Towards Light Read online

  He clicked his key.

  The door opened.

  Andy entered.

  This time the room was well lit but empty. The place looked like everybody had downed tools during the middle of fit out and hadn’t returned.

  But there was someone in the room. The curly haired lady from reception stood as though she was waiting for Andy.

  ‘He’s ready to see you now,’ she said.

  ‘Why did you make me go the long way around?’

  ‘He wanted to invite you in himself and check whether you were a curious man. He asked me to take you to him.’

  ‘MC?’

  ‘No. Adam. I think you’ve met him before.’

  ‘Briefly but it was not brief enough. I’d appreciate it if you’d show me the way out and I’ll go home and never come back here.’

  ‘OK. No problem. Follow me. The earrings jangled as the woman walked towards the exit.’

  ‘Do you know why Adam wants to see me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me?’

  ‘Only if you ask the right questions, otherwise you can ask him yourself.’ Andy followed the woman to the exit door but stood there for a moment.

  ‘Is it to do with Max?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is Max in danger?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘OK. You’ve done your job well. Take me to him.’ The journey was short and comprised a ride in a lift to the second floor and a short hop across to a glass walled office.

  ‘If you take a seat in the guest chair, I’ll be right back with some coffee.’ The curly brown hair bounced as the woman paraded out. Andy surveyed his surroundings. The walls were blank. There was a sofa still with cellophane on the cushions.

  The desk was expensive walnut with a bowl of balls on it. There was also a photo in a frame. Andy turned the photo towards him and studied it. There were three people in the photo: two women and a man. Andy didn’t recognise the man, but the fellow was in his early twenties and dressed in sports kit. One woman was the receptionist with the earrings. She looked younger though: twenty years younger at least. The third woman Andy had met that summer. She had changed little in the last twenty years. Julia Matthews beamed Andy a smile from the photo.

  Chapter 3

  The woman returned to the office with coffee. Andy sat in the visitor’s chair holding the photo from the desk. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘I’m Sue. I expect you’ve got questions for me now you seen that picture.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me why I’m here?’

  ‘The photo is a picture of me, my son Adam and his girlfriend Julia before he died. I understand you met Julia?’

  ‘She kidnapped my son.’

  ‘I liked her and hoped that she would stay with Adam, but I think she was more interested in him than he was in her. He was too young. I don’t think men should have girlfriends until they’re at least twenty-five. They’re too immature and more interested in their friends and their jobs and their hobbies.’

  ‘You could be right, but it was Adam’s friends and hobbies that got him killed I believe?’

  ‘Josiah Taylor and Bob Simpkin were not his friends. They were a pair of weirdos looking for a guinea pig and Adam’s bravery verged on recklessness. He had an addictive personality and loved computer games. They filled his head full of ideas: they said he could join them as their Chief Operations Officer in their start-up.’

  ‘So, Adam hooked himself up to their computer to experience virtual reality connected straight to his brain.’

  ‘As you know the experiment killed him but left a part of his consciousness copied to the computer. Julia uploaded it to the mainframe at the PKL building where she copied your son’s consciousness too.’

  ‘Are you sure you wanted her as a daughter-in-law?’

  ‘A morbid attempt to resurrect a part of Adam drove everything she did. It’s hard to hate someone who loves your son and dedicates her life to his memory.’

  ‘So how did you end up here?’

  ‘Last year I got an email inviting me to an interview as the receptionist at this place. The email was from a recruiter who wrote that he’d heard such excellent things about me he’d lined up an interview with no cv. The job offered a fifty percent pay increase. I attended the interview, but they’d made their mind up before I arrived and offered me the role at the meeting.’

  ‘Who interviewed you?’

  ‘They looked like builders. I thought it odd. They were disinterested in me like someone had told them to meet me and offer me the job. My contract is with a staffing agency. I started soon after and it was busy for a few months. The main construction work had finished, and fitters were completing the cabling and racking and ductwork. All the contractors arrived through the turnstile and someone else inducted them. I gave occasional directions to delivery men but otherwise just played bridge online.’

