Downtime - Marc Platt [99]
He flung his arm wide and played to the gallery. ‘Your real power goes no further than the mainframe on this campus, Great One.’ He pushed the performance up a couple of notches. ‘All anyone has to do is pull the plug!’
He glimpsed Sarah mouthing ‘Right’ to herself, before she vanished.
And for heaven’s sake hurry, woman, he thought. Even an ego the size of the Intelligence must have a limit on how long it’s prepared to gloat.
The steely eyes in Travers’s head were watching him closely. ‘Protect the generators,’ ordered the voice.
Several Chillys rose from their places and headed out of the arena.
Kate crouched back into a crevice as she heard footsteps approach. A figure rounded the corner and jumped to see her.
‘For a minute I thought you’d gone,’ gasped Sarah..
‘Not yet.’ The truth was that Kate was too confused to move. She’d walked into a war zone and had already compiled a list of questions to which she needed answers.
‘Stay out of sight until I’m back,’ said Sarah.
‘But...’
But Sarah had already gone.
Kate felt nauseous. She didn’t want to be involved and she didn’t want to be left out. She wanted Gordy now. Her hands had clamped into fists clammy with the frustration of inactivity.
Her fingers were still stinging. She had been possessed by something – something that she thought was in her head. But that thing had also been in her home. She had seen it for the monster it was.
She always took care of herself. No one gave her orders.
But she had lost control. She never lost control.
The gun was heavy inside her jacket. She stared up at the play of light on the inside of the sky canopy. The world was being closed in. The air had an acrid, burnt taste. Strands of web were catching in her hair. It was no good. She had to do something. Her dad was around her somewhere.
She slid from her hiding-place and started to dodge across the concrete, out along the walkway overlooking the university’s central square.
She reached the stairs and glanced down. She was face to face with several Chillys on the way up.
32
Access Denied
he generator plant was built under the maintenance road.
T The air inside hummed.
Victoria clattered down three flights of metal steps to reach the control centre. She counted three security cameras on the way. Each of them had swivelled in its housing to follow her progress.
The cavernous generator chamber was like a small cathedral in size. It was deserted. A row of huge grey cylindrical turbines crouched along one side of the chamber.
Like everything else at New World, the turbines had been designed by the Chancellor, or what Victoria had believed was the Chancellor. She had tried to persuade him to invest in solar-powered generators. Now she had seen the canopy blotting out the sky, she knew why he had resisted so vehemently.
She had one chance. She was certain that her own password into the computer system would be deleted by now, but she still knew the Chancellor’s personal access codes. She had secretly made a mental note of them long ago – an act of kindness in case the old man, who never seemed to write anything down, ever forgot them. If the system still accepted the codes, she would override and shut down every function on the mainframe and see the bulldozers in on the following morning.
There was an access terminal set up beside an output guidance console at the far side of the chamber. She set to work at the keyboard, concentrating, using the disciplines she had learned from him to stay calm and think clearly.
The log-in code took a full minute to be accepted. Victoria proceeded through a maze of menus that led her eventually to select the Generator Output System.
As she waited she heard the clatter of feet on the metal stairs. The screen flickered and scrolled with checks for viruses and trojan variants.
It finally cleared and displayed its text: ACCESS DENIED
She began to try other codes. Any codes.
ACCESS DENIED
ACCESS DENIED