KINDRED - Transmission 13
Making no sense of it at all.
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NOVEMBER
“Inspector Webster is unable to come to the phone right now—”
“Shit!”
Nik ended the call before the beep. Two messages already. No point in leaving another.
Frost crowded the corners of the small panes of his rented room’s only window. A musty smell of rising damp and linseed oil—or maybe stale beer.
Leaning toward the window, he took a furtive glance outside. To the left, a damp road, no cars in sight. On the right, a gravel driveway, a half-empty skip.
Not a soul.
Nik sat down in front of a battered wooden desk. A warming shaft of sunlight lay across it, and a troupe of ancient dust particles hung motionless in its beam.
He switched his laptop on. The screen lit up, but his eyes wouldn’t focus.
What had he gotten himself into?
He’d done it again—like that other time… He just couldn’t help himself; couldn’t leave well enough alone.
Stand back, Nik, close the door, Nik.
It was none of his business.
And… closing the door was the right damn thing to do. It’s exactly what Preston had been doing, he’d said so himself. Though—he hadn’t quite finished… when he—
The way Preston described it all had a strong element of plausibility—even, in some strange way… inevitability.
But nothing was inevitable. Things could be controlled, put away—made to disappear. Keep something from the world’s notice for long enough, it becomes as if it never existed.
Only; it didn’t exactly look like the world hadn’t noticed.
Nik closed his eyes and put his fists up to his face, pressing them into his aching eye sockets. His breathing was ragged, shallow—he made a conscious effort to slow it down.
Several seconds passed, the only sound was the soft whirring of the computer’s cooling fan.
It can’t really be true, of course. The computing power alone would be... Billions.
Webster would know what to do.
He opened his eyes and glanced down at the screen of his smartphone. He fixed it—willed it to ring.
Nothing.
He sighed weakly.
The computer screen dimmed slightly. He wiggled the cursor and it brightened.
His emails were open on the screen in front of him. Only two overnight; one from Tim, the other he’d sent himself from Alan Maddox.
He brought up Tim’s first:
From: Tim Phelps
To: Nik Patel
Subject: Campfyre shenanigans
Hi Nik,
Missed you tonight at the pub—shame you couldn’t make it!
Listen, are you all right? Is there anything going on? I don’t like this business with Alan Maddox. Mike wasn’t there tonight either, which I thought was a bit strange, and he wasn’t himself on the phone when I called him—a bit… distracted, you know? Look, I don’t know what this is all about, but I don’t like it at all. If you’re involved with anything, you should get out of it. Now.
I mean it Nik, you don’t want to get in over your head.
Anyway, I guess I’ll be seeing you in the morning at the office. If we still have a job.
Cheers, and take care,
Tim
Nik stared at the message a moment. Something was off in his friend’s tone. Something—like the way Tim had spoken when they’d parted yesterday.
He started drafting a reply in his head, but the threads all tangled.
Instead, he blurted out a quick voice note to Mike to explain that he’d not be in the office today as he wasn’t feeling well.
Right. Focus.
He clicked the email from Alan Maddox’s address:
From: Alan Maddox
To: Nik Patel
Subject: FW: Longwaithe Aged Care - access verification
Greetings new member.
Your access has been set up, your details are as follows:
URL: http://www.longwaithe-ac.co.uk
Username: AMaddox
Password: pass1234
Your access is open for 24 hours. You will need to log into your account within that time to retain access.
Salutations,
The Unseen Corporation
Nik examined the email a moment.
What if he clicked on the link now—would it work this time?
More importantly, what was Alan doing with an aged care association?
The man was barely in his forties when he died.
He shook his head and exhaled, then clicked on the link. The website opened.
“Longwaithe Aged Care” was apparently a retirement home located near some village in the north of England.
‘Every beginning is full of new opportunities, new encounters…’
Flowery white letters floating over a photo of a low-rise, nondescript building in a pleasant green garden setting.
Too green.
Nik scanned the page.
The “news” section was out of date, and the menu items across the top of the page didn’t seem to work properly.
In the top-right: “Login”.
He clicked.
The page refreshed and asked him for his login name and password. He carefully entered the credentials from the email.
He paused, then tapped ‘Enter’.
The next page loaded quickly:
Welcome Alan Maddox
Please respond to the following questions:
1. If “L” = 73, how many in SPHINX?
→
2. Choose the correct word:
Stolen - Given - Taken - Bought - Found
→
3. Into the box below, type “My Name is Alan Maddox”:
→
Nik squinted at the screen. He remembered back to his Infosec classes at university. Three challenges.
Something Alan has.
Something Alan knows.
And something Alan was.
Full three-factor authentication.
There was a timer at the bottom of the screen; 30 seconds and counting.
He sat watching it as the timer ticked down; 29…28…27…
He tapped in a number into the first field, just a random one that his fingers found themselves.
I mean, it could be that?
22… 21… 20…
He looked at the other two questions and shook his head.
He couldn’t fake Maddox’s typing; and… the other question—there was no way he would get it.
15… 14… 13…
All but impenetrable except to Alan Maddox himself.
He glanced at his mobile again.
No contact from the Inspector.
