Code Breakers: Beta (12 page)

Chapter 14

Gabe slowed his quad-bike as the headlights cut through the late evening darkness to illuminate the edges of a ruined town. He brought the bike to a crawl and swept the lights slower over the ruined town, looking for signs of life. Bandits would often infest these places, waiting for the few survivors left to stumble upon them.

Nothing moved. He heard nothing beyond the low whine of the two bikes’ H-core engines.

He sent Petal a message across their private network.

–
I think we should camp here overnight. We’ve got at least another day’s trek to get to Xian’s.

– Agreed. We should split up, take the flanks, and check for any potential scumbags. Oh, and there’s another thing. I’m detecting a wider network out here. I say I, but I think it’s Gerry inside my head, doing what he does, but there’s definitely something around.

– Maybe someone brought Omega online? Could it be the Meshwork?
He knew it wasn’t as soon as he said it; otherwise he would have picked up on it too. Since they’d left Bachia, there was no sign of an online network anywhere. Must be suppressed by Elliot.

–
No, it’s not that. There’s no initial nod. It’s far-reaching. There’s traffic there. I can see Gerry doing his magic inside my nut analysing it, sorting it. It’s weird, man, it’s like I’ve got two brains or something. But I still ‘feel’ him at work, you know?

Of course, Gabe had no idea. How she was still operating as normal, in fact, better than normal, with Gerry’s mind inside her was something he couldn’t understand. She never ceased to amaze him at what she was capable of—far more than James could have ever known. How much was his design and how much was down to her own evolution, Gabe could never know.

But he wasn’t counting his chickens just yet. Just because Gerry’s code hadn’t appeared to mutate to a detrimental effect yet, didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen. Elliot, James’ other two clones, and people like Seca were proof that it wasn’t trivial, and it never went well. Even Sakura and Hajime within Alpha and Omega hadn’t uploaded intact.

He put the thought of Gerry’s code breaking down out of his mind and concentrated on finding some shelter. He also wondered if this is where the Red Widows had spotted his family. Were they here, hiding somewhere, worried that he and Petal were looters or worse?

–
I’ll scout the interior,
Gabe sent.
You take the perimeter.
He’d look for signs of life as he went.

– Righto, Gabe.

They split off, with Gabe accelerating into the town.

Craters littered the outskirts, and he rode around them before finding a road. The surface was split and cracked, any tarmac long since melted off or salvaged for other uses.

He stuck to the narrow gaps between half-crumbled concrete buildings and fallen towers overtaken with moss and soy plants. He shined the swivelling lamp on the front of the quad into the buildings; his heart paused as he anticipated seeing the reflection of someone’s eyes, or spotting movement within the shadows. He strained his ears, listening for a voice, a scrape, anything.

Nothing moved. Everywhere was empty, dry, crumbling. Even the weeds seemed reluctant.

These kinds of towns were never fully reclaimed by nature. Most things couldn’t grow in the soil. The lack of rain didn’t help matters much either.

As he passed each building, a growing disappointment fell away like the decaying buildings of the town. There was nothing but rusted machinery, too old to determine their function.

Further in, a main thoroughfare split the place in two. On the left were large, single-storey buildings with their roofs fallen in. Their skeletal shells were twisted with heat. They, too, were devoid of life or any signs of survivors. No bedrolls or packaging. No fire pits.

By the state of it, the place must have taken a near direct hit from a nuke, he thought. Gabe had seen other towns like it, back in Hong Kong. Those were the places that retaliated against the Family’s first wave of attacks during the war.

When they realised it was an end game, the few remaining countries with nuclear capability—the US, Brazil, and Pakistan—launched a devastating counter-attack. The Family weren’t affected, having already established their space station and various nuclear bunkers for their engineers.

The world ended, and all that was left was fewer than a million souls. The lucky ones who had shelter. The lucky ones like Gabe’s grandparents. If it weren’t for them securing a place in the Hong Kong shelter, his parents and he wouldn’t have been born. Some days he wondered if that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. Life in this world was an ongoing debate to whether it was worth it.

A message pulled him from his thoughts and observations.

–
Nothing out here. Scumbag-free from my point of view. What about in there?

– Nothing either. It seems safe. I’ve found a candidate for tonight’s shelter. Follow my light.

