The automated car drove Bill and Laura back to New London. Their next stop was the ITF offices.
They passed by groups of confused business owners and residents standing outside their premises, scratching their heads at the power problem. Going by what he saw, Bill guessed the outage could be citywide. If he were in Harvey’s shoes and had hit the power stations, he wouldn’t have settled for partial control. How far the issue spread, though—that was yet to be determined.
The car pulled up outside the ITF offices, a steel-and-glass building with six floors nestled between replica nineteenth-century buildings. All was quiet, but Bill expected chaos inside. He and Laura hopped out and jogged to the entrance. With the power down, the ITF would be vulnerable. But he sensed Harvey was after something other than control of these offices.
They broke through the doors Bill had told Julie to lock and entered the lobby. It was unusually quiet, as well as dark.
Laura glanced behind her. ‘Should we relock the doors or something?’
Bill shrugged. ‘Not much point. They already have what they want.’
‘Which is?’
‘Us scrambling to get control of the situation.’
They passed through the offline security scanner and took the stairs to the first floor. Bill arrived first and found a frantic Julie organising the team.
She looked up and saw Bill. She walked over to him, blowing out a breath. ‘Thank God you’re here. I was just about to call you again—’
Laura must have entered because Julie froze, like a deer caught in headlights. Bill found himself frozen to the spot too. He hadn’t planned for his wife and the woman he’d kissed recently to be in the same room so soon.
What had he been thinking heading straight for this floor? Why not the sixth?
One of the men called Julie over. She excused herself and went over to him.
Laura’s hand on his back surprised him, enough that he broke free of his statue-like stance.
‘It’s okay, I had to see her at some point,’ she said. Her eyes were fixed on Julie.
He wondered if he should tell Laura what Julie had said about letting the Indigenes die. After their kiss, when it had looked like the virus was affecting Indigenes and not the humans, Julie had questioned why they were trying to fix the problem. Her shocking words had turned their amicable connection frosty.
What use would it be to upset his wife, or to make an enemy out of Julie? With the power outage he needed all hands on deck.
Bill shook the memory from his mind just as Julie rejoined them. Laura walked away to check on her team’s progress.
Lifting his chin, he treated Julie like the employee she was. ‘What’s the report?’
‘Frank at the power station says the power’s out citywide—and possibly not just here. The interstellar wave is offline, except for the private channels, which we still control. Jeff on the fifth floor says the AI has been working to get control back up for this place since it happened.’
She glanced back at her team, who were scrambling between monitors, trying to make sense of this mess.
‘What did happen, Bill?’ Julie frowned at him. ‘Is it the Elite and Conditioned again? Have they taken control of the power grid for their machine?’
‘We think it was Harvey Buchanan.’
Julie let out a gasp. ‘So he got access to the system when you took it offline?’
Laura, standing at a nearby monitor, clenched her fists. ‘He did what he had to do, Julie.’
‘I didn’t mean—I just meant...’
Laura returned to them. ‘I know what you meant. That this is Bill’s fault. It’s not his fault. There’s only one person to blame for this mess. Harvey.’
Laura slipped off her coat and draped it over one arm.
Julie’s eyes widened. ‘Are you back?’
‘Yeah, is that a problem?’
Julie attempted a smile. ‘Not at all. We could do with the help.’
As both women continued to assert their authority, the tension refused to leave Bill’s body. He folded his arms, keen to stay on topic and off a different, more intimate subject.
‘If the grid is offline, how is the sentient program on the fifth floor still running?’ he asked.
Julie said, ‘It runs off a different power supply.’
That made sense... and lifted some of the stress off him. ‘And what will happen the second we fire up the systems?’
‘Our systems will be back up,’ said Julie.
‘But who will be in control of them?’ said Laura.
That was his thought too. ‘If we restore power here, we could be handing our security codes to the renegades and Harvey.’
‘Are you saying we should leave everything offline?’ said Julie.
‘For now. I don’t think the ITF building is their primary target.’
‘Then what is?’
He wished he knew. ‘I’m not sure, but we saw lots of confused faces out there. It won’t be long before the residents come here asking questions.’
Julie nodded. ‘We should mobilise the military, help to keep things calm. I know that’s your team’s job, Bill, but I’d like to help out more. The Wave is down at the moment. There’s not much for my—I mean, Laura’s—team to do.’
‘Military mobilisation will be done by the sixth floor, Julie, but I need you to take lead on it as well as manage things here. This floor should continue to monitor the Wave for any secret attempts to communicate through backdoor channels.’
‘Agreed,’ said Laura.
Julie hesitated. ‘What’s the purpose of taking the power offline if not to attack this place?’
Laura frowned as if she were running all possibilities through her mind. ‘All power is down. That means light, heat, the replicator machines.’ She looked up. ‘Maybe he’s trying to starve us?’
Bill shook his head. ‘They would have more control over us with the power active. Think about it; as soon as the power comes back online, Harvey and his renegades could control the apartments, this building, the interstellar wave...’
Julie’s eyes widened. ‘But if they get control of this place and our security codes...’
Laura finished her thought. ‘They will gain control of the ships and the spacecraft on board.’ The latter would allow those travelling to reach the docking stations. ‘You think they’re planning on bringing people here from Earth?’
Bill didn’t see how that would benefit Harvey. ‘Earth is no longer theirs to take. The criminals have been ousted.’
