The Rendering (4 page)

“ ‘Test authorized’?” Auntie M murmured to herself. She knew that nobody was authorized to run tests, not right then. “ ‘System overload’?”

A map of the Center appeared on her screen, with the animal research section flashing. She frowned, stood from her workstation, and headed into the hallway.

She trotted around a corner, through a sliding security door, and past one of the guard stations. Maybe if she hadn’t been distracted by wondering who’d authorized the test, she would’ve noticed that the guard stations were empty.

The guard stations were
never
empty.

But she didn’t notice. She hurried into the animal research
section, where she heard the Quantum Bio-Map Generator humming. She crossed toward the machine, then saw that she wasn’t alone.

“Roach!” she said. “What are you doing here?”

He smiled coldly. “Tidying up some loose ends.”

“You were banned from the Center. Get out.”

“After all the trouble I took to get
in
?”

“You’re lucky they only banned you,” she said. “They should’ve tossed you in jail—you know that scanning an entire organism into the databanks kills the subject. Your reckless experiments—”

“Those ‘reckless experiments’ are the future,” he said. “Who are
they
to fire
me
, the greatest mind in ten generations? I’ll show them. I’ll show you all. Did they think I’d crawl into a hole to lick my wounds? No, I sold my technology to the highest bidder. I bought equipment on the black market and I continued my work. My scanning booths are operational. You’ll see—all you meatpeople, you’ll see what true genius is!”

“Stop with the crazy talk,” Auntie M said, crossing to the security button on the wall. “You’re breaking the law just being inside the perimeter.”

“I write my own laws.”

She pressed the button, but nothing happened. No alarm, no alert. She turned slowly back to Roach, her eyes worried.

“Ah,” he said with another cold smile. “You begin to understand.”

“You disabled the security.”

“You can’t imagine I’m here on a whim.” He glanced at his watch. “No, this is planned to the millisecond.”

“What do you want, Roach?”

“First the Protocol,” he said. “Then the HostLink. How does that sound?”

Auntie M snorted. “Over my dead body.”

“Now that,” Roach said, taking a gun from his pocket, “is a deal.”

And he pulled the trigger.

Okay, so what are the HostLink and the Protocol?

The Center’s top technicians had been working on the HostLink for years, trying to build a machine that could digitize minds from a distance. They planned to use it as a research tool so scientists in the United States could work with teams in Japan and Norway.

They’d just gotten a prototype working—which, I later realized, was why Roach finally attacked. He knew how to make the HostLink hijack any device connected to the Net, to scan
in minds through Web-enabled cell phones and desktop PCs. Thousands of minds at a time. Maybe millions.

And you’ve probably never heard of the Protocol, either—the Biogenic Protocol, the most advanced software produced by the Center. My aunt and Roach had slaved over that code for years, before Roach went insane.

Or
more
insane. He was never what you’d call a poster boy for mental health.

So what
is
the Protocol? Some kind of programming wizardry that switches seamlessly between digital and biological systems.

In other words, I’m not sure. But my aunt said the Protocol was the closest thing to a magic wand you’d find in the digital world. Kind of a universal translator, able to convert brain waves, for example, into software.

That is hardly what I said, Douglas
.

Well, close enough. If anyone wants more info , click the link that says
Protocol
.

All that really matters is this: in the right hands, the HostLink and Protocol are stunning technological advances. But in the wrong hands, they’re deadly weapons that bring biodigital monsters to life and transform real people into digital code. And when people are reduced to code, they don’t just die: their minds are stolen, transformed into processors more powerful than the most cutting-edge computer,
and exploited by the person who scanned them.

Only two things limited the HostLink and Protocol’s power: the user’s skills and imagination. Which kinda sucked, because Roach coded better than anyone alive, and he imagined bloodthirsty hordes of biodroid soldiers.

Back to Roach, pulling the trigger.

Now, nobody doubts that Roach is a stone genius. As far as pure brainpower, the guy’s basically unrivaled.

But you know what? He’s still a crappy shot.

He fired at my aunt and hit the wall behind her. Then he fired again and hit the ceiling. No kidding. He took a breath and steadied the gun, and my aunt ducked behind an aquarium, and the next shot missed her and shattered the fish tank.

Water sloshed everywhere and dozens of guppies splashed to the floor.

Auntie M raced for the exit.

Roach fired three more shots as he ran toward her. He missed and missed and missed and lost his balance on the wet floor. He fell onto his butt and slid across the tile, through all the guppies flipping and flopping in the shallow puddles.

By the time he stood up again, Auntie M was long gone.

Doc Roach pressed a button on his communicator and said, “Commander Hund?”

At that point, I’d never even heard the name Hund, much less seen the man. Still, here’s a little preview:

Hund probably isn’t seven feet tall, but I bet he’s close. He has dark hair and a scar across his face and usually about a hundred pounds of killing machines strapped to his body—a dozen weapons, each one deadlier than the next.

But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is his eyes.

One glows yellow under some kind of an implanted lens. And the other stares at you like Randy Pinhurst (this freaky kid I knew in fifth grade) used to look at flies before he ripped off their wings.

Hund is the commander of Roach’s mercenary army—and a recurring character in my nightmares.

Roach murmured into his communicator: “Commander Hund?”

“We’ve neutralized the guards,” Hund reported. “The building is ours.”

“Not quite. Dr. Solomon is on the loose. I’m pushing the timetable forward.”

“The explosives will be armed in five minutes,” Hund said.

