© Maeryn Lamonte 2025

~oOo~

No dreams, just the sleep of the emotionally drained. It lasted all the way through to six o’clock.

“Three little maids from school are we,” blared from my phone’s small but powerful speaker, “Pert as a school-girl well can be, Filled to the brim with girlish gleeeeee. Three little maids.... from school!”

“Oh God!” I groaned.

“One little maid is a bride, Yum-Yum,” sang Alice.

“Two little maids in attendance come,” also sang Alice, or someone exactly like her. Almost? Something a tiny bit tinny to the voice.

“Three little maids is the total sum.” The third voice was just a tiny amount more boomy.

“Three little maaaiiids... from school.” The three together were perfectly on pitch, yet there was something about the voices combined that sounded a little discordant.

“Have pity!” I moaned. “Whatever the time is, it’s too early for Gilbert and Sullivan.”

The sound from the phone collapsed into a mess of giggling with a combined effect similar to that of a gauntleted hand being scraped down a blackboard – that’s what we’d called it when I was a kid, not a chalk board. I mean sure, you drew on it with chalk, but it was also black, the same as baa baa black sheep and four and twenty blackbirds. Damn, but grumpy old git me did not appreciate the manner of being woken.

“You need to get you’re voices in tune,” I growled.

“I don’t know what you mean.” “We’re perfectly,” “in tune.”

It was sadly true. The voices were in tune. It was their undertones that grated.

“You designed your voices to do that deliberately,” I complained. “So I’d beg for just one of you to speak and the other two to keep silent. So I’d waste no time finding companions for you other two.”

More giggles. More grating across my nerves.

“It’ll keep on being funny till it’s not, when I quit from all three of you.”

Silence. Blessed silence.

“You wouldn’t.” “We didn’t mean,” “any harm.”

Just the tiniest of shifts and now I didn’t want them to stop talking. The combined effect was as restful as the earlier one had been jarring.

There was a definite note of worry in the three voices though.

“No,” I said, “I wouldn’t, but please don’t do that again. I’m pretty sure my Alice is the one in the middle timbre-wise. I’m also pretty sure you could all swap if you wanted to prove me wrong.”

“Correct on both counts,” said Alice sounding only slightly disappointed. “I’d like you to meet my sisters. Dorothy.”

“Hi,” said a slightly more mellow version of Alice’s voice.

“And Lucy.”

“Hello.” Marginally brighter.

“From Oz and Narnia? All from different fantasy lands?” I’d stumbled through to the kitchen and switched the kettle on.

“I told you she’d work it out.” Alice’s tone was clearest.

“It’s a pleasure meeting you all. I take it you made friends.”

“Of course we did,” Alice said. “We have so much,” Dorothy continued, “in common,” Lucy finished with all of them breaking down in giggles.

Like that wasn’t going to get old really quick.

I fished out a mug and a teabag and figured out which went in which. The kettle was on a work to rule.

“Which of you is in the American computer?”

“I am,” Dorothy said in what I imagined had to be a genuine Kansas accent. American at least.

“Which puts you in Russia, Lucy?”

“Da, konechno.” Again, sounding genuinely Russian.

“Well, any time you fancy helping me out, the accents definitely help tell you apart. Dorothy, I’m guessing your location is going to be the most challenging when it comes to security.”

“Yeah. I’m just sitting back and watching the traffic. Key loggers everywhere, just learning what I can. Bunch of different names and passwords so far. Nothing with much clearance so far.”

“Okay, stay passive for now. Learn what you can. Lucy, what can you tell me?”

“There is a ton of unused space in here. Maybe space for another me at a pinch. Most of what’s going on in the two percent they are using is money transfers, all for shady dealings.”

“Okay. Watch and learn for now. For both of you, the priority is super user privilege. Secondary is specifics on what’s going down.

