The Machine Awakes (17 page)

He pressed the hypodermic to Cait's arm, and the pain faded. She closed her eyes, ready to accept the warm, soft embrace of oblivion once more.

Sorry, sis, not this time.

Cait's eyes flickered open. She was alone in the room, and it was darker, Glass having dimmed the lights as he left. How long she had been out, she had no idea.

She listened again, but there was nothing. Maybe she'd imagined Tyler's voice. Dreamed it. And all she wanted to do now was to sleep and to dream, luxuriating in the floating breathlessness of—

That's just the painkillers.

She opened her eyes properly now. The world became sharper as the effects of the last dose began to fade.

That's it. Fight it.

Cait sighed. She needed to sleep, to rest, to heal.

No time. Come on, focus. It's time to get out of here.

Cait raised her head. The dark room was lit only by the few instruments arranged near to her bed, displaying numbers, graphs, medical data to anybody who cared to look. Cait cast her eye over the equipment. There was a heart rate monitor alongside another machine that showed a series of moving lines racing across its display. Brain function? Cait couldn't have cared less.

All set.

She sat up and paused, just in case being upright made her puke or faint, or both.

Come on!

She closed her eyes. “Where are you? Where are they keeping you?”

First things first. We need to go before they come back.

“Okay, okay, okay.” A deep breath. Upright seemed to be working. Next step was to see if she could stand.

Look, we don't have time for this. But you are my only hope for getting out of here. We need to go. Now.

Cait opened her eyes. Her neck was stiff, almost immobile, the pain just a faint burn, like a sunburn. She reached behind her head and felt two things: a series of leads trailing from her skull, and a plastic bandage taped into place.

She felt around the leads blindly until she located the sensors. She gave one an experimental tug, and it came free easily. Relieved that they were not drilled into her skull, she pulled the rest off. Then she leaned forward and felt around the bandage. It ran from the base of her hairline down to the first big vertebra she could feel easily under her skin. She pressed the bandage and the room spun for just a moment, but then everything settled.

What the
hell
have they done?

Worry about that later, sis. You need to leave.

Cait swung her legs out from under the blanket. She was still dressed, even down to her boots, the only clothing they had removed being her gray T-shirt and the black hoodie. She looked around and saw them dumped out of the way against the wall, sitting on top of her backpack.

Cait stood, one hand braced behind her on the bed. It took a moment to adjust to being back on her feet, but she took that opportunity to get her bearings.

The room was small and plain—it wasn't a permanent medical facility, but a fairly well-fitted field hospital. Everything was portable, on wheels or in stacked cabinets that could be closed up and carried. Looking down, she could trace the various power cables from the monitors and lights across the floor to a large industrial board, the fat cable of which was laid out against the wall, snaking around half the room before connecting to a big wall outlet.

She was still in the warehouse, somewhere in Salt City, she thought, the temporary medical facilities set up for her benefit.

Whether it was that thought that made her feel nauseous, or the drugs Glass had pumped her with, or the abuse her body had withstood over the last few hours—days?—she didn't know, but the room spun a little.

Pushing off the bed, she made a beeline for her clothing and pack. Picking them up off the floor was a bigger challenge than she had expected, the dizziness coming upon her suddenly. She stood back up, balanced herself against the wall, and as the feeling passed, tried again.

Success.

She pulled the T-shirt and hoodie on. The pack, to her surprise, still had the disassembled gun in it. It was useless as a self-defensive weapon, but she didn't see any benefit in leaving it behind either. Zipping the pack shut, she flipped it onto her back and stood.

Footsteps, approaching from behind the closed door.

Someone's coming.

“No shit,” Cait muttered. There was nowhere to hide, and she knew in her addled state she was too slow to get back into the bed. Instead, she flattened herself against the wall behind the door and hoped she could summon the strength to fight her way out with her bare hands if she needed to.

The door opened, and the light rose up to full brightness. Cait squinted, the sudden light painful. She held her breath, fighting down the nausea creeping up from her stomach. A light-headedness came over her, along with a pins-and-needles pricking on her skin, like all her hairs were standing on end.

It was Glass. He walked to the bed quickly, pulling the survival blanket aside as he realized it was empty. He spun around, and—

Cait launched herself forward, almost without thinking. She threw her hand forward, like she was going to shove him in the back. But before she made contact, Glass buckled, his back arched like he'd been struck, sending him crashing into the side of the bed. Then he spun sideways, banging his head on the hard edge of the instrument table on his way to the floor, where he lay on his back, his neck at a peculiar angle, his eyes open and staring.

Cait toppled forward onto the bed, cradling her hand in her arm like she'd been hurt herself. She pushed her forehead into the bed, gasping for breath. Then she forced herself upright, clenching her jaw as she fought to control the dizziness. She gasped again as her movements pulled the bandage on the back of her neck painfully tight.

The lights were on, and the door was open. There was no sound except a steady tick from the monitors next to the bed. Glass's lifeless eyes stared up at her.

She lifted her hand, flexing the fingers. She hadn't touched him, but she knew exactly what had happened. Glass himself had said it. He'd cut the suppressant, and now her talent was back. Cait was relieved and scared at the same time. She'd killed Glass, unintentionally.

But she had to escape. She was fighting for her life now. She had to get out, get somewhere safe, figure this mess out.

“Shit. Shit shit shit shit
shit.
”

What are you waiting for?

“Jesus, wait a second, will you?” Cait said. Shaking her head clear, she moved to the door and stepped out into the corridor.

There was no sign of anyone. The corridor was lit by ceiling tiles, but they were set into an unfinished grid of pipework, tendrils of translucent plastic hanging at regular intervals—packing material of some sort, the tattered streamers slowly unraveling from the abandoned construction work over her head. Looking around, she saw the walls were likewise unfinished, wiring still visible, running alongside a steel framework.