‘There are more valuable people there than the criminals to recruit,’ said Laura. ‘You kept a lot of people safe from the regime. Harvey could be after their expertise.’
Julie said, ‘But if their goal is the power here, why haven’t they re-enabled it yet?’
‘Something must be preventing the system from rebooting.’
Bill hoped that was the case. ‘We need to figure this mess out before that happens.’
‘What do we do?’ said Laura.
‘We use the resources at hand.’ Bill pointed. ‘Julie, liaise with my team on the sixth and get boots on the ground. I want the residents calm and all exits and entrances to this city blocked. Nobody in or out.’
She nodded. ‘On it.’
‘What about the underground operatives?’ asked Laura as soon as Julie walked to the exit.
He nodded at her glass-walled office at the back of the room. ‘Let’s talk in private.’
Laura entered the room slowly, sniffing the air and looking around the office that she hadn’t been in for a while.
She frowned suddenly. ‘Did someone redecorate in here?’
Not that he’d noticed.
‘Julie has been using this office as her own.’
Laura’s lips thinned as she sniffed the air again. She released a breath.
‘You okay, love?’
She nodded. ‘Get in touch with Gunnar. He’ll know what to do.’
Bill removed his DPad from his bag and sat down to call the head of his operative team.
The Swedish military man Bill had promoted because of his ability to keep his cool under pressure answered. Gunnar had the whitest blond hair and a set of pale-blue eyes that seemed to look right through him. He appeared to be in a dark room or cave.
‘Where are you?’
‘In the tunnels beneath the city,’ the man said in perfect English with a Swedish accent. ‘We were waiting for your call.’
Bill frowned. ‘How did you hear about the power outage?’
‘Some were at home when everything went down. We figured you’d want us to stay put, not to turn up at the ITF in case things were compromised.’
‘You did the right thing, Gunnar. More than ever, we need people operating on the outside.’
Gunnar nodded. ‘I assume we’re talking about Harvey Buchanan here and not the Elite or Conditioned this time?’
‘He freed Marcus Murphy and they took Ben.’
Gunnar cursed.
‘At least, we think they did. How did you know it was Harvey this time?’
The Swede smiled. ‘You’ve been asking us to watch him all week. I figured this man’s a big deal. There aren’t too many who rattle you, Bill.’
He could handle dipshits like Marcus Murphy, but Harvey was on a different level. ‘He trained with Deighton in his early days as a geneticist. He was also Deighton’s doctor for a while.’
Gunnar whistled low. ‘We had limited information on him here and I know you were reluctant to say who he was back on Earth, but any colleague of Deighton’s is no friend of mine.’
The head of his underground network in New London had lost his family on Earth, thanks to Deighton’s eviction of residents from a building set to become another genetic clinic. Gunnar’s family had run out of food and oxygen before Gunnar had even heard about it. He’d been working on a special assignment overseas, which Bill guessed had been planned to keep the Swede away. Deighton had done the same thing to Bill when Isla had gone missing.
‘I’m promoting you to commander of all the underground networks. I want to know where Harvey is. And Jameson. He’s missing too.’
Gunner lifted a blond brow. ‘Does that expanded title include a pay rise?’
‘You get us out of this mess and I’ll give you the damn keys to this city.’
‘I’ll get on it, Bill. The team here is ready to go.’
Bill heard a chorus of agreement in the background. ‘Thanks, everyone. Gunnar, what about the Indigene operatives? Have you heard from any of them?’
‘Not for a week. They returned to their districts before the cure was administered to help out. We haven’t heard from them since.’
Bill should get in touch with Stephen next, to make sure everything was okay. But everything was pointing to this being a non-Indigene battle.
‘Okay, let’s focus on matters here. Your priority is finding out where Harvey Buchanan is. Head over to his clinic and secure it. Also, check the halfway house at the construction site. We find Harvey, we find Ben Watson.’
‘We’ll locate that bastard; don’t you worry.’
Gunnar clicked off just as Julie knocked on the door.
At a wave from Bill, she opened it and poked her head in. ‘Just to let you both know I’ve been in touch with the other ITFs. They’re in the process of mobilising troops there. And ground troops here are heading out now. The ways in and out of New London will be secured shortly. If Harvey is in New London, he won’t get out.’
Bill guessed Harvey was long gone from this city already. ‘Thank you, Julie.’
She hesitated. ‘Anything else you—both of you—need me to do?’
Bill shook his head. ‘Just keep in touch with the military, make sure the residents are not stirring up trouble of their own. And let me know if there’s any activity on the Wave—public or private channels. Just because the power’s down doesn’t mean they haven’t found a way to activate it from their end. We can’t assume anything at this stage.’
Julie flashed a quick, closed smile at both of them and left.
Laura, who had been standing next to him, perched on the edge of the desk. Only then did he notice her fists were clenched.
With a sigh, she unfurled them. ‘I don’t think I can look at her the same way again.’
He squeezed her knee. ‘She’s a good member of the team. When you left, she filled a void.’
Laura snorted. ‘So you told me.’
Bill rubbed her leg. ‘I don’t mean that. I needed someone to take care of things here. Julie did what was asked of her.’
Laura sighed again. ‘I know. These are strange times. We need everyone on board.’
‘Including Julie?’
Laura nodded. ‘Including Julie.’
‘I think we should call Stephen, find out what he knows.’ Bill stood up and offered her seat to her. ‘Take the seat. This is your office.’
Laura stood uneasily. ‘It no longer feels like it. Can we go to yours?’