The Industry (9 page)

The following night, Kirra sat in her usual corner, her fingers pattering out an unsteady rhythm on her knees. She kept changing position, drawing her knees to her chest, stretching her legs out as far as they could go, kneeling on them just to stop them from trembling. The space between her heart and stomach felt knotted and queasy, fluttering as though she'd swallowed something alive and whole.

Hushed footsteps along the corridor reached her ears. The lock on the cell door clicked quietly. She took a small, sharp breath. They had been waiting for a recruit to bring their evening meal for hours, but two silhouettes stood in the doorway instead of one. Why two? And where was the food?

The recruits glanced at her, then at the other corner. When they saw it was empty, they went for the handguns in their belts.

This was the sign Kirra had been waiting for and she coughed quietly into the silence.

Milo's hand shot out from behind the door, grabbed the closest recruit's weapon and yanked it away. The recruit was so surprised he barely had time to respond before Milo cracked the gun down on his skull and he crumpled to the floor with a soft thump.

The second recruit had almost enough time to point his gun directly between Milo's eyes, but Milo was quicker, reaching out to trap the recruit's firing arm between both of his. He twisted, ducking out of the way in case the gun fired. The recruit gave a strangled grunt and drew away, giving Milo enough room to tackle him. They fell hard against the cement together, Milo groping for the gun that was still dangerously close to his face.

Kirra shot to her feet, watching the struggle breathlessly. Milo was putting up an impressive fight. In fact, he looked far more agile and combative than the recruit did. He finally wrenched the gun from the recruit's grip and got to his feet, applying a furious kick to the man's chest. It seemed that overpowering him had only taken the element of surprise.

Gun in hand, he glanced at Kirra, motionless against the wall, then back at the recruit, who was clutching his ribs and attempting to push himself to his feet, half-crawling, half-limping towards them. The first recruit was still out cold by the door.

Milo raised the gun, looking down at the winded man, but stopped midway and instead handed it to Kirra. She stared at him, horrified.

‘No! I'm not going to —'

‘Quick!' he hissed. ‘Come on! Now!'

Kirra looked at the recruit as he clambered towards her. Panicking, she raised the gun. It shook in her hands, bouncing about between her fingers. She couldn't do it. She couldn't kill him.

Then she felt Milo by her side, his hand on the small of her back, and watched as he slipped his own finger over hers. He pressed down and made her squeeze the trigger, and, with a bang that seemed to explode into her own heart, she shot the man.

He gasped, his hands going straight to the wound in his throat. There was a suspended moment in which the room was very still, except for the blood spewing from the bullet hole, and then the recruit toppled over onto the floor, fighting to take long, slurping breaths.

Milo took Kirra's hand and dragged her towards the door, still breathing hard from the pain of the scuffle. They didn't have time to think about what they'd done. Someone surely would have heard the gunshot.

They glided along the corridor and into a wide, rundown hall, where old pieces of machinery were left off to the sides and the smell of oil and dirt hung in the air. Milo crouched behind a bank of discarded equipment, pulling Kirra down beside him and together they waited with bated breath, listening for sounds of pursuit. They were perfectly silent, but Kirra was sure the tumultuous pounding of her heart would give them away. They both still held weapons: Kirra's, heavy and cold in her hand; Milo's grip on his looking almost comfortable.

‘Why did you do that?' she breathed, blood screaming in her ears.

Milo knew exactly what she was referring to but he continued to stare straight ahead. Finally, he shook his head, his curls rustling over his eyes. ‘You needed to do it.'

‘But why?'

‘Think about it, Kirra! Why did those two come into the cell? They weren't bringing us dinner, and they weren't there for me! Think about it!'

Kirra stared at him, feeling sick. He nodded grimly and turned away.

Milo seemed to decide it was safe, or perhaps that they might not get another chance, and pulled Kirra to her feet. Keeping low behind the cover of the machinery, they sprinted the length of the hall, stopping just short of entering another corridor. They had planned their escape as carefully as possible, but their knowledge of the factory was limited to the corridors between the bathroom, their cell and the graffiti room. To some extent, they were fumbling around in the dark. At any moment they could turn a corner and find themselves in a dead end or, worse, come face to face with a wall of recruits.

