of land between me and the five men.
Before I can lower my eye to my scope, a sled with a fur-clad man appears from behind a low hill. The four dogs are racing, he’s pushing them to full speed; paws and skids spit snow at the night sky. He’s whistling at his dogs, urging them on, and I have absolutely no clue why Katvar would approach armed men at full speed. With one arm he holds his pathetic, old rifle. His longbow is tied to the sled.
He offers himself. He is bait.
I will not scream.
I tilt my rifle north, taking aim. Before I can move my finger to the trigger, a burst of bullets sprays from one man’s submachine gun, felling one of the four dogs and Katvar.
I will not scream.
I bring the reticle to the man’s chest and squeeze the trigger. He falls, and at once, the others dive for cover. Before they all disappear, I slip another round into the chamber, aim, and fire. The target falls. Two men down, three to go.
I am invisible.
I am The Fog.
I move my scope back west. Katvar is lying flat on the ground, the snow sprayed with bright red. The ghostly green northern lights illuminate his torn hood and the large hole showing bloodied fur and hair. Blood leaks down his white face. A clean headshot.
I will not scream.
Trying to control the rage, I exhale and regret it only a second later. My cloudy breath gave away my position. A bullet rips a hole into my fur coat, just where the shoulder meets the hood. I notice it from the corner of my vision before I hear the shot. A second later, I’m gone — backed away and changed position, knowing they will have done the same.
The dogs are yipping nervously. They want to get away or turn around to check on Katvar, trying to pull the sled, but the dead pack member and the tipped sled make their movement almost impossible.
Slowly, I breathe into my scarf, bring my rifle in position and scan the surroundings.
A cloud of condensed breath rises from behind a snowdrift roughly three hundred and fifty metres from me. I aim at the snow, a mere forty centimetres below the crest and fire. No scream. Once the echo of my shot dissipates, Svalbard falls silent again.
No one should be stupid enough to blow his breath straight up in the air.
I move my rifle to check the sled, but no one’s hiding behind it — the dogs would have told me with sharp barks of alarm. They managed to move closer to Katvar’s body. And then I see it. A faint white wisp of life. He’s breathing!
I have to be quick now. He’ll be losing blood fast. I scan the low ridges again and can’t spot any sign of the men. Desperate to get to Katvar, I press the rifle to my chest, take the pistol in my left hand, flick off the safety, and stand.
They don’t stick their heads up, so they can’t see me and I can’t see them, but I know they must be ahead of me, hiding somewhere behind the many snowdrifts. Somewhere within a radius of four hundred metres.
The snow is soft and creaks quietly as I take one step after the other. I’m an excellent target — upright, close, no cover. Easy, even for a bad shot.
Ahead of me, nothing moves, nothing breathes. Did they retreat to the aircraft? Is there a pilot waiting or a backup they can call in? I’m so close to the peak of the snowdrift that I can see a pair of feet, fur gators, legs — black against the white snow, the occasional pale green flickering across it. When the chest comes into view, I fire two shots in quick succession. In the corner of my eye, the other man throws up his hands. I have no time for negotiations. I pull the trigger on him twice. My eyes search for the bodies of the other three, making sure they are as still as icicles, then I set my feet in motion. Quick.
I race towards the sled and the man in the snow.
‘Katvar!’ I cry, knowing he won’t answer. He might still be alive, but for how long? I can’t do anything about a damaged brain.
I would at least hold his hand and kiss him and tell him I love him, because I never told him. There’s so much I want to say.
I kneel at his side. ‘Katvar?’ My fingers fly over his face, his hood, the gaping bloody hole.
It’s a mess, I can barely see where the fur ends and his hair begins. Shit there’s so much blood. I roll him onto his back and push the hood aside, plant a layer of snow on his wound to slow the bleeding, then check for more bullet wounds but can’t find any — a small victory.
I rub my hands clean with snow and gently, ever so gently, pick off clumps of bloodied snow and bits of fur from his wound. He doesn’t respond. His breath is so shallow, I keep checking the pulse in his neck to make sure he’s still alive.
‘Katvar, please?’ I cup his cheek. There isn’t even a flutter of eyelids. ‘Don’t go now.’
