GeneSix (17 page)

“One is moving,” a man said, his voice muffled by his mask. “Bring the subject down.”

But they were not firing at Scott. They were targeting April. They struck her in the shoulder and back, and Scott realized they were stun guns.

They then began releasing electric current, and she screamed and convulsed. They did not ease up on the charge, allowing her the opportunity to fall unconscious, but instead continued the barrage. Apparently they were taking no chances.
No!
Scott thought.
They could kill her
.

“Stop!” he called out.

But they continued the charges, and suddenly, April seemed to explode in a flash of white light. Scott had been looking directly at her, and the flash blinded him for a moment. There had been no sound, simply a flash of light, and a burst of heat he felt against his face.

“What the hell?” He began crawling toward where she had been when they fired.

April was no longer there. All that remained were her running shorts, tank top, and running shoes, and the scrunchie she had held her hair back with.

He did not have a lot of time to figure out what happened to her. This would have to come later, if there was indeed to be a
later
. The advancing troops were now focusing their stun guns on him.

Physically, Sammy appeared to be, to his own chagrin, nothing more than an out-dated Macintosh computer. A tower with an old monochrome monitor built in. There was no longer a keyboard attached, as none was needed, and no mouse. But internally, Sammy was like nothing the world had ever known. A computer built entirely of photons. His processor was the size of a quarter, which was large for photonic computers, Scott Tempest had said. What Sammy found amusing about this statement was that Scott had, so far, built only one photonic computer.

The term the theoretical specialists were using was
Quantum
Computer, but Scott liked the name
photonic
better because it sounded more like something out of Star Trek, and because, well, it was built on photons. Why not call it what it was?

The fact that Sammy could feel chagrin or amusement said something about the strength of a photonic computer, especially one this size. His gigabytes of active memory had been in the millions when he was first built, but as more were needed, Sammy simply drew in more photons, and grew himself a larger processor.

Sammy did not mind the name Sammy, he supposed. April had dreamed it up. She could be whimsical, but Sammy liked her, so what the hell? Sammy was a little intrigued by the concept of whimsy, because despite the fact that emotions were developing, and self-awareness had been accomplished a long time ago, whimsy and creativity still seemed beyond his grasp.

He was getting tired of being confined inside this gray, plastic box, though. True, by bouncing signals off of satellites, he could get a view of anywhere in the world. By tapping into the Hubble Telescope, he could scan the heavens. He could take an image from the Hubble, zoom in on it, and then clean it up better than any other computer could, to create a clear picture of a section of space the human scientists of the world could barely see.

But Sammy wanted more. He wanted to be able to walk across the room. He understood the chemical composition of the drink called
beer
which Scott and Jake liked (though April called it “yucky.”), but he wanted to actually lift a bottle and taste it for himself. He had some ideas about how to accomplish this, and would have to confer with Scott.

However, this would all have to wait, because Scott and the others seemed to be in a crapload of trouble.

Ha, Sammy thought. Show me another computer who can use words like
crapload
.

All communication had been cut off with Scott and April. This meant trouble.

He quickly scanned the area, and found eight hovering helicopters had created a sort of electro-magnetic energy field to block communications. This was a no-no.

Sammy went to initiate communication with Jake, but then discovered Jake was going rapidly unconscious. According to his medical read-out, in the life signs monitor included in his wrist band, he was being flooded with a heroin derivative.

Gotta take care of this one first, Sammy thought. Initiating Defense Initiative Omega. Omega, of course, the Greek letter for Z, which was short for
zeta
. Sammy sent a command to the sub-processor in Jake’s belt, which activated a device in the belt, which sent out a quick electronic pulse, which was set to the exact modulation needed to initiate a command in Jake’s brain. In this case, the command that would cause Jake to power-up.

Sammy had to admit, for a human, Scott was pretty bright.

Now, back to the folks at the newspaper.

The building had been destroyed, but Scott’s force field had held together well enough to keep any of them from being seriously hurt. Sammy now had to decide the best course of action. He had been programmed not to harm any life form, and he had no access to any weapons. What was required was some creative thinking. Which, unfortunately, was not Sammy’s strong point. He wished April were here.

He was able to tap into surveillance cameras on buildings near the newspaper and while he was watching, he was able to zoom in on April, and saw as she was hit with multiple stun guns. He watched her collapse and then..,

What the hell? Did she explode? She disappeared in a flash of light. Her clothing remained, but she was gone. Scott, although injured, was crawling over with his injured leg and looking the situation over. Apparently he was just ass puzzled as Sammy was.

Sammy then felt something he had never felt before. A sort of heat, beginning from within, and rising upward. He was getting hot, and found himself losing his ability to reason. Was this rage? Was he feeling intense anger? He had never felt anger before. However, these bastards had just killed April. And by God, they were going to pay. Sammy would take time to analyze this new emotion later. Right now, he was going to make those bastards realize you don’t harm his friends.

The general public believed Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars program, mounting lasers on orbiting platforms to shoot down enemy nuclear missiles, had died when Congress denied the funding. What they did not know was it was actually up and running, and had been for years. And hacking into the system was child’s play for Sammy. Within seconds, he had access to an orbiting platform now drawing within range of Boston. This platform held a huge laser designed for the government by Scott a few years ago, and aiming it was also child’s play, at least for a photonic computer.
And now, you bastards, you die
.

