Infinity Reborn (The Infinity Trilogy Book 3) (27 page)

“I will, Commander,” she says, then she turns, and her powerful legs piston beneath her as she dashes away toward her teammates waiting in the distance.

The Lobots are nearly at the foot of the hill. They’re still creepy as hell, but my concern about them has lessened considerably now that we have these thermal wristbands. “OK, everyone, let’s get a move on,” I say.

As I turn to carry on up the stairs, Brody suddenly points back toward the promenade. “The big boys are coming back, too,” he says.

I don’t even have to think twice about what he means as I look over my shoulder and see the three giant green Remote Articulated Mechanoids roll out of the shadows onto the promenade far below, crunching through mounds of fallen debris as the writhing sea of Lobots parts around them.

“Please, let’s just go before they roll up here and we find out the hard way whether or not they shoot at cow-shaped people,” says Bit.

“I wholeheartedly concur,” says Professor Francis.

The group begins moving again, up toward the trees beyond the line of lampposts at the top of the stairs.

“Good luck,” says Jonah as he slowly and painfully gets to his feet.

“I’ll see you soon,” I say. He smiles as I turn and leap up the stairs two at a time to catch up to the rest of the group. After sixty or so more steps, we all finally reach the top, and I look back at Jonah as he slowly lumbers up the steps below us.

“He’ll be fine,” says Percy. “Major Brogan can look after himself, and the core isn’t far. He’ll catch up in no time. It’s just on the edge of Sector A. We can cut through here.” He points into a dark wooded area and then reaches into the canvas bag hanging at his side and pulls out a flashlight. He clicks it on and sets off into the trees as everyone follows behind him. There’s no path, so all we can do is trust that Percy knows where he’s going as we all crunch through the loose leaves and twigs beneath our feet.

“Attention,” Nanny Theresa’s voice says from the radio. “Are you receiving this transmission?”

“Hello?” I reply. “I read you.”

“Something is wrong. Genevieve is missing,” says Nanny Theresa.

“What do you mean she’s missing?”

“As we were observing the firewall, Genevieve said that she felt as if we were being watched, as if there was a new presence of some kind inside the mainframe with us. Genevieve left to investigate nearby systems, and now I cannot locate her. I’m not sure what this may mean, but it makes me extremely uneasy. It would be wise to hurry.”

“We’re nearly there,” says Percy, but it still takes a few more minutes of brisk walking before I can see the vague outline of buildings beyond the edge of the trees. Up ahead Percy finally reaches the end of the wooded area, and we follow behind him out into a tiny grass-covered clearing surrounded by more trees on every side. In the middle of the clearing is a single very small and narrow rectangular concrete structure. It’s barely ten feet high, so I can see silhouettes of taller buildings against the night sky in the distance beyond the trees on the other side. I recognize some of their shapes. That must be the border of the main courtyard in Sector A.

“Oh my god, look!” Bit gasps as she points into the sky over the trees. I look toward where she’s pointing, and I see them. The blue flames of their turbines are unmistakable, especially at night. Five transports are approaching the facility.

“Do you think it’s a rescue team?” asks Bit.

“Maybe,” I say. “If it is, they’ll be our ticket out of here when the whole place goes up.”

“The Lobots!” exclaims Bit. “And the R.A.M.s!”

My eyes widen. “We need to reset the mainframe and shut them all down before they reach Sector A, or whoever is in those transports will either get their brains fried by those damn spiders—”

“Or be made into mincemeat by the R.A.M.s,” adds Bit.

“Hurry!” I bark at Percy. He nods and quickly strides toward the windowless structure, and we all follow closely behind him to the door of the little building, if you can even call it that. It’s only about the size of an elevator.

“Here it is,” Percy says, shining the flashlight on it. “The entrance to the mainframe’s neural computer core.” In the center of the door is a silver hand-shaped metal plate. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what we need to do to open it. I nod toward Brody. His face contorts into a grimace as he gingerly opens his satchel and reaches inside for the grisly foil package.

“If the circumstances were different,” says Professor Francis, “I would say that this is a lovely little out-of-the-way spot. Very secluded. A nice place for a picnic, I imagine.”

