12 — Firewalls

In the dominant economic models, purpose is an individualistic pursuit of passion and as such a net drain on societal resources. In a harmonised economy, purpose is redefined as the fulfilment of one’s optimal function. The individual who is useful—the farmer, the manufacturer, the scientist—is the one who achieves true integration. It is only in serving our designated function that we find true economic and social peace.

—Naomi Feld, The Collective Balance: An Introduction to Macro-Societal Utility

Unlike Radford’s dusty repository next door, Justice William Baron’s office in the Palace of Westminster emanated power. The air carried old leather, beeswax polish, and the peat of the single malt beckoning from its crystal decanter on the credenza. His mahogany desk was vast, its surface a dark reflective plane. On the marble mantelpiece, the antique orrery clock turned with a fine brass whir that never failed to stir him. A testament to an age when genius had its rewards.

Opposite him, the holo of Detective Chief Inspector Ardone shimmered, a three-dimensional anomaly of cold blue light in the warm analogue room. The network strain presented as ghosting at the edges of her form, a microsecond of static that momentarily fractured her composed face. She stood at ease, her green eyes betraying nothing.

“The retrieval of the asset was frictionless, Justice,” Ardone reported.

Baron steepled his fingers, a smile touching his lips. “Frictionless? I should hope so. Arranging such things is a delicate art, one my people have mastered. Your constables merely had to be at the right place at the right time.” He leaned forward. “And where is our errant technician now?”

“Secure. He’s showering and can’t hear us. He’d been in the sewer.”

Baron chuckled, a low rich note. “Ah, yes. The scent of the Walkers. Quite literally, eau de toilette. A rather potent reminder of what happens when you walk away from civilisation. I trust he’s enjoying the return to hot water and soap.”

“He’s… processing,” Alene said, her face impassive.

Processing. Baron let the word sit a moment. The CGS had a talent for draping damage in therapeutic language. Soft clinical covers stretched over ruin. Young men vanished into the Imager for years and came back empty, if they came back at all, and some functionary would call it an adjustment. They taught an entire generation to avoid appetite, ambition, and even suffering, until a young man could die of emptiness in a warm bath and the system would classify it as a treatment failure instead of a systemic one.

He ran a thumb over the carved lip of his desk and looked at Ardone’s flickering outline. Radford had once spluttered that she was an affront to the natural order. Baron had no patience for that kind of stupidity. He cared about function, appetite, and nerve. Ardone had all three. She was a scalpel in a city grown used to padded gloves.

“Since our asset is… indisposed,” Baron said, turning to his own terminal, “let us be productive. I have another gift for your investigation.”

A data packet chimed on Ardone’s end. He saw her eyes flick to read it.

“It’s an authorisation to tap the secure CGS channel that carried Feld’s intercepted transmission,” he said.

“How do you know about the intercepted transmission, Justice?”

The narrowing of her eyes pleased him.

Baron smiled and lifted his glass. The ice gave a small, clean clink against the crystal. “The same way I found him for you, DCI Ardone. I have sources in places the CGS doesn’t. I had to burn a rather valuable one to pinpoint your man.”

Wasteful, yes, but capital existed to be spent when the return justified it. He set down his glass and leaned towards Alene’s holo.

“In return, I expect to be the first to know what you learn from that tap. We are, after all, partners in this.”

“I appreciate your support, Justice,” Ardone replied, her voice a flat, neutral line.

Baron noted the careful deflection. She was guarding her pieces carefully on the board. Very well. Soon enough, she’d learn who was making the stronger moves. He rose and walked to the window, turning his back to the holo.

“Speaking of my asset,” Baron continued, “does Feld have anything I can use regarding the Walkers? Their leadership? Their network?”

“The asset is still in shock,” Alene replied, the slight correction a scalpel-nick of resistance. “Nothing useful yet.”

“A pity. I’ll need to debrief him myself. Have him brought to my office as soon as he’s… presentable.”

“That won’t be possible, Justice.” Her tone stayed factual, not defiant. “He’s a critical component of my investigation into the pandemic. His insights are required to analyse any new data from the tap you just sent me.”

Interesting. His reports had painted Feld as a technician with decent hands for work, but no stomach for real conflict. Yet Ardone was covering him with more than procedural caution. Either the man was more valuable than expected, or she had other loyalties constraining her.