  ‘Sounds like a cushy job.’

  ‘It was. And then things got strange. It started with power outages. The lights would go out for hours on end. Contractors used their own diesel generators but were getting sick of the disruption. The trade lift shafts stopped operating which prevented them getting the heavy gear up to first floor and the site became less busy with each day. The painters disappeared first and then the plasterers and then the electricians gave up. They couldn’t understand the power outages.’

  ‘But you stayed?’

  ‘It pays well, and I learned a long time ago to make hay while the sun shines. I’m not sure why they want me here, but I’ll keep coming while the money keeps arriving into my bank account.’

  ‘You said Adam wants to see me?’

  ‘Last week I turned up as usual and was in the middle of a rubber when I got an email from Adam. At first, I thought it was a sick joke, but I’d visited Julia in prison and, although I thought she was mad, I’m not so stupid to think everything she told me was a fantasy. I’d read up on artificial intelligence and human-computer interfaces, as this research lead to my son’s death.’

  ‘What did Adam write in his email?’

  ‘Not much: Hi Mum. I’m here with you. I’m sending a man to help you find me. He’ll be an inquisitive guy. Put the photo of us and Julia in the corner office.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, the next time Adam contacted me was after you’d left the building this morning. A message arrived on my computer:’ ‘He’s here mum, meet him in the data hall and take him upstairs please.’

  ‘Adam sounds like a polite guy.’

  ‘His father and me insisted on politeness. I think that is why Julia fell for him. She’s a classy lady despite her flaws.’

  ‘So, Adam wants me to find him. Max told me about his time connected to the PKL computer system and how Adam helped him. One good turn deserves another.’

  ‘So, you’ll find him?’

  ‘I’ll try. In the PKL building in Lincolnshire the control room was in a basement. Do you have a basement level in this building?’

  ‘I don’t know. The lift has been out of action for months and the lights out in the main building. I’ve stayed in the reception area for safety, so I don’t fall through one of those holes in the floor.’

  Andy scanned around. Through the glass in the office partition, he saw the elevator. The door stood ajar.

  ‘I’ll see where that lift takes me. Are you coming?’

  Sue’s phone beeped. The message read: ‘Send him by himself first please mum.’ She showed the message to Andy, and he left the office and pressed the call button for the lift.

  Andy entered; the doors closed, and he surged downwards. He counted the seconds in his head and reached ten before the cab stopped. Andy estimated he was thirty metres underground according to the acceleration and deceleration.

  He stepped out into something resembling a cannabis factory. Powerful lights shone from the ceiling on the jungle of plants. The leaves soared three metres above the tables and the air was thi
ck with herbal scents, but it wasn’t marijuana. Andy figured that from the pink flowers as big as saucers. They smelled like the packet sweets he bought Sam at weekends.

  Foliage obscured the edge of the room, but alleyways ran through the vegetation and Andy followed one. He saw exits to his left and his right as he walked fifty metres and arrived at a T-junction. The path was circular. Andy pictured the layout in his mind. He assumed that the alleys ran like bicycle spokes from this central hub. The exits he’d seen were likely to be concentric circles at intervals like a spider’s web through the plants.

  A shape zipped around the inner hub. It resembled a pizza box on wheels and was going at a good speed, around twenty miles an hour. It stopped in front of Andy and zoomed off on its original trajectory. Andy followed it at a jog but lost sight as it veered right down one spoke between the greenery.

  A rumble overhead alerted Andy to an overhead crane in motion but he couldn’t see it. He heard a squeak and a hiss. And then he saw the robot zoom back in front of him with a tree stacked on top. The robot braked, but the tree kept going and Andy caught it. Some leaves rubbed off and stained his shirt. He lifted it back in place and the machine span three times thankful to have its cargo restored.

