Just Murder (T14 Book 3)

CHAPTER ONE

August 27th 2025

As I made my way to Arthur's office everyone was buzzing with the news about the former prime minister, Alex Fortnam. Whoever had managed to decapitate him in his prison cell had saved everyone the bother of a treason trial but doubtless it would cause several new headaches, though nothing like the one he would have had for a brief moment.

I'd never known T14 in such a commotion before.

Jennifer, someone shouted down the stairs. It was Alice from the tech team asking me what was going on. How the hell should I know? I could only repeat the basic facts: Arthur, Bill and several others had gone off to the prison and Adam was in charge of HQ.

Mostly I didn't think of our deputy director as my boyfriend during working hours but I figured that there wasn't going to be much for me to do among all this political chaos, so now I was going to see the man who was temporarily my boyfriend again. Since we'd become a couple and moved in with each other we weren't allowed to go on assignment together, for understandable reasons, but no such rule applied in the office so I decided to go with him and help reallocate work and with the general running of HQ.

I made him some tea and poured myself an orange juice. There were now only twenty two agents in the building, an unusually small number. Three were down in the basement cells with our latest guests so the upper seven floors were sparsely populated. Apart from Adam and myself, five people were in the third floor tech suite, four in reception, four in the admin room and Hannah was still on the top floor finishing off the induction of our three new senior agents. They would be told almost everything about T14. The two most notable exceptions were the existence of Base camp and the presence of Tim Saunders, the former PM but one, as one of our agents, and, most important of all, Arthur's brain implant. We thought it best to keep the existence of his digitally-aided memory a secret among as few people as possible; even some of our longest-serving agents didn't know about that and what it allowed him to do.

Adam was the usual picture of intense concentration, his long legs crushed under the desk and his fingers and eyes moving nineteen to the dozen. He never did anything by halves, being a kind of OCD perfectionist and professional worrier. Mind you, since we became an item, I like to think I've had some positive influence over his manic anxieties. The remarkable thing was that these 'faults' seemed to actually make him better at his job rather than worse. When Arthur recently replaced Bill White as A1, Adam was the obvious choice to take over the deputy slot.

I settled down opposite him anticipating a nice relaxing afternoon. I should have kept my mind shut.

After half an hour Hannah phoned Adam.

I've finished the induction, what's happening?

Not much, he admitted, Someone could go down and do some more interrogation, other than that it's looking like a quiet day.

Nothing from the prison?

Not yet, and it would be counterproductive to clog up our minds with the news coverage.

I was about to speak to Hannah when the yellow alarm flashed. Adam froze like a statue. In the eleven years of T14 neither yellow nor red alarm had ever been used.

Suspicious gathering outside the entrance, said Suzy.

I snatched the phone from Adam. Hannah, get everyone down here and meet me at the armoury.

As I put the phone down Adam had brought up the entrance cameras.

What the fuck is that? I gasped.

Announce lock down, said Adam sternly as he began typing in the code. I sprang up and spoke urgently into the intercom.

Lock down, we are initiating lock down. Suzy, clear reception and escort the admin staff to the first floor meeting room. Jason, initiate shutdown of all computers except A1 office and yours, you are now external comms officer. Headsets on everybody.

The lock down sequence took a couple of minutes to complete.

Get to the armoury, said Adam, I'll stay and monitor the cameras. Without looking up from the screen he opened his rucksack and threw me four spare Glock magazines. I pocketed them and sprinted away.

Halfway to the armoury an explosion shook the building.

Adam, I said into my headset mic between breaths, how long 'til we're sealed in.

Forty seconds, if it all still functions.

Reception clear, said Suzy.

Shit! shouted Adam, luckily not too close to his mic, Outer doors breached and they're laying charges on inner doors.

It was hugely frustrating not being able to see what was happening but I felt better once I reached the armoury. This, like A1's office, was on the first floor so I was there before anyone else.

We all already wore bullet-proof vests and utility belts with various bits of kit so all we needed were Kalashnikovs, ammo and grenades. I grabbed one for myself and then quickly checked out enough for everyone else. I didn't get one for Adam, I knew what he had in his rucksack and about his person.

