Im still not sure. About him, or the whole thing.
The male voice again, a bit whiny, in a way that still sounded extremely familiar. He fought the urge to open his eyes and turn his head.
Suddenly he noticed the bleeps speeding up.
Shit, he had to relax.
Deep breaths, nice and easy.
He wanted to hear more, try to work out what the fuck was going on.
Six floors, then, the woman went on.
Thirty metres into the rock, each floor consisting of a hub with five tunnels leading off it like spokes, each of them fifty metres long. Five times fifty is two hundred and fifty, multiplied by six floors …
One and a half kilometres. Thats a hell of a lot of space …
And each one of the spokes is ten metres wide, which means they might have several rows of server racks in them. Say, two passageways for maintenance in each tunnel. Each rack is, what, one metre deep? That makes …
Five kilometres, maybe more. Five kilometres of servers … Thats a fuck of a lot of capacity!
The mans voice sounded agitated.
Thats enough to supply …
… pretty much the whole of Europes requirements for secure data storage.
The site manager paused long enough for the statement to sink in. The hundred or so visitors seemed impressed. As for her, she was only really half-listening to the press conference.
Details of the sites capacity flickered past on the large screen, interspersed occasionally with pictures of its construction. She stretched discreetly and took the chance to check her phone for messages. But the inbox was empty and the calls she had missed in the lift at the Grand didnt seem to have been registered by the phone. Weird.
In contrast to the summer heat outside, the air in there was cool, and even though they were above ground, she thought she could detect a faint smell of the rock, a bit like in the underground in Stockholm. Which wasnt really that strange …
During the Cold War this had been the site of an underground command base – shed read that in the papers. And just as Kjellgren had said, there was a long tunnel which acted as both an emergency exit and a conduit for all the communication cables to the artillery bunkers on the coast a couple of kilometres away.
Now that same tunnel brought cool water from the Baltic to service the air-conditioning down in the underground chambers. That and the cool Swedish climate, the unlimited and secure supply of electricity and the extensive broadband network were evidently the main reasons why the whole installation had been located in Sweden, blah, blah, blah …
Obviously she ought to have been more interested, because this was her employer they were talking about here, after all. But she was having trouble concentrating on the details of the presentation. She couldnt shake the gnawing feeling that something was seriously wrong. Really she ought to be trying to call Thomas again.
Black was bound to be safe in there. All the visitors had been registered and checked out in advance, and had been made to undergo a security check more rigorous than at any airport. All electronic gadgets except the photographers cameras had been locked away out in the security lodge. Naturally she had been spared these security procedures, and still had both her radio and mobile on her.
But she already suspected there was no point to the call she was thinking of making. Just as before, Thomas wouldnt answer. Besides, he would be there in an hour or so.
Kjellgren was driving, and according to the text she had received a few minutes ago, they had already passed Uppsala. She wasnt looking forward to the meeting.
But she wasnt the one who had made a fool of herself, she wasnt the one who had drawn an illegal handgun …
Our site basically works the same way as an old- fashioned bank vault … the site manager went on as the video projector faded neatly into an image she recognized.
The bank vault on the screen was practically identical to the one she had been in a few days before. Thick concrete walls, polished marble floor and long rows of little brass doors … Could it be the same vault?
Rebecca straightened up in her chair instinctively. She had been trying not to think about the safe deposit box and Tage Sammers story, hoping to set the whole thing to one side for a few days until Blacks visit was over.
A thick shell to protect against attack from outside, the site manager went on. Then separate compartments inside, each one isolated from the others to allow entry only to those authorized to access the contents. But here the size of each compartment can be varied with a few simple commands from the control room. In other words we can adapt to our clients requirements instantaneously. The compartments become bubbles whose size can be constantly adjusted.
Any demand to store ten, one hundred, or even a thousand times more information would be no problem at all, the changes can be made instantly. What server room can compete with that level of capacity?
He left another deliberate pause for the rhetorical question to hang in the air for a few seconds. The projector replaced the bank vault with an image of a spacious underground chamber containing row upon row of identical server cabinets.
Everything gathered in one location. Simple, cost effective, and – above all – secure, the site manager went on.
The projector laid a new picture at an angle on top of the current one. An almost identical underground room, then another, and another … Rows of shiny server cabinets, so many that she had already lost count. Thousands, millions of secrets, all stored in the same place.
All of a sudden she felt rather unwell. It must have been the after-effects of the adrenalin rush. But at least her hands had stopped shaking.
The site manager resumed his speech as the vaults went on multiplying on the screen, but she was no longer listening.
Like shiny little bubbles, all of them doomed to burst sooner or later …
Are you awake, HP?
For a moment he wondered about carrying on pretending to be unconscious, in the hope of finding out more about what was going on.
But something in her voice made him open his eyes before he had actually made up his mind.
It took just a matter of seconds for him to recognize her. Her platinum blonde hair was now dark, but the nose piercing and overblown eye-shadow were the same.
The emo girl with the headphones he had seen in the underground.
Good, she nodded to him. How are you feeling?
He tried to say something, but all that emerged from his lips was a sort of dry croak.
Here. She handed him a bottle of water and he raised himself up on one elbow. Deep, wonderful mouthfuls …
Your fevers gone down, she said, looking at a screen beside him. But itll be a few days before the infections disappeared completely. Youve been dosed up with enough penicillin to treat a horse. Quite literally.
He didnt try to answer, and just nodded as he looked round slowly. It looked like a hospital, with the only difference that everything in there was bigger. The bunk he was lying on, the lamps and straps hanging from the ceiling.
It took him a while to work it out.
A vets? he croaked.
Yep, she replied. Well, at least youre not totally out of it. My names Nora. And you already know Kent over there …
HP sat up with an effort and glanced over towards the corner where the man was supposed to be sitting.
And there he was.
Hi, HP, the man said. Or should I call you 128?
The words echoed for few seconds in his brain.
Hasselqvist with a Q and a V … he muttered, without really being able to take it in.
A.k.a. Player 58, the man spat. Remember? You sprayed teargas in my face out on the Kymlinge Link Road.
He flew up from his chair and sprang at HP.
Easy now, Kent … the emo girl said, stepping between them.
She was almost ten centimetres taller than Hasselqvist, and, judging by her posture, considerably more muscular.
We havent got time for wounded egos …
Hasselqvist with a Q and a V glowered at her for a few seconds, then threw out his arms in surrender.
Stepping back, he muttered, In case youre interested, I suffered an allergic reaction and had to spend three days in intensive care …
Actually, I should probably thank you. Now he grinned at HP. If you hadnt got in the way, it might have been me sitting there.
He nodded at the oversized bunk HP was sitting on.
HP ignored him.
Where are we? he mumbled at the emo, whose name was evidently Nora.
The Life Guards veterinary clinic.
What?
Lidingövägen, opposite the Östermalm sports centre. The guards stables … Ive got a key to the gate so we got in the back way.
Okay …
He drained the bottle of water and tried to make sense of his thoughts. But it was impossible.
His head ached and even if he felt a bit brighter than he had over the past few days, his body still felt like it had been put through a mangle.
So which one of you is going to tell me what the fuck Im doing here?
Look, HP, Nora said as she got him a cup of coffee from the large thermos flask on the camping table. Weve been trying to get hold of you for a while, but youve been playing hard to get … Those notes on your door? she added when he didnt seem to get it.
Kent and I, and Jeff – youll meet him soon – have all been caught up in the Game. Just like you, we all did things we never would have dreamed of doing when we started …