Hex (11 page)

“We'd have to do that anyway,” she replied. “We couldn't tell Ali something like that without him finding out. But if we can make Wraith believe Ali's in danger and tell her so, she'll do as we say.”

“If Wraith finds out we've tricked him . . . ,” Kez began, but Raven interrupted him:

“If he does find out, it'll be too late to object,” she declared. “Wraith wants into that lab more than either of us. This is the way to do it.”

•  •  •

When Raven suggested that they move out of the Belgravia Complex, just in case Ali reported them to the Security Services, Wraith didn't make any objection. He had been against moving into the complex to start off with, and although he didn't think Ali would risk calling out the Seccies, he preferred to err on the side of caution. The next morning, after having been at the complex for less than a week, Elizabeth Black and Kester disappeared. As far as the housing corporation were concerned, they had notified them of their intention not to renew the lease on the apartment for another month, a removal company had been hired to sell the furniture and forward the proceeds to an American bank account, their flitter had been returned to the rental company, and Nimbus Airlines' database registered them as having traveled to San Francisco on the 9:00 a.m. flight, together with a Mr. Ryan Donahue.

In actual fact Wraith, Raven, and Kez had moved no further than the Stratos Hotel, signing in under different names and requesting a secluded suite. The hotel had been Raven's choice and she had brought her collection of disks with her, packed into three large crates in the customized skimmer that had replaced the flitter. Apart from that they had mostly traveled light, taking only what they could carry. But this had included the equipment Wraith and Kez had collected.

It was standard electronic equipment, obtainable perfectly legally from any store, but what Raven was using it for was completely unorthodox. Since she had agreed to go ahead with the decision to keep looking for Rachel, even without Ali's assistance, she was making elaborate preparations. Wraith allowed her to make adjustments to his laser pistol and didn't inquire what she intended to do with the rest of the equipment. He considered himself fortunate that she hadn't flown into a rage after he had stymied her attempts to use Ali as bait. But Kez, who had more or less resolved his difference with Raven, had the heap of electronic innards explained to him in detail during their first day at the hotel.

“Most of this is to do with getting into the lab's system,” Raven had explained. “If I can find their central control room I'll be able to control it without physical intervention. But until I get there I'll have to trip circuits and fool security, all of it manually. For that I need tools.”

“You're making them yourself?” Kez asked.

“I told you it wasn't just computers I had an affinity with,” Raven reminded him. “Who do you think made Wraith's transceiver?” By then Kez had had that device explained to him in more detail than he felt able to cope with, but he knew why Raven had brought up that particular piece of equipment as an example. Among the spaghetti of cables and wires on the long dining table of the hotel suite was a more delicate piece of electronics. It was tiny, involving microcircuitry that the stores could not have provided. Raven had produced the miniature circuit-board and some specialized tools from the duffel bag that she had brought with her to gangland when Kez had first met her. From it she had created a transceiver device similar to Wraith's. But this one was not intended to be surgically implanted. It took the form of a plain white ear-stud, something that would hardly be noticed. Especially not when worn by a seventeen-year-old girl. Raven had even produced a matching stud for the other ear, although this one was without circuitry. But the first stud was a piece of equipment any electronics designer would have been proud of. Barely five millimeters in diameter, it contained a transmitter, receiver, location beacon, and private sensor. If Kez's plan worked and Ali went into the lab, Raven would be able to keep complete track of her, every second she was there.

•  •  •

Bob Tarrell was surprised by the sudden disappearance of his new acquaintances. But Elizabeth had left a message on his vidcom, apologizing and explaining that AdAstra had unexpectedly recalled her to the States, and after all there was no reason for him to be especially concerned. The media was full of the news of his new channel and the shareholders were predicting a roaring success.

His daughter was more alarmed. She watched the morning news with her father on Monday on Populix, one of his channels. The main story was the launch of CultRock, showing that her father had exploited his ownership of the news channel again. But she was not concentrating on the program. Her thoughts revolved round the gangers' departure and what it signified and she barely noticed the screen until a brief remark at the end of the item.

