Code Breakers: Beta (15 page)

So that was Rosario Fuentes she had seen. Fucking double-crossing bitch.

Her thoughts immediately went to Jimmy—had he realised he was screwing a two-faced whore? Was he in on it? With both Cemprom and the government’s central operating office compromised, or at least seemingly in league with Elliot’s growing infrastructure, she couldn’t risk sending a general message for help. She’d already seen what happened when Malik contacted the Libertas Security Service: they were in on it too—or at least a number of them.

She pondered for a moment. What to do? What would Petal do? She would do some amazing hack, but Sasha wasn’t that adept. Still, thinking along those lines, a plan came to her: piggyback the network to establish her VPN with Jimmy and send him a message.

It required a degree of trust on her part, but at this stage in the game if she couldn’t trust him, then she couldn’t trust anyone and the game was already lost.

Fuck it, she thought. Just do it, and see what happens.

A moan came from the man she had tied up. He was starting to come around, straining at the bonds around his wrist and ankles. She knew how that felt. Fuck him; this was war. At least she wasn’t going to kill him or turn him into some kind of interconnected zombie slave.

While he was still struggling to gain consciousness, she navigated her way through the computer system via her connection with the slate. The communications protocol was securely hidden away behind a number of encryption layers and firewalls, but that was okay, she didn’t need to breach the security; she needed to spoof or hide her connection just for a moment.

Altering her internal transceiver to appear like one of the nodes within the warehouse system, she wrote a message, encrypting it using a system that only Jimmy and other Criborg members could decrypt, and sent it to him.

As soon as the message reached him, she broke the connection and deleted the log files. Hopefully that would be enough to remain under the radar. She daren’t try to send anything else. Not yet. She needed to find a way out first. Get Malik safe.

Before Sasha could disconnect completely from the slate, she felt something tug at her mind, like an errant thought or a leftover dream bubbling to the surface. Something familiar. Something...

Oh shit, it’s him. The nanosecond that thought came to her, she knew it was too late. He had her and dragged her into the system. Elliot had his code tendrils around her. Paralysed, she could only think: I’m going to die here.

–
Another daughter has come to see her father. How nice.

Sasha ignored it, didn’t want to get into a conversation with it, didn’t want to give it time to get its claws into her like it did with Gerry and Petal. Instead she focussed on her surroundings, the make-up of the network. At first it overwhelmed her.

The amount of nodes available seemed infinite. Masses of data flowed around her like a vast ocean. Each computer or chip connected like plankton, but all shared interconnectedness, a single but multipart shared existence.

She could then understand why people liked being on the network: crazy-posthuman-guy in charge aside, there was a beauty to being part of such a massive construct. But then that wasn’t really for her. Jimmy had made her to be independent; she always felt out of place as just another cog in the machine back at Criborg, and she wasn’t about to let that happen here.

Without thinking it through, she dumped all her thoughts in one discharge, flooding the network with data. She let everything go: all her dreams, aspirations, thoughts, knowledge, and memories. Mixed it all together and dropped it out there like an aircraft jettisons fuel.

It bought her time, and she managed to free her mind enough to realise her physical body held the slate: the bridge that connected her internal systems to this wider one.

She smashed the slate against the edge of the stool until she had severed the connection.

A blast of static noise and imagery crashed through her brain, splitting it like a lightning strike. A roaring voice screamed—Elliot’s—as she hit the ground and banged her head against the hard, tiled floor.

She winced with the pain and rolled over.

The operator stared at her. She recognised the look in his eyes, the madness. It was then she realised what needed to be done: trace Elliot’s data-centre and destroy him, and destroy the ronin-chips. She couldn’t let the number being produced get into the public.

The guy with the box... she realised he was probably delivering a cache for distribution. Dammit! She’d need to stop him, and the factory too. All while finding a way of getting Malik out alive.