Peering into the gloomy corridor, Kirra heard distant voices yelling. The recruits had realised they'd escaped. Milo pulled her into the passageway, heading away from the voices, but his grip on her wrist tightened when they heard someone, close by, heading in their direction.

Kirra stopped an anxious gasp before it left her mouth. Together they darted through an open door into an empty room and listened for their pursuer. The muffled voices were some distance from the lone presence
in the corridor, which was moving almost soundlessly. In fact, Kirra realised, they could no longer hear anything at all. Their pursuer must have changed course, leaving the corridor silent. She expelled a grateful breath.

They vacated the room and turned left, eyes scanning for possible exits. A shriek of terror exploded from Kirra's dry lips when she felt a warm hand shoot out to wrap around hers. Poised beside the doorway was Wyles. He spun Kirra into his arms and had a gun to her temple like lightning, watching as Milo froze.

Kirra struggled, an impulse reaction before she realised there was no need. It was Wyles, after all. Gentle, generous Wyles with his chocolates and jokes. Surely he wasn't going to hurt them.

‘Place the gun on the floor,' he whispered, his weapon sinking deeper into Kirra's skin, his eyes flicking down the corridor.

Milo didn't move, his expression outraged. He looked between Kirra, the gun at her head and Wyles several times. Kirra swallowed painfully. She wanted to talk to him, tell him that it was alright. This escape attempt had failed, but there would be others.

‘I don't have all night,' Wyles said, increasing the pressure at Kirra's temple.

Milo studied him suspiciously. Finally he complied, slowly setting the weapon down. Kirra winced as Wyles tightened his grip on her. It really was all over. Wyles was going to drag them back to the cell, lock them up and leave them there for Latham to deal with, who would undoubtedly find some new and repugnant way of punishing them.

‘Back in there,' Wyles said to Milo, indicating the room he and Kirra had just vacated. Milo retreated over the threshold slowly.

‘Good,' Wyles muttered, loosening his grip on Kirra to shut the door in Milo's face.

Kirra searched out Milo's gaze just before the door blocked him from view. He looked livid, but she managed a small smile for him. They would just have to try again.

Wyles locked the door with a set of keys from his pocket, then proceeded down the corridor with his arm firmly around Kirra, pinning her to his side, going the same way she and Milo would have fled had they not been intercepted.

‘Don't make a sound,' he murmured, coming to a halt at an open door. Kirra felt the fresh night air whipping around her face. They stepped out into a deserted street and, to her shock, kept walking.

‘Where are you taking me?' she asked, twisting back for a last glance at the building where Milo was locked away.

‘No questions,' Wyles murmured, pulling her along the street.

The smell and taste of fresh air was strange after so many months inside the factory, and the sky, filled with stars, made Kirra feel extremely exposed. Even the pavement beneath her feet felt odd.

Wyles unlocked the back door of a sleek green sedan and forced her inside. The smell of brand new upholstery filled Kirra's nostrils. He closed the door with a thud and proceeded to the driver's seat. Once inside, he reached for a bag and withdrew two tablets and a bottle of water.

‘Take these,' he said curtly, handing them to her.

She shoved his arm away. ‘No!'

He pulled his gun from inside his jacket and pressed it to her forehead with a resigned sigh. ‘Yes,' he said.

One of Latham's recruits would never shoot her, Kirra knew that, but she was beginning to suspect Wyles wasn't all he appeared to be. After a quick review of her options, she took the pills from his hand. She tossed them into her mouth and raised the bottle to her lips, swallowing them down in a single gulp, staring daggers at Wyles the entire time.

‘Good,' he said, more to himself than to her, his gun now out of sight. He turned the key in the ignition. ‘They won't harm you. They'll just put you to sleep. Don't fight them.'

