Still naked, she crossed to the American fridge-freezer and pulled free a bottle of ice-cold beer. She flipped the cap, and took a long, well earned drink. Then she set about preparing a light salad… what with the recent worry and speculation surrounding the Scorpion network and the total destruction of its London Headquarters, satisfying her hunger had not been high on her list of priorities until just now.
She revelled in the uncomplicated task of preparing the salad; she enjoyed the simplicity of slicing the cucumber, the crunch of the lettuce as the blade cut through its heart, and the reward of arranging everything neatly on the plate after the brain draining mathematical calculations of an average day working on the Chimera Programme.
Claudia Dax was on her third beer when the comm. buzzed.
Picking up the wireless handset she hit the answer button.
“Yes, what do you want?”
“Sorry, Claudia. We have a problem with the Chimera Programme.”
“What is the problem, this time?”
“The programme’s chameleon mode has caught a cold. In turn, the self diagnostic script is showing signs of erratic behaviour.”
“Damn. I’ll be there in five.”
The emotionless voice at the other end of the comm added:
“You don’t have five minutes, Miss Dax. Get down here now, that’s what you get paid such an exorbitant salary for. And, I would remind you that Professor Kirill is expecting Chimera to be glitch free in under seventy-six hours.”
“Yeah, yeah, I understand and you don’t need to fucking remind me of the countdown. I’ll be down in five minutes.”
She killed the comm. connection.
“Shit…” she muttered, forking a large amount of salad into her mouth and taking one more swig of beer. She tossed the empty bottle into the bin where it clashed against the other empties. She disappeared back into the bedroom, brain turning over possible reasons that could have caused such a catastrophic problem to occur… and all the time at the back of Claudia’s mind was the nagging doubt about Scorpion, and what happened to their HQ — and about Ferran & Cardini International…
She did not see the flashing blue curser on her screen.
Claudia Dax loved the small hours.
The early hours of the morning when everything was quiet and still; when everyone else was sleeping; when the world appeared to be dead.
Claudia was often wide awake at this time; there were no distractions, she could think clearly…
And now: 3.30 a.m.
She lay on top of the duvet wearing her light cotton pyjamas, staring up at the ceiling. She rolled from the bed and stood for a moment. The air-conditioning whirring quietly in the background and she sighed, brain awash with binary codes, calculations and projections for the Chimera Programme. She smiled to herself, and then wandered, seemingly without purpose or direction, out of her apartment towards the lift.
Claudia gazed out through the three-sixty degree glass module as it descended silently. The doors opened.
Claudia Dax listened and with a sense of foreboding stepped, still in her pyjamas and bare feet, out onto the luxurious carpet, her whole body tingling with the audacity, the daring of her actions… to creep around on her own in a top security Government research establishment at night… naughty, very naughty…
She walked the corridors while virtually all of the other inhabitants of the complex slept, and after passing several security officers who merely nodded sedately at her presence, she moved stealthily to the unguarded air conditioning shaft leading up to ground level and the natural elements beyond. She raked her auburn hair back with both hands and slipped the elasticated band in place to make a pony-tail, stepped towards the ventilation grille, crouched down, and pulled it gently towards her. The grille came away easily, and as usual she was completely alone, as she made her way through the maze of tunnels…
She reached the exit at the rear of the ground-level complex. She produced a key and, without effort, overrode the electronic sentry software — after all, if her exceptional programming skill could not be used to her advantage sometimes…
Claudia stepped outside.
The cold highland night hit her as she took a few steps, revelling in the feel of the fresh air, the real world, the possible dangerof being outside in her pyjamas in the Scottish Highlands. Knowing, that all around her, heavily armed guards were concealed at their posts. Part of her wondered if they could see her, and merely ignored her eccentricity, her need to be outside. Another part of her revelled in the feeling of breaking the rules. But, only so far… She couldn’t go any further towards the perimeter or the guards would most certainly spot her and report the breach back to Kirilclass="underline" personnel were only allowed out of the establishment with an armed escort. But she sometimes had to be completely alone, and to breathe the fresh mountain air, completely alone.
She gazed up at the star-filled sky for a long while, moonlight glinted across her slender figure, and she thought how lucky she was to have a body that many women would die for, and every man in the department fantasised over.
She patted her flat belly. “Still firm and strong,” she sighed.
She stepped back into the artificial world, sliding the protective grille back into place and twisting the toggles to the locked position. She re-instated the security sentry programme and readjusted the log to how it was before her little jaunt outside. Digits flickered across the small screen and Claudia checked that she had not trodden in any debris from outside.
If only they knew, she thought.
A shiver ran up and down her spine; half in delight, half in fear.
Yes; she had been the best programmer and systems analyst — in her final year at Cambridge, possibly the best ever. But there had been something else; a chink deep inside her soul that led her to hack…
She found it easy, had honed her skills, and refined them to such a degree, that she had managed to computer rape some of the largest international computing organisations. She had cracked their supposedly unbreakable passwords, entered their databases and played with their files — just for a laugh… She always felt alive and turned-on by smashing their personnel files. The adrenalin rush she always got from fucking around with their finances was better than any drug induced high.
Claudia knew what drove her; knew that she had been born with a gift. But she hated — loathed- authority or anything which said, you will do it our way, and no other way… Her usual response to this was very simple… Well, you can all fuck off.
Claudia thought of herself as something of a cyber-freedom fighter — data protection? Nothing was safe in the twenty-first century. She wanted to open up the cans-of-worms that lurked beneath global organisations and governments. Find their dirtiest secrets and make them public on the Internet. She had the skill and knowledge to do this. To break the code of their digital locks and keys. She had the Chimera Programme at her fingertips…
Claudia smiled mischievously to herself.
Well, she had written the Chimera Programme script. Although no-one would ever know, because Kirill had already taken all of the credit for it himself. The British taxpayer had funded it, and Scorpion, under the watchful eye of GCHQ, had been conducting the field trials, which had looked promising to say the least. Chimera was capable of infiltrating any network — unseen. It could take control of any computer and override the system within seconds; hack world data banks; match the individual identities of every known major league organised crime criminal and global terrorist alike. Take control and utilise strategic military and spy satellites to coordinate ground, air and sea forces anywhere on the planet…