Chapter 20

13:35 and James still hadn’t heard anything from Petal or Sasha. But as he sat there in his lab, his scruffy assistant, Saladin, sitting next to him, he let the anxiety wash away. His first clone lay inside a scanning and diagnostic machine: a glass and ceramic cylinder embedded with various magnets and radiation arrays. The clone lay on her back with her arms by her sides.

Apart from that and a console desk with the obligatory holoscreen, the lab featured a three-metre-square Plexiglas cell. The idea was once the clone was awake fully, James would run more ‘waking diagnostics’ with her safely in the cell.

Saladin, wearing his dark curly hair over the shoulders of his white lab coat, admired her with his hands casually placed in his pockets, like he was admiring a piece of art at a boring exhibition. “She looks good,” he said.

The look on his face suggested he meant more than just her well-being. Like Petal and Sasha, clone one was athletic and lithe. This one was James’ hunter model, designed to complement Sasha. While Sasha excelled in close-quarter combat and battlefield leadership, clone one was a stalker, sniper, and stealth specialist. She was made to infiltrate the most secure places, perform dangerous reconnaissance, take out high-value targets.

Saladin approached the small holoscreen attached to the front of the scanner tube. “What happened to her? I mean, before you had to put her back into stasis?”

The chart on the holoscreen indicated a steady heartbeat, and her cognitive activity appeared normal—which was approximately forty-percent more efficient than a regular human. James stood next to Saladin and looked on to his first creation.

“She did just one mission for me.” His voice was low like he didn’t want her to hear. “She wasn’t quite ready.” Although the glass cylinder ensured she wouldn’t be able to hear him, the fact she wasn’t floating serenely in her stasis pod unnerved him.

“Go on,” Saladin prompted. “Is there anything specific I ought to know?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We’ve got time before she’s ready to wake fully. A few more tests to run yet.”

James sat on a stool and sighed as he recollected the fateful day. “It was about six years ago. I had her and clone two activated and working with me in the lab, doing basic research projects, mostly so I could see what their learning and general cognitive functioning were capable of.”

“Quick learners, were they?”

“Yeah, something like that. Anyway, after a while it seemed obvious to my team and I that they were ready for a field test. One evening an opportunity presented itself.”

James looked on at the still face of the clone. He pictured her face back then after she did what she did. Even now he felt his skin turn to goose flesh and a cold shiver tickle at his spine like an old ghost come back to haunt him from the past.

With a deep breath he continued on. “General Vickers and a group of his men were running drills on the surface of the island. He was training the new recruits for guerrilla tactics in the field. One of the men cracked.”

“Cracked?” Saladin asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Yes, cracked. His mind fractured. We had a few incidents of people within the Criborg facility lose it completely once out on the surface. We spent many decades underground. Some people just can’t handle that. Anyway, this particular gentleman went rogue, and unbeknownst to Vickers, this recruit had loaded his weapon with live rounds instead of the blanks used for training.”

“That couldn’t have ended well.”

“No. He took out two of his squad before running off into the brush of the island.”

“I see. So that was the opportunity for your hunter? To track and, what? Eliminate him?”

James shook his head. “I set her the task of tracking him. That’s all. I didn’t want him killed. We always strived to help whomever we could. Besides, if he had cracked like he did, it was wise to study him to ensure that others didn’t have the same reaction. Clone one was tasked to locate him so we could bring him in safely.”

“Did she find him?”

“Yes.”

James became silent then as again that terrible image came to his mind. An image he’d tried for years to banish from memory, but, if anything, in the intervening time it had sharpened. An Impressionist painting becoming a hyper-resolution digital photograph, so that every drop of blood, every fibre of tendon and skin were etched in such detail he could see each and every cell.

“What happened? It helps if I know the full story,” Saladin said. “That way, I can best tailor my solution to help repair her aberrant behaviour.”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“She killed the kid. She stalked him for hours, toying with him, scaring him, pushing him into a corner like a lion preying on a baby gazelle. When she had him cornered, she killed him like a wild animal, ripping limbs, tearing flesh. Is that enough detail for you? No?