  Andy followed it through the leafy corridors getting further away from the central hub until they reached the end of the path. The robot paused at a steel door until the detector spotted it and raised the barrier. Andy followed too and arrived in a room full of pipettes, glass boiling tubes and stills.

  A mechanical arm grabbed the tree and lay it on a table. A tool on the arm stripped a few leaves from it, crushed and ground the leaves and placed them in a jar. Another machine added a clear liquid and a metal bar the size of a jelly bean and transported the container to a stand.

  The liquid in the jar turned green as the magnetic stirrer set to work. A pipette drew up the solution and squirted it into trays. The lights dimmed.

  Andy said, ‘Adam are you here?’

  Andy’s phone rang, and he answered it. He recognised the synthesised voice. It was the voice that Max had used when strapped to the bed and hooked to the computer in the PKL facility.

  ‘Andy, I need your help.’

  ‘What do you want Adam?’

  ‘I need you to bring Julia Matthews here.’

  ‘Your mum said Max may be in danger. Is that true?’

  ‘Max and everyone else. There isn’t much time and I can’t explain to you why. You need to trust me and if you don’t, then talk to Max.’

  Andy stood in the darkness. He pondered which way to go but the flashlight ahead dazzled him.

  ‘Armed police, don’t move,’ said a voice.

  Andy raised his arms in the air but winced as the electrode spikes pierced his chest. He writhed on the floor as the current flowed through him. Powerful hands cuffed him to the rear and hauled him to his feet. Someone placed a hood over his head and marched him along. Two guys either side half propped, and half dragged him. He smelt the air and realised he was now outside the building. A shove to his shoulder forced him into the car.

  Andy listened as they moved off but soon gave up. He heard the rumble of traffic and noticed when they stopped at the lights, but he didn’t know whether he was travelling North or South or East or West. Andy found it hard to judge the speed. He counted though and estimated he’d travelled for around an hour before the car stopped and the door opened.

  His kidnappers were silent even on arrival. After the tug on his arm, he rose from the vehicle and trudged along. The prods in his back could have been from a weapon or a finger. He heard a door open and his guide pushed him into a chair. His hosts uncuffed one wrist and fixed the other to a table. The door closed, and he sat hooded in the chair and waited.

  Chapter 4

  Andy’s interrogator arrived within ten minutes. The guy’s voice was familiar. ‘What were you doing at the facility?’

  ‘I needed a piss and asked at reception if I could use the toilet. I must have got lost somewhere along the way. The lights went out like you saw; it was dark.’ Andy felt a slap across the face.

  ‘Sometimes we try water boarding, but we drown the odd guy. The worst torture I saw was on a video from Iraq. A high-pressure hose up the ass destroys the internal organs.’

  ‘I’ve never tried a colonic irrigation but if you’re offering then get on with it. Your voice is boring me.’

  ‘You’re an odd man Mr Teague. Most people would shit themselves with fear around now.’

  ‘I would have done too but two summers ago I faced death and made my peace with god. Pain and death mean nothing and I’m well insured.’

  ‘No point being insured if your family’s not around to receive the pay-out.’

  ‘I can’t control or influence you and I’ll not try. You can remove the hood now I recognise your voice Rand.’

  Andy listened as the guy stood up and shuffled round behind him. Rand yanked the hood from his head and hooked his fist into Andy’s ear. Andy saw stars and then saw Rand. He’d lost more hair. The paler patch around the eyes showed his return from a recent skiing holiday.

  ‘You still got the girlfriend in Cork Rand?’

  ‘She left me. Some dickhead scared her by breaking into my apartment and leaving me half dead at the airport.’

  ‘You seem to have healed.’

  ‘I’ll ask you again and then I’ll hand you over to someone who will get the info from you. They don’t need torture. They can read your mind now, but you know that: you’ve seen it done.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘The same people who commissioned the PKL building. A government agency. Let’s call them unit C.’

  ‘Hand me over to them then and you can get on with what you were doing.’