“Well, this is not a sandwich,” Brody whimpers through gritted teeth as he retrieves the dripping silver bundle. A hastily wrapped severed human hand looks horrible enough, but in the halo of Percy’s flashlight, it looks all the more ghoulish as Brody carefully unwraps the fingers, trying his best not to touch the skin. But he’s not holding it carefully enough, and the whole hand suddenly slips out of the foil. Brody grabs for it and catches the severed appendage by two of its fingers. “Oh man, it’s still a bit warm,” he murmurs disgustedly as, wincing with displeasure the entire time, he awkwardly places Dr. Pierce’s hand palm down on the silver plate in the center of the door.

There are no chimes or bells or sounds of verification at all, but the door suddenly slides into the ground with a quiet whoosh. A dim light emanates from the entrance, revealing a set of stark white steps leading down through a twinkling crystalline corridor below. Blood drips onto the pavement at Brody’s feet, and he does a strange little shuffling dance to avoid the drops hitting his shoes as he quickly wraps the hand in the torn section of foil blanket and puts it back into his satchel.

I raise the radio to my lips and squeeze the “Talk” button. “Hello? Theresa? Are you there?”

“I can hear you,” she replies.

“Is there any sign of my mother yet?”

“No. I’ve been searching all the nearby systems that I can access,” says Nanny Theresa. “But there’s no sign of Genevieve, and I feel as if the strange presence is watching me. I’ll keep trying to locate your mother, but you must hurry and repair the mainframe.”

“We won’t be much longer,” I reply, then I tuck the radio in my satchel and look at Bit.

“Let’s do this,” Bit whispers, then she turns and trots down the stairs. Brody follows after her as Professor Francis pushes in front of me, eyeing me suspiciously as he descends the stairs behind Brody.

Dean glowers at me, too, for some reason, as he sidles past. “I’m watching you,” he whispers ominously as he follows the Professor through the doorway.

Percy stands at my side and looks down at Dean. “There’s something seriously wrong with that kid,” he murmurs, and I nod in agreement. “After you, milady,” Percy says as he waves his hand toward the door.

I take a deep breath and hurry down the steps behind Dean. The jagged crystalline ceiling and walls look similar to the corridors outside the clean room that we were trapped in all those hours ago, except for one major difference. Those walls were like pristine diamonds, radiating their own gentle light, but the white glow of these walls is marred with dark patches, slowly pulsing blobs of gray just below the surface, as if the crystals have been afflicted by some kind of disease.

Up ahead Bit steps out onto a floor below, and one after another we join her as the stairs end and the corridor opens into a small crystalline space with a passageway curving away off it. Every surface all around us is patterned with the same dark, patchy blurs beneath the craggy white crystals. Percy emerges from the staircase behind me and looks around the walls, his brow furrowed with obvious concern. “I’m no IT expert, but even I can tell that this computer looks as sick as a dog.”

“Brody, can you help me please?” Bit says, fumbling with her satchel. “I need my slate.”

“Oh yeah, of course,” he says as he pulls Bit’s computer free.

“So this is the computer?” asks Professor Francis.

“These crystals are its brain,” replies Percy. “They extend under the whole of Sector A.”

“Whoa,” Brody exclaims as he looks around in wonder. “So we were inside its brain before, y’know, when we first got here?”

“A different part of it but, yes,” says Percy. “The core is the command center of the whole thing.”

“Can you hold it up for me please?” Bit says, and Brody obliges as she switches her slate on with one hand and starts swiping away at its surface.

“How far down is the control center?” I ask, pointing toward the passageway.

“I don’t know,” says Percy. “I don’t have the security access to enter the core, so I’ve never been down here before.”

“My code patches are all in order,” Bit says as she looks up from her slate. “Once I connect my slate to the computer core, it should be relatively easy to fix the damage that I’ve done. At least I hope it will be.”

“Then let’s do it. We’re running out of time,” I say.

Bit nods and strides away down the corridor. Brody immediately turns and jogs after her, and Professor Francis follows right behind him. Dean stares directly at me. His eyes go wide with fear, and he quickly skitters away down the passage after the Professor.