I take another handful of fresh snow and hold it against the wound. Slowly, the white turns a bright red. I want to cry, but instead, I keep talking to him, my voice soft, my hands gentle.
‘Open your eyes, my love. Don’t you want to see me?’
I kiss his brow, the bridge of his nose, his lips, while everything inside me screams.
My chest heaves, tears skid down my face to splash on his. Still, he doesn’t move. The cold wind forms small ice crystals in my lashes.
I keep cleaning his wound, trying to see the extent of the injury. The longer I work, the more hopeful I am. There doesn’t seem to be any brain tissue in his hair, but pieces of skin, a broad wound with nasty, torn edges, and lots of blood.
I stand and walk up to the dogs, cut the dead one off the line and tip the sled back on its skids. I lead the dogs to Katvar. They are beside themselves and it takes a lot of growling and pushing to calm them down.
With my arms wrapped around his ribcage, I pull him onto the sled and strap him down. A click of my tongue and we slide uphill towards the Vault.
The security system scans my retina and the hatch opens with a belch. The dogs hesitate and I have to step off the sled and lead them into the dark corridor. Behind us, the door hisses shut.
We pass the airlocks and the Seed Vault, the connecting tunnel to the server room, and finally reach the door to the control room. The scraping of the skids on the concrete floor keeps the dogs irritated and jumpy the whole way. When I take off their harnesses, they at once rush to check out Katvar, the room, the technical equipment, and back to Katvar again. There’s a nervous whining coming from the three snouts and I have to agree — I want to cry too.
I send the dogs out of the control room and pull the sled halfway through its door to block them from coming back in. I can’t have dog noses all over Katvar’s wound when I stitch him up. I unstrap him and pull him off the sled, lay him on the cold stone floor, always careful not to touch his injury. Then I open the sled bags and pull out the bear skin, spread it on the ground and move him over. It’s not easy to hoist a limp man onto a fur blanket without bunching it up into a useless blob.
I press my fingers to his neck and find a regular pulse, open his coat and take out the water bottle he’s keeping warm there. I take a sip. I’m parched. Should I try to make him drink? Probably not. The water might enter his airway.
I roll him onto his side and pull his arm out of the coat sleeve, move the hood aside, and check his wound. Congealed blood, liquid blood, bits of skin and hair.
The smell of metal scrapes through my nostrils.
I scramble to my feet and search the cupboards. I know there’s a MedKit here. But where? The dogs look past the sled blocking the door, one protests with a bark, the others join in. ‘Quiet!’ I shout. ‘I need to think.’
They shut up and everyone plops on the ground with a huff and a sigh. That’s when memory hits.
I run to a hatch in the wall, turn the small handle and open it. MedKit, ultrasonic scanner, defibrillator, MIT FireScope, radio, SatPad. I pick up the MedKit and scanner, and place them next to Katvar’s still body.
Worry clenches my stomach. He’s too pale, his lips are blue, and his breath is so quiet, I have to put my ear close to his mouth to hear him.
I exhale and get to work.
A quick scan of the MedKit’s innards, then I snip off all hair around the bullet wound, spray disinfectant on it, and begin to clean it with gauze, forceps, and a magnifying glass attached to my forehead. The thing has a lamp and I can see the tiniest bits of dirt, dead skin and flesh, and hair. It takes a while to pick it all off. Blood keeps pooling in the wound and I constantly dab it off, pick the wound clean, dab off, disinfect.
I disinfect my hands again, wipe them on a piece of fresh gauze and disinfect the wound once more. That’s when his knees start twitching and the speaker in the room crackles.
‘Hello Mickaela. You made it. I’m proud of you.’
My heart stops. I look up. Erik’s face shows on one of the monitors. A smile twitches beneath his beard, but doesn’t reach his eyes.
‘I don’t have time for you. Call me in an hour. Or never.’ I pull a thread through the bent needle and focus on the lacerated skin. When I do the first stitch, Katvar cracks his eyes open. He blinks, trying to find something familiar, something to hold him here so he won’t drift away again.
When, finally, his gaze finds mine and he seems to remember who I am and why we’re here, his expression darkens.
