by M. D. Cooper
Rena shrank the code she’d been studying and used her SIS credentials to access the university’s systems. “Here he is. Let’s take a look….” She pulled up a token auth that bore the seal of El Dorado University, and pulled it up alongside the ‘clone’ code.
“Yes,” she said after a moment. “If you account for the artifacts that identify this cylinder as a clone, you can see that the fundamental base neural lattices are the same. This is definitely a clone of Ethan.”
It all fits. The timing. The sweater vest. Ethan’s imprisonment.
Ben blew out a breath and sagged back against the counter, the relief pouring through him taking on a physical presence. He laughed mentally, the feeling almost euphoric.
That was his fatal flaw, not killing the original. Every killer eventually makes the one mistake that will lead to his demise.
When Rena looked at him in alarm, he broke into an ear-splitting grin. “Stars, Rena! I think that’s the best news I’ve heard all week. All year.” He clapped her on the shoulder as he passed, then broke into a jog as he headed back to his office.
No wonder the crimes since Landon’s death all felt like copycats.
He couldn’t wait to tell Esther what they’d just found.
Damn. Landon killed Prime!
* * * * *
Ethan sent out an urgent call for medical help and knelt helplessly beside the unconscious man, feeling his pulse stutter and then stop. He looked up in relief as the lift doors parted and disgorged three medics pushing a mag gurney. The woman in the lead nodded at him as he stood, stepping back out of their way.
“Can you tell me what happened?” she asked as she knelt beside the downed man and placed her left hand on the pulse at the base of his neck.
He realized the woman’s entire left arm was inorganic—a medical prosthetic he was sure held diagnostic scanning equipment and powerful triage mednano. As she began her scan, he saw her direct the other two medics to slide a pallet under him, preparing the man, Ethan assumed, to be transferred to the gurney.
“I have no idea,” he replied now to her query. “He looked up at me and then began to convulse.”
“Hmm,” the woman replied noncommittally as Ethan stepped out of the way to ensure he didn’t hinder their progress. As he did so, he heard the woman exclaim and rock back on her heels.
“What the hell?” As her two assistants paused, she motioned for them to load him on the gurney as she explained. “Something inside that man just destroyed some of my best mednano.”
She rose as they lifted the man’s body. “Jenkins,” she called out, and Ethan was sure she was speaking to someone over her Link—but aloud for her team’s benefit, “get another one of those new stasis units prepped. We’re coming in hot.”
Ethan watched in bemusement as they rushed the gurney back into the lift and its doors closed, leaving him alone with his thoughts in the silence of the corridor.
The medical team managed to revive him later that day. Shortly thereafter, the lab had received a third schematic to throw up alongside the first two. This, too, had the disturbing fingerprint of his doppelganger embedded within. Given the medic’s exclamation about her mednano, Ethan had not been surprised.
So here he stood, facing irrefutable proof of what this Prime creature had done: not only had he reverse-engineered the original shackling program, but he’d created a more insidious version.
Not one version, but two: one for AIs…another for humans. Ethan was convinced they may never have been able to nullify either one without his own personal token.
He pulled up the readings once more, comparing the scan they’d done of the shackled AI to the one of the SIS agent who’d had the seizure. He marveled at the technological advancement of the stasis pods which held the victims of his doppelganger’s shackling—both human and AI. True stasis, without the potential damage that cryo held for organics subjected to its frigid embrace.
He realized another first: never before could both an organic and an inorganic sentient have been suspended together in stasis prior to this invention, and yet Daniel and Aaron resided together in a single stasis pod—right next to the one that held the agent who had collapsed.
The tenacity of the vice-marshal, too, impressed him. She had steadfastly refused all requests to reanimate the human, Daniel Ciu, and his partner, Aaron. He’d found a kill switch written into the code and realized that only her swift intervention and insistence on keeping them in stasis for the past two months had kept them both alive.
He worked the problem of Aaron’s shackles from both ends, first stripping out the need for his token authorization, then deftly removing the kill switch. Growing more confident by the day, Ethan settled into a rhythm, mentally swapping code, flipping and reversing, erasing and rewriting.
When he was done, he sent it up to the medical team, and then turned his attention to the next problem, the shackles plaguing the human.
Pausing the sequencer, he replied.
Ethan sent her avatar a mental smile.
Ethan felt a fierce surge of satisfaction at that.
the vice-marshal said after a moment. Ethan sent Esther a mental nod, and she continued.