“C’mon,” I say to Percy. “Let’s finish this.”

“Indeed, after you,” he says. He falls in step behind me as I head down the curving passageway after the increasingly strangely behaving Dean McCarthy.

As everyone moves in single file down the crystal tunnel, I watch Dean as he walks on up ahead, looking back at me with every other stride. I always thought he was a goofy kid, but ever since he came back to his senses, it seems like a screw has fallen loose somewhere in his head, and he’s seriously beginning to creep me out. I know I’m not exactly one to talk when it comes to hearing voices, but being connected to that R.A.M. when Nanny Theresa hacked into it has definitely messed him up. I’d probably be messed up, too, if she rampaged through my head like she did to him, so I really should cut him some slack. He’s been through a lot, just like all of us have.

“There’s a door here!” Bit calls back from up ahead. It isn’t long before everyone in front of me begins to slow as the corridor comes to an end. As Percy and I reach the others, I peer over Dean’s shoulder to see a white door with a silver hand-shaped metal plate in the center of it.

“Can someone else do it this time?” Brody whines.

“I’ll do it.” I push past Dean and reach into the satchel. I pull out the silver package, unwrap Dr. Pierce’s hand from the foil, and press the palm to the plate. The door immediately slides down into the floor to reveal a small spherical, perfectly smooth black room. The shiny white floor of the corridor continues into the center of the sphere, creating a short bridge that glows with its own light, and at the end of the bridge is a round platform with a three-foot-high pure-black column positioned in the middle of it.

This is not at all how I imagined the control center of a massive supercomputer to be. I’m not sure what I expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. The round room is absolutely tiny, barely big enough to fit one person in, let alone all of us.

“Bit, do you know what to do?” I ask.

She looks at me and shakes her head. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she says as she slowly walks along the short bridge to the column in the center.

Bit lays her computer slate on top of the black column and prods at its surface. I look around at the inside of the sphere, but nothing is changing; there are no lights or sounds or holoscreens appearing. Nothing.

“I don’t have a clue how to interface with this thing,” says Bit. “Where’s the display? I thought this column might be the connection plate, but my slate is running, and nothing is happening. What kind of computer is this?” When she looks back at us, I can see the absolute frustration on her face.

“You need to put your hand on top of the column,” Percy says from behind me.

“Really?” Bit asks. “And then what?”

“That’s all,” says Percy. “Just put your hand on the top, and the sphere will activate.”

Bit shrugs, slides her slate to the side, and holds her palm over the top of the column.

“OK,” she says, and she takes a deep breath. “Let’s give it a try.”

As Bit lowers her hand over the column, a thought occurs to me. How does Percy know what to do . . . if he’s never been down here before? My brow furrows as I look over at Percy. His wide-eyed stare is fixed on Bit’s hand, and there’s a strange smile of anticipation on his slightly parted lips. Something isn’t right here.

I turn back to Bit and yell, “Wait!” but I’m half a second too late as she slaps her hand onto the glossy black surface of the three-foot-high column.

Bit’s neck suddenly arches backward, and she gasps loudly as her whole body goes completely rigid. The sphere lights up all around her, and as I look back at Percy, I see him lift a walkie-talkie to his lips.

“Dr. Blackstone,” he says as he raises a pistol in his other hand. “It’s done.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Percy places the muzzle of the gun to the back of Professor Francis’s head and pulls the trigger. With a loud bang, the Professor’s forehead erupts, spraying blood and brains all over the side of Dean’s face. Dean just stands there, motionless, as the Professor crumples dead on the floor. Brody turns and looks at Percy in shocked horror, as Percy digs the gun into Brody’s left eye socket and pulls the trigger again.

Click.

The gun has jammed. I yell out loud, “Infinity!”

She doesn’t need to be told twice. Her power fills me completely, and I lunge toward Percy. He throws the gun aside and leaps backward down the passageway as a wide-eyed, startled Brody dashes across the bridge toward Bit.

“Bettina!” he yells behind me.

I feel Infinity’s power surge through my body, but I’m not being cast into the darkness. All of Infinity’s movements feel like my own as I take two bounding strides and jump at Percy, whipping my leg out in front of me and slamming him in the chest with the heel of my foot. The strike was hard and severe, but Percy only stumbles backward a few steps and smiles with his perfectly straight white teeth.