“When she came back, she dragged his body, what was left of it, in a backpack and dumped the remains in my lab. She bathed in his blood while out there. Can you picture that yet? Look at her form now. Imagine her naked, covered in the gore of a man. Bits of his skin and bone entwined in her hair. And you know the worst thing of it all? She liked it. Was proud of her actions. There she stood, beaming the widest smile you’ve ever seen while blood dripped from her face and arms and hands.”

James took a breath and tried to hide the shake in his hand by placing it in his pocket.

“Oh,” Saladin said, his face taking on an ashen aspect and his body tensing as if she might spring up, smash her way out of the tube and rip him apart. “I read your report and thought she just had anger management and impulse control issues; I didn’t realise it was that bad.”

“It was that bad. That’s why I couldn’t wake them, until now. I just didn’t have the technology to alter that level of damage in her brain. Are you sure your technology will help with this?”

“There’s no such thing as a sure bet,” Saladin said, “but I’m confident it’ll work. Besides, there’s only one way to see, right? Fuentes is eager for us to test it. She’s desperate for the resources. She told me earlier that a group of insurgents killed five park landscapers this morning. We need help dealing with this.”

“Yes, that was... unfortunate. And to a point I agree, but we have to be careful. I created these, and Petal and Sasha, so I’m not green in these matters.”

“Of course not. I wasn’t suggesting that. It’s just we’ve been privy to a lot of Family technology. I’m sure you did great things at Criborg, but with all respect, you didn’t have all the resources that we have at our disposal. From what I read, you and a couple of assistants were all you had?”

“And Sasha. She’s been a great help to me over the years, despite it not being her area of expertise. So explain to me, once we inject clone one with your nanosolution, how will that integrate with her brain? I read your report, but, no offence intended, it was light on scientific details. I gathered it worked similar to NanoStems?”

“Not quite, but it came from the same branch of research.” Saladin handed James his slate and played a video file illustrating how the tech worked while he talked him through it. “Once the scan is finished, we’ll have a fully virtualised model of clone one’s brain and its workings. We can model that against a ‘normal’ brain and see what areas are malfunctioning.”

“So the nanosolution is intelligent? You can specify what areas to fix?”

“Yes. Exactly. The real breakthrough, however, came with networking each nanobot. Despite being the size of regular cells, each one has its own neural network, allowing a meshed network of communications to develop between them. We can then send instructions and receive data, meaning that we can effectively move them into areas where they’re needed the most and replicate the nature of the original, damaged cells.”

“So, unlike NanoStems that generate the cell, these are like virtual cells themselves that can be repurposed on an as-and-when basis?”

Saladin grinned. “Amazing, eh?”

“Very impressive,” James said, analysing the illustrated demo that showed the cells swarm a damaged area of the brain and divert the functions through their own mini cortex system. “How do you issue instructions and receive the data?”

“We can do it two ways: the first is to upload or download to clone one’s internal systems via her neck port; the second is with a secure wireless channel. With the correct slate software, we’ll be able to connect with the nanocells directly.”

“How secure is it?”

“No one’s hacked it yet,” Saladin said, puffing up with pride. “It’s been in the works at Cemprom’s secret tech division for the past decade.”

“Wait a minute.” James handed the slate back to him. “Are you telling me this is still a prototype? It hasn’t been used effectively in the field yet?”

“We’ve done extensive simulations and modelli—”

“No, no, no, this is not right.” James ran a hand through his hair and whirled away. The thought of the battle ’droids turning on Vickers’s men came to him. He thought they were secure, too, after running simulations, yet in the field, on their first mission, they were hacked.

“It’s fine, Doctor,” Saladin said. “We’ll test it with her in the cell first. Make sure it’s okay. Trust me. It’s really had a lot of testing.”

The door opened, and Fuentes walked in, preventing James from protesting further. She looked like she just came from a media studio: her hair nicely done up, her suit perfectly tailored. Her stiletto heels clacked across the tiles. She approached James and put her hand on his shoulder.

