INTO THE CITY

CHAPTER 1

"Camera six is down, get me onto eight!"

"Where are they? Where the hell are they?"

"The cameras are dropping sir, they're all dropping! All the doors at sector six are blocked, our men can't get through. We've tried to shut down seven but we're being overridden, they have the equipment to get past us!" The last comment was said with bemusement, there wasn't supposed to be any equipment capable of overriding the security system. A line of staff sat at their desks, their screens going bank in front of them as camera after camera cut out, their supposedly untouchable equipment incapable of sorting itself out.

"Make sure the lifts are out! Make sure that they can't get to the upper reactor without going on foot, we can have a team surrounding it waiting for them but only if we shut down the lifts!"

"Captain Falsam."

"Not now!" Falsam shouted, he was in charge of the security staff and had enough on his plate without being pestered by a junior employee. He watched the screens, he watched his staff typing frantically at the bank of computers as they tried to get their cameras back up, to no avail.

"But sir."

"For God's sake! What is it? Can't you see I'm busy?"

"Evacuations sir," the employee cowered, "I need to know about evacuations." There were memories of the attack on the south 3 reactor, more than seventy people died because the evacuation process was implemented far too late, had they been moved when the terrorists entered the plant then most would have survived. It was a horror that couldn't be repeated, the publicity of such a failure would ruin a promising career, Falsam knew he had to act.

"Get all non essential personnel out of the complex, keep a minimal staff here; treat this as a code orange."

"Yes sir." The employee left the room, rushing to get the message out, most people in the complex knew that something was wrong and were desperately waiting for an order. He turned back to the line of staff, all sitting at the long desk along the back wall of the small camera room; this was where any attack was supposed to be thwarted. He stared at the screens, they were black, such an expensive system had been trashed in a matter of seconds by a group assumed to lack the ability, if his staff wasn't going to be able to get them back up and running then nobody was. It was time to take decisive action, he wasn't going

• 1
• 2
• 3
• ...
• 8
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about Novel excerpts: Survival?
We want to hear your view. Write now!