Something isn’t right here. I’ve seen Infinity’s power. That kick should’ve shattered his rib cage.

Percy unzips the front of his plastic yellow suit and pulls it off over his shoulders. He lets it fall to the floor, exposing the crisp white shirt, red tie, and black pants he’s wearing underneath. Apart from the blue blazer, it seems that Percy has made himself a brand-new tour-guide uniform, no doubt courtesy of Dr. Pierce’s 3-D printer. Percy calmly steps out of the crumpled plastic suit on the floor, and then, to my horror, he peels the skin of his hands clean off and tosses it aside. The skin came off way too easily; there’s no blood at all, and I quickly realize that the skin is as fake as he is, merely a realistic-looking rubber glove, as artificial as his perfect smile. His real hands underneath are gleaming silver, and as he unbuttons his cuffs and rolls up his sleeves, it becomes blatantly clear that both of his arms are shining chrome-plated cybernetic implants. Judging by the way he took that kick, I’m betting that he must have a fully reinforced chest as well.

“What did you do to Bit?” I say as I raise my fists and adopt a fighting stance.

“Do you really expect me to tell you that?” he asks as he also raises his metallic fists. “I thought you were a smart kid. Can’t you figure it out?”

“I’m clearly not smart enough to have seen through your disguise.”

Percy smiles. “Don’t feel bad. I’ve been fooling people for money since before you were born.”

“That long, huh? Well, that certainly explains the old hardware.”

“What? You mean these?” Percy says, looking at his metal arms.

“I knew a sergeant once who had a similar pair,” I say as I take a step closer to him. “You’ve polished them up, and it looks like you’ve taken good care of them, but those things are antiques. They’re Helcorp Three Thousands, aren’t they?”

Every word coming out of my mouth is Infinity’s, but as she speaks, I can strangely remember the Sergeant she’s talking about. I can even picture his stubbly, frowning face in my head.

“They are Helcorps. German engineering at its finest. Do you have any idea how much a pair of classics like these costs? You should be honored that I’m going to crush your skull against the wall with them.”

My eyes narrow into slits, and adrenaline surges through me as Infinity’s words spit from my lips. “Well, don’t just stand there yapping . . . come at me, ya two-faced bastard.”

“Really?” Percy says, grinning. “Look who’s talking.”

Suddenly he dashes toward me and swings his fist at my head. I could tell from his foot placement and torso position exactly what he was about to do, and as his clumsy punch approaches my face, I can immediately tell that this fight will take me exactly one second to finish. I quickly duck and spin, and as Percy’s fist whooshes over my head, I thrust my leg out behind me and hit him square in the groin with a brutally vicious, bell-ringing kick.

Percy folds in half and lets out a loud and guttural groan as he drops to his knees. He’s pathetic. It’s no wonder he needed a gun. Veins bulge in his neck, and he screws his eyes shut as his face turns bright scarlet. I sidestep around the whimpering Percy. With Infinity guiding my limbs, I jab my fingers hard into a spot on his arm just above where his left triceps would be, then I make a fist and hammer it firmly on his shoulder.

There’s a click, then a whirring sound, and a wide smile dawns across my face as Percy’s left arm detaches from its socket and drops down inside the sleeve of his shirt. He topples sideways from the sudden uneven weight, and I quickly thrust my hand out and catch him by the neck to hold him upright. After another sharp jab and a tap on the shoulder, Percy’s other arm pops away from his body, too. I pull him backward. He thuds to the floor, moaning pathetically as I step over him, grab his metal wrists, and haul his expensive arms completely out of his sleeves.

I drop them on the shiny white floor, then I quickly turn on my heels and run back past a dead Professor Francis and happily smiling Dean into the small spherical room. “Brody! What’s happening?”

He’s standing at the column with both of his hands resting on top of Bit’s hand, and even before I’ve reached him, I can tell by the look on his face that there isn’t going to be any good news. “It’s killing her,” he whispers.