“Then I’m setting detonation for ten.”

Roach tapped a few times on his communicator, and a digital display started running down in a blur.

10:00

9:59

9:58

9:57

9:56

You know how in movies the good guy always stops the timer when it’s at 00:02 or something? I hate that. I always root for the bomb, and the bigger the explosion, the better.

Not this time.

This time, I wanted the timer to stop at 9:56.

Still, here’s a little spoiler. Plenty of stuff happened in the next ten minutes: armed mercenaries, technological miracles, and digital murder. But one thing that didn’t happen? A hero swinging into action and stopping that clock.

So pretty soon, that timer showed

00:09

00:08

00:07

00:06

00:05

00:04

00:03

00:02

00:01

Then the detonator fired.

When Roach had started scanning the skunks, I’d been sitting in Auntie M’s office. Not her lab, of course; that was off-limits. But she’d given me a pass to visit the low-clearance offices, after I’d tagged along on an official tour the year before. I think she’d wanted to get me interested in science class.

Anyway, I’d finished playing
Street Gang
, and I was
bored
.

I’d surfed the Web for a while, but that had gotten stale fast, so I’d called Jamie.

“Hey,” I said when she picked up.

“Don’t tell me,” she said. “You finished playing video games and now you’re bored.”

“That is completely unfair.”

“So what’s up?”

“I finished playing video games and now I’m bored.”

Jamie laughed. “Then start the biology project. Unless you want to get a C-plus again.”

“You sound like Auntie M.”

“Yeah, and I’ll be a world-famous cybernaut when you’re just a loser video gamer.”

We bickered for a while, like we usually did; then I decided to do what she said, like I usually did. I logged in to the Center’s library on my aunt’s computer. “I’ll search the databases for dragonfly stuff,” I told her, “and e-mail you what I find.”

“Focus on that stealth flight ability,” she said. “And their eyes. They have thirty thousand lenses in each eye.”

“Is that a lot? How many do we have in each eye?”

“One.”

“Oh.” I snorted. “Insects.”

“You ought to love this project,” Jamie said.
“Bug.”

Yeah, the other kids sometimes called me Bug, because it rhymes with Doug, obviously, and because of what I said before. Things happen around me. Electronic stuff breaks down. Computers crash and DVDs freeze up. Kilns go haywire in art class and melt all the sculptures.

Have you ever walked down a sidewalk and the streetlights flickered when you passed? Happens to me all the time. And forget about using a microwave. I mean, usually they’re
fine—but every six months, one bursts into flames while nuking a pizza bagel.

That’s why I like my pizzas delivered.

Amazingly, nothing had ever gone haywire at the Center.

Until that night.

“Let’s see … eyes and flight,” I said, tapping a few words into the search field. “Gimme a minute, I’ll send you the results.”

“Sure, and I’ll end up doing all the work.”

“You
like
work,” I said.

“Doug …,” she said warningly. “Not this time.”

“Fine. We’ll work on it in school tomorrow.”

She said okay, and I found a bunch of information about dragonflies. More than a bunch, actually: six gigabytes, including partial DNA mapping and six hours of video.

I liked the common nicknames best:

“Ready for the file?” I asked, and clicked Send.

“I’ve got
CircuitBoard
open,” Jamie said.
CircuitBoard
is a girl game—no fists, no knives, no guns, no blood, no violence. You just try to connect these circuits before the time runs out. Thrilling. “Wait a second.”

“Um,” I said.

“Let me finish, or you’ll mess with my Net connection.”

“I already hit Send,” I said. “Here it comes.”

“Bug! I was at my high score.”

And right then, the timer hit 00:00, and—

The floor collapsed

Back to Aunt Margaret. Before the detonator fired, she escaped Roach, raced to processing lab three, and locked herself inside.

She tried calling the cops, but all Center communications were frozen by that power-draining test on the skunks. She knew she didn’t have much time, so she launched her personal encryption and burrowed into the system, desperate to stop Roach.

Desperate to keep him from getting the Protocol and the HostLink.

Two minutes later, a pounding sounded in the hallway. Then silence for a few seconds, until the door burst inward and Roach’s mercenaries poured inside. Auntie M didn’t even look up from her computer. She just tapped a few more keys and hit Enter.

The mercs pointed these futuristic-looking rifles at her—only the best for Roach’s army. Although I didn’t know it then, he’d spent the past few years working for shadowy corporations and Third World tyrants, multiplying his fortune and perfecting his own technologies. And designing weapons that violated every treaty and moral scruple.

But the mercs didn’t fire; they grabbed Auntie M instead.

“Do you have any idea who you’re working for?” she asked them.

“The guy who signs our checks,” one said.

“Roach isn’t just a guy, he’s a madman.”

The merc shoved her. “Shut up.”

“And if he gets away with this …” She shook her head. “He’s a madman with access to weapons the Pentagon’s never even seen.”

“Yeah?” the mercenary said. “Then I’m gonna ask for a raise.”

Before she could reply, Roach stepped inside, murmuring into his communicator: “What do you mean you can’t find the Protocol?”

“It’s not here,” Hund’s voice said through the speaker.

“We need that Memory Cube, Commander. It’s the key to everything.”

Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of a Memory Cube; they’re not on the market yet and probably won’t be for another twenty years. I’ve seen a few around the Center, though. They’re about the size of a deck of cards and they store data like a hard drive or a USB stick. Except Memory Cubes are so advanced they make your laptop look like a number two pencil.