Code Breakers: Beta Page 14

  “No time yet,” Gabe said. “We need to locate Omega.”

  He knew the old hacker was right, but the desire to see Petal again, to see her safe made him desperate to take the truck and head east to Criborg.

  Thinking about the whole situation, he wondered if he should contact The Family. His connection to their system was still operational, and perhaps he should warn them about Red Widow’s plans. But then, they must know about them, surely? He doubted Red Widow’s advancement into Darkhan and GeoCity-1 had gone unnoticed, but then why no response? He doubted they really cared. The security inside the Dome had been massively increased. They probably thought nothing of it; kept focus with their plans.

  A rumble overhead from a Jaguar circling around the dead towers of Darkhan made the truck hum with the vibrations.

  “None of us can stay here for long,” Gerry said. “We need to get out into the city and track down that other server ASAP, then find safety.”

  “Ain’t nowhere safe in this ol’ town, man. The crazies have it locked down.”

  “Then what do you suggest?” Gerry fidgeted in his seat, eager to get going before the sun came back up. He didn’t fancy his chances of staying hidden during the daylight.

  Enna interjected, “I suggest we get Old Grey up and running, use her to help track the other server. Cut down on the random factor of just wandering around the place.”

  “How?” Gerry said, slumping in the truck’s seat. “If the Meshwork is suppressed, we don’t have any network to use. I only have a connection to The Family because of the stuff they’ve added in my head, and right now I don’t know if it’s safe to get them involved.”

  “I guess we connect Old Grey to the truck’s power supply and see what happens,” Enna said.

  “That sounds too hopeful. I’m not sitting here doing nothing,” Gerry said already reaching for the door as the Jaguar peeled away to circle further into the city. “Malik, you stay here so I can communicate with you and the rest of the group. I’ll go scout out around the city, see if I can detect any data signals. Even with the suppression, there must be something.”

  “Ah, man, this ain’t right, we should wait,” Gabe said.

  Gerry pointed out of the truck’s window to a group of three hobos huddled around a pile of trash at the corner of the skyscraper where it met the street.

  “How long before one of them causes a scene, huh? How long before their interest brings those mad fanatics to this location?”

  Gabe shook his head, but Gerry was having none of it. He turned to Enna, “Sit tight, and wait for my communications. I’m going out there.”

  Before anyone had the chance to act, he opened the door and stepped out into the warm night air. The shadow of the skyscraper, now long and angular, hid the truck. As Gerry engaged his stealth protocol, he moved closer to the building, feeling its rough, bullet-wounded facade against his body. The hobos looked up towards him, their honed senses telling them something had changed in the atmosphere and they ambled off into the street, rubbing their grubby faces with worn, dirty-gloved hands.

  Beyond the pile of trash, a stream of people floated down a street in front of the skyscraper. He dodged between shanty camps of filthy cloth tents and the obligatory drum-fires that gathered the restless like beacons.

  Via his connection to The Family’s station, he hacked into the system anonymously, not wanting to alert Jachz, who by now was probably doing all he could to scan his location and get into his feeds. He found the layout for Darkhan, downloaded the map and schematics data.

  — Mags, model the map in 3D on the HUD. Filter buildings that used to be on the power grid, and ones that are defensible either by height or location.

  — Processing, updating.

  There were five locations within a kilometre: three on the other side of a bridge, which Gerry knew would be guarded well, and two on his side of the city. The closest one, an old subway station converted to a bank, was situated approximately eight hundred metres away.

  “I found a possible location,” Gerry said over his VPN to Malik, “I’m on route. Will update shortly.”

  “Got that. Take it easy, Gerry.”

  He slipped into the flotsam of the sea of survivors, picked various items of loose clothing and rags off passers-by, disguised himself as one of the pure, the unaltered. Looking at them as he walked down the main street towards the subway station he realised that even though they were considered pure, their lives were barely worth living. The conditions were such that they lived off food grown in fields still recovering from radiation, drinking water distilled in rain-silos that sat atop buildings like transparent pyramids.

