Extensis Vitae (17 page)

One of the guards raised his riot baton and came at Reznik from the side. He ducked under the swing and gave the guard a hard shove, knocking him back into one of the other men. The two of them got tangled up and went down together, the electric pulse getting triggered in the process and shocking both of them.

Cole tried to punch Reznik in the face, but he caught Cole’s fist in his hand and squeezed, causing the guard to cry out in pain as his knuckles cracked. Reznik yanked him forward, twisting his arm up behind his back. The big man was no match for Reznik’s augmented strength as he propelled him toward the cell. Cole’s face met the bars of the cell with a dull
clang
. Reznik turned around, pulling the suddenly listless Cole in front of him just as Red Face lunged at him with a utility knife in his hand.

Cole grunted as the blade jabbed him in the stomach, and his legs went out from under him. Reznik let him fall, and Red Face stumbled sideways, trying to avoid Cole. He punched Red Face in the side, his ribs cracking under the blow. A subsequent uppercut to the jaw dropped him like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

Reznik looked at the remaining guard, who had stood still during the brief scuffle. The man’s eyes were wide and focused on Cole and Red Face. When he saw Reznik’s glare, he ran for the door. Reznik extended his arm and clotheslined the guard. It looked as if he had run into a steel bar at full force. The breath whooshed out of the guard and he went down hard. Reznik grabbed him by the vest one-handed and tossed him up against the wall. The man slid down, wide-eyed, gasping for breath.

The sound of slow applause drew Reznik’s attention. Rin was clapping her chained hands. She sagged weakly against the bars, but her eyes were bright and her lips were curved in a cynical smile. Surprisingly, the batons and fists of her attackers didn’t seem to have left any marks on her.

“Are you all right?” Reznik asked. He retrieved the key ring from Cole’s belt and walked over to the cell.

Rin met his eyes as he unlocked her handcuffs. “I’ve survived a lot worse than what these fools could manage, but it’s good that you got here when you did.”

“I’m sorry this happened. I gave you my word that you wouldn’t be mistreated, and then this happens.” He scowled and tossed the handcuffs on the desk.

“You could have done a lot worse to them. Why show so much restraint?”

Just then, June entered the room. Her eyes went wide at the bodies on the floor. Cole and Red Face were out cold, and the other three weren’t much better off.

He walked over to June. “Did you take care of it?” he asked under his breath.

She nodded. “Just like you said, they had switched off the camera,” she replied quietly. “I caught it all on tape—starting with the part when Cole zapped her on the ear.”

Reznik smiled at her. “Nice work, June.”

He turned back to Rin. “That’s why I showed restraint,” he said with a nod at the camera in the corner. “Need a bargaining chip when I talk to Swanson again, which I imagine will be soon.”

Rin just nodded. She turned away and stretched, trying to massage the cramps out of her back and shoulders. She took a seat on the cot. “I’m going to sit the rest of this one out.”

***

“What in the Seven Hells happened here?” Swanson barked. He stood just inside the doorway of the detention room with his hands on his hips. His hair was sticking up from sleep and his uniform was rumpled. June stood behind him in the doorway. Reznik sat on the edge of the desk, while Cole and the four others sat lined up on the floor against the wall. Rin lounged on the cot in her cell, feigning disinterest.

Cole was holding a bandage to his gut, and his forehead was developing a vertical bruise from where he had met the cell bars face first. Red Face held a rag to his nose, trying to stop the bleeding.

“Officer Cole, report!” the administrator bellowed.

Cole flinched and spoke up. “Sir, there was a problem with the prisoner. She was being unruly, so we had to calm her down.”

“And I suppose she kicked all of your asses while locked up in that cell, did she?” Swanson asked with raised eyebrows.

“Well, sir, we were tending to her when her accomplice, Mr. Reznik here, jumped us from behind.” Cole evidently thought the cameras had remained off during the whole incident.

“And my security team brought along Mr. Murphy and Roberts here as back up, is that it?” Swanson asked incredulously, looking at the civilians. “I’m sure when I review the surveillance footage, your story will be corroborated, yes?”

The five of them looked very nervous now. “You said the video is prepped for review—right, my dear?” Swanson asked June over his shoulder.

“Yes, sir. I pulled the tape and it looks like about ten minutes are missing, but there should be enough there for you to review if you like.”

Cole and his friends were sweating profusely now. Reznik had to force himself to keep a smile off his face. Swanson paced back and forth, glowering at them. He stopped in front of the cell and looked over Rin. “You sure you don’t want to change your story before I review the video, Officer Cole?”

“Sir, we had a little bit to drink and decided to check on the prisoner. She started taunting us and we had to teach her a lesson! I guess we got a little carried away.” Reznik was sure the part about Rin taunting them was a lie. Cole appealed to Swanson, “Surely she can’t get away with murdering and raping our people and who knows what else they did to the citizens of Colony 13!”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet what I’m going to do about her. But I
do
know that my security detail should be above abusing prisoners, no matter what taunts she may have hurled at you. Effective immediately, you, Greene, and Garcia are suspended from duty, and the five of you are assigned to sanitation detail until further notice. Go see Dr. Kane and get checked out, and then I want you to report for duty first thing in the morning.”

