boy began his crossing of the square. Alan wanted to degrade the quality, to give an amateurish impression. But George wanted high quality, reasoning that perhaps they would only get once chance at it.
Their own feed was low down, with one camera sweeping across the square, and the other fixed on a long view. At 11am in the morning, the square was not crowded. On the south side a group of office workers on a break. On the west side a young mother with two small children. A blonde child kicking a ball, then yelling. Seconds dragged. Somewhere systems were tagging it, doing their stuff.
“Detection time?” George asked.
“Less than thirty seconds, I think.” Alan said.
Nothing. George looked up at Alice, at Alan. Of course in a sense they had lost nothing if it didn’t work. But they had invested so much energy and time in this path, that it was really hard to think of a result of just nothing.
A figure running across the square. They watched, and waited for him to head towards the boy, but he just kept moving - a jogger. To Steve and Alice, this was George worrying about the plan failing. But George was picturing explaining to Alex. It was something he’d done many times before. That look in the eyes. People seemed to age ten years right in front of him as he told the story.
“Here they come.” Steve said.
Onto the square came two casually dressed, fit looking people. No nonsense types. Their arrival triggered a complete collapse of the public cameras, so they only had their own to track them.
How do you realise you are chasing a ghost? You have the surveillance on your glasses. So you have the target right in front of your eyes. But when you take off the glasses and look at the scene, there is one crucial difference. The artificial boy is not there. So in the space of a few strides you realise you are being played.
It was deathly quiet in the fun palace. Like the pause after the first move in a chess game. George knew the boy was a pawn, but he had done well to stay alive this far, and for the obvious reasons he wanted his luck to continue. He heard the beep from his phone, and glanced at it. Now he stared at it. At the image of Alex. Since when did Alex send images?
“Sorry. I better take this.” George said.
Steve looked confused. He couldn’t remember George taking a personal call.
“You pick the place.” Alex said.
George was pacing laps. All of them knew about Alex. Or at least of the existence of her, if not the details. When you worked together it didn’t do to go digging into each other’s lives.
“Run the dust scanner.” Alice said.
“I’m not sure I know how to do it.’ he said.
So Alice ran it over him. Looking for any signs of tags on him. Assuming that he didn’t want anyone to start tagging Alex.
“Clear.” Alice said.
“Nothing?” he said.
“Nothing.”
Which gave him the clearance he needed to head for Sandringham, in the Alex direction. He hesitated and looked back at the room. As if sensing that he was crossing a line, even if it might be crossed for him.
At first he couldn’t spot Alex in the restaurant. Two scans. She was different somehow. More attention to detail, the hair, the clothes. Enough to produce a surge of emotion.
“Here you are.” she said.
Now it was different. Famous one on the other side of the planet. Michael somewhere, out there.
“Must be strange with an empty house.” he stumbled. Like a teenager.
“Yes. But it’s good to see you.” she said. Confident.
// Alice
With George departed, Alice and Steve were left with it.
“You think he’ll need an instruction manual?” Steve said.
“Don’t be unkind. Isn’t he entitled to some happiness?” Alice said.
Alice turned to the wall microphone.
“Last week. Movements of the boy.”
It was uncharacteristic. Always a spidery set of paths came up. They had to sort and dig. A case of too much information. Considering that every camera in the city, every drone would have instances, it added up to a ‘needle in a haystack’ type of thing. There were only occasional marks. Mostly it was blank.
“A pro.” Steve said.
“Bit young to be a pro, isn’t he?”
He had taken great care to be invisible. To the extent that tracking him from this set of data was not really possible.
“Go further back.” Alice said.
So they rolled it back, over months. They could almost mark the time he was recruited, when he started to disappear.
“Long term statistics.” she said.
Not helpful either. Born and raised in Melbourne, that was what it told them. Useful things like between the ages of 6 and 16 mostly he was in school. Alice leaned back in the chair. The physical world wasn’t going to help them. So they turned to the internet. Again, he was beyond careful.