  ‘If you help me, I’ll let you go. I’m no friend of unit C.’

  ‘Why do you think I can help you?’

  ‘The last time you showed up freaky things happened and now they’re happening again. I suspect you know what’s going on. Every time we check the electrics out in 1586 there are now problems. We’ve disconnected the control boards and put new ones in, but we still get the power outages. It’s like the building is living. And the first time we’ve been in the basement for months was today. Someone has planted a jungle down there and installed a set of robot gardeners.’

  ‘Get me out of here. Take me to a public place and I’ll talk to you. Bring a gun if you want but it will just be me and you. After we’ve talked, you will walk one way and I’ll walk the other way and we’ll never see each other again.’

  Rand stood without speaking and left the room. Andy studied his surroundings. Cracks ripped through the plaster walls and beads of condensation mingled in the mould. Andy guessed that Ranto construction would soon begin demolition on this project.

  Rand returned. ‘Not possible,’ He bagged Andy again. Andy felt a needle prick in his neck and lost consciousness.

  He dreamt of giant plants marching with rifles and saluting their President who watched on from the balcony in their jungle city. A pink peony adorned his leafy chest.

  The artillery followed behind rolling catapults with coconut bombs and giant crossbows loaded with sharp tree stumps. The sun shone on the parade and the vegetal army trooped with energy and purpose. A cloud misted the sun, and the soldiers broke step and drooped. Then they regained their composure, and the wind dispersed the haze.

  Max appeared in a sedan chair carried by four pine trees decorated with baubles. Max saluted the President. A sparrow swooped from above and nicked a bauble from a pine tree porter. The sparrow fell to earth with its stolen cargo in its beak as the conker fired from an infantryman’s slingshot hit its target. The stunned bird flapped on the floor before the soldier placed it in a plastic cage and hung it on Max.

  A shadowy figure drifted into view alongside the President. The figure phased from smoke to a solid, but the face remained in a state of flux. Recognition shone in the President’s eyes as he turned toward
s the smoky character. The apparition evaporated, and the President inhaled its ghostly remnants.

  The leader stiffened, and his Peony became brittle and shattered. He summoned the air force who burned the soldiers with napalm and the fire raged. Andy smelled the burning wood and the stench of char choked him.

  He stumbled through rolling clouds of black and emerged from the forest onto a prairie. A pickup truck stood on a strip of asphalt that ran straight to the horizon with sun scorched savannah on either side. He climbed behind the wheel made of rubber and put his foot on the Jelly throttle. The vehicle was soon up to seventy miles an hour, but Andy felt no acceleration. It was as though the scenery was moving past him as he remained motionless in his seat. But then he noticed acceleration: a vibration up and down. The road and prairie had disappeared and undulations in the sand rocked him and forced his teeth to clang. Tyres burst and the hubs bit into the ground. The crash threw Andy clear, and he lay on the ripples. A man approached: a one-eyed man. The guy reached down and offered his hand. Andy clasped it and the guy hauled Andy to his feet.

  ***

  Andy opened his eyes. He stood in a parking lot in a city centre. Rand had dumped him near the bins behind a restaurant that backed onto the lot. He inhaled the vapour from the kitchen and he held onto a streetlight to steady himself. It was dark, and Andy’s watch showed it close to ten thirty at night but the same day. His temple throbbed.

  The curry aroma drew Andy through an alley and to the front of the restaurant; his hunger stung him like he’d swallowed a wasp’s nest. The waiter agreed to take his order as long as he promised not to linger. Andy swigged the Indian lager that arrived with poppadums as he sat next to a mirrored wall. A group of four were settling the bill and a guy with a woman was looking around for the waiter’s attention.

  Was it Roberts that Andy had dreamt of? He’d not see the hired killer since the fight at the PKL building but the police had let him know that the judge sentenced Roberts to a whole life term. In his dream Roberts had helped him to his feet. The guy would be the last person that Andy would call for help. The first person was his son: Max.