Code Breakers: Beta (6 page)

“Just five of them—if that list was accurate.”

“I like those odds,” Sasha said. “Do you know how to get there?”

“Yeah, I’m sending you the map reference now.”

She felt a buzz of a notification to her internal implant chip. He sent her the details across their secure VPN. In response she sent him a smiley character.

“Wanna go now?” she said.

Even in the gloom she could tell he was smiling. “Let’s do this.”

***

Sasha crept across the rooftop on her belly. Malik stuck close beside her, his hot breath tickling the exposed skin of her neck, a reassuring wisp of heat in the chilly night. The Dome’s season simulator created a cool breeze. Below her, keeping to the edges of the buildings, a shadow crept in and out of doorways and alleys. Her prey.

From her current position, Sasha could see the depression in the dust and dirt of the roof. Years living underground at Criborg had taught her how to spot even the subtlest of changes. Every room, every corridor appeared the same in that facility. All grey walls and floors. The details made the difference; small changes to the environment enabled her to know her whereabouts and navigate the labyrinthine compound with ease.

Because of her honed observation skills, she knew her wannabe assassin was female. The way she carried her weight and moved gave her away. Although Sasha had yet to get a look at her, she’d conjured an image in her mind of what she might look like, hiding in the shadows, her face at one end of the scope. That image looked like Sasha: predator versus Predator.

Only Sasha had several advantages: Malik for one, and her inbuilt programming for another. She knew that her would-be assassin was entirely human—one of the Dome’s civilians. They were relatively new to this kind of work. An expert would not leave the traces she had. The shadow moved on, past a street lamp. The glass of her scope reflected for a split second.

Sasha turned to Malik and gave him a thumbs-up gesture, followed by a two-finger signal pointing to the base of the building. She attached her grappling hook to the edge of the building and, silent as a moth, descended the three storeys to the ground. Malik followed, landing quietly next to her.

With a push of a button, she unhitched the hook and wound in the wire.

For ten minutes they continued to stalk their prey, staying in shadow, watching, waiting, and making sure they weren’t being observed.

Sasha took point and covered the high ground while Malik took the tail and covered the low. Their target stopped outside a small hutlike building on the edge of the warehouse district: an area gridded out with buildings designed for engineering and construction uses. Within those warehouses, prefabricated homes and offices were created, along with the computer network, its cabling, the infrastructure, and the exoskeleton of the Dome itself.

The hut conjoined a heavy gate. The gate, made from electrified rods, was closed. They wouldn’t be able to scale it. Around the district, more of those gates stood like sentinels between huge, abandoned, ninety-metre-high security towers.

Sasha heard a small buzzing noise, followed by what she thought sounded like a door closing. It came from within the hut. She turned to Malik and said, “How far are we from the offline node’s location?”

Malik took a slate from inside his dark blue suit. He stepped behind a corner of a building to shield the light from the slate. “Approximately three hundred metres into the district, towards the northeast end.” He looked up, pointing to a security tower with a single red light on its roof. “Near there. In an office in one of the warehouse units.”

“You think that’s where the sniper’s gone? A secret entrance within the security hut?”

“It’s possible. In the early days of the Dome, the Family needed to keep much of this place secure while they got everyone onto the AIA network. Some of the citizens weren’t so happy with their plans, so they needed secure ways of entry. I never visited the node, but know that it was registered with us at the office. We weren’t given access codes or other details. Just that it was there and used for Family operations.”

“Okay,” Sasha said. “I should follow her in, see where it leads.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t just report this in with Fuentes and the security services?”

“I doubt we have time. Who knows what they’re planning down there?”

“We need to update them, just in case.”

She realised he had a valid point, but she didn’t want to give Fuentes or Jimmy any excuses to criticise her again. And besides, this was her thing, something to prove to herself and the others that there were other, more direct ways of dealing with an insurgency. Going through the proper channels would only give their enemies a boost; the city didn’t yet have the resources or talent to deploy and stop this threat as well as maintain peace from the various factions within the city vying for power and position.

“I get what you’re saying, and you’re welcome to do what you’ve got to do, but I’m doing this. This is our chance now. I’m going in. Can you keep a look out and cover me?”

“I’m just worried about you,” Malik said.