I've reached A1, said Jason as Hannah and the others arrived. One order. Protecting HQ and agents only priority: shoot to kill, repeat shoot to kill.

Understood, said Adam. Ten seconds to lock down.

Another explosion sounded from below.

Inner door breached, said Adam, Men entering reception. Dressed in black, gas masks, machine pistols and back packs. I'll stay here and monitor their position. 45 is in charge of defence tactics.

The tech team arrived and collected their weapons as I handed out gas masks.

All sealed, confirmed Alice. Who knew who these people were or what they were after but our tech and research was priceless and couldn't be allowed to fall into anyone else's hands.

Our HQ had two staircases from the first floor and one to the entrance. Part of lock down was to seal and disable the lifts.

Lock down complete, said Adam, Nine men in reception. I repeat, you see any of them kill on sight - no warning, no hesitation. Over to you, Jen.

Using hand signals I divided us into two groups, Hannah taking the second team up the stairs. I whispered to Hannah via my mic to spread everyone out over floors two and three. That left me with Mike, Jay and Sally.

Two heading up stairs, said Adam.

I motioned to everyone to stay put and inched my way forward. Their gas masks rendered stun grenades useless and we didn't know if they had grenades or explosives in their backpacks, which somehow were immune to our scanners; they could have had fucking uranium in there. That meant that our only options were head or leg shots or a knife to the throat or heart.

I slowly got to the floor and set myself in a sniper position. Adam would by now have little numbered blips on his screen showing all our positions, so he'd know what I was doing, though not necessarily that I was on the floor.

Approaching top of stairs, he whispered. I figured that the two would take left and right, unless of course they had heat scanning equipment. If so, this could go on for days. However, there was no sign of anyone outside or inside directing them via any such equipment.

I soon had my answer. Only one of them turned in my direction. Three seconds later they were both on the floor, dead. Nothing had exploded.

Nobody else on stairs, said Adam, once again reading my mind. I quickly removed the nearest guy's pack and retreated.

After hurrying into an empty office and leaving the others on guard I carefully placed the backpack on the desk. Then I switched to a private chat with Adam.

I have one of their packs, shall I open it?

No, he hissed, we need the bomb squad.

It feels as if it may be lead lined. Looks like something from Mars or Chernobyl.

Leave it alone, he urged, we have to eliminate the other seven then evacuate and call in the squad.

Well, I said, ever the optimist, I dropped those two and nothing exploded.

Time is still vital, what's your plan?

What are the rest of them doing?

Nothing, they're just standing there.

Fuck, that sounds bad. Suicide squad?

Did you find a detonator on him?

No. Fucking hell, Adam, what are we going to do?

Back up is on the way, police armed response. ETA ten minutes, twenty for bomb squad. Once ARU arrive I'll just open the shutters.

Okay, ten minutes. There's no way I can get behind them. We can't wait it out, they must have a plan. I'm going back on general comms. I made the adjustment and continued. Okay guys and gals, I've been speaking to Adam. Police ARU will be here in ten minutes, then the bomb squad. The seven left haven't moved from the lobby. The packs are heavy duty, maybe lead-lined. I can't tell what's inside but when I dropped the first two nothing happened as they fell to the floor with the packs on. The one I have isn't ticking or glowing or anything. Team two make your way quietly down staircase two. Suzy stay where you are and be ready to evacuate the building on my signal. Jason, secure the prisoners, open inner door and be ready to evacuate yourselves. Also shut down everything you can. Clear?

Affirmative.

Suzy, clear?

Affirmative.

Hannah?

On our way.

Okay, this is the plan. Team one and two will converge on either side of the first floor landing out of sight of reception. Any movement from them and Adam will say 'advancing, advancing'. On my signal each person will throw one smoke grenade into the lobby. Hannah and I will then engage in rapid fire and cross our fingers. Okay, Adam?

Yes, do it quickly.

Give us a line of fire from the floor at the centre of the staircase, four feet back and let us know if they move.