  He passed a number of burnt-out strip-malls, the windows long since smashed, and the fronts home to rats, dogs and the truly downtrodden, each shop a microcosm of life clinging on to scraps and false hopes.

  Beyond these malls of despair and desperation, the bridge connecting the two halves of the city loomed like a great steel spine: semi-circular struts traversed the dried-up river like vertebrae. A gang of five Red Widow members huddled around a small square in front of the bridge, checking people as they passed.

  The checkpoint stretched across the street to a tall concrete building, still mostly intact.

  The group of fanatics were stopping random people, giving them a shake down, causing a scene before pushing them off into the sea of desperate humanity. Occasionally they’d let one through and send them across the bridge into the darkness. He could only assume they were the ones chosen to live.

  He ducked his head, merged further into the crowd, developed a limp, a racking cough, and hoped he could pass without incident.

  Within the crowd he heard a rattling, rolling noise. He looked down and saw the top of a young girl’s head. Like the rest, she wore dirty rags around her thin frame. She sat on a wheeled board, and propelled herself across the rough ground with her blistered and swollen fingers, probably from being stepped on by the uncaring group around her.

  She looked up at Gerry, stared right in his eyes, and cocked her head. She seemed to be reading him. Or listening.

  “Can I help you,” Gerry said. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” she said, not specifying to which question she had answered. “You’re very noisy,” she added. “He’ll hear you.”

  “What do you mean?” He certainly wasn’t making any more noise than anyone else around him. The girl beckoned him down to her level. He knelt, looked at her, realised she couldn’t be much older than ten or eleven. And yet her eyes were already world-weary, her cheeks hollow. “What is it?” he asked again, intrigued by the girl.

  She reached up and tapped her thin index finger gently against his head. “From there,” she said. “So much noise, signals, and data. He can hear you, too.”

  “Who can?”

  “The man in the box.”

  Gerry smiled, wanted to laugh. It was utterly absurd, but the way she looked into him, it was as if she could see inside his brain. Could she really hear his thoughts, his data processing?

  “What can you tell me about him? Is he a bad man?”

  She smiled, shook her head. “Neither. He just listens. Come, I’ll show you.”

  Intrigued, he stood, followed the girl as she paddled her wheeled board out of the flow of people and towards a battle-scarred tower. Its facade chipped and damaged from various munitions. Great chunks hung away, held from falling by a webbing of rebar. Its multiple windows were devoid of glass and covered with rusted steel sheets.

  She pointed up to a distant window. “He’s waiting up there.”

  Gerry focused his mind, had his AIA scan the area for any radio or data signals. To his surprise, he detected a weak and intermittent signal, fragmented beyond coherence, the data packets scrambled and incomplete.

  He opened his connection to Malik and the others back at the truck.

  — I think I’ve found something. I’m investigating. I’ll update you shortly.

  To the girl, he sai
d. “Hey, thanks—” He looked down to find she had gone, vanished back into the crowd. He pushed forward, squirming back into the crowd to try and see her, but she was nowhere to be seen. He turned his attentions back to the dark window, decided he’d check it out.

  Chapter 19

  A sharp tang hung in the air, shifted about the white-walled medical lab. The bed Petal lay upon took her weight, cradled her spine. So comfortable she could have stayed there forever. She closed her eyes, waited for the phantom movements from being in the sub to give way to the stillness of solid ground.

  Her muscles still twitched, neurons fired, balance readjusting to waves and currents that were no longer there. It could have been the latest shot of ‘Stems, she thought, that continued to stimulate her nervous system. She’d had three doses inside a day. More than she’d normally tolerate.

  A taste of metal coated the back of her throat. Her mouth felt oily and slick. She opened her eyes, turned to her side, and found a pitcher of water on the bed stand.

  A cup had already been poured for her.

