Nanopunk

Chapter 0

“Stop, wait. Is this really what's going to happen, minute by minute?”
“Yes, my calculations are near perfect.”
“And when I wake up I won't remember any of it when it all kicks off again?”
“Correct.”
“So I can't change anything?”
“No.”
“Great, then why are you showing me this?”
“I will monitor neural activity to identify and eliminate any possible recollection and deviation after you awaken.”
“Will I forget about my connection to you?”
“No, that is a part of your current memory.”
“What about you? You just going to sit back and watch after I wake up? No wait, sorry, of course, I forgot; you're big as a stadium and tuned into every single network and computer on the planet.”
“I can only observe and analyse; to interfere and modify is not part of the instruction set of algorithms.”
“Oh come on, J. What if say, I was going to get killed somehow? Wouldn't you interfere to save my life? … J, say something. I'm not going to get killed am I, J. J? Show me the rest.”

***


Chapter 1

Shadows stretched along the cold, empty platform yawning out into a deep, snow-scraped darkness. Amidst the gloom, a curved perspex waiting room glowed like an abandoned fish tank, giving off a pale yellow light, barely holding back the grey and black stains of dark. Thin lines of condensation running across the plastic glass followed the graffiti scratches and washed out gang tags to feed tiny scattered islands of mould in various shades of green. Above the waiting room, a hook held an ancient circular clock. With a well oiled and gentle ‘clunk’, the longer of the two hands leaning on 5:09 slid down onto the number 10, concealing the ‘S’ in Glasgow Central Station on the cracked enamel clock face.
Behind the perspex, Alister sat at the end of a long row of faded orange plastic seats. His legs stretched out in front of the heater, thin threads of vapour swirling up from the snow-soaked end of his grey jeans and skate shoes. It had been a long walk to the station.
He was watching a large grey rat sniff the air then creep along the thick, black steel beam running across the platform and rails to the other side of the station. The rat grabbed the edge of a crack, hauled itself up and hung for a few seconds before swinging its feet onto a rusty nail and clambering out through a well gnawed hole to scuttle across the frosted brown flakes peeling off the frozen beam.
Alister gazed across the rails to the other platform. He shivered and thrust his hand deep into the inside pocket of his coat, touching the wallet containing the fake Lawrence Weston ID.
The announcement board buzzed and flashed on.
Tues ay 4 Jan ary 05:28 A.
Nex  Train: Lo don - Eusto .
Due: 05:40. On  ime.
Beyond the platform, the rails disappeared into the swirling snow.
The hands of the old clock clunked to 5:30 and the network came online. A shiver ran through him when the nanoparticles deep in his brain and hidden in his nervous system swarmed in response to the frisson of data that flowed through the station.
On either side of him and across on the other platform, a line of advert screens crackled into life and were immediately hacked to display what looked like a wanted poster from an old cowboy film. An image of a shaven headed, square-jawed face under which was written. 'Wanted for bankrolling mercenaries, Gerard Chevalier.'
The screens blinked and shut down leaving the platforms under a gloomy glow.
The Voice said, “Alister, I see you have run away and are concerned about being discovered. You have had insufficient sleep again. I have detected abnormalities in your Circadian rhythms.”
Alister leaned his head back against the wall and stared into distant space, longing for the warmth and comfort of the train seat. He sighed and briefly closed his eyes as the Voice spoke again. “You have broken the rules of your-.”
Alister cut in, speaking only inside his head. “Oh, gimme a break, please, J.” He’d quickly learned not to speak aloud to Janus. The voice faded and he relaxed back into the murmuring of his own thoughts. He didn’t like that he’d become edgy and impulsive since he began hearing it at the end of November, the day Janus, the world’s most powerful supercomputer accessed UK networks and found him. He touched, then glanced down at the watch his dad had given him for his seventh birthday. After all these years he still couldn't get used to everything it could do. Maybe he should take it off, get some privacy.
***
He sat up with a start. He must have drifted off. A young woman in a long, rust-coloured coat was hauling a suitcase with a sticky wheel along the platform. Behind her, the train clacked its slow course along the curve of the tracks through a vortex of snow.
Alister yawned, wiped a hand across his face, hooked his arm through the strap of his egg-shaped backpack, swung it over his shoulder and went out onto the cold platform. A faint smell of diesel and ozone hung in the air. Tucking his chin into his grey canvas jacket, he watched the train stretch past him through a cloud of his own breath. The carriage lights flashed on, illuminating the platform.
The young woman was almost as tall as he was, around five eight or nine. A scattering of tiny dark red streaks broke the black of her shoulder length hair. If she wore make-up, it didn’t show; not around her brown eyes anyway.
She shot a glance at him and he gave her a quick smile, then turned away to watch the train come to a stop, the hydraulics whistling.
“Hi, this is the London train, isn’t it?” She was smiling at him.
He nodded. “First one of the day,” he said. “Looks like you just made it.”
The doors hissed open and with hardly any effort she swung her case onto the train and stepped on. A pair of gloves fell from her pocket and he stopped to pick them up. They were good quality leather; thin, strong, army issue.
