Chapter 12
Present day, HQ,
UK Unit, Cloud 9
Jack and Amy walked into the light, airy office, clutching mugs of coffee and munching biscuits.
“I’m being watched.”
“Nonsense. We’re the ones doing the watching…don’t be ridiculous,” Jack scoffed.
“It’s true. I felt it again just now back at the kiddie-fiddler’s place. It’s been going on for a while.”
“The only one who’s watching you is me…and Pyke, when he tunes in to see what we are up to,” chided Jack.
“What! Why?”
“Cos you’re a nightmare. Believe me, you need to be watched. You can’t go around killing anyone you fancy. You can’t go solo. You’re a Fallen and must wait for orders.”
“Where the hell do you get off acting like my keeper?” barked Amy, through a mouthful of biscuits. “So, I get in trouble.” She shrugged. “What’re they gonna do? Shoot me? I’m already dead.”
“Touchy, aren’t we?” teased Jack.
“Sorry.” She took a breath and wiped crumbs from her mouth. “You know what? I also felt followed when I was down there, alive,” she said, pointing to below her feet. “I was always looking over my shoulder. Maybe I’m paranoid.”
“Maybe you sensed Fallens looking out for you.”
“No. Most Erthfolk can’t see Fallens. It wasn’t a Fallen. It was more sinister.”
Jack stared at her. His heart missed a beat.
She continued.
“I just get so frustrated with all this effing politically correct bullshit. I had enough of it down there. Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t upset this person, don’t upset that religion…for fuck’s sake. If someone is bad, whatever make they are, whatever God they worship…sort it, simple.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not that easy,” Jack muttered, looking over his shoulder, checking to see if anyone was listening. “We have to play by the rules.”
“Seriously, Jack? I repeat. I’m dead. What’re they gonna do?” Amy shrugged her shoulders and held out her hands, palms up. But Jack wasn’t listening. He was too busy scanning the room.
She followed his gaze.
“What?”
“I don’t know,” he said, waving her away. “Nothing.”
“No, I mean what’re they gonna do about me breaking the rules?”
“Chuck you out. Send you down. Who knows? But whatever happens, I’m responsible for you, and I’ll get it in the ear as well. I don’t fancy Hell, do you? We’ve sent too many of our clients down there. It won’t be fun.”
“Heaven, Hell…I’m not sure I believe there are such places. What if this is it? Up here is dead.” She pointed down below her feet. “And down there is alive. We’re just forever recycling. Living, then policing… living, then policing.”
Maggie piped up from behind her enormous tank of a desk. Her designer reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.
“Where the bloody hell have you two been? This isn’t a holiday camp you know. We’ve got Erthfolk to deactivate. Chop chop! Soho Sid is at it again. Pyke has the details. He’s been given enough warnings. It’s time to close him down.”
Maggie, Margaret Delia Smithers, ran the office with a hand of steel. At 62 years of age, she died of a heart attack, a workaholic spinster; she’d given her life to a successful career in MI6 and was not ready to down tools just yet. On her hospital death bed, she’d asked for the deal.
Pyke, a lanky, cheerful, fun-loving internet whizz-kid had hacked multi-billion corporations with the best of them. A regular Robin Hood, he stole from the rich and gave to the poor—after funding his lavish lifestyle of surfing, fast cars, wine, women, and song. He didn’t touch drugs, ever.
Crack cocaine had taken his younger sister, so Pyke had a thing for destroying those in the industry by accidently ploughing their ill-gotten gains into drug rehabilitation projects or alerting authorities when deals were going down. Until, one day, at the age of 28, his luck ran out.
He found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, looking down the barrel of a gun belonging to the minion of an angry wannabe drug baron. Whilst waiting for his sobbing mother to turn off his life-support machine, he’d asked for the deal. So much knowledge, surely he couldn’t waste it, not yet…besides, hacking was fun.
“Mon petit, Chou, bonjour,” greeted Pyke, happy to see Jack and Amy.
He waved them over to the middle of the room where an impressive Stonehenge-esque circle of eight rotating glass screens surrounded him; twelve-foot wide by five-foot high, each hovering three feet off the white marble floor.
Enclosed within his gladiatorial wall of glass monitors, he ran from one job to the next, from one screen to the other, putting out fires and causing chaos for offenders.
He preferred being on his feet, working on a large touchscreen, rather than being stuck to a chair and hunched over a desk. He worked best in visuals, like an artist, striding up and down, painting stories with his sweeping hands. He sometimes used a skateboard to add to the mix. The energetic workout kept his genius mind clear and agile…and it was fun, Pyke’s favourite word.
Pyke liked being busy; he worked on all eight screens at once. Each contained the intelligence files of a current job Maggie had authorised; people or situations needing to be deactivated.
Running backwards and forwards between screens was his idea of heaven, like playing eight, life-size computer games. As each job finalised, Maggie would push forward the next, in order of high risk importance from a long list of awaiting targets.
The majority of jobs he could handle on his own, but some needed help on the ground. That’s where Jack and Amy came in.
Screen three tracked the current file in his queue, displaying a collection of ten message boards, with chatroom conversations running on each. He darted to and fro between conversation threads, exchanging lines of dialogue. He was ‘Cooldude888,’ flirting with each member.
“Oh, this is fun, like playing 10 games of chess at once. Love it! I won’t be a minute…am just waiting for one of these wankers to get overexcited and sloppy and show an IP address. Then I’ll be with you. I keep crashing their internet at sexually frustrating moments; one of them will get careless in a minute.”
He pressed a button and ‘PirateJack’ disappeared from a dialogue box.
“What is this case?” asked Amy, striding over to take a closer look. “These are children, aren’t they?” Her eyes narrowed as she peered at the screen.
“Yes, but nothing for you to worry your pretty little head about. This is mine, all mine,” he smiled, knowing she would jump at the chance to work on anything to do with children.
“What is it?” Insisted Amy, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up.
“Well, what we have here is a selection of nine to 13-year-olds talking to each other, but a few of them are paedophiles, dirty old men pretending to be kids, grooming, befriending, taking pictures, then blackmailing them into doing disgusting things. I just need one of these dirt bags to log on and join the conversation without taking precautions…and I don’t mean a condom. Hello, here he comes,” he beamed.
‘PirateJack’ re-joined the chat, his IP number identifying ownership of his hardware flashed onto the screen. In his eagerness to re-join a crucial part of the grooming conversation, he’d taken the risk of logging on without using a safe dark web server.
“Gotcha!” Pyke, fist punched the air with excitement. “Yesss! Come on my beauty. Come to daddy,” he cheered.
Jack joined them, watching the screen, popping the last of a biscuit into his mouth.
“But with all your kit, you can easily see who it is? Why would you need an IP address?” he asked through a mouthful of crumbs.
“Because, my old friend, ‘misslollypop2004’ here,” he said, pointing to a name on a neighbouring chat screen, “is a member of the Child Abuse Crime Team working undercover, pretending to be a 12-year-old, trying to close this sex ring down.” He pointed to the floor.
“Down there, they still need the IP address to track offenders. They haven’t quite caught up with tracking in the deep dark web yet. So, I’ve helped nudge her in the right direction. She’ll have clocked this and be sending the cops in as we speak.”
Jack caught Amy’s eye and pointed at a one-sided chat that had been going on a while. ‘Sienna2006’ asked ‘PrincessB07’ if she was still there.