The Rendering (7 page)

Impossible things.

By definition, Douglas, nothing that happens is impossible
.

Maybe so. But this was pretty close.

As you no doubt guessed, the Center used a sophisticated artificial intelligence woven through the buildings and labs and even the parking lot. The AI monitored tests and printed reports and controlled the air-conditioning and validated parking. And made coffee.

I figured it also tried to protect kids caught in mercenary attacks. I mean, obviously the mechanized voice and the coffeepot were controlled by the AI, right?

Wrong.

The first clue: the Center’s AI had never been so
active
before.

Nobody wanted an artificially intelligent robotic overlord in
control of a weapons lab, so they designed the AI more like a clever calculator than like Skynet. While it handled power surges and electron microscopy, it couldn’t reformat the blueprints into video game levels or ring phones to distract mercenaries.

Then who did?

Well, now
that
is the question.

Minutes before Hund threatened me with his knife, a newborn Awareness swirled and clustered and slowly woke in the depths of the Center’s memory system. A completely new kind of intelligence, one that didn’t even have a name yet.

Just a mind, floating in the digital darkness. An offshoot of my aunt’s uploaded brain—mostly—though I didn’t know that then. Even
she
didn’t know that then.

A sensation disturbed the quiet. The newborn Awareness scanned the area, and detected terror and panic. Internal sensors swiveled and evaluated … then focused on three life forms:

The skunks Roach had scanned into the mainframe before the detonator exploded. Their bodies had died within minutes, and their minds had dissolved into ones and zeros. But they were still afraid, still trapped inside the machine.

That was the first emotion the Awareness ever faced: the fear of three disembodied skunks. And the first emotion the Awareness ever
felt
? A combination of kindness and pity.

The Awareness realized that the skunks were on the verge of complete brain death, and with her innate sense of goodness, she refused to let innocent animals die. The Awareness scanned for output pathways, any way to return the skunks to life.

Douglas, your homework!

Gimme a minute, Auntie M. I’m getting to the good part—

Per our agreement that you’d stop posting after you revealed who was responsible for the events at the Center, I’m cutting your Net connection
.

—about the bomb and the skun—

Hey, this is Jamie. Doug’s got a Latin test tomorrow, and things don’t look good. So he asked me to post this:

Sorry I haven’t posted in a few days. Well, a few weeks. Okay, a month.

Things got a little crazy around here between the cyberdroid attack on Wall Street and my getting a 71 percent on my Latin test. Oh, you thought the stock market just crashed for no reason? No, that was Roach and VIRUS.

And Aunt Margaret made me sign up for this after-school project that’ll raise my grade to a solid B-minus. A play for Latin class. I don’t want to talk about it.

You make an admirable Hermes, Douglas
.

I wear a dress in school. Not really helping my social life.

That’s not a dress; that’s a toga
.

What part of “I don’t want to talk about it” did you not understand?

Apologies, Douglas
.

The thing is, fighting VIRUS is more important than
schoolwork, but my aunt insists that a B average is part of my cover. Just an ordinary student, blending into the crowd.

So I’m sorry about the long silence on the blog. And yeah, I’m talking to you, MealyMouth13, the only guy who left a comment. I’ll overlook the fact that all you said was “ur r teh suxxor! more C’/BEr§kuNkz!!!”

Anyway, for all you lurkers, don’t worry. Auntie M’s been monitoring the hits, making sure that Roach can’t trace them. Can’t trace
you
.

But if things are so busy, why am I back?

I mean, I’ve still got no proof that I didn’t kill my aunt. I’ve still got no proof of
any
of this—at least, none that I can safely share.

I’m back because I can’t be the only one who knows what’s happening. They say the truth is out there. Well, it’s my job to make sure they’re right. This information is too important to lose.

Also, I’m stuck on level twenty-nine of
Ambush Z
. Can someone throw me a bone?

So my last post about the Center ended with me in processing lab three, my lifeless aunt on the floor and Commander Hund stalking forward with his blade drawn.

“Take your finger off the cube, kid,” Hund said.

I gaped at his knife. “If I do, you’ll k-kill me.”

“Maybe I’ll let you go,” he said.

“But you w-won’t.”

His smile made me shiver. “Give me the cube, and you won’t feel a thing.”

The sad truth is he scared me so much I almost did what he said. Then I remembered my aunt and shook my head. “I’ll erase it.”

And into the silence, Roach’s voice came: “Commander Hund, I just finished checking, and there
is
no auto-erase on that cube.”

Hund laughed horribly. “You’re bluffing me? Bad decision.”

He spun the knife in his hand and stepped closer until he plucked the cube from my hand.

Well, so much for that. So much for me. After everything that had happened, I’d lost the Protocol.

I’d had only one job: to keep the Protocol safe. Now I’d failed. I’d lost my aunt and I’d failed.

And my problems were just beginning.

Hund slid the cube into his pocket and drew his arm back to slash me with the knife—and the lights went out.

