Code Breakers: Prequel Read online

  He hadn’t realised it, but as he took the seat this was as comfortable as he had been in years. The place was really comfortable. And he yearned to relax, perhaps listen to some music again—anything to not be the killer or survivor for a short while. He could understand why Jericho had holed himself up here. For a few moments he felt normal again.

  “What, man?” Jericho said, starting at Gabe. “What’s the matter? You’ve got a weird smile on your face.”

  “This might be a strange request from someone ya’ve not met before. But that music ya had playing earlier. Would ya mind if—”

  “You want it back on?”

  “If that’s cool.”

  “Yeah, man, that’s fucking cool. You like the reggae, eh?”

  “It reminds me of home.”

  “Likewise, man.”

  Jericho leaned over, gestured at the holoscreen. The dub beats of a reggae track filled the room. Petal smiled, reached for Gabe’s hands. She lifted him out of the chair and together they danced to the music, Petal pogo-jumping, and Gabe just let his body move to the triplet rhythm almost hypnotically.

  Jericho, and Holly soon joined them. The latter pogoed with Petal, giggling.

  For the next hour, their host played a mix of Reggae, R n B, and some old rock. At one point, Gabe noticed tears on his cheeks. It was a mix of joy and sadness. For so long, he’d been in survival mode, always being tense, fearful. He was always filled with anger for not getting back to his family in time, but here in the penthouse, with friendly company, and his only family in Petal, he felt for the first time in years a sense of peace.

  But as they wound down, the music that he grew up with reminded him too much. Reminded him of the bad choices he made. It made him long to see his mother and father again. Long to be back in the shelter with his people.

  Collapsing into the armchair, tired physically and emotionally, Gabe caught his breath. Petal and Holly were chatting in the kitchen, sharing drinks from Jericho’s fridge. He’d even had a beer. A real beer!

  “Hey, man, wanna drag on this?” Jericho leaned forward, handed Gabe a roll-up.

  “What is it?” Gabe said, unable to identify the sweet smell that came from the smoke. He’d sampled various drugs during his time with the gangs, but nothing that smelled like that. It had a very distinctive pungent quality.

  “A special blend of herbs that I grow myself. With all the radiation, loads of weird shit started to grow. Well, one day, I got a bit bored and decided to smoke of it. This one I call ‘Sweet Blue.’ It’s fucking epic.”

  “What’s the high like?” Gabe asked, suspicious. Jericho had been smoking it for the past hour and seemed okay, just chilled and friendly.

  “It’s not that high, really,” Jericho said. “It’s like a painkiller. Just numbs things, makes you see things in a better light.”

  “I hate to be a downer, but I’ll pass, thanks. I’ve got some serious allergies to things. Don’t wanna take the risk, ya know?”

  “Fair enough, man. I can respect that.” He gave Gabe a wide beaming smile as he sat back and took a long drag on his joint.

  Gabe wondered about Shelley’s warnings about Jericho. He’d been nothing but an accommodating and generous guest. He later mentioned that he was having issues with the Mayors and their ‘psychotic ninja whores’ and that Petal and Gabe had done him a big favour, so perhaps that was partly the reason for his welcoming of them.

  Which made of course made Gabe’s next action that little bit more difficult.

  Part 7 - The Handover

  Gabe got up from his chair. “Mind if I use ya bathroom?” he asked Jericho.

  The other man pointed behind him to a doorway next to the kitchen. “Through there and first on the left, man.”

  “Cheers.”

  Gabe gave him a smile, and walked to the bathroom. He had to time it right.

  On the holoscreen, he noticed that a camera was recording the bathroom. He had a feed from every room in the penthouse. They switched over in sixty-second intervals. This particular feed came around every three minutes. As soon as the feed switched to the bedroom, he knew he would have a clear couple of minutes.

  Once inside he undid his belt and pulled his trousers down to his thighs. Strapped to the inside was a graphene-steel knife eight inches long and just nanometres thick. It curved away towards the tip from the equally thin handle. A piece of rubber across the cutting edge prevented it from cutting into his thigh.

