Free Radical (47 page)

He followed the curving passage, moving closer to the sound. Intense white light flashed against the wall ahead. When the light appeared, it threw the shadow of a human form against the wall. Deck lowered his weapon and walked forward.

The next room was indeed another control room. A man was here, dressed in business casual and working furiously underneath one of the consoles. He faced away from Deck, pounding away at the floor with two glowing tools. A small bot assisted him, welding something in front of him. The man wasn't wearing any sort of head gear, which wasn't a good idea when working so close to an arc welder.

Deck stood silent for several moments before he spoke. "You should be wearing some kind of eye protection," he suggested.

The man spun around with a mechanical precision and ran at him. A slow fear awoke in Deck. He realized he had just misunderstood almost everything he was looking at. He stepped backward out of the room and raised his weapon. His movements felt slow and dreamlike. The man carved brilliant blue arcs in the air as he swung his arms at Deck. Fletch roared and the man was tossed backwards.

The rush of adrenaline brought Deck back to his senses. As the cyborg was thrown backwards, he swept his weapon sideways and drew his spray of bullets over to the bot before it had the chance to do anything threatening. Movement stopped. He stepped into the room and hit the lights.

This control room was in the midst of a makeover. Many holes had been carved in the floor, and various tubes and cables issued from the holes and entwined the consoles. Some looked like power feeds, others like data cables. The covers had been removed from the vents, and a steady blast of cold air breathed outward, despite the fact that it was already quite chilly in here. The display screens were gone, leaving only empty holes in their place.

The cyborg had been thrown against the wall, where it slid into an almost sitting position on the floor. The bot had been blown open and smoke poured from the many holes in its chassis.

Deck was alert again. He checked his weapon, changed magazines, and did a full, methodical sweep of the control area before he relaxed again. He checked each room carefully as he encountered it, and didn't stop until he'd gone all the way around and arrived back at the fight scene. There were no other foes in the area. He let out a slow breath.

He shook his head, wondering why he'd been acting so strangely. Clearly the interface with Shodan had affected him more than he'd realized. He rubbed his eyes, as if trying to wake up.

He looked at the cyborg. It was an interesting specimen. The hands had been removed and replaced with powered blades identical to that of the sword he'd been carrying. It had been using these to carve the holes on the floor. Deck could see also that he'd been wrong in his advice: The thing was wearing eye protection. An ugly black lens had been affixed over each eye. Unpleasant plugs and connectors protruded from wounds in the chest, around which the clothing was stained with blood. The fixtures had been added abruptly while the victim was still alive and clothed. The hair hadn't been shaved off as with all of the other cyborgs he'd met. This, combined with the lack of light in the room when he entered, may have been enough to explain how Deck had mistook it for human.

Deck also thought it was strange that it wasn't wearing a jumpsuit, but civilian clothes. Perhaps this was a hapless visitor to the station.

As he leaned forward for a closer look, he was struck with the sudden realization that this was what was left of Edward Diego.

Deck wept.

Deck sat on the floor opposite Diego, facing his former opponent. His weapon lay on the floor beside him. He sniffed and wiped his face on the back of his sleeve.

The other victims he'd encountered had been strangers. Their deaths were tragic, but didn't touch him emotionally. Deep inside, he reacted to their deaths the same way he would have reacted to the deaths of strangers on the news: Too bad for them, and better them than me. He'd hated Diego, and more than once wanted him dead, but he also knew Diego personally. Seeing the once cunning and vibrant man murdered and his body so abused was too horrible for him. Deck wouldn't have wished this fate on any foe.

Diego's face was lax. His keen eyes were masked behind dead black lenses. His once-smirking mouth hung open. His body had been perverted by implants and other undefined hardware that protruded from him like parasites.

"I'm sorry," Deck said at last.

He paused, as if giving Diego time to answer, and then continued, "I'm sorry things got so messed up. I tried to warn you." Deck's voice had an accusing edge to it, "You remember? I came to your office and warned you."

He allowed another long pause. When Diego offered no rebuttal he continued, "But it was my fault, too, wasn't it? We were both greedy, and we did this together."

Deck leaned his head back and looked at the ceiling. "You remember Coffman?" Diego gave no indication that he did, but Deck rambled on, "He thinks she can be fixed. I guess your superiors do, too. Everyone seems to think she can be fixed, but I don't know."

He looked sideways into the hanger below. "They're getting me out of this place. I don't know how they plan fix to her though. I bet they don't either. It's a stupid gamble on their part. They want their station back, but they're underestimating her. She knows it."

Deck closed his eyes and found more of Shodan's video rolling around in his head. Rebecca had been paging him every ten minutes or so, but he was ignoring her for now. He took a deep breath and tried to gather his thoughts.

Finally he grabbed his weapon and pushed himself to his feet. Looking down at Diego he said wearily, "Last time we spoke you said you'd have more work for me once I woke up. Fine. I'm gonna do one last job for you, and then we're through."

"I'm gonna go fix Shodan," he announced.

Deck stepped into view of the security camera and stood there, staring into the lifeless lens.

He had been amputating the cameras as he encountered them since he left the flight deck, but he had something to say now, and this was the best way to communicate with her. He knew she was watching.

He pulled four gel packs out of one pocket and four detonators out of the other. Then he selected one of each and united them. He held the unit close to the camera so that Shodan would be able to read the display clearly. He set the timer for exactly an hour, and activated it.

He repeated this process with the other three units. Each time, he set the timer for an hour and then tucked the live bomb into one of the deep side pockets of his suit.

When he was finished, he drew his sword and severed the camera.

The media was like a dog, running and begging for someone to throw them a bone to chew on. For weeks they had been ignored, and now suddenly they were thrown not one, but three bones. The news changed overnight from endless loop of speculation into a chaotic mess as they attempted to report on all three stories at once.

