Free The Darkfall Switch by David Lindsley

nodded to his wife, ‘Will you go get Luke down here, honey?’
    ‘Mrs Proctor,’ Foster interjected, as she started for the door, and she turned to him. ‘Just say I want to talk to him. Don’t tell him anything.’
    She stopped, turned to look at him for a moment and said, ‘I won’t.’
    While she was out of the room, her husband said, ‘I understand people died, Dan.’ His voice was subdued and sombre.
    ‘Yes,’ Foster said. ‘Forty-eight people were killed in the London Underground system when the power went off. Ordinarily, a power blackout would just be, well, inconvenient. Though if you’re in a lift, or if you’re a surgeon mid-way through an operation, you might think it’s more important than that. But in this incident it happened at exactly the same time as another major fault.’
    ‘Luke couldn’t have known about that, surely?’ Proctor protested, a puzzled frown on his face.
    Foster shook his head. ‘No. The other fault was entirely different, and it was quite coincidental. It was an overheated cable that failed. But the two things happening together were more than a delicately balanced power system could handle. And as London dropped off the grid, most of the rest of the national system collapsed. You’ve had the same sort of thing happen here.’
    Proctor nodded. ‘I remember the New York blackout,’ he said, slowly shaking his head as the unpleasant memories came back. ‘I was there at the time. Got trapped in an elevator. It was crazy, just crazy.’
    Foster was about to continue his explanation when Hilary Proctor entered, followed by her pale-faced, gangly son. Dark hair, long and greasy, framed his face, his sweatshirt hung over a thin chest and his jeans were tucked up over grimy trainers. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the floor.
    ‘Luke,’ she said, ‘this is Dr Foster. He’s come all the way from London, England, to talk with us.’
    Foster shook the thin-wristed, weakly proffered hand. It was a limp shake, without any attempt at eye-contact on the boy’s part. ‘Hello, Luke. Can we all sit down?’
    As they took their seats Foster caught a worried look in the boy’s red-rimmed eyes, and wondered what Worzniak had told him, and whether he had primed him for this meeting.
    ‘Luke,’ he said, ‘I presume that Mr Worzniak told you why I’m here.’
    The boy finally lifted his eyes to stare at him sullenly, without giving any indication of whether or not he knew anything, so Foster continued, ‘Well, I’m going to be brutally frank with you. This is not a criminal investigation, but I think you should know that what you did a few days ago could have led you to be subjected to such an investigation.’
    At last he saw a response in the lad’s face. It was rising defiance and he rushed to calm him. Foster needed co-operation, not sullen stonewalling. If he lost Luke’s co-operation now it would end all hopes of finding out what he’d done. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ve come here just to find out a few facts. If you are open and honest with me that’ll be the end of it. Oh, you’ll be asked to give us an undertaking, but that’s all.’
    The boy said nothing, and Foster noticed that he was avoiding looking at his parents. ‘Luke, I’m sure you know we’re aware that you hacked into a computer system the other day.’
    There was still no response, so he expanded, ‘We have a comprehensive track on the actions. So we know that the attack originated from a computer in this house.’
    Now the defiance in the boy’s expression began to develop into something else – defensive anger, perhaps. Foster had to get him on his side, so he decided to try to gain his interest. ‘Look. I’m not really concerned about the fact that you did it,’ he lied, ‘but I need your help. Because there’s something much more important behind what happened.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ the boy asked. It was his first words since he had come into the room and as he spoke