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  “What do you know about X-Core?” Joe asked. “I’m really out of touch with the music scene.”

  “It’s like musical catnip for nerds. Techno/industrial noise, bands with names like Precision Image and Le Cadavre Exquis. I looked them up on a few sites, and it’s geeky beyond belief.”

  “Geeky how?”

  “You can’t get their music on iTunes, Amazon, or any of the other commercial sites. You download X-Core songs for free from the bands’ own websites. If you’re good at maths.”

  Joe narrowed his eyes. Why Brits insisted on adding an s to math was a thing that still baffled him. Like their national obsession with tea.

  “Maths?” he asked, sure that the sound as it came out of his mouth would betray him. But Ellie’s last statement had come out of left field, and Joe wondered if he’d misheard.

  “Wait here.” Ellie got up and left the room. She was back moments later with the brushed matte silver clamshell of a MacBook Pro.

  She squeezed in next to Joe and popped the lid, searched for X-Core, and clicked on one of the results.

  THE HOME OF PRECISION IMAGE, the website’s banner informed them.

  “Click DOWNLOADS,” Ellie instructed, and Joe located the word on the menu bar and did as he was told. It brought up a page of a dozen or so songs with names like “It Took No Comfort,” “Etude in Code,” and “Democracy Theocracy.” They all sounded deathly.

  “Choose one,” Ellie said.

  Joe scanned the list, and chose a track called “TechnoLeeches” because it was the weirdest title there, and pressed the download button next it. Instead of a progress bar, a dialogue box appeared, similar to the CAPTCHAs that appeared on so many websites these days. The difference was this one was an equation—x2 - 3x - 4 =0—with two boxes to be filled, and a SUBMIT button.

  Joe said, “That’s weird.”

  “Like I said: catnip for nerds. Solve a quadratic equation or you don’t get to play.” Ellie shrugged. “Seems like an odd way to grow a fan base.”

  “It’s a gimmick,” Joe said. “There must be a dozen sites and message boards where you can get the answer.”

  Ellie shook her head. “They change every time. Even for the same song. It means you basically have to solve a different maths problem—and give two values of x—to get access to any of the tracks.”

  Joe looked at the CAPTCHA on the site, worked it out in his head, and entered 4 in one box and -1 in the other, then hit SUBMIT. The track started downloading.

  “You’re not just a pretty face,” Ellie said.

  Joe flashed her a grin.

  “Maths club,” he said, the sibilant an afterthought. “Just about the only thing I did learn there.”

  It was an easy lie that covered a top secret truth: optical character recognition software in his chip had translated the equation into something his chip could handle and it had done the rest. Sometimes dealers and terrorists used codes to mask illegal communications, so Abernathy had made sure that Joe was a walking, talking Enigma machine.

  “It’s like they only want a certain type of people to listen to their music,” Ellie said, voicing a suspicion that was already building in Joe’s own mind.

  But what were they talking here? Bored nerds setting puzzles for people they thought could solve them? Or was there something more sinister at work here? A cult? Mathology? Joe didn’t know.

  “You ever listen to X-Core?” he asked.

  Ellie shook her head. “Half a song maybe. Less, probably. Not my thing.”

  “I’m guessing you’re into classical, right?”

  “Death Cab for Cutie.” She grinned. “You?”

  “Anything that isn’t R&B. Mind if I listen?” He pointed to the computer screen. It had finished downloading the song.

  “Go for it.” Ellie moved a couple of inches closer.

  Joe double clicked the file and it opened in iTunes.

  It took him about ten seconds to realize that the track had already started, and that he had been hearing it the whole time, but then he recognized a low bass note from a synthesizer that he almost felt as much as heard.

  Felt it in his stomach, like a rumble, even through the MacBook’s tiny speakers.

  The synth panned from speaker to speaker, making it sound like it was in constant motion. Twenty seconds later there was a sudden, shrill screech of guitar tearing through the circling bass; highly distorted and processed that seemed to cycle through a disconnected four-note pattern, getting dirtier and more distorted with every pass.

