Prime Target: chapter 2 -everywhere he went

Emerson strode over to the locked walnut door. He was authorised to have a key. He was not authorised to use it.

Emerson unlocked the door. Walked into one of the empty offices. Messaged Rita, who was probably screeching at the CCTV monitor about his deviation from protocol, letting her know he’d be talking to the kid about his formula. Then he fetched a laptop from the shelf, angled it away from the cameras (even the one hidden in the plant pot), disabled live monitoring and waited.

Ten minutes later, Mikey wandered into the room. He looked worn and tired, not like a kid should look.

“Started yet?” Emerson said. Mikey jumped.

“What is this place? Does everyone here know about RSA being broken?”

“Not everyone, no.” He casually ignored the first question and gestured at his screen. “I’m guessing you started with a matrix of primes?”

“No,” Mikey began. But Emerson pointed at the screen again. There was no matrix of primes. There was a sentence. CCTV. BEST NOT TRUST ANYBODY IN THIS PLACE.

Mikey caught on. “Why is that?”

Emerson typed WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY’LL DO ONCE YOU’VE BROKEN RSA, LET YOU GO HOME? AND REGEV’S NOT ON YOUR SIDE EITHER

“I understand,” said Mikey shakily. “So… so what do I do?”

“That’s where the formula comes in,” said Emerson, looking up and nodding. Then he clicked something.

A printer at the other end of the room spewed out a stack of papers.

“This research should help jog your memory,” the old man said gravely. “I’m Arthur Emerson, by the way.”

He’d left the door to the corridor unlocked. Accidentally, he’d claim later. But first he had to make sure there were no obvious signs of his betrayal. After Mikey left the room with the maps Emerson spent a few minutes clearing the digital trail. Anyone who checked the printer’s history would find that Emerson had printed nothing but a matrix of primes.

He just had to hope nobody would connect the dots that he hadn’t erased. But Arthur Emerson was British and a pessimist. He was not hopeful.

After Mikey left Emerson’s room he looked at the papers the man had printed. The first line of the first page said ‘the corridor is unlocked on the left-hand side.’

The rest of the page gave directions out of the building.

It was all in lowercase. In comic sans. Mikey was beginning to doubt Emerson’s sanity, then decided to throw caution to the perfectly conditioned artificial wind and just go for it.

Mikey cautiously tried the right-hand side door. Locked. He walked casually to the other side, opened the door and stepped out. If anyone asked, he’d been looking for the toilet.

But what if they saw the papers? What if they realised he’d been helped, what if they caught the old man - Emerson? Mikey memorised the first two pages as best as he could, then folded the sheaf into a tiny rectangle. Slid it into his shoe.

He’d already been searched in the police station, and nobody would search him again. Not if he needed the toilet.

At least, he hoped not. Practiced his best ‘I’m just a kid’ face. People often said he looked younger than his age, which was annoying in normal times. But now, it could be a plus.

He moved mechanically, like someone else’s brain had hijacked his body. Followed the memories of his map, down infinite staircases that seemed to loop back into themselves, corridors and hallways so winding and impossible that he was like a cheese mite lost inside a commercial printer.

He didn’t meet a single person. At one point he saw something moving and stiffened, pressing himself against the smooth wall, only to watch a robot hoover glide smoothly by, spinning like a blind dancer. Kept walking, following the route planned for him by a wiser man who had told him not to trust anyone.

It was only later, once he’d found his way out of the convoluted maze that was this complex, once he’d gawped at the Frustum’s ridiculously behemoth architecture and narrowly missed being caught by an AI security guard, once he’d reached a train station and sat down long enough to notice that his heart rate had been going beserk for the last few hours – only then did the question occur to his mind, like an itch that wouldn’t go away.

He tried to reason with the nagging voice in his mind. Come on, he thought. Don’t be silly. He’s all you have. And why would he help you if he was a bad guy? Then again, the police were the bad guys now. They said there was a drug related crime and there wasn’t. They said he’d go home if he did what they said.

There were too many rules that were being changed, too many lies, the ground shifting beneath his feet… A tsunami wave of nausea hit him.

If Emerson wasn’t on his side, why help him escape? And if he was on his side… why send him out alone?

He scrunched up his eyes as his joints began to throb. He unfolded the second map and tried to match the lines to his surroundings. It was all wrong at first. He took six deep breaths and tried again; the lines matched.

“I can do this,” he told a cloud.