“You dropped your gloves.”
“Oh,” she turned back and took the gloves. “Thanks,” she said, stuffing them deep into her pocket.
He followed her along the warm, empty carriage; their reserved seats were opposite each other, allocated in sequence by the computer.
She dropped her coat on the seat beside her. “Seems we’re the only two people getting this train.”
From her half-zip sweater worn over a khaki t-shirt, Alister guessed that she was either army family or was into the ‘London Look’ of military gear handouts. The gloves, though, were not fashionable. Army family then.
He shifted into the seat facing her. “Who’d be up this early,” he said, “first day after the New Year weekend? The rest of the country is probably still sleeping off hangovers.”
She smiled. “I’m Claire, by the way.”
Alister rummaged in his backpack, extracting his Smart-map and phone which he placed on the table between them. “Hi,” he said, glancing at her, “Alister.”
The lights dimmed and the train moved out of the station.
5:40. He had a good head start. The first person to find out he’d gone would be his psychotherapist at 16:00 hours. The longer the better. Of course, she’d call. He scooped out his phone and added her number to the ‘Reject Calls’ list and disabled the ‘locate-me’ function from his social networking sites. Then he scrolled through his contacts, adding almost every number there to the ‘Reject’ list, hesitating for a brief moment at his foster parents’ numbers.
“Sorry, Harold, sorry, Anna,” he thought, as they too were added to the list. He imagined them calling his supported living apartment and finding he hadn’t moved in. He’d had enough of therapists, social workers and community psychiatrists, endless meetings and reviews.
Harold and Anna had looked after him ever since his dad had died. Maybe he should have told them he wasn’t going to move into that flat. They might have understood. He gazed at their images on the screen. They’d really helped him through the worst, but not everything. Some things, some of the hurt, were just too personal to share. Like the call from his sister.
***
It had come six weeks ago; after eleven years. He’d recognised it immediately. “Ally,” she had said; like when Jules and dad came into the ward after the accident that took their mother. But this time there was no explanation, just the click and long mocking beep of the disconnection.
The crisp, clear sound of Jules' quirky, frightened voice sliced into him and tore open an old wound that bled out emotions he thought time had drained away. A confused mess of anger, guilt and grief snarled up in his head. Julia, Jules was out there, alive, scared.
Things had been tough enough and now this. What could he do? What should he do? This was his life, with Harold and Anna. He thought she was gone forever, like mum and dad. And from out of nowhere, with no number, nothing, just one word, his world falls apart - again; Ally. Why? Why now? Was it ever going to settle down, be normal? He was about to get his own place, start his own life. He thought he was alone, the only one left. Joy, anger and anxiety fought like demons in a doorway to dominate his thoughts.
For hours he'd paced around in his room or sat stabbing a pen into the old table he used as a desk, scraping along the grain in the wood, breathing in irregular bursts, stomach knotted, not answering the texts and call from Paul, his best friend.
He'd checked his watch – the only thing left of his past. Shit, two in the morning, there was no one, no one. It wasn't just the dread in the way she'd said his name; there was something else behind her voice, or in the call itself, in the space around what she said; a strong feeling it would be too dangerous to tell anyone about her call. What the hell did that call do to him?
All these years he thought he was the last of his family. That was who he was; and now it was all wrong. What should he do? He'd sworn his anger and confusion through gritted teeth and thrown the pen across the room, crept downstairs and stolen two large slugs of whiskey from the bottle in the kitchen before going back up to bed and crashing out.
He'd wanted to do something but whatever it was in that call had been shoved into his unconscious and was messing with his head. It wasn't just the fear in her voice, there was more; other, dark stuff. Night after night it gnawed at his mind while he slept, clawing to get through to him. Some nights he’d wake up in a cold sweat, lost in a thick fog of hissing and a hubbub of voices. The call distracted and haunted him for days until he began to wonder if he hadn’t imagined it.
Then, one awful, restless night, the anger and confusion exhausted itself, dissolving away a tangled knot of armour in his chest, and he woke up just missing her, plain and simple. He knew what he had to do, where to start; go to St Pancras, the last place Jules had been seen.
He'd slept soundly after that. Sure, he'd be chucking it all in: his own place, college, friends, no idea what would happen; but anything would be better than letting the confusion and worry swill around day and night. Jules was alive, in a bad place and needed him.
***
He rested his head back on the seat and watched a small convoy of Lycus Security vehicles, their headlights slashing around in the darkness, weave through the rubble and wreckage of houses towards the lights of an illegal campsite. Security for all: yeah, right. Government pay a Private Military Company to maintain public order then do nothing when Chevalier's goons start to behave as if the homeless are a dangerous threat.
Across from him, Claire had produced a laptop and was busying herself with it. Every so often a look of annoyance crossed her face and she tutted.