  A drum machine—again highly distorted—kicked in with a simple rhythm that drove on without changes or fills. More synths bled in and out, throwing odd, discordant moods and tones into the mix.

  As the tune developed, Joe was struck by the lack of harmony between the different elements; they seemed oddly individual, as if the band had recorded each instrument separately from the others with little or no knowledge of what the other instrumental parts would sound like.

  They fitted together—sort of—but it sounded more accidental than by design.

  Delay and heavy reverb sent bass and guitar into rhythms that seemed at odds with each other, and odd samples of speech would drop in and out at points that sounded … wrong somehow, as if their cues were chosen for them to appear at precisely the worst possible moments for the listener to be able to work out just what had been sampled over sudden swells of noise and texture.

  It made Joe feel on edge, uneasy, anxious.

  He had a strange and totally inexplicable thought that the instruments weren’t just circling around, but rather getting closer, like predators closing in on a kill.

  Finally, a full two minutes into the song, the vocalist condescended to sing—although it could hardly be called “singing.” It sounded more like a bored, monotonous recitation of a poem:

  Their leeches bled us of our faith

  Drew our blood, let science in;

  Bloodless shells we cried for mercy

  Pagan shrines to insulin.

  With scalpels they rewrote the gospels

  Lumbar puncture stigmata;

  Broken altars, broken idols

  To autoclave automata.

  Trepan culture, Karma sutured

  Our wounds are read and understood;

  Their practice did not make us perfect,

  It only taught us to be good.

  From the local to the general

  Did we build our promised land?

  Anesthesia, cracked amnesia,

  Hippocrates to guide our hand?

  Did we slip the bonds of angels?

  Learn to fall, forget to fly?

  In Gray’s anatomy found our scriptures,

  Heart beats to set watches by.

  Insanity did Kubla Khan

  Find echoes of our distant past;

  Vexed to nightmare by a CAT scan,

  And an etherized Encephalograph.

  There was no sign of a verse/bridge/chorus structure to the song, and its lyric seemed to be in constant conflict with the music, with no attempt made—it seemed—to match the rhythm of the song with the meter of the verse. Again, it was like the vocals had been recorded with no foreknowledge of the music it would be grafted onto. But somehow that very disconnect meant the words gained an almost unreal quality, and the monotone delivery started to become almost hypnotic.

  When the track ended by winding down until just the bass rumbled on, Joe felt confused and uneasy.

  “You certainly can’t dance to it,” he said in a small voice from a suddenly dry throat.

  “It kind of gets to you, doesn’t it?” Ellie rubbed her temples as though fighting a headache. “I feel like I need to shower after listening to it.”

  “I don’t get it. I mean it has a certain power, I guess, but no one could honestly listen to that noise for pleasure.”

  “Lennie listens to nothing else.”

  “And does he often go missing?” Joe asked, changing the subject.

  “Occasi
onal nights away. Maybe a weekend. But nothing like this. Maybe I should call someone… .” The thought made her draw away from Joe.

  “I’ll talk to his parents. I’m sure they’ll know what to do. It might help if I can tell them what he was like the last time you saw him. Was he worried? Depressed? In love?”

  “Serious. But then, he’s always so serious, isn’t he? I mean, he can joke around but he’s always very controlled. Very repressed. Forced, even.”

  “Tell me about it,” Joe agreed, but he didn’t recognize the portrait that Ellie was painting of Lennie. Sure, he was exceptionally smart and incredibly focused, but he had a really sweet, funny side that sounded miles away from the person Ellie was sharing her home with. “Are there any new friends that he might have taken off with?”

  Again, something registered in Ellie’s eyes and she thought about the question before nodding a little. “Not new, exactly. But like I said earlier, a few of those X-Core types started coming round …”

  “Did they all have to wear headphones?”

  Ellie bit her lip.

  “They didn’t play music,” she said cautiously. “They just went up to his room and kind of sat there.”

