Alex Scarrow - Day of the Predator

‘She hasn’t told you yet, has she?’

He frowned. ‘Told me what?’

Sal’s smile widened, a nervous twitchy smile. ‘That’s actually really funny.’

‘Funny?’

She nodded. ‘Funny.’

‘Why? What’s funny?’

‘She’s playing with you. How long have I been in here?’

‘Why?’

‘Please… tell me how long?’

He looked down at his watch. ‘A few hours. Why?’

‘Exactly. Please.’

‘Five hours… five and a half hours.’

She giggled again. ‘You don’t have much time left, then.’

The last of the congenial expression was lost from his rumpled face. ‘Stop messing around and tell me what the hell you’re talking about!’

‘Sure,’ she said amicably. ‘Our computer system is locked down for six hours. After that, it’s got orders to totally brick itself if Maddy doesn’t give it another codeword.’

‘Brick?’

‘Fry all the data. All the machinery. Everything.’

His bushy eyebrows both arced, and beneath his jowls his jaw began grinding away again.

‘You ready to take us back now?’ asked Sal politely. ‘I’ll even say “please”.’

65 million years BC, jungle

Broken Claw looked at the others in his family pack, predator eyes meeting predator eyes. In his claws he was still holding the bamboo spear, the bloodied end of it embedded in what was left of the new creature.

His mind worked hard trying to understand what he’d done. Trying to comprehend the fact that it wasn’t his claws that had ended this pale creature’s life, but the long device that he was holding, something other than him. Something he controlled. Something he had… used.

He turned to the others, clicked and growled and mewled softly.

Do you see? We killed the new creature with this.

Their minds, all younger, less developed. His children stared, yellow eyes burning with hatred, but not quite understanding, not just yet.

But he did. And his older, wiser mind stretched a little further. This long stick he held, he understood now what it was and where it came from. They grew along the river in thick clusters. But now it was no longer simply a plant — the new creatures had fashioned it into something else entirely: a deadly weapon.

Something deep in his reptilian mind shifted. Concepts, very simple concepts, looking for each other amid a busy crowd of instinct-driven brain signals, finally finding each other and embracing.

His pack had no communicable sound for the concept. His mind had no word for the idea. But if he’d had a wider range of words to construct his thoughts from then his mind would have been full of words like use, make, build…

His small mind suddenly produced an image, an image of a fast-flowing river and a tree trunk lying across it — a device the new creatures had built to cross the river.

He turned to the others, clicked his teeth and beckoned them to follow.

What he had growing in his mind is what any human being would have called… a plan.

2001, New York

They approached the archway. Cartwright nodded at his men still standing guard outside. He gestured to Forby to join them inside as the shutter cranked noisily up. The other men he instructed to continue guarding the entrance, allowing no one else inside.

One by one they all stooped under the shutter as it clattered to a halt. As he followed the others in, Cartwright glanced up at the sky above Manhattan, beginning to lighten with the first grey stain of dawn. Another hour and it was going to be daylight, New Yorkers getting ready to go to work, and disgruntled civilians building up around the road blocks either end of the Williamsburg Bridge. Traffic police, TV film crews and journalists were surely soon going to add to that, asking his men and the National Guard soldiers where their orders had come from. What the hell was going on? He and his discreet little under-the-radar agency could do without attracting that kind of attention. The terrorist-bomb cover story those men had been given would hold for a little while longer, but not forever.

The last one inside the archway, he pressed the button and the shutter rattled down noisily again. Forby removed his bio-containment hood and then unslung his machine pistol.

‘It’s all right, no need to aim it at the girls,’ said Cartwright. ‘But just have it to hand, uh?’

Forby nodded and lowered his aim.

‘So,’ he continued, approaching the desk stacked with monitors, ‘the computer? Before it’s all fried?’

Maddy nodded. ‘Yes, of course. DOMINOES.’

Cartwright shook his head. Of course. You idiot, Lester. He looked at the Domino’s pizza boxes strewn across the desk, and would have slapped himself if he’d been alone.

The dialogue box on one of the screens flickered to life as a cursor flashed and scuttled across the screen with new text.

› Welcome back, Maddy.

‘Hi, Bob,’ she said. ‘I’m in time, aren’t I?’

› No system files have been erased yet. You had another seven minutes before I proceeded with your instructions.

‘Christ,’ muttered Lester, ‘you weren’t kidding.’

Sal shook her head. ‘Nope.’

› My camera detects unauthorized personnel in the field office.

‘Yes,’ said Maddy, ‘we have guests.’

› Are you under duress?

‘No, it’s fine, Bob. These guys are OK, for now.’

Cartwright tapped Maddy’s arm and spoke quietly to her. ‘Anything funny, I mean it… you say anything to that computer that sounds remotely like a warning and it’ll be the very last thing you do.’

She nodded. ‘Don’t worry… I’m not stupid.’ She sat down in one of the office chairs and faced the computer’s webcam. ‘Bob, we got a message from Liam.’

› I am very pleased to hear that.

‘Yes, so are we.’

Sal joined her at the table. ‘Hey, Bob.’

› Hello, Sal.

She held up the piece of paper Lester Cartwright had produced earlier. ‘This is the message. Can you see it clearly?’

› Hold it very still, please. I will scan it.

A moment later the scanned image from the webcam appeared on one of the monitors and the image flickered light and dark as Bob adjusted the contrast to get a clearer resolution of the handwriting. Then a highlight box flashed around each handwritten letter in rapid succession, until finally a text-processing application opened itself on yet another monitor with the entire message typed out clearly.

› Some of the message is in code.

‘That’s right,’ said Sal. ‘It’s a book code.’

› The encryption clue is ‘magic’. Is this correct?

‘Yes.’

› I have more than thirty thousand data strings that include the word ‘magic ’.

‘I think that’s referring to the book you were reading the other day. Do you remember? We were discussing it.’

› Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

‘Yeah, that’s the one.’

Cartwright and Forby leaned forward. ‘You have got to be kidding,’ mumbled the old man.

‘Hey, my daughter is reading those books,’ said Forby. ‘Is that the next one?’

‘It’s the last one,’ said Maddy. ‘Book seven.’

‘Jeez! What my girl wouldn’t give to get a look at that!’

Cartwright cocked an eyebrow at his man. ‘Forby… please be quiet.’ The man obediently drew back and resumed his wary stance, the gun held loosely in his hands.

Sal sat down beside Maddy. ‘Bob, you and the duplicate AI will have the same digital book file, right?’

› Affirmative. The file was in my short-term memory cache when we downloaded the duplicate AI into the support unit.

‘Then this should be pretty much straightforward,’ said Maddy.