It was nice that someone was genuinely concerned for her safety and not for some bullshit reason like Jimmy used to spout.

“Thanks,” she said, feeling lame about the lack of reply, but this wasn’t the greatest of times to explore one’s emotions.

Malik poked his head round to watch the towers and other buildings, making sure there was no one watching out for them. Sasha waited, listening. A slight rumble passed underground beneath her feet. “I think there’s a tunnel under here, maybe some kind of shuttle or train.”

She waited a further couple of minutes. Nothing stirred. No noise came from the hut, and there was no disturbance beyond the gates. It seemed to her that within the hut was an access route to the tunnel below.

With a quick look at Malik, she whispered, “You’ve got my back, right?”

“Always.”

“Good. I’ll message you over the VPN. Let’s keep things quiet from now on. And wait for me here. Let me scout the place out first. Are you cool with that? You’re on my side, right?”

“Of course. I...”

It seemed like he wanted to say something else. Words hung on his lips, but went unspoken.

Sasha didn’t think too much about it, couldn’t. She needed to stay focussed on the task: get to the hut and find a way in. She flashed him a quick smile, turned, and dashed like a panther across the open road. Fifty metres and four seconds later, she was at the door of the hut. The key-code panel was still warm from the assassin’s touch.

When she inspected the nine-digit keypad more closely, she noticed that dew from the cool evening air had settled on the buttons—except for the ones recently touched. A few drops remained on some of the buttons, indicating a downward direction. She took a deep breath and followed the pattern, pressing each number in turn.

For what seemed like an eternity, nothing happened, but then there was a buzz followed by a clunk within the door’s mechanism. She pulled on the handle slightly to test it. It opened. She sent Malik a message via their VPN.

–
I’m in. I’ll update you shortly.

The hut was dark and smelled of grease and burnt matches. She took a small OLED torch from an interior pocket of her suit, clicked it on, and investigated further.

At first there was no sign of where the assassin had gone. At just three metres square, the interior only featured a counter attached to the rear wall, above which hung a board with hooks, presumably to hold keycards. She saw no other obvious way out. Sasha tapped her foot on the floor, searching for a hollow sound. It felt and sounded solid. Even the flat ceiling showed no obvious exit points.

As she stood there, pondering, a stream of rising cool air blew across her face. She knew cold air didn’t rise. There must be... She knelt down and ran her hand across the surface. She detected the barest of bumps, a tiny crack in the floorboard. She traced around it until she found a small indentation. Taking a knife from her belt, she placed the tip in the shallow dent and prised it upwards. A mechanism clicked, and a segment of the floor opened.

The stench of mechanical engineering wafted up from the tunnel beneath: oil, grease, rust, sweat, and the acrid flavour of a foundry. It was a familiar scent to her; she’d often visited the engineers and mechanics back at Criborg. Some of them lived most of their lives in the facility and carried the scent around with them like their own brand of cologne.

Once inside the tunnel, she tried to send Malik an update, but the place was EM-shielded; their VPN lost its connection. She was alone. She considered going back to get him, but this was her mission. Besides, she just wanted to scout the place out. As soon as she had some intelligence, she’d go back with a full report. Thinking of this, Sasha took a small head-mounted camera with an infrared module from a utility pocket on her belt and placed it on her forehead.

Beneath her feet were the twin trenches of a tramline.

She followed, stepping quietly and deliberately, feeling her way through the tunnel.

A full fifteen minutes had passed. It felt like walking on a treadmill and not actually getting anywhere. She bent down to inspect the floor’s surface. Like the corridors in Criborg, the tunnel was entirely without features. Every step the same.

Until at last, at the very end, she thought she noticed a light. So far away it appeared no larger than a thumbnail. But with every step it grew larger. And then she was jogging, pulled towards the light like a beacon, unconsciously wanting to be rid of the dark and go into the light.

She regretted it instantly. The light flashed, blinding her. She turned away, shielding her eyes. Now the tunnel lit up all around her, stunning her to a stop. She spun around, trying to get her bearings. Within the blinding light she could make out blurry shapes moving.

Someone grabbed her arms and legs. A hand reached out and ripped the camera from her head. She heard it smash to the ground.

