Chapter Eleven

“Sure it’s a big job; but I don’t know anyone who can do it better than I can.” John F. Kennedy

Harry paced the room. The plan was coming together. It was huge and world-changing, and it would once and for all mark him as the most powerful man on the planet. People would remember him. Would love him.

It took a big man to make big decisions.

There was a light tap on the door. It opened before he answered, so he knew who it was before Boyd stepped into the room.

“Did you find anything?” Harry asked. In the weeks since his speech, Boyd had been searching for those responsible for that despicable cartoon. It had been a cowardly attack, and one that had made a mockery of what should have been a momentous event.

“No.”

Boyd didn’t elaborate.

Fury swirled inside Harry, tightening his gut, acid burning his throat. “No? How fucking hard can it be?”

Boyd shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. “We took a few people in and questioned them, but either they’re not talking, or they don’t know anything. I’m guessing the latter. Whoever did it was working in isolation. Just forget it. It’s not important.”

If Boyd had one fault, it was that he didn’t see the importance of perception. Didn’t see that how the public viewed you was of vital importance. Boyd had always said fuck them. Just let them know you were in charge. Then what the hell did it matter if they liked you or not?

Harry blew out his breath, closed his eyes for a moment, and breathed slowly, easing the tension from his muscles. While he didn’t agree, they had other things to concentrate on. “Is the Church operation ready to go?”

“All in place.”

“Good.” The buildup was important. When the time came to act, his response had to be justifiable. Which it was. More than that, it had to be seen to be justifiable. His people had to recognize him as their savior. The man who would lead America to greatness. “How is Gideon Frome working out?” He’d always liked Gideon. It had been a pity about his family’s scandal. Or maybe not so much. The situation had actually worked out well. He’d perhaps been a little too promising in the political arena. Now he was useful but no competition.

“I don’t trust him,” Boyd replied.

“You don’t trust anyone. We’ll just parade him out for the people now and then. Later we can decide if he’s an asset or not. If he’s not, you can eliminate the problem.”

Boyd grinned. “I’ll look forward to it.”

…

It was Monday morning. Kate had already asked Auspex what the prediction was for the yellow alert. 81 percent. It was still rising.

What the hell was she supposed to do?

Go to the Secret Service agents and NTAC and tell them that they were wrong and that there was about to be a nuclear attack of some sort? Which they would know about if they’d used a super-intelligent but totally illegal predictive engine to calculate the threat levels instead of relying on the human brain.

And that, in the meantime, she’d also illegally decoded the encrypted chatter, deleted numerous green alerts, and removed her sister’s name from the info dump of a code yellow.

That would really go down well.

Her whole family were likely to be arrested before the day was out.

There had to be a better way. She just couldn’t come up with it.

She supposed knowing when would help. Just in case it was going to be tomorrow, and she had to decide on her course of action really quickly.

She typed in the question…

Yellow alert 10245: Allocate predictions to each day.

A minute later, a stream of information covered the screen. She blew out her breath as her brain took in the details. The rest of the week was negligible. At least she wasn’t going to die tomorrow. In fact, the probabilities were negligible for the next twenty-one days. On the twenty-second, they peaked at 81 percent. Then the information stopped.

Shit. Three weeks from now.

She still wasn’t sure she believed this. It was crazy to think a machine could predict the future.

Or maybe she just didn’t want to believe it.

The screen on her right lit up with a green alert. She hardly thought about what she was doing as she leaned across and deleted it. That was the seventh since Auspex had told her the probable results of handing over a green alert to the analysts. With the first couple, she’d checked the probabilities. They had always come out pretty much the same. Of course, that meant she hadn’t sent in a green alert for a week and someone was bound to notice and want a reason. She could delete them with no trace—at least no trace that anyone except her, and maybe Oliver, could find. Even so, they’d start to question her, to look at her more closely, and she had work to do. She couldn’t risk the close scrutiny. And yet, she couldn’t stop herself deleting them.

Nausea churned in her stomach. She was going against the Party, against everything she and her family believed in. At the same time, she couldn’t help but wonder what else were they doing that she had closed her eyes to over the last few years.

Thoughts like that were so wrong.

As a child, she’d always been questioning. It had worried her mother and driven her father crazy. He’d told her to accept things, but it hadn’t been in her nature.