Alister flipped the smart-map open and set his phone to scan. One more check to map his route on whatever transport systems were running in London, then he’d get some sleep. He passed his phone over the smart-map; images of viaducts, plastic steel tunnels and bridges rolled across the screen. Moving the phone over London, news about the portakabin communities and the flooded areas around the river scrolled over the images. He found the house in Crouch End, next to the Rainbow Coffee Shop. Good, buses were running. He mapped a route from Euston to the house.
Claire sighed, shook her head in irritation and shut the lid of her laptop with a sharp click.
“So, where are you off to, Alister?”
“All the way to London.”
It was obvious that she wanted a conversation. He fidgeted with his phone. “What about you, where are you headed?”
“London, Middlesex Uni. I’m starting the ‘Europe after the Freeze’ course.”
“Cool,” Alister said, glancing up. She didn’t get it.
“What are you going to do in London?” she asked.
“Get a job. I’m pretty good with computers.”
“A lot of people are.”
“No,” he gave the faintest of nods, “I’m really good.”
Claire tapped the lid of her laptop.
“In that case,” she said, “maybe you can help me with this problem I’m having.” She inched the laptop towards him. “If you can, I’ll buy you a drink and a sandwich from the buffet. How about that?”
Alister shifted in his seat. At least this would help pass the time.
He shrugged. “Okay.” He folded his smart-map, leaned it under the window and spun her laptop round to face him. He lifted the lid and a soft stream of data sizzled up his arm, triggering the wifi and backlight on his watch as it passed. This should be easy enough.
A flash of deja-vu as light from the screen lit the keyboard.
“It’s very slow,” Claire was saying. “The password is enter1701.”
“Mm,” he’d absorbed that already, “looks like a hardware conflict.”
Icons appeared one by one on the desktop. “Did you upgrade the memory?”
Her eyes widened and she raised her eyebrows, evidently impressed. “My ex-boyfriend did,” she said.
“Well,” Alister retrieved a Swiss army knife from his backpack and eased out a black screwdriver with his fingernail. “The second memory chip he put in isn’t fully compatible with the motherboard.”
She gazed at him blankly.
“That other chip he put in is running at a slower speed than the one already in there,” said Alister as the computer shut down. “Bit of a data traffic jam.”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay, just do whatever you need to.” She paused. “You’ve a smart-map. Can I have a look?”
He glanced at it. “Yeah, sure.”
“Thanks.” She snapped open the map into a firm-sheet, her phone pinging when it linked to the map. “Lots of new stuff,” she said, moving the phone over it. “I must get one of these.”
A burst of light flooded the carriage, and the train slowed through a bright, snow-swept building site.
Alister gave a nod towards the illuminated half-built structures and machinery. “So that’s what the army are protecting behind the no-go area.”
“The Grey Zone. It’s where my parents are this week,” Claire said. “2nd Company, Queen’s regiment. Sandwiched between a site full of building materials, tools, machinery and miles of cables on one side and organised, armed gangs on the other. It was the covered farms before then.”
“Country’s gone crazy.”
“I know.” Claire looked up from the smart-map. “Those gangs hijacking the food trucks just outside Fort William last week; that’s just wrong.”
“Wikileaks say it wasn’t gangs but Peoples Infantry veterans re-routing the quality food that was headed for the Edinburgh Green Zone, those big houses and hotels where the rich people are staying.”
“Really?”
“P.I did the right thing,” Alister said with a nod. “Took it all to the homeless camps out on the ruins, tons of stuff.” He smiled. “Serves those toffs right. All this talk about one nation, one people, it's just rubbish.”
Claire nodded. “It does look like that in some places.”
Snow exploded from the darkness on either side of the track and shredded across the floodlit skeletons of buildings criss-crossed with scaffolding. Giant cranes, crowned with lights, stood motionless over concrete structures. Illuminated by floodlights, A large billboard declared, ‘Apartments of all sizes and Stunning New Shopping Mall – Your new future starts here!’ On either side of the Billboard, on long wide banners around thirty feet tall, Chevalier, dressed in a white suit, stood in front of gleaming apartment blocks. Across the bright blue sky was written, 'Lycus, your security guaranteed.'
Multicoloured rope lights stretched between buildings and a large hand-painted ‘Merry Xmas’ banner flapped in the wind over a dark and hollow empty diner. The train sped through darkness again, leaving Alister and Claire to stare at their reflections.
He turned back to the slim laptop, easing out the slower memory chip. He clipped the keyboard into place and powered it up. “Right,” he said, watching shortcuts bubble onto the desktop, “let’s see what’s going on with your software and apps.”
He typed on the keyboard in confident, fast bursts. “So what’s this ‘Europe after the Freeze’ course all about then?”
“We analyse how everything changed,” Claire said.
“What?” Alister glanced up at her while his fingers danced across the keyboard. “Like the portakabin communities and PMCs?”
“A bit,” Claire said. “More like work, relationships, the way parents bring up kids, the difference made with the help from the Chinese Winter Revolution workers and machinery. We study life in the Bricolage Communes in Paris, too. It’s not just the political stuff like the gangs, People's Infantry and Private Military Companies.”
“You mean pirates, mercenaries and crooks, like Lycus.”