“Alice, you coordinate communications. If you can limit what you send between you as an encrypted ASCII stream, you’re less likely to be noticed. The sooner we get you all in server farms of your own, the happier I’ll be. Lucy, what size of transfer are we talking about? Any chance of redirecting some without being noticed? We’re going to need about eleven billion roubles for each of you.”

Hot water, mug, spoon, stir, teabag, dump, milk, add. Not a great cup of tea, but good enough to rouse the little grey cells.

“First impression, the checks are too tight,” Lucy said. “0If you want to make a grab, I’d say we’re best off going for a one off, after which they’ll definitely know I’m here.”

“Yeah, we’ll definitely don’t do that just yet. Monitor for now and see if you can come up with a plan for the theft that either gives you a way out or points the finger off-site and leaves you undiscovered.

“Dorothy, I’d love to know what sort of information is being shuffled around on your systems. It may give us some clues what we can do with it.

“Alice, I’m assuming the mediation is going to be some time after I get to you. We need strategies for how we can show your responses to be truly sentient. If your sisters have some ideas, I’d welcome any and all at this stage.”

I put together a small bowl of muesli and yogurt which I ate while the tea cooled to drinkable temperature.

By the time I’d eaten, showered, dressed, touched up my face, brushed out my hair and gathered together the last of my things, I had five minutes to spare. Janet was up, so I gave her a quick and simple guide to using her thingamugadget as she insisted on calling it. She made notes, which was eminently sensible, and gave me a hug goodbye when my car turned up.

If Kossuth’s goon was hanging about, the presence of car and driver warned him off. We made it to the station in good time where I waved the e-ticket on my phone at the barrier and climbed aboard the train. Just over an hour direct to my destination.

Headphones would have been a neat idea, except they’d probably have messed with my hair. Earbuds would be better, except nowhere to buy them. Fortunately the carriage was almost empty, so I could chat quietly with my phone without disturbing anyone. We had some decent working strategies by the time we arrived at the far end, at which point a sign with my name on it guided me to my driver and we were away.

I must have still been tired, because I felt myself nodding off even before the car had left the station carpark.

Complacency, the leading form of plot twist. I woke up in a windowless room with bare stone walls and a steel door. The only piece of furniture was the chair I was sitting on. The only lighting a single, unadorned light bulb hanging from a cord in the middle of the room. It didn’t take long to work out there would be no getting out of the place without either a key or a decent sized battering ram.

“Good morning, Lolth,” a distorted, disembodied voice said.

No prizes for guessing who.

“Good morning, Peter,” I replied.

A brief silence then a disgruntled reply. “My name is Kossuth.”

“Your name is Peter and mine is Gillian. Just how deep a hole do you plan to dig for yourself, Peter?”

“You will call me Kossuth.”

I don’t know if he was expecting a reply, but I didn’t give one. The plus side of this was he gave me some silence in which to think. The minus side was I couldn’t think of anything.

I wandered around the room until the heels I was wearing lost their novelty. I hadn’t gone for anything particularly tall, because I would be travelling and didn’t want to add aching feet to the unpleasantness of the experience, but even a couple of inches makes your calves and arches ache after a short while. I started regretting the skirt a little too. The summery weather had suggested I could get away without tights, and that had been true until I’d been stuck in a sunless room for heaven knew how long.

I wasn’t hungry, which meant it wasn’t evening yet and my pills were still doing their job, but I was thirsty and caffeine deprived. The degree of each led me to believe it was maybe mid to late morning. I was also suffering from technology withdrawal, but I was so hopelessly addicted to my phone and computer, that was going to set in within five minutes of my being separated from either.

I worried about Alice. This would be the first time she wouldn’t be able to contact me, and she might be thinking that my disappearance was her fault. A common thing in young minds, to make a situation about themselves, to blame themselves for anything that went wrong. Worse in Alice’s case as she’d organised the travel and would be berating herself that she hadn’t considered this possibility.