“You look flustered, Doctor. Are you okay?”

He opened his mouth to speak when a thud came from the scanner. All three of them looked round to see clone one on her side, her hand spread up against the glass and her mouth shaping words.

“Well, look who’s awake,” Fuentes said, soothing James by massaging his shoulder. “Isn’t she pretty? She’ll be perfect. Your new daughter... our new security officer.”

***

Clone one looked scared. James guessed anyone would be, stuck in a tube with an array of tools and probes scanning each and every brain function. But the haunted look on her face reached further than that. It was the look of someone who had seen and experienced things no one should have to experience. Her lips quivered as Saladin and his young assistant, Malory, helped her stand.

Throughout the slow, careful procedure, clone one hadn’t taken her eyes off James. He couldn’t even remember if she had blinked. It was like she wanted to take all of him in like an all-seeing camera. No shutter. Always open. Always recording.

She shivered. Her naked body rippled with the change of atmosphere. Malory wrapped her in a fleece robe. Water droplets ran off clone one’s head and soaked into the plush fabric. And then came a breathy moan from her lips.

Her throat bobbled, and she pushed herself forward, as if willing the words to come. Words that James wasn’t sure he wanted to hear. What did someone in stasis for six years have to say? What horrors could they suffer in their induced unconscious dream world? Although her brain activity had never registered anything beyond the bare minimum, James always wondered if the clones might not experience something while in stasis.

The thought of being trapped in a nightmare made him look away from her, the guilt too much. But she staggered forward, her baby-babble speech growing louder, more refined as her muscles remembered how to form words.

“Doh... doh... doct...”

Fuentes smiled, impressed at what she saw. “She’s trying to say your name, James. Listen.”

He didn’t want to listen.

When he looked at her, he could see her face from before: covered in blood, the crazy smile, and the pieces of torn skin hanging from her hair.

But despite that, he couldn’t deny her. Not now. He’d come too far. Waited for too long. With Rosario and Saladin’s support, he could make things right. Make her right. For all his faults, he always had hope.

Clone one stepped closer. James waited, unsure what to do. She held her arms out. They shook and trembled, cutting a pitying sight. It broke through his fear. Those eyes of hers still hadn’t blinked; they bore into him as her face beseeched him.

Finally he moved closer, bringing his own arms up to take her outstretched hands.

It was like an electric shock. As soon as they touched, she blinked, and tears flowed. Her face screwed up with too much emotion as she fell into him, wrapping her arms around his body and burying her face into his chest. She trembled against him.

Closing his eyes and bringing his arms around her back, pulling her into a gentle embrace, he promised her everything would be okay. “You’ll be fine, my daughter. In time, you’ll be well again.”

With Saladin and Cemprom’s technology, there was that incredible power again: hope. It could drive everything—for good or bad.

“I think she likes you,” Fuentes said.

“She’s amazing,” added Saladin.

“Okay,” Fuentes said. “Let’s get her in the cell and inject the nanobots. We need to see if her body will react to them.”

“Wait,” James said, feeling protective of the girl in his arms. “She needs time. She’s just woken up.”

“Time’s a luxury we don’t have, I’m afraid. We need to know one way or the other.”

He knew she was right. As cruel as it was, if the procedure worked as Saladin expected, then she would be a huge benefit to the safety of the city and the eradication of Elliot. And when he thought back to it, he created these clones for that very purpose. If there was a chance they could repair the damaged parts of their brains, make them safe and effective, they would fulfil their destiny, but more importantly, he would have his daughters back. Regardless of the source they were based on, he’d always viewed them as his daughters.

And hadn’t he thought every single day when he looked upon their emotionless forms in the stasis pods how much he’d love to have a chance to give them a life safe from insanity? It had worked—to a degree—with Petal and Sasha. Now was an opportunity to improve clone one and two, give them the same chance to live.

“Come on, girl, let’s get you safe inside here and we’ll bring you some food and water. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”