“While CultRock looks set to be a major success, the US channel that first encouraged this latest music sensation has gone into receivership. AdAstra is no longer online and its database has disappeared from the net.”
For a split second the reporter's expression wavered between annoyed and puzzled and finally settled on tolerant.
“The channel has refused Populix access to any footage of its programming and has recalled Elizabeth Black, an AdAstra researcher who assisted in the launch of CultRock.”
The reporter adopted a more upbeat tone as the channel moved on to show pictures of celebrities arriving at the Tarrells' apartment for the launch of CultRock, and Ali subsided.

Despite the matter-of-fact way the story had appeared on the news, she was suspicious of the official explanation. She knew that Raven wasn't really “Elizabeth Black,” and she also had doubts about AdAstra. It seemed a bit too convenient the way the channel had simply disappeared. Obviously the gangers had decided to cover their tracks when they departed. That suited Ali. She hadn't wanted to get involved with them in the first place and the further away they were, the better. She had no intention of reporting them to the Security Services though. Aside from the fact that she was nervous of being questioned about her involvement with them, she had nothing substantial to report. To go to the Seccies with the story she had been told, starring a white-haired ganger called Wraith and his sister, a dangerous and perhaps insane Hex named Raven, would be ludicrous. She kept her own counsel. But it had been difficult for her to cope with the questions of the rest of the clique that day at school.

Listening to the vapid conversation, Ali almost agreed with Raven's contempt for these people, even though it included her. Her encounter with the gangland Hex had affected her in more ways than she had realized at first, and one of them was the way it had distanced her from the rest of the Gateshall students and her clique in particular. Even though she was safely ensconced in the middle of the group she felt as isolated from them as if the CPS had found her out and were already driving her away. Raven's repeated assertion that she would be caught had sunk in. She was no longer able to convince herself that she was safe. Raven renting that apartment had been like gangers bypassing security and invading the heights of London. Nothing felt normal to Ali anymore.

•  •  •

Kez was feeling equally uncomfortable. He had suggested that they deceive Ali in order to help Wraith. He wanted to help the ganger find his sister and he hadn't forgotten that Wraith had promised to take care of him, while Raven had obviously never even considered it. But, despite wanting to help Wraith, he was beginning to feel that he had made a deal with the devil.

In order to take his mind off how miserable he was, Kez tried to make himself useful. Gradually he was beginning to learn some of the most basic concepts of electronic science, despite the fact that Raven was not the most patient of teachers. Her natural aptitude for anything technological, coupled with her years of experience, made him less than a novice compared to her. But at least he was doing something, and in reward for his persistence Raven didn't subject him to any sudden flares of anger when he made a mistake. He spent most of his time creating the frequency-activated explosive charges with which Raven intended to blast their way into the lab. They were basically simple devices, although Raven supervised the final installment of the charge that would activate the explosive. Wraith obtained more lethal equipment from the Countess and had opened negotiations with her to hire the services of some men to act as muscle backup when they broke into the facility. The whole operation was looking increasingly serious. Kez doubted that it would succeed the way Wraith envisaged it. But he hoped that, with the additional element that he and Raven were devising, the plan might yet work.

Kez's only worry was how Wraith would react if he discovered what he and Raven had decided to do. He had enough faith in the ganger's perception to suspect that sooner or later Wraith might well find out how Ali had been tricked and he hoped fervently that, if Wraith did find out, it would be too late for him to do anything about it. Otherwise his sense of honor would oblige him to warn her and the operation would be hopeless. Kez knew Raven wouldn't stick with a hopeless cause and he didn't think he could either.

To his surprise, Wraith was
becoming interested in politics. The extermination of Hexes, something he had never thought about before in terms of its morality, was troubling him now that Rachel might be one of those at risk. It hadn't affected him so much with Raven. She had always seemed able to take care of herself, and in the slums of Denver, morality was rarely an important consideration. But the Kali's code of honor, which had affected Wraith so much, was making its presence felt.