  “Sat there?”

  “I went up to offer them something to drink once, an excuse to check on them, really, because it was so quiet. The door was open and they were just kind of sitting there, silent. It was kind of strange, to be honest.”

  “Maybe they heard you coming and stopped whatever it was they were doing?”

  “It’s possible, but that’s not the impression that I got. It just felt like they’d been sitting in silence the whole time. And it took them a while to realize I was there even when I asked them about the drinks… .”

  “That is strange,” Joe admitted.

  “Even when they finally saw me there was a moment where they looked at me … like I was something they didn’t recognize. And then the moment passed and they were all perfectly calm and lucid. Maybe it’s some kind of meditation… .”

  “Probably,” Joe agreed. “Do you know who any of these other guys were, I mean, so I can tell Lennie’s parents, maybe get them to call around …?”

  “I didn’t know any of them. And Lennie didn’t introduce them, which was kind of odd, too, now that I think about it. Usually his manners are perfect. But I know who one of them is.”

  Joe took a quick mental note of Ellie’s demeanor. Her face showed that she was still a little cautious, but that was only to be expected. She had a kid she didn’t know asking her questions in her parents’ kitchen and no matter how practiced he was at this kind of thing—he’d been on dozens of training courses to learn his craft—it was still an odd situation for her.

  He decided that pushing her could make her even more hesitant. If he made it seem as if he was too interested—too eager—to gather information, then caution might turn into suspicion.

  He decided to play it neutral.

  “I guess it could be helpful,” he said quietly, making it sound like it didn’t matter one way or the other.

  Ellie stood up. She’d made her decision, and it was just the one Joe had been hoping for.

  “Wait here,” she said and left the room.

  Joe sat there as she went upstairs and he knew that she was going into Lennie’s room. She came back a minute or two later clutching a piece of what looked like a card to her chest.

  “I saw this the other day.” There was a little hint of guilt in her voice. She was, after all, confessing that she’d been in his room. “I recognized one of the people from the night they were all just sitting there.”

  She handed Joe the card and he saw that it was a flyer for a Precision Image gig, illustrated with a photo showing the band performing live.

  Ellie put a perfectly manicured nail on the lead singer and said, “That was him.”

  Joe nodded. So Lennie wasn’t just a X-Core fan; he knew the singer of one of the bands. He didn’t know whether that was a good or bad thing. Still, it was a lead. The flyer gave the date and location of the gig, and it was in Brixton, tomorrow night.

  He tried to think of a way to get a quick look around Lennie’s room, but any excuse would only make Ellie suspicious and probably wouldn’t get him anywhere, so he wound up the interview, thanked Ellie, left her his number in case she thought of anything else that might help, told her everything was going to be all right, and left.

  He was ten feet down the road when he pulled out his phone, dialed Abernathy’s number and when Abernathy answered said: “Okay, you’ve got me interested. I think it’s time you briefed me.”

  “All in good time. What do you know about Lennie’s father?”

  “Not much,” Joe said.

  “You must know that your friend’s the son of Victor Palgrave?”

  “I met Lennie’s father a couple of times, a long time ago, on sports day at school, but I have no idea why you would have an interest in him.”

  Abernathy laughed.

  “Read a newspaper sometime, Joe. They can really fill the gaps in your knowledge of current events.”

  “I only read the back pages.”

  “So if he was an overpaid Premier League player you’d know all about him?”

  “Hey, look,” Joe interjected. “It was you who taught me to cultivate an interest in soccer, because in this country—apparently—it’s impossible to get anywhere with the male half of the species if you can’t recite stats for a game that only lets the goalkeepers pick up the ball… .”

  “Okay, it was a low blow. Anyway, listen up. And in case you’re wondering, we’re talking UK politics, Joe.

