Nadia — Chapter IV

Follow the story of Nadia, a quantum security expert in 2050 London

Nadia, a story by Miquel Morales.

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Jumping in now? Catch up with previous chapters.

Chapter IV

“You know, it’s not the
first time I deal with the likes of you. Nor it will be the last, for that
matter.”

The woman had a
distinctive voice. Coarse, yet sharp as a whistle. A slight lisp and the way she
pronounced the ‘r’ betrayed her as a non-native English speaker. Eastern
Europe, maybe? Hard to tell.   

“Scoundrels. Corporate
leeches who would rather put their energy to nefarious use than do their actual
job. Tell me: what was it, how did they get to you? Money? It’s usually money. Perhaps
the promise of a shiny new job?”

Nadia tried to keep a steady
face despite the woman’s determined scrutiny. A plain metallic table separated the
two of them in the middle of an otherwise empty room. Exactly how one would
imagine an interrogation room to look like.

“Excuse me, where exactly are we?” It had been a relatively short ride to whatever that place was, but the back of the van they had put her in had no windows. In any case, they couldn’t have gotten further than a few blocks. Somehow, the secrecy of it all made Nadia think it had less to do with the actual police and more with someone else’s particular idea of justice. Ugh, so stupid. If only she had made it for the elevator a couple of seconds earlier, the policeman’s hand wouldn’t have been able to stop the doors from closing. Guess no one is naturally prepared to run from the police at a moment’s notice.  

“Ah, she speaks!”

“I do!” said Nadia with a
mocking smile. “And I can tell you right away that I don’t have the foggiest
idea of what you are talking about.”

“Funny, because your
friend said quite the opposite.”

“My friend?”

The woman pulled up some
information on her bracelet’s screen.

“Mr… Tom Schultz. Ah, chatty
fella.” Wait, how was Tom involved in any of this? “We know you stole the
RayStar duplos, so let’s go straight to the point, please.”

“What?” It was impossible
to hide her surprise this time around. “I did not do such… Wait. Are you even police?”
Definitely not. This has RayStar written all over it.

“Who is paying you?” The
woman was clearly starting to lose her temper.

The door opened and a man
in a suit walked in. He leaned on to whisper something in the interrogator’s
ear.

“We’re not done here,”
said the woman as she reluctantly stood up and followed the man out of the
room. The door locked with a beep.

Nadia finally let her guard
down and allowed her body to show how nervous she really was, her right foot going
up and down in an endless loop. She wished they hadn’t taken her earpiece. She
could’ve used Ziza’s help with going through the events of these recent days. The
duplos. But EVE had not gotten even remotely close to that data. She couldn’t
have the way the system was designed. Especially not with that useless hidden attachment
strategy. Plus, EVE’s target had always been the proprietary security
algorithms of Nadia’s company. Or at least Nadia had assumed so, given her
interest in getting close to the quantum encryption core systems. No, they must
have made a mistake. Nadia hadn’t messed around with the duplo dataflows at
all. Someone else had to be behind all this. Or had she missed something? She
would just tell them about EVE, the attachments, the kidnapping of her sister…
The door opened again. It was…

“Tom?! What on Earth…”

“Nadia, listen. There is
no time.” He was all sweaty and dishevelled, his eyes full of fear behind the
colourful glasses. “They know everything, they figured it all out. I’m so
sorry. They had Hao’s file, and they said they would…”

“Tom!” Nadia grabbed him by
the shirt and tried to shake him into making some sense. “What is going on?
What are you doing here, and what did you do?”    

 “I… There is no time! They will be back any
second.” He took her by the arm and the two ushered into a dimly lit hallway
with concrete walls. “You need to get out of the city. Didn’t you have a friend
up in Coventry? “

“I do. But my sister…”
They were now running through a maze of corridors across what seemed like the
basement of a large building.

“Your sister is fine,
don’t worry.”

“Wait, how do you…”

“She’s fine Nadia! You
need to worry about yourself right now.” Voices and steps could be heard some
distance behind them. The guards were in pursuit. And getting close.

“Where is my sister?”
They reached a fire escape door and Tom cracked it open, prompting the alarm to
go off. The light of day filtered in, momentarily blinding Nadia.

“Remember the party the
other day? Wait until nightfall and head there. You will understand everything
once I’ve also left you an untraceable paycard. You shouldn’t use any of your
accounts until I contact you. Not until we clear our name.”

“Tom – where is my
sister!”

“Where she has been all
this time. At her place.”

“What!”

“Trust me Nadia, I’ve got a plan.” He reached inside his shirt’s chest pocket and took out Nadia’s earpiece. He handed it to her and pushed her towards the door. “Now go! I’ll keep them for as long as I can.”

Flooded with questions, Nadia rushed out into a quiet back alley and started running without looking back. A shot could be heard in the distance.

To be continued…

Read the next chapter: Nadia — Chapter V

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