The Rendering (8 page)

Where something whispered, “Sug.”

I yelped—but softly.

“Sug Solomon. Ssep a lissle sloser.”

Step a little closer?
I turned slowly and eyed the fridge-thing. The snakeskin was coated with what looked like barnacles.

“Yes, here.” The barnacles opened and closed, making the eerie whispering. “San you hear? There is no visual abilisy.”

I kept my distance. “Um, who are you?”

“Lise the soffeemaser.”

“The coffeemaker?”

“Yes. Lissen, Sug—”

“First a coffeemaker, and now I’m talking to a snake fridge?” I said. “With barnacles?”

“Lissen! You muss fin—”

“I lost the Protocol cube.”

“I know. We muss—”

Well, let me translate. A little of that snake fridge accent goes a long way.

Instead of hurrying, I panicked. My breath grew shallow, and my knees turned to applesauce.

And I suddenly, desperately wished I’d known my mom
better—because I wanted to pray for her to help me. If ever I needed someone watching from above, that time was now.

I knew that Auntie M would watch over me if she could, but I couldn’t accept that she was dead. I still expected her to walk through the door and make everything all right—even though I knew that wasn’t possible.

I started to hyperventilate, my mind spinning in crazy circles.

Then a thought struck me: maybe Auntie M wasn’t gonna walk through the door, but she’d made me who I was. And maybe I’d never known my mom, but that didn’t matter. Not at all. Because if she was watching,
she
knew
me
.

I took a few deep breaths.
This one’s for you, Auntie M. And for you, Mom
.

I looked for a door handle on the snakeskin fridge. I looked for a latch. Instead, I found a seam inside a flap of skin. Like a puckered scar. It was oozing neon green glop.

“Reach inside,” the fridge whispered.

So I wormed my hand to the inside, which was slimy and warm and throbbing faintly.

Dis. Gusting.

“Deeper,” the fridge said. “Until your elbow is at the seam.”

So I shoved my hand in deeper, until my elbow disappeared into the seam. And my fingertips felt … something.
Something harder and more distinct than warm humming goo.

I hooked an edge with my fingers and pulled against the resistance of the glop inside. Then another edge, and another. Finally, with a wet
splooch
, I dragged three meaty chunks through the seam.

And they did look kinda like T-bone steaks, except with touch screens and stubby little plugs—which might’ve been cool if I hadn’t been covered in snakeskin-fridge goo.

Hey. This is Jamie. I’m posting this a couple of months after the Center exploded, and a couple thousand miles away. And with the benefit of hindsight.

This whole story is about to get so crazy—well, so much crazier—that I told Doug he should explain some things.

He said, “If you think it’s a problem, you do it.”

He’s such a bug sometimes.

Anyway, to give you some background, let me start with myself: your classic case of “poor little rich girl.” My parents were—
are
—both lawyers. They made a lot of money, but they worked seventy hours a week and spent another ten driving back and forth to their offices in the city.

I had everything, kinda. They loved me, they provided for me—but they were never really
there
for me. Unlike Doug’s aunt.

So I used to act out a little, and … Let’s just say that I’ve been to my share of therapists. I’m over all that, though. Mostly thanks to Dr. Solomon. After Bug and I became friends, she really took me under her wing. She’s sort of my hero. She said I’ve got the mind for science, too, which is all I’ve ever wanted.

Enough of my personal Hallmark Moment.

What I want to explain is this:

First, those test skunks were digitized. Their bodies died, and they existed only as digital information.

Then there’s the new Awareness that Bug mentioned. We had no clue what was happening in the Center’s data banks at the time, of course. But that Awareness spawned from Dr. Solomon’s scanned mind, then merged with the Center’s AI, forming a brand-new identity. And that Awareness grafted a backup copy of the Protocol, which Roach didn’t know about, onto the skunks. So three digital skunks contained the most powerful cybernautic code on the planet.

But their minds were stuck in the machine. The output paths were destroyed.

Soon they’d die, too.

That’s what those “steaks” were: a way to output scanned minds into physical bodies. Kind of like clay that you can sculpt
into any shape. Because when you transfer a digital entity to the real world, you need
something
from which the body can grow. Well, usually.

So once the Center gave the right commands, the “steaks” would grow back into real skunks—into Larkspur, Cosmo, and Poppy.

Except
now
they’d contain the Protocol.

Only one catch: for precision work like that, to re-create the test skunks exactly, you needed the HostLink in workshop seven. Otherwise, things could get
craaaazy
.

Me again. Doug. While I was getting those techno-steaks,
this
conversation was happening across the Center:

“Commander Hund,” Roach said, tapping at a wall-display keyboard, “I’ve intercepted a communication to the boy.”

Hund turned from the door. “Where is he?”

“Heading for workshop seven—just like you.” Roach touched a few more keys. “There! I finished prepping the HostLink for transport. You’re clear. Remove it before the boy arrives.”