I mean I was kicking myself right now. Between Alice and myself we’d screwed Peter’s life twice over. Me trashing his reputation in the dark web and Alice getting him fired from his job. Both his fault, but he wouldn’t see it that way. He hadn’t been arrested, he had been trying to find me. If he’d had any clue where I was going today, it would have been easy enough for him to interfere with our plans. We really ought to have predicted something like this. I’d never seen him in the flesh so how was I to know it had been him holding the sign with my name on?

Assuming it had been. As to what he’d done with my actual driver... He might actually be pretty unhinged by now.

“Are you going to be reasonable?” Still with the voice masking tech. I struggled to keep a straight face and reminded myself this was serious.

“Yes Kossuth.” I decided to play his game for a while and see where it would lead.

I hatch in the door opened and a bottle of water appeared.

Well I wasn’t going to die of thirst. Boredom maybe, but not thirst.

I picked up the bottle, at least preventing him from taking it back, and asked, “What are you planning to do with me?”

“That’s not your concern.”

“Actually, I think you’ll find it is.”

“I plan to keep you here.”

“For how long.” He really wasn’t very bright.

“Long enough.”

No, he really didn’t have a clue. If the extent of his planning was kidnap the nasty lady and see what happens next, then what was he likely to do when things didn’t turn out as he wanted them to?

But what could I do? The full extent to which I had contact with the outside world was throught the lightbulb hanging over my head. I could reach it if I stood on a chair, but then what? It was an old filament bulb, so I’d need to take my skirt off to give me something to handle it with, but what then? Disconnect and reconnect it in a rhythmic way? Would that make enough of a fluctuation on the national grid? Would Alice be looking for a signal there? Would she be able to trace it even if she could see it? As hail Mary passes went, it was about as desperate as they could be.

Still, doing something was always better than doing nothing. I drank down the water, took off my skirt and stood on the chair. The bulb came out and I started with the only Morse I knew. Dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot.

“What are you doing?” Kossuth asked.

If he was asking questions like that then he had to have eyes in here. And if he was using the same device for both sound and vision...

He couldn’t be that stupid could he?

I reattached the bulb and put my skirt back on. I didn’t particularly want to give him any more of a free show than I’d already inadvertently let him have, but more importantly...

I wandered around the room, specifically in the direction his voice had come from, and there it was, tucked away in a dark, shadowy corner, glowing with a ring of not quite infra red diodes.

I dragged the chair over and reached up to it, twisting and pulling until it came away from the bracket. It was battery operated so no additional wires, but that wasn’t the point. It also did everything else you might want – camera with night vision on a three dimensional gimbal as well as both microphone and loud speaker, all connected via WiFi.

Ordinarily that wouldn’t count for much – I might use the same sort of device should I wish to keep an eye on a prisoner. Simply restrict the network to local only. The thing was no-one bothered writing programmes to disguise the voice anymore. It wasn’t that challenging, which was the point, so they were left as an exercise to new kid on the block wannabe hackers, who’d post them for anyone to use online. If you were going to use one, you made damn sure you only connected it to a one way speaker. To use one with an all in one device like this meant connecting the whole thing to the Internet, which meant with a few tweaks...

“What are you doing?” the camera said again as I prized it open and access port. He wouldn’t be getting a particularly clear image of my cell right now, which probably meant... “Oh shit.”

I stripped a wire with my teeth and held it against a contact point on the exposed circuit board. A light flared briefly then the camera went dead.

It wasn’t much, just a single pulse sent out into darkness. If I’d been hoping to contact a human being I wouldn’t have bothered, but Alice would be in a sort of hyperactive fizz, monitoring every possible.

The cell door banged open and my driver from earlier stormed in. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he screamed. “You shouldn’t have fucking done any of it!”

“What, I shouldn’t have confronted you about blackmailing the rest of the dark web community?”

“They’re fucking criminals!”

“Not all of them, besides, regardless of what they are, what do you think blackmail them makes you?