He said nothing to that; she was correct, he had wondered….
As the connection closed, Ethan turned to study the scan the autodoc had provided of the human’s brain. The nano in his brain stem appeared to have extended up into the brain and interleaved itself throughout the man’s prefrontal and anterior singular cortices. It appeared too impossibly intertwined with his glial cells to ever separate.
What if, rather than removing that nano, I focus instead on manipulating the control nano at the point of entry?
Yes, he mused, that could work.
His mind flew through the code, rewriting, manipulating, and then adding inert formation material to the simulation.
After a week filled with testing, aborted attempts and finally a series of successful runs, he pinged the vice-marshal.
CRACKED CASE
STELLAR DATE: 10.13.3191 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: SIS laboratory, Tomlinson Base
REGION: El Dorado Ring, Alpha Centauri System
Esther had been in a meeting with the prime minister when Ethan called. Telling Lysander something had come up, she excused herself and sent the tendrils of her consciousness back along the secured trunk line that connected the main node in her office at Tomlinson to that of Parliament House.
She navigated her way to the laboratory and sent an audible ‘knock’ into the room before projecting a holographic representation of herself for the two human medics in attendance.
Esther greeted them as her form coalesced, and they nodded respectfully to her. Turning to face Ethan, she smiled. Switching to audible commu
nication on behalf of the humans in the room, she asked, “Well, gentlemen, where do we begin?”
Ethan returned her smile as his humanoid frame approached the human lying prone in the autodoc. “If you don’t mind, given the…origin…of his shackles, I’d like to explain what I’m about to do—and why—before initiating the procedure.”
He glanced between her projection and the two medics, and Esther understood it was more to ease the minds of the two humans than it was for her. She nodded for him to proceed.
“The nano is too deeply integrated into your agent’s neural cortices to be removed,” the AI began. “But it’s still malleable. This, combined with the natural plasticity of the human brain, should allow us to alter the nanofilament’s cellular structure.”
The scientist looked inquiringly over to the humans and, when they indicated they understood, he continued.
“I will now reinitialize the shackling program embedded in his brain stem.” He brought up the small medholo attached to the stasis unit and, although Esther couldn’t follow the specifics, she saw the two medics nod as they saw the display shift.
“What we’re going to do now is command the nano lacing his brain to reconfigure itself into glial cells.” The neuroscientist turned to Esther as he explained. “Glial cells are the building blocks of the human neural system. They form the myelin sheath that insulates axons. They surround neurons and provide support and protection for them.”
Although she couldn’t comprehend the implications of everything Ethan said, she understood the fundamentals: the neuroscientist was turning something meant to harm into something good instead.
She realized that Ethan had paused, waiting on her permission to proceed. “Please continue, Ethan,” she said, infusing her tone with calm confidence. The AI nodded, then turned and initiated the program while the human medics carefully monitored the agent’s brain composition.
She saw the medics exchange glances. A satisfied smile settled on the face of one as the other shook his head in what struck her as amazement.
She wasn’t amazed, not in the least. She’d known instinctively that Ethan was a treasure—a brilliant scientist with a solid core of ethics. What Lilith Barnes had done to him had been unconscionable.
“All readings are returning normal for glial cells,” the man who had shaken his head announced with a broad smile. He turned to Esther. “We can bring him out of stasis any time you’d like, ma’am.”
“Do it,” she said.
Ethan stood back just in time.
The agent’s eyes opened. For a moment, his expression appeared vacant, and his eyes unfocused. Then his gaze snapped to Ethan, and he launched himself from the autodoc, attacking the AI with a vicious savagery.
“You sonofabitch, you fucking monster, you—”
“John.” As she spoke, the man’s gaze swung wildly to Esther, but then returned to Ethan.
In a low voice that shook, the agent snarled, “You have no idea what this…this…thing has done. To me…. Stars, to all those people.” His voice broke.
“John.” Esther’s voice was a bit louder this time. “He’s not—”
“He slaughtered them.” John’s voice rose, cutting across hers and he struggled against the medics.
Had they been anything but enhanced and modified ESF soldiers, Esther was certain the man would have broken free.
“John.” Her voice cracked through the room, but the agent ignored her, spitting at Ethan as his invective continued.
“You got off on torturing those people. I saw it. And what you did to me….” He shuddered, then slumped in the medics’ hold as his voice turned ragged. “I’ll never sleep again….”