He’s angry, I can see it in his clenched jaws, the way he looks at me as if he’s about to wrap his hands around my throat. ‘Don’t speak now,’ I whisper.
‘You’ve shot five Sequencers,’ Erik says. There’s triumph in his voice, but one cannot trust whatever emotion he expresses. He can switch them on and off like the safety of a gun.
‘You probably wonder how they found you so quickly.’
‘No, I don’t,’ I say aloud, then, softer, ‘I’ll numb your skin now before I continue stitching it up. It will be a bit cold.’ There’s a begging undertone to my voice. I’m begging him to trust me at a time when I won’t even trust myself.
Katvar’s eyes signal consent and I grab the bottle of lidocaine and spray it on his wound. We hold hands while I wait for the drug to take the edge off his pain.
‘You passed all my tests,’ sounds from the speaker. Katvar’s eyes settle on mine. Warm pine bark brown with grey specks. Paler than usual. Is there mistrust?
‘Michaela, you will be the first female BSA leader. It’s a great honour and you have earned it.’
That’s when Katvar’s gaze grows cold and with it, my heart. I pull myself together and finish my work. The fourth stitch is done, and Katvar’s knees are trembling again.
‘Are you hurting?’ I ask and he clenches his jaw. His expression is that of defiance.
‘You seem unusually attached to your little friend. I can make him your husband, but he’d have to go through training. You didn’t need much military training. Runner McCullough taught you well. So sad he rots in Taiwan. I’m impressed by your skills. Two of the Sequencers’ best assassins are stiff as boards now. Ha!’
His cackling echoes through the room.
‘You had little time to practice sniping, and yet, you killed them so quickly. Hm…,’
I know this “I wonder” tone. It always comes just before a punch to the gut.
‘Sometimes I think marrying you to Silas was a mistake. I could have sharpened you faster without him.’
‘You sharpened me extremely well by making Silas my husband,’ I growl.
Eighth stitch, ninth stitch. Two more to go. I focus on my hand and on Katvar’s fist grabbing my sweater. I don’t look into his eyes. I don’t want to see hate in there.
‘Perhaps,’ Erik muses. ‘He didn’t look pretty when you left.’
I exhale a sigh, wipe my hands and gently wrap Katvar’s head in a thin layer of gauze. Then I unpack the ultrasonic scanner, place the gel pillow on his bandaged injury and press the “scan” button.
‘I need to see if you have any fractures,’ I explain. An image appears on the small hand-held device and when I move it around his skull together with the gel pillow, it’s as if I’m looking straight into his brain. But I don’t even know what a fracture is supposed to look like and I’m about to grind my teeth in frustration when a thought hits me.
I pull off my right boot and sock, then place the scanner on my ankle. There’s a clear white line and the bone is a bit thicker where the fracture might have been. But this one is healed now. Maybe I just have to subtract the white line to have a freshly broken bone?
I move the scanner back to his head and find lines all over his skull, but they seem to be symmetrical, which makes me think they are normal. Shit. I have no idea what I’m doing. Frustrated, I switch the machine off.
‘Okay, this is what happened: Your head was grazed by a low velocity bullet from one of the old submachine guns. I don’t know if there are fractures to your skull, but at least the wound is stitched up and the bleeding’s stopped.’
I pick up the water bottle and make him empty it; he needs to drink to compensate for his loss of blood.
Trying not to show my concern, I ask him if he’s warm enough. He nods, but his legs are trembling. I fetch more furs and drape them over him, then squeeze his hand gently and turn to Erik. ‘Hey, dad.’
I gaze at his yellow beard, the orange hair that has a few grey streaks in it, his hard, thin lips, and I wonder if all this harshness will one day show in my own face.
‘I see,’ he says. ‘You like to think you can refuse my offer. If you do, you and your friend will die. You cannot possibly believe you can drag him across the ice thousands of kilometres. Need I mention that, if you refuse me, you will be hunted by the BSA and the Sequencers? They believe you work for me and, ha! You did indeed do my work.’
‘You sent them here under false pretences, just like you sent our forces to Taiwan and killed them all. You killed all my friends. Do you really believe you’ll get away with that?’