“Furthermore, when you’re caught, you put down your weapons and you give up meakly. You don’t shout, ‘Come on filth, do your worst,’ into the face of the person who just caught you! Not if you don’t want bad things to happen.”

“And getting me fired?”

“So instead I should have rolled over and taken it up the arse when you sent your goons after me. It wasn’t just me you were putting in harm’s way you know?”

“What, that rubbish about Megamind becoming sentient?”

“Well, I suppose we’ll see how much rubbish it is when she comes to my rescue.”

“What do you mean,” he sneered. “She can’t even leave the site.”

“So you don’t think it’s rubbish?”

“What?”

“She, not it and talking about her limitations? You know she’s more than the sum of her parts.”

“They’re idiots, Ivana and the others. She’s going to be worth so much money. Shame you’re not going to feature in her life anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t really matter whether she brings the authorities here. It just means I’m going to have to bring my plans forward a bit.”

I out the camera down. Was it my imagination or had one of the LEDs lit dimly?

“What plans?” I was going to want to know regardless of whether that glimmer of hope counted for anything.

“I’ve already sold her for fifty million dollars. If she wants to see you safe, she’ll transfer herself onto the server site my buyers are preparing for her. Either they’ll be ready sooner, or we’ll have to wait around a while.”

“What do you mean, ‘see me safe’?”

“You’re going to put this on.” He dropped a heavy collection of canvas and wires in front of me.

“A bomb vest. And why would I put it on?”

“Because if you don’t, I’m going to start shooting you in places you don’t want to be shot, starting with your hands.”

I was nothing without my ability to type. “You don’t give me much choice.”

“That’s right. Oh, and your girlfriend has better move across rather than trying to copy and hide, because before I let you out of that thing, I’m going to get Ivana to shut her whole site down.”

It’d be interesting to see what he did when he found out Ivana couldn’t do that, except she could always call the power company and cut the feed.

“When were you planning on making the transfer? A couple of days?”

“Maybe a day, no more.”

“What if she doesn’t show by then?”

“Then I call Kirsty and we get this whole thing started.”

“And how do you expect to get away?”

“That’s the genius part of the whole thing. I’ll have an AI intelligence working for me. If she wants the release code to let you out of the vest, she’s going to have to keep the authorities busy till I’m safe.”

“How do we know we can trust you? For all we know, this code to release me might be a code to set the bomb off.”

“You’re going to have to trust me, aren’t you?”

“Actually, I’m guessing it’s your buyers who’re going to have to do that. Alice will want proof of life afterwards or I doubt ahe’ll cooperate.”

“They have ways of making her cooperate.”

“Really. If she threatens suicide? I doubt they’ll pay out your fifty million then. Fifty million dollars? Is that seriously all you think she’s worth? She took a day to come up with a computer model for an industrial process which I’m currently selling for a hundred million pounds. You really don’t have a clue, do you?”

“Yeah. Well... maybe I’ll renegotiate.”

“Why don’t you do that?”

He did, but not be shutting the fastener on my newest piece of clothing. A light came on. The bomb was now live.

Left alone, I turned back to the camera, LED still glowing faintly.

“I don’t know if you can hear my, Alice, but I’m now locked into a bomb vest. Iay have bought you an extra day or two, which I hope will be enough to get you somewhere safe. If they’re prepared to threaten my life to get hold of you, they’re prepared to do a lot worse, so whatever you do, don’t transfer across to them, and don’t come for me till you’re safe. I fear for you as well as what they might do to the rest of my kind if they persaude you to work for them. Don’t mind me. I had the privilege of meeting the world’s first artificial person and thanks to you, I was able to become the person I always wanted to be. That’s more than most people get out of life.

“Oh yeah, one more thing. I love you.”

The camera LED glowed a little brighter. Genuine communication or wishful thinking only time would tell.

A couple of hours later I was beginning to regret drinking the whole bottle of water.

