Free The Darkfall Switch by David Lindsley Page A

them a faint flicker of curiosity showed in his face. Foster allowed himself a small sigh of relief. Did this sign of interest give a hint that the boy was coming round to the idea of co-operating?
    ‘Luke, I’m a powerplant engineer,’ he explained. ‘I specialize in the control systems of power stations. I troubleshoot them.’
    Curiosity gave way to interest, and then became something else: there was now a hint of awe on the boy’s face.
    ‘I’ve had a look at the system you hacked into,’ Foster continued, ‘and I can see how you got in, but what I don’t understand is how you managed to shut the plant down so expertly. And I don’t know how you disabled it afterwards so that it took so long to restart it.’
    ‘I didn’t….’ the boy began. ‘I just hit on something. I invoked….’ His voice suddenly trailed off and his expression turned from awe to worry. He frowned and stared down at his trainers in silence.
    ‘Invoked? You invoked something?’
    In the silence they all stared at him. Eventually his father said, ‘Luke, you have to help Dr Foster.’
    ‘What did you invoke, Luke?’ Foster asked.
    Still nothing.
    Frustration turned to rage. Unbidden, anger began to well up again in Foster. If Luke clammed up now they’d probably never know the truth. He stared at the boy but failed to renew the brief eye contact he had established a moment earlier. ‘Luke,’ he said, trying to contain his rising emotions, ‘partly as a result of what you did, several people were killed.’
    ‘That wasn’t me!’ the boy blurted out. His eyes began to glisten as though he was on the verge of breaking into tears.
    ‘Not completely,’ Foster said, somehow managing to stay calm. ‘There was another, unrelated, incident at the same time. But without your initiating the shutdown the situation could have been contained.’
    ‘I don’t care,’ the boy said. ‘It was tough luck.’
    Foster reeled back as if he had been hit in the face. ‘Tough luck!’ he shouted. ‘People died in the most appalling conditions because of something you did, and you say it’s tough luck!’
    The boy’s response was defiant. ‘Sure! Just tough luck.’
    That reply was more than Foster could stand. ‘You little idiot!’ he shouted, ignoring the parents’ obvious alarm. ‘You just don’t realize, do you? Well, I do.’ He regretted his next words almost as soon as he’d spoken them. ‘Because one of the people who died was somebody I cared about very much.’
    Immediately the atmosphere in the room changed. All three Proctors stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment.
    He calmed down and said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I shouldn’t have said it.’
    ‘But you did say it, Dan,’ Cyrus Proctor said, his voice very quiet and restrained. ‘You said you knew one of the victims. Who was it?’
    He hesitated, but the truth had to come out now. ‘It was my fiancée.’
    ‘Oh my God!’ Hilary Proctor breathed. ‘Oh God, I’m so, so sorry.’
    ‘No. I should apologize to you. I shouldn’t have let you know.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because it might indicate that I wasn’t being objective. That I might have a personal vendetta against Luke.’
    ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you did,’ she said. ‘After a loss like that, when you know the engineering background, who could possibly blame you?’
    He stared at her, while he struggled to suppress his own doubts. ‘That’s it,’ he said finally. ‘It was a terrible coincidence that I, a professional engineer, should have lost somebody because of an engineering incident. But there it is: I’m one of a small handful of experts who could hope to find out what happened. I’m certainly the one the government would call on, as they did. When they asked me to look into it, I couldn’t refuse.’
    The boy had been staring at him as he spoke, his face stricken. Suddenly he looked at his father, then his mother. He gave a choking gasp and at last the tears