A single voice called out, “Stay still, unless you wish to die.”

Chapter 5

Gabe checked the time on in his internal HUD. 10:15. He was late. He pulled the covers off, threw his legs over, and felt the cold tiles under his feet. All instincts told him to get back into bed, with the warmth of the blankets and... her.

Her name wouldn’t come to him. She’d said it last night, but he was too out of it on booze and guilt. Thought that he’d fuck it out of his system, get back to his old self. But he just felt old and disgusting, looking at the young, bronze-skinned girl. He couldn’t even be sure if she was real or one of Enna’s transcendents. The proprietor of the Spider’s Byte had procured five of them from Enna before all the trouble had started.

Whatever she was, she was good at what she did. And for a short while, Gabe forgot who and what he was, forgot what he’d seen on the slate with his parents’ tribe. Forgot everything that he had done and the consequences that he carried around like a millstone.

But the cold light of morning showed him for what he was: a pathetic old man scared of facing the truth. In a daze, he got up, washed and dressed, and left the girl an extra fifty bins for having to degrade herself to the likes of him.

On his way out of the Spider’s Byte’s private rooms, he reached up for his padre hat hanging on a hook by the door. He stopped his hand before he touched it, dropped his arm, and left it there. He was no longer that person, the one with a persona and a goal: to do good in the world by exorcising AIs and malicious code. People lapped it up, thought he was some kind of holy man with extraordinary powers. But the reality was he was a ’Stem-addicted, self-taught, charlatan hacker.

Not to mention a killer.

Sure, he’d say that those he killed were in self-defence or justified, but he still killed. And he knew he would have to again.

Not wearing the padre hat gave him an idea.

If he was going to shed his persona, he might as well go the whole way.

In the bathroom of the private room, he took the stun-sickle and used the blade to cut away his dreadlocks, letting each one drop to the floor with a thud. When he’d finished, he used the clippers in the room to remove the remaining hair on his head, leaving himself bald.

It showed the various scars from his days in the gangs and a series of botched brain mods: early devices that allowed one to interact with computers directly with thought.

Problem with those was they would go wrong under pressure, taking out parts of the brain with them. He once saw a hacker get too deep into a system, and the mod malfunctioned, boiled his brain within his skull. Shortly after, Gabe replaced his with the more expensive, but infinitely safer, neck port. They came with a feedback buffer that greatly reduced the risk of malfunction and permanent brain damage.

With his new look, Gabe finally left the room and let the cool air of the morning wash over his head. It was surprising to him how different it felt. He seemed lighter.

Shivering, he stalked across the dusty central square of Bachia. Even after all this time, the ground still showed patches of blood—some the result of Gabe’s own hands.

It seemed everywhere he went, blood followed.

***

“Jesus, Gabe. What the hell have you done?” Petal said from her position on the theatre table. Enna, James, and Jess surrounded her, staring at him with expressions of surprise. Alpha and Omega hummed in the corner, speaking their secret language.

Dozens of cables connected them to Enna’s control desk. Wires from Petal’s and the transcendent’s neck ports snaked into the same control hub.

Gabe shrugged; he didn’t want to get into it. “What’s the plan?” Gabe asked, directing it at James and Enna. “You think we can get Gerry out of her mind in one piece?”

“The plan’s to use Alpha to distinguish Gerry’s code from Petal’s mind and bring it out into storage until we can do the same with the failed transcendent. We’ll need you to direct operations, though, Gabriel,” James said.

Gabe noticed that he didn’t look at Petal and vice versa. He felt the tension between them. He could understand her feelings towards him, but he could also relate to James. The lie, that Petal was a clone of his daughter when in truth she was the clone of James’ sister, was at the heart of the issue. From Gabe’s point of view, he didn’t think it mattered a great deal. The fact that Petal and Sasha were here was what counted, regardless of whom they were clones of.

But then, he had the privilege of knowing his parents, growing up with them in the shelters of Hong Kong.

“Are you ready, Gabe?” Enna held a jack lead in her hand, waiting for him.

He took a seat by the theatre table and reached out a hand to touch Petal’s face. As much as she was created as a daughter for James, she was as close as he had to a child.