Kirra was full of questions, not least of which was what had brought about the sudden change in his temperament, but as he accelerated down the street, the factory receding behind them, she started feeling wobbly and sluggish. Her eyes were heavy; her neck felt unable to support the weight of her head. At a rate she would have found vaguely disturbing, the pills did their job and she dropped off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Kirra awoke to the sensation of something soft and comfortable beneath her. Her head started to pound as though on cue, and she opened her eyes a crack only to be blinded by the morning sun. She turned her head away. How long had she been asleep? Her hair was strewn across her face and neck as though she'd been unceremoniously dumped on the white couch beneath her.

A couch? That couldn't be right. She opened her eyes and sat upright, a colossal, heaving effort, and squinted around. The room she was in was long and broad, and nearly everything in it was stainless steel or perfect white. A smooth marble coffee table sat at her feet on a soft ivory rug, and she was facing a spotless kitchen behind a perfectly oval kitchen island.

She rubbed her forehead, feeling ill, and jumped when a side door opened and a man strode into the room. Her eyes widened. It was Wyles. In a flash she remembered
the escape attempt. She remembered Milo being locked in an empty room before she'd been rushed away by the man she'd completely misjudged until now.

He came to stand in the middle of the room, watching her from what seemed like a safe distance with a strangely contrite look on his face. He was tall, his skin was very pale and his hair was almost black. His square jaw was covered in its customary dark stubble and his eyes were sunken and weary.

‘Good morning,' he said.

Kirra gazed at him for a long time before speaking.

‘Who are you?'

Her voice was rough and croaky from sleep. Strangely, she didn't feel all that fearful of him. She was annoyed, yes. Perplexed, certainly. But scared? Not at all.

‘Desmond Rall,' he said.

‘So … not Wyles then?'

He smiled. ‘No. Not Wyles.'

He had a strange accent, one Kirra couldn't quite place. He sat in a chair opposite her, the light catching his face, and for the first time Kirra realised that his chin wasn't the only damaged part of him. His nose was off centre, and another, much lighter, scar nicked up from his eyebrow into his hairline. He clasped his hands and leaned forward as she stared at him.

‘What happened to Milo?' She asked her most important question quickly. ‘Did they find him?'

‘Who?'

‘Milo,' she said. ‘You locked him in a room at the factory, remember?'

‘Oh … the kid? I wondered what his name was.'

Kirra's jaw tightened. ‘He's not a kid,' she gritted out, looking around. ‘Where are we anyway? Why aren't I tied up or behind a locked door or something?'

Desmond Rall gave her a roguish smile. ‘I'm not a recruit. I don't work for Latham.'

Kirra froze. ‘What?'

‘I'm not a recruit.'

‘Yes, you are. You've been there for months. I've seen you!'

‘Oh, Latham thought I was working for him. Truth be told, I just needed to get close enough to steal you away.'

He got to his feet and strode to the kitchen. Kirra studied him as he filled a stainless-steel kettle with water, all the while whistling between his teeth. She blinked furiously to ensure she wasn't having an incredibly overimaginative daydream.

‘You … you were just pretending to work for him?' she ventured.

‘That's right,' Desmond called from the pantry, where he was digging around for something. ‘Under the name Wyles.'

‘Do you work for the government? Are you going to help me?' Kirra gasped.

Hope inflated her to the point of giddiness, but subsided when he emerged from the pantry with a box of teabags in his hand and gave her another wry smile.

‘I do not work for the government,' he said, the hint of a chuckle in his voice, ‘whichever government it is you are referring to. As a general rule, the government and I don't
really
get along. I'm a Contractor.'

‘Great,' Kirra muttered, disappointment hitting hard. ‘What do you want with me?'

He stopped what he was doing.

‘What do I want with you?' he repeated. He stared at her over the pristine kitchen island. ‘You
are
Kirra Hayward, aren't you?'

‘You know I am,' she said, not in the mood for games.

Desmond was still gawking at her. ‘You know what the Spencer System is, don't you? Why you're so valuable?'

‘The Spencer code has something to do with security systems,' she said, ‘but that's all I know.'