  He undid the strip, removed the rubber protective piece, and placed the knife up his sleeve. He originally thought about the pistol that he recovered from one of the girls back at the station, but that was in his jacket that he took off and left draping over a chair. It would be too obvious to reach for it. And besides, it didn’t hurt to have a backup if he needed it.

  Back in the living room, Holly was sitting at Jericho’s feet enjoying a pull on the joint. Petal was sitting in Gabe’s chair sipping a beer. She looked at him, and before she could betray him with a quizzical expression, he gave her a quick shake of the head. It was one of their secret signals to stay quiet and let him do his thing.

  He could have just sent her a message across their private network, but given the amount of computing in the penthouse he fully expected to be hacked and monitored. As good as a hacker as Jericho might be, one thing he couldn’t do was hack someone’s brain.

  As Gabe came up to the back of the sofa on which Jericho was sat, he reached out a hand ready to grab the guy by the neck. He was determined to recover the information Shelley wanted in the quickest possible way, and his experience had told him people were much quicker to help when their lives depended on it.

  “I wouldn’t do that, man,” Jericho said, casually exhaling a plume of green-tinged smoke.

  Gabe stopped, unsure of what to do next. He wasn’t expecting that.

  Jericho turned to face him. “I wondered how long it’d take you. I guess you enjoyed the home comforts too much to act quickly, eh? Most people do, you know. It’s why I got so many enemies these days. People who want to avenge the death of their friends who came to me, tried to take advantage of my hospitality. Holly, be a darling.”

  The young girl jumped from her seated position and pointed a pistol at Petal.

  “You see, Gabriel, I’ve been at this game for a while now. I knew what you wanted before you even got to my door. I saw you both snooping around. I saw that you came from the east. Only one kind of person comes from the east these days.”

  “And what kind’s that?” Gabe said, letting the blade inch down his arm ready to flash it out if he needed. He gave Petal a quick glance. She looked relaxed, still sipping on her beer. He knew she’d already anticipated this; she’d moved his coat from the chair. It now lay in a pile on the floor next to the chair she was sat on. She’d likely have already pocketed the pistol. He doubted Holly would be quick enough for Petal.

  “Those doing jobs for that crazy bitch Shelley. What is it she wants now? A server, DNA-drives, information on them damned planes she’s trying to fix?”

  “Something like that,” Gabe said.

  Jericho stubbed out the joint on an ashtray sitting on the arm of the sofa. He stood up, brushed the ash from his jacket. He walked past Gabe, who tracked his every movement, ready to strike. But Jericho didn’t seem to care as he left his back exposed. He reached the fridge and took out two more beers.

  He removed the tops, and held one out to Gabe.

  “Take it, man. Chill out, we can work something out.”

  Gabe didn’t take the beer, wanting to keep his hands free. Jericho shrugged his shoulders and walked past him, almost brushing against him as he went, provoking Gabe to strike, but he didn’t take the bait. Gabe was reckless at times, but he wasn’t stupid. No one was that calm unless they had something going on. Jericho took his seat and sipped from the beer.

  “You know she’s fucked-up in the head, right?” Jericho said. “Shelley’s cracked, man, completely. The last time I saw her she
was chowing down on the liver of my best friend. That was after she stunned us both and tied us up. She started with him first, making me watch as she skinned him alive. Have you seen a man being skinned alive, Gabe? Petal?”

  Gabe shrugged. “I’ve seen things you could barely imagine.” Sure, skinning someone was awful, barely imaginable, but Gabe had seen what a gang would do to a rival gang member in order to stamp their authority. When people got hungry, real hungry, the level of debasement they would sink to knew no bounds.

  “So you can relate,” Jericho added. “How will you feel when you slice me up and take what it is you want back to Shelley, and she has you and Petal trapped? How will you feel when that mad bitch takes her blades to Petal’s pretty face, slicing it off with the expertise that can only come from years of practice, eh? How will you feel when you’re forced to watch your friend scream and cry in agony as she systematically removes all her organs and preps them for lunch and dinner?”