The people with the Hex gene were the result of a perfectly legal scientific advance. But for over two hundred and fifty years they had been exterminated by their own governments because of the potential threat they posed to the computerized society. Wraith had worked out that even if the CPS only exterminated one person a day, the death count would be nearly a hundred thousand people by now, and Raven estimated the numbers were far higher. It didn't seem to trouble her that much. Raven had never been particularly interested in other Hexes and was confident enough of her own safety for the massive death tolls to leave her unaffected. But Wraith was more disturbed by them, and especially by the laws that had made this wholesale slaughter legal.

If Hexes had been allowed to exist, Raven would not have had to fear for her life ever since she'd been a child; she might have been a different person without that burden, lacking the manic-depressive streak that made her hell to live with. Ali wouldn't be scared that she would die before she even reached her eighteenth birthday. Rachel wouldn't have been taken away for experimentation at ten years old and delivered to Dr. Kalden's research lab.

The more he considered the whole question of the illegality of Hexes, the more certain Wraith was that the extermination laws were a horrific crime against humanity. But he seemed to be unable to bring Raven and Kez to his way of thinking.

“There's no point in brooding over it,” Raven told him, in a bored tone of voice. “I've had to live with this for most of my life. But there's nothing that can be done about it.”

“Bad things happen,” Kez shrugged. “I was living on the streets at the same age that Raven was fleeing for her life. Gangers have trashed the lower levels of London. People get flatlined every day for no other season than they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Little kids get raped and murdered.” He shook his head. “You can't
do
anything about it. It's just
there
.”

“But it shouldn't be,” Wraith insisted, taking hope from the fact that Kez's response had at least showed concern, unlike Raven, who had already turned back to her wires and fuses. “Those things are illegal. But the murder of Hexes is sanctioned by every government in the world. There's nowhere you can escape from the CPS.”

“Unless you're good enough,” Raven pointed out.

“And how many people are?” Wraith demanded. “You discovered your abilities young enough to be able to use them. Most people are only just working it out when they're hauled off to a death chamber.”

“But the government figures that if they weren't, things would be even worse,” Kez reminded him. “Raven goes through a computer system like a knife through butter. What if there were thousands of people doing that?”

“Then governments could design better computer systems,” Wraith pointed out. “Raven, could you design a system that even you couldn't get into?”

“It's a difficult question,” she said thoughtfully. “I would say that the kind of system Dr. Kalden's lab has is one of the best. But if I can physically penetrate the facility, the computers will be a walkover.” She thought a while longer. “I might be able to design a system that most Hexes couldn't get into, though,” she said eventually. “Maybe even one that it would take me a long time to crack.”

“Then why don't the government use Hexes, instead of exterminating them?” Wraith frowned. It was Kez who provided the answer.

“Because it would make people like Raven incredibly powerful,” he said. “She could do anything she wanted with the network.”

“Most people choose not to act illegally,” Wraith said seriously. “Why shouldn't Hexes be the same?”

“I don't think it would work,” Kez replied and bent over his own bunch of wires. Wraith fell silent. He could guess what the boy was thinking. Someone like Raven, if there could be more than one of her, wouldn't agree to play by the rules any more than they could be forced to.

•  •  •

They had been at the hotel for two days by the time Raven entered the net again. She told Wraith that she was still unhappy with the scarcity of information on the laboratory and was going to make one last attempt at pulling more information out of the CPS database. Even though her professed intention seemed bland enough, Kez suddenly felt as tense as a spring. This was the moment. He watched Raven disappear into her room with apprehension—she still preferred to keep her ventures into the net private—before bending his head diligently over his work. Wraith asked him a question about how many explosive devices they would have in the end, and he replied mechanically with the figure Raven had determined upon. It seemed to take forever for the girl to finally emerge from her room, although in reality it was only about fifteen minutes.