“Yes, sir. Understood.” Cole and his buddies started to beat a hasty retreat.

“There will be one other thing, though, Officer Cole.” Swanson held out his hand. “You are relieved of your position as Captain of Security. I’ll take your bars now.”

Cole’s face fell as he removed the captain’s bars from the breast of his uniform. He handed them over and left in shame.

“All right, let’s take a look at this video,” Swanson said.

Chapter 15

R
eznik watched as June and three other members of the security force sparred and wrestled around on the mats in the fitness center. He had spent the past couple hours showing them some takedowns and hand-to-hand fighting techniques. June, in particular, had proved to be a quick learner. Reznik was impressed with the young woman’s athletic prowess. He knew that she would be giving her male counterparts more than they could handle in no time at all.

A call from Myrna on his Datalink interrupted him. He told the students to continue sparring with each other while he took the call. She sounded upset about something, and rather than discussing it on the Datalink, she wanted Reznik to meet her face to face.

He excused himself from the training session and went to meet Myrna in her lab. When he walked in, he could tell from her body language that something was wrong.

“Myrna, what’s going on?”

“I was speaking to my father just a little while ago about something that had been nagging at me. Michael, there’s some kind of security protocol in your core system that requires an authorization code to unlock. I encountered it when I first logged in to the BIOS, but I was able to bypass it. When I spoke with my father, however, he said the military used to protect their combat models from unauthorized use by having some kind of codes built into the firmware.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s some type of kill switch. As to what it does, I’m not sure.” Her eyes were filled with concern. “My father wasn’t sure about any of the details—he hadn’t ever tried to activate that body or any of the augmentations before, so he hadn’t poked around inside the BIOS like I did. I’m afraid I might have done something really terrible to you in my ignorance.”

Reznik thought for a moment. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. First let’s find out what we are dealing with. We could try asking Rin—she might have some knowledge of this. It sounds like these security protocols might be similar to that token device that she has.”

***

Rin was sitting on the floor in a lotus position when they arrived at the holding cell. She regarded them silently as they entered. Reznik pulled up a chair near the bars while Myrna sat near the door.

“Hello, Rin,” Reznik greeted her.

“Good morning.”

“I have a question that I was hoping you might be able to answer. Apparently there’s a code required to deactivate some type of security protocol with this body. Are you familiar with how that works?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Did they not enter the code when they activated that skin?”

Reznik took ‘skin’ to be a slang term for ‘body.’ “No. It was able to be temporarily bypassed, and since this body was acquired from elsewhere, the codes weren’t with it.”

“Interesting. How long have you been re-skinned?”

Reznik looked at Myrna. “Five days? Six?”

“Six,” she answered.

“You’re the one who brought him back?” Rin asked. Seeing Myrna’s nod, Rin just shook her head. “You people shouldn’t tamper with matters you don’t understand.”

“Care to elaborate?” Reznik asked.

For a moment, he thought Rin wouldn’t say any more, but then she spoke again. “Most combat skins have some type of command control or kill switch. The commercial models tend to use tokens or something similar, while the old military models used kill switches. This was done to prevent unauthorized use and to neutralize any that went rogue. The black market is very lucrative for advanced combat skins, and the owners obviously don’t want them to fall into the wrong hands and potentially be turned against them. From what I’ve heard of the military models, some can be temporarily bypassed, but have a limited expiration date. If the code is not entered within a specific amount of time, certain means are then used to induce cardiac arrest or stroke. In other words, once the time runs out, you run out.”

Reznik didn’t know how to respond to her sobering assessment.
Just when I’m starting to get somewhat accustomed to this new life, I find out that I’m literally a ticking time bomb
, he thought.

Rin got up from her lotus position and began doing push-ups, lean muscles rippling in her shoulders and back. Reznik watched her as he sat there stunned, his thoughts racing.

Myrna came over and put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ve got to do something. Let’s go see Hal—he might be able to think of something.”

“Who is Hal?”

“He’s our chief information systems technician.”

“Any idea how long until this kill switch kicks in?” Reznik asked Rin as she knocked out what had to be her fiftieth push-up. She sprang back to her feet.

“A week or two, I would think.” She shrugged. “If I were you, I’d either find those codes ASAP or find a damn good hacker.” With ease, she leapt straight up and grabbed onto the steel rafter and began doing pull-ups.

Reznik got to his feet. “I appreciate the information,” he said with a sigh. “Let’s go see what Hal has to say.”

***

Hal occupied a small office adjacent to the mainframe room. The place was a chaotic mess, with coils of cable, computer equipment, and numerous boxes of what appeared to be miscellaneous junk piled around the small room haphazardly. It was just as Reznik had imagined it would be. The only things missing were the empty pizza boxes and Mountain Dew cans that he had been half-expecting to see strewn about.

A huge three-dimensional user interface was projected across the room, illuminating the claustrophobic space with a soft glow. A small man sat in a chair and was gesturing frantically in the air, manipulating icons on the interface. The man had greasy hair and hunched shoulders, and wore some type of special glasses.

Hal turned out to be brusque but professional once they had been introduced and were talking business.

“A kill switch? I’d heard that such a thing exists with these military spec clones, but I have never seen one before. I could take a peek at this code of yours,” Hal offered with the gleam of a challenge in his eye.