Al watched the bots in the observation tank, fascinated.
The wreckage of the yellow bot that the other bots had turned on lay smoking on the floor. Above it the conquering bots circled to celebrate the kill, like ecstatic primates. Then those bots that had fired their rail guns attached themselves to the light at the top of the tank, clustering around the source of power.
“What are they doing?” asked Delta.
“Charging up?” wondered Al.
“Does this represent a shift in behaviour?” asked Bo Zhang.
“If it does, why? How?” Al asked back. “If it’s global, how are they talking to each other? Or maybe it’s just some local disagreement like in Lord of the Flies.” Al was smiling, mesmerised. “I mean, if they’re all capable of independent action then—”
The Chinese President looked at Commander King, who duly interrupted.
“Allenby. We can’t keep a hundred thousand people in a traffic jam all night. We need a plan.”
Al withdrew his hands from the tank.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on, but the bots will always need power,” Al speculated to the assembled world. “We should cut the power for another couple of miles around the Forbidden City, but leave the back-up generators running in the manufacturing plants. Which plant has the biggest generator? Do we know?”
A technician rattled at a keyboard. “The Shen Yu – it can run for eleven hours before it needs refuelling.”
“Perfect! They have to stick close to power, which gives us time to figure out how far they’re spread and …”
“As the generators run out of gas one by one, they’ll concentrate …” added King, thinking aloud.
“Until they’re left with a single source of power. A single target,” concluded Bo Zhang.
“And then we hit them hard!” said General Jackman. “Good job.”
Military leaders on screens all over the world nodded in agreement.
“Not until we’ve found the guys!” Delta snarled from the Skimmer.
“Right – we take things one step at a time,” Al agreed, adding to Delta, “and trust me, Stubbs and Kelly will survive anything. No one has ever been able to get rid of them.”
Bo interrupted, receiving incoming intelligence.
“Flight Lieutenant, is this your sister?” He clicked on a screen and brought up a loop of street CCTV from the West Nanjing Road. It was just the tiniest, poor quality, second-long clip of someone being helped into a beaten up cab.
“The shopping mall in the background suffered a cyber-attack and lost all surveillance – just like the hospital in Hong Kong.”
Delta squinted. Was it Carla? Whoever it was already looked unconscious.
“Do you think it’s her?” asked Al.
“I can’t tell …” Delta looked uncharacteristically scared.
Bo reassured her. “We will keep looking. We will find her.”
“Sir, they’re changing again!” a technician called to Al from the observation tank.
Al ran back to the flea circus.
The bots were now clustered against the same area of glass, stuck, trying to push themselves through it in the same direction.
South. Towards the Forbidden City.
Across the Forbidden City and beyond the bots did the same.
All the bots.
Crawling out of their hosts’ hair in the quarantined zones. Exploding when scratched, setting scalps alight, provoking panic.
Many more began the process of tunnelling, chewing, blasting and burning their way out of packaging, out of the machines and consoles and containers they had been stationed in ready for distribution around the world.
Returning to the source.
Obeying EVE.
On one screen of the domed array in the chamber, the K-SAT feed showed the Forbidden City changing colour once again.
The poison that had been spreading from the centre was now in reverse. The red specks were streaming back from the furthest reaches, flying in long orbital arcs, in clusters and in convoys, spiralling in towards the centre, obeying the call of a new master.
Grandma had been summoned out of her bath to come and watch the ‘Great Moment of Victory’ but instead found herself watching Kaparis.
“TREACHERY!” Kaparis roared. “PERFIDY! INCOMPETENCE!”
She had seen small children having tantrums – and she had certainly seen adults get angry. But she had never seen a grown man, trapped in an iron lung, gurgle and froth at the mouth.
Heywood, the butler, discreetly prepared a pipette full of tranquilliser to prevent full hysteria. His orders were clear. The engineering that encased Kaparis and forced air in and out of his lungs was brutal, and if it had to work harder because he was agitated, it became more brutal still. In the early days of his confinement it would break his ribs.
The drops fell from the pipette. Kaparis groaned and hissed.
Poor man, Grandma thought, despite herself.
But not for long.
Li Jun was hauled into the chamber by a dead-eyed goon who towered over her. Her young head hung limp from her body, as if she had already been beaten. The goon took out a pistol.
“Lift her head up!” barked Kaparis.
The goon pulled it up. Her fearful eyes regarded Kaparis on the dais. They also, briefly, caught Grandma’s.
“I FIND THAT SMASHING A POT HELPS!” Grandma interrupted, much too loudly.
“WHAT?” Kaparis spat.
Just talk, thought Grandma – witter – delay …
“I smash a pot to let off steam – I get through a dozen a week around Christmas. I have to buy in a job lot from a factory outlet outside Woking. Or I beat a pillow. That helps too. ‘Everybody needs a strategy’ – they tell you that in family therapy. Have you ever had family therapy? I think you’d benefit.”
“Family … therapy …?” Kaparis gurgled, building towards another eruption, which Grandma punctured by suggesting –
“I could smash one for you, if you’d like?”
At this Kaparis became suddenly still. His eye revolved and then settled on her.
Is he still breathing? wondered Grandma.
“All … right … my dear. Perhaps you could help me? As you may have noticed, I’m indisposed,” he said in a spooky sarcastic tone.
“Why, of course,” Grandma replied, and trotted up to the dais past Li Jun and the goon, Li Jun looking up at her in terror.
“What about that pot? The one by the window?” said Kaparis, flashing the pot in question up on his screen array – an oriental, antique vase.
Grandma walked over and picked it up.
“SMASH IT!” barked Kaparis.
SMASH! – Grandma threw it against the floor and it shattered. What a waste, she thought.
Kaparis gurgled. “Now, the one next to it! Go on!”
SMASH! went some blue Roman glassware. Again Kaparis gurgled.
Grandma dared to think it might be working. “Aren’t we making progress? Now all we need is someone to love and something to believe in …”
“Now the painting!” he commanded.
Grandma hurried, to show willing, and pulled a Picasso from its fixing, cracking the frame hard against the floor, the canvas folding and crumpling within.
“Now the gun …” said Kaparis. Dead calm.
Grandma froze.
“The gun?”
“Help her, Hans.”
Hans the goon moved towards Grandma, grabbed her hand and began to force his pistol into it.
“Stop that at once!” Grandma protested.
Li Jun looked at Grandma with renewed terror.
“Let me show you my family therapy,” said Kaparis.
Grandma fought to wriggle free, but Hans gripped her hand harder, forcing her finger across the trigger.
Grandma – who had never had a moment’s serious trouble at Broadmoor – felt a flash of fear such as she had never felt before as Hans angled the gun towards Li Jun. Grandma filled her lungs –
“STOP!” she yelled.
And for a moment everything did. Hans froze. Kaparis stopped gurgling. Even the fish, illuminated in the sea beyond the windows, seemed to freeze. It wasn’t for long, barely half a moment, but it was long enough for Li Jun to fill her lungs and yell in turn –
“Strategy! I have a strategy, Master!”
Kaparis paused.
Six minutes later, after Li Jun had outlined her desperate plan, Kaparis rescinded one order and gave another. Not because he had been persuaded by a superior intelligence, but because he was Kaparis and he could change his mind.
“Get her back to work,” he ordered Hans. “And get me Baptiste. Now.”