Back in Hong Kong, he’d met a girl, a fellow gang member. He got her pregnant, but when he returned from one of his scouting missions, she had gone. Rumour amongst the gang was that she lost the baby and, unable to face him, killed herself.

That was something he dared not think too much about.

Gabe took the lead, hooked it into his neck port, and connected with Alpha.

Jess’s eyes widened as she sat on a stool, her small, deformed legs folded beneath her body. She wore a Libertas uniform jacket of blue and silver. Her hair was in a single ponytail. She looked far too innocent to be involved with this kind of stuff. She should be back in the Dome with the other kids, enjoying her life.

And yet despite that, she seemed calmer and more adept than anyone in the room. She reached out her tiny hand and touched Gabe on the arm.

“You’ll be fine, Gabriel.”

“Thanks, Jess. Do ya hear anything? Like Gerry talking or saying anything?” He referred to her unusual talent of being able to listen to data within computers and networks. He suspected she was some kind of cyborg or advanced transcendent. She’d been very quiet about her parents and background or what she was. All she knew, from her point of view, was that she was a normal kid and just happened to have this weird ability.

Gabe knew that her parents were most likely responsible for putting something in her brain, a transceiver of some kind, but for what purpose, he had no idea. People did some weird stuff after the Cataclysm, especially in Darkhan, where a lot of tech and skilled people survived.

The girl shook her head in answer to his question. “I can only hear static coming from Petal and Gerry. It’s too intermingled. From the server, Sakura is sad.”

“Sad?”

“She misses Hajime since I had to decouple them.”

“I never knew AIs could miss each other,” Gabe said, but then remembered they were more than AIs. When coupled, they were like Gerry or Elliot. In fact, they were the first of their kind: uploaded minds. Like the others, however, they too didn’t make it intact.

“Okay, let’s get this going,” Enna said. “Navigate via Alpha, Gabe, and see if you can filter Gerry and Petal. Jess here will listen and let us know if anything unusual happens.”

“Got it. See y’all on the other side.”

Gabe’s mind switched over to an interface mode, meaning that directly within his thoughts he could see and manipulate Alpha’s operating system. He’d done it many times before, when he and Petal had to dispose of AIs and viruses into Alpha’s special storage system. He looked to do something similar, but this time, instead of the AI/virus coming from Petal, he had to go in and extract Gerry’s code directly.

Alpha provided a particular application for an operation like this.

Gabe activated the data-filtering algorithm that would, in theory, allow the server to distinguish between Gerry’s and Petal’s minds.

The program opened up, presenting him with a number of boxes to enter the filtering criteria. Using a sample from Alpha’s log files, he programmed a series of key data points, aligning them to either Gerry or Petal. This would train the filtering program to define the two.

He ran the program.

Sakura, the uploaded human consciousness that ran within Alpha, performed the task, filling up the memory and using all available processing power. The results trickled in, and Gabe scanned through the files. They were strings of textual and graphical data. At first it didn’t make sense to him. The word strings were scrambled into weird collections, and the images were dark amorphous blended shapes.

He programmed a Helix++ decryption program and applied it to the flow of text data. The reason for their strange appearance was that they were a mix of both Petal’s and Gerry’s thoughts. So entwined, he initially saw no way of separating them.

Gabe instructed the server to continue filtering the data and to use the results of his decryption programme as rules in order to help separate the information.

The server’s processor fans hit max speed, and the core temperature continued to increase. Gabe felt someone’s hand grip his arm, but he continued on, trying to find order in the chaos of the data that was Petal’s mind.

Error codes flashed on the server’s display. Gabe ignored them and continued to press on, diving his own mind deeper into the code to try to find something concrete that he could use to prise Gerry from Petal’s mind, but the deeper he went, the more entangled everything became. He found no order of any kind.

The code began to mutate and shift.

The filtering program shut down, as did his decryption utility. He felt his mind being pushed out of the server. A great pain sliced through his neck and into his brain, forcing him out of the operating system. The hand on his arm gripped harder, and a piercing scream pulled him out completely.

Someone yanked the lead from his neck port, severing the connection. He opened his eyes; a white light obscured his vision. His heart rate continued to increase. He realised then the scream was his.

Jess yelled, “Shut it down! He’ll destroy it!”