A voice yelled, “Hund!” from across the room, and he reacted, quick as thought. Guns suddenly in his hands, he pivoted, sidestepping into the darkness, completely silent. Stalking whatever had called his name.

His implanted lens shimmered briefly, then turned black in the gloom.

Night vision.

A footstep sounded behind a huge electron microscope, and Hund murmured into his communicator. “Roach. There’s an intruder in processing lab three.”

“Scanning,” Roach’s voice said. “One moment.”

Hund slipped like a shadow around the scope and I heard my aunt whisper, “Doug, get out. Now.”

I looked down. My aunt was on the floor. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were not moving; she wasn’t breathing. She sure wasn’t whispering. I swallowed the lump in my throat and blinked back tears.

“Now!”
her voice repeated. “Slow and steady, don’t attract his attention.…”

I started backing toward the door, wiping my eyes with the heel of my hand.

When I got halfway to the corridor, I heard Roach’s voice: “Nothing there. Only audio inference. Get that cube.”

“Already got it,” Hund grunted. “And now for the boy.”

“The explosion will take care of him.”

My breath caught.
Explosion? What explosion?

“The little twerp tried to
bluff
me,” Hund growled. “This is personal.”

That snapped me out of my fear and grief. I shot the rest of the way across the room and sprinted into the corridor.

I heard Hund behind me. He was a trained mercenary killer, and I was a kid. He was faster than me, stronger than me, bigger than me. There was no chance I was going to get away.

Still, I ran as fast as I could. Out the door, down the hall. I scrambled around the wreckage, waiting for the gunshot.

Then something tugged at my mind. What was it? He was
faster
. No. He was
stronger
. Obviously. He was
bigger
 …

That was it—bigger!

I charged past two doors, grabbed the handle of the third, and spun inside, hearing Hund’s boots close behind me.

I didn’t hesitate. I had no idea what this room was for, but I’d seen it on the
Arsenal Five
blueprints, and I figured—

The room to which you refer housed the data–compression modules
.

Would you stop interrupting? I’m trying to tell a story here. Do the words
dramatic tension
mean nothing to you?

Anyway, inside the room, an array of huge modules extended from the floor to the ceiling, each about six feet square with maybe a foot between them. I could just squeeze into the gaps. No way a guy Hund’s size could follow.

I squeezed, as fast as I could, then moved down five rows, losing myself in the maze.…

I heard Hund step into the room. “Nice try, kid,” he called. “But the exterminator doesn’t need to crawl into the rat hole.”

I heard a
pfffft
. A second later, something clanked to the ground.

“That’s tear gas,” Hund said. “You’re gonna learn a lesson in pain.”

Even though the canister landed on the other side of a module, I could already smell the gas. I looked around, desperate for a way out. My eyes started watering again, not only because I’d lost my aunt, but also because of the tear gas in the air.

Then I found what I was looking for. On the floor was an access grate leading to a cable duct. My eyes stung, and I couldn’t stop blinking, but I managed to pull the grate open and felt the breeze of the ventilation system that cooled the wires.

“I’ve got a mask for you right here,” Hund said. “Come out and I’ll make everything all right.”

Yeah, I bet you will
, I thought.

The tear gas burned my nose and throat and eyes, and I could barely see. But I didn’t need to see to follow the breeze and squeeze under the floor into the duct.

I closed the grate overhead and squirmed away. The duct was maybe two inches wider than my shoulders. I groped blindly ahead—twenty feet, fifty feet—until my heartbeat returned to normal and my vision cleared. Then I lay back in the darkness under an unknown room and just … stopped.

I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to think about Roach or Hund or the Protocol cube—or my aunt, lying limp on the floor.

All I wanted was to curl into a ball and forget.

After a while, voices drifted through the floor above my head. A man and a woman were talking—a pair of Hund’s mercenaries.

“You done with this room?” the woman asked.

The man grunted. “One more crate.”

“What
is
all this stuff?”

“HostLink accessories.” The crate clattered, and the man grunted again. “They want this lab packed up.”

I squirmed in the cramped duct, worming my way closer to a hatch, where I peeked into the room overhead. I saw a sliver of a research lab with black counters and futuristic science gear. The mercenaries were loading everything onto a cart, stealing every last scrap of technology and data … or
almost
every last scrap.

“What’re we supposed to do with that?” the man asked, gesturing to this … 
thing
in the corner that looked like a refrigerator covered with snakeskin. “It won’t fit on the cart.”

“Our orders are to take everything we can. They’ll destroy the rest.”

“Another bomb?”

The woman grinned coldly. “A small-yield nuke. The commander likes his explosions.”

“Let’s haul, then. Don’t wanna get left behind with
that
going off.”

“No worries. We’re almost done. C’mon.”

They rattled away, and I shifted uncomfortably in the duct. When you’re inside one, a cable duct feels an awful lot like a coffin. Especially when you just saw your aunt sprawled on the floor and the words
small-yield nuke
got dropped into the conversation. So as soon as the sound of the cart faded, I climbed into the room.