As I left the office and lead my team to meet the others Adam told us where each of the seven were standing. The view of the lobby from the landing was so familiar that I was fairly confident of finding my targets from his description of their relative positions.

Hannah and I got as close to the stairs as we could without literally putting our heads above the parapet. I rolled a grenade slowly down the stairs and everyone else joined in.

Two advancing staircase, said Adam. We opened fire. One down. I could just about discern a shape through the smoke and fired at it.

Two down, confirmed Adam, no other movement. After ten seconds he repeated this.

I turned to Hannah and she mirrored my confused expression, still visible through the mask from just her eyes. What the fuck were these guys playing at?

Are they robots or what? I whispered to nobody in particular.

Four down, five to go. Sadly the outer basement door was a noisy vacuum affair, otherwise I'd now have told Jason to surprise them.

We waited.

Still no movement, said Adam, "but the smoke in reception is clearing. No visible weapons. 45, 61 take them out now."

I indicated to Hannah to cover the left side of the lobby while I took the right. Then I held up five fingers. After five elephants we both sprang up and emptied our magazines.

No returning fire, said Adam, the confusion clear in his voice.

Going for more accuracy I switched to my Glock and we moved quickly down the stairs.

All but one of them were on the floor and very obviously dead. The last one was, incredulously, just standing there.

Hold fire, Han, I said, covering him, Adam, can you see this guy?

"Yes, I can't believe it. Must be some kind of mind control. I'm ending lock down and coming down there.

As Hannah double checked all the corpses I continued to stare at the statuesque figure. With the gas mask and freaky looking back pack he could have been an astronaut.

Slowly remove your pack, said Hannah. Despite repeating herself twice he didn't move. She gave him a hard shove and he just wobbled.

Adam came down the stairs and briefly patted my back. Good work, Jen, he smiled. Then he did the same for Hannah before removing the guy's gas mask. Clearly something was wrong with him, some sort of post-hypnotic state. Adam clicked his fingers in front of his face, slapped him hard, then finally put a gun to his head. No reaction whatsoever, not even a flicker of eye movement.

Nobody is that good an actor, I said.

Adam and Hannah removed his back pack as the shutters began to rise. I could hear sirens approaching.

I reloaded my Kalashnikov, removed my gas mask and stepped under the shutters. After a quick scan of the street I took out my ID and pointed the gun at the floor.

The first of the ARU to approach happened to be one of the two who had done a good job during my impromptu bank raid a while back. He recognised me and I heard him telling everyone to stand down.

What the hell's happened? He asked, looking at the charred and twisted remains of our front doors.

We've been invaded by zombies, some kind of brainwashing. They all have scary looking back packs that can outwit our scanning equipment, no idea what's in them. Bomb squad should be here in ten. We've taken care of everything inside but we could have nine packs of Semtex, uranium or anything in there so you'd better evacuate a three hundred yard radius for starters.

He nodded and rushed away without a word. He was very organised and impressive, not a wasted moment. He orchestrated the evacuation far better than I could have. Bearing in mind our recent manpower crisis I decided that I would definitely mention him to Adam and see if we could poach him for ourselves.

CHAPTER TWO

An hour later the bomb squad were opening each of the nine packs with painful slowness while other people rebuilt the front doors. We took the opportunity to add further reinforcements and a second, more quickly operated shutter system.

The whole building apart from the lobby was clear but we had to stay out of the way of the bomb squad so there wasn't much to do except mill around.

When Arthur returned he sent all the junior staff home and the rest of us 'helped' to enforce the exclusion zone, though the armed police and toxic hazard warning signs were doing a good enough job of keeping people away.

I told him about the ARU guy and he agreed to interview him if he was interested.

Looks like I stepped down just in time, said Bill as he walked past me. I don't envy Arthur this headache.

By the time the night shift showed up the bomb squad had departed, taking all the back packs with them for further examination. They still weren't sure quite what the contents were, but it was definitely some kind of powerful explosive material.