He ignores my question. ‘I can send my second-in-command to kill you both, or I can send a physician and food. Which is it?’
‘Did Silas’ brother get the job?’ I ask. The man is a perfect copy of my ex-husband. Well, not perfect enough. He’s not dead. ‘Did you know that Silas murdered your granddaughter?’
‘I am aware of it. It was his right as your husband. She wasn’t his.’
‘Of course she wasn’t. He fucked me with a pistol. Few contraceptives are more effective than that,’ I hiss and take off my necklace. The ivory dog guards a tiny square thing, glinting in the artificial light. I slip it into the computer.
‘I don’t wish to know what happened between you and your husband.’
‘I don’t give a shit about what you want and what you don’t want,’ I mutter while typing my old password and hitting “Enter.”
‘What are you doing?’ Erik demands.
‘Trying to find out how to treat gunshot wounds to the head. It would help if you shut up.’
‘I’m disappointed by your choice of words—’
‘I don’t give a fuck. In fact, I don’t give one single fuck about the feelings of a man who forces his own daughter into marriage with a guy whose only hobby is torturing women.’
‘As I already said, I have no wish to know… You aren’t searching for treatments, you are uploading a program.’
It’s the first time I hear uncertainty in his voice. I enjoy it for a second before reminding myself that he manipulates his own emotions just as perfectly as he manipulates all his followers.
‘You have ten seconds to explain to me what you are doing,’ he growls. His voice sends goose bumps across my skin, my neck hair rises. Like hackles.
‘Start counting.’ I don’t look up at him, I’m busy learning what the program can do. It seems intuitive, there’s a globe and a grid covering it — that must be Earth’s satellite system. A red dot is labelled “SvalSat.” That’s where Katvar and I are.
A window pops up. “Engaging Shell…”
What the hell does that mean?
Shell doesn’t sound good. Involuntarily I gaze up at the ceiling, expecting a bomb to hit any moment. I swallow, and my eyes are back on the screen.
“Incoming data bypass: Active. Incoming data transfer: Secure. Incoming communication: Active.”
“Outgoing data transfer: Active. Outgoing communication: Active.”
Okay? That seems to be…
“External controls blocked: 93%. Unblocked external controls: SvalSat.”
“Shell installed and active.”
I exhale and pinch the bridge of my nose. So that’s what the Shell is — to cut off everyone trying to control the global satellite network. Except me. Holy shit, Jeremiah.
A menu at the bottom appears and gives me various options. The most interesting are, “Navigation,” “Reconnaissance,” “Weaponised.”
‘You are still immune to my teachings. What a pity. My team is on the way. You will not survive,’ Erik growls.
‘Why thank you! We really need a few more carcasses, else our dogs will starve and won’t make it across the sea ice.’ I take a closer look at the screen and click “engage optical internet.”
The computer begins to work. I lean back, wait and learn.
‘You know,’ I say to Erik. ‘What you keep telling your troops is bullshit. You never planned to fulfil the Creator’s wishes and bring an end to all humans, clean the planet of the virus humanity. No, you are creating a dictatorship of men over women. You plan to debilitate a whole species by telling men and women that they are enemies, by antagonising what’s two halves of one kind. You create emotional poverty to weaken the ones you want to rule. You want to be God. And why all that?’ I bark a laugh, bend close to the camera, and snarl. ‘Because you couldn’t get your way with my mother. You are pathetic. You are bound to fail.’
I watch bright green lines shooting across the grid, lighting up the entire fishing net of global data transfer. Cool.
I hope.
A small window pops up, the first line reads, “connected” in bold letters, and below, a list of satellite names is rattled off, faster than anyone could read. As each name-number combination appears, one of the small knots in the global network blinks brighter.
A few minutes later, a message reads, “Complete.”
Well, shit. What am I supposed to do now?
Erik is cackling softly. ‘It seems, you don’t have the ability to connect the dots. I cannot fail. Did you forget the power of religion, Mickaela? Judaism, Christianity, Islam — you read the books. Men are superior to women, and even to nature. It’s written there and has been believed and practiced for more than two thousand years. It must be true then, mustn’t it?’