She’d changed the year she’d turned twelve. Something had happened to her little family, something dark that had somehow altered all of them. Her sister had gone from a fun, outgoing person to a recluse, her mother became vague, her father irritable, and none of them were talking to Kate.

That had been the state of things for five years. Then, for a short time, while Stella had been engaged to Gideon, things had gotten better. Until Aaron had disappeared, his and Gideon’s father had committed suicide, and Gideon had gone off to fight on the Wall. That time had been horrible. Her father had been afraid the scandal would roll over and engulf them. Stella had retreated into herself totally, locked herself away.

As time had passed and nothing had happened, they’d relaxed. Kate had gone to college, Stella had gotten a position in the administration, and on the surface, everything had seemed fine.

Now nothing was fine, and they were likely hovering on the edge of disaster.

Three weeks was no time at all.

She grabbed her bag and pulled out her notebook. Maybe she needed to take things back to basics as Oliver had suggested. Try and get a grasp on how accurate Auspex was.

She started off with very specific questions. They had to be things that were outside her direct control, otherwise she could choose not to do them.

Will Teresa be wearing a bright pink shirt today?

Probability: negligible

Kate marked it down in her notebook next to her own prediction, which was zero.

Will the canteen have bacon sandwiches today?

Probability: 99 percent.

She thought for a moment. Do you ever give a 100 percent probability?

Until an event has occurred, it cannot be 100 percent certain.

That was good… She supposed.

She had twenty-five questions in total. Mostly they were close together with their predictions. Kate had a couple she’d attributed absolute certainty to. Auspex gave the first—that Teresa would be at her desk outside Oliver’s office at eleven o’clock when Oliver had his daily call with the big boss and Teresa liked to be on hand—a 96 percent chance, the other—that Philip, the tech expert on Floor One, would try and chat her up if she went to his office—only 2 percent. What did he know? And there was one—that the coffee machine on Floor Two would be out of order—that she gave 50 percent and Auspex gave 99.

The call to maintenance was not made.

She closed her notebook and sat back. She had a few minutes before she had to go check the first. Teresa’s whereabouts at eleven o’clock.

She’d promised herself she wouldn’t ask again until the testing was done and she was more certain that she had something to worry about. But she found herself clicking the question.

What is the chance there will be a nuclear explosion in the next month?

Probability: 81 percent.

Serious crap.

Maybe from a different angle. Perhaps she could trick him, prove his probabilities wrong and contradictory. What is the chance that my mother will buy me a dress for my birthday this year?

Her mother always bought her a dress for her birthday. Kate invariably wore it once for dinner with her family, and then hung it on the wardrobe in her spare room. She didn’t do dresses. All the same, her mother had done the same thing for ten years. She’d even hinted that this year she was going all out, full-length. Kate didn’t even want to think about it.

Probability: negligible chance.

For a moment, a little ray of hope buoyed her up. Then she crashed rapidly. Of course it was negligible, because there was going to be some sort of nuclear attack. She’d likely be dead, maybe with the rest of mankind.

She leaned across and switched Auspex off. Time to check out his answers, although she had a strange sense of futility, as though she already knew what she was going to find.

An hour later, when she flopped back in her chair, she was totally drained. He’d been right every time. Goddamn it, she’d loitered in Philip’s office for ten minutes. Normally he would have been all over her—he was ambitious. She’d even fluttered her lashes at him, and he hadn’t even noticed. What the hell?

She downloaded the backup data from Auspex and found that Philip’s mother had passed away the previous day.

Oh. Poor guy.

For once she’d hoped that Auspex wasn’t functioning correctly. But of course he was, and she had no clue what her next move should be. An anonymous tip to NTAC?

She still hadn’t heard from Stella or Joe, and she was getting worried. She desperately needed to talk to her sister.

Swallowing, she rubbed her hands down her pants leg. It looked as though, for now at least, she was alone with this. She blew out her breath, then re-ran the prediction one last time.

89 percent.

Crap. Leaning across, she switched Auspex off. For a minute, she stared at the blank screen, then got up and left the room. She walked home on autopilot; didn’t even notice the checkpoints, just waved her papers automatically. Once home, she crawled into bed, pulled the covers over her head, and slept. That night she didn’t dream.