Altered Egos Read Online Free Page B

sit and wait for the wind to blow. The cut he’d made would ensure the tree fell in the direction he wanted. After that, there was his main task to complete.

    The next morning, Nash walked into Helmsdale station to be greeted by Sergeant Binns, who was standing by reception with two harassed looking civilians. ‘Mike, have you a minute?’
    ‘Problem, Jack?’
    ‘It’s about the blackout last night.’
    ‘Tell me about it. I was halfway through cooking my evening meal when everything went dark. I didn’t fancy lasagne for breakfast.’
    Binns introduced the visitors; one from the local electricity company, the other a farmer. ‘The power blackout was caused by a tree falling across the power lines,’ Binns told Nash.
    The man from the power company added, ‘Half the county was without electricity. The thing is; it wasn’t accidental.’
    ‘I thought it was a result of the gales.’
    ‘They helped, but even with the wind as strong as it was that tree wouldn’t have fallen.’
    ‘No,’ the farmer said bitterly. ‘That tree was sawn through. And it was done to make sure it fell across the power lines.’
    Nash stared from one to the other in astonishment. ‘You mean someone went to the trouble of sabotaging the electric supply? Why would they do that?’
    ‘Ask me another,’ the engineer said. ‘It wasn’t kids either. It would have taken hours of work to saw through a tree trunk that width.’
    ‘I still don’t see what we can do about it. We’ll investigate of course, but without some idea of the motive, I don’t think we’ll have much luck.’

    ‘We’ve got a problem.’
    ‘What sort of a problem?’
    ‘I’m at the laboratory. We’ve had a power failure last night, just come back up. But the stand-by generators couldn’t be activated by the security men.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘They’d been tampered with.’
    ‘How did that happen?’
    ‘I don’t know, but there’s worse.’ He paused and took a deep breath. ‘Far, far worse.’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘During the blackout somebody broke into the buildings. Both the laboratory, and the offices.’
    ‘How did they manage that?’
    ‘I don’t know how they got past the fence. I’ve had the guards check the perimeter and it hasn’t been cut. Once they were in, all they had to do was open the doors. The electronic locks are deactivated by a power cut for safety reasons.’
    ‘Was anything stolen? Any damage?’
    ‘I thought of that. So I went to the laboratory first. My first thought was that it might be animal rights people. But the cages were still intact. However, a load of product had been poured into the giant blenders. All sorts of different stuff. The blender switches had been left in the on position. As soon as the power came back up, they started working. All the contents have been rendered useless. They’ll have to be incinerated. We daren’t even flush them away because we don’t know how toxic they are. With all the chaos, we can’t even tell if anything’s missing.’
    ‘OK, that’s bad, but not cataclysmic. What else? I take it there is more?’
    ‘Oh yes, there’s more all right. Our intruder went into the office block. Not only went into it, but went through it. Took a load of personnel files,’ he paused before telling his boss theworst. ‘And he went into your office. Your safe is electronic like the doors, isn’t it?’
    ‘Oh no! Don’t say—’
    ‘I’m not sure exactly what you had in there, but it isn’t there now. The intruder even left the door open.’
    ‘I’ll tell you what was in there. All the disks. The ones with the programme details on.’ His boss’s voice took on a harsher note. ‘And the details of everything we’ve done: you and I. If they were decoded and fell in to the wrong hands you know what would happen, don’t you?’
    ‘I do, but what can we do about it?’
    ‘Let me think for a minute.’
    He waited; his impatience mounting.
    ‘As far as I see it, there’s nothing we can