He came back to his desk and looked down at her through the blue shimmer. “DCI Ardone, the Walkers are a cancer in the heart of this city. This pandemic is a crisis, yes, but the Walkers are a chronic, internal threat.”

“A threat that falls under your mandate, Justice. One your office regularly assures the public through the media is well in hand,” she countered. “The pandemic, however, falls under mine. Ari Feld is the origin point of an informational contagion. My priority must be to identify the developers.”

Baron held her gaze. Radford would have folded into flattery by now. Ardone answered pressure with pressure. She’d taken his own hierarchy of threats and used it to fence him off from Feld. She wasn’t yielding.

He smiled, and this time the respect in it was real. “Very well. Your priorities are clear. But do consider, DCI… who are you really working for? Councillor Herbert is a woman of ideals. She serves a concept. Men like me? We serve the people who get things done.”

Her pause was answer enough. He didn’t need to press.

“You have your tap, DCI Ardone,” he said, “and my full support. My direct line, as I offered, remains open. Use it.”

He terminated the connection. The harsh blue light receded, and the room returned to its calibrated amber warmth. She hadn’t taken the bait or offered a feint around any affiliation with Herbert. An independent operator, then. Better that way.

He walked back to the window and looked east across the Thames towards the city. Even from here the symptoms were visible, a dark smudge of smoke over Southwark, protestors packed on Westminster Bridge, the glass dome of the CGS building emerging from Duck Island like a ballistic missile that’s too fragile to ever launch.

It was frustrating, not having the technician. Feld was a lever. More than that, perhaps. Herbert and Ardone each had their own reasons to conclude the man was worth protecting. A dependent with two vying custodians had value he could use.

Francis had promised public support for his new security mandate, the first step in building his own parallel authority. Ardone would give him further leverage in time.

He went back to his desk and picked up his glass. On the mantelpiece the orrery kept turning, brass planets finding their places by force of design.

Soon the tapped line would speak, and when it did, he would decide his next move.

---

The shower was a sterile white cubicle, the water relentlessly hot. Ari scrubbed his face, then his arms, then his chest. The cheap soap rasped, abrasive against his skin. As painful as it was to clean himself, he wasn’t gentle. He was trying to purge the cloying stench of sewage, decay, and failure. He catalogued the damage to his body with a technician’s detachment—a level-three contusion on his hip, significant deep-tissue trauma to the left shoulder, multiple abrasions. All reparable.

The memory of Santo’s hand, slick and tearing free, flashed in his mind. His own hand spasmed, an uncommanded clench, and the soap shot from his grasp, clattering against the tray. A motor-control glitch. He stared at his trembling fingers, then retrieved the soap and continued scrubbing, harder this time.

The last of the tunnel filth, a grey-brown slick of grime, dried blood, and suds, sluiced from his skin. Ari shut off the water and listened to the last of it spiral down the drain.

He’d miss Benjamin. His quiet, intense curiosity had reminded Ari of himself, before grief had hardened into logic. Charles had built a brutal and functional society out of scraps, history, and desperation. Ari could see how it held together. He still wanted no part of it.

He dried himself with a thin starchy towel, the movement pulling painfully at his injured shoulder.

DCI Ardone had arrested him, but hadn’t taken him to New Scotland Yard. Was this Francis’s doing? Protection, or a secret cell with better plumbing?

He pulled on the clean, standard-issue clothes Ardone had provided. They felt alien, a return to a tight skin he no longer fit. He’d only been with the Walkers for a few days, not long enough for topside to feel foreign, yet it did. He stepped out of the steam-free bathroom, catching himself against the doorframe as a sharp pain shot through his hip.

The main room was decorated with institutional blandness. Furniture in scratchy neutral fabric sat on the synthetic floor under lighting so even it washed out the shadows. The air in the main room was scrubbed clean of any lively scent or character, an anosmic blank compared to the layered smells of the Walker hall. Decay, yes, but also woodsmoke, food, unwashed bodies. The odours of actual living.

The DCI was waiting, standing by the room’s single window, deep in thought, looking out at other utilitarian Vauxhall towers. Her ghostly reflection floated just outside the window, her brow furrowed and her thumb and forefinger stroking her chin. She looked up after catching his movement in the glass and turned to face him.