When his vision returned, he realised it was Petal who was grabbing onto his arm. She bucked on the theatre table, arching her back, breaking the bonds around her wrists. She pulled the lead out of her neck port and turned on to her side, crunching into a ball as her muscles tensed.

James attended to the server, removing cables, but it was too late.

Black smoke came from the machine, and its lights went out one by one.

“She’s gone,” Jess said, tears tracking down her face. “Sakura’s gone!”

“What the hell happened?” Gabe said, still wincing as his brain felt like it was too large for his skull. Pressure pushed against his temples.

“She couldn’t handle it. It was too much. He’s mutated and growing,” Jess said. “Alpha didn’t have enough processing power; Gerry’s too powerful.”

“It’s definitely gone.” Enna referred to the data on the holoscreen. “Alpha’s dead.”

***

Seeing Jess cry nearly broke Gabe. The poor girl climbed off her stool and dragged herself across the floor to sit next to the smoking server. She rested her head against the metal case and sobbed.

How does one console the grief for a dead computer, even one with a consciousness inside? Gabe was the first to react. He walked round the theatre table and knelt at the girl’s side. He placed a hand on her shoulder. She turned and hugged him as the tears continued to flow.

“It’s okay,” Gabe said. “It’ll be all right.”

“She’s gone,” Jess said. “I can’t hear her anymore.”

Gabe looked to James and Enna at the holoscreen. “Is the memory damaged?” he asked.

Enna gestured towards the screen and scanned the flowing lines of data. “No, they’re okay. The power unit is gone, the motherboard has shorted, and the CPU is fried. The memory is good, though. We could transfer it to something else.”

“No!” Jess screamed as she broke away from Gabe, stretching out her arms. “You can’t. It’s all one thing.”

“What do you mean?” Enna said.

“The machine, the memory, it’s all Sakura. The memory’s okay, right? We have to fix it, bring it back. Bring Sakura back.”

“How?” James said. “This is really old tech. We don’t have the parts to do this kind of thing. We could perhaps engineer something similar if we—”

“No,” Jess said. “It has to be the same. It’s like her DNA, and you can’t just go changing stuff.”

Enna sat up from the control table and leaned against the wall. “We need to fix it anyway if we’re to find a way of destroying Elliot. We need both servers fully operational.” She looked to James. “Is there no way of fixing the CPU and motherboard directly?”

“Not that I know of. Even with my equipment back at Criborg I couldn’t do it. It’s entirely different architecture to what we’ve been using for the last few decades. It was a bespoke design by Hajime and Sakura. One of a kind.”

“Well, I’m fucked, then, right?” Petal said, sitting up, nursing her head in her hands, her hair wet and limp with sweat. “If we can’t download Gerry, he’ll mutate and take me with him. Just a matter of time, ain’t it?”

“Um, it might not be,” Jess said, releasing her grip on Gabe’s waist. “Gabe, when you were trying to divide them, I saw something. It wasn’t a mutation or anything. It was, I don’t know, I’ve never seen or heard anything like it before; it’s like it was a new thing, combined from Petal and Gerry.”

“A new thing? Like a hybrid?” Petal asked.

Jess shrugged, wiping her face. She sat silently looking at Petal as if she were scanning her, then finally said, “I can’t hear Gerry anymore—his data and yours is one thing. A new voice.”

Petal remained passive, clearly trying to take in the ramifications. This was unlike anything Gabe had seen before, but then he’d never known it was possible to upload a mind before he experienced Elliot.

“How do ya feel?” Gabe asked Petal.

“Apart from the shock of the disconnection, I feel okay.”

“What if...” Gabe looked back at the server, thought about the data he saw, the melding of information and images.

“What is it, Gabe?” Enna asked. “What are you thinking?”

“Could it be that Gerry ain’t gonna mutate in a dangerous way like Elliot? Take Sakura and Hajime. They uploaded, and although it went wrong, they’re not dangerous or malicious, are they? They just do their thing inside the servers. What if Gerry’s the same? What if he and Petal are...” He searched for the right word. “Compatible, like synergistically? What if their minds work together? After all, Gerry was the first to be completely at one with his AIA, who’s to say his mind wouldn’t fuse and meld without any repercussions?”