The kettle started whistling from its place near the sink. Desmond rummaged through the cabinets, bashing together pots and pans, and Kirra winced.

‘You get a sequence of numbers from this code, right?' Desmond hollered to her over the clanging. ‘And they become a PIN? Well, that's a very rare skill.'

‘Yeah, I've gathered that.'

‘Yes, but you don't understand
how
rare,' he said, eventually digging up a mug with a large crimson heart painted on the side and setting it down triumphantly. ‘There are only three people in the world who can do it, and one of them, Richard Spencer, is dead. There have been intelligence reports of a woman named Josephine Shaw who's suspected to be a Translator, though it hasn't been confirmed.'

‘Why not?'

He shrugged. ‘She's disappeared. Then there's the third person, who is currently missing.' He finished with a small grin, looking pleased that the person in question was missing because of him.

‘What about Milo?' Kirra said pointedly.

Desmond stopped what he was doing and spun around, his interest evidently piqued. ‘The other kid can do it too?'

Kirra gave a curt nod. ‘You were there in the factory — how could you not know that?'

Desmond shrugged again. ‘Latham's got a sort of hierarchy going on. I wasn't a high-level recruit. When you got to the factory I was given responsibility for bringing you meals. I wasn't cleared to sit in on your translations. I had no idea Milo was anything special at all.'

‘Yeah, well,' Kirra said, ‘he is.'

‘That makes a lot of sense,' Desmond continued thoughtfully, plopping a teabag into his mug. ‘See, I thought they'd just grabbed any old kid.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘I didn't think Milo was a Translator. I just thought he was a nobody they kidnapped for you.'

Kirra looked up. ‘What? Kidnapped for … what?'

Desmond took a few moments to consider his response.

‘Latham put out a worldwide search — that quiz you answered — to find a Translator,' he said. ‘He figured if Spencer could do the code, chances were someone else somewhere in the world could too. He went for the youngest candidate he could get his hands on; he thought it would make things easier. And then he met you and he wasn't so sure. So he brought in a kid for you to form a relationship with, so he could use it against you if it came to that. You know, brandish a gun at him, or torture
him, and force you to hand over the sequence. The whole torture thing is much more effective when there's leverage involved. He thought if the two of you were locked up for long enough together, you'd do anything for each other.'

Kirra stared at a very precise spot on the coffee table. ‘Yeah. They made me watch him … and they made him watch me …' She trailed off before she embarrassed herself. She wasn't sure she'd ever really get over Balcescu's drug.

‘I didn't realise Latham continued the search to find a second Translator,' Desmond said, ‘but it's quite ingenious now I think of it. He had the opportunity to use you both, and should anything happen to one of you he had the other to fall back on — his own sort of security.'

Kirra was very still.

‘So, Milo was really only there because of me?' she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.

‘That was the original idea, yeah,' Desmond said. ‘Why else would they need him? Tea?' he asked over his shoulder as he poured boiling water in the mug.

‘No, thank you,' Kirra murmured, staring blankly at the floor.

So Milo had been part of Latham's plan for her. The only reason Latham had gone looking for Milo was because he'd thought it would help his cause where Kirra was concerned. Kirra wanted to be sick. The idea was putrid, crawling around in her mind like a parasite. She shuddered. The fact that Latham had orchestrated their bond was … revolting. Milo was her friend, her only source of comfort, and that was exactly how Latham had
planned it. Now the thought of being reunited with Milo felt quite sordid.

‘Are you alright?' Desmond asked as he resumed his seat across from her, as though they'd been discussing nothing more than neighbourly gossip.

‘Fine,' Kirra said. ‘Fine.'

‘Well, anyway,' he continued, blowing the steam from his tea, ‘you're in high demand. Contractors the world over would give their right arms to get hold of you.'

Kirra must have looked baffled because Desmond said, ‘You don't know very much about the Industry, do you?'

She shook her head. Desmond nodded and absently scratched the side of his face.

‘Richard Spencer?'

‘No.'