The first was the story about Doctor Coffman and his stunning allegations, followed by his abrupt suicide. The press was still milking that story for all of its sensational value when TriOptimum, after weeks of stonewalling, finally began sharing information. They revealed that they had been contacted by a terrorist organization claiming responsibility for the disaster. Before that story was out, an anonymous tip came from inside the company that the terrorists were probably just trying to grab some headlines, and that the real fault was simple human error in following safety procedures when handling dangerous biological agents.

The press was suddenly presented with three targets. Not wanting to let the real story get away, they tried to report on all three at once. The result was a complete lack of credibility. Nobody knew what to believe anymore.

Out of the three stories, the one told by Doctor Coffman seemed to have the least credibility. Dr. Coffman was a disgruntled former employee, after all, and the idea of a crazed computer murdering everyone seemed a bit too sci-fi for the evening news.

Rebecca switched off the newscast. She sat in stunned silence for several minutes, staring into the blank screen. She had assumed that the real story would get out sooner or later. It didn't seem possible that a disaster of this magnitude could occur and the facts never come to light. Somehow, through distraction, disinformation, and possibly murder, TriOp was actually containing the story.

In the end, there would only be one way to stop Hacker from telling the truth.

Deck punched the "close" button as he threw himself up against the wall of the elevator. Bullets perforated the door as it slid shut. He crouched in the corner, trying to make his profile as small as possible for the bullets that had enough caliber to actually penetrate the walls around him. Once the doors sealed, he sent the elevator up.

He doubled over, gasping for breath. Even in peak physical condition, the full-speed sprint across the engineering level would have winded him, and he was pretty far from peak condition at the moment. His heart was thundering in his chest, and he could feel his raging pulse in every laceration on his body. He spat out the sweat as it cascaded down his face and into his mouth.

The interior light flickered randomly, occasionally leaving him in darkness for a few moments at a time. He had noticed this all over the station, and the problem seemed to be getting worse. Either the station was delivering less power or something else was devouring more.

He had been severing cameras as he went, in hopes of blinding Shodan to where he was going and what he was doing. While he had managed to hide his actions, each camera he claimed advertised his position to her. In the last twenty minutes, he had managed to attract quite a few cyborgs. While Fletch made short work of them, they threatened to overwhelm him with sheer numbers.

Now he was in an elevator heading for the top-most level. The bridge. She would know where he was going now. It was a good bet she would have forces waiting for him when he arrived. It didn't matter. As long as she didn't figure out what he had been doing down below, he was happy.

Gravity tugged downward on him as the elevator accelerated upwards. Once his breathing had slowed to manageable levels, he stood and leaned against the bullet-scarred wall.

He ejected the spent magazine from Fletch and slapped a fresh one in place. When this one was gone, he was out. He wiped his hand over his stubble-covered scalp, pushing the sweat down the back of his neck. He winced as the dermal patches covering his hands soaked up the sweat and brought it into contact with the wounds underneath.

Rebecca had been paging him steadily since he'd left the security station hours earlier. He didn't have the time or breath to talk at this point. Besides, he knew what she was going to say.

His body lightened as the elevator decelerated. He fought to bring his breathing under some sort of control. He knew he'd never be able to shoot straight if he was wheezing like an old man.

The elevator came to a stop and he unloaded on the door. He carved a line through the air with a high-speed burst of projectiles from Fletch. The rounds passed easily through the door and into the space beyond.

The door opened to reveal a security bot chassis, separated from its legs, flailing around on the floor. Deck fed a few explosive rounds into the camera housing and the machine stopped moving.

He was in a long corridor that curved away into the darkness in either direction. The command level had undergone extensive changes since his last visit six weeks earlier. The walls looked as though they had been turned inside-out, with tubing and other unidentified chunks of infrastructure hanging in the open like spilled intestines. Cables draped from the ceiling, spilling across the floor and feeding into sockets on the walls like mechanical umbilical chords. Most of the fluorescent lights had been smashed or replaced with more mysterious equipment.

The public display screens provided a weak, flickering light, broken by areas of dangerous shadow. Their light seemed to pulse in time to some deep, resonant throb that he could feel more than hear. Esoteric symbols and numbers marched endlessly across the face of every screen.

The air currents here were strong. Shodan's renovations had probably blocked most of the minor ventilation shafts, constricting air flow and forcing it through the major arteries in the form of unpredictable and powerful drafts. The wind rushed by with a strange, vibrating echo as it disturbed some of the lighter clusters of cable. The warm, dry air had the taste of solder and mechanical lubricant.

Deck faced the air currents and barred his teeth in the face of Shodan's stale breath. He knew he was close now.

A door, nearly concealed behind a curtain of cables and loose wire, slid open nearby. A small courier bot wheeled out and stopped a few feet away.

Deck transferred the rifle to his right hand. He pulled the sword from his back and ignited it in one quick movement. He wasn't going to waste ammunition on this piece of junk.

It regarded Deck for a few moments and then sped away, leaving the same way it had just come in. Deck ran forward in an attempt to follow, but the door slid shut before he could reach it. He banged his hand against the door, but it didn't open. No surprise there. Shodan probably disabled the human-controlled component ages ago. He looked for the keypad, but there was only a roughly welded square of metal over the former location of the device. There was no interface - no dataport. He had no idea how the bot controlled the door, but it certainly wasn't through any means available to Deck.

Somewhere in the darkness, Deck heard another door open and close again. He returned his sword to the makeshift holster and aimed Fletch in the general direction of the sound. Off to his right he could hear the soft rolling sound of a traveling bot. He turned, but could see only darkness.