At first I think that Brody must be overreacting, but when I look at Bit’s face, I’m convinced that he’s right. Her eyes are rolled back in her head, her jaw is clenched, and her face is completely ashen. Her throat exudes a labored, croaking sound, and she’s so pale it looks as if all the blood is draining from her body. Her legs are still stiff as a board, and her arched back is spasming and twitching every few seconds. This is not good.

“What the hell is this thing?” I say, looking around at the now white glowing curve of the sphere and the shimmering black column beneath Brody’s hands.

“I don’t know,” whimpers Brody. “But we have to get her off of it.”

“Can we pull her away?” I ask as I wrap my arms around her torso and prepare myself to pull.

“No!” Brody shouts. “I already tried. I pulled as hard as I could. She didn’t budge an inch, and that’s when this happened.” Brody slowly takes his hands away from hers. I’m not completely sure I know what to make of what I see. Bit’s hand looks as if it has . . . melted. Her fingers aren’t there anymore; instead there’s what looks like a flesh-and-blood-colored pool of liquid, and it seems to have mixed into the black surface of the column like swirls of raspberry-ripple ice cream.

“What the hell?” I say, frowning at the sight in utter confusion.

“When I tried to pull her away, it sucked her hand in.”

“There doesn’t look like there’s much of a hand left.”

“I know,” Brody says with trembling lips. “It’s my fault. What if we try to pull her free and it takes her whole arm?”

“It’s just as Dr. Blackstone said it would be!” Percy yells down the passageway as he tries to push his back against the wall with his legs and get to his feet. “The world will be made anew.”

Percy slips and falls back onto the floor, and I glare directly at him. “What is he talking about?”

“I don’t know and don’t care,” mutters Brody. “I swear I’m gonna kill him, Finn. He needs to pay for what he’s done to her.”

“No, Brody,” I reply. “We need to know everything we can about this thing. We need to find out what it’s doing to Bit and how to shut it down.”

“And if we can’t?” Brody asks.

“Then we cut her hand off at the wrist,” I say as I turn and walk down the corridor toward Percy. I’m three strides way from him when Nanny Theresa’s voice barks from inside my satchel.

“Attention! Respond immediately!”

At first I ignore it as I look down at Percy, trying with all my strength to restrain the thoughts of murder boiling through my mind, but as I reach down toward him, Nanny Theresa’s voice shouts from my satchel with forceful urgency.

“Please respond! Please!”

Whatever she wants, it must be important if she’s on the cusp of begging. I pull the walkie-talkie from my bag and squeeze the button.

“I’m here. What’s wrong?”

“Everything is wrong,” she replies. “Genevieve is still unaccounted for, and the presence has forced me away from the firewall surrounding the computer core. You must fix the damage now, before it breaks through and corrupts the system even further. Get to the core immediately, I implore you!” Nanny Theresa actually sounds afraid.

“We’re inside the core now, but when Bettina tried to access—”

“Where? I can’t see you.” Nanny Theresa cuts me off midsentence. “I’m looking through the cameras inside the core-control building, and it’s completely empty.”

“But Brody and Bettina are standing inside it. They’re in the core right now. I can see them in there.”

“Describe it to me,” says Nanny Theresa.

“What?” I reply, frowning with confusion.

“Half the camera feeds are corrupted. Describe your location, tell me what it looks like, you stupid child.”

I decide to ignore the insult for now and do as she asks. “It’s a small round room at the end of a crystal corridor and—”

“You’re in the wrong place,” says Nanny Theresa. “You’ve been led astray. Wherever you are, you’re not inside the computer core.”

“Surprise,” Percy says as he leans his head against the wall and chuckles to himself. “This place was built especially for Project Infinity, especially for Bettina.”

“Percy brought us here,” I say into the radio.

“What?” Jonah’s voice grunts from the tiny speaker. “Where are you?”

“Underground, the entrance was in the middle of a small clearing through some trees. I could see the buildings on the border of Sector A.”

“There are no cameras that I can access that are displaying anything like what you described,” says Nanny Theresa.

“I’m coming to look for you,” says Jonah.

“Finn!” Brody shouts from the room. “Hurry, Finn!”

“I have to go. Bit needs my help.”