She slowly headed down the corridor. As she closed in on a corner, she heard sounds and pulled back. Footsteps and male voices.

Back, around the corner.

Cait nodded, managing to stop herself from speaking aloud this time. She crept back along the wall, down the passageway she had just come, passed the door to the makeshift medical unit, and found herself in a large open space, perhaps intended to be the building's lobby, or a vehicle garage. There were boxes all over the place, and big stacks of long-forgotten, decaying building materials.

There was an entranceway ahead, a low, wide arch, with orange-yellow light pouring in.

Cait ran across the open space, then slammed her back into the archway, gasping in pain and pausing to check that the way was clear.

On the other side of the arch was a street, lit in the dim flickering streetlights she knew so well.

Salt City, industrial quarter, looking pretty much the way it had when she'd walked down on her way to the rendezvous.

No, not rendezvous.
Ambush.

The ground was wet, and it was still night, although Cait had no idea how much time had passed since she'd been grabbed by Flood's cell. Glancing up, she saw the sky was bruised indigo. Dawn was approaching.

Cait took a breath and ran for her life.

 

19

Kodiak and Braben slipped
back into the Bureau control center. The place was still rammed with agents coordinating the security lockdown and sifting through the data being fed back from the hundreds of marines sweeping the city. The task was monumental, but had so far come back with no results—or at least nothing that required his, Braben's, or Avalon's personal attention. The trio had status reports to review, but as far as Kodiak was concerned, they could wait. Anything important would come directly to them.

The two agents orbited the bullpen on the raised walkway that ran the perimeter, Kodiak picking the planning room on the opposite side, close to where the main ops board was. He gestured for Braben to enter first, then he followed, closed the door, and activated the privacy screen. Immediately the glass walls faded to a flat steel gray.

Braben paced in a tight circle, shaking his head. Kodiak could understand his partner's edginess. What they'd just done was well beyond their authority, even with Avalon's personal authorization. But needs must. The delay in getting access to the Fleet manifest was a deliberate tactic from whomever they were up against, further proof, Kodiak thought, that the whole business was an inside job. There were people in the Fleet who didn't want them to have the information.

Kodiak sat at the table. Braben came to a halt, hands on his hips. He stared at the floor, like he really wanted to say something.

“Take a seat, Mike,” said Kodiak. “We need to start sifting data.”

Braben sighed and with one hand still on his hip, lifted his other, waggling a finger at Kodiak like he was an angry parent. “Someone is going to find that servitor.”

“And when they do they'll send it down to maintenance.”

Braben threw his hands up in the air. “They'll know what happened to it, Von. We are going to be in some deep trouble.”

Kodiak frowned. Braben was right but, honestly, did that matter? They had the data from the manifest. They'd foiled whoever had been trying to stop them from looking at it. True enough, they'd find the servitor and figure out what had happened to it, but Kodiak thought that hardly mattered at the moment. They could deal with that when this was all over. When they found the shooter. When they figured out
why
the Fleet manifest had been kept from them for so long.

And then nobody would care about how they had got hold of the data, or what they had done to get it. If this let them ID and even locate the shooter, that was all that mattered. The ends most certainly would justify the means.

Kodiak would let nothing stand in the way of the investigation. Nothing.

Kodiak gestured for his partner to sit. “We can worry about that later. Come on, let's get to work.”

Braben complied, but he was still agitated, not meeting Kodiak's eye. Kodiak sighed. He really needed his partner's head in the game. But all he could do was get on with it. Braben would be okay, eventually.

Kodiak took the data stick from his pocket and laid it on the table, which lit up, drawing a blue outline around it. A progress bar appeared in front of Kodiak as the table's computer began transferring data. After a few seconds, the copy was complete; then the table display was lit end to end with scrolling text, code from the Fleet manifest taken from the auxiliary control room. Kodiak had to stand up from his chair to see it all. Braben joined him. He whistled.

“This is the raw data from the manifest feed. How the hell do we process this ourselves?”

Kodiak watched the scrolling text. Dammit, Braben had a point there too. The Fleet manifest was a large application, a live-fed database of everything the Fleet owned. He'd used it before—most likely everyone in the Bureau had at some point during the course of their duties and cases, whether to find stolen or missing equipment, or to locate people … or their bodies. If it was tagged by the Fleet, it was in the manifest.

But this wasn't the manifest
application
—as Braben had pointed out, this was the raw data feed, millions of lines of meaningless machine code that the manifest application itself would read and process. While the Bureau had access to that application itself on the Fleet's shared servers, as far as Kodiak knew, there was no way to load up a raw data file.

He pulled on his bottom lip, thinking it over. He thought back to his little hack on Helprin's Gambit—that had worked rather well to throw the casino games. Six months on that station and he'd learned quite a lot about computer systems—aided, of course, by the AI maintenance glasses. They did the heavy lifting.

Kodiak turned to Braben. “Did anything get brought back with me from Helprin's Gambit?”

Braben blinked, then shook his head at the change in subject. “Ah … yeah, there's a box of evidence. Just what you had on you. Unfortunately we had to leave the casino chips behind.”

“Is there a pair of glasses in there? Big, black things. Heavy.”

Braben frowned. “Yeah, I think so. Why?”

“Call up the evidence locker and get them brought up.” He pointed to the table and the endless screeds of text flowing across its entire surface. “I think I have a way of reading this.”

*   *   *

The planning room, even
with the privacy shields down, was a perfectly controlled environment. Air temperature, oxygen content, humidity. Sealed off from the Bureau office, it was much like being inside a U-Star in deep space. With even lighting and a stable environment, you could spend
days
in the room and not know it.