And the question that irritated and terrified him at the same time, the riddle that couldn’t be solved, still bouncing off the edges of his consciousness: who says you can trust Emerson?

Whilst they all waited for instructions from Big, Scary and Besneakered Rita, Regev was working out in the Frustum’s over-equipped gym. He did not need the muscles. He did not want a six-pack. He was there because he needed to get the lowdown on the rest of the team.

Only Levy was there, though, sweating over the barbells. A camera panned overhead as Regev pretended to work out. After exactly ten minutes, he walked casually over to Levy.

“Noam Regev,” he said with a smile, proffering a hand.

“I know,” Levy panted. “You came late to a meeting that was in the works for who knows how long.”

“You’re supposed to introduce yourself, not insult me.”

“No, I’m supposed to ask why you’re acting like you didn’t memorise all of our faces on the plane.”

Regev laughed, glanced at the door. “Sassy. Now, can I ask what you think of-”

“Just a minute-” Levy clanked up a resistance machine that looked like a torture device, making lots of noise. “Sound recording,” he explained.

“I figured. So, what do you think of our job – milking a teenager for information he never planned to get?”

“It’s not what I signed up to FVEY for, exploiting kids,” Levy said carefully. “But it’s important for national security.”

“You believe that?”

“No.” Levy stopped working the resistance machine. Took a breath. “But there’s no other way. Once RSA’s been broken, the battle is on.”

“Let’s be real,” retorted Regev heatedly. “If a fifty-year-old maths professor had broken the cipher, he’d have posted his work somewhere. And everyone would have access to everything. It’s only because Mikey’s fifteen that they’re able to think about monopolising his discovery.”

“You want to go public?” Levy said, clanking the machine again.

“I want to get the kid to safety. Then we go public.”

“I think I owe you a handshake,” said Levy, mock - solemnly. They shook on it.

After they left the gym, they made sure to keep up a light conversation. Levy could never remember what they’d discussed afterward, but he thought it might have been sneakers. Levy went to rejoin the group, but Regev said he wanted to shower.

Rita was apoplectic. “Where is he? Where is he?” she said, her voice shaking with rage. “Wilson! Get everyone here. Everyone. Get me forensics. Unit 56. Find out where everyone was for the last three hours. Status update in my office.”

Wilson nodded and scurried away.

Rita breathed deeply through her nose. Everyone. Everyone was a spy. The team she’d trusted, put together herself. working with the Israelis or the Russians or the French. Eloise Wilson could be a spy; Peters could be a spy. She suddenly understood what it meant to have nobody, after living alone for ten years.

In the conference room the team heard her rant. Their faces were all identically grave.

Levy settled nervously into a seat in the corner of the third-floor conference room. Was Rita about to bust him and Regev in front of everyone? He looked around for Regev but couldn’t see him. Probably still in the shower, then. He hoped the charismatic Israeli wouldn’t get into trouble for missing Rita’s ‘meeting’.

Rita was steaming. “The kid is gone. Disappeared. Nada.”

“Kidnapped? Or escaped?” That was DeLorean.

“I. don’t. know.” She burst out. “Make it your job to find out.”

She picked up the mustard, put it down again.

“I don’t think I need to impress upon you the importance of this situation,” she continued severely after taking a breath. “Get him alive.”

“Where’s Regev?” Emerson asked the guy seated at his side in an undertone. “She should turn to psychology before logistics.”

“Dunno. Maybe he helped the kid.” The man shrugged.

“Don’t think so,” Emerson mused. “Anyway, Americans are just as suspicious as-”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence. The door burst open and Regev stalked in. those calculating eyes of his sweeping the room.

“Show me the footage,” he barked.

“What footage?” Rita demanded suspiciously. “And where have you been?”

He ignored the commander. His eyes swept the room, calculating, taking in the panic, the accusations. “All the exits. Everywhere he went.”

He stepped closer to the screen, hands behind his back, posture relaxed in a way that made everyone else more nervous. “He didn’t vanish,” Regev said, eyes narrowed. “He followed a pattern.”

There was silence. Then:

“Patterns?” Peters raised his eyebrows. “We’re talking about a kid. Kids don’t- he had help-”

Regev pointed a finger at Peters. “He’s Mikey,” he said simply. “Mikey always follows patterns. That’s his vital weakness, besides for being a kid.”

Then he turned back to Rita and bowed his head ironically. “Sorry. You can go back to being the commander now.”