“John.” Esther’s voice was gentle now. “This is not Prime. Ethan is as much a victim as you. Prime was cloned from Ethan—and yes, Prime is one twisted stars-be-damned monster.”
She saw the man heave a breath as he stilled himself.
He gave a short laugh, then straightened as he attempted to shrug off the medics’ hold. “Not sure I’ve ever heard you curse, ma’am. Personally, I’ve been calling him a sick fuck—at least, before the damn thing in my head turned me into his sock puppet and kept me from even thinking such thoughts.”
At Esther’s nod, the medics released him, and John leaned back against the autodoc. Esther noticed he avoided looking in Ethan’s direction. By the pained look on the AI’s face, the scientist knew it, too.
“Ethan,” she turned to him, gesturing to the agent, “this was the reason why we have kept you in isolation, and why we left John down here with you. The evidence Samantha had from the bar—”
“My sweater?” Ethan supplied, and Esther nodded.
“Yes. It was circumstantial at best,” she admitted. “We needed John to confirm for us that it was indeed your clone who had slaughtered those humans. And,” she smiled wryly, “we thought it best done in private.”
Esther saw both the scientist and the agent nod at that.
“Yeah,” John cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his head. “Thanks for that.”
After a brief pause, she said quietly, “John, as soon as you’re up for it, we need to debrief you.”
His head jerked up at the word.
“Core,” he swore. “Ma’am, Prime—he’s not dead.” His voice was low, yet held a note of urgency, “Prime isn’t on El Dorado anymore—”
Ethan’s head shot up, and one of the medics muttered a quiet ‘fuck’ under his breath as the agent continued.
“He’s on a ship bound for Proxima.”
* * * * *
The human’s reaction had shaken Ethan to his core. The behaviors the agent had described were so depraved…. He shuddered, flinching away from an incomprehensible evil. Resolving to double his efforts to help the vice-marshal track down and stop the creature Lilith Barnes had created, he decided to see what he could find by searching the ring’s network.
Esther had ordered his access restored as she and the prime minister had departed just moments ago. It was the first time since he’d awakened in the medical expanse that he’d been granted the freedom to join the public networks. He reached out, thinking he could query the university for any files Lilith might have left behind.
To his surprise, hundreds of pings flooded his Link the moment he made the connection. None were from people he knew. He reached out tentatively, selecting one at random. Before opening it, he examined it carefully, using his knowledge of neural nets to study it. He probed until he located its point of origin, the date sent, and the token identifying its destination.
It was sent as a reply, but he knew he had not sent the original message. It was recent, which meant it was likely in response to something his doppelganger had initiated. When he opened it, he gasped audibly as he saw the trace identifier for the AI shackling code embedded in the message’s header.
With growing dismay, he sought the next message, and then another. He flew through them with increased agitation, then pulled out long enough to compile a code that would scrub through all messages and curate a list of ident tokens. At the midway point he surfaced long enough to ping the vice-marshal.
The vice-marshal was quiet. Ethan waited, knowing she was reviewing the contents.
Finally, he couldn’t stand it any longer.
She sent him a wave of reassurance, and then brought the tokens of two AIs to hover before him across their connection.
now, and her tone was grim and yet laced with satisfaction.
He knew his puzzlement telegraphed across their connection. Esther’s response was in the form of a fierce virtual expression that seemed equal parts savage and determined.
The vice-marshal highlighted the icon labeled ’Frida‘.
* * * * *
The meeting was brief. Esther felt a pang of guilt that she’d sent Ben all the way to Parliament House for a missive that could have been delivered in less than thirty seconds, but she understood the bond he and Lysander shared with Judith and her brother.
No, as much as this inconvenienced Ben, Esther knew she’d made the right decision. Both human and Weapon Born needed to hear the news together.
As Ben took a seat, Esther pinged Lysander, requesting permission to access his office’s holo emitters. She projected her avatar in a seat across from the human, a calculated move that placed Lysander in the chair next to him. Next, she sent the Weapon Born a private message, requesting he set security protocols in place to keep their conversation from being recorded.
He sent her a surprised look, but complied, asking, “What’s this all about, Esther? Has there been a new development you two want to share with me?”
Based on Ben’s expression, Esther knew Lysander would guess the analyst wasn’t in the loop either.
She glanced at Ben, and then back at him. “I wanted to tell you both privately first,” she said, and then paused. “Ethan reversed the final set of shackles—the human ones.”