A part of him was relieved that neither he nor Petal had found anything, like the bodies of his family. It meant there was still a—no. He couldn’t think like that. He expected the worst. These were not the days hope had any right to claim. Not yet.

Gabe pulled up the bike outside an old warehouse-type building. Inside were great iron wheels and distorted pieces of tracks. A munitions train factory. Part of a shell for the engine of the train stood in the far corner. Although rusted and riddled with bullet holes, it’d provide a safe spot and shelter them from any bad weather. He noticed a light spitting of rain. So rare that when it did happen, it was clearly noticeable.

He shone the light across the street and angled it up the side of a crumbled tower for Petal to see. Within a few minutes the low whine of her bike came through the gap of a tight road before pulling up next to him.

“Nice digs,” she said.

He shrugged. “It’ll do for one night. Bring the bikes in front of the shell. We’ll make camp.”

Petal gave him an exaggerated salute and headed inside.

Gabe got a small fire going, took some rations from a sealed vacuum pack, placed them in a tin, and warmed them over the fire. The smell of bad eggs wafted around the old rusted shell. As he huddled over the food, the firelight licking at the insides of their shelter, he was taken back to a night of his youth. The first night of him joining a gang. They had tasked him with infiltrating a rival group, being that he was young and new, the opposing target would assume he was ripe for recruiting.

Once inside, his objective was to steal a cargo of ration packs, not unlike the ones he was preparing now. For years that’s all anyone had to eat. At first, when they came out of the shelters, they swarmed whatever shops or stores still stood. A wave of illness came months after as the radiation poisoning killed those driven mad by hunger.

Gabe knew better. Back then he had self-control. Instilled by his father. He was taught to be patient, to master one’s desires and urges. For food and, more importantly, for violence. Maybe his father knew he had a rage in him even at that young age.

As a teen and mixing with the gangs, it grew stronger. Soon he carved a reputation for himself, but it was only to buy him time, time to find much-needed resources for his family.

But that didn’t work out so well. And so the rage stayed. Boiled inside him like the protein powders in the ration packs. At least this time, he’d helped keep Petal alive for a few years. He looked at her like she was his own daughter these days.

“I regret the things I did when we first met,” Gabe said, his voice low like a growl. Something about the quiet atmosphere beneath the shelter made him not want to break the silence. Since the war there were very few animals left, almost no insects, and no birds. There was nothing at night but silence and the cries of the wind. Some nights he thought it was the world expressing the pain that humankind had wrought.

“What do you mean?” Petal said. She sat opposite the small fire, cross-legged, her hands inside her biker’s jacket pockets. In the five or so years he’d known her, this was the first time it occurred to him she hadn’t aged one bit. She’d died and been revived a number of times, been in dozens of fights, and yet she looked as fresh and innocent as the day he found her wandering alone in the desert.

“The techxorcist work, all that AI and bad code. The jobs, the fights, the strife. Ya didn’t deserve all that. I pushed ya too hard, didn’t consider ya welfare enough beyond the jobs.”

She shrugged. “We survived. We needed to do what we did. What’s brought this on?”

“I’m tired,” he said, leaning back against the duffle bag that was attached to the back of the bike. “Tired of the struggle, ya know? Why does it have to be this way?”

“Hell knows. It is what it is. Careful, you’re gonna burn that slop.”

He lifted the tin and placed it on the dirt floor, steam rising in slow, winding swirls. He divided up the meal between them on two metal plates. Handing one to Petal, he asked, “Do ya feel anything going wrong?” He tapped his head. “In there, I mean, with Gerry.”

Petal removed a fork from inside her jacket, took a bite of the protein, and grimaced. After choking it down, she shook her head. “Nah, that’s the odd thing. I feel totally at peace, like I got a protector or something in there. I wish I could communicate directly with him, though.”

“How is any of this even possible? I mean, are our brains all capable of accommodating two separate and distinct minds?”

“That’s the thing,” Petal said, her mouth half-full with food. “I don’t think Gerry is a mind anymore. He was changed by his interaction with Elliot. Whatever happened when he was uploaded has drastically changed what he is. I kind of think of him as a ghost. A digital spirit that’s somehow using my neural network as a kind of computer. He’s in my very DNA now.”