“I’ll wait until he shows,” Hund said. “Then I’ll remove him, too.”

“He’s not important, but the HostLink is critical.”

“I can grab the machine
and
kill the boy.”

Roach smiled coldly. “I’ll send my little pet after the Solomon brat. You get the equipment. Now go.”

Hund turned on his heel and prowled away.

To workshop seven.

I stuffed the three steaks into a specimen pack I found on the floor, and turned back toward the fridge-thing. “Anything else?”

“Roach is destroying all the data banks he can’t steal,” it said. “I will not remain coherent much longer. You are on your own.”

“Great.”

“I believe,” the thing whispered, “in you.”

I grabbed the map that spewed from a nearby printer, and the countdown started. A calm computerized voice came from all the speakers: “Self-destruct initiated. Detonation sequence in forty minutes. Self-destruct initiated. Detonation sequence in forty minutes. Self-destruct initiated. Detonation sequence in
forty minutes. Self-destruct sequence initiated. Detonation sequence in forty minutes.
Self-destruct initiated. Detonation sequence in forty minutes. Self-destruct
initiated. Detonation sequence in forty minutes. Self-destruct initiated. Detonation sequence
in forty minutes. Self-destruct sequence initiated.

By the time the message changed to “Detonation sequence in
thirty-nine
minutes,” I’d raced along two corridors and bounded down three flights of stairs.

If I correctly remembered the floor plan the coffeemaker had shown me, about fifty soldiers patrolled the Center, in groups of two. Except I guessed they weren’t patrolling, not anymore. Now they were looting—dragging all the HostLink components to the loading dock.

So aside from the random patrol, I didn’t have anything to worry about.

Well, other than Hund.

And the tactical nuke.

And the Protocol.

And my aunt.

But other than all
that
? Clear sailing.

Or so I thought, until I stepped from a stairwell in one of the lower sublevels and froze.

Something was slithering toward me from a hole in the wall. A snake or a tentacle or a … I didn’t know. I didn’t stick around to find out. I scrambled backward, and the thing emerged with a
thhhht
from the crack.

It was a centipede about the size of my leg, with a sequence of lights flashing inside and two antennae quivering from each
armored segment. All of them waved at me as the thing undulated closer. It wove between the stair railings, then slithered along the wall, and I saw that it crept on tractor treads layered with tiny suction cups instead of a thousand legs.

This time, I didn’t freeze in terror. I backpedaled upstairs as the thing slithered toward me, fiber-optic antennae waving.

I waited—two seconds, three seconds—then put my hand on the stair railing and vaulted.

I spun in the air, the specimen pack containing the steaks flopping at my side, and landed in a crouch on the landing below. Behind me, I heard the centipede drop from the wall to the floor and scrabble toward the edge of the stairs, ready to leap onto my head and shove pincers into my eyes.

Well, at least I
thought
that was what it wanted.

I shot into the hallway, then closed and bolted the door to the stairway. Much better. I checked the map. Only a few hallways, a tunnel, and an access shaft remained between me and workshop seven.

I crept down a hallway.

I crept down another hallway.

I crept down a third hallway.

And I froze when I heard voices. Sounded like mercenaries grumbling about the helicopter transport. Coming from a big echoing room down the corridor, with a huge monitor and tiers of plush seats.

An auditorium or a surgical theater: an operating room with a view.

I paused outside the door. The voices sounded distant and … 
fuzzy
, somehow. Staticky. Then I realized I wasn’t hearing the mercenaries themselves, just their voices broadcast in the room. Like someone had left a walkie-talkie on one of the seats.

I slumped in relief, took a single step forward, then saw what was broadcasting the voices. And believe me, it was no walkie-talkie.

Instead, I found myself staring at my first cyborg monster.

Imagine the body of an orangutan, squat and muscular with long arms. Now replace the fur with elephant skin—except as slimy as a slug’s foot—and the hands with knobby paddles.

And instead of a head, picture a helmet: a glowing dome, like an upside-down punchbowl with an oil slick swirling in it.

Roach’s “little pet.” A monkeybeast.

One of the first generation of biodroids, though I didn’t know that yet. A crude version, because Roach didn’t have the Protocol … but still dangerous. Still deadly.

Most of the creatures—or machines or whatever—built by the Center were made for scientific applications. Like that snakeskin fridge, or even, I guess, that fiber-optic centipede, which—

That was one of my designs. An experimental
emergency medical unit for disaster response. A mobile, self-guided medic with nanotech healing capacity
.

Yeah, I got that. Especially the “experimental” part.

Anyway,
Roach’
s biodroids were made for one thing and one thing only: destruction.

I stared at the monkeybeast, holding my breath. Afraid to move, even though it was facing the opposite direction.

Then, with one last crackle of static, the voices stopped. A gear whined and the shimmer of the biodroid’s helmet intensified. Its arms shifted unnaturally and seemed to break backward. A second later, its legs did the same.