He made an irritated sound in the back of his throat. ‘No one's explained any of it to you?'

She shook her head, wondering what she could possibly need to know other than the fact that Latham, and everyone like him, was evil.

‘Okay,' Desmond said. ‘Okay. Well … the Industry isn't really like the world you've grown up in.'

‘Really?' Kirra said.

Desmond seemed not to notice her sarcasm. ‘Yes. That's the first thing to know. It's a sort of community, I guess, built on criminal activity. Assassination, Extracting, Retrieving … that sort of thing. It operates in every country in the world. We don't like to call ourselves criminals — sounds too petty — we go with the title “Contractors” instead.'

Kirra tried to digest this. A criminal community that operated all around the world?

‘Now to Richard Spencer,' he went on. ‘Spencer was an engineer. A brilliant one. He engineered a brand new security system for regular people, one that was, until recently, completely unbreakable. Usually there are various ways of breaking through a security system, but all our methods are ineffective with the Spencer System. Everything we've tried has failed. Then it was discovered that Spencer had embedded unique disabling PINs for each of his systems into codes. Codes only he could break.'

‘Why would he do that?'

‘Well, that's the great mystery, isn't it?'

Kirra frowned at him. ‘You don't know?'

‘No one does,' he said. ‘Initially they thought it was Spencer's way of adding another layer of security, but as the codes only provide a means of breaking through the system, rather than protecting it, that theory was shot to hell. Some of us thought that perhaps it was simply Spencer being a control freak. Maybe he wanted the assurance that he could break through his own systems if he so desired. We still haven't worked out why, but the fact of the matter is that the Spencer System is a coveted product. Naturally, every person who has any reason to hide anything — or themselves — wants the protection this system offers.'

‘But you said the codes can break through —'

‘Yes, but only those of us in the Contracting Industry know that. Spencer's customers — regular people — have no idea about any of this. All they know is that it's
marketed as the best security money can buy. It's very difficult for Contractors to stay in business when their targets are safely hidden behind an unbreakable defence. It's become a very frustrating time for us, and we've tried everything to get through the system, but to no avail. We soon found out, however, about the codes. Codes that, when broken, could unlock these systems. It was an incredible breakthrough for all of us, well worth the celebration it caused. Contractors all over the world went hunting for the codes, and we eventually found them, but discovered shortly after that they weren't the sort of thing just anyone could decipher. In fact, they were deemed impossible to crack. This enraged many of us, so when the news came out that the engineer could translate his own code, Contractors all around the world raced to get to him first. Richard Spencer killed himself the day he heard they were coming. Probably the best move he ever made. After all the inconvenience he'd caused, that man was better off dead than what they had planned for him.'

Desmond took a sip of his tea and set it on the coffee table in front of him. ‘And so, with Spencer dead, the search for another Translator began, with Latham at the helm. He discovered that there were copies of every code for every system. Now, you can obtain these copies if you pay one of the old Spencer apprentices the right sum of money, but that only gets you the code; none of the apprentices know how to break it.'

‘Why not?'

‘Spencer never thought to include his employees when it came to his ingenious code idea. He had a bit of a superiority complex, I think. Speaking of complexes,
Latham was, at the time the Spencer System came out, one of the most sought-after professionals in the Industry. He started losing business only days after the Spencer System came on the market. He could no longer break into houses to assassinate his targets, or sneak into their office buildings to kill them at work, or break into their computers to check their schedules. He specialises in making assassinations look like suicides or accidents. It's hard to make a death look like a suicide if you can't get inside the victim's home to place a fired handgun by their side. So he sought out the best mathematicians he could get his hands on. He blackmailed cryptographers, threatened all sorts of analysts, but no one could explain the code to him. Then he had a stroke of genius. He tricked someone into bringing him a prototype of the code, something Richard Spencer had kept very well hidden. Spencer had used it during the development of the code, and it had a corresponding answer sequence attached. Latham's discovery of that prototype will probably go down as the single greatest event in Contracting history because with it, and with it alone, another Translator could be found.