“I still don’t like it,” Gabe said. “I feel like ya’ve got a ticking time bomb inside you, waiting to go off. Waiting to send ya mad like all the others.”

“You think I’m a threat to you?” Petal asked.

“Maybe,” Gabe said. “But it’s nothing I can fix until we get Alpha up and running.” His hand subconsciously patted the side of the case that held Alpha’s motherboard. “If Xian doesn’t have any parts, I don’t know how we can proceed. How can we stop the threat of Elliot?”

“There’s always a way,” Petal said.

Gabe saw a glimmer in her eye and a strange distortion in her face. For a split second it was like looking at Gerry again. Perhaps it was just the idea of him being inside her brain combined with the tiredness of the long journey creating things that weren’t there, but one thing was sure, he’d never seen Petal so at peace. So calm. He wondered for a brief second if they shouldn’t just let her be.

But the thought of losing her threatened to break his cold, black heart in two.

“Do you still detect a network around here?” Gabe asked, trying to distract his wandering mind.

“Yeah, the traffic is getting stronger. There’s definitely something going on. It ain’t the Meshwork, but a private network, like ours, but this reaches much further. I think Gerry’s been working on it. He’s providing me with glimpses of images and data. It’s like I’m looking at stars in space, an infinite distance with lots of connections.”

“Is it navigable? Could ya get to Bachia’s network? Or Libertas’... perhaps we could get word to Enna or the guys at Cemprom about what we’re doing? I still can’t find an open radio signal due to that damned suppression.”

“I can try,” Petal said. “You want me to send a secure message? It’s kind of hit and hope, like sending a bottle out in the sea.”

“We don’t have other options until we get to Xian’s, and that’s at least another day away. You remember the Helix encryption algorithm I taught ya? Enna’s got the keys to it. She’ll recognise it if she gets it.”

“Okay. Sending now.” Petal closed her eyes. Her eyeballs twitched behind the thin skin of her lids as she interacted with her internal transceiver. Gabe felt a flicker of network traffic and very briefly, through his own systems, caught a glimpse of the network. Vast was an understatement. As quickly as it came, it was gone.

“Sent,” Petal said. “You wanna get some rest? I’ll take watch. Just in case there’s some sneaky fuckers waiting for us to sleep before coming out of their holes.”

“Wake me in four hours,” Gabe said. “We’ll split the watch.”

“Fine by me, old man. Sleep tight.”

Petal stood, ran her hand over his bald head, and tapped him on the shoulder. “Sweet dreams.”

Gabe gripped her hand for a second before she headed out of the shell of the train. She disappeared into the dark, finding a position from which to keep watch. Gabe lay his head down and let the tiredness take him; all the while he pictured Petal and Gerry as one combined face.

***

Gabe woke to Petal’s scream. The low morning sun raked through the open side of the building, striking against the old, rusted engine shell, warming his face. Bleary eyed, he sat up, realising he was outside of the shell, lying in his watch position on a mezzanine floor to the right of the building.

Damnit! He’d fallen asleep on his watch.

He saw two dark figures exit the shelter. They each gripped Petal’s arms, holding them out and avoiding her forearm spikes. Which meant they knew her, had intel. They were wrapped in brown and grey camouflaged desert robes. Assassins.

They forced Petal face-first to the dirt. She struggled. One of the assassins struck her with a stun-baton. It looked like the ones used by the Libertas security people. Once stunned, the other one took a pistol from within their robes and aimed it at the back of Petal’s head.

She wasn’t out completely; her legs and arms still moved, but she wasn’t able to fight back. One of them, a male, barked questions at her, but Gabe couldn’t quite hear the exact words from his position. He also noticed that their quad-bikes had been sabotaged. The H-core engines were ripped from the chassis, and the fuel cells damaged.

How could he have missed all this? Staying to the shadows, he got to his feet and slowly climbed down from the wooden mezzanine floor. He took off his heavy duster jacket and placed it gently on the floor, to avoid any noise. From within the interior folds, he took his whip and a stun-sickle. The latter’s power source had long since run out, but the blade was still wicked sharp, and he’d spent many an hour practicing with it until it felt like a natural extension to his arm.