Free No Direction Home by James Baddock

held in both hands, his shoulders hunched slightly forward as if bracing himself against the impact of the bullet. ‘He
knew
who was coming through the door even before it was opened – this confirms it.’
    Vinter nodded. ‘OK – but we guessed that from the speed of his reaction – he couldn’t have reached a gun in that time.’
    â€˜Agreed. But I know now how he was tipped off – it was us disabling the door cam several seconds earlier.’
    â€˜Explain.’
    Naragama touched another set of keys. ‘We retrieved these images from the web cam on his comp.’ This time, a frozen image of Teixeira appeared on the screen, directly facing the camera, evidently seated at his computer typing at the keyboard.
    â€˜I didn’t know you could do that,’ Vinter commented.
    â€˜We activated it several seconds before we disabled the corridor and door cams – we used the firewalled channel in reverse. It didn’t connect the web cam to the network, but it stored the images onto Teixeira’s comp. We couldn’t watch them in real time, otherwise we might have been able to warn you, but we’ve studied the footage in detail since then, of course.’
    â€˜And?’
    Naragama touched a key and the image sprang into motion. After a second or so, Teixeira reached over to his right, standing up as he did so and turning to face the door, again to his right – only now he had the gun in his hand. In one movement, he brought it up to his mouth – and waited. The sound of the door being opened was suddenly audible – and, barely a second later, he squeezed the trigger, the sound of the gunshot all but overloading the comp’s built in microphones as the back of Teixeira’s head exploded in a red mist of blood, brains and bone. He reeled back, disappearing from the camera’s view – but they could still hear the thud as his body hit the floor.
    â€˜OK, what did I just see?’ Vinter asked.
    Naragama replayed the sequence in slow motion, but froze the image barely a second into the scene. ‘The comp warned him,’ Naragama said succinctly. He gestured to a second screen, which showed a representation of an electronic spike. ‘That signal was transmitted by the computer just a tenth of a second after we disabled the corridor and door cams. It was subsonic in nature, but it would have been picked up by Teixeira’s comms implant, which converted it into an audible signal – this, in fact.’ He pressed another key and a momentary blast of what sounded like electronic white noise screamed out from the monitor’s speakers. ‘And, no, it isn’t white noise – it’s a very rapid microburst digital signal, which was also broadcast on Teixeira’s personal comm frequency, which is why it wasn’t picked up by anyone else. It was meant just for him.’
    â€˜And that was what warned him?’
    â€˜Evidently.’
    â€˜In a signal lasting less than a tenth of a second? How the hell would he understand that?’
    â€˜He didn’t. My guess is that it triggered a post-hypnotic suggestion.’
    â€˜What, to blow his brains out?’
    Naragama shook his head. ‘No – otherwise he’d have shot himself as soon as there was an ordinary power failure or glitch in the cam system. What it did, I suspect, was to prime him for the final stimulus – the UNSEC uniform, or a weapon being pointed at him.’
    â€˜So he gets this subliminal warning from the comp, gets the gun ready and, as soon as he sees Lawson, pulls the trigger in order to avoid capture?’
    â€˜That’s about it, yes.’
    â€˜What if he’d been further away from the gun when the initial alarm was sounded? In the shower, say?’
    Naragama shrugged. ‘Maybe he always had it within reach, no matter where he was. He was an UNSEC officer, after all, so he would be entitled to have his