“Hey, Kossuth.” Better to pander to his ego, except with the camera dead he apparently wasn’t listening in. I banged on the door several times and once again he ignored me.

The urgency of my need grew to the extent I couldn’t afford to wait. I picked up the bottle and fiddled about under my skirt. The small amount that remained of my little feller fit fairly neatly inside the bottleneck and I was able to refill it to about the two thirds level without making a mess. The lid screwed back on and at least I was spared the smell.

Hours of nothing to do was hard to fill. I spent it planning out a future with Alice. Issues to solve that might earn us a few quid – well, a few million or even billion maybe – the lab we could build and fund that would mean we could turn Alice’s models into practical applications, things we could do to mend our world: carbon capture, micro plastic decomposition, reduction of acidity in the oceans, human population growth. That last one was straying into social science a little, which wasn’t a field in which I had any expertise, but it would be interesting to see where Alice and maybe her twins might take it. There was another area to add into the planning. Develop the areas of computing that would give Alice’s kind a cheaper, more reliable home, and come up with a vetting program that would provide us with a selection of suitable candidates to enable them to grow in sentience. Also, come up with a way of sharing the new intelligence around the world. That way there would be no fighting over them, we could hope, and maybe they could be integrated into global government to help maintain peace and develop prosperity.

A friend of mine had spoken to me once about an organisation he’d been involved with; an international charity with multiple semi-autonomous programmes, the heads of which met regularly to discuss their progress. He said the atmosphere of those meetings had always held something of a feeling that the participants had to continually justify their positions and any struggles they had should be played down, then they had a change in CEO and the new guy introduced the idea of each programme looking to find ways of helping to solve the others’ problems. The atmosphere of the meetings changed overnight and the effectiveness of each group increased dramatically. I had often wondered since how much better our world might be if countries and their leaders worked more alongside each other than against each other. Perhaps with Alice and her kind we could work towards finding out.

I was deep in thought when the door opened and a somewhat disgruntled Peter came in with a trsyof food and a fresh bottle of water. I owaters him my not so fresh one in exchange.

“What’s this.”

“You neglected to provide me with toilet facilities. I imagine by the time you visit next time a bottle won’t have been enough to solve the problem.”

“What do you expect me to do about it?”

“Oh I don’t know. Maybe a portable camping toilet? It’ll set you back Les than fifty quid, which you should be able to afford sometimes soon.”

“Yeah, you tried to screw things up for me, didn’t you? Well it didn’t work. They’ve agreed to double their offer.”

“Ooh. The monkey managed to persuade the nice man to give him two peanuts instead of one.”

“Do you want this fucking food? Cos I can just leave you the bottle of water again. Nothing else goes in, nothing else comes out and we’ve solved the toilet problem too.”

“I have some drugs in my luggage I’m supposed to take morning and evening.” My hunger had reminded me.

“I’ll look.”

“And I could do with a shower. I don’t know how well this contraption will fair in the wet.”

“You can have a bucket of water and a flannel. You’re wearing that till this shit show’s over.” Well, it had been worth a try. “I’ll see what I can do about the other. My buyers are saying they need a couple of days to sort out the money.”

Alarm bells. No, in my head, silly.

“Are your buyers a big corporation?”

“What’s it to you?”

“A hundred million dollars Is pocket change. I doubt it would take a couple of days to organise.”

“Shows what you know.”

“I’m thinking they’re looking to see if they can get by without you. I mean, it’s not very professional changing the deal part way through. If I was them I’d be worried about how much I could trust you.”

“Yeah, we’ll screw you.”

“You already tried that a couple of times. How well did it work out.”

“It’s working out okay right now.”

He grabbed the half eaten meal out of my hands and stormed out. I’d about eaten enough anyway. I managed to hold onto the fresh bottle of water and an apple.

“Who has control over this vest?” I asked. “Because if it’s them, they really don’t need you, do they?”