She smiled. “We also look at the different ways the internet, news and TV pick out and put together what’s going on, how things like fashion, art, and music have changed. We get to watch movies and TV shows, too.”
“That’s a lot of stuff,” Alister replied.
Claire had a clear-cut way of talking, a bit like she’d rehearsed it. She was nothing like the kids he'd grown up with.
“You really like doing this, don’t you?” she said, watching him closely.
He shrugged. “My mate Paul says I like it like he enjoys playing keyboard and writing tunes.” He produced a small bottle of ginger beer from his backpack, finished it off and flipped it into the recycler.
“I can see what he means,” Claire said. “Why don’t you use the touchpad?”
“Keyboard shortcuts are faster.” Alister murmured, oblivious to the faint background tingle of particles transferring data from the laptop into his system.
Ten minutes later, and he was turning the screen round to her with a small triumphant flourish of the hand, then he settled back in his seat and adjusted his baseball cap.
She tapped in a few instructions.
“Wow, that’s really fast, thanks! How did you do that?”
“I cleaned out some rubbish in different places. And I found some strange keyboard logging programme your ex-boyfriend must have installed.”
“You found a what?” Her gaze shot up from the screen, eyes widened in concern.
“It’s okay, I’ve fixed it,” he said. “It was recording your keystrokes to a text file before emailing it to him.”
“I know what a key-logger is, but Jake?” She shook her head. “Really?”
The train sped alongside a wide curve of motorway lights and shot past a large illuminated intersection crowded with trucks, diggers and builders’ huts.
He moved the screen so they could both see, and opened up the text file with a list of her accounts, usernames and passwords.
“I’ve changed all your passwords to Claire223304 with a capital C and shut down all Jake’s webmail accounts. They don’t exist anymore so you’ve got time to reset your passwords now.”
“Thanks.” She relaxed and sat back. “You can do that to someone’s webmail accounts?”
He nodded. “And I’ve maxed out your security settings; nothing will get into your laptop now.” Best not tell her he had also traced Jake’s MAC address, the unique number of his network card, and crippled the card.
A smile spread across her face as she tapped into the laptop.
“It’s like a new machine, where did you learn all this?”
He yawned. “Been picking things up since I was a kid.” Hand on his wrist, he rested his head on the window and gazed out at the heavy snowfall. His voice trailed off into a faint whisper. “Since I was seven.”

***


Chapter 2

Alister’s seventh birthday. March 28th. 10:00
Wearing his new jeans and Wolverine T-shirt, Alister stood at the large glass wall on the 14th floor of the Lycus Research Labs and watched the snow falling across the Thames. The weather had forced all the schools to shut - and on his birthday, too. He was enjoying his seventh birthday. He breathed on the glass and wrote ‘7 ma I’ for the world to see.
The nanoparticles on the glass swarmed into and absorbed the impurities in the vapour, leaving nothing but pure water while Alister wandered back to the sofa. He flopped beside his father, sunk in the corner, sleeping. His dad used to wear a suit when he worked here. Now he wore cowboy boots, jeans and a baggy sweatshirt. It didn’t seem right seeing his dad’s name, ‘Dr David L. Cloud,’ on a visitor’s badge. Alister wished it were on a cool Lycus badge. His dad always joked that aliens ran Lycus. Sometimes he worried that his dad believed it.
Raising his left wrist he marvelled at the watch his dad had given him. Dad said it could do anything. The little sensors on the back and strap could measure all kinds of things about him and how was feeling, if he was eating too much or too little of something, if he was nervous, tired, excited. It was a real, proper scientist watch. It even had wifi and could link with computers to upload stuff. The best thing about it was how he could listen to his streamed music or radio through the tiny graphene audio-skin his dad had peeled off a little rainbow card and put inside his ear. It was the most awesome present ever.
His dad didn't tell him what else it could do. Dad acted funny when Alister asked if it could make him remote-control computers. Dad went “uh” and “um,” then went off and started to talk about having to get ready to go to the lab. Maybe it could; that would be so cool.
He stared from the watch to his dad still asleep. Down the bright hall, the conference room door swung open and Phil, Jules' top lab technician, dashed out towards the office. Even Phil was wearing a suit today because of the presentation. Phil was tall, six foot four. If Alister was that tall nothing would scare him.
“Hello, Phil,” Alister said.
“Alister, hi, cool T-shirt,” Phil replied. “Forgot to give you this.” A small, glossy, silver envelope magically appeared in his hands and he presented it to Alister. “Busy, busy!” Phil punched in the code for the office door, jabbed the ‘delay’ button to keep it open and rushed through the office to disappear into the laboratory at the far end.
Inside the envelope was a badge that said, ‘7 and Infamous’. He smiled, put the badge on the strap of his little backpack and strolled into the clean, tidy office. Four desks spread around the room each with a computer and three screens. A big screen on the wall permanently tuned to the Science Research channel. Two dry wipe boards covered in rows and rows of formulae. He recognised some of Jules' writing. Through the door to the lab at the far end, he could hear Phil moving things around on one of the metal shelves.