  “The current government has, according to some Conservatives, become altogether too soft on immigration. The right wing of the party feels like the UK’s borders are too porous, and a large section of the voters seems to agree. As a result there has been an alarming growth in right-wing parties and organizations. To placate these dissenting voices, a more traditional form of Conservative is secretly being tipped for a meteoric rise up the cabinet hierarchy. And that minister’s name is Victor Palgrave—your friend’s father. Some say he’s going to be the next prime minister.”

  “Fascinating,” Joe said. “Now, is there a point to this tale, or are you just going to fill me in on the progress of all my school friends—,’cause I’m pretty sure that’s what Facebook’s for?”

  “I’ve just arranged a meeting for you,” Abernathy said. “A personal audience with Victor Palgrave. Go have a chat with him. Then we’ll talk.”

  “Okay. Send me the address.”

  “Already done,” Abernathy said. “By the way, did you find anything out at Lennie’s house?”

  “X-Core.”

  “Welcome back, Joe,” Abernathy said and hung up.

  CHAPTER THREE: UNCLE ALEX

  Ani had never been “on the run” before, and it wasn’t at all like the movies.

  There was no romance, glamour, or sparkle to it; no big-budget special-effects sequences; no adrenaline-pumping, free-running set pieces; no excitement at all, really: just fear.

  The town she had lived in all of her life had become sinister and threatening. Every unexpected car engine had her heart pretty much leaping out of her chest; every sudden appearance of a stranger had her swerving and changing direction; and every CCTV camera had her lowering her head in terror.

  Even the streets looked different somehow, as if the scenery were changing to match her situation. Alleys looked longer and seemed to have more places for pursuers to ambush her; roads looked wider and more likely to contain hidden threats; and the buildings seemed to close in around her, making her feel trapped and isolated.

  She thought about calling her dad, but hesitated when she took her phone out of her pocket.

  She didn’t dare.

  Maybe they were tapping his phone.

  Or hers.

  Or both.

  With the phone in her hand she started thinking about GPS and SIM cards and then she sto
pped to take the SIM and the battery out. She was sure there was no way they could track her if there was no power.

  Or was she?

  She was a tech-head, a hacker, a digital spitter-in-the-face of the great and self-proclaimed good, but suddenly all that she knew was up in the air. Uncertain. Unknown. Unknowable.

  Who were those guys back there? They weren’t cops—she was pretty sure of that, because of the guns, really—but that led to thoughts of darker, less defined law-enforcement agencies.

  MI5?

  FBI?

  Interpol?

  Intellectual property rights enforcement?

  A Colombian death squad?

  Thinking about it was getting her nowhere, but her mind kept picking over it anyway; teasing at the few details she knew, and trying to find a way to make some kind of sense of them.

  Problem was, that way lay madness.

  She knew this from school and from her online life, too. In the absence of information, of data, the human brain was remarkably adept at inventing stuff to fill in the gaps.

  Soon she’d be as mad as Jack McVitie and his 9/11 Truther nonsense; or the old man she saw downtown sometimes, who shouted out random statements that were linked only by the power of his delusions.

  I need data, she thought. Solid, dependable data.

  Hence, Uncle Alex.

  She just hoped he was home.

  The Grafton Centre shopping center squatted on concrete haunches over the bones of an area of Cambridge that once made up part of a district called the Kite.

  Urban decay had taken root in the area and, rather than taking steps to stop the rot through a program of gradual regeneration, the universities and city council had opted for a scorched-earth policy that saw a large area demolished and the four-hundred-thousand-square-foot Grafton Centre rise from its ashes.

  As far as phoenixes went, this one had retail outlets for feathers.

  Ani had heard stories from her dad about life before the center was built, warm memories of a place where people used to shop in daylight before they were herded beneath the artificial lights of perpetual shopping time.

  Of course Ani’s dad wasn’t an unbiased witness; she was sure his black and gray market goods—he was what was usually referred to as a “fence,” the middleman that plied his trade buying what criminals had to sell and moving it on to other people at a reasonable though marked-up price—had found an easier outlet amid the run-down houses and pubs of the Kite.