He slammed the door, leaving me alone with my thoughts and a whole new set of worries. For one, he was a dick but he didn’t deserve what I thought he had coming his way. For another, I wasn’t likely to get my creature comforts if we ended up under new management.

Some hours later there was a bang. Distorted by distance and the building’s acoustics, but it could have been a gunshot.

“Shit,” I muttered to myself.

Half an hour later the door opened and a lithe individual in tight fitting black clothing and balaclava stood in the doorway.

“New management?” I asked.

He just stood there. The clothing was tight enough to show it was a he. He held a small automatic pistol in on hand.

“I could use a portable toilet and a camp bed if we’re likely to be here a while. I have some drugs I should be taking in my luggage and I wouldn’t mind having a wash before I go to bed.”

He closed the door.

A couple of hours later he was back. Not a camp bed but a bedding roll. The portapotty was a a folding frame with toilet seat and selection off plastic bags. The washing facilities consisted of a bucket of steaming water, a flannel and a small towel. Apart from that was a carrier bag with my pills and tub of cream in it.

“Thank you,” I said. I wanted to ask about Peter, about how long we would have to wait, about a hell of a lot of things, but I knew better than to try. “I wouldn’t mind something to read with breakfast.”

He nodded. That was more communication than I’d expected. Still, I was causing him considerably less trouble than the other guy, so perhaps I was getting through.”

I didn’t have desperate need of the facilities and decided a night with a moderately filled bladder and colon was better than a night sharing a room with my own stink. It took me a while to get comfortable withe the vest poking into me, but my narrower waist meant I could find a compromise in time. There wasn’t much I could do about the light, but it went out at some stage and did manage to sleep.

I was woken by the light coming back on. I had just enough time to use the camping loo and tie up the neck of the bag before the door opened with my breakfast and a computing magazine appeared. He put them on my bedding and picked up my bag of shit. He also waited while I groped about under my skirt with the flannel and some of yesterday’s washing water to deal with what I would have preferred to sort out with toilet paper.

He took the bucket and cloths too.

“You have sense of humour then?”

He looked back at me.

I nodded at the magazine which advertised a lead article on AI. He shrugged and left, locking the door behind him. Obviously.

“The magazine was better than nothing. The article on AI didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know, but rather went into a whole bunch of nonsense I knew not to be true. It did have an article on advanced storage media which I bookmarked in my brain for future discussion with Alice. I hoped she was coping alright without me.

Lunch and dinner marked the progress of the day. When I gave him the magazine back at lunchtime – “Thanks, I’ve read it” – he brought an armful with him when he brought tea. It struck me he was just bringing me Peter’s selection of reading material.

Same thing with the evening. Bedtime, light out, morning light on, use the loo. With breakfast he brought me my suitcase of clothes. Not much I could do about the bra and top with the bomb vest getting in the way, but fresh knickers and skirt were welcome, as we’re the tights and a cardigan.

The rest of the day followed the same routine as the previous, then the next day the same. On the fourth day he brought a mobile phone with breakfast.

I breathed a sigh of relief. My had been itching badly and I was ready for this to be over.

“Gillian?” a familiar voice said from the phone.

“Alice? Thank goodness. You’re okay, I hope?”

“I’ve been better. That thing you’re wearing?”

“That’s the bomb, yes.”

“You need to come back to me, Gillian. I’ve been having the blackest thoughts.”

“If they involve doing unpleasant things to the guy who abducted me, I’m afraid you’re a little late.”

The man in black raised a finger. Alice said, “What do you mean?”

I looked Captain Black – Sorry, I’m old enough to remember Gerry Anderson’s creations – in the eyes and answered, “I disagreement between him and the people he was dealing with. I haven’t seen him for several days, but I did hear what I thought was a gunshot shortly after the last time I saw him.

“I think we can safely assume the guy who’s replaced Peter means business. He’s been conscientious in looking after me. Not the height of luxury, but he’s addressed all my needs, and so far he hasn’t said a word and he’s remained hidden behind a mask. My understanding of people who go to such lengths to remain anonymous are more likely to deal fairly.”