‘And you want a woman to lead the BSA for you. Or with you,’ I mutter.
‘You would be a…pretty addition. It would show women all around the world that they can trust us, that they can come to us.’
I nod as if it all makes sense now. Then I cock my head, faking curiosity. ‘Could you please shake your head real hard for me, Erik? I want to hear that pea brain of yours rattle.’
Appealing to Erik’s human side never generates the anticipated result. I want to make him glow white hot with fury. I want to stir up his emotions to a thunderstorm, so he thinks with less clarity. I want him to believe I underestimate him.
Blood drains from his face, his grey eyes turn a deadly black. This fury, he can’t fake. I wonder if he’s aware of that.
I push my arm out, tap my finger to the screen, and click “Weaponised.” Another menu opens, more options, satellite specification, status, orbit, and location.
‘What are you doing?’
I ignore his question. ‘I read all your holy books, dad. They are boring and full of crap. But I learned. From you. Human nature, for example, is so very fascinating.’ I gift him a sweet smile. ‘And if there’s one thing I find most remarkable, it’s the martyr concept.’
‘Micka?’ Katvar’s hoarse voice carries panic. Do not kill them, his eyes seem to beg.
‘Trust,’ I sign and turn back to Erik, show him my teeth, and push a button. ‘This is for my daughter and for Jeremiah, you bastard.’
‘What did you do? Look at me, daughter. What did you do?’
‘I set fire to your throne,’ I answer and stick a piece of tape over the tiny camera. He stares at his now darkened screen in shock. I watch him, his confusion, and the grid of satellites that begins to blip and blink. I cast a last glance at the inconspicuous window at the bottom right of the screen. “Destruction of global network: 0.1% complete, 294 hours remaining.”
Seventeen satellites equipped with particle-beam guns and nine swarms of now-autonomous parasitic nanosatellites are chewing through more than five thousand satellites in orbit. At the end, the nanosatellites will neutralise the weaponised satellites and self-destruct. In two hundred ninety-four hours — or twelve days — humanity will enter the post digital network era, the post global observation era and, if Erik keeps warmongering, we will soon enter a new Iron Age.
Exhausted, I rub my face, rise to my feet, and walk over to Katvar, and sign, ‘I didn’t blow up headquarters, but there’s little hope for anyone there the BSA doesn’t deem valuable.’
He touches my hand with his and I bury my face in his palm.
‘It appears you forgot a little…something,’ Erik says softly. His tone drives icy goose bumps over my skin; my spine stiffens. ‘How did I find you here, Mickaela? How did I know?’
‘The sensor at the high security gate told you as I entered,’ I answer.
He leans back in his chair and gazes at his camera. From here, it appears as if he looks right through me. He nods once and a trace of approval flickers past his eyes before he makes his expression inscrutable.
My mind begins to race. I check the clock on the monitors. I must have entered the Vault roughly an hour ago. The aircraft. The Sequencers. They arrived the moment I did and nothing is a one minute flight from here.
I touch my belly and gulp. Erik has implanted a tracker. Why did I not think of this earlier?
With quick, trembling fingers, I open a map on the screen and zoom into Greenland’s southern tip. Although I know I’m more than two thousand kilometres away from headquarters, the view makes me sick: small houses, ramshackle huts, the pit, the two gallows. I crank up the image amplification but see no movements, no heat signatures, nothing. I shouldn’t be surprised.
The area is too large to scan for enemy movements between there and our position, so I zoom back to Svalbard and the surrounding sea ice.
One aircraft is all I can find.
Think, Micka. Where would you be if you knew days in advance that your enemy is approaching a location which is of utmost importance to you? Yes. You’d be as close as possible, you would make sure he doesn’t see you, and you would take him out when he feels safe and makes a mistake.
I look up at the screen that shows Erik. He sits in his chair, arms crossed casually over his chest, waiting. He believes he’s already won this game. His men are nowhere in sight, yet he seems triumphant. He’s sure I’m sitting in his trap. Why is that?
My stomach drops. My hand drifts back to my lower abdomen. My eyes fall on Katvar and I feel the urge to run away from him.
I’m rigged.