21st October 2020
Mud. Aoife hated mud. Assuming she survived the worst the British weather could throw at her, she made a personal promise to never assume things couldn't make her more miserable than they already were. She'd thought being overworked was bad enough, but it didn't remotely compare to being hauled up a hill in a storm, for the sake of other people's bullshit. Almost as soon as they'd got out of the Land Rover SUV the heavens had opened and she found herself wondering why anyone would ever come out to the countryside voluntarily. At least Nat seemed to be enjoying herself, the only telecoms engineer left on staff was in her element and had immediately trudged off into the fog, leaving Aoife to swear as she disappeared.
Aoife was certain she looked like something out of one of the trashy post apocalyptic movies Ethan liked. Her eyes were the only part of her face visible, a small strip between the heavy respirator protocol demanded she wore off site, and the beanie she had pulled down tight, clumps of green hair sticking down with the original mousy brown starting to peek through. The oversized boots were her own fashion choice, but the coat Palisade had deemed to kit her out with was predictably a size too large, and left her waddling around like she was in some sort of dark blue hazmat suit.
Their main satellite dish was only a few dozen metres away, Taymont Hall only a couple hundred down the hill, but in the rain and low cloud they might as well have both been invisible. The majority of the work the North England Broadcast Corporation did was over regular, if encrypted, internet cables but for the really heavy duty stuff, or anything particularly sensitive, they had a government relay set up overlooking the Hall. And the fact it hadn't been supplied by Palisade themselves meant it was one of the few pieces of hardware that had worked reliably from day one. Or at least it had until the feed was cut without warning overnight.
Almost losing her footing on the slick ground Aoife swore loudly, causing the optimistically named security 'officer' next to her to start, his hand going for the gun hanging from one shoulder. She almost felt sorry for him. Palisade had done little more with their government money than hire bouncers on ego trips, but it wasn't like he wanted to be here any more than she did, or as if he was the one who wrote the idiotic protocol demanding she had an escort to so much as a foot off site.
If she was honest with herself, which she absolutely wasn't going to be, a small part of her was glad to have something different to do with herself. Last night was meant to be her movie night with Ethan, like every Wednesday. It wasn't like they had it in writing but that was the unspoken deal they had; no matter what was going on they'd work their asses off to make sure they had a couple of hours together and stream Kurosawa or Hammer Horror or Harryhausen, sharing a love for the sort of cult movies that got both of them into media in the first place. They were meant to keep each other's sanity in check.
But he'd blown her off. A brief, apologetic message had appeared on her screen instead of his face at their usual time, breaking their streak just when that was the last thing she needed him to do. And the worst part was, no matter how hard she was mostly succeeding at being mad, a larger part of her just hurt. Everything was too much, she was tired and stressed and she didn't realise how much needed him right now until he wasn't there. She wanted him to watch stupid fucking movies with her, help her forget the stress and make her feel like a human. And that want kept managing to be so bigger than the anger that he wasn't.
Having a broken satellite to help fix might not brighten her mood, but at least it was hard for the weather to make it much worse.
As Nat came back into view alongside the hazy outline of the dish Aoife was reminded, again, that it was always possible to get more miserable. The butch woman, coat whipping about in the wind, was already inspecting the main data line where it was hanging limp from the dish, completely severed despite being almost a foot thick and swaddled in insulation. Aoife moved closer and Nat, body language tense, held up one end for her to see and it became worryingly obvious how neatly they'd been clipped. It was the work of industrial tools rather than some freak event, premeditated, intentional. Aoife's heart sank and her eyes strayed to where the power cables were all similarly cut despite being just as robust. Whoever had done it had also tried to go to work on the dish itself, damaging several of the connections and buckling the frame that was holding it up before either giving up or getting spooked away.
There had been talk for months of conspiracy morons skulking around but they'd never tried anything like this, and the rumours had largely become part of the furniture. To have someone targeting their equipment so decisively was a massive escalation, and exactly the sort of thing the arseholes from Palisade were meant to be safeguarding against.
"Just how fucked are we," Aoife asked, voice muffled by the mask and weather. Nat responded by wavering a hand in air in a gesture of non-commitment that spoke volumes. The other woman was the most natural optimist Aoife had met and if she wasn't being emphatic then the answer to how fucked they were appeared to be 'very.'
Frustration bubbling over, Aoife lifted her head and screamed into the storm.
*****
Ethan turned the coloured note over, studying it in his hand, as if he expected to suddenly find some extra insight that wasn't there. It was five days since he'd been thrown into the world of Project Upstart and he still frequently caught himself looking at things as if there was some spell to be broken. Desks and computers had been brought in to Studio 3 to give Project Upstart an office space to function out of and the post-it-note he held was one of a mosaic of the garish paper squares that spilled out across one wall, where he and Lukas had used them to map out every individual task and step to be completed before they went public. It could have all been planned out on a spreadsheet, but Lukas had insisted this would visualise things to keep minds focused more sharply. Ethan thought it just made things seem more overwhelming than they needed to be.
The current core of the project was the block of programming they needed to have ready to introduce the vaccine from the moment the Scotland and London teams broke the stark reality of DuoHalo to the country. That main mass of stickers was then flanked by the additional goals they'd set themselves, repackaging additional footage and segments into the start of a public health campaign, as well as ongoing videos that Averna could upload to offer continued, dedicated content and support to those vaccinated. The majority of the latter would come later, but they wanted their workflow established long before they got there.
It was the smallest block on the far right, squeezed up into the corner of the room in neat pink notes, that the current object of his attention had been plucked from however. Sat underneath the headline 'Recruitment' each of the handful of labels simply held a name, a date, and a 'Team' name in Nia's handwriting;
'Stephanie Holloway, Team Kaminski, 22/10/20'
'Alyx McNamara, Team Barclay, 24/10/20'
'Jessica McNamara, Team Knight, 24/10/20'
There were a dozen or so of them, each a member-to-be of Project upstart, each picked by the Delphi Algorithm to be partnered up with either Lukas, Rhys or himself. And while the smallest section of their wall, there was an acceptance that this is what would be taking up most of their time for the first week or two. Ethan read the note in his hand for what seemed like the 20th time, the paper somehow managing to feel heavy between his fingers.
'Farah Hassan, Team Knight, 21/10/20'