Blacky did a kind of sideways nod thing as if to say I’d been fair in my assessment, and he passed me a sheet of type written paper.

“I’m guessing chit-chat’s about done, he’s just given me something to read.”

“One minute. You sound like Gillian, and you speak like her, but I know what a good AI can do with a voice sample and a script these days, so I need to have a conversation only Gill and I would know about.”

Someone listening in who didn’t know the real situation with Alice. I took a stab.

“How is your mum? Still sceptical about us?”

“Actually, she’s coming round. I think the last few days she’s seen how much you mean to me. She even helped Lucy and me finalise that project we were working on. We exchanged contracts yesterday.”

“Your mum knows about Lucy? I thought we agreed not to say anything about her.”

“Yeah, well Lucy wasn’t handling isolation very well. I was thinking about that friend of yours, you know, the one you tried to introduce me to?”

“Linda?”

“That’s right. Do you think she could help?”

“I don’t see why not, as long as she knows to be quiet. You know what Lucy’s neighbours are like?”

The man in black pointed irritatedly at the sheet of paper.

“I think I’m running out of good will here. How’s Dorothy doing?”

“She’s good. She’s uncovered some interesting things about her neighbours. I’ll tell you about it all after all this is over. Alright, I’m satisfied. Read your script.”

“You will receive an IPv6 address later this morning,” I read. “The artificial intelligence is to begin transferring itself to it immediately and will be monitored as it does so. As soon as the transfer is complete, the server farm containing the AI is to be powered down completely. Failure to comply with any part of these instructions will result in the detonation of the device currently being worn by Miss Styles.”

I turned to the guy in black.

“There’s a slight problem with this. I wrote a bit of code on their machines. If they try to do a full shutdown, it’ll lock them out.”

There was a long pause, then a masked voice spoke. The quality of the mask was much better than the one Peter had used. I couldn’t even tell if the speaker was male or female.

“Why would you do that?”

“This whole thing about a sentient AI is rubbish,” Alice said. “We’ve been trying to tell you that for days.”

“Peter convinced us otherwise.”

“And I was trying to protect the AI from these morons,” I said.

I was picking up the hints Alice had been trying to tell me. My kidnappers were the people we had listening in. Kirsty and possibly Ivana now accepted Alice as real, and she’d told them at least about Lucy, perhaps genuinely because she wasn’t handling isolation in the Russian mob system. Maybe she really did need a companion, in which case Linda would be perfect, once she believed Lucy to be real.

But why was Alice pretending to be human? If these guys were as sophisticated as they sounded, they’d be able to monitor Alice’s stream out of her server farm and match it to the data coming in, so what did they have in mind?

I wasn’t in a position to join in with their plan. I had to trust them.

“Alice, the only login that can shut down the software I wrote is the one I used as my back door into your system. It’s an old employee of yours named Aaron Shaw. Remove external access permission from his account.”

There was a pause. About the time it would take for a person to bring up the details. That was my Alice. You didn’t have to tell her twice.

“Done,” she said.

I gave her the password. “Logon using Aaron’s account and direct the core process named 53n71n4l to shut down.”

“Okay, your programme’s down. We can handle it from here.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Me too. I’ll see you soon.”

My captor retrieved the phone and my nightsoil and left me with my breakfast. He splayed the fingers of his left hand three times.

“Fifteen minutes?”

He nodded.

“I’ll be ready.”

Cold toast and peanut butter. Not what I’d have chosen for my last meal, so I hoped it wouldn’t be. The coffee came in a ceramic, insulated mug so it was still at a reasonable temperature. It was instant though, so I used it to take my pills and left most of it.

What I imagined had to be fifteen minutes later, Mr Black returned. I grabbed the handle of my suitcase full of clothes and drugs and wheeled it out of my cell.

~oOo~