The Passengers(96)
‘And you said yes.’
‘No, not at first. Like Alex, I resented what they did to Dad’s business, but I couldn’t afford to drop everything and take on his crusade. Steph and I had Gracie by then and they were my priorities.’
‘Then what made you change your mind?’
‘The day my family was killed by a Level Five driverless car. No one would tell us why my girls died, only that the inquest jury found them to be at fault. It didn’t even recommend reviewing the software.’
‘So Alex suggested the hijacking as a way to get revenge?’
Noah allowed the question to hang in the air for a moment before answering.
‘No, Libby. That was all my idea.’
Chapter 66
Libby’s body stiffened, her anger towards Noah intensifying. For the briefest of moments, she had understood his bitterness towards the Government for what it had done to his family business and his frustration at the blame given to his mother and wife for the accident that killed them. But after admitting the hijacking was his idea, her sympathy for him evaporated.
Noah must have sensed the drop in temperature between them as he became ill at ease, rubbing the palms of his hands against his face and shaking his head.
‘You have to let me explain,’ he began. ‘At first, the plan was to cripple the cars. All vehicles – no matter what make or model – share some software which lets them communicate within one another, like warning each other if there’s traffic or roadworks ahead. Because we had an input into that programming, we knew how to find our way back in and go straight to these sensors.
‘Alex and the others were going to install a rogue piece of coding into the verification software. That meant we could access any model of any Level Five car’s source code and infect it with a virus so that it obeyed our commands. By making one car grind to a halt with a fictitious problem, it would spread, and thousands upon thousands would do the same. And by the time the hack was discovered and rectified, the damage would be done. It wouldn’t last long, but long enough to bring Britain to a standstill and make the industry a laughing stock.’
‘Then what changed?’ Libby asked. ‘How did it become mass murder?’
‘Once inside the software, Alex discovered that cars read our National Identity Cards and any technology we carried. And that’s when we learned what really happened to my girls. They’d been sacrificed because the Passenger whose car hit them was a pilot in the Royal Air Force and protected by AI. His service to his country meant his life was worth more than my family’s.’
Noah awaited Libby’s reaction, but she continued to take him in with the same caution. ‘My hatred for everything and everyone to do with those cars consumed me. Their impact was just so far-reaching. Even afterwards, my little girl died because she couldn’t get the liver she needed because fewer accidents in safer cars means fewer organ donors.’
‘You can’t punish people for not dying!’ Libby interrupted. ‘That’s crazy.’
‘I know, but that demonstrates where my head was at back then. As was believing that crippling the cars wasn’t going to make a big enough impact. I decided our hack had to extend beyond a three-day news cycle. It needed to be an event everyone would remember watching for the rest of their lives. A hijack. I told Alex we should take complete control of a handful of cars and hold them to ransom, threatening to kill the Passengers if the Government didn’t admit to what it was doing. And we’d make the inquest jury do what AI did – choose a survivor based only upon the biased information we fed it. But at no time was anyone supposed to get hurt.’ Libby cocked her head in disbelief. ‘I promise you that I thought we were only going to whip up a frenzy against these “unhackable” cars. Then everything changed the night I met you.’
‘Me?’
‘I must have watched the footage of the day my girls died a hundred times until I knew it off by heart. I counted how many footsteps it took for you to get from one to the other, how long you spent with my mum and Steph and how you tried to comfort them. Seeing your kindness and how much the deaths of people you didn’t know affected you was the moment I knew I wanted you on the jury. But then when we met in Manchester, you were the first person I’d spoken to in I can’t remember how long who wasn’t living inside the same toxic bubble as me. And I felt a connection to you every bit as much as you did for me in our kiss. You woke me up, you reminded me who I really was and made me understand I could accomplish everything I wanted to without threatening to hurt anymore. But trying to convince Alex and the others I’d had a change of heart was impossible. Like that other juror Matthew explained to you, mob mentality makes people braver when they’re together.’
‘You should have fought harder,’ Libby dismissed.
‘I did.’
‘You should have made them understand it was wrong.’
‘I tried.’
‘Then why didn’t they listen?’
‘Because by then we had spent eighteen months planning the hijack and nobody was willing to back down! And I was scared at how out of control it might become if I didn’t go along with it. I thought if I remained a part of it, I could at least rein them in if I needed to.’
‘And how did that work out for you?’ Libby deadpanned.