As it was going to take all night to finish the new front doors we kept the exclusion going with a few PCs and some ARU. Adam and Arthur supervised the building work while Suzy and I patrolled outside and kept everyone going with hot drinks and doughnuts

I had a chat with Chris, the ARU guy, and invited him to the house for a meal at the weekend (Adam would cook, didn't want to put him off). If he passed muster with us then I'd take him to Arthur and Bill next week and persuade them to make him a definite offer.

As midnight approached I was surprised to hear the voice of our resident doctor and caffeine advisor over my earpiece.

I've finished examining the intruder, he began. He's still in a catatonic state but we think we've found the cause. There's a tiny implant in his ear which seems to be transmitting something. I'm wary of removing it so the tech team are trying to examine it in-situ.

When he finished I spoke to Arthur, Bill and Adam and voiced the obvious thought: this was similar technology to the device we found in the lorry a few months ago.

We still haven't discovered who stole or leaked that, said Arthur.

But we know who tried to hamper our investigation, said Adam, Fortnam. Coincidence?

That thought silenced everyone. Could this all possibly be connected? The MOD secretly develop a device to subdue people with electrical signals, unknown people steal it and test it in the middle of London, the PM tries to noble our investigation and then, on the same day he's killed in prison, HQ is invaded by electronically controlled zombie bombers? I bet nobody had ever used that sentence before.

When we've cleaned up and are secure again we'll have a meeting and thrash all this out, said Arthur.

Perhaps we should attend the MOD inquiry after all, said Adam, that's where all this started.

For the rest of the night my mind was spinning with various seemingly absurd explanations.

By the time Adam and I got home around 6am to grab a few hours sleep, HQ was once again secure and the surviving interloper had been taken to hospital for an attempt to surgically remove his implant. Later in the day the post mortems on the others would reveal whether their brains had been in some way modified.

Anyway, we left all that behind and had a kip and a quick lunch.

Back in the office at 2pm we gathered for a senior meeting and updates on various bits of progress or lack thereof.

Right, let's crack on, said Arthur, 7, you've been examining two of the implants.

"Yes, one from a post mortem and the other from the hospital. There's a definite difference in the one taken from the man who's now in a coma; it's indicative of some kind of fault. We're waiting for brain scans to be sent over to see what this did to him and why he's gone into a coma.

They appear to be fairly unsophisticated devices. Bursts of white noise, almost certainly coupled with previously installed post-hypnotic suggestion, puts them into a trance and then it seems as if audio instructions are delivered, either from internal storage or some remote broadcast method. We can't tell which method was used yesterday. There is only one more thing I can divulge. He paused to ensure he had everyone's attention. There are enough similarities in the construction of these implants to indicate that it originates from the same source as the electrowave sedation device.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Are you saying these guys came from the MOD?

Well, we still haven't established the manufacturer of the device, have we? Fortnam never divulged anything and he can't now. The MOD are still in official denial mode and we don't yet know what they will say at the inquiry. If they acquired it from someone else and conducted their own illegal test they're not admitting it so far.

Could these implants be used on anybody? I asked.

The PM exams indicate nothing unusual about their brains or nervous systems so in theory yes, although I don't see how it could have any effect without prior hypnotic work.

Okay, thanks, 7, said Arthur. "We still have no ID on any of them, their DNA isn't in our records. I think it's now increasingly likely that the equipment originated overseas and that the MOD somehow got their hands on it. Therefore, I'm going to speak to the Prime Minister presently and ask for the inquiry to be brought forward. I think both devices and the beheading are linked in some way. This now becomes an urgent matter of national security and T14's top priority.

I am able to also announce some good news. The people behind the gang from last year and 45's recent kidnap have all been eliminated. Unfortunately we were unable to capture them alive for questioning as they blew up their HQ when they realised the game was up. Nonetheless this is one more group of powerful people orchestrating and funding worldwide terrorism that we no longer have to worry about.

So we'll never know why they dumped me in that industrial estate?

Afraid not.

I shrugged. Never mind, useful learning experience. So, we're all about the MOD now?

For the time being, yes. Agent 4 has made a start on that front.

I looked up at Bill on the other side of the conference table. He tapped his pen on a notepad a couple of times, clarifying matters before beginning.

"Yes, I've