Alister wandered over to the bare table against the wall on Jules' side of the office, where he played while his sister worked. He crawled under it to his box of ‘lab-stuff’, slid the top off and began to rummage.
“Hey!” His hand emerged holding half a bar of chocolate and he sat beside the box to finish it off. Licking his fingers clean, his brow furrowed at the chocolate stains on his new Infamous style jeans and, “Aww, no!”
He crawled out from under the table. The door through into the lab was slightly open. There was a washbasin in there. He’d ask Phil to help him wash off the stain. He walked up to the door, hesitated, and gave it a soft push. The electronic hinge swung the door open with a quiet hiss.
“Phil?” Alister took a step from the carpeted office into the tiled lab and called again. “Phil?”
The lab extended out ahead of him to the far wall where shiny black computers filled the space with a whisper of humming tones. To his left stretched the long workbench with the washbasin. On his right, a few small pools of light illuminated some of the workstations covered with microscopes, testing instruments and electronic tools. His face dropped; mum and dad used to work here together until the accident. They were all so happy when Jules joined the team.
Phil had disappeared. He must have gone out through the other door that went down past the equipment room to the conference hall where Jules' was.
Goosebumps rippled up his arms. The most hi-tech lab in Europe, they said so on TV. And he was in there, alone.
Jules' voice came to him: “When you come to the laboratory, Alister, you mustn’t touch anything. You could hurt yourself.” Another pang of sadness, mum used to say the same thing.
“Dad said be strong,'” he murmured to himself, and shoving his hands safely into his pockets, Alister turned and peered back through the door and the glass walls beyond that, to his father. Satisfied his father was fast asleep, he began to explore with a mixture of sad memories and excitement that turned to anticipation at what he'd come across next. Soon he was relishing every step. He would work here one day too, mum would like that.
Motion sensitive proximity lights bloomed into life as Alister walked past them into glowing pools of soft yellow, passing deeper into the lab. Soon he was surrounded by occasional bursts of colour and the quiet bustling movement of machines busy in the shadows; blinking, talking to each other, doing stuff, changing things. His electronic jungle.
“Wow, this is sooo cool!” Over the long table, eight big screens hung side by side. Waves of coloured lines flowed across them, through shapes that expanded and shrunk on a pale silver grid.
He walked along, eyes adjusting to the gloom, his gaze darting over the parade of objects: beakers, electronic devices, rows of test tubes, skinny glass tunnels that swirled a shiny liquid into and out of shoebox-shaped computer screens. Strange, small metal cubes and cones wired to crowds of little displays that blinked numbers at each other. The lab had never looked so bright and busy. This was fantastic.
He stopped. In the middle of the cluttered table, a glass beaker stood on a charging mat surrounded by little magnets like a magical treasure protected by tiny soldiers. A digital scale beside it blinked 333ml. The liquid inside seemed alive, sparkling with flashes of gold, blue, green and red.
Something pulled him towards the beaker. Gaping at the swirling colours, he slid his hands from his pockets and touched the edge of the table. Why did those patterns of flashing colour look so familiar?
His dad used to let him touch stuff. He slowly reached over the instruments and circle of magnets until his finger hovered over the surface of the beaker. The liquid blobbed up against the glass. Alister gasped and his face beamed when a little wave chased his finger round the surface.
He had to, he just had to. He pursed his lips and touched the top of the liquid. A thin, slow stream of flickering rainbow reached up and curled around the tip of his finger. It was warm and lacy. He stirred the liquid and the tingling made him smile. The number on the digital scale flashed and changed.
He stared open mouthed at his warm, dry finger, dipped it in deeper and slowly swirled it for several seconds, lost in a daze. A fuzzy bright feeling danced up his arm and spread through him. The digital scale beside the beaker blinked rapidly down from 300ml. It hit 250 and a ping brought Alister round. The number continued to drop.
Alister stood motionless and stared at his finger, took it out of the liquid and shivered. Why was their lab always so cold?
“Woah.” His head spun for a moment. The thermostat clicked and the heaters hummed into action raising the temperature in the lab by five degrees.
He ambled back into the office, pressed the big green button and went out into the bright, open hallway. Beyond the glass wall, it had stopped snowing and beams of sunlight merged and spread like wide curtains across the snow-covered city.
The sofa squeaked when Alister jumped up beside his dad who shifted and woke up. “Oh, I must have dozed off.”
His dad's phone began to beep softly. He pulled it out and looked at the screen. Alister craned his neck towards the flashing particle detector app.
“Hey, nosey!” his father said and slid it back into his pocket.
Alister pointed at his father’s pocket where the phone was. “All those funny lines and dots looked like a picture of me, daddy.”
“Did they?” His father laughed. “Is Julie back yet?”
“No. Daddy, why can’t you come and work here again?”
His father smiled. “Julie's better at this job than I am. Besides, I can spend more time with you, eh?”
But he was always in the basement lab he’d built, or asleep, or watching TV with a bottle.
“I suppose.”