“Home sweet home,” Alene muttered. She gestured towards a small kitchenette unit.

Ari inspected it. “No Sup?” he asked, the absence feeling like another system anomaly.

“Safe house,” Alene explained, pulling two nutrient packs from a cupboard instead. “The Sup network runs everywhere. Too easy to compromise the location, send something unexpected.” She tossed him a pack. “Standard nutrient packs or synth-protein bars only. Luxury accommodation.”

Ari wasn’t hungry, but he took the offered pack. The paste tasted like nothing. They ate in silence for a few moments, with only the hum of the building’s systems and the soft click of Alene checking the charge on her sidearm before placing it on the small table between them.

Alene finished her nutrient pack first, setting the empty wrapper down with neat precision. The gun remained on the table.

“Your boss, Adebayo,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest. “He was remarkably unsettled when I asked him about you. Why would that be?”

Ari stopped chewing, the nutrient paste suddenly viscous as cement in his mouth. Interrogation time. He swallowed.

“He’s always flustered. He’s a nobody. A mid-level manager who’s always kissing up to Councillor Herbert. Why?”

“Just building a profile,” she said. “Are you two close?”

“He’s my boss and a twit. I avoid him as much as possible.”

She leaned back and stared at him. For a full minute she said nothing. Ari took another drag from the nutrient pack, the pain in his hip making sitting intolerable. He shifted his weight.

“Tell me about the Walkers,” she said, her voice neutral, conversational. “Their setup. Capabilities.”

Ari shrugged. “They live underground. Scavenge things and fix them.”

“I gathered that,” Alene said, her patience already thinning.

Gathered. Even basic words mean something else now. He pushed the thought away.

“I know your profile, Feld. You don’t just sit still,” Alene pressed. “What did you see when you were with them? What systems are they running? Defences? Network?”

Why should I tell her anything? He looked away, focusing on the featureless wall. Charles betrayed me. Jack, or whoever he is, tried to abduct me. Telling her anything could put Benjamin in danger.

“They’re just people trying to survive,” he mumbled. “Leave them alone.”

“Leaving them alone isn’t an option,” Alene said, leaning forward. The movement shifted how the light hit her, casting her face in sharper angles. “They have knowledge of the tunnel systems. They might even know something about this pandemic. They were harbouring a fugitive. You. They are part of the equation now, Feld. I need to understand all the variables.”

All the variables. That includes me. I’m another risk to be contained.

“I was their prisoner, mostly,” he deflected. “Didn’t exactly get the organisational chart.”

Alene sighed, a soft hiss of controlled frustration. She didn’t pick up her sidearm, but rested her hand on the grip where it lay on the table.

“Look, I understand you don’t trust anyone right now. You’ve been hunted, betrayed… contained.” She met his gaze directly. “But I’m not the enemy here. We—you, me, Sharon, Francis—we’re trying to stop something catastrophic. I can’t do that blind. Give me the Walker schematic, Ari.” She tapped a finger on the table. “You, of all people, must have been mapping it in your head. Access points, protocols, power sources, key nodes. Don’t give me your impressions, give me the data. What are they capable of?”

I’m not the enemy. Charles’s face, cold and pragmatic as he made the exchange. Santo’s eyes in that last moment. Alene, with her hand on a gun and her reasonable tone demanding data, was just another operator in a battle not his own.

“They know the tunnels better than anyone,” he said. “And they have weapons. That’s all I know.”

He pushed the half-eaten nutrient pack away. The trembling in his hands had returned, a low-level static he couldn’t suppress. He balled them into fists, hiding the glitch.

“Look, it’s… it’s been a long day.” The admission scraped on the way out. “It went badly down there. People got hurt. I just… I need to sleep.”

Alene held his gaze for a long moment.

“Alright. Bedroom’s through there.” She gestured with the gun towards a closed door. “Get some rest. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

Ari pushed himself up from the table, a spike of pain from his bruised hip making him wince. He momentarily faltered, his hand instinctively going to his side. Alene’s eyes tracked the movement with a measuring look.

He retreated to the indicated room. A locked room was simpler, a bounded space with defined parameters. At least there, he’d be safe from the questions. A definitive clunk echoed in the quiet flat as the magnetic lock on his bedroom door engaged, sealing him in.

He stood with his hand on the door a moment. Rescued from the Walkers only to be contained again.