— it was an evil weapon with only one obvious function: to kill.
“Are you absolutely sure, my son? Are you sure that you cannot share this information about these evil-doers for whom you work, with me? If not, then the Lord will deal with you through me, and as his loyal servant I must do his bidding to the best of my ability.” The slender blade of the knife glinted in the last remnants of light filtering through the stained glass window.
“Fuck you.”
The Priest raised the knife. Light gleamed from the blade; reflecting in the eye of the Assassin.
“Has God shown you the light yet, my son?”
The Assassin remained resolutely silent; instead he stared up with hatred.
“Then I must show you the error of your ways.”
The blade came down and around with precision and practiced skill — a single swift cut to the throat. The Assassin gurgled one last time, blood sprayed in a long arc across one of the white-washed walls; and the priest cleaned his blade on the Assassin’s clothing before allowing the dead body to topple and lie at his feet.
The Priest looked up, eyes narrowing. A figure moved into the chapel, cautiously; the priest retracted the blade and quietly replaced the flick-knife back into its hiding place. He smiled when he saw the black-clad figure of the SO19 senior officer moving towards him, HK MP5 steady in his gloved hands.
“Ah, the troops have arrived, just in time to save me.”
The armed police officer removed his gas-mask and slung the MP5 over his shoulder. He stared down at the dead body, then up at the priest. “You killed him, Priest?”
“God works in mysterious ways, my son,” said the Priest, with a kindly smile. “He was punished for his evil desecration of God’s holy place of worship.” The Priest gestured to the many bullet holes in the plaster and wood, across the stone, and the tiny holes in the stained glass window where fading light crept in.
“He certainly does. Shall I call in a clean-up team?” The stench of death and cordite was stinging his nostrils. The chapel — a place of love and worship — had become a charnel house.
“Best left to our people to deal with it,” said the Priest calmly, and strode out into the fresh air.
The Kirill Government Research Establishment — Scottish Highlands. Steel and non-reflective glass interlocked within the very granite of this inhospitable part of the world, a massive complex that was not visible on the surface or from the air — but went ten levels below. A feat of engineering, and the Government’s best kept secret.
Claudia Dax reclined back in the leather chair, and gazed out over the rugged mountain terrain on the monitor before her from within the depths of the underground complex; she watched the wind spin and whip the powder snow into a spiral of eddies, shifting and dancing, twisting as if possessed by demons. The Scottish Highlands. How Claudia loved and loathed this desolate region of Scotland; how it lived, a land of such diverse personalities, of such contrasts; a place of life and death; a place of beauty and a place of great ugliness, hardship and fear.
The Scottish Highlands — a vastrugged landscape of nature’s hostility. A huge landscape of jagged rock, smashed into mercy by nature and her cold wet climate.
If Claudia tried, if she closed her eyes and reallytried, she could imagine that she was somewhere tropical, smell the sun-tan cream, the surf breaking over the exotic coral reef. It had been too long since she had enjoyed the sea; far too long.
Claudia was considered the best in her field: she had passed her GCSEs at the age of ten; A-levels at the age of twelve. She had then been one of the youngest students to ever be accepted by Oxford University at the age of fourteen — by which time she had already achieved a degree with honours in computing through The Open University distance learning tutorials. By the time she arrived at Oxford, she was well on her way to graduating in advanced computer science and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence was just that — artificial. Scripted routines that were scripted…
Claudia Dax had pioneered a new school of thought: the concept of self-learn, self-teach, self-programme. The ability for the programme to learn and actually adapt by altering its own core code. To possess realintelligence, instead of a being told by way of pre-written directional script.
Kirill had snapped Claudia up after the publication of her second paper. And now, aged twenty-six, Claudia was an incredibly wealthy young woman living a life of dreams in a secret location within the vast wilderness of the Scottish Highlands. Although, incredibly wealthy, it was nothing as vulgar as finance and money and material possession that kept her at Kirill’s establishment — despite the desolation of the land: it was to do with her exceptionally competitive nature and her aspirations for the future. She could have chosen to work anywhere she wished: Berlin, the Bahamas, Washington — all had a particular lure for her sought-after programming genius. But Kirill was based in Scotland. And Kirill was at the very centre of all the important computing breakthroughs that were happening. Claudia Dax had to be at the centre of that importance.
Otherwise, her rise to the pinnacle of her chosen field would have been for nothing.
She was sitting at the terminal, linked to seven servers and harnessing the processing power and speed of one hundred subprocessors. Her fingers blurred across the keyboard and then she paused, adjusting the settings of various programs and sub-routines that were running in the background. She was the creator of her current project — spotted the glitch even before the security scripts reported it; she adjusted the code and sat back as figures flickered across the screen. LED lights randomly flashed at her.
Claudia Dax rubbed her weary eyes, ran fingers through her auburn hair. She suddenly realised that she was incredibly hungry — and incredibly tired, although she accepted these were small discomforts in comparison to what had recently gone down at Scorpion HQ in London.
Scorpion HQ — vaporised.
She shivered, and closed down the external view on one of her monitors.
Claudia gazed through the tinted glass at the offices below her; most of the terminals were empty, she glanced up at the clock, surprised to see it was 8.30 p.m.
“Bloody hell,” she said wearily. She had been working since 8 a.m. without a break, her concentration complete, and her focus intense and uninterruptible. Now her body and brain cried out for sustenance and she sighed to herself, climbing to her feet and stretching her perfectly formed athletic body. Her muscles ached and screamed for an intense gym workout.
Instead, she realised what she actually needed was a long cold beer. Very cold and very long.
She took the lift up to her private quarters — all the programmers employed at the highest level of security clearance were given the most luxurious living quarters two floors below ground level of the complex. This was one of the benefits, one of the perks, one of the expectations of working for Kirill’s prestigious team. They were offered the best salaries, the most exotic holiday packages, numerous opportunities to work worldwide and the opportunity to work on the most exciting cutting edge projects with the most powerful computing hardware ever created.
And Claudia Dax was, quite literally, at the very top of the pile.
She stepped through the door into her apartment, stripped off her clothing and revelled in the feeling of the air-con on her skin. She walked barefoot and naked across the Italian Marble floor to the wetroom, as she stepped under the shower head, warm jets automatically started and she lightly soaped her tanned skin. She massaged shampoo into her dark auburn hair, washed it free and then stepping out, towelled herself dry.