If only he could do something to make his dad better, happy again. No one could be so sad and tired for this long. If only he took his tablets; if only they hadn't all gone fishing with his grandma and grand-dad the day their boat sank, then Dad wouldn't blame himself, wouldn't drink so much, mum would still be here.
His eyes were fixed on his boots. Everything seemed brighter, fuller. His glance bounced between the boot on each foot, following the pattern of images and stitching, working out the number of separate pieces that made up each boot and what shape each piece would take if laid out flat. Five, he nodded to himself, sighed and took a comic from his little X-Men backpack and began flicking through the pages, unable to concentrate, his mind full of thinking. He turned away from his father to conceal the worry on his face.
In the corner of the ceiling, the slow, silent turn of the black CCTV camera drew Alister’s attention and he slapped his hand to his mouth. The Lycus building had cameras everywhere!
He knew somewhere in the building there would be a recording of him going into the lab and dipping his hand into the beaker. Jules would find out.
“What’s up, Al?” his dad said.
Alister could feel the bug eye camera staring at him and wished he could delete the pictures of him in the lab, the beaker, everything he’d just done. If only the film would just show him sitting with his dad. His head spun for an instant then all the worry about the camera and pictures faded away. He dropped his hand over his watch and looked down guiltily at his feet, “Nothing, Dad.”

***
Chapter 3

New Carlisle Central. 06:51
The train had stopped. Cool air drifted in from the busy platform, carrying with it the cluttered sounds of people saying goodbye, wheeling cases, pushing station trolleys. A Lycus Security Solutions advert on a screen had been hacked and now read ‘Criminal Security Savages’ over footage of guards violently tearing up a campsite.
There was no tingling, no presence in Alister’s head, just a quiet calm. For a second it was like he was still dreaming. He sat up, rubbed his eyes and glanced around the bustling carriage. All the seats were taken and people were busying themselves settling in. Most of them were Chinese; many wearing little white stars: ‘Winter Revolution’ pin badges. Others wore the three green circles of Centauri Community Construction badges.
He was remembering that someone had given him a badge once; what was it?
The doors finally shut. A friend of Claire’s had joined her and they were chatting excitedly.
“…since he came back from New York, says there's something big going down and wants to stay out of sight,” the girl said to Claire, “so he dropped me off a way from the station and I took the bus. He’s just paranoid like that.”
Claire’s friend had copper red pixie cut hair and two small rings in each ear. She wore a San Francisco 49ers hoodie and black jeans; a lined denim jacket was slung over her arm. She spoke with a warm, appealing Glaswegian accent. When she caught Alister’s gaze, he turned away, struck by her lively blue-grey eyes. He pulled the notepad out of his backpack and switched it on.
“Suzie,” said Claire, “this is Alister. Al, this is Suzie, she’s doing Art and Politics at the same college as me.”
“Hello,” said Suzie. “So, what are you up to in London?”
He shot a quick glance at her. “Get a job with computers,” he mumbled.
A sceptical look passed over Suzie’s pretty, open face.
“No really, he’s incredible,” said Claire. “He knew what was wrong with my PC before it even started up. It’s running perfectly now - faster too – and it only took him a few minutes.”
“About time,” said Suzie. “You’ve been complaining to me about that computer for weeks.”
The girls leaned forward while people squeezed past them to their seats.
“What about the snack I promised you, Alister?” Claire asked him. “I’m starving!”
“Just a Mocha for me, thanks,” Alister said.
“I’ll come with you to see what there is,” Suzie said.
“Nothing to eat, Al?” Claire asked. “Come on – it’s on me!”
“Okay, I’ll have a… an egg mayo or a cheese sandwich please, either is good.” He started as the train set off with a shunt.
Suzie grabbed a headrest for balance and looked out of the window. “Ach, the snow is really thick, no smooth start for trains round here. Still,” she smiled at Claire, “I’m sure Claire will find something to warm you up!”
The two girls set off laughing along the carriage towards the buffet car. They seemed friendly enough and Suzie sounded like fun, even though she looked a bit harder than Claire. Maybe he’d stay in touch after he’d found Jules.
How easy would that be? Even with the help of Janus. He fingered the train ticket in his pocket and wondered if he was doing the right thing. London would be nothing like he remembered.
If only his dad --. No. The memory of standing by his father’s bed. The image of a thin, frail man, drained of everything he used to be... Alister would never forget. And he’d never forget walking through the cemetery alone with his social worker on the freezing windswept day of the funeral. That was horrible; it still brought a lump to his throat.
Pushing back the memory of a hearse outside their house boarded up with steel sheets and layered with securi-foam, he gazed out across the dirty grey landscape. Jules was alive, she'd called, he wasn't alone.
He pulled out his phone, the remains of his whole history on that one little machine. Flicking photographs across the screen, he came to the Paris Disneyworld pictures and stopped at the image of his five year old self in his Woody cowboy hat, standing with his parents around Baloo. His dad was wearing a blue Sorcerer’s Apprentice hat with little gold stars and Mickey ears; Jules was standing next to him. He barely recognised the skinny little mixed race kid in the picture as himself. What happened to him?