  She reached out her right arm, felt resistance. A wire twinned with a narrow tube came from her wrist where her old implant used to be.

  The skin around the old wound had healed, and pressing her fingers against it she felt something hard beneath the skin. A new chip, an upgrade perhaps? How long had she been out during surgery? She glanced around for a clock. A holoscreen attached to the end of the bed flicked with various metrics. The time read 03:02. She’d been out for about three or so hours. The soreness in her body made it seem like weeks.

  She tried to access her new chip with her mind, but everything fogged. She couldn’t detect it in there. She thought perhaps it wasn’t online, or needed booting up or something. Hopefully it wasn’t a botched procedure. Given the missing code within the submarine’s stealth module, she had to wonder.

  From another tube attached to her upper arm, an almost-clear liquid dripped into her. The wire traced back to the computer unit attached to the end of the bed. She took a closer look at the numbers and charts.

  Heart beat, blood pressure, mental cognition, and something else: a stream of assembly code flowing vertically. Next to the stream were a series of graphs. She didn’t understand the notation beneath the graph. It appeared that this was perhaps the code running on her implanted chip. She recognised some of the routines, but it seemed more advanced than the last time she checked. The last time being with Enna in her lab.

  To the side of the bed sat a remote control panel like a small slate. She pressed her finger against a red spot labelled ‘help’. And then she wondered if her own slate, the one that Gabe had given her, was still in the sub. She didn’t know if Sasha had remembered to recover the slate after General whatshisname tore a strip off her.

  As she came fully around, she blinked her eyes against the bright glare. Overhead OLED panels simulated the summer sun perfectly. Alas, there was none of the relaxing heat prickling against her skin. The place felt dead. No atmosphere, no fresh air. She already missed the salt-air from the sea.

  All around her were white walls. No artwork, no attempt at decoration. Not even a decent sized holoscreen for entertainment purposes. It seemed so militaristic.

  The electronic whine and click of a lock caught her attention. She looked up at the door beyond the foot of her bed. Dr Robertson stood in the doorway carrying her broken slate.

  It was safe then!

  Deep ravines cut through the soft skin of his forehead, each one thick with concern or concentration. He entered the room, avoided eye contact.

  “Vitals are looking good. Your new implant seems to have installed okay.”

  “Good to know,” Petal replied, with a hint of sarcasm. “Doc, I—”

  “Wait, I know you’ve got questions,” he said, running a hand through his hair, as his entire body seemed to sigh with a sagging movement. “But, there’re things you need to know first.”

  “You recovered the data on the slate?” She sat further up. Her muscles groaned with the effort, but already her strength was returning.

  Jimmy Robertson took a step back, looked down at the slate, his eyes intent almost as if he were peering directly into the data itself.

  “You’re not dying,” he finally said looking up at her. The corners of his mouth tightened, moved upwards ever so slightly, a small proud smile. “You were never dying. Your friends were right to be concerned, but it wasn’t as bad as they thought. You were mutating. Adapting.”

  Mutating! God, it sounded like she was some kind of freak. “What do you mean mutating? Adapting? To what?”

  He stepped aside, pulled the holoscreen closer to her. “You see that flow of data,” he pointed to the flow of assembly code she noticed earlier.

  “Yeah, it’s a data stream. I’m assuming that’s because of the implant, right?”

  “It’s so much more.” Now his smile stretched real wide. He looked like a proud father whose daughter had learned to walk or ride a bike for the first time. “It’s your operating system. Isn’t it amazing?”

  “Um, yeah, sure. Not to put a damper on things, but what exactly does it, and my implant chip, actually do?” She studied the graphs, managed to realise that some of the bars in the image indicated the input and output traffic of data, and another bar represented some kind of computational process. Beyond that she didn’t really know.