“Associates.” she said, in a hopeful, give me something type of search.
Again, it told them what she already knew, that he was Ctrl-X. It gave them Oscar, and Mia.
“The team?.” she said. The wall paused, as it lurched through everything.
It gave up Oscar and Natalie, and the bank. Which of course was the last time Oscar was in the open air. It wouldn’t have been good to turn up to meet Natalie with the hood and glasses, would it?
“Airports?” Alice asked Steve.
“Certainly fits with Oscar’s and Mia’s profile. Perpetual motion.”
“But they know that. They know that we will have to profile. They will flip it.”
“So they are sitting in a cafe in Degraves Street?”
“No. I don’t think so. That fits with the profile as well.”
They didn’t need to ask the wall to invert the profile. That was the thing about Australia. Most urbanised country on the planet, but there was lots and lots of empty space to hide in.
“Trains.” Alice said.
“Don’t have cabin surveillance.” Steve said.
“Exactly. We go for random cameras at railway end points. Or more generally just random photos from anyone.”
“You’re just trying to thrash the wall.”
“Worth a try.”
So they threw it to the wall, and not only did it pause, it went off into some enormous loop of wherever it went. Searching for any image of the boy. Hours later it would get a result, and set an alert for those it was programmed to talk to: Steve, Alice and George.
// George
George remembered why he never ate in restaurants. The formality of it. Of feeling like he was on display. But Alex’s smile was completely disarming.
“What would...” he began.
“What would the famous one make of this?” she said.
“It’s not my place to...” he fell over the words again.
“Don’t you think that there are really only two types of people in the world. Those that give love, and those that feed off it?”
He just sat, and thought. The pain behind those words. She continued.
“His son is out there. Somewhere. In the crosshairs of god knows what bastards. But he’s not here. You know that even when he’s here, he’s not here.” she said.
“I know. Of course I know.” he said.
The waiter chose that moment to appear, and to hover. They ordered quickly.
Afterwards, slowly they walked back to her house. The empty house. What did it say when you could face somebody with a gun pointed at you, but you balked at this, he thought. Then past the front door, hesitating at the unfamiliar surroundings. In an instant her arms were around him, grabbing hard, and her mouth was tight against his.
// Alex
George had not seen the silent alert, but Alex did. The phone lit up, and showed an image. She was instantly awake, as she recognised Michael immediately. She slid out of bed quietly. Fumbling with the keys, glancing back at the house. Half expecting a light to come on, and George to race out. She crawled th
e car slowly to the corner, and then planted the foot.
Set a course on the automatic driving system to the location that had come up on George’s phone. The car silently picked up the roadside beacons, and accelerated to the allowed speed.
Which gave her way too much time to think. Why hadn’t she woken him? They could have gone together. But deep down she wondered whether George was a detective first, and everything else a long second. Once she got to the location, how would she find him? He would be constantly moving. With George she could have had access to the police systems. They could find him quickly.
The car slowed as it entered the CityLink tunnel. She dared not look at the other cars. The surveillance cameras hung ominously from the roof of the tunnel.
// Michael
“On that ridge we are going to be totally visible.” Michael said.
“Yup. I’ve got a plan.” Oscar said.
“Care to share?”
“It’s radical. You might not want to know.
// George
George woke up with a start. Looked across at the empty bed, and for a moment thought of the previous night. Smiled. But something was not right. He listened for the sounds of activity. Nothing. He tentatively stepped his way around the house. Still nothing. He looked at his phone, at the updates, and instantly understood. Started throwing on clothes and heading for the door, dialing Alice.
“Send a car. I’m at 14 Linacre Crescent Beaumaris.”
She didn’t ask. It was obvious. He wasn’t the usual indestructible George at all. More the I am in so much deep shit George.
// Alex
Alex suddenly imagined the scene when George woke up, and found her gone. She glanced at the phone again, as if willing it to have a message. She should ring and confess, or something. The GPS told her that she had fifteen