  “That ain’t gonna happen,” Gabe said. “We ain’t stupid. I saw her handiwork, I know what she’s capable of, but frankly I don’t care. She has something I want—”

  “Then just kill the bitch and take it. You’ll be doing this world a favour.”

  Gabe had to admit he had a point, but how many more people did he have to kill to survive? He’d done enough of that back in Hong Kong, vowed to curb that side of him. If he started now, he didn’t know if he’d be able to stop, and given the things he’d had to do to survive, he was no one to judge Shelley, Jericho, or anyone. Everyone got by in his or her own way, as screwed as it might be. He weren’t some wandering judge. It weren’t his responsibility to snuff out the crazy and the dangerous. All that mattered to him was surviving each day in the best way he could, and with the least blood spilled.

  “I can’t do that,” Gabe said.

  Jericho laughed, slapped his hand on the arm of sofa, and sent the ashtray flying.

  “Fuck, man, you’re something else. You think you can intimidate me into giving you want you want when you have a conscience? If you can’t kill that mad bitch, then I know you ain’t gonna do nothing to me. Leaves you in limbo right now, don’t it? Can’t kill, won’t kill, but you need whatever she’s promised you. And for what? What is it you want from me?”

  “You offering to do a deal?” Gabe asked. He glimpsed over to Petal. She was eyeing Holly carefully, planning her next move. Like him, she kept silent over the private network, but he could tell by the tension in her face she was ready to act. Holly didn’t stand a chance.

  Jericho placed the beer on the floor and put his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

  “I’m always open to a deal. You know, perhaps if you opened with that instead of sneaking up behind me with bad intentions, I could’ve done you a favour. But now, you’ve just pissed me off, and no one disrespects me in my own home and gets out alive.”

  Part 8 - The Node

  The gunshot made Gabe twitch, dive to his side, and dodge an unseen bullet. He tripped, crashed into the wall of holoscreens to his right, cracking his head against the solid glass surface. As the pain flared, colours and shapes filling his vision, he turned his head, expecting Jericho to finish him.

  But he couldn’t.

  “Holy shit,” Gabe said. Holly stood over Jericho’s prone body, aiming her gun to the back of his head. She pulled the trigger for a second time, executing him. His head jolted under the blast, brain matter, skull, and blood erupted in a miniature cloud, covering the front of the girl.

  “Holy shit,” Gabe repeated.

  Petal stood from the chair, moved to the girl, and placed a hand on her shoulder. Holly turned, dropping her arm to her side, the gun falling from her fingers, crashing against the floor. Blood dripping from her young face.

  And that’s what got Gabe the most. This kind of killing was too much for someone so young, yet the way she dispatched the Mayors’ allies back in the station it wasn’t entirely surprising, but the coldness, it gripped Gabe’s throat. This world wasn’t the only thing that had suffered at the hands of The Family-induced Cataclysm. Humanity itself had been destroyed. Sanctity of life was as dead as Jericho.

  Holly wrapped her arms around Petal’s waist. Petal seemed to not understand what the girl wanted, but awkwardly brought her arms around her and looked over at Gabe.

  She wasn’t wearing her goggles. Her eyes were turning to a swirling mix of red and black. She wasn’t far from being over-capacity. That thought pulled Gabe’s attentions back to the present.

  “Holly, girl,” Gabe said, standing. He stepped over Jericho’s body, placed a hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him, her expression impassive, cold.

  “Why?” Gabe asked. “Why’d ya do it?”

  “I had to stop him,” she said quietly, as if observing a funeral protocol in reverence for the recent dead. “You’re good people. I wanted to help. Petal needs help. Jericho wouldn’t have given it. And...” She looked away, closing her eyes, grimacing. A face of shame.

  “He touched you?” Petal asked.

  With her eyes still closed she nodded her head. Wiped the blood from her face with the sleeve of her tatty sweater. Petal wrapped an arm around her shoulder, gave her the embrace she needed. Then the tears and sobs came.

  Between the chokes and gasps, Holly said, “I loved him like a father once. But then he started to hit me.”

  “It’s okay,” Petal said. “You don’t need to explain. You had to do what you had to do.”

