Finn watched his uncle disappear.
Up on a monitor he saw him getting hurried across the CFAC to a waiting chopper. Soon they’d all be on an overnight flight to Shanghai. Power was leaking from the building.
At least he and Hudson could spend the rest of his birthday repeatedly blasting their way through successive digital war zones while consuming snack food. It would give him time to process his emotions and the events of the day. There are limits on everything when you’re thirteen years old, he thought … A thought immediately interrupted by—
WHUMP! The sides of the biosphere shook.
“Hey. Birthday greetings,” said Hudson.
Without fail, and despite repeated warnings about vibration, Hudson would chuck down his school bag whenever he came into the lab, sending a minor shockwave through the nano-compound that could shake Finn clean out of bed.
Hudson collapsed into the beanbag next to the compound, fringe flopping over the top of his glasses as he emitted the latest playground gossip. “Guess what? Skeggy’s older sister took him to get a tattoo of a phoenix but his mum found out and stopped it halfway so now it just looks like a chicken with worms coming out of its butt.”
He stopped at the sound of the helicopters overhead.
“Hey, where’s everybody going?”
“Secret mission. Can’t say or I’d have to kill you,” said Finn.
“I thought we were meant to be a team?” said Hudson, indignant.
“Tell me about it,” said Finn.
“We are a team!” said Grandma, catching the end of the exchange as she bustled into the lab, dragging Hudson’s sack of sleepover bedding after her. “We’re the three musketeers! It’s me, you and Hudson!”
Yap! added Yo-yo, bouncing in her wake.
“And Yo-yo. And guess what I’ve got tickets for?” Grandma looked very pleased with herself.
“What?” Finn hardly dared ask.
“Bulb Expo! Tomorrow!”
“Bulb Expo?” said Finn.
“Turns out Commander King is very senior in the Royal Horticultural Society and he’s given me three tickets. We’ll have a marvellous time!”
“Is it a light show?” asked Hudson
“No, silly,” said Grandma, “it’s garden bulbs! Like The X Factor for flowers.”
Garden bulbs? Finn felt something snap inside.
“I am not going to a poxy flower show!” he yelled.
“Nonsense. I can’t just go with Hudson. We can’t be two musketeers, we must be three!”
“Yes you can – he can tell you about his butt worms.”
“Goodness. Have you got worms, Hudson?” asked Grandma.
Hudson looked stricken.
“Not me!” cried Hudson. “Skeggy!”
“Who on earth is ‘Skeggy’?”
Hudson regarded her in terror, knowing he was about to undergo ruthless cross-examination.
Finn was about to storm back to his quarters when suddenly he was struck by a brilliant idea.
“Hold on,” said Finn. “Grandma, where exactly is this flower show?”
“Chelsea.”
He was going to do it …
Because he had learned a lesson after all today – you have to take your chances …
Kaparis received intelligence reports of helicopters heading north from Hook Hall towards Heathrow and the holding of a China Airlines flight.
Tedious, he thought and felt a tingle of irritation.
They must have spotted Baptiste was one of his and decided to act. They would be too late, of course.
Should he bring bot distribution forward? He had the time. He would soon have the numbers.
Or maybe he just needed to create a little distraction?
To muddy the waters and give Allenby a shock he would never forget?
“Prepare a Viper squad,” he ordered Li Jun.
Two and a half hours later, Dr Allenby, Commander King and the thirty-three other members of the Hook Hall detachment were cruising at 35,000 feet in a Boeing 747 bound for Shanghai. The evening meal had been served and the cabin lights had been dimmed.
The flight would take eleven hours and they would move seven hours forward in time. Al was reading The Art of War by the ancient Chinese warrior, Sun Tzu, to get into the right mood. “The General who wins makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought,” he informed anyone who’d listen.
Out of the window the endless night passed, deep with secrets.
DAY TWO 07:00 (LOCAL GMT+8). Cash Till#3, Kung Fu Noodles, The Forbidden City, Shanghai. Nano-Botmass:*25765
SEE VECTOR RUN …
Sparks flew as carbon was fed into spark gaps at one end of the production suite. It was consumed, worked and transformed as it was drawn along an assembly line.
*25766 …
An instruction from an XE.CUTE bot at the head of each suite determined which of the fifty-two types of bot would be replicated.
*25767 …
There were now forty-three production suites fixed like leeches to the electronic innards of the cash till, each a miniature factory, each running at full capacity. Eleven more were partially constructed across cash tills #2 and #3.
*25768 …
Bots crawled and flew through the three cash tills and constantly swapped data and power through long whip-like