“We need her inside the actual computer core,” says Nanny Theresa. “Before the firewall is breached!”

“Finn!” Brody shouts again.

“Sorry, I have to go. She needs me,” I say as I flick the “Off” switch and stuff the radio back in my satchel.

I crouch down and grab a smiling Percy by the scruff of the neck. “What is this place, and what is it doing to Bit?”

Percy chuckles. “You thought you were unique . . . ,” he says, grinning at me. “But soon the computer core will be replaced and will spread your friend’s mind into every atom of every person in the whole world.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!” I yell at him.

“It was in the food y’see,” says Percy. “That was so clever of him to put it in the food. Every sandwich and burger and cupcake and salad anyone has eaten in the last ten years has been sprinkled with them. He told me that himself. He’s a genius.”

“Food? What did my father do to the food?”

“Eat your grains,” Percy says, and he chuckles again. “Eat ’em all up. They’re good for you; they’ll make you brand new.”

“Do you mean quantum grains?” I say as I shake him by the collar of his shirt. “There are quantum grains in the global food supply?”

“And she will be the queen of us all,” Percy says, looking back at Bit. “The mother of the new humanity.”

I stare at Percy, frowning in confusion, as Brody yells from the room. “Finn, it’s getting worse!”

I raise my hand, and, with a loud smack, I slap Percy hard across the face. “Tell me how to help Bit, or I’ll shove my fingers through your eye and turn your brain into cat food.”

Suddenly the crystalline walls begin flickering and brightening all around me. Percy looks up at them and gasps. “It’s happening.” His eyes are full of wonder, as if he’s in some kind of daze. “I’m going to be here to witness the dawn of a new age.”

The gray blotches beneath the crystals begin to disappear, and as the walls get brighter and brighter, Percy begins to weep. He’s a mess. Getting anything out of him is a lost cause. I push him angrily, and he topples over onto his side into a blubbing heap as I stand and run back to the sphere.

Bit looks unbelievably horrible. Her eyes are so far rolled back in her head now only the whites are showing, and her cheeks are so drawn that there are hollows in the sides of her face. Her skin is almost pure white now, and even though she’s still standing, it seems as though she’s hardly breathing.

Brody was right, and I wish with every fiber of my being that he wasn’t, but there’s no denying it now. She’s dying.

“Brody.”

He’s staring at Bit, his face twisted with misery. Tears are rolling down his cheeks, and he doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even look at me.

“Brody!” I shout, and he jolts at the sound of my voice and looks at me through blinking, water-filled eyes.

“I need the scalpel. The scalpel that’s in your satchel.”

“What?” he whimpers. “Why?”

“I think you know why.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re not cutting her hand off.”

“I have to Brody; otherwise she’s gonna die.”

He turns away from me and looks at Bit, and his eyes well with more tears.

“Brody! Give me the bag!”

Brody screws his eyes shut and grits his teeth as if every one of my words is cutting him like a razor. But then he takes a deep breath, opens his eyes, and, with a trembling lip, slowly removes his hands from the top of the column and lifts the strap of the satchel over his head. I quickly snatch it from him, kneel down, and tip the contents onto the floor. Matches, glow sticks, plastic cable ties, a flare, a packet of thermal foil blankets, a small bag with a fishing line in it, a couple of carabiners, Dr. Pierce’s hand, two bottles of pills, a first-aid kit, and other assorted knickknacks spill out around my feet and onto the short white bridge. I pop open the first-aid kit, and there it is, sitting on top of some gauze and Band-Aids.

I grab the scalpel, stand up, and hold it over Bit’s wrist. My hand quivers.

Brody wipes his nose on the back of his sleeve with a loud sniffling sound and then averts his eyes. I don’t blame him. I wish I didn’t have to watch what I’m about to do. This isn’t going to be easy, and I don’t just mean the fact that I’m about to cut my friend’s hand off. I mean that I’m going to have to cut her hand off by slicing in between the bones, through the sinewy tendons and rubbery cartilage. This isn’t going to be one quick chop and it’s over; it’s going to be who knows how many long, gruesome, gut-wrenching minutes of sawing and hacking.