10… 9… 8…
The man from last night. The AI that predicted your future—they would certainly be on to him now.
It was only a matter of time before they found him.
5… 4… 3…
The branches of an old tree outside the window were stubbornly holding on to the last of their autumn leaves.
Their dark, shrivelled shapes dithered in the breeze, disturbing the feeble light.
Nik swore he saw movement on the ground outside—a figure. But he refocused and saw that there was nothing there.
2… 1… 0…
The screen flashed up a warning message:
TIME OUT.
Intrusion detection in progress.
Client computer address and unique identifier captured.
That last line was concerning.
But they couldn’t really do anything with the information they had captured—could they?
He looked away from the screen, off into the distance and reached for his mobile phone. It was time to try Webster again.
But when his palm was just millimetres above the handset, it began to vibrate of its own accord.
He stopped short and looked at the phone.
Its solid black glass shape slithered across the desk with each burst of vibration.
He snatched it up and flipped it around to view the screen, hoping to see Webster’s number. But the screen said ‘Number Withheld.’
He pressed the answer button and brought the handset slowly up to his ear.
“Hello.”
A moment of soft static, a beep, then a click. He tried again. “Hell—hello?”
“Who are you?”
Female voice. Firm, confident.
“Uhh—I should be asking that question… I mean, you called me!”
Nik winced at his own anxious tone. A pause.
“You’re not Alan Maddox.”
Nik looked back at the computer screen in front of him, the words “Intrusion detection in progress” flashing in bold black. Of course.
“No, I’m not. But I have an idea of who you are—listen, how did you get this num—”
“Where is Alan Maddox?”
The question was barked, but there was a slight waver. His caller was of East Asian origin.
Nik waited a moment before answering.
“Alan’s… dead—But I have nothing to do with all of that! Look, you have to tell me what you were doing with Alan Mad—”
“We know your name—Nik Patel.”
Another pause.
An erratic indrawn breath.
“We will find out more. We are the Unseen Corporation. You are not safe from us.”
Click.
Bollocks!
Nik closed his eyes and shivered as he replaced the handset on the desk and brought his hands up to his face.
“Who the hell is the Unseen Corporation?”
High level corporate threats.
Murders; two of them.
A clairvoyant AI—apparently in unknown hands.
And… now an international hacker collective that can find him wherever he is?
And all he had was the words of Henry, the coffee barista.
‘Alan Maddox should keep Trent Robinson away from the Unseen Corporation.’
He saw no connection.
Dammit, from his cramped, carpet stained pub bedroom, he saw nothing at all.
And what the hell did Henry know about all of that?
Nik shook.
The cocktail of fear and adrenaline was mounting again, approaching the level of the previous night.
He began to get up. To cross the room to the tiny ensuite to wash his sweat-streaked face. But at mid-rise he froze.
His phone, face down, was vibrating again on the desk.
He flipped it over with a trembling hand and read “Number withheld.”
“Oh, shit.”
He picked up the phone, and looked at it for several seconds, transfixed, as it continued to vibrate.
Finally, he tapped ‘answer’ and brought the handset slowly up to his ear.
“H—hello?”
“Nik? It’s inspector Webster. I got your message. I’m coming to get you. Whatever you do, don’t move—you’re in grave danger.”
From outside, Nik heard a deep throb and a soft squeak of car brakes. He stood, and leaned towards the window.
The sleek, business-like form of a dark, low-slung German saloon pulled up on the other side of the road, just opposite the pub.
Its engine idling. A dark suited man at the wheel.
* * *
The dark-suited man took his hands off the leather steering wheel and studied the computer printout he’d been given that morning.
He squinted first at the photo, then at the figures and words.
He grunted.
Then threw the creased sheet of paper down on the passenger’s seat.
Useless.
The technicians couldn’t tell him exactly where to go. All he’d been given was a list of locations and probabilities.
But the girl he’d picked up in Paris—it had been so certain that time. He was told exactly where she would be and at what time. It all turned out to be correct.
Exactly correct.
Their excuse was that KIN was… what was the word they used… misaligned?
Basically the stupid machine didn’t always want to do what it was told.
Viktor was a man of action.
He wasn’t about to argue with the egg heads.
But the old ways were simply better—and more satisfying.
He took a deep breath. Consulted the vehicle’s sat nav.
He’d been on the road since dawn and had already visited two pubs and a motel with no result. He was running out of time—at least that’s what the printout was telling him.
So he now found himself parked up in front of a third pub, this one given a meagre eleven percent probability.
He squinted and lowered his head, peering through the car’s tinted glass.
One front main entrance.
A side alley—gravel driveway.
A skip next to a side service entrance.
The lot was fenced in and backed on to a double railway line.
Easy.
He unbuckled, and was preparing to alight when another car rounded the corner at speed and pulled up to a crooked stop right in front of the door of the pub.
An unmarked police-issue Ford Mondeo.
Viktor stayed planted in his seat.
As he watched, a young man hurried out of the pub and opened the passenger door of the other car. He exchanged a few words with the driver, and climbed in.
Viktor whipped the printout up in front of his face, and took a last, hard look at the photo.
“Gotcha, Nik.”
He dropped the sheet of paper, then gripped the steering wheel.
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