The Passengers(20)
The realisation hit her hard – there was no way out of that car. She was completely alone. As if to remind her of his presence, she felt her baby kicking inside her again. Claire corrected herself: she wasn’t on her own, she was with her son. And for his sake, she had to survive this ordeal. She would need to protect him like she had never protected anyone else before, even Ben. She could not give up on him.
When her baby wriggled and kicked again, Claire hoped the stress of what was happening that morning was not hurting him. All she could do was put into practice the breathing techniques she had learned in her Lamaze classes. She recalled how both her and Ben had giggled their way through the lessons and how the colour had drained from his face when he was forced to watch a childbirth video. Now, she began with a deep, slow cleansing breath before continuing with gentle, shallow ones. After a few moments, it appeared to work and her baby settled again.
‘We are going to be okay,’ she whispered to him, her hands gently massaging the football-sized shape of her stomach. ‘Just stay calm and we’ll find a way out of this. We have managed to get this far, we’re not giving up now.’
Claire gave a furtive glance towards the rear of the car and the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up on end. ‘Mummy’s going to do whatever it takes, no matter what.’
Chapter 13
‘It can’t be!’ Libby whispered, staring at an image on the screen and scarcely able to believe her eyes. She tilted her head as she gave him an unrelenting stare and tried to regain control of her breathlessness. She ignored the other Passengers and confusion in the inquest room to concentrate on just one face.
The person you’ve spent six months searching for is trapped inside a driverless car.
The rational side of Libby’s brain took charge and questioned whether it was really the man she’d met in the bar six months earlier. Was her mind playing tricks on her? Or was it someone paying him a very close resemblance? She couldn’t be sure.
Slowly, she took in his appearance. The resemblance was uncanny. He was slimmer than she remembered him. His cheekbones were more pronounced and his eyes drained of the sparkle she so clearly recalled. But she was sure that if she were in his position, the shine would have left her eyes too.
The only way she could be sure she was staring at the right man was if she heard him speak. His lips were moving but no sound was being emitted from the speakers in the room. Libby considered sharing her news with the other jurors, but the confidence she had conjured up moments earlier to argue with Jack had vanished as quickly as it had arrived and had taken her voice with it. For now, she would hold her tongue.
Libby looked away from the screen, momentarily distracted by the operative responsible for beaming video footage onto the largest of the walls. He frantically swiped the screen of his tablet in all directions before reaching for the stenographer’s device and repeating the action. ‘Nothing’s happening,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand it; I no longer have any control over what’s being shown.’
‘Then who has?’ his colleague asked. He shrugged.
Meanwhile one of the security men handed Jack a telephone. He strode towards the doorway and hovered under the architrave out of earshot as all eyes fell upon him, awaiting a logical explanation for what was being broadcast. It was clear from Jack’s slowly reddening face and expanding veins on either side of his thick neck that he was losing his patience.
‘Well, find someone who can tell me!’ he barked and hung up.
‘Jack?’ asked the only other male juror. ‘What’s happening?’
Jack took a moment to gather his thoughts. ‘This has yet to be confirmed, but there’s a possibility a handful of vehicles may have been … temporarily compromised.’
‘What do you mean by compromised?’ asked the religious rep.
‘Are you saying they’ve been hacked?’ her male colleague chipped in.
Jack said nothing and Libby felt her stomach tighten into a fist-sized ball.
‘I am not saying that is what has happened; I am saying that it is a possibility something along those lines may have occurred. I am awaiting further information from my colleagues in the Home Office and the Ministry of Transport.’
‘Hacked?’ the woman in plaid repeated. ‘But that doesn’t make any sense. These vehicles are unhackable. That’s what we were told from the very start, isn’t it?’
‘It’s how you persuaded the public to place their trust in driverless cars,’ added the dark-haired man. ‘Cast-iron guarantees were made that because vehicles only communicate with the outside world when they have to, there’s no continuous line or cloud to be hacked. Are you telling us now they can be compromised?’
‘I’m sure this is nothing more than speculation and rumour,’ Jack replied, but his thin smile disappeared quickly and he struggled to mask his concern.
Suddenly, another of the twelve television screens became filled with an image: this time of an elderly man with a handful of medals pinned to the left breast of his jacket. His body language contrasted with that of the others – he appeared relaxed as he stared from the window of his moving vehicle.
‘That makes six of them,’ the male juror commented just as the sound feed to the TV news channel returned.
‘And we have just had Government confirmation that the people you are watching have had their cars taken over by a third party, but by whom and for what purpose, we do not yet know. All we can tell you is that they all appear to be travelling from different parts of the country to the same destination. Police have also admitted each Passenger has also been warned they may end up dead by the end of the morning.’