Then the boating accident and it was just Dad and Jules. He sighed deeply, a year later Jules is gone. Leaving him to hide a grieving scar under years of trespassing and petty crimes. And even that didn’t last; his dad dying from some weird coma; which made the guilt, headaches and forgetting things even worse.
***
In the buffet carriage, Suzie and Claire stood in the queue and examined the shelves of food and drink.
A motley collection of recycled bottles jangled in the fridge when the train sped round a curve. Claire and Suzie leaned on the bar to keep their balance.
“Come on, Claire,” Suzie said, “I saw that look on your face when you were telling me about what he’d done to your computer. What is it?”
Claire shook her head. “Jake had keylogged my laptop and was emailing himself all my codes.”
“Oh really?” Suzie said.
“Okay, you were right, Jake’s a jerk,” Claire said. “You can take that ‘I told you so’ look off your face. Anyway, Al found some kind of software Jake had installed to track all my passwords. He somehow shut down Jake’s email accounts and changed all my passwords. My bank, email, Google, iStore, Amazon - everything.”
“You’re kidding!” Suzie said.
“No, I checked.”
The queue moved along. Claire spotted the price list and took out her purse. “The passwords all worked as he said.”
“Wow,” Suzie said. “In less than fifteen minutes, that’s really fast. Did he use any software, like off a memory stick?”
“No, he just tapped away at my keyboard,” Claire said.
“Now that’s pretty impressive hacking, I wonder if Uncle Stuart knows him,” Suzie said. “What did he say his name was, Alden, Alex?”
“Alister,” Claire said. “I did wonder if he was one of that group your uncle is in, the Peoples Infantry.”
Suzie shook her head. “Name’s not familiar.”
The digital display on the coffee machine across the counter flashed on. ‘Broken, Do Not Use’
“Tell you what,” Suzie said, “I’ll give Uncle Stu a call now and ask him. And I’ll see what Alister wants instead of mocha.”
“Thanks, Suzie.”
“C’mon, don’t look so worried,” Suzie said, “he’s just a smart, helpful guy. Any nasty hacker wouldn’t operate in public. You’ve seen his face - you could identify him. And besides, he’s stuck on a train. He’d know that one call and the police would grab him at the next station. My gut feeling is he’s okay.”
“You like him do you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but the way you said he’s okay was a bit of a giveaway.”
“Well,” Suzie smiled. “But the point is, if he was up to no good, he’d know he was taking a risk by telling you what he’d done.”
Claire fingered through a handful of coins. “That does make sense, Suzie, I suppose you’re right.”
“Okay then,” Suzie nudged her, “I think you owe him breakfast at least.”
Claire smiled and Suzie gave a short laugh, turned and headed back to the carriage, dialling her uncle.
“Uncle Stu, hiya. No, everything’s fine. Aye. You ever come across someone by the name of Alister? Tall, skinny, mixed race guy, about five ten, mix of Glasgow, London accents?”
Suzie stopped in between the carriages and put her finger to her ear to block the rhythmic, dull clacking of the train. “What about Jamie’s group at Brechin?” Through the door, she could see Alister asleep with his head against the window.
“Well he fixed Claire’s laptop. Found some key-logger Jake had installed. Plus he somehow shut down Jake’s webmail accounts….I know but wait ‘til you hear this, he actually changed Claire’s bank and other web account passwords. Sure, Ash could, but not in fifteen minutes with nothing but her own laptop…..That’s what I said…. No, all the way to London. In fact I’m looking at him now, fast asleep he is. Will do, thanks for the lift to the station again and good luck in Paris and Montserrat – you too, bye.”

***
Chapter 4

Alister awoke in a bustling carriage. Someone was shaking his shoulder. Instinctively his hand shot up, grabbed the wrist and was about to twist when he realised he was staring into Suzie’s alarmed face.
“Sorry.” Alister slowly let go of her wrist. “I do Kempo, self defence. I didn’t mean to.”
Suzie turned her hand left and right. “In your sleep though?” She looked up at him. “Are you some kind of black belt then?”
“Yeah, Sandan rank. Been doing it since I was seven.”
Suzie looked at him for a couple of seconds then nodded and said, “The mocha machine is broken, is tea okay?”
“Yeah,” he scratched the side of his head, “that’s fine, milk no sugar, thanks. Look, I’m sorry about scaring you like that.”
“No harm done. Lucky you let go when you did. I was about to give you a right keeker anyway.” Suzie smiled down at him then turned and strode away.
He glanced at his shoulder then back at the door she’d just left through. Keeker, Alister smiled to himself, he hadn't heard anyone use that old term for a black eye in a long time. He sat up, stretched and looked around.
People were busy chatting, eating and sharing food. Kids played or read from consoles. Across the aisle sat a Chinese couple with a small child; their bags piled on the vacant seat. The parents read from notepads with Centauri Community Development Foundation and various other corporate logos on them. The child was busy button-mashing a hand-held game console.