  “You don’t understand,” he said now, sitting on the bed. He rubbed his forehead. “How best to explain? Your neural network within your brain isn’t entirely organic. That’s where your chip comes in. It connects a multicore quantum computational chip to that network, allows your brain to subordinate tasks. It also helps in things like your reaction speed, your strength.

  “The chip improves the flow of data to and from your nervous system and your brain functions. Think of it as a second brain, but with lots of added abilities, like how you can connect remotely to computer networks, or how you can retain and manipulate artificial intelligences and viral code. It’s why you’re a rock-solid code safe. This chip is a more advanced version of the one that you had previously. I’m afraid that one was permanently damaged when it was removed.”

  She thought back to the night when those cruel bitches cut it out of her without a care in the world. As if it were some cancerous tumour that needed to be sliced out and discarded.

  “So, what exactly am I?”

  “That’s a little complicated. You’re not quite—”

  “If you’re gonna tell me I ain’t human, I kinda know that already by now.”

  Robertson’s eyes widened a little at that, and then his shoulders relaxed, as if it were one revelation he didn’t have to take responsibility for. He still gripped the slate, held it close to him. He bounced it up and down slightly.

  “The info on this slate from your friends,” he said. “It’s not entirely accurate. Enna, I’m assuming some kind of bioengineer, had read you all wrong. She thought your DNA was breaking down and assumed you were dying with some kind of condition, which to be fair is how it looks to someone who doesn’t know what you are.”

  She couldn’t but help to feel a twinge of worry at that. She thought about all the times Gabe had taken her to Enna to get a shot of NanoStem or some other medical procedure. Had she operated on her properly? Had Enna really known what she was doing?

  She asked again, “What am I?”

  “Probably best if I show you.” Robertson stood from the bed. “Are you up for a stroll?”

  Petal swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. Her head swam, she reached out. Robertson caught her hands. She quickly let go, “I’m fine. You might want to disconnect this first.” She held up her arm with the tube and wire still attached.

  “Of course.” He entered something on the holoscreen, rendering it blank, and with careful and agile fingers disconnected her from the machine.

  A tiny electrical charge tickled at the wound on her wrist when he removed the wire and tube. “Did
you find my old chip?” she said suddenly realising the robes she had stolen from a Red Widow fanatic were no longer on her, replaced instead with a dark-grey form-fitting one piece body suit. She wore slipper-light shoes, split at the toes and with a thin rubber sole.

  “It’s okay,” Robertson said, making his way to the door. “All your belongings are safe. But you won’t need that chip any more. Your new one is greatly upgraded.”

  “Sounds great. But I can’t feel anything yet. Or access my systems.”

  “You will do shortly. It takes a while for the neural pathways in your brain to sync with the chip and vice-versa. You should be good to use your upgrades within a few hours.”

  He held the door open with a sincere smile that reached his eyes.

  “Who don’t like upgrades, huh?” Petal replied, walking out into a sea of grey corridors.

  Jimmy Robertson led Petal through what seemed like miles and miles of tunnels. If she weren’t counting exits and turns, committing the layout to memory she’d easily have gotten lost in this underground labyrinth. It was vast in its scope. Way more than Seca’s compound.

  “So where we going, Doc?”

  “Doctor Robertson,” he replied with a sigh hanging on his voice. “You’re going home, right back to where you began. Back to where I…” He stopped, his words laced with heavy regret choking in his throat.

  This is it, Petal thought. Finally, after all those years of wondering who she was, or where she came from, she would know once and for all. But aside from that, this doctor intrigued her. He exuded kindness, but she could tell he held a fierce intellect in that old head of his that displayed so clearly years of frustration, grief, and perhaps failure.

  He didn’t seem to fit this place at all. She remembered the way he looked at the General when he took Sasha from the submarine bay. There was hatred. No, not hatred, she thought. Envy. Yes, he was envious of the General.

  Perhaps his stature within this group wasn’t what he wanted or deserved?

  A familiar voice caught her attention, as they turned left at a junction in the tunnels.