  Gabe stood silently trying not to get to deep into the girl’s misery. As terrible as it was, he had to keep his and Petal’s goals at the forefront of his mind. Now Jericho was no longer an issue, they had to find the information Shelley wanted, and find a node to download some of the AIs and viruses within Petal, but he’d give the girl a few a minutes at least.

  While Petal and Holly talked it out, he grabbed Jericho’s limp arm and dragged his body out of the main living area of the room and into one of the spare, empty bedrooms. He at least thought with it out of the way, Holly would be less traumatised, not having that constant reminder of what she’d done.

  Combined with that, it allowed Gabe to search the place properly, find the servers.

  The apartment had three bedrooms; only one was used as such. The others were empty. The bathroom Gabe had already seen, which left just one other place.

  Holly and Petal arrived together in the corridor while Gabe was inspecting the attic hatch. He turned to look at the girl. She’d washed the blood from her face, but her eyes were still rimmed with redness.

  “Is it all up there?” Gabe asked?

  “Yes,” Holly said. “Be careful, it’s trapped. I’ll show you the way.”

  Gabe stepped back, watched Holly take a slate from her jacket pocket and gesture across its surface. The attic hatch slid open and a ladder dropped down. The stench of coolant gas wafted out: a dry, arid smell, the smell of a server room.

  Holly ascended the steps half way, reached a hand in slowly to one side pulling out a control pad. She entered a code, and a series of motors whined above in the darkness.

  “What was that?” Petal asked.

  “Guns,” Holly said.

  Gabe noticed the stains of blood on the edge of the attic hatch. He followed the trajectory and noticed a series of patched holes in the mock-wood floor of the hall. Clearly it had been activated more than once. How many people had died in order to get those servers he couldn’t guess.

  “Wait there,” Holly said as she scampered up the ladder and into the darkness.

  Gabe listened to her footsteps as she traversed the attic, flicking switches. The lights came on, and for the first time, Gabe got a view of what was up there. He stepped up a couple of rungs on the ladder until his head was level with the hatch. Inside the attic were a series or server racks running the length of the wall on the far side. The space was bigger than he expected, at least twenty metres by ten.

  To the right end of the attic, a glass wall sectioned off
the space, beyond which lay a single server. He could tell it was an old design from the size and the case style. It had to be at least before the war, over fifty years old. And here it was, the centrepiece of an impressive system set up.

  Holly stood by it, after disabling the security protecting it: A series of laser beams, criss-crossing the room, briefly lit before extinguishing. She knelt to the server, reached behind it, pulled out a pair of cables with neck port plugs on the end.

  She looked back to the hatch, saw Gabe, and waved him in.

  “It’s safe,” she called out.

  Gabe climbed the ladder, stepped up into the attic. The flat ceiling was still a good metre taller than him. The walls were lined with white Polymar™ boards to provide a secure and climate-controllable environment for all the rack-mounted servers. The light came from a series of overhead OLED panels. The power requirements to run all this must have been huge.

  “How’s all this being powered?” He asked Holly as Petal joined him and they made their way to the glassed-off server room.

  “Jericho got a small reactor in town working, fed the power to here.”

  “And he didn’t want to share that with the rest of the town I take it?” Gabe said, passing through the door to stand next to Holly.

  “It’s everyone for themselves here,” she replied, handing Gabe and Petal a cable each.

  “What’s this?” Petal asked, pointing to the ancient server.

  Holly smiled then, stroking a hand across its surface. “Old Grey,” she said. “One of a kind. Its operating system is an AI of sorts. You should be able to dump your AIs and viruses in it. It’s got some kind of special storage zone for malicious code. Jericho thought it was an anti-cyber warfare device. It also survived the EMPs untouched. The rest of the servers here Jericho made himself—from parts that I sourced.”

  It came up to her waist, and was half the size wide. The case was a glossy black colour. The coolant gas billowed every few seconds from grills on its side, illuminated blue and red by a series of flashing LEDs on the side. Although not harmful to breathe in small quantities, the gas tickled the back of Gabe’s throat, making him cough.