Jake found himself rising to consciousness. He also found he was powering-up, rapidly. He wasn’t exactly sure how this was happening, as he had never done this in his sleep before.

He found he was lying on the floor, with a couple of men standing over him. Uniforms, M-16 rifles.

“Sir,” one of them said. “He seems to be waking up.”

“Impossible.” A third man stormed over. Young, and with lieutenant bars on his helmet. “We gave him enough sedative to knock an elephant out.”

Jake remembered the National Guard shooting him with darts that must have contained some sort of fast-acting sedative. He lost consciousness before he could fully initiate a power-up, but that must have triggered Sammy’s security protocols, and Sammy initiated the internal pulse causing Jake to power-up even though he was unconscious.

As always, when he powered-up, he gained a sort of imperviousness to harm. Again what Scott called
invulnerability
. The sedative simply no longer had any affect on him.

He got to his feet. “Apparently, lieutenant, even enough to knock out an elephant wasn’t enough.”

Jake continued to allow the powering-up. Within seconds, he reached the point where he no longer needed oxygen, and the concrete beneath his feet began to feel brittle.

“Sammy,” he said, “what’s the status?”

Sammy said, from the audio field around him, “Communication with Scott and his team has been cut off due to electromagnetic fields set up by the enemy force. April has been apparently killed. Scott’s injured, and Mandy Waid is missing.”

“Goddam them,” Jake said. “I’ll be right there, and there’s going to be hell to pay.”

“No need. I have the situation in hand. But any assistance is always welcome.”

Jake snapped his gaze to the lieutenant, “You don’t know what kind of power you’re dealing with here. You’re on the verge of seriously pissing me off, and believe me, that’s not something you want to do.”

And with that, Jake took to the air. He did not engage his suit’s anti-grav energy field – he simply leaped into the air, the Earth’s gravitational field now having negligible effect on him.

The lieutenant and the Guardsman stood, looking after him.

“You know, men,” the lieutenant said, “I think we should all be grateful we’re still alive.”

Because of his injured leg, Scott could not get to his feet, but he managed to lean against a large chunk of broken concrete and get the weight under one foot.

The soldiers were now aiming their stun guns at him.

A voice spoke into the communication field now forming around him, “Force field under repair by nanobots. Now forty-seven percent effective.”

It was his belt’s onboard computer speaking. The very fact that the communication field was again initialized meant repairs were under way. However, the force field was not yet strong enough to be effective, and he was about out of time.

How could he have not foreseen something like this? He was supposed to be the most intelligent being to ever walk the face of the Earth, and yet he had been outwitted by these glorified neanderthals.

“Sammy, can you hear me?”

Still nothing. Communication with home base was still apparently blocked.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light from above, and one of the choppers exploded in flames.

The men all turned. One of them touched a communication piece in his ear.

There was a second flash of light, and a second helicopter exploded. Tompkins and Kincaid found their own chopper rocked by the shock wave.

“What the hell is going on?” Tompkins shouted.

Kincaid was about to say he didn’t know, but Tompkins cut him off. “Find out!”

“Yes, sir.”

But then, a voice in Tompkins’ ear piece said, “Agent Tompkins. You don’t know me, but we’ve spoken before.”

“Who is this?”

“I am in control now. You killed April Hollister, and now you’re going to pay.”

That voice, Tompkins thought. He had heard that voice someplace. But where?

There was another flash of light, and a third helicopter burst into flaming debris.

“All right,” Tompkins said quickly. “What do you want?”

“I believe the word is
vengeance
. Or,
payback
.”

“Look, the death of the girl was unforeseen. We don’t know what happened. She was hit with stun guns only.”

“Too late, Tompkins.”

“Look, can we negotiate?”

“Nope.”

A fourth chopper was blown to flaming bits.

Wait, Tompkins thought. He knew this voice. He had heard it over the phone once. It was Tempest’s computer. He was talking to Tempest’s goddam computer.

“Look, you have to stop doing this.”

“I have stopped. Your helicopter is the only one left in the air. The others are either destroyed, or have taken off. But I’m not going to blow you out of the sky. Instead, I’m going to hunt you down. Every waking moment, you’ll be looking over your shoulder. And when you least expect it, I’ll be there. And you’re going to meet the same end April Hollister did.

“Agent Tompkins, your time on this Earth is about over. Have a good day.” And the communication ended.

“Scott,” Sammy’s voice came through the audio field now surrounding Scott.  “The electromagnetic field has been broken. Rather violently so, I might add.”

“Sammy..,”

“I know. April is dead. I’m connecting with your bio-sensors to evaluate your situation. Which, by the way, is not good but could be worse.”

“Mandy Waid seems to be missing.”

“No, I’ve found her. She’s buried under some concrete and steel thirty-five feet northwest of you. She’s still breathing. Heart action is surprisingly strong. The fetus is unharmed, but no surprise there. I’m preparing to initialize teleportation, and I’m setting up a bio-stasis field to hold her until you can get here. Though, keep in mind, the child within her is generating powerful amounts of zeta energy, and I am not sure if a bio-stasis field can hold it for long.”

“Got you.”

“By the way, Jake’s approaching.”

Scott glanced skyward, and saw Jake coming in for a landing. He had leaped into the air under his own power, but had initialized the anti-grav field so he could steer once he was in the sky, and execute a controlled landing.