Free Aftershock by Sam Fisher

else?’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜I can’t help but love him, even though he ignores me, ignores the family, cares only for this,’ and she waved her hand in air. ‘This ... place.’
    Johnny looked down at her. She used to be a really beautiful woman, he thought. Sexy, intelligent. He suddenly felt a wave of revulsion.
    Hilary gazed up at him, makeup smeared across her face, tear streaks staining her cheeks, her hair a mess. She stood up. ‘God, I’m so fucked up,’ she slurred and made for the drinks cabinet.
    â€˜I think you’ve had enough,’ Johnny said and took Hilary’s arm.
    She turned. ‘Oh, Johnny. You do care about me.’
    Still the old acid tongue, even half-cut, Johnny thought to himself and smiled. Hilary fell into his arms and he held her, breathing in her perfume. In spite of himself, he started to harden. Hilary felt it too.
    â€˜Oh my,’ she whispered in his ear and dropped backwards onto the sofa, pulling him on top of her.

15
Computer Centre, first floor, Dome Alpha
    Ralph Gafton was alone in service conduit Number 6, running off the computer centre. His Puerto Rican boss, Miguel Bandonis, had sent him in to check on a set of relays the diagnostic systems had identified as malfunctioning. He suspected a short in one of the circuits. He unscrewed the panel and lay it on the floor of the conduit. It was a tight squeeze in the narrow passage and he had to twist his body round to get the torch into the opening so he could see what was up. He flicked the light around inside the wall unit, a box about 2 metres long and a metre wide. He could see nothing at first, but on the third sweep of the torch he caught sight of a small bundle of components covered in melted plastic. ‘Yep,’ he said aloud. ‘That would be the blown relay.’
    He started to pull his head and arm from the opening. There was a flash of light and a loud pop. He jolted back, banged his head on the rim of the wall unit and cursed. A sheet of flame flew across the space inside the box.
    Gafton reacted quickly. He crawled along the conduit and tugged on the extinguisher attached to the wall, span around and headed back to the hole. Just as he pushed on the release button, a voice came through the radio attached to his shoulder. ‘Ralph, you okay? Just got a warning light.’ It was his boss, Bandonis.
    â€˜Yeah, everything’s cool,’ Gafton responded. ‘There’s a small fire. I’m putting it out.’ And he shot foam into the box of electrical circuits with practised ease. He had been an electrical engineer for a dozen years, including a spell on North Sea oil rigs. He knew what he was doing.
    â€˜I’m coming down,’ Bandonis said.
    â€˜No need,’ Gafton replied, but the line was already cut.
    Gafton let the foam settle, then stuck his arm and head back through the opening. He flicked the torch beam around the cavity and had just pulled away, slipping back into the conduit, when Bandonis appeared at his side. ‘Let me see,’ he said. Gafton sighed and crawled along the passage to give his boss space to check on the problem. Bandonis waved a torch around inside the unit, then pulled back and leaned against the conduit wall. ‘Seems all right,’ he said. ‘It’s the secondary relay for the emergency escape doors, right?’
    â€˜Yeah,’ Gafton replied. ‘The primary circuits are further back in the next conduit.’ He nodded towards the wall. ‘They’re well protected with sensors around them.’
    Bandonis paused for a moment, a stab of anxiety in the pit of his stomach. They would be well protected, he thought, if the sensors were reliable, but he couldn’t be sure they were. Bandonis had been on the engineering crew from the start of the build. He knew every nook and cranny of this place. More importantly though, he knew enough about how much Johnny Xavier had been