Outside, a heavy wind blasted snow off the wasteland, sweeping it past the window until the train crossed into the Centauri Community Farmlands and the storm cleared. In the distance, the dark horizon cracked into thin shards of blue, pink and grey. Across the fields, behind lines of high security fences that stretched into the haze, the pale spread of morning colour flashed on the shimmering resilient weave covering thousands of greenhouse domes, transforming them into an eerie, bubbling ocean.
“Wow,” Alister murmured and sat back when the train burst past rows of towering transparent hive farms, the change in pressure drumming on the window and sending pulses through the carriage until the train flew into another snowstorm and the farms disappeared. He checked his watch; the sun wouldn’t be up for another hour. He took a deep breath. The sounds and smells of food were giving him an appetite.
The Voice in his head was gone but something made him look out of the window and up at the sky. A small aircraft sliced through patches of space and wind-swept bursts of snow, following the train.
***
MI6. London. 07:45
On the eighth floor of the MI6 Building, the man in grey overalls was listening to music through his headphones as he peeled the backing from the sign he’d just stuck onto the misted glass door. 'Data Analysis Division.' Nodding his head rhythmically, he picked up his tool bag and went down the hall and began to fix a similar sign on the oak doors of the meeting room.
Back in the large, open plan office, strips of fluorescent lights shone over four cluttered desks. The Head of Division, Tom O’Neil, looked out of the long window at the grey dawn spreading over the rooftops on the north side of the river and blew the steam from his hot drink. Using his free hand, he pushed the thin wire frame glasses up his nose and scratched the stubble peppering his face.
“Security swipes and palm scans on every door and corner.” He took a sip, pulling a face. “And awful coffee. Moving us here from GCHQ was a stroke of insanity.” Crossing to his desk he loosened his tie and glanced at the oscillating green lines on a small monitor. The Markov A.I. analyser was still flat.
He crossed back to the long window and stared at his reflection. Head of messy curly black hair, light blue suit and Baltimore Ravens tie. He was looking forward to going back to the States for the Superbowl next month.
The tweeting of his phone pulled him back into the room. It was his fiancée, Sally, who worked in profiling downstairs, the only advantage of moving to London. Sally was probably wondering why he’d left for work so early.
“Hi, Sal, yeah I know, I’m really sorry. You’ll find out when you get to the office. Military Security’s idea of recruiting whizz-kids to friend teenage children of key army officers, make sure the kids aren’t fooled into giving away any secrets on all those social networking sites, has hit a snag.” He shook his head. “And someone on the train helpfully removed all the logging software off the laptop belonging to Claire Bowlby, General Bowlby’s granddaughter.
“No,” O’Neil said. “We don’t yet know who he is or how he did it. Only one so far, Jake Hogg, the ex-boyfriend of Claire Bowlby, put there by Military Security. He modded, I mean modified, the software for his own purposes. He’s been arrested. My team and MI6 field ops have been tasked with the investigation since Military Security balls’d it up.”
He slid some papers aside and set down his mug on top of the Health and Safety guide. “How about lunch at B1? Great, see you then, you too.”
He slipped the phone into his pocket and pressing a button on the desk phone, dialled Blackmore, the MI6 officer who’d been allocated the case.
“Hi, Pete, are you now? Well lucky you. I’m already in the darned office. Don’t bet on it, check your assignments, there’s a real juicy one top of your list now. But more importantly, bring me some decent coffee and a sub on your way in, nowhere was open this morning. Yeah, tell me about it. This is more serious than we thought. We need to find out what else they may be up to before it’s too late. Hang on.”
He pressed the speaker button and dropped the phone into its slot.
“I’m on it now. Hopefully we can figure out who the other hacker is and how he managed to bypass military intercept software as well as change all Claire’s passwords.”
O’Neil ran his fingers through his mop of messy black hair and focused on the computer screen. In response to a volley of keyboard instructions, the Markov Logic A.I. programme began to analyse Alister’s hack.
“How’s the new A.I. machine?” Blackmore’s voice boomed across the room. O’Neil stabbed and kept his finger on the volume button until the green line shrunk to hover over the line beside the number two.
“I’m running the Markov now as a matter of fact. The new Article 2 server array is working well so far. It’s trawling the social networks, blogs and newsgroups; building patterns and profiling potential threats.” Logic spots emerged and moved across a grid while he spoke. “A few possible suspects have been passed to your people for double checking.”
“How the hell did the hacker get into all her accounts with no other software?” Blackmore said.
“Backtracking the hack was a waste of time.” O’Neil crossed to the touch-screen on the wall and scribbled on it. “Unbelievably the trace just disappears into the ether. I’ve been doing this job for ten years and I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ll get my team onto it as soon as they roll into the office.”
“Okay, good luck. Gotta go, Tom, MI6 up north are going in. Keep me posted.”
The line auto-disconnected with a soft click.
O’Neil tossed the empty plastic cup into the recycling bin and taking off his jacket, slung it over the back of a chair. Someone out there was playing hide and seek with top grade military security software then disappearing without a trace. He’d have to find a way to track down the hacker and his team asap, find out and shut down whatever operations they were working on.

***