Rita gritted her teeth but nodded. “Jeanette, review the exits. Filey, get forensics in - the footage might’ve been tampered with. Ooh. Groups of three, minimum.” She glared at everyone rudely. “Some of you will be traitors, and traitors work alone.”

Levy looked at Regev, who was engaged in conversation with the English gentleman, Arthur Emerson. “Oh - you’re Levy, right? A field agent. Come join up with me and Emerson here.”

“Sure,” Levy said, maintaining a poker face at Regev’s farce.

Rita had each team sign their names and gave them each an angle to look over.

When she finished assigning the roles, she sighed. Allowed herself three seconds of loneliness. Then got back to her team.

Mikey followed the maps and found a tiny exit in the courtyard. Crawled through. Simple as that, he was free. In the wrong city, in the wrong country, quite literally alone in the world, but free.

It was strange, Mikey thought, but for his whole life he’d been kind of invisible. He hadn’t minded most of the time, hadn’t even been conscious of his isolation. He’d had no friends but he had Moshe and his parents, and his classmates – his jaw tightened. They’d been nasty, his class. When they weren’t ignoring him, they were hitting him orfinding ways to trick him into trouble. He knew what it was to be an underdog, and this - as terrifying as it was -was not that.

Now, it felt good to be important, even dangerous. Not a little boy who knew nothing anymore. As he went, he wondered with vicarious satisfaction what Moshe or his classmates would say if he knew that the actual FVEY - those same guys who monitored signals intel all over the world - were interested in Mikey.

When he reached the train station he was pulled out of his reverie. He blanched at the noise. There were too many people and that was unsettling, maybe even dangerous. But he reminded himself that he was important now, that he was dangerous, and whispered “I have to do this. No one else will help me.” By the time the train pulled out of the station it was decided. He was determined to reach England safely, or wherever was safe. Wherever Emerson had sent him.

The train was noisy, too. What seemed like hundreds of teenagers had crowded on and they were making his mind hazy. The carriage buzzed with too many voices, too many lights, too many smells. When he finally realised he was groaning out loud, a cluster of teenagers were staring at him like he was a zoo exhibit.

“You okay?” One of them, a lanky boy with neon blue hair, twanged. Mikey couldn’t place his accent and he thought maybe the boy was stalking him. He went on groaning.

The boy stretched out a tattooed arm and touched Mikey’s shoulder, who let out a high-pitched scream and began to rub his wrists incessantly.

“Whoa, there,” the boy said, more gently, palms up. He had birds tattoed on his wrists, too.

“Leave him, Gunner,” a girl with lime green and purple lipstick drawled. “He’s a wacko.”

Mikey screamed more. He wanted the boy to leave him and stop touching him. Mikey was scared because he knew strangers weren’t allowed to touch you, but the boy was a stranger.

The boy finally left him and melded back into his group.

“New hair, Raven,” Mikey heard Gunner say to a girl with blue dyed hair. The sounds were from somewhere very far away. He couldn’t stop shuddering for hours. His reality, a boy who was travelling the world alone and on the run, loomed before him like a maze, a puzzle with no edges, nowhere to start, no way out.

Emerson was, at that moment, trapped in a conversation he needed to escape.

His partners - Levy, some junior analyst and field agent with far too much enthusiasm and far too little sense - was rambling about satellite drift or packet loss or something equally irrelevant. Emerson nodded at the right intervals, murmured “Mm,” and “Quite,” and “Yes, that’s unfortunate,” while his pulse hammered in his throat.

He needed to get to his room. He needed to send a message to Cheltenham. To explain, to receive orders, update them. Not in that order, though. He shook his head.

“Anyway,” the analyst said, still talking, “I think the whole system needs a-”

“Yes, brilliant, thank you,” Emerson cut in bitterly. “Do write it up.”

He stepped sideways, intending to slip past, but Regev followed him like an overeager puppy. Emerson’s jaw tightened. He could feel sweat prickling under his collar. Every second he wasn’t in his room was another second Rita might check the logs. Another second someone else might put the pieces together. Another second the UK might decide he’d acted without authorisation - which he had.

He cleared his throat. “I really must attend to something urgent.”

“Oh! Of course. Need a hand?”

“No,” Emerson said, a little too sharply. “No, thank you. I’ll manage.”

The analyst looked lost but Arthur didn’t care.

He walked away briskly